I started the game last night and took a few screenies which I was too tired to post, but will soon.
I felt right at home having played FO3 - like coming home. The graphics are really good in comparison though. Definitely not as good as GTA5, but really good. The game automatically set my graphics to Ultra as it detected my hardware, which I confirmed in the settings.
When I watched some of the FO4 videos, I was a bit worried about graphics because it looked like stuff in the distance was blurry and only cleared up as you neared them. I was pleased to discover that is not the case - the distant objects are as in focus as nearby things.
I've already met my dog, he has helped me kill some nasty things and I've had to use a stimpac on him when I was in my workshop and did not realize he was being attacked outside.
There is so much to explore, and always 4 options to channel the conversation when you speak with someone. I must admit that I immediately though of mandru while playing the game - it appears to have limitless opportunity to discover and explore while collecting things and building your empire. Might keep mandru busy for a long time to come.
I've seen some people complaining about video quality for FO4 videos on Youtube. I think to keep up with the flood of videos, YT has lowered the quality in order to get them up as fast as possible.
Could be - the video in my game is fluid and flawless in game play
I too have been watching a lot of the YT vids (mostly the un-narrated play through series you suggested on another thread) and I've got a couple questions about your play time experience.
I'm accustomed to the smoothness of character control in the last couple FarCry series and I was wondering is the control over your in game character (his movements, ability to aim a weapon and actually hit a target, etc...) is as clunky and unwieldy as the videos make it out to be?
I'm also interested to know if you are having any success using melee combat? Those situations when the fighting gets too close or if you are low on ammo for a preferred weapon. Maybe you just enjoy the exploding head animation of an enemy upon the delivery of a well tempered punch?
The guy in the play through series I mentioned above really seems to be unaware of simple tactics like utilizing the terrain to his best advantage or not sucking at stealth. ???
I've seen a lot of seemingly good hand to hand accessories picked up by the guy playing that series. Axes, bats, damage boosting gloves for both bare hand and power suit applications and while he collects those items I'm up to part #30 of the series and in two situations has he shown evidence that melee is programmed the game. In one situation he was being charged by two ghouls of equal levels. the guy playing was trying to move to get a better aim and he hit something in his controls that one-hit splashed the first ghoul's head but the second ghoul (who was a few steps further away) he put down with a magazine and a half's worth of ammo and because of the longer exposure time to the second ghoul's attack he took far more damage from both injury and radiation and that's not accounting for loss of bullets sprayed away ineffectively into the far end of the darkened tunnel. :D
Some of his play choices make me grit my teeth. There's a car nearby or an embankment that would allow some protection of the ankle biting radioactive mutant mole rats and rather than use that advantage to send dog meat out of harm's way while picking the attackers at his leisure he slogs through them firing at random.
Another video I watched showed a guy in a power suit handily slap the life straight out of a Deathclaw with just a pool stick and by knowing when to skip out of the way and dodge took actually very little personal damage. But the movement mechanics seemed clunky. While I don't know what buffs and power ups he had engaged at least it made the melee part of the game seem not only possible but even desirable in some applications if there are enemies that are more susceptible to blunt force damage over having lots of holes poked through them.
I haven't yet watched any FO4 videos but what you reported mandru doesn't surprise me greatly. I have watched vids of other shooters being played and some of these people couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a hammer. They seem to be totally clueless as to the concept of cover, too - they'll run around out in the open getting themselves well and truly peppered and they'll be all "Why am I getting hit all the time?"
You have to wonder sometimes... ????
Yes, it can be frustrating to watch someone else play when they have no movement (or thinking) skill.
I'm using some kind of energy weapon that had a powerful scope - hold left alt to hold your breath - aiming appears to w@&k well. I like using VATS on occasion, but mostly do not find the need to do so unless being overwhelmed with the speed of the attack.
Meelee seems to be okay - press left alt (when not in aiming mode) and you swing your weapon against anyone close.
Stealth is cool - there is a HUD display: [ Hidden ] in which the brackets move closer to each other seemingly when the threat becomes more imminent.
Mostly for me so far it seems like a vamped up FO3, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I like the side games of creating and maintaining settlements. There is so much to do and so many places to go that I never feel bored because I can simply change my focus.
I love the F5 quick save and F9 quick load features because I can experiment all I want and return to the earlier quick save. It only does not w@&k when you are in a conversation (I think) because I have used it within missions.
