So...Fallout 4 is kinda s***

[MinisterofDOOM]

Not sure what I expected, really. It's a Bethesda game. It hasn't advanced the formula in the least. In a lot of ways, it takes some big steps backward.

Basically, though:
Combat sucks. And combat is 90% of the game. Gunfights are boring and have no substance. VATS looks neat but doesn't add much. Many enemies are ultra obnoxious (like the stupid dragonflies that do very little damage but are so fast you can't actually hit them--VATS or otherwise). It's just NOT FUN.

The story is stupid and takes WAY too long to build up steam.

Characters aren't. Just a bunch of puppets with lines. No depth, nothing interesting.

The world isn't interesting.

The engine, despite being a decade old, is still horribly optimized. It runs like garbage. I can run GTAV and Wolfenstein at 50+ FPS, but Fallout 4 chugs along with random hiccups from unfathomable causes tanking the framerate to ~20FPS.

The quests are all the same: Go here, kill s***, return to questgiver.

I just haven't had any FUN with the game yet. I keep waiting for it to get good. Steam says I have 9 hours sunk in it. It hasn't gotten good yet.

Don't waste your time.

[RCA]

Disclaimer...
- Playing devil's advocate
- Haven't played though the whole game

Gunfights are boring and have no substance.

I can see a game where gunfights don't happen often, you could set up a gunfight in a way where it's really meaningful.
But What does a substantive gunfight look like in a game that is 90% gun fighting?

In FO4 they have the segment in the beginning where you're in Concord, you just got some Power Armor, you ripped a chain gun from a plane, you clear out a whole town of Raiders, and BOOM a freaking Death Claw out of no where!
You couldn't expect Bethesda to create a huge gunfight set piece every time you need to shoot people.

VATS looks neat but doesn't add much. Many enemies are ultra obnoxious (like the stupid dragonflies ...

Here are two reasons why VATS is useful:
- VATS is great if your not the best using the mouse so it helps with faster moving targets. It's also very useful when using weapons with huge on-screen models.
- Most importantly VATS is useful because it allows you to quickly kill enemies with Critical hits that can only be achieved using VATS. A "hidden" bonus + "VATS Crit" bonus you can destroy a Synth with a punch to the back of the head. Start maxing out your Luck and VATS Crits will flow!

It's just NOT FUN.

I would say this, they made FO4 harder than previous FOs, but maybe it would be more engaging if you lower the difficulty or use the VATS for the damage bonus it provides?

The story is stupid and takes WAY too long to build up steam.

How did you play it? All main story or did you do side missions?

Just a bunch of puppets with lines. No depth, nothing interesting.

This is similar to the "substantive gunfight" thing. How many people in your life that you interact with are interesting? Maybe some, but the vast majority aren't.
Would you spend dev resources laying out 20,000 lines of conversation for a random NPC? As a player you wouldn't spend time asking the random bar keep about his memories of childhood for hours on end. Tons of characters so it seems like many are useless.

What about Piper the meddling journalist, Nick Valentine the gum-shoe Private Eye Synth, and the sketchy Mayor McDonough of Diamond city? They all have interesting history's and motivations.
I have a theory that Nick is the android from the Fallout 3 story line.

The quests are all the same: Go here, kill s***, return to quest-giver.

This is the most difficult thing about open worlds and MMOs. I would say Bethesda are getting better at his. The Brotherhood of Steal's quest givers go with you to investigate a lead, or get an item, and usually the quests have quarks about them that is influenced by the quest-giver.
Example: BoS early mission, you launch a rocket test to destroy all enemies but the quest-giver is in the blast as well. It ends the mission and shows you again how BA the Power Armor is.

::end of advocating for the devil::

The engine, despite being a decade old, is still horribly optimized....

I just haven't had any FUN with the game yet. I keep waiting for it to get good. Steam says I have 9 hours sunk in it. It hasn't gotten good yet.

Seriously you would think by now Creation Engine would run as smooth as silk! My guess is they are tweaking it, updating it, and trying to force circles of code into square boxes. It's time for a ground up replacement.

