Can one reasonably conclude that many important modding advances will never make it to FO4?

[OH1972]

On 27.11.2017 at 10:24 PM, Gameplayer said:

 

 

 

The previous rendition of leveling was very confusing for players, you literally had to plan out your progression before you started playing the game and you did fuck yourself out of nice builds due to simply being locked in both by your Skill Point Selection, Attribute allocation, and what perks you picked while leveling....I've also seen this refered to as dumbing down the game, and people pointing to how look now that lazy players that don't want to pre-plan their character before starting the game that makes the game worse.

I can point to another genre by another developer, how about the difference between Gary Guygax 2nd edition DnD and 3rd edition DnD?  I like 3rd edition no more bullshit numbers game figuring out THACO and Saving Throws. 

The scary thing is that players that bring it up ignore that the new system is still very much like the old system.  The new system just does a better job of not only hiding stuff but also presenting what the player needs to fucking know to successfully build an end-game character.  What stumps me is how someone can say that building an end-game PC is not possible. Its entirely possible to build your end game character.

 

You know what? I'd like to be a top athlete, too. Problem is, I probably lack some of the genetics for that. Which is why all this kind of "character planning" is nonsense to me. Yes, attribute allocation can lock you into certain tracks. As in, your character has defined strengths and weaknesses. That's roleplaying.  

The new system is still very much like the old system? Are you kidding me?  It changes how success at a whole number of things comes about substantially. It also makes development way more coarse.

[Gameplayer]

17 hours ago, OH1972 said:

 

You know what? I'd like to be a top athlete, too. Problem is, I probably lack some of the genetics for that. Which is why all this kind of "character planning" is nonsense to me. Yes, attribute allocation can lock you into certain tracks. As in, your character has defined strengths and weaknesses. That's roleplaying.  

The new system is still very much like the old system? Are you kidding me?  It changes how success at a whole number of things comes about substantially. It also makes development way more coarse.

The issue with Fallout 4's skill/perk system can easily be fixed, by putting a level cap in place.

After that you have the same effect of having to plan out your characters final destination skill/perk wise.

The reason it wasn't done is "Skyrim" which had infinite leveling system put into place due to player demand on Bethsada Forums.

If say you had a cap at level 30, 40, or 50 you would then have to actually think about what perks your taking and that would determine where you put your initial attributes.

 

Now the thing that a lot of players don't point out when complaining about the current system is that those locked in tracks your on during the characters development from early levels to say level 50....Is simply this it takes literally days of playing the game to get to uber level.  That is a whole shit ton of hours that your not able to hack robots, control robots, and build robots cause you didn't put your points there.  After 96 hours you likely have gotten really far into the main story, completed at least one of the DLC's, built up some settlements, and been to a lot of area's on the map.  I find it hilarious that players can overlook that so easily to declare that all of our characters are the same, cause the experience in getting there is most certainly not the same there are a shit ton of hours there were the execution of how we got things done are not the same.

 

Now as far as hours considering 96 hours puts a player into the hours range to say that sure they have done a lot in the game but still haven't completed...

Lets compare that to say Halo 1, 2, 3, and so on, a whole series of very popular games a lot of which can be completed in about 2 to 5 hours of play for a full priced game, really that alone Ive said enough full price game done in 2 hours.  We're talking about a series of games here that have started before the reboot of the Fallout Franchise, more than that there is no shortage of Tripple A titles to be found during the same period of 10 years that were short of content but as popular as the Fallout franchise reboot.

 

Then of course there's the Creation Club,

Hey I got news for ya wake up and have another look around you, all that stuff that went on with the Free gaming MMO market, that shits in full swing with triple A games on the consuls right now.  So take your pick of triple A mistakes going on right now on the consul machines your in for, "Loot Boxes", "paid power-ups", hell you have to pay money in some games just to get to use the vehicles temporarily in a fucking triple A title.  Creation Club cry babies are carrying on like CC is the coming of Satan when he already showed up full force everywhere else in every fucking game on the market. 

Gamers are literally screaming about modders having the option to take their creations to market meanwhile every other current game out there on consol is going pay to win features and implementing actual gambling to the extent that its finally getting some attention from the law's here in the US.

But no Creation Club is the devil, cause now modders have the option to not do it for free, which is really what the whole argument against it is about and has been about since the 25/75 Steam "debacle".

This would make a great case study but Im just not interested in wasting time and mental resources thinking about cause its just stupid, I mean hell dude I can point out games where people will gladly pay 100 dollars for a chance to get a swimsuit, not a guaranteed swimsuit a "chance" to obtain a swimsuit.

