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[Silverthrone]

That's all thanks to Father. If only you could wait for the old geezer to kick the bucket before the events of Bunker Hill, the ending would probably come out a lot happier. Sadly the diseased sack of psychopath is scripted to live just long enough to screw everything up royally before fucking off this mortal coil in his space-coffin.

Hear, hear.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wish I could have given that child of mine all the thrashings that he never recieved but so desperately needed. The Institute is far too lax with children.

Just like Morrowind, which also had a plot that affected the greater state of the empire and world at large and then just never came up again. 

The polities in ES are what the plot needs them to be. Nothing more, nothing less.

Or fucking Daggerfall, in which they made all endings canon because fuck sense.

I rather like it, in an odd way. I would have prefered a solid, chosen ending, but as far as plot spackle go, the Dragon Break is probably the one I mind the least. It is a method that works reasonably well with silly old Nirn. I would have them all flogged if they tried something similar in their Fallouts, however...

[BFEL]

In my opinion, a Sole Survivor at the helm of the Institute has the power to turn the Commonwealth around and create a nation of prosperity and peace from it.

A player character at the helm of literally anything has the power to create a nation of prosperity and peace from it. Or would, if Bethesda could write like Obsidian can.

Seriously, even the Nuka World raider gangs could end up a egalitarian governing body if you have a [player values here] godlike figure running them for long enough.

There's pretty much nothing we COULDN'T vastly improve over the buttmonkeys Beth wrote as the major players, since most of us are reasonable 3 dimensional people instead of the caricatures that head things in game.

[nenjin]

I think the question is from their side: why bother?

Players of Bethesda games have built a whole self-driven narrative culture out of their playthroughs. Bethesda just needs to provide some context (even if that context is "no I don't want to do the fucking main quest") for players to go nuts with it. It'd be nice if they'd elevate their game, but every time morality being coded into the game comes up players have rejected it. (Remember the two reputation systems from FO3 and NV?) Sure the answer is always "just do better" but from Bethesda's perspective, why should they? Their games still sell like mad when they release and players continually generate more crap which makes new players pick it up or old players revisit it and who eventually have to say "yeah it was worth the money" just by sheer dint of played hours alone, forget whatever meaningful enjoyment they get out of it.

Yeah it's a cynical attitude but after THIS many games in the same engine, doing the same kind of thing, with the same game design values prevailing every time...I've given up on expecting Bethesda to really change. They're already invested in generating 1,000 quests voiced by the same 10 people and filling an entire world with enough points of interest that game feels fleshed out. They'd need to do all that....then actually hammer out the kind of living world stuff players keep asking for. Which is a tall order. We forgive what mods do in pursuit of this stuff because they're mods. If Bethesda takes a crack at it and 20 hours in your meticulously arranged RPG scenario crumbles due to bugs.....then people shit all over them for their effort.

I mean, take a look at settlement building. I'm one of those people that likes it. Despite its pretty gaping holes in content and implementation, and the BS monetization of simply adding objects to the build menus, I think it was a legit effort at broadening the base of the game. Did the majority of fans see it that way? Hell no. Most of them shit all over settlement building and everything it stands for, despite it being a lynch pin in the narratives people like to tell about themselves in this game. "What is the this crap? Settlements don't matter in the end so why did they even bother." So.....why should they even bother trying? Sales are up, it's the same 'ol Bethesda it's always been to most players, so why try anything dramatic? They can safely make another ES game and another FO game and they will be bought and swooned over and streamed, with or without the living world/choices matter stuff people have always been wanting from their games but never getting.

I think given a long enough time span, Bethesda may one day make their games actually alive. The two questions I have though is: how many titles will that take, and will I actually still be alive to see them?

[Neonivek]

The problem with their settlement building is that it is a half-baked idea and is incredibly painful to work with... In fact probably the worst part of the game if you care about it at all.

Settlements are a way of gaining money, resources, as well as getting extra little tidbits in the story? Amazing! Now lets bog it down it with terrible looking buildings, sloppy aweful job prioritization, Gawd awful trade rooting in two unique flavors of suck, annoying constant events that instantly destroy a location if you don't do it... and the list goes on... and on... Anyone who LIKES the settlement system likes it IN SPITE of these facts not because it is a genuinely good system.

