Fallout 4

Oh, one of the first things I learned in Survival was that my favorite mods more or less busted it. Craftable backpacks let me do outrageous things like carry a rifle, a pistol, and pick up a hundred weight units of scrap. Sim Settlements let me set up mutfruit, tato and corn farms in Sanctuary right away for a source of vegetable starch, and once I got supply lines and heavy industrial plots going in Starlight Drive-In, the only time I found myself starved for materials was near the end of my Brotherhood quests, when I ran out of aluminum when fully upgrading my power armor. And the reason I got so much done over the last days of December was my Immersive Teleportation mod letting me zip around to key settlements.

Thing is, none of that really felt like "breaking" Survival mode, because by itself the mode is kinda not-worky. Without backpacks, and with weighted ammo, and with the need to carry food and drink, you're left with precious little inventory space to carry scrap, which is kind of a bad thing for a game obsessed with hoarding junk for crafting and settlement building. I'd say Bethesda intended you to clear a site carrying as little as possible and then run back and forth while carrying the bare minimum of equipment to sustain yourself during repeated subsequent scrap runs, except I think that would be too generous. My spiel about disabling saves in the above post suggests that there wasn't much thought put into this play mode, which clashes with Fallout 4's core gameplay in so many ways. If they had, they might have snuck some beds into the Glowing Sea during the patch that introduced Survival mode instead of asking players to traverse a quarter of the map without getting jumped by a Deathclaw, random legendary enemy, or game crash.

It's kind of like making an "Extreme" game mode where your primary weapon is bound to the Enter key instead of a mouse button. Does it make the game harder? Yes. Is it a rewarding sort of challenge, a "fair" difficulty? Not really.

If I may put the boot to a dead draft animal, doing "Blind Betrayal" again really highlighted just how bad the dialogue and quest design is in this game. I can't bluntly refuse to kill Danse and get kicked out of the Brotherhood, instead I bluntly refuse and am trusted to do the deed anyway. I can't show any sort of sympathy for Synths, the game's dialogue writers assumed I'd been fully indoctrinated by the Brotherhood. I can't bring the Railroad into the quest in any way, tell Dez that a synth is in peril, tell Danse that he has people in the Commonwealth who would help him. And I can't interrupt Danse's execution by bipping Maxson, because Danse apparently suffers a heart attack at the sight of his leader dying.

Also, I was stuck in combat mode after avenging Danse because the landed Vertibird counted as a hostile entity, even though it was grounded after I headshotted the pilot through the canopy.

Some of that I think is probably a limitation of the engine scripting, time and the ability to create that many variables to each plot line. Their assumption is potentially that if you're that far into the Brotherhood, you're down with the trenchcoat Starship Trooper cosplayers.

Though having some ability to "change your mind" or at least have said refusals recognised in game would be only a minor stretch, I'd grant you. It's weird as you can save the Sheriff in Megaton in a supposed scripted sequence, if you're fast enough. Same with Markarth market and the Forsworn assassin. o quite why FO 4 goes "nope, this is WRITTEN," I have no idea.

I do agree more could have been done with the main quests, especially the obvious.

Fallout 4's writing in-general relies on two major things.

The Assumption that the player will just go along with what it presented and the assumption that the player won't think very hard about what is being presented.

I just rush through the dialogue these days, I've learned that writing my own story in my head is more enjoyable than watching the one the game is trying to present me. Also, of course there's no change to the Covenant questline to reflect the fact that the Institute is currently a radioactive crater. Of course I can't mention that I've met Old Man Stockton while working with the Railroad. Of course the town vendor is still bugged and saying "Enjoy your stay!" instead of selling me things, even when she's behind her counter in the middle of the afternoon.

Also, I have come to a realization about playing Fallout 4 on Survival mode: I'm actually playing XCOM 2. If I start an encounter in Concealment/Stealth and ambush some flat-footed enemies, I can abuse Overwatch/VATS and drop all of my enemies in one or two silenced sneak attacks from a semi-auto rifle (Sandman perks + Ninja perks + Deacon's perk = hilarious damage multipliers). If I'm sloppy and activate an enemy pod with my last action on my turn, I die in a brief hail of gunfire. And outside of battle, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time collecting outfits and playing dress-up with my soldiers/Settlers. Admittedly, it's in part because they keep showing up in my settlements in their underwear...

Just what are you broadcasting in your settlement radio signals?!