No, no, no,.....We has to complain about Fallout 4's CC like its the worst thing in the world's oh noes....When in Fallout 4 withen one download of free mod we have a 100% chance to get a swimsuit.  Of course its a sin against god if that same swimwear found its way onto CC, cause we all know the reality the reality is that if that swimsuit was in a Lootbox there would be people paying a 100 dollars for a "chance" to obtain that swimsuit.  You cant really argue that either cause that is where gaming has gone while you weren't looking.

Seems to me that Bethsada cut you a less than raw deal when I line them up against the other competors for your wallet but hey lets all complain in the dark here and act like its the worst company ever.

Meanwhile the demand for more content is so strong with mod users that there are in fact animators for Sim's 4 bringing in around 2 grand US a month to develop more content for a doll house game.  Lets not forget that we are having this discussion on Lovers Lab of all places its not like I a mod author wouldn't know about whats going on here, well I sure the fuck do know whats going on...Over at Sims 4 the fans of that game want fresh content so bad they're willing to pool together cold hard cash to pay for it even if the end result is the next guy to happen along gets it for free, but right Creation Club is the devil!!!

 

That's bringing me to the next point.....People acting like the game wasn't good enough....

With all that Loot Box stuff going on, with the shit show of games of 2016 and 2017....The supposedly new marketing practices which have all had just over 10 years to develop and show for in games you might not have been interested in but are now in your triple A titles now.  With games that have multiple iterations over the last ten years where basically I could show you how literally the older game is in fact better in every way including its graphics to such a degree as to be insulting see DeadRising for an example and that title is not alone, hell with where gaming could be going in 2018 you might have to pay for graphic enhancement DLC and that's not BGS's fault.

 

That's about all I got in me for a rant today,

Im not trying to insult any of you or get under your skin....

 

This rant is not meant to be directed at the person I quoted....it went from a response to a rant and I didn't feel like deleting it all.

[Farmthat]

I've always been a big fan of fallout, back from the original. (Fallout 2 was my favorite.) 

 

But I did not like this new game. The plot reasons for its poor reception are well-documented and I agree with many.

 

But here's one of my major beefs for modding: the world is both ugly and unrealistic. Everything is literally made of trash. It's been 200 years--nobody has built anything new? There's no shred of civilization?

 

Nobody sweeps the floors, all the clothing is 200 years old... I know this sounds trivial, but... WTF? Human nature would create order. People wouldn't wallow in ugly old homes that look like they've been abandoned for 200 years and then squatted in for 1 week, they'd put some effort into making it look good! They've had 200 years! Nobody built a rock wall around their town or anything? 

 

The best thing about fallout 2 was the NCR. They used their G.E.C.K. And actually started rebuilding a society. It was a little rough around the edges, flawed morally, but at least they were making progress.

 

excluding the institute, nobody else is anywhere but a full 200 years in the past, or even more primitive. Even the BOS. 

 

In a way, Skyrim is more civilized and modern than Fallout. 

 

And i I get it--that's a large part of the appeal of the fallout franchise. I loved the tribal communities in fallout 2 and new vegas. They're believable. They're variety.

 

but in fallout 4 everyone is just medieval with a veneer of retro-sci-fi and a dash of baseball or other favoring.

 

as a modder, it's a boring, homogenous environment with almost no tension in the world. Superficial differences between the NPC factions, greater reliance upon 100% bloodthirsty radioactive monsters to play the villains. 

 

 

[pinky6225]

Think its to early to tell, when i joined LL in 2013 there was already quite a few sexlab mods but nowhere near the amount there are now, things like sexlab submit which i think inspired quite a few other mods wasn't made till 2013 and wasn't in its more finished version until 2014, as i recall skyrim came out in 2011

 

Prison overhaul wasn't about till 2013 which was one of the first mods i had that had a large number of scripted scenes

 

skyrimll's SD+ again 2013 and he's still working on it four years later

 

Admittedly i'm not a modder but i think a lot of the popular mods now are possible as they have the knowledge/example from other mods in the past so until that is built up fallout 4 isn't going to have the huge range available for skyrim

[C5Kev]

To answer the question, I would concur. I certainly don't know as much as the folks here about the Fallout franchise as I never played them. But I was all Gung-ho when the game came out, make several insignificant mods, but as time went on, I started loosing interest in the game as a whole. Totally. As much as I wanted to like the game, I found it plain ol' predictable, boring and uninteresting. Maybe that'll change, but I doubt it. It'd be like putting lipstick on a pig. And I don't think another Pip-Boy re-texture will help either. I just can't get into it anymore - at all.  A few reasons...