THEN there is the fact that the settlement system like ALL Bethesda's narrative systems is also half-baked even further because even though you are "Rebuilding the wasteland" it isn't typically recognized.... None of the benefits that SHOULD stem from it are used... Yada yada... This is like becoming the Arch-Mage in Oblivion all over again.

So basically if Bethesda ever goes "Well Fans don't want a settlement system" and point to Fallout 4... they deserve to be slapped in the face. Implementing something in a terrible way typically does have the effect that no one will like it except the outliers.

It is actually one of the worst aspects of game companies.

[Krevsin]

What the game would have really needed was a way to delegate the radiant quests to some of your NPCs. That way you would actually feel like a commander of asignificant force of people instead of a babysitter. Seriously I am the goddamn general of the goddamn minutemen/paladin of the BoS/parent of the most powerful man in the Institute. I should be able to send squads of minutemen/BoS knights/Synths to clear out raider nests, help defend settlements etcetera.

I do enjoy settlement building but that's because I enjoy building stuff and wiring it up. I love it in spite of all the radiant quest bullshittery, the total lack of delegation and a more elegant system to manage my citizens and of course the fact that no matter how much love and time I direct at them, I'm still going to end up with settlements that despite looking different visually feel exactly the same on a more tangible level because the game has to compensate for the fact that the settlements are player made which always results in painfully obvious reuse of the same lines by the settlers.

I am convinced that if Bethesda made settlement building central to the narrative, it would make for a much better game (and also a better fleshed out system because they'd spend more time on it instead of half-arsing it) and a narrative that fit the playstyle of a Beth open world RPG much more than this wannabe Mass Effect approach.

[Glloyd]

Fuck, the settlement building is the most painful shit to deal with. The first time I played it I assumed it would kind of zoom out from your character, and you could zip around popping things into place without worrying about your physical body. Nope, you have to fucking lumber around in first person trying to hamfistedly line things up properly, while dealing with the shitass menu that was obviously designed for consoles. And tcl doesn't really help, because stuff stops snapping into place properly, and it ends up being way more of a hassle than its worth. If they had just designed a proper settlement building system, just went full Sims, it would have A. felt way less tacked on and B. be way more fun. As is, it's an unintuitive mess that takes hours upon hours to get something half decent done, for no real purpose. I agree with Krevsin in that it should have been integrated more into the actual game and the narrative, but as is it's pretty rough.

The thing is, I was totally open to the implementation of settlement building, and it was one of the features I was genuinely excited for. But they just made it such a pain to deal with, that it wasn't even worth it, and I love spending hours just building shit in games that are designed for it. But FO4 isn't designed for it, and it's worse off for that.

The most I managed to do was build one shitty building, then I just gave up and fucked off into the wasteland before discarding the game altogether not long afterwards. Fallout 4 was the worst game I played last year, and I'm still bothered about it because Fallout 2 and NV are some of my favourite games.

[Jimmy]

I usually just build a ugly box building filled with small beds and no access route inside, another box with no floor filled with food crops and water pumps, and a fuckton of heavy turrets. Bam, there's your damned settlement. Y'all can stand around outside and shoot at anything that attacks.

Remember folks, as long as it's somewhere on the map, it counts. Your settler doesn't necessarily have to ever get to sleep in their bed.

[Krevsin]

I built a lot of nifty things (like turning Sanctuary into an estate) with the settlement system but that's more in spite of how clunky and awkward it is and because I do enjoy building things. So it's more because I've powered through the stupid stuff than because the underlying system is fully realized.

It's a shame really. Could've been great.

[umiman]

I've replaced a lot of my settlers with robots.

They're just better, and I like them more. They also work 24/7 without breaks and can be armed with nuclear weapons.

Not to mention you can make all of them only communicate in beeps, which makes me happy.

Also I highly recommend the mods that:

1. Disable attacks altogether.
This seems like super gamey and cheaty, but trust me when you have like 10 settlements, you will NEVER stop seeing settlement attack notices. Also if you play without fast travel it becomes impossible to handle. Besides, the attacks are idiotic anyway. It's just better for your sanity to get rid of them. In fact, you still get radiant quests from settlers directly asking you to help defend their settlements, which I think is significantly better than the random attacks.