The Pip-boy app on my Galaxy Tab is also fun to use - I can keep an eye on the environment on the PC monitor while using Pip-boy features like dropping junk or changing weapons
The bottom line: I think if you liked FO3 you'll enjoy FO4 even more. Of course, as always, gaming is such a personal experience.
mandru, if "that guy" is MKIceAndFire then I can tell you a little about him. He's from Spain and playing through as fast as possible usually leaving everything left right and centre alone as long as it isn't absolutely necessary to progress the main story line. He's got good reflexes and usually is a good shot. Even if you think that he takes far more damage than you'd allow yourself, he usually manages to survive anyway and therefore doesn't care much about it. Also, as he's one of YT's more important uploaders, he receives copies of games earlier than we ever could (read: a few days before the official release) and the goal among those types of youtubers is to be first to publish and to finish. Guess why it was him you were watching and not some random guy -- speed is the key. They make a living doing stuff like that and get paid quite handsomely, too.
Yeah, that's the poster. :)
I heard a friend complain about the clumsy shooting experience, something that seems to be hard to get used to whe you've been playing other shooters. Different engines give different looks at targets and the aiming works differently. Always something that needs a little time, but nevertheless it might be a little worse on this title. Well, the game isn't really a shooter after all 8)
This is what "God" wrote
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/is-fallout-4-even-a-rpg-confirmed-30-fps-best-on-p-32163641/ (http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/is-fallout-4-even-a-rpg-confirmed-30-fps-best-on-p-32163641/)
Quote from: Binnatics on November 18, 2015, 06:45:03 AM
I heard a friend complain about the clumsy shooting experience, something that seems to be hard to get used to whe you've been playing other shooters. Different engines give different looks at targets and the aiming works differently. Always something that needs a little time, but nevertheless it might be a little worse on this title. Well, the game isn't really a shooter after all 8)
Here's a tips/tricks video that just happens to show shooting in the game as I experience it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2e-XGuFFgk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2e-XGuFFgk)
Obviously the Old Testament (Book of Law) God not God 2.0 of the New Testament (Book of Love) :-D
Concerning melee and hand to hand skills. My hopes for melee went way up while I was watching one of the MKIceAndFire FO4 series (it was up in the 30's range). There was a moment when Piper (the newspaper reporter) grabbed an enemy, used a hip pivot and slammed them to the ground following up with a head stomp.
After following that link and reading it over a couple times I'm now hoping that is not a combat option limited only to the companions. ???
Edit additional: I watched that tip vid in the post right above this. You slipped that in as I was preparing to post. It's good stuff and answered a couple questions and create a few new ones. :laugh:
:-X :-()
I'm still new in the game and an immersed in the story and have not done much in the way of combat (except the basics to stay alive). There is so much to do I am trying all kinds of bits and pieces and just having fun in general.
I like the way you meet people and then end up with some kind of quest to go on which remains tracked in Pip-boy while you do other things. I've been doing a bit of free roam, but mostly sticking to the story - kind of unusual for me these days ;D
Don't worry, PZ, you'll forget about that soon. :-()
I know I will - that's why I can watch the same movie over and over :-()
in an endless loop because when the credits start rolling you're already wondering how the heck it started? :-()
I've got a question. When you've cleared the mutants and monsters out of a location do they stay cleared out or do they respawn the next time you go through that area?
It would be nice if it was a genuine mop up operation in the long game. :)
That's a good question for which I do not have an answer. I recall discussing this in FC2 and the guard posts. Clearing them out permanently makes for a dead world with no excitement. However, having NPCs respawn too frequently is also annoying. For me, the ideal would be that a game would take into account how the world was changing and adjust the number and types of NPCs automatically.
Yeah, I've seen that in videos, where certain areas can be "cleared", but it seems other areas can't, so I dunno. It may have something to do with which areas you can build in, as those are restricted. You can't just build anything anywhere. I think you can collect scrap anywhere though, but might be wrong on that. I haven't seen any videos where someone collected scrap outside the area they were building in. If you wanted to do some extreme builds, you'd think you'd run out of materials in the limited areas you can build in, and getting scrap outside would be the only way to go.
"you can build anything you want. If you find the material needed, that is.."
