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[TheDarkStar]

The sodding Forged, right north of Finch Farm have a bunch. They are a nuisance.

Indeed.  I wasted a lot of ammo before I realized that for once I had a reason to shoot someone in the legs.  The guys with flamers at least don't wear much, if any, leg armor.  Frag mines worked wonders too.

Speaking of mines, while I've had issues with grenades and mines in general (see my last few posts), I do use them a lot more than I ever did in FO3 or NV.  I should use them even more than I do though, since I have something like 15 frag versions of each in my inventory, not to mention half a dozen each of cryo, plasma and pulse grenades and mines.  No wonder I'm so overloaded all of the time.

I ended up selling a lot of my grenades and mines because I barely ever used them - if I really needed an explosive, a Fat Man or Missile Launcher works but is much more accurate.

[Flying Dice]

Usual procedure: "Okay, I'll take three frags and a pulse when I go out, that should last me until can loot some..."

*two hours later*

"Okay, time to sell these twenty spare grenades to the shops, I guess I just couldn't use more killing things than I got from looting after all."

[TheDarkStar]

I find that I get so many stimpacks and radaway that I end up selling 25-50 at a shop every once in a while. Also, is Rad-X actually useful? There are already a bunch of things to increase radiation resistance and I never end up needing it.

[GiglameshDespair]

I used it a decent chunk in the beginning before I found a hazard suit, when I was exploring. I don't tend to explore in power armour.

[Rolan7]

I find that I get so many stimpacks and radaway that I end up selling 25-50 at a shop every once in a while. Also, is Rad-X actually useful? There are already a bunch of things to increase radiation resistance and I never end up needing it.

Rad-X didn't seem to make much difference for me, but I was wearing power armor for the first time too.  Wasn't sure how to read the meter (still not sure really, doesn't really matter though).

I never ever ever sell stimpacks though, they're weightless.  Sometimes I buy more from shopkeepers in exchange for my loot, since they have so few caps.  Yeah I'll never use them up, but they're a backup weightless cash supply (and in sufficient numbers make any fight trivial, except for mininukes).

In NV I used to carry around a lot of chems and pre-war money for the same reason.  But now the pre-war money is what I make my settler's beds out of, and the chems are actually a weight concern so they get sold.

Oh and power cores are like stimpacks that way.  "Fungible", I guess?  A lot of heavy loot becomes weightless, useful, and theoretically worth a good price in a pinch.  Such are the things a hoarder must do when faced with these pathetic 300-cap "traders".

[NullForceOmega]

Okay, before anyone jumps down my throat, just hear me out.  I have discovered what I believe to be F4's largest flaw.

Due to over-reliance on the Radiant Quest system Bethesda is so proud of, F4 is boring.
It isn't the poor writing, it isn't the half-baked mechanics, it is the nearly fetishistic usage of the radiant system for everything, combined with a distinctive lack of variability in that system that is the game's ultimate failure.
The side quests are actually halfway decent (mechanically, the writing is still crap), the main quest, in spite of being an absolute hack job, is playable.  But the incredibly limited variety and vast over-presence of Radiant quests just drags the whole game down abysmally.

I've put in 200 hours on my main save, and while I have yet to even bother completing many sidequests, the Radiant system has utterly burnt me out when it comes to basic gameplay.  (I may just shoot Garvey the next time he tells me that the settlement I just resolved the problems of has more problems.)

[Sirbug]

I don't think the writing is bad or something, but radiant quests were a mistake. Who would even think it's a good idea?

Then again, apparently there are people who think random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2 were a good idea, or hunger system outside survival simulators and roguelikes, so what do I know?

[Neonivek]

Then again, apparently there are people who think random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2 were a good idea, or hunger system outside survival simulators and roguelikes, so what do I know?

Do not confuse bad execution with the idea itself being bad.

There are plenty of games that are neither a survival simulator nor a roguelike that does hunger well.

As well "random quests" could have worked but the way they are set up in the game is flawed.

[Sirbug]

Then again, apparently there are people who think random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2 were a good idea, or hunger system outside survival simulators and roguelikes, so what do I know?

Do not confuse bad execution with the idea itself being bad.

There are plenty of games that are neither a survival simulator nor a roguelike that does hunger well.

As well "random quests" could have worked but the way they are set up in the game is flawed.

