Yea, FO3 and NV are scaled for walking. I wonder how those games would be if the map was bigger, locations of interest were more spread out and then vehicles were added.

If there was no world maps (map node system) then it would be pointless to create a huge open world like in Fallout 3 and New Vegas and have a whole lot of nothing between locations just so people can drive vehicles. If you don't have a vehicle then what? Spend hours just walking to the next point of interest?

The point would be to make the world feel less condensed and more like a vast wasteland. Portions of the map could be still be closely spaced to allow for walking, and there might be alternate modes of transport for those who prefer not to have a car. I am not necessarily saying this is what Fallout 4 should be. It might be better in another game. But then again, you could take the ideas from this thread and make a dozen or more really unique and really interesting fallout type games. If only...

Chargeable energy weapon shots!

Everything you can do, enemies can do too!

Intelligent AI that detects weaknesses! (and changes to AP/HP ammo or EMP weapons respectively for example - or recognizes you carrying a melee weapon and decides to throw a mine in your chargeway)

Interesting combat that also utilizes your environment!

Enemies who sleep at some time, so you can make use of Mr Sandman!

If you sleep at the wrong places, you'll wake up dead! Yeah!

If you sleep at the right places, at the right time, special surprises wait for you!

Rarely, people steal (small amounts of) money from you! If your perception is too low, you won't notice! If your perception is high enough, you can decide what to do with the thief after you catch him/her (with very high PER, you can catch and hold them right away, with just enough PER, you'll recognize the theft and they'll run - you can pursue them)! People would be on your side, unless the thief has some friends.

I would disagree, you don't need to cover a larger area to experience other means of living or factions, nor do larger areas necessarily offer more diversity. Cyrodiil for example is the size of the entire byzantine empire, and Skyrim is several times larger then Texas, and yet both where fairly homogenous in terms of culture and lifestyle for various logical reasons, with a few minor exceptions such as the reachmen in western Skyrim. That isn't to say i wouldn't like a larger area, just that one isn't needed for anything.

I do agree on that they are scaled down, but older Fallout locations were far from larger. you could drop all of Shady into Megaton. but yes, no matter what you do you do sacrifise some realism.

Or you wake up looking down the barrel of a gun while thieves go through your inventory. But then if you have companions or a motion detector, you are sometimes woken up with a warning of approaching danger.

Should companions have fleshed out leveling systems that we can manipulate?

As it stands they'll gain special points, hp and skill points after a number of levels but should they have their own level up screens with their own set of perks and stats that the player can pick and choose?

Again just throwing ideas out there.

I ilke to play as a character whose companions have freedom to make their own choices or "are who they are," so my preference would be to have some influence but not complete control over how companions develop. Maybe if I tell a companion to always fight with a certain weapon type, that companion's skill with that weapon goes up, but that's about it.

I think it might come down to whether you want to play as a character or a party.

Could also happen in the more civilized places. I'd love to have Perception play a part in it (when you don't have companions to watch). And if you have low Perception, high Luck should also save your sorry ass!

I wouldn't be in favor of it. I like companions to have special perks and skills, but the leveling up for them feels best when it's stealthy (and not bugged like with the nonhuman companions in Broken Steel) to me.

Companions have to be weak enough to justify you traveling alone and enable your Charisma to actually feel like it's useful and enhances a companion's worth in combat (New Vegas added nerve - companions were so [censored]in op though, it didn't really make a difference).

Multiple followers like in Fallout 2 do not work imo. When you travel in a squad, you should do so in a game that is squad based and designed for the experience. For Fallout, 2 companions are enough, any more will detract from the experience (just install a companion mod to see what I mean).

But what I'd REALLY love is to take a companion not only on a separated companion quest, but through the main quest as well - to witness their character develop over time, not through some scripted enablers you have to look up at nukapedia (please design missions to be fun - exploration and surprise isn't easy to handle).

I would like a much larger map in FO4. much like Skyrim with how large it was. but larger. However I do agree that the time scaling would need some adjustment.

