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[Neonivek]

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.

Ok shoot... what is the worst thing they ever done that is so mishandled and haphazard that it clearly blows settlement building and all its incongruity out of the water?

I mean settlement building is pretty high up there all things considered. I mean maybe the vault DLC settlement building beats it... but it is the same system soo...

It gets bonus points for being so prominent... Settlement building is meant to be a huge part of Fallout 4 and is one of the selling points... Essentially it is at least 25% of the game.

[Silverthrone]

It can be quite irritating at times. I find that I can adjust to the rather earnest and basic tone, even if it is rather bombastic for something so simple and clear cut. It is not a favourable point, of course, adjusting to a silly story that rather reminds me of an ambitious young drama student tackling a big and difficult play without quite grasping it. It does not help that the main plots in Fallout 3 and 4 attempts to be close and personal for the player characters. I can play along, and even appreciate the beats, but it would be quite difficult if I were not prepared to accept quite some silliness to reach them.
Naturally, not a favourable point, and I do hope the complaints eventually pay off.

[Neonivek]

The major issue with Fallout 4's story is that it is kind of an idiot plot.

It relies on all the characters to be idiots in order to work.

Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so in your face... Even to the extent of holding up the non-twists as if they were genius machinations.

Even a poor story told well... can make you believe something better occurred. Yet Fallout 4s story is told very poorly... Oddly enough this plot is probably the easiest to fix in my mind.
-Step 1: Don't make the Institute the villains. Make this a story about survival and paranoia that escalates the conflict until either they become villains or that there is no villain
-Step 2: Your twist isn't a twist... don't pretend like it is.

[nenjin]

Broken quests? Check.

Objects you need/want falling through the world? Can't leave home without it.

Crashes often? You betcha.

Nightmare fuel model and texture bugs? Oh yeah.

Boring shit list of repetitive dungeons? All the live long day.

Horse armor? Say no more!

I could go on but what is the point. There are many 'worst things ever' in Bethesda games going back to Morrowind that people have bitched about over the years (particularly how they do content) and it's gotten marginally better each iteration. This is just another in the latest of things Bethesda does that the internet loves to rip on them for. And for once, it's something at the end of the day I still enjoy and would rather have in the game than out of it. After this many games, and this many people continually buying the same game knowing who makes it and how the make it, it just starts to get old after a while. Sensible critique is sensible. Hyperbole is not. I loathed Skyrim's rework of the skill system. Worst thing ever? No. Bad? Yes.

[BFEL]

So anyone use the V.A.N.S. perk? Kinda wondering if it means it points to the closest quest out of your ACTIVE quests, or the closest one out of ALL your quests.
Cuz if its the second one it would actually be worth getting in survival mode, since no fast travel means getting everything in the area done on the first go is desirable.

[Krevsin]

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.

They've had the same terrible fast travel system for 4 games in a row now. Their world design philosophy has been "let's pile interesting shit all over the place with how it all fits together being a hamfisted afterhtought for 4 games in a row. They've been trying to stick a mostly linear RPG plot heavy on grandiose setpieces and imbued with a sense of urgency that entirely collapses when put into an open world RPG for 4. Games. In. A. Row.

I see the changes they've made in some areas but they haven't learned anything about how to make an open world RPG's world and narrative work. 4 games. in a row. After Morrowind, a game which actually got large chunks of it right.

Bethesda may have learned but they haven't learned any of the right lessons. At least Fallout 4 was a step in a right direction. A tiny, timid step followed by half a mile's worth of backtracking but a tiny step nontheless.

The worst thing ever? No, not really. Their games are still mighty fine wandering simulators. But they fall apart whenever plot or worldbuilding comes into play. So while not the worst thing ever, it's still incredibly disappointing.

[Arbinire]

It isn't anything mechanically which causes people to criticize Bethesda.  Morrowind mechanically was a wretched game and even outdated when it released.  RPG's in general have never been mechanically stellar games, the drawing point is story and immersion.

What people are frustrated with is the regressive attitude they have taken with their storytelling, especially so with the Fallout franchise.  And the solution is insanely simple.  Stop trying to make the main character of the game the player, make the main character the setting in which the player's character lives in.

[Iceblaster]

And here I am, just enjoying the game for its merits and not dissecting it against every other game in Bethesda's twenty year(?) history. Is that bad? Am I the cancer on gaming that I am complacent in a decent game with fun mechanics?

[Egan_BW]

Go play DOOM4 or something and redefine your idea of "Fun".