In my understanding of game design, there are two styles of gameplay. Routine and advancement. Routine revolves around repetition of tasks and often found in strategy games, simulators, or games where losing is fun. It prioritize resource management, constant pressure and loosely defined intermediate goals. Advancement is a style for most RPG or FPS games, where you always meant to move forward, unlocking new places to be, new toys to play, new mechanics and playmates.

Those two tend to mesh poorly. Routine elements stall the advancement, forcing to delay new quests and new explorations. Mixing those two things makes neither here-nor there hybrid.
I'm distress at the fact that AAA games are trying to be everything at once.

[Neonivek]

Those two tend to mesh poorly. Routine elements stall the advancement, forcing to delay new quests and new explorations. Mixing those two things makes neither here-nor there hybrid.
I'm distress at the fact that AAA games are trying to be everything at once.

Well no, they don't mesh poorly... They mesh constantly and non-stop.

RPGs are a mesh between the two... In fact "Roguelikes" are a subgenre of RPGs

And as you said "Routine is roguelike" and "RPG is Advancement" and since a Roguelike is both

[Telgin]

Okay, before anyone jumps down my throat, just hear me out.  I have discovered what I believe to be F4's largest flaw.

Due to over-reliance on the Radiant Quest system Bethesda is so proud of, F4 is boring.
It isn't the poor writing, it isn't the half-baked mechanics, it is the nearly fetishistic usage of the radiant system for everything, combined with a distinctive lack of variability in that system that is the game's ultimate failure.
The side quests are actually halfway decent (mechanically, the writing is still crap), the main quest, in spite of being an absolute hack job, is playable.  But the incredibly limited variety and vast over-presence of Radiant quests just drags the whole game down abysmally.

I've put in 200 hours on my main save, and while I have yet to even bother completing many sidequests, the Radiant system has utterly burnt me out when it comes to basic gameplay.  (I may just shoot Garvey the next time he tells me that the settlement I just resolved the problems of has more problems.)

Honestly, I was beginning to think the same thing.  The main quest is pretty short, and if you weren't being distracted by Preston giving you quests to go kill 10 ghouls or raiders every time you finished one, the game wouldn't last very long at all.  It took me quite a while to realize that the Minutemen quests never ended.

At the same time, while these quests and other side quests do give some variety, I was getting kind of annoyed by being distracted by them.  I continuously kept close to 10 quests in my Pipboy at a time, and it seemed like I couldn't finish something without another quest or two popping up.  Or, more commonly, finding another landmark infested with super mutants or ghouls that I had to explore to find the not very useful legendary weapon inside of.  I was kind of hoping for better pacing there, where you discovered a few more focused quests at a time as you followed the main quest.

Speaking of legendaries, the whole "Legendary Enemy" thing is kind of immersion breaking.  I'm not saying that they turned Fallout 4 into an MMO, but it feels like they thought about it.  Oh, look, random special enemies that are guaranteed rare drops, and who "mutate" halfway through the fight, whatever that means!  The first time I saw that was with a super mutant, then a ghoul.  Okay, those can mutate.  But raiders?  That felt a little strange.

I guess I have a lot of small gripes with the game, but the fact that it's monotonous and kind of boring is definitely a big thing I'd started to notice.

[Sirbug]

At least it's not as bad as Skyrim in this aspect. TES already had weird MMO feel to it anyway.

I hope they rethink their direction by the next installment.

[Neonivek]

At least it's not as bad as Skyrim in this aspect. TES already had weird MMO feel to it anyway.

I hope they rethink their direction by the next installment.

With its stunning success? Naw if anything they will intensify the badness.

[Flying Dice]

Honestly Skyrim feels less boring and repetitive, at least to me. Part of that's the map size, part of it's the larger number of non-procedural quests, part of it's the fact that Fallout 4 (like 3 and NV) ultimately boils down to "wander around shooting everything that moves sort of awkwardly because it's trying to be a FPS but can't quite manage it for an hour, then spend an hour playing inventory management, not counting time spent doing so during the looting routine". TES games generally have a much greater potential for players to just fuck around on their own, though that's been toned down when they stripped a lot of the fun shit out of the magic from Morrowind to Oblivion, then more from Oblivion to Skyrim.

[Grim Portent]

I don't mind the radiant quests in FO4 as much as I did in Skyrim actually, because in Skyrim the loot from bandits was terrible and the money irrelevant, at least in FO4 even basic raiders often have useful stuff to scrap for parts and money is much harder to earn in large amounts so the caps can come in handy if you haven't managed to become bloated in chems and stimpacks, and often even if you have become resource bloated.