 

- First and foremost, and I guess I'm naive, but I really  thought this was to be a serious-type game. But it's not. There's WAY  too much tongue-in-cheek / corn-ball bullshit humor in this game for me to take it seriously.

- The first time I was in the pod and saw my baby get kidnapped, I thought to myself, "Ah geez, there's the future bad guy!" And he was. Pffft...the story-line sucks. And if the story sucks, the game sucks.

- I don't care about ANY of the people in this game. My baby's kidnapped? I don't care...never knew the little blob. And I talked to my spouse for what, 2 minutes, then dead? Boo-hoo. Nate wasn't even the kid's biological father, so who gives a shit?  Fuck him!

- I'm supposed to be focused on getting my kid back, right? But first, help these folks, then these folks, then those folks, then these folks, then those folks...on and on and on.

- I need to spend endless hours to build / fortify settlements for the benefit of others I care nothing about?  I thought I was trying to find my kid?

- To me, having to micro-manage sub-moronic settlers takes away from the story  (*cough*)  and adds nothing.

- Just like The Matrix (and related-type movies), people in the future have fantastic tech, etc., but can't seem to build a sewing machine or a washer / dryer. Everyone / everything is dirty, beat-up, busted - except for the NEW Mega-Nuker 3000 - which is in pristine condition.  But folks still take a dump in a bucket or broken toilets. Uh-huh...riiiight.

- It's been 210 years and no one has decided to rebuild anything and live in cobbled shacks? Oh c'mon!  Or even repaint anything? It's simply too unbelievable to be credible.

- The Minutemen. OK, I get it. But after 210 yrs, no one has said enough is enough and created a police / military force? What happened to the narcissistic / psychopathic / sociopathic politicians / rich folk that are smarter and always have all the answers?   Just drinking their life away at the Colonial Tap Room?   Right...and let me know when Elvis gets here.

- The Railroad. Dumb. I'm from 210 yrs ago. Why would I even give a rat's ass about or as Virgil put it, "liberating vending machines" - no matter how "smart" it was?

- The Institute. Dumb. Trying to further / help man-kind by building human and gorilla-like machines? For what end? How does that even make sense? Holy Trans-humanism, Batman!

- BOS. The hi-tech military force from the land beyond that wants to take out The Institute. Why? Oh, they don't like synth's. So they build a giant synth - well, a clunky robot that throws, yes, throws nukes at shit?  Hmmm, that's a pretty hi-tech delivery system. Lowly bandits have plasma / Guass rifles and that the best you can do?

- I can't stand clunking around in that stupid power armor. Besides, the last suit I found smelled like ball sweat and throw up. No thanks.

- Dialogue system has been talked about enough. Yes / No / Sarcastic / Something else. Period...and it blows.

- I bought Far Harbour and didn't get too far in. Got to the "robot murder" hotel and found that two tank-tread driven robots are in love. Ohhh....OK! This is supposed to be funny, right?  Dumb.  Game off.

- Who's the main robot guy in Far Harbour? You know, the collection of Radio King television tube chassis' on his head? Want him dead?  Shoot just one tube. Bang. Dead.

- Go here, shoot this. Go there, shoot that. I know that Skyrim is much the same thing, but somehow, Skyrim is fun. And a FAR better story-line.

- I've never felt threatened or apprehensive in this game. Super-Mutants aren't scary Falmer-types, as maybe they should have been. Just big, dumb idiots. Humorous at times, but I didn't buy the game to hear stupid, "off-the-cuff" comments.

- IF  I do play, I now bypass everyone's issues. I get myself to the Castle, wait for Ronny, buy "The Last Minute" and game over. You can kill everything - easily.

- There's no real RPG here. One is directed to go this way or that way or that way. It's just an FPS with smart-ass robots.

 

I could go on forever, but to sum up - I don't think any big mods / latest mod-tech or things such as HDT will make it into or help this game. Sure, I could be wrong. But I also don't believe all that many people find this game fun or interesting and therefore, why even bother? It's just a bad foundation. Even an FO4 SL-type mod can help. Sorry Vinfamy, I know you're trying!  Again, if the story sucks, the game sucks. And the story sucks as well as the game play is boring. I've also read that most of the DLC's suck as well. But I'm not spending a dime to find out whether that true or not.

 

Just my two cents...