I think you can collect lots of scrap in lots of areas. I've already seen a mod that lets you build anywhere, and as large as you want. Their only caution was that if too large, performance is affected. However, if you have an equally large performing PC, then....
"..the game crashes?" ????
:-()
nah... you can build a base as large as you like :-()
:-X :)
Was wandering around last night and ran into a nest of super mutants, one of which was named "Hammer"
He had this weapon:
Spoiler
A super sledge that delivers 80 hit points of damage. I hit a rad scorpion and killed it with a single blos and sent it flying at least 30 feet.
"blos" ???
That would be cool to have though I don't do melee unless I have to.
Yeah! Blossed the snot out of it. :laugh:
Nice find. :-X
:laugh: :-X
I missed my chance. Saw it but decided not to go for it because I couldn't find anything funny to connect it to. If I had known that simply quoting it would do the trick, hell, I would have. :-()
Quote from: Art Blade on December 01, 2015, 10:54:52 AM
I missed my chance. Saw it but decided not to go for it because ...
I do that kind of thing way too often.
I think I'll adopt the term "blos" - might become the new pwned
in my book your best typo still is boar pilot. :-D
:laugh: - I agree, but there are so many
we love variety. :-()
I'm up to level 13 and have avoided companion hookups other than dog meat until my character is a little better developed to avoid getting dragged into conflicts that are way over my head like that deathclaw that pops out in Concord while you're still level 2.
Traveling around with dog meat cautiously selecting my own skirmishes collecting bottle caps and materials I've decided that if I could change even one attribute in dog meat's behavior it would be to add a "Heel" command so that when I need it he would stay one or two steps behind me until I order him to do otherwise. I hate Escort Missions and having dog meat ricocheting around like a loose cannon during stormy high seas is really annoying. I can't count how many times I've muttered under my breath "If you do that again I'll shoot you myself.
I've started using the Stay command to park dog meat just out of range of conflict. It prevents him from charging getting himself hurt so bad I have to stimpack him and he often triggers events before I'm set and ready. Once I've cleared a safe zone I move him forward and force him to stay as I tackle the next stage of the mission. Having him around has its advantages but it would be a lot easier to w@&k with him if he'd just be a good dog and heel.
Dang dogs never listen \:/
that dog, if he keeps disobeying, either beat him or eat him. >:D
:-D
Dogmeat will come back to you and stick close if you sneak. But if sneaking isn't what the current mission needs, then the stay command is about all you can do. You don't have to stimpack him, he will sit and whimper for a while, then recover on his own. I just sent him home, after 60 levels, it's time to let someone else have fun, and my choices were Preston, Strong, Codsworth or Piper, and Piper looks cuter in that Brotherhood of Steel uniform I had laying around, so I picked her. I may pick Strong after I get tired of Piper, just because it would be funny to have a super mutant tag along on all those quests, especially while talking to the people in the Brotherhood, pompous so-and-sos that they are, it would really burn them to have a hulking mutant on their nice clean airship.
:-D
Quote from: mandru on February 28, 2016, 07:47:06 AM
Having him around has its advantages but it would be a lot easier to w@&k with him if he'd just be a good dog and heel.
Must be part Border Collie. I can attest to the fact that as obedient a dog breed as they are, they have a strong independent streak. My Maggie will do what I tell her when we're out walking, but if she gets a whiff of rabbit, I might as well try to walk a well-anchored tree stump :-\\
bind a rabbit on the dog's back. They won't run far. :-D
Maybe even part toy poodle. My wife's poodle will not hesitate attacking a bear, and appears to listen about as well as dogmeat.
On the topic of dogs and bringing this back to FO4. ;)
I have achieved the highest level of approval with Cait (picked up in the Combat Zone) as a partner and I'm convinced her behavior patterns are based on the characteristics of a Cocker Spaniel. She's willful, often snotty to the point of refusing to hold cover when you are trying to sneak, and always running ahead and jumping between you and what ever target you are trying to line up a shot on. She also hates being ordered to Stay and expresses it openly.
