Forums » Fallout

Do characters, and character builds seem pretty bland this time

    • 6 posts
    March 2, 2016 9:52 PM EST

    Hello all, I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on if you think the Character Builds and characters are not going to be as unique as in previous games.

                  From my experience, the SPECIAL tree essentially is combining skills and some perks into one condensed tree. Along with that it seems that, "SPECIAL," itself doesn't have a big enough impact on your character like in previous games.

    While perception used to deal with npcs on the minimap, your gun sway (at leasat in new vegas), affected skills, gave you some unique dialogue options, etc. Now it's just VATS accuracy. Essentially, before you leave the vault you can be extremely accurate in vats with any weapon of your choice regardless if your character is skilled in it. In previous games, you would have to at least level your guns skill to reduce the sway with guns while aiming, etc.

    Endurance is a retroactive increase to your health each level (a very small amount), and increased sprinting duration. That's it.

    I could explain all of the stats and what they do, but I think you get the point. I feel that they have condensed so many of the skills and stats together such that characters are all going to be pretty good at everything without being hindered or force to choose. Say you want a shotgun specific character. Well you choose rifelman and gun nut most likely and that makes you good with all rifles and shotguns, and Snipers, and single shot weapons, whatever they may be regardless if it's an energy weapon, or not. You don't ever get to specialize in what type of weapon you use really. For me it really takes away from the RPG element of the game because why would you just specialize in shotguns if you are always getting stronger with every weapon that's single fire; unless you want to purposely gimp your self for a challenge which tends to take you out of the game or make the experience more bland. Also there is really only one shot gun you use later in the game limiting the amount of versatility and unique characters you can create signifigantly.

    Sorry for the longish rant, but this is just one example of many that seems to make this game so much more limited and smaller compared to Fallout New Vegas,  or even fallout 3. From builds I have seen most characters end up taking the same exact perks and have very similar stats as you only need a minimum number of points to access a perk because the stats themselves often don't provide much. Does anyone else feel similarly that the game seems to be pin holing you into doing everything, limiting character variety?

    • 312 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:03 PM EST

    This basically sums up why I've quit Fallout 4.

    • 1441 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:06 PM EST

    While I do understand this, I personally would only take what perks I feel are appropraite to a character. If I use shotguns and pistols, I'll only use those weapons

    • 312 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:11 PM EST

    If you use shotguns you're limited to the Double-Barrel and the Combat Shotgun. I used the Double-Barrel (and a Hunting Rifle) for role-play purposes, though I often found myself pining for a Combat Shotgun for efficiency. I would have liked to see a 20-gauge, 12-gauge, or a pump action. It's difficult to role-play when one weapon/upgrade is objectively better than the alternatives. (Though vast, the upgrade system in FO4 is definitely linear.)

    Heck, New Vegas had varying ammunition types, and that's something I sorely missed in Fallout 4.

    • 1441 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:14 PM EST

    Well, some Legendary effects mimic the elemental rounds, some upgrades act like armor piercing rounds

    • 6 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:16 PM EST

    Yes, like I said somewhere in my post you purposely have to gimp yourself to fit your characters build. While a lot of people are okay with that, I personally enjoy the rpg aspect of making my own unique character. Someone who is going to go the semi auto rifle route, is going to have almost all of the same perk as someone who went a shotgun route. This will overall make most characters very bland as normal RPG players won't feel compelled to specialize because you are good with everything without having to level skills, or perks. In Skyrim, or fallout you have to at least level the skills, and get perks to specialize your character, while in this game any character who has rifelman will have the same damage and gun variety as any other character in the game, meaning you could be a scientist who put the bare minimum in rifleman and have the same damage out put as someone who made their character a trained soldier and dedicated a lot more time into trying to specialize their character.

    • 312 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:16 PM EST

    I never notice a difference between an AP SMG and a Powerful SMG, and I was playing on Survival. The only difference I noticed in the receivers was Auto vs. Semi-Auto, and the reason for that is fairly obvious. :/

    Randomized Legendary Effects was a bummer since if you're looking for a specific combination, you're almost never going to get it. Skyrim's Enchanting basically removed the RNG factor of FO4's Legendaries, and it definitely made the gameplay a lot more customizable.