Other things I didn't like:
- The new dialog system is maybe too simple. It does have it's potential advantages but I don't think Bethesda used it as well as they could.
- Companions, how about you get out of the fu*king door way? The game is harder this time around, companions can't die, all object are useful for base building, and inventory management with companions helps carry lots of goodies. This makes having a companion practically required and they can set off traps, and get stuck in doors! Ugg! At least in Skyrim you could shove them out of the way!

As for the fun, sorry you're not enjoying it. Have you gotten into the base building?
Many people seem to be having fun with it.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Some good questions.

I think the generic answer is "It's a Bethesda game." I'm a little embarrassed that I gave them another chance.

But to the specifics"

It's not the fighters in the gunfights that feel insubstantial. It's not the scope or depth. It's the pure combat itself. The guns have no feedback, they all "feel" the same (which undermines one of the best additions to the game--crafting that's actually useful). There's no substance to shooting, landing a shot, wounding. It all lacks feedback. You aim at a guy, press the mouse button, and his health goes down. There's nothing remotely visceral or substantial about it. It makes combat a chore rather than fun, and since the game is 90% combat, it makes the game a chore. Setpiece fights aren't exciting, they're tedious and unwelcome. That deathclaw fight? I HATED it. I was soullessly dumping pixelbullets into bland 2-dimensional enemies with no feedback whatsoever, and BAM, enemy with tons of health out of nowhere. It added no value to the fight, and the only difference between the Deathclaw and the raiders was that it took longer to (tediously) kill and hurt more when it landed a hit. Just no subtance.

VATS does indeed help with those two things. However, I am a keyboard and mouse player, and I don't need gamepad compensation. And gamepad compensation shouldn't be needed. Make the game's combat actually WORK! But the frustration I have with VATS is that, even with pretty decent stats, hit chance is stupid low and discourages non-center-mass shots, which destroys all strategy the paper-thin combat might have had.

Difficulty definitely has nothing to do with my enjoyment level. In fact, quite the opposite. However, I do find grenade style weapons highly broken. A molotov is basically impossible to anticipate (especially close-quarters) and can destroy you in one hit if you're already a little battleworn. Raiders will happily molotov themselves in a tight hallway to kill you, and it's incredibly irritating. It's just a random instakill you can't do much about.

I play Fallout games with a combo of both. I switch back and forth. I was doing side missions (mostly settlement liberation) and decided to pursue the main story. The whole diamond city crap got so tedious and uninteresting that I went back to side missions. At least there I felt like I was making some kind of progress. I don't care about that stupid PI or the stupid obnoxious horrid news reporter or the deliberately and indefensibly a$$ noncharacter mayor or any of that crap. I just don't. It's all worse than a Kevin Anderson novel.

For the people, I just don't see anything interesting. They're no deeper than their stereotype facads. There's no reason to care about anyone in the world and thus no reason to care about the world itself. I can see that Bethesda WANTED these characters to be interesting. But they failed. They're just too generic and unrealized. I have read about the Synth companion but haven't found him yet. It sounds neat, but my real complaint is that I have to wade through a story that's less interesting than a beige Camry to get to that point, and I frankly just can't find the drive to do so.

I think your quest answer was a valid copout ten years ago. But look at any other open-world game (RPG or no) and you'll see that's not true. GTA V, for crying out loud, (the poster child for violence) has more variety in its mission styles than Fallout 4. Saints Row. Just Cause, for Hell's sake. There's more to an open world than killing Raiders for six different reasons over and over again.

I have tried the base building, but it's SO badly designed and clunky and the resource hunting is so badly implemented that it's just a chore. Again, they SORT OF had the right idea, but they missed the mark with execution. For example: tagging items for search. Awesome. UNTAGGING them is so tedious that you end up with a whole horde of magnifying glass icons that mean nothing unless you spend several minutes going through your inventory. And it doesn't help to actually FIND the resource, just to identify it as needed once you have it. Scrounging around the world for enough aluminum or screws (EFFING SCREWS!, which, by the way, you can irritatingly buy in crazy-pricey packs of 250 or one at a time but nothing in between????????) to build just ONE component for ONE thing is soulcrushingly time consuming and there's no fun to be had along the way.

I REALLY wanted to like the base building. I was excited for it. It's as badly done as the rest of the game.

Neat idea.
Terrible game.