If there's water Cait will end up in it. She can't swim so on various occasions I've seen a swirl of something moving below the surface of nearby water and opened a barrage of fire from what ever weapon I happen to be carrying at the time only to have Cait pop up out of the water where she had been walking on the bottom and drag herself onto shore. The only thing missing from those moment is the furious dog's shake off to remove excess water from her (to use a simile) pelt. On the other hand if you need to swim across a narrow body of water to reach an objective she will complain "I wasn't made for swimming". :D
She's competent in a fight. However be careful with what you drop into her inventory. I'd shifted a few flamers over to her to trim my weight a bit so I could regain the ability to run and the next thing I knew she'd pocketed her signature shotgun and was gleefully playing the toast master in close quarters inside a factory. I would never trust her (or I now suspect any of the other companions) with a Fatman :o
There's no romance from Cait. Genuine affection is something she's never encountered or learned to reciprocate from her upbringing or life experiences She just wants to be your needy bossomed buddy regularly reconfirming that your friendship for her hasn't cooled off and reminding you that she's up for the next brawl.
I haven't taken on Cait yet, just left her in the combat zone, as I was still romancing Piper. Now that I have highest affinity and romance with her, and the resultant perks, I may see what Cait is like. I wonder if the perks for each stay active when they aren't your current companion. For instance, do I still get the double XP for discovering a new place that comes from Piper if I switch to Cait or someone else?
But yeah, don't give anyone a weapon and the ammo for it if you don't want it used up. Settlers will have infinite ammo for their weapon if you just give them one round of it, but companions will use up whatever you give them. I gave Piper a plasma rifle and rounds just to see how she would use it and because I never do, didn't care about the ammo, and she burned through over 900 rounds in a few game days, which is about 30 minutes real time. So she is back to her 10mm which she came with and it's infinite ammo.
And, no, I can't imagine what one of these people would do with a fat man. Considering mine is now the highest upgraded MIRV, and launches I think 12 nukes at once, that would be a (maybe funny) disaster. The one time I tried to launch it, the detonation was way too close and took out everything including myself.
Early on in my travels with Cait I was looting a fallen raider and she asked for a share of the ammo. Since she was using her shotgun I gave her 100 rounds for that weapon. I guess because it was her original (and extensively used) weapon she still has the full 100 in her inventory.
In my post above I had commented that Cait didn't respond favorably to the Romance option once you've achieved full affinity with her. Boy, was I wrong on that. I don't know if my charisma, or my character level wasn't high enough or simply my persistence in wooing her hadn't been met but because I enjoyed seeing her embarrassed reaction when dodging the romance dialog I continued to ping her with it.
On top of my usual rampaging and blowing to bits and looting everything that moves (outside of targets that cause negative alignment), I've been spending quite a bit of time trying to make each of the many settlements happy and independently capable of defending themselves. This involves outfitting the each of the settlers with prime armor and weapons as well as beefing up and refining the accurate positioning of their automated defenses.
Every settlement has its own weak spots and I've learned a lot from studying the reoccurring attack patterns. Even if a settlement gets hit while I'm engaged elsewhere in Build Mode (the attack announcements fail to show on my screen in those situations) which means it's over before I know there was an attack. I found that I could come back later and by walking the perimeter searching for and collecting the attacker's dropped weapons I can make a good guess of who they were and gather good information about which direction they'd come in from to assault my settlers. This process has allowed me to tweak my auto defenses to the point where most attacks now are over before the settlers can look up from their assigned tasks.
But still some attackers manage to slip through. :D
When roving I'm constantly keeping an eye open for Gene the dog breeder (who reluctantly sells junkyard dogs) so that I can get at least one dog in each inhabited settlement. Besides the dog's happiness and defense value for a settlement it's great fun to see one of these typically easy going mutts charge in and grab an enemy so as to injure and tangle the bad guys up even as the settlers take care of mop up by shooting and or pummeling the intruders with key melee weapons.
One wispy but agile little ghoul settler with a war cry on her lips and wielding her legendary "fiery super sledge" like an angry wasp while working in unison with one of the dogs gave me a good case of the giggles. She was one wicked little sack of bones. :laugh:
Through all the above I've managed to get my character's level up over 165 and filled in a few holes in my S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Perk options which brings me back to the subject of romance with Cait. I'd been largely ignoring her for quite a while other than an occasional quick run by charging out of Sanctuary Hills to stomp out one brush fire or another.
Once I'd learned that the sound of generators and automated defenses on the roofs of occupied buildings can affect settler's happiness levels I've been going through and trying to revamp all of the settlements to as near to whisper quiet as I can. Not that I've seen anything approaching favorable results from all my efforts in this endeavor. I keep slogging along trying to make my settlers happy.
