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[scriver]

I'm stuck in a mood where I really want to play F4, but know I will not like the game if I actually play it. It's a dingleberry of a mood.

What I really want, I guess, is F4 New Vegas. But I'm almost given up hope on that being the secret acrual reason Avellone went to work on Bethesda by now.

[Jimmy]

Sometimes you gotta accept the fact it's a gold-plated turd and just enjoy it for what it is.

I've restarted my Survival game since my last PC died. Level 19 so far, maxed out Codsworth's relationship, working next on Piper. Only just reached Diamond City, and haven't even started any of the main story line quests besides rescuing Preston & Co. Putting ranks into the vital perks of Rifleman, Gun Nut, Armorer, Locksmith, Hacker, Sneak, Chemist and Science! I went with a SPECIAL spread of 4/4/4/3/7/3/3. Right now I'm surviving by using chems until I get decent power armor, which I figure I'll grab when I pick up Ada and the full set of X-01 power armor from the Mechanist storyline.

This is all on a vanilla install too, no mods. Yep, hardcore survivalist mode with only beds for saves. HTFU, noobs.

[scriver]

Oh, I enjoyed it a lot back when it was new, I've just played it out. But still want to return to it again.

[Jimmy]

If Bethesda get points for one thing, it's that their games are eminently replayable. Hell, just gen a new game, skip returning to Sanctuary, and go deliberately visit every location you've never done in the game yet. Unless you have 100%ed the game before, there's gotta be content you've never played.

[Astral]

Even then, there's a big reason I can keep going back to Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas - mods. That is what makes me continue to enjoy Bethesda games well past their expiration date.

Even 100%ing the game isn't enough, when there are potentially full conversion mods like DUST (which turns NV into a die a lot survival simulation) or FROST (which does the same for 4).

They also help age-proof the game to a certain extent, since annoyances that were overlooked in nostalgia can be changed to fit whatever you want.

[scriver]

If Bethesda get points for one thing, it's that their games are eminently replayable. Hell, just gen a new game, skip returning to Sanctuary, and go deliberately visit every location you've never done in the game yet. Unless you have 100%ed the game before, there's gotta be content you've never played.

There's a bunch of stuff up in the north east, and I've never finished any of the main questlines, but no, a handful of location I haven't been is not enough when the game has played out it's fun.

[Sergius]

I've just started an evil-ish playthru, I skipped Sanctuary and Concord completely (wasn't even planning to do it, just saw that there was another path leading from Vault 111 to some raiders under one of those giant energy poles, then just kept going). I then went straight to Goodneighbor, where I had the chance, for the first time, to see the Memory Den introduction without the main quest.

Interestingly, if you go that route, you get Dogmeat from Nick instead of some random fuel station.

I'm not going to do Survival, I did it once but to me it feels like busywork. It was fine the first few levels because of the very fast leveling, then it turned impossible when trying to do the initial arena in Nuka World. I'd rather enjoy myself.

This time, my intention is to actually join one of the Nuka World gangs and conquer the Commonwealth.

[Astral]

I liked survival mode, with some concessions made for autosaves due to mod instability. Dying is one thing, crashing after you're 30 minutes from your last autosave is infuriating, and the fact that you basically have to roleplay a narcoleptic just to continue the game (and the fact that 1 hour autosave naps can still cause illness) didn't sit well with me.

I did like the fact that enemies weren't bullet sponges (one of the most egregious parts of playing "hard" difficulties), so paying attention and getting the first shot off is far more important than having hugely overpowered gear... and it tended to open up a few more avenues that I normally wouldn't consider (such as mines and other explosives, which normally aren't worth the setup time in my opinion).

[SOLDIER First]

Here.

[Jimmy]

I agree about mines. I've found myself hoarding frag mines and deploying them against mirelurks. If their legs are crippled, they're ridiculously easy to destroy.

[Damiac]

You just bought a gaming laptop that doesn't have an ssd?

Yeah... I mean I didn't want to spend a ton of money, I got a laptop that was a little old (6 months to a year out of date) and on sale, adding the SSD would have jacked the price way up.  So you're saying the load time comes down to HDD access, and therefore there's not much I can do to improve it.  Would lowering texture quality mean I have less to load at each transition?

Is load time significantly better on a SSD? Also, how are external SSDs? Are they limited so much by the USB connection that you don't benefit from the faster disk access?

[umiman]

Oh yeah, many people myself included would tell you that SSDs are the single most important upgrade you can make on your computer.

Windows boots in like... 2 seconds.

Warhammer Total War loading times go from 10 minutes to a few seconds.

It's inevitable that if you want to PC game these days you will probably need an SSD. The alternative is your circumstance where you have to wait forever to load anything. If you have patience then that's fine, but if not you should invest in one.

This is because load times are never going to improve. Texture sizes are only going up, not down. Those are the main culprit to load times. Also because of the increasing complexity to games, load time optimization will naturally get the short stick.

I'm not an expert on SSDs so I can't tell you how an external one would work but what I can tell you is not to cheap out on no name brand SSDs if you're putting important stuff on it. I had an ADATA SSD to start and in 2 weeks the entire thing decided to wipe itself randomly, destroying my windows and games partition. This is a known issue with shitty old SSDs where they can get completely screwed up if there's a power issue.

Regular hard drives don't have that issue because they kinda fail in stages. So you can tell if it's failing by strange issues or your computer straight up telling you. Then you can take measures to save your data. SSDs fail in one shot, and everything disappears when it fails.

Since then I returned the ADATA and bought a Samsung drive. Not only was it way way way faster, but I haven't had any strange problems.

A nice side effect on an SSD is how quiet your computer gets. It also uses less power, generates less heat, etc.

---------

Tl:;dr: if you have issues with load times in modern games, buy an SSD.

[nenjin]

I held off on an SSD for my PC build, and while it's livable....having an SSD in my work laptop, yeah windows boots in like 2 seconds. I don't know what gaming is like on this but your average AAA game can take anywhere from 30 to 45 seconds after clicking launch to even see a splash screen for the game on a standard HDD. Some guys that hit your harddrive like a ton of bricks (like PoE) are greatly improved by an SSD.

It's not a performance improvement to the point I'm ready to replace my standard HDD (because big SSD still cost an arm and a leg, they're an access medium not a storage medium), but I'm thinking about it for the future now.

[ZeroGravitas]

wow... to me the idea of still using an HDD is kinda insane. almost on par with saying you play on a CRT monitor or your mouse has an actual rolling ball in it or something.

the only application for an HDD is like, you actually need 8 TB of data storage or something. for an installed steam library of like 200-300gb, a $150 500gb SSD is more than enough.

[nenjin]

I'm at 1.5 terabytes for my installed Steam games. So, I kind of disagree. Reinstalling big AAA games or games like fucking Payday 2 is a pain in the ass, so I like a big drive so I don't have to play the "hard drive cleaning" mini game every few months.

Plus using extra writes/deletes on an SSD to clear up space constantly seems self-defeating.