Fallout 4

[dwarf]

Does anyone find the sound design in this game frustrating? It's difficult to gauge enemy whereabouts by listening out to them because there seems to be no correlation between the volume of their facile threats and their proximity to your location.

 

Also finding the frequency of legendary enemies is too high on hard mode - they're bullet sponges of the most tedious kind and most of the time I end up just sniping them, quick saving, and then waiting for my 'caution' status to return to 'hidden' so I can critical them from a safe distance.

 

Agree with the criticisms about the lack of variety in questing. It's really only redeemed by the gorgeous world design.

[Magnus]

Does anyone find the sound design in this game frustrating? It's difficult to gauge enemy whereabouts by listening out to them because there seems to be no correlation between the volume of their facile threats and their proximity to your location.

Every time you enter a building in Fallout 4: "HEY I HEARD SOMETHING." "IS SOMEONE THERE." "SHOW YOURSELF." "HUH I MUST BE HEARING THINGS." "BE CAREFUL I THINK HE'S USING A STEALTH BOY."

[dwarf]

The one that erks me is 'ONLY A COWARD HIDES!'

Get rekt u skrub

[Agent Gibbs]

Does anyone find the sound design in this game frustrating? It's difficult to gauge enemy whereabouts by listening out to them because there seems to be no correlation between the volume of their facile threats and their proximity to your location.

 

Also finding the frequency of legendary enemies is too high on hard mode - they're bullet sponges of the most tedious kind and most of the time I end up just sniping them, quick saving, and then waiting for my 'caution' status to return to 'hidden' so I can critical them from a safe distance.

 

Agree with the criticisms about the lack of variety in questing. It's really only redeemed by the gorgeous world design.

 

I'm kind of annoyed with them for the loot they drop, i've gotten quite a few legendary scrub enemies show up (mole rats, rad roaches) amongst others who drop legendary armour/items which turn out to be crap (or worse than the current limb specific armour i have) - go to work bench go to break them down - you can't

 

right now i think every one of my Sanctuary villages has some shit legendary armour or weapon

 

god damn let me break them down into stuff!

[Magnus]

I think it's better this way, because now people can't break them down accidentally. It's not like you'd get anything special, anyway. If you need two screws that badly, just break down a regular weapon?

 

I've mostly been disappointed by the legendary weapons and armor (and since I'm playing on easy, I don't run into that many legendary enemies), but every now and then, you get something that's pretty cool.

[dwarf]

Also finding the frequency of legendary enemies is too high on hard mode - they're bullet sponges of the most tedious kind and most of the time I end up just sniping them, quick saving, and then waiting for my 'caution' status to return to 'hidden' so I can critical them from a safe distance.

 

OK so it turns out I've actually been playing on very hard. Ffs. Since dropping it down it's been fairer and more enjoyable.

I've found the legendary weapons and armour mostly useless, and besides, it's too irritating and time consuming reapplying apparel for each limb when most decent one-pieces are sufficiently similar statistically.

Edited December 2, 2015 by dwarf

[Sheikah]

The one piece suits are generally quite a bit worse than upgraded individual pieces. You can have perks on each piece too, like take less damage from humans. Have a complete set and you'll take next to nothing from humans.

[jayseven]

I spent about 20 hours before I went to Diamond City, because when I played FO3 I took a left out of the vault and just explored for about 40 hours before I even went to megaton. I had no idea how big the game was or how long the story would be.

 

Once I got to Diamond City the game really picked up. There's some really solid quests that introduce you to different strains of the game's focus -- essentially living off the Minutemen stories is pretty damn dry. I guess it's more interesting for Americans who are a bit more clued-up with the actual historical relevance. Having been to boston fairly recently I was really all about finding the Freedom Trail - which i came across during the story but couldn't follow it - then the story kept being cool, then super cool, and now I've found some interesting places and I have 17 missions on the go, plus I found at least 15 places that I couldn't visit because I was following a mission...

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that with FO3 I had no idea how BIG the game was, and to go into FO4 knowing that it would be a game of similar scope I had lost a lot of the curiousity and joy that FO3's surprises gave me, and I made the mistake of assuming I knew what to expect this time round. The game gets better the more you do, I think.

[Kagato]

Despite the game being a few weeks old all i've done is wander around the wasteland doing random bits and bobs, suppose i should probably head to Diamond City at some point. Had a few weird sound loop glitches that wouldnt stop until i rebooted, love that soundtrack of old timey classics though, cant stop singing them at work...