    • 312 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:17 PM EST

    I really loved the Cowboy perk in New Vegas. Definitely made me consider what weapons I was picking up. ^_^

    • 6 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:28 PM EST

    Even then the legendaries are just carbon copies of normal weapons with a prefix next to them that has the affect attached to them. It's years and years behind any other game with looting like this. Games in 2008-2009 had so much more than what fallout 4 has and this game took around 6-8 years to develop if I remember correctly.

    • 312 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:29 PM EST

    Even then the legendaries are just carbon copies of normal weapons with a prefix

    They did create some hilarious effects, though. I found a Ghoul-Slayer's Gamma Gun. (useless pos)

    I had about 3 legendary rolling pins of varying effects (freezing, berserker's, wounding, iirc), but I can't find the screenshots. D:

    • 13 posts
    March 2, 2016 10:56 PM EST
    I think there's more potential than we've unlocked. It will never be as limitless as Skyrim, but there has to be something cool we haven't figured out yet. Like some kind of synergy between a level 10 perk, a companion perk, and a chem or some crap like that. Again, it won't make it Skyrim but I think there's more than meets the eye.

    Equipment is an issue though. If you find something that looks cool, if you can't mod it or it doesn't have some kind of important stat boost it won't be viable for the whole playthrough. That can limit builds, since only certain armor or outfits are worth picking up. And apparel is pretty limited to begin with. Sure there are plenty of different colors of suits and lab coats, but a different colored shirt isn't much of a variation. Hopefully the dlcs bring in some new useful gear with some level of variety
    • 6 posts
    March 2, 2016 11:38 PM EST

    For 25 dollars it better be bigger and add more than Shivering isles, nights of the nine, etc. combined. Sadly I think this is the case of another game being not fully finished and the developers or whoever is in charge of publishing, getting people to pay for them to finish the game. Drugs aare pretty boring too, it's just percent/stat increases, or some jet combo/tankiness. In the end you will pop the drug and shoot things, or smash them. Most enemies aren't going to be strong enough to benefit from having an extremely high dps, or single target damage to be useful. I am not sure if you can unlock new drugs though, but there way more in fallout new vegas along with special items you could make. You also can't use syringes without a syringer rifle I believe, but I wish you could sneak up on someone and inject them. There are just so many possibilities and cool things that could have been done and I am sure we are going to see it in paid dlc such as automatrons and the fighting pit thing with monsters. One of which was suppose to originally be in the game, and another that was a mod in like the first month of the game they decided to steal. I am still hopeful that people find a way to make the game work, or Bethesda isn't going the route I think they are.

    • 585 posts
    March 3, 2016 5:46 AM EST

    The thing I disliked about FO4's perks is that there are some that you have to take.  So while you might not be forced, perks like Lifegiver are pretty much required no matter what the character, as it can be achieved by almost any character, even the squishy nerds that are one of the most common archetypes in the game.

    I think that SPECIAL perks would be more important if the game limited you to how many times you could increase them. While doing this would take away some customise ablilty, it would give characters realistic and RP friendly weaknesses, and would stop every character from turning into the same person.

    • 6 posts
    March 4, 2016 5:03 PM EST

    Yeah, some are cool, but still generic. Fire, ice, and electricity are basic for almost every other game. And most are like, "Frenzy if critical hit." Well if you have to critical hit something you are probably going to kill it anyways, or when it frenzies it will just die instantly because it's already on low health. You could also just shoot a syringer rifle for about all of the legendary effects you have in the game. Some were some what interesting, but I never saw something cool that was over the top, or not in other games. They can't even retexture a legendary gun for a cooler look? That's not really acceptable in this game as almost every weapon feels and plays the same.

    • 6 posts
    March 4, 2016 5:06 PM EST

    They don't want to do that though. They want to make the game as accessible as possible so nobody is excluded and it ends up taking away all of the good the game has to offer. The fallout franchise sold itself on it being an RPG/survival sandbox game, with other features thrown in. When you strip all of those things a way, you get like Rust mixed with call of duty and it doesn't suit the fallout franchise at all.