2. Increase generator power by 3x.
So you don't have to spam a million generators everywhere.

3. Better settlers.
For better settlers. This way they come with better gear, actual clothes, and look less stupid.

4. Enough about the settlements already, Preston.
Self-descriptive. Shut up, Preston.

5. Higher settlement budget.
Self-descriptive. The normal budget allotment is so tiny you can barely do anything.

6. Immersive vendors.
Make the stores have stocks and stuff so they don't look completely bland.

7. Quieter settlements.
Self-descriptive. So many settlement things are way too noisy like generators and the banging noises.

8. Scrap dead things.
The game has a tendency to leave corpses lying around your settlements. Now you can remove them.

9. Workshop spotlight fix.
If you haven't noticed, spotlights don't work once you fast travel. This makes them work.

[nenjin]

I realize I'm defending Bethesda here but....

For a first iteration it's not that bad. Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's limited. Yes, walking everywhere you need to, to build is a pain in the ass.

But so are most first iterations of everything in video games. People act as though it's the worst thing in the world, like the half million broken and bugged quests in Bethesda games at release aren't an indicator of how Bethesda works through this shit. Like Companion management wasn't bloody worthless in Oblivion and Skyrim. Like looting used to be ridiculously tedious checking every container until FO4 when you could just look at them to know what's in them. Fuck, it's still tedious even with that.

My point is, everyone likes to judge Bethesda games on an individual basis before running out and buying the next thing they make. If you're going to keep buying Bethesda games and bitching about their execution, maybe start looking at the execution over time rather than in isolation. FO4 is easily the most polished and feature-rich game they've made yet. The next one will probably be even more so. The next ES game might have settlement building that is better than the settlement building in FO4. I won't say every Bethesda game has been a straight improvement on the last, because they're not. But if you compare how far they've come from Oblivion, then credit where credit is due.

The other solution is just to quit buying Bethesda games until they "get it right." Which exactly no one is doing.

[Iceblaster]

b-b-b-but muh internet feel-good points :c

[Neonivek]

The next ES game might have settlement building that is better than the settlement building in FO4

Congrats! But that doesn't justify why it is so terrible RIGHT NOW!

Fallout 5 might be the greatest game ever made with a stellar story, balanced mechanics, and a symbolic representation of life...

But I am not going to praise Bethesda for getting it right after these many games. In fact the whole "stop complaining" thing... is moot because the only reason Bethesda changed it is BECAUSE people complained.

The reason I give other publishers slack is that they try to make their games the best game possible. Bethesda has been set on "Passable mode" for a while now. We are mad because we know they can do better and we can see so much squandered potential.

then credit where credit is due.

In the same way that a child who gets straight Ds, should be praised for getting a C.

No, until Bethesda makes a game that is mechanically and narratively sound... They don't have any credit. Especially since while they have plenty of mechanics that improve, they also have plenty that get worse or that don't change no matter how bad they are. Their improvements are a bandaid. I mean maybe with 100 more games they might make a game that isn't riddled with problems.

[Silverthrone]

It is like said in The Tales of Ensign Stål. Bethesda RPGs are games that you kiss and beat to death with the same, warm soul. Well, mostly.

It is fair to complain. It is perfectly fine. There is a lot of fertile ground for whinge-potatoes. Some things should be called out, and without complaints, how will anything improve? But, to a certain point. One would think that Bethesda products were a leading cause of cancer, at times. Not so much here, mind. The Bay is a rather constructive place, with grievances well explained and warranted. Nonetheless, it might be time to put down the rod once in a while. If nothing else, then to flog the game more efficiently after a brief rest.

There is something they do that I adore, something I cannot get anywhere else. Something that does make me forgive the drawbacks. Mediocre dialogue and characters, silly (but adorably earnest) plots, over-simplification, their long struggle with context, and making everything fit together... And yet, that strange je ne sais quoi keeps bringing me back, and I cannot honestly say that I have not enjoyed my Bethy-brand experiences.

It could be better, and it jolly well ought to be better, but one would think the game boxes shipped with nothing but used stable straw and old bottle caps.

[Neonivek]

Honestly I don't mind silly plots

But... It is all about framing. Bethesda has a silly plot that is framed like it is Casablanca.

[nenjin]

It's fun to bash Bethesda, because they can make it so easy. I've done it plenty. But settlement building "being the worst thing ever".....just a little bit over the top.