[Emasher]

The main problem with legendary weapons and armour is that they're randomly generated, meaning you end up with a lot of pretty much worthless equipment that you can't really make use of beyond just selling it. Seeing as there's quite a lot of non-legendary equipment that's already quite valuable, it makes legendary equipment pretty much meaningless. Fallout 3 and New Vegas both had a unique version of each weapon which had some bonus compared to the standard one. They were put in specific locations, and were usually a reward for completing a significant task. For example, as a reward for completing Fallout 3's Point Lookout expansion's main quest, you got a rifle that had the same design as ones commonly found in Point Lookout, but it didn't have certain debuffs that the common ones had. Unique weapons in those games were specific rewards for accomplishing specific tasks, which made them quite satisfying to find. Contrast this with the randomly generated weapons that often don't make sense in Fallout 4 (I have a 10mm pistol that magically makes whatever you shoot catch fire, despite just using standard 10mm ammo), that you find in just about every location.

 

When everything's special, nothing is.

[Sheikah]

Legendary weapons are totally the opposite of worthless compared to normal weapons. Once you get a sniper rifle with +50% damage to humans (or any other perk), for instance, there is literally no reason to have a regular sniper rifle. They are exactly the same, and can be upgraded the same, except one does more damage to humans. Legendary weapons also tend to sell for a lot more - my legendary fat man has a value of thousands. Mine is also classed as 'lucky', so does double damage when I fire it as a critical shot. Pretty rad, if you'll excuse the pun.

 

There's also a lot of weapons/legendaries that are rewards from specific quests, like previously, as well as from specific locations and enemies. One of my favourite melee weapons is a guaranteed fist weapon from a big enemy.

 

I do agree that the system for acquiring legendaries from randomly spawning enemies is a bit hit and miss though. That's really the reason I play on hard - you encounter so many legendary enemies that it averages out, so you do get good weapons with good perks as well as shit ones.

[Emasher]

Legendary weapons are totally the opposite of worthless compared to normal weapons. Once you get a sniper rifle with +50% damage to humans (or any other perk), for instance, there is literally no reason to have a regular sniper rifle. They are exactly the same, and can be upgraded the same, except one does more damage to humans. Legendary weapons also tend to sell for a lot more - my legendary fat man has a value of thousands. Mine is also classed as 'lucky', so does double damage when I fire it as a critical shot. Pretty rad, if you'll excuse the pun.

 

There's also a lot of weapons/legendaries that are rewards from specific quests, like previously, as well as from specific locations and enemies. One of my favourite melee weapons is a guaranteed fist weapon from a big enemy.

 

I do agree that the system for acquiring legendaries from randomly spawning enemies is a bit hit and miss though. That's really the reason I play on hard - you encounter so many legendary enemies that it averages out, so you do get good weapons with good perks as well as shit ones.

 

I just see no point in having the useless ones in the first place. Yes, a legendary sniper rifle that does +50% damage as a reward for some quest, or at the end of a large difficult dungeon would be great, but that's not what you typically see with the system.

 

Legendary weapons in Fallout 4 are treated like enchanted weapons were in Skyrim (they almost certainly share the same code). It just doesn't make any sense in the Fallout universe as opposed to a world full of magic and that sort of thing. I suspect it was just a re-skin of that system to cut development costs, rather than designing something that actually makes sense.

[Sheikah]

Every single legendary is better than the normal version of the same counterpart. A synth right leg with -15% damage from super mutants is always better than a synth right leg with no perk, for instance. That +50% damage modifier is something I got just randomly, as well as one making me deal 50% more damage to animals.

 

I guess what you're saying is you don't get enough things with perks you like, or that the perk system is ramdom? Again, I don't disagree that it's pretty random, but in my experience playing on hard makes it so that you're always getting loot with good perks as there's just so many legendary enemies.

 

As for the upgrade system not making sense, I'm not sure where to go with that. One of my favourite levelling up systems is basically a board game that loads up in front of you (Final Fantasy X). For me, whether a progression mechanic makes any sense will always firmly take a back seat to whether I can run 50% faster or fire 2 nukes at once up a deathclaw's jacksie.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Sheikah

[Emasher]

To sum up what I'm saying:

1) There are too many immersion breaking bonuses on the legendary weapons. For example: It doesn't make any sense for a gun to cause conventional ammunition to burst into flames when it hits its target. Stuff like that falls into the category of magic, and that destroys suspension of disbelief in a world that doesn't have magic. A mutated mosquito carrying a piece of armour doesn't make much sense either.

 

2) You're right, there are certainly lots of good legendary weapons that do fit in with the world. And yes, all legendary weapons are objectively better than non-legendary weapons. Those are both objective facts, and I'm not denying either of them. The majority of ones I've found though have had such specific bonuses on them that they're almost never going to have an advantage over the normal ones. For instance, a hunting rifle that does extra damage against ghouls (pretty much useless since there are much better types of weapons for killing ghouls). You get stuff like this because the legendary weapons are randomly generated rather than actually being designed like in previous games in the series. While this in itself doesn't make the game worse, in my opinion, it would have been better to actually design legendary weapons and make them rewards for doing something significant, rather than extremely common, and just something you come across at random. My opinion is that this would be more rewarding to the player.