As it is in Fallout 3 for example, roughly a minute real time walk from Megaton to Greyditch. And realistically that same distance could be walked by the average human in an hour. But with the time scale in Fallout 3 that's about a roughly 3-4 hour time difference.

I wouldn't mind seeing this changed a bit.

I like the idea of picking companion perks, but I don't think we should develop their skills, that can just be automatic.

But, having a selection of unique companion perks that we get to choose every 2-4 companion levels can be fun.

If they did something like Bioware does with followers in games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect that would be kinda neat. You could pick their skill sets and as they lv up decide if you want them to be say big guns or small guns. etc. I like that idea. Sort of give you control over your companion so that you can use who you want yet have them balance with your character's skills.

I couldn't care less about the perks or companion skill development as a whole.

I just want them to have a good AI and not be overpowered. If you want to be safe, make sure companions have high enough health or DT/DR to not die in an instant (always compare to the norm and ALWAYS take Charisma into account) but reduce their damage output drastically. When I can use them as meat shields and pack brahmin, they're already worth a ton. Companions who steal my kills on the other hand aren't much fun imo. Combat degenerates into a lame timesink with op companions, that completely render your perk and combat gameplay choices useless, because companions do all the work.

Well that is pretty much the point of companions, make combat easier. So instead of doing damage, you just want them to absorb it while you kill everything.

Absolutely, and that already makes combat easier.

There should be the option with very high Charisma and certain perks to have companions do all the fighting for you if you wish to play that way and skill accordingly. But not by default. This just takes the fun out for me.

For perks, I'd love to be able to give companions certain tricks in combat, like knocking opponents down or blinding them (Ms Fortune style).

But is it really fun for people to not be challenged by combat anymore the moment they pick up companions?

There should be companions that are unoptimal for, or even incapable of combat, but can offer things you otherwise wouldn't be able to achieve in other areas of expertise.

I don't think they should.

Companions should be treated like real people, with their own personal skills, and preferences for weapons. It would be odd for Boone to become good at energy weapons just because you told him to, when he has spent so much time with his rifle. Much like how companions will refuse to carry certain faction armor, their skills and perks would be something they decide, and at that point, their skill progress would be what it is now, automatic

I agree.

How about choosing between perks that all would make sense for the character? I'd also dislike that. And for the same reason. It's a choice that simply isn't yours.

BUT what about characters that you actually DO command, like slaves or contractors like Charon? Now with those, it'd actually make sense that you make decisions for them. I'd be fine with that.

And this brings me to Undecaf's comment, which i also agree with. There should be more diversity between companions.

I'd also like to have like two or three special companions (that have special usefulness) you can only recruit via high Charisma (people who wouldn't like to be a companion, unless for somebody they'd enjoy spending time with essentially).

I think it makes companions unrealistic if they are inept at combat, if said companion is SUPPOSED to be a fighter. Especially if they just get bombarded with damage per your meat shield desire. I've never had a problem killing stuff with companions. Maybe you should just increase your combat skills in FO?

Plus, combat in FO isn't very challenging, companion or no. Maybe instead of nerfing companions they just fix combat.

Yeah it's part of a larger system. You can't like turn one wheel and not adapt the whole mechanism accordingly (actually the reverse way should be taken - first the whole thing, then the parts).

Combat already was too easy and companions simply broke it further imo.

Now regarding combat skills, see let's say there's a bunch of ghouls running up to me and I have Boone and Ed-E with me. Of course I can take out some of them, but I can just as well lean back and let my companions do all the stuff and (and this is my gripe) without me having invested anything into the companion playstyle, except having companions.

See, there's realism and then there's fun (as in a properly balanced gameplay system). These two will inevitably clash at some point. For example headshots would kill a human instantly. It doesn't in Fallout though, because it'd take the fun out of it. I would go with gameplay balance over realism in many cases.

If you think the companion system wasn't broken in Vegas, that's okay, I can't argue with that. To me it often felt like I was in a race with my companions, who kills the enemies first, me or them? There was no challenge anymore for me and I'd like that to change.