Also, do enemies not have any sort of damage scaling either? They still take twenty sniper rounds to kill, but they only have to land a hit on you?

That's bullllllllllll

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Apr 5th 2019 at 1:45:02 PM

Must've gotten a copy of ED-E's "human mating calls" for my beacons. Or maybe it's my maxed Charisma at work.

And yeah, Survival's damage scaling is, as I understand it, 0.5x damage dealt by the player and 2x damage dealt to the player. There's a mod that tried to correct that and make it, you know, fair, but I don't think it's working anymore.

I must be a mutant as I have pretty much made up my mind never to do a straight run to a Railroad, Minutemen or Brotherhood ending again, after being really teed off getting to the ending for the Minutemen, finding the Railroad honestly evil and two-faced, and being of the opinion that those jerk-offs in Power Armor aren't really Brotherhood anymore, they're either Outcasts or Enclave in drag - that and it is so much fun to splatter that bloody zeppelin of theirs all over Boston Airport along with that dickhead Maxson.

Which leads me to a final choice of two options, both of which I rather enjoy - being a Raider version of Him/Her On Terra and ruling over the Boston Wasteland; or shepherding the Institute to a newer and brighter future. If someone made a mod where you could combine the two for a satisfying story I don't think I'd ever stop playing.

I guess you could say you're the enlightened ruler of the Institute preparing for the regrowth of civilization, while playing a role on the surface as an agent of mayhem to hasten the old world's collapse. Kind of like the synth raider leader at Libertalia, just on purpose.

More post-victory Survival mode horror stories. The Battle for Bunker Hill just won't end, even two weeks after the Institute was blown up and the Prydwen brought down. And for whatever reason the Railroad Heavies there are hostile to me, while the Brotherhood Knights aren't.

Vertibird travel has the enormous side effect of triggering those damned "defend the checkpoint" miscellaneous quests every time you fly near one (why is there no mod to turn those off?!). Which means when you reach your destination, all the NPCs there are reacting to the enemies you aggro'd in another cell, but which are still trying to kill you. I flew to the Slog once only to have everyone in it come pouring out onto the road, running south past the ironworks to help the people in Finch Farm fight off some Gen 2 Synths attacking some Minutemen on the road. And then a Brotherhood vertibird showed up when I jogged back to the Slog to attack another nearby checkpoint.

At level 58 on Survival mode, with no ranks in the Big Guns or Explosives perks, a direct hit from a Fat Man won't kill a named Gunner in the GNN building. But with 10 Agility, 10 Covert Ops manuals, 5 ranks in Sneak, shadowed medium combat armor, 6 Strength, and 3 ranks of Ninja, I can tea-bag a Legendary Deathclaw Matriarch in her sleep, then kill her in a flurry of six slices from an un-upgraded Combat Knife.

This is the game Bethesda made right after the Skyrim "stealth archer" complacency syndrome, by the way.

I have a two-shot 50 cal silenced sniper. You don't have to lecture me on that XD

To be honest, I find my own attempt at Skyrim Sneak Archery to never live up to the standards set by other people. It never feels as overpowering as it's decried.

... it levels far too swiftly and easily. It's THE easiest skill to max out, and at Sneak 100 with all levels of the stealth perk taken I have literally stealthed in front of people in broad daylight. With no cover. And i was only in my twenties in level.

Yeah, you can literally crouch and plink away with arrows while enemies just stand there right in front of you.

So I'm doing a Fallout 4 run on my You Tube channel and figured I'd drop this here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPHhsge0V9c

It's not really long, as it's the first episode and tries to set an RP tone to the rest of the series. There's a decent bit of game talk but not too much. I've seen others just play the game and not RP it, and that just seems redundant to me at this point. So I'm trying to fill in gaps in the character and try working around the story with my narration.

So to finish on PS 4 with my unmodded game (Where I was pretty much leaning into the Insitute)... or go for a mixed playthrough with Minutemen / Railroad (Or just pure Minutemen) on my modded PC version (After I finish Vampyr).

My problem is that every time I load up I pretty much just get hit with anxiety about how big the map is and go "Yeah ain't got time".... even though I could probably blitz a tonne of it.

I think I may try Institute for the Evulz. Plus... my guy is a survivor of the original America. And so is probably more on side with the technocracy elements. He's not quite anti-hippie (aka the Railroad) but with the Minutemen and the institute you could probably carve something approaching an actual nation out of the Commonwealth. Once you stop them basically thinking of the surface as a giant test tube of course. And give them some actual GOALS beyond SCIENCE!!