When I finally got around to fixing the noise levels in Sanctuary Hills (one of my more challenging rebuilds) it brought me back into close proximity with Cait. I'd long ago assigned her security patrol covering a couple points along the single paved road into Sanctuary.
Having been previously rebuffed by Cait many times it surprised me when my automatic selection of the romance word track when it came up returned something other than her becoming and edging away. She was hooked, played, and landed.
**Warning! Do not allow two lovers in the same settlement if you are going to sleep. It can permanently glitch up the Lover's Embrace Perk**
Here's some of her amusing additional word tracks now:
* "Fishing for a snog are ya?" (or something like that)
* (Contented aimless humming while patrolling) ??? (the disturbing thing is both Preston and MacCready are humming it too but I'm not taking that route with them)
And specifically when waking up where she's jumped into bed with me when I've slept 24 hours to accelerate the time spent in settlement trying to raise happiness
* "OW! I think I've pulled a muscle."
* "All this rest is making me tired." :-D
So now it's Cait including cuddles and cudgels. ^-^
Excellent report, mandru :-X
The surprises in the game appear to be endless
nice story, mandru :)
Nice update, Mandru, I just basically finished the game a few days ago. I won't go into the details of the path I took, but I did the missions in a way to keep the Brotherhood and the Railroad alive while destroying the Institute. The normal quest progression requires you to align with a single faction and destroy the other two. This way, I still have side quests I can do for both factions. As far as I can find out, there's no way to align with the Institute and keep the other two around. But you can complete quests in a certain order to keep the brotherhood and railroad around, even though it can be weird sometimes, as there's no end game options for a scenario like that, and as far as the Railroad is concerned, the brotherhood has been destroyed, when they are actually alive and well.
Anyway, I also ran through the other faction endings mostly to see how they went and to get the associated achievements. I'm now just two short of getting all the achievements, and they are settlement building types from the DLC.
If you have the Far Harbor DLC, there is a friendly super mutant you can meet who sells trained dogs. Also wolves and mutant hounds. Since he is settled in one place, he's easy to find, gets new dogs every couple of game weeks and doesn't give you hassle like Gene does. Plus, I have something like 19 days in game and have only seen that guy once. Erikson the super mutant in Far Harbor is always around his camp, so it's easy pop over and buy a dog or two from him and be on your way. The workshop DLC also has cat cages you can trap cats in and they will also increase settlement happiness.
Sounds like there is quite a bit of replay potential
those cages.. maybe you can trap a couple of cats first and then toss a few dogs in, too. To make you happy. :-D
I have a couple settlements with both cats and dogs in them, they pretty much ignore each other. Now I'm trapping gorillas, as they add both happiness and defense to a settlement, whereas dogs only add defense and cats only happiness, so best of both.
that post of yours was precisely your 1,800th post. You're starting to worry me.
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on July 29, 2016, 07:53:00 AM
... Now I'm trapping gorillas, as they add both happiness and defense to a settlement, whereas dogs only add defense and cats only happiness, so best of both.
D_B, I'm running the pure vanilla base starter version of FO4 which may vary from how your game settings have now been altered with the additional download content, however...
When I am in the game's settlement build mode and hover my cursor over one of the dogs the pop-up info panel shows the symbol for defense and there's also a little smiley face which I always assumed indicated they were providing happiness too. I might be wrong and it could turn out that my constantly keeping an eye out for Gene to buy dogs is naught but a wild goose chase. :-\\
You might want to check that for both of us D_B. :-D
:)
I'll have to look again at the dogs, Mandru, it could well be that they also give happiness as well as defense. But it seems to me that the gorilla display is different than the dog display, but that it's been so long since I checked what the dogs have I could just be mis-remembering.
And, Art, what, you afraid I might catch you up?
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on August 01, 2016, 08:20:17 AM
And, Art, what, you afraid I might catch you up?
:laugh: :-X
D_B, that is entirely possible. :)
If I'm going to slow down the way you're speeding up, we might meet somewhere in the middle and one day, you'll hit the 25k mark before I do.
Even if hell is more likely to freeze over, you know, but still..
:-D
I don't think you have anything to worry about, your title is safe.
phew.
I must admit that gorilla guards along with trust worthy monkey butlers would make me considerably happier. :laugh:
:-D