 

[Ernest Lemmingway]

I would have to agree with almost everything c5kev wrote. FO3 and FO4 are just not Fallout games. I remember playing the first game from Interplay and it was a blast. Neither FO3 or FO4 can hold a candle to the depth of story, character development, world development, or even graphics despite the fact that both are higher resolution and use 3-D modelling. And as I've said repeatedly, Bethesda doesn't get Fallout. They never will, IMO.

 

The one point I disagree with--somewhat--is the humor. Yes, Fallout is known for including cheesy pieces of humor. But it served the story and lightened an otherwise grim mood. Bethesda's attempts at humor are jokes but not humorous, nor is the mood ever truly dark enough to need such. They're too politically correct to truly explore the darker realities of life in a post-apocalyptic world. Slavery, rape, fanaticism, not even in Morrowind did they explore the first and third themes in any real depth. So much potential for plot development completely wasted.

 

Honestly, I thought Fallout was better as a top-down isometric game rather than a first-person 3-D game. The format certainly worked better for things like random encounters and said Easter eggs. I guess we were right in fearing that Bethesda would turn the series into "Oblivion with guns." They certainly don't try to change much from TES game formulas.

[Nalessa]

To be fair, bodyslide was done a few months after FO4 release, for skyrim it took multiple years to get that.

 

And the quality of armor created by modders, even early on, has been way higher then what skyrim had at the respective point in time.

 

I'd say so far FO4 has had a much better and faster release of quality mods then skyrim had when that was 2 years old.

 

One big limiting factor is also no proper F4SE yet, if that gets done then modding is going to skyrocket I think for Fallout 4.

[NNS10]

53 minutes ago, Nalessa said:

To be fair, bodyslide was done a few months after FO4 release, for skyrim it took multiple years to get that.

 

And the quality of armor created by modders, even early on, has been way higher then what skyrim had at the respective point in time.

 

I'd say so far FO4 has had a much better and faster release of quality mods then skyrim had when that was 2 years old.

 

One big limiting factor is also no proper F4SE yet, if that gets done then modding is going to skyrocket I think for Fallout 4.

Armor and weapon mods are about the only types of mods that get released.

 

If looking at other mods that involve modifying or adding gameplay to extend the game's longevity, it's sorely lacking in FO4. Ditto on good quest mods. Only a handful of them.

[Bruce Banner]

The lack of quest mods is undoubtedly down to having a voiced protagonist but , in my view anyway , having a voiced PC is worth the payoff and I personally find it far more immersive than having a mute character like in Skyrim . In fact after getting used to having a voiced character , if the next Elder Scrolls game doesn't follow suit it would maybe put me off buying it . If Fallout 4 and the Saints Row games can have a voiced main character then there's no excuse not to in my book .

[allsunday]

I honestly feel like a group of purple-haired land whales with Ph.Ds in gender studies and a group of super cucked white knight manginas infiltrated the ranks of the video game industry so far up their own asses that they seeped into Bethesda and they took a look at the most popular mods for Skyrim (like CBBE, UNP, HDT Physics, HDT HH, NIOverride, and Sexlab) and they all decided to it needs to stop, it's hurting the feelings of ugly girls too much.  If you just take a look at the evidence, Bethesda literally went out of their own way to place limitations on its own papyrus engine to curb these kinds of mods.  There's no other way to explain how they went from a bad papyrus script engine to an even worse one.  WTF??  And why?  All this just to appease the emotions of ugly land whales so that they can feel good about themselves whom I'm sure most of them don't even play video games aside from Candy Crush or some stupid ass walking simulator like Life is Strange.  

We have these ideological morons taking over Hollywood and the video games industry in the past decade and most of the films and games released are crap and yet most people continue to sit around thinking it's all just a funny coincidence.
 

[landess]

Gameplayer touched on this throughout most of his reply.

 

Could it be we were witnessing the golden age of modding?

 

Oblivion was the first game where I was shopping for mods, looking at the state of affairs surrounding it, and generally going bonkers for mods. It seemed like anything was going to be possible. Follow this with more titles from Bethesda and others that promoted modding like CDPR, and the Sims for that matter and we have a burst of excitement flowing through the market. Mod-able game became more popular, Sites sprung up..... it was a brave new world - the wild west.

 

Then corporate interests shifted from simply allowing games to be modded, to promoting their own mods. The rest is history in the making as we sit now.