I would be like that if there was more control and I could play that way, but as it is I just can't make anything of the Institute. At least the Brotherhood doesn't pretend you're in charge when you're not.

I could never get the initiation into the brotherhood past the point were you get that speech from Maxon about "protecting the Commonwealth from itself". I always immediately put a bullet between his eyes for the sheer poetic irony of being killed by your own people after uttering such a cliché sentence.

Also yeah Stealth is really OP, the BLITZ perk also makes playing Melee-Stealth really bonkers, by the point you find any legendary weapon with the Instigating effect, winning the game becomes a formality.

Edited by Kiefen on Apr 10th 2019 at 10:33:26 AM

I can see why people joined the Brotherhood, especially with DC the way it was. If the local warlord is the only one offering stability, then you drink the kool-aid. There's only, what, 3 functional settlements in the DC wastes? Rivet City, Megaton, Tenpenny Tower. The rest are marginal at best.

Compared to the Commonwealth which is a veritable paradise by comparison - loads of easily purified water, the soil is able to maintain crops, there is the potential for nearly hundreds of disparate settlements...

The Brotherhood would find it harder to get a foothold as people can experience a pretty stable life without NEEDING them. But the FO 4 Brotherhood, I think, is the natural conclusion of the Brotherhood Arc from one - techno-luddites, with a fear of unchecked progress, partly in love with their own myth, then deciding the only way to protect humanity is from itself.

They are the anti-enclave ONLY in that they don't want to kill all living things; but they're still fairly anti-mutant / ghoul.

The DC BOS were the abnormality - the Outcasts are the REAL Brotherhood, remember. Very little care for the rest of the wastes. They are basically SPESS MEHREENS after all.

Which is really sad given how idealistic they are in 76. Immediately postwar, they wanted to archive and document technology, to build on and perhaps even surpass the achievements of the Old World.

Btw apparently the very first Brotherhood Elder was a Maxon.

Yeah, which goes to show that bloodline =/= good leadership. The new Maxon seems to be more a puppet who's been fed the ideology of the more luddite elders.

Which shows how an ideology becomes crippled and twisted as it goes from passion, to ethos to dogma.

Got killed by a car the other day. Not an exploding car, or a car falling through an overpass or anything. As far as I could tell it was completely stationary. But I backed into it while shooting up some ghouls at the Fiddler's Green trailer park, and bam, slo-mo death collapse.

Also, someone ought to inform Bethesda that insomnia is not a communicable disease that can be picked up by brushing against an unawares Feral Ghoul. Unless they're trying to imply that my character is having nightmares about making physical contact with a shambler, after putting down and getting mauled by literally hundreds of others before that point.

Sorry about that vid guys, I didn't watch it before posting and didn't realize the sound was so off. Will fix later and post a new one.

Somehow Madison Li survived the burning wreckage of the Prydwen dropping on her and Liberty Prime. I found her in East Boston, standing in the street not far from the Mechanist's lair and the local police station. She didn't respond to my greeting and showed no sign of noticing my presence, so I can't tell whether I'm getting the silent treatment for my crimes or she's been traumatized by having her two former employers explode in the past month. It makes me wonder if any other named Brotherhood NPCs are out there, but I don't really want to find Scribe Haylen because she'll probably force me to kill her.

Level 72 now, over 3 days into this save file. I try to tell myself that many of those hours were spent building settlements or just huffing it across the wasteland, as if that would make them any less wasted than time in combat or awful conversations. Even the game seems weary of this long epilogue, it can't be bothered to let some enemies drop to the floor dead, instead they let out their death groans and then stand like mannequins with exploded heads. The only two settlements in the Commonwealth I haven't recruited yet refuse to come up with any problems for me to solve. The long respawn time on Survival has left the land feeling empty and silent. Still, I press on to Far Harbor. I will complete this Survival Mode I have broken so utterly with my backpacks and teleporters and industrial settlements. Maybe being so far from my supply lines will make things feel like a challenge again.

Which isn't to say I'm not dying. Thanks for stepping on that landmine, Nick.

How the hell have you leveled up 70 times in three days

were you playing nonstop?!

What the sh-

Side-note: which Companion did everyone else stick with? I seem to flip between Nick and Piper.

Edited by Soble on Apr 16th 2019 at 2:06:38 AM