Why not go real life and parody?
Basically a mix between or combination of the pollutions of detroit (parody/real life in a jab at how bad detroit is polluted) and of radiation/airborne fev that got asborbed by fungus (real life...aka have u seen what those fungus does to insects?). Granted it was in a recent game though, the idea for multiple limbs.
U could have a form of rat that is a carrier for infect and mutated lice/fleas/etc that infect/work thru the rat and its saliva is infected with the larvae of whatever infected the lice/fleas/etc and the compound of its saliva over some time do a chemical reaction to a certain type of animal or humans dead cells and reanimate/juice up so that the body after some time controlled by the larvae within a short amount of time can make the body move so that it can transport the body/larvae to reach a new host. Maybe a living one..
i dunno i need my coffee this morning. Sometimes to find truely scary things, we just look to nature and put our spin or twist on it.

Hmmm...
Either I still don't quite understand... Or you are asking for the self evident same thing that I have been since 2007.

As far as everything else being barren ~yes; of course... but none of that needs to only exist as 2d overland map... the map itself need not be 2d, nor unexplorable in realtime.


Does it really? At best, one can imagine that cooking smells would attract wild life and vagrants, but unless they actually get food out of it, they would not stay very long. If the inhabitants rarely leave Megaton... Why should anything develop around there?

FO3 being a one city was strike one in my book; Fallout and Fallout 2 each had several, and they were sometimes interdependent... That part of the mechanics of the series.


Surely this is all that should have ever mattered, no?


Except that what isn't?

You greatly mistake it then. Fallout's world was nearly wiped clean of life, and there is almost nothing left... It's a doomed world ~recovery or not. The developers of Fallout created an explorable area the size of more than one US State. Look at this map: http://i.imgur.com/vLk7M.jpg Four squares on that map is bigger than FO3' entire map; and you can visit each square; possibly multiple spots in each square. In Fallout, if you click on a devastated city, it loads that terrain for the visit; if you click on the coastal areas, it loads that terrain instead. Every day it checks for an encounter, and loads whatever terrain the PC is walking through... and that's where the encounter takes place. That could be anywhere on the map. *This is the purpose of the Wasteland terrain in the Fallout series.

** Now what question should be, is when will FO4/5/6... start using the same premise as the series proper... and behave in similar manner; by procedurally generating the wasteland areas outside the main campaign locations. This would allow for Fallout 1 & 2 sized maps, unlimited chance encounters, and inherently make a reason for vehicles; and restore the feeling of recovering settlements amidst the vast open wasted remains of the US. The area shown in FO3 was fine as it was... but there should have been 15 of those that peppered the map [miles/days/weeks apart]... not just the one.
IMO FO3 just doesn't measure up to the series before it; it could have... but they didn't do it that way.



I'm suggesting only that a land is not Wasteland, unless it's wasteland; and that by definition usable and inhabited land ~isn't. Everything out there is on the move. Giant rad scorpions cannot subsist on rocks and dried leaves.

It is certainly true that miles & miles of ~stuff exists, but that does not make it important enough to include in the game.... unless it's meant as a main campaign location.

Id like to see more fast travel alternatives, like the carriages in Skyrim. Of course what I really want is a vehicle to zip around the wastes in, but we are just going to have to wait and see if thats plausible.

Fallout had this; and Fallout 2. It would be nice to see those restored as well.

*Oh... you mean Halo-warthog-style... That would be fine too; something like this [but more polished]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7nxZUeAe0w

I really dislike fast travelling, but sometimes legging it from one end of the map to the other can get tiresome. Atleast ive got the radio to keep me company on those long journeys, its actually easier to kinda veg out and follow the long road in New Vegas since there are both actual roads that go mostly straight. In Fallout 3 you're mostly travelling over open wastes to get to your destination, and most often a lot more combat to break it up.

Actually I would kinda like there to be more roads period to follow. In New Vegas when you're simply travelling from one area to another you can just followed the well trodden paths, but if you want to map out the area thats when you load your rifle and get off the path for parts unknown.