[Iceblaster]

I do have my eyes on that game, but until I can find it for cheaper, I'll have to do without. Woe is me

[TheBronzePickle]

The game is certainly enjoyable, but for the price tag, it just doesn't measure up. Whatever you're looking for in Fallout 4, there are options that either offer the same quality for cheaper, better quality for the same price, or in a few places, better quality for cheaper. Sure, most of them may not have the exact combination of things that Fallout 4 has going for it, but honestly, unless the game has literally exactly what you're looking for, you're better off going somewhere else. Even the modding scene has been depressingly weak compared to earlier Bethesda games, partially because some of the most interesting mods were co-opted into the game already and partially because even with the modding tools, a lot of the stuff hard-coded into the game is just too difficult or time-consuming to work around.

[Iceblaster]

Honestly, on modding, I think you should not hold 4's up to NV's and 3's so quickly. It's only been a year. I'm pretty sure NV and 3 had a shit modding scene when it first came out/a year on. Give it some time to mature.

EDIT: I don't see all the complaints about quality. NV is a buggy mess that needs an unofficial patch to fix it and has a shitton of cut content, but 4 works out of the box and requires no mods to fix cut content or patches. It may not have fifty dialogue options and speech checks for every thing, but it's still a good game :/

[TheBronzePickle]

I honestly never had problems with bugs in NV. Maybe I got lucky. As for the cut content, I don't think I've ever played it. I thought the game was pretty amazing on my vanilla plus DLC run through. It had plenty of content as it stood, though my views may be skewed by the fact that I did play it with the DLC. Other than the extra gear, I'm not sure how much of an effect that had on the vanilla map's content.

[Krevsin]

And here I am, just enjoying the game for its merits and not dissecting it against every other game in Bethesda's twenty year(?) history. Is that bad? Am I the cancer on gaming that I am complacent in a decent game with fun mechanics?

It's not just every other Bethesda game, it's also every other RPG I've ever played. 

I do like the game, but I find it lacking. My criticism does not come from hatred for Bethesda and all they've done. If I didn't like the games, I wouldn't talk about them at all because I've only got a limited amount of things I can remember and "things I hate" isn't high on the priority list. I admire Bethesda for what they do but I find it lacking in key areas. I do not point out those flaws in order to "shit on the game" as the kids call it these days but because I genuinely want Bethesda to do better.

Not that I expect a lot of key designers from Bethesda browse these forums but hey, those who never speak are the ones who are never heard 

Honestly, on modding, I think you should not hold 4's up to NV's and 3's so quickly. It's only been a year. I'm pretty sure NV and 3 had a shit modding scene when it first came out/a year on. Give it some time to mature.

EDIT: I don't see all the complaints about quality. NV is a buggy mess that needs an unofficial patch to fix it and has a shitton of cut content, but 4 works out of the box and requires no mods to fix cut content or patches. It may not have fifty dialogue options and speech checks for every thing, but it's still a good game :/

I couldn't play Fallout 4 out of the box because the game wouldn't run at all. I had to do ini file tweaks and change my monitor's resolution in order to be able to run it.

NV was playable with the occassional CTD for me and that went away with the official patches for the most part. It most certainly wasn't buggier than Fallout 4 is right now (about on par) and the cut content did not impact the game too much except that it made one of the factions shallower, but even then it was still far more interesting and less chronically dumb than any of Fallout 4's factions. Fallout 4 is a decent game but compared to other things on the market it's lagging behind.

Also the main problem with Fallout 4's modding scene right now is that the game is still being patched on a semi-regular basis with patches that break mods. Give it a couple months, maybe half a year so the patching process stops.

I honestly never had problems with bugs in NV. Maybe I got lucky. As for the cut content, I don't think I've ever played it. I thought the game was pretty amazing on my vanilla plus DLC run through. It had plenty of content as it stood, though my views may be skewed by the fact that I did play it with the DLC. Other than the extra gear, I'm not sure how much of an effect that had on the vanilla map's content.

It added some additional talking points for the NPCs and changed some lines of dialogue to include some of the DLC content IIRC.

[Iceblaster]

Meh. I guess I overreacted. Honestly, I just hate that most discussions about Fallout 4 tend to devolve into 'here's ten reasons why new vegas was better' or 'i will now spend six paragraphs talking about how shit fallout 4 is.' Sooo, yeah. Kinda makes me feel like I'm the outlier in online communities