[Crooltool]

When I first joined LL, Skyrim had been out for 2 years and 3 months and LL had approx 600 skyrim mods, FO4 has been out for about the same time, and LL has 383 mods for FO4. but at this time, Skyrim had a fully functional script extender, and Skyui, now yes, FO4 is behind as far as mod development goes, BUT, skyrim wasn't being updated and thus breaking the script extender every month. Also, Skyrim didn't have another "new" game out vying for the attention of the script exender team <Skyrim SE> at the same time. I really think that once the script extender settles down, we will see a large increase in the number and quality of mods for FO4, will it equal Skyrim? I don't think so but I think that will be due to modders dividing time between SkyrimSE and FO4, and I dont fault them for working on SkyrimSE at all, the chance to mod Skyrim in a 64bit enviorment  after fightin with the limitations of skyrim LE would be like a dream come true. Add it the fact that the ES universe has always been more popular then the FO universe, and I wouldn't be writing off mod developement for FO4 just yet. 

As for the storyline sucking, really, has there ever been a Bethesda game where the story line wasn't at least a little bit lame? I blew thru the original skyrim story line in less then 30 hours, and thought what a waste, and parked the game until I discovered modding, now i have over 8000 hours into skyrim and I still have not completed the original storyline other then that first time. meanwhile.. I have less then 30 minutes into Skyrim SE.. why because the storyline sucks, and until the mods get close to skyrim LE, i'm content to mess around in FO4 because while the storyline still sucks, at least its NEW and sucks, instead of been there done that sucks.

[Veladarius]

Few things to comment on:

- A lot of the modders that did a lot of the major things for Skyrim are either gone or still modding Skyrim and have no interest in FO4 (either due to not liking FO$ itself or the Fallout series in general). A lot of the people that have helped me for the first year or two when I made Captured Dreams in Skyrim are gone.

- Building mods in Skyrim looks to be far different than in FO4, both have their quirks and such but a lot of changes have been made. I have worked with modders who made things for Oblivion and they had issues with Skyrim's CK because a lot of the features they used were broken and had to be done by script (if they could be done at all).

- To me the game seems far from finished:

--- The Institute quest line is way too short, it's like they took a 12 step program and reduced it to 3.

--- It is mentioned that the Super Mutants in Boston are different from others and the Institute had a program that made them for research, did the institute release them?

--- The Railroad missed so many details and instead glossed over them all with the 'we got a holotape of everything they have'. Apparently they missed that all the traders working for Stockton have been informing the institute fairly often about escaped synth locations.

--- Brotherhood of Steel and the Minutemen - BoS could have done a takeover of all the settlements and replaced the Minutemen entirely or forced them to join the BoS.

--- Minutemen never go after their biggest nemesis - the Gunners. Minutemen should have started taking over the Gunner bases and outposts as well as the major Raider bases and kept them for themselves ensuring they couldn't be retaken, would have been another decent use for the construction system to refortify them to repel any attempts to take them back and if they failed then the Minutemen would be replaced by whomever took it.

 

Overall it seems like what was released was less than half the game it could have been but they tried to do too much. It would be like if the first Star Wars movie ended with the rescue of Princess Leia.

[Varithina]

4 hours ago, Veladarius said:

Few things to comment on:

--- Brotherhood of Steel and the Minutemen - BoS could have done a takeover of all the settlements and replaced the Minutemen entirely or forced them to join the BoS.

 

--- Minutemen never go after their biggest nemesis - the Gunners. Minutemen should have started taking over the Gunner bases and outposts as well as the major Raider bases and kept them for themselves ensuring they couldn't be retaken, would have been another decent use for the construction system to refortify them to repel any attempts to take them back and if they failed then the Minutemen would be replaced by whomever took it.

 

Overall it seems like what was released was less than half the game it could have been but they tried to do too much. It would be like if the first Star Wars movie ended with the rescue of Princess Leia.

 

Brotherhood and minutemen, it seems to be implied from what the bos themselves say that they will not be staying in the commonwealth after they deal with the insitute, in which case taking over anything is a waste of time and resources that are better served in dealing with the institute, also the sheer number of people need to keep control of any settlement would put them off.  As to forcing the mm into the bos, what stops the then conscripted mm from placing explosives or other sabotage when the bos start doing other things, nothing at all is the answer.  Working together however would have made sense, support the mm/settlemts, which makes things more stable and harder for the institute to do things. It also gives the bos a line of supply for food and such as well as possible intel and help finding the stuff they want, after all plenty of the people in the commonwealth are scavengers they would be likely to sell to the bos as they are to anybody else.

 

Gunners, they never really made any sense to me, unless somebody is paying them to do so, their constant attacks on well everybody make no sense, sure mutants/raiders and such yeh the have loot, and are pretty much hostile to everybody, but attacking settlements/traders makes no real sense, after all they are getting paid and the question is where are they spending their down time and spending those caps?  In the settlements or at the traders they are attacking well good luck with that idea.