[Sheikah]

Yeah, there are a lot of weapons with no real use other than to sell because of their peculiar perks, but that's really no different to most other Fallout games where probably 90% of weapons you find or more are just trash for selling on. This way you don't always get something you want to keep, but in my experience you get decent stuff far more often. In past games there was almost no reason to bother with normal enemies like raiders, and most of them were pushovers too. I welcome the addition of legendaries.

 

Regarding your other bit about immersion, this game has never taken itself seriously, really. I would never look at a single aspect of this game and question whether it broke the immersion factor of living 220 years after the apocalypse. We explore houses that have got most of their stuff still in the draws, and a fair number of the perks that have existed since Fallout 3 are pretty much what you would describe as 'magical'. I suppose for me, an immersion breaking event would be something like a car pulling up in Skyrim. A gun firing elemental bullets on criticals seems pretty tame, and to be honest not entirely unbelievable in a game like Fallout.

[Emasher]

They've certainly always had unrealistic stuff in them, but a magical fire pistol just goes a little too far in my opinion. I can accept something that doesn't make sense that still fits in with the game, but there is a line. It's going to be different for everyone though, so if a magical fire pistol makes sense to you in Fallout, then have fun with it.

 

It's certainly not the biggest design flaw in the game anyway.

[Sheikah]

What about the perk they first introduced in Fallout 3 where your health comes back when you're in the sun? Something like that always seemed way more magical than any of this stuff.

[Emasher]

No argument there.

[Fierce_LiNk]

@Eenuh got me this for Christmas and I've just started playing it.

 

Granted, I'm very early into the game, but for some reason I haven't got a huge urge to want to play it. It's probably down to tiredness as I was knackered yesterday when I sat down with it, but I haven't really connected with it yet. Gonna try a bit more later on tonight and see how it goes from there.

[Blade]

@Eenuh got me this for Christmas and I've just started playing it.

 

Granted, I'm very early into the game, but for some reason I haven't got a huge urge to want to play it. It's probably down to tiredness as I was knackered yesterday when I sat down with it, but I haven't really connected with it yet. Gonna try a bit more later on tonight and see how it goes from there.

 

As you are a Witcher 3 fan like myself I am very interested to read your thoughts on this. I keep seeing the game cheap but I am wondering whether its worth sinking the hours into the game, bearing in mind there are so many top quality games now released/about to be released.

[Fierce_LiNk]

As you are a Witcher 3 fan like myself I am very interested to read your thoughts on this. I keep seeing the game cheap but I am wondering whether its worth sinking the hours into the game, bearing in mind there are so many top quality games now released/about to be released.

 

I'm trying to move completely away from comparing games to each other because I think it just sets things up for disappointment. The Witcher 3 is my favourite game ever and it'll take a lot to top that. So, I'll happily judge Fallout on its own merits.

 

The game does appear to be cheap in a lot of places. Could be worth going for. I'll let you know after I've played some more.

[Blade]

I'm trying to move completely away from comparing games to each other because I think it just sets things up for disappointment. The Witcher 3 is my favourite game ever and it'll take a lot to top that. So, I'll happily judge Fallout on its own merits.

 

The game does appear to be cheap in a lot of places. Could be worth going for. I'll let you know after I've played some more.

 

Cheers. I get your point about comparing games to one another.

 

I don't care if it is £1, I want to know whether its worth the time that will be needed as there is so much out there

[Fierce_LiNk]

Cheers. I get your point about comparing games to one another.

 

I don't care if it is £1, I want to know whether its worth the time that will be needed as there is so much out there

 

Horizon is the one that I'm really looking forward to playing next. That'll be my next purchase!

 

There is quite a lot out there, atm. Great time to be a gamer!

[Happenstance]

I loved Fallout 3 and New Vegas but I never managed to get into 4. I dont really know what it was but it just didnt click with me the same way as the other two.

[somme]

Fallout 4 was my first jaunt into the franchise.

 

I played it before Witcher 3 and Horizon and really enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the settlement building which is a lot better now they've improved it via patches. The story was interesting too, especially considering I hadn't played a Fallout game before.

 

It looks pretty hideous compared to most other games this generation, but that didn't bother me too much.

 

I was also pretty impressed when I named my character and the robot butler started calling me by actual name!

 

Anyway, I don't think it'll blow your socks off, but well worth it at sale price.