Fallout VI: Shotguns and Six-Shooters

[The_Jackal]

You are thinking about reasonable people that would obey a sane "emperor" instead of living their "freedom" in the mud. Because the first thing a completely destabilized region without infrastructure needs is direction, and lots of it. That is why the Brotherhood worked so well. They had preestablished military ranks and they trusted their commanding officer. In fact, all organizations have a power structure (as well as the two main settlements, Goodneighbour and Diamond City) where a single man decides the fate. Yes, Goodneighbour might be more liberal but I feel like Hancock still mostly is in power.

They're already doing that, just doing it at the city-state level instead of at the regional level. The misconception of a destabilized nation is that a power-vacuum creates total anarchy, when in fact it's just a transition from one group of rules to another. The Wars of the Roses, the Sengoku jidai, the Thirty Years' War, these were all tumultuous periods of history with plenty of bloodshed and homo homini lupus, but they were groups of people banding together to protect themselves and their interests, and they all had a common goal: To restore the peace to promulgate their own policies and secure their own power. The problem with Fallout (and most post-apocalyptic settings) is that the world remains fragmented, desolate and broken for no real reason, as if by fiat.

a) If the apocalypse was more than a generation ago, and there are still humans left to for communities, they should have at least some form of allegiance with neighboring settlements or colonies. If the apocalypse - like in Fallout - was more than 7 generations ago (a generation being roughly 30 years) - population would have been big enough to form larger republics like New California. As a matter of fact, I find the New California Republic the most believable area of Fallout.

Totally agree, but I feel like the local fragmentation is, in part, driven by the desire of the designers to cram a bunch of unique factions into a very tight geographic space. It's not exactly a hugely diverse game if the Minutemen had completely pacified the entire region. Instead you've got gunners, super-mutants, various raiders, triggermen, the minutemen, the railroad, and the institute all duking it out within blocks of each other (before the BoS even float into town).

b) People should be breeding enough to reach a stable population. Humans are adaptable, they breed well despite their inability to fend for themselves in the early stages of childhood, and while background radiation would increase all forms of cancer and other genetical misformings, you would still get enough children to repopulate. (If you want to generously cut out the sad thought of stillbirths, mutations and cancer from your games, you can still just adapt the reproduction rate accordingly and just state many people are infertile).

I think you can lampshade the scarcity of people by there just being very low life expectancy, low birth rate, and a high incidence of crippling or lethal genetic disorders. Assume that the war resulted in throwing the world into a pre-industrial status, where the net rate of population growth was low, not by virtue of birth rate, but by virtue of high child mortality, scarcity, and infertility.

It still has to be consistent within its own rules and reasoning. Major factions need goals or else they would dissolve. The Brotherhood has the goal set in previous games but their presence is in question here. The Institute has no major goal, the Railroad is a smaller organization with a goal that fits their abilities. And the Minutemen are very ambitious and as I think I said earlier - they need mounts or some mode of transportation to realistically get to a point where they are needed within minutes. But they all move by foot. Honestly, paying the Brotherhood in food rations gets you better protection as long as you don't house any non humans.

I agree, but let's accept that in many cases, rhetorical ideology often tails after political objectives. In other words, most people formulate their opinions based on their motivations, rather than having a set of ideals and principles, then changing their actions because of them. What I'm saying is that ideology is part philosophical, and part opportunistic. Very few people will reason their way out of a free lunch, and those who do are unlikely to retain temporal power for long.

[Spore]

I think you can lampshade the scarcity of people by there just being very low life expectancy, low birth rate, and a high incidence of crippling or lethal genetic disorders. Assume that the war resulted in throwing the world into a pre-industrial status, where the net rate of population growth was low, not by virtue of birth rate, but by virtue of high child mortality, scarcity, and infertility.

Possibly not quite that terrible. If you consider the knowledge of Chems and Stimpaks combined with the - rare but existing - practicing medics and doctors, you are looking easily at pre WW 2 medicine, with terribly overworked doctors. And while the Ghoul doctor inside an irradiated glowing pool and Vault 81's medic aren't seeing patients is explainable, but why the doctors in Diamond City even have enough free time to offer plastic chirurgy instead of much needed basic medical treatment is beyond me.

I mean there is a kid responsible for the water of a whole settlement, people should be falling ill left and right.

[factotum]

Totally agree, but I feel like the local fragmentation is, in part, driven by the desire of the designers to cram a bunch of unique factions into a very tight geographic space. It's not exactly a hugely diverse game if the Minutemen had completely pacified the entire region. Instead you've got gunners, super-mutants, various raiders, triggermen, the minutemen, the railroad, and the institute all duking it out within blocks of each other (before the BoS even float into town).

New Vegas had a number of unique factions--Mr. House, the NCR, the Legion, the Families who run the Vegas casinos, the Powder Gangers, the Great Khans, the Boomers, probably half a dozen others I'm forgetting even ignoring the DLC--yet still managed to have that feeling that progress was being made back toward proper civilisation. Although even there people still hadn't really figured out the whole "we can use bricks to make *walls*" thing. With all the ruined houses around you'd think bricks would be a far easier building material to find than sheets of corrugated iron...

[Lord Raziere]

hey guys just started Fallout 4, I'm at level 10, any ideas on how best to level for a crafter build? I die a lot in fights and I mostly want to make cool stuff, and don't really care for the main story, and I'm wondering if there are any good ways to go about it.

[Triaxx]

You want at least 6 charisma for two ranks of Local Leader, and one of Cap Collector. Those three ranks will unlock most of the functional buildings, like traders and stores. Then you want science and gun nut for power and defences. You'll want them anyway for improving your personal gear as well, so there's no reason not to snag them.

[Lord Raziere]

You want at least 6 charisma for two ranks of Local Leader, and one of Cap Collector. Those three ranks will unlock most of the functional buildings, like traders and stores. Then you want science and gun nut for power and defences. You'll want them anyway for improving your personal gear as well, so there's no reason not to snag them.

I'm not looking for build advice, I'm looking for good ways to actually level up. as in gain exp.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'm not looking for build advice, I'm looking for good ways to actually level up. as in gain exp.

Kill things or complete quests. Those are the only two ways to gain xp in FO4.

FO4 isn't a settlement building game, it's a First Person Looter that has a settlement building game surgically attached by a mad scientist and then imbued with FEV to ensure the graft takes.

[Lord Raziere]

Kill things or complete quests. Those are the only two ways to gain xp in FO4.

FO4 isn't a settlement building game, it's a First Person Looter that has a settlement building game surgically attached by a mad scientist and then imbued with FEV to ensure the graft takes.

I don't care about the settlement all that much, and I figured quests and killings thing was assumed, I was hoping for something more specific. But, ok, whatever. I mostly build things for cool crazy weapons and armor and such.

[unseenmage]

hey guys just started Fallout 4, I'm at level 10, any ideas on how best to level for a crafter build? I die a lot in fights and I mostly want to make cool stuff, and don't really care for the main story, and I'm wondering if there are any good ways to go about it.

Build stuff in settlements. Build and scrap and build and scrap. There's diminishing returns but for a while you'll level like mad.

But yeah, as has been said the real xp gain comes from completing quests. If you want to avoid the main quest just do Radiant Quests for Preston Garvey or the Brotherhood. The Railroad and Institute also offer up radiant quests but can be more effort to unlock than the previous two. If you have DLC Far Harbor's natives will even offer to come along and die while pretending to help you save their settlement. And the raiders of Nuka World just love to boss you around in exchange for xp.

Edit: Oh and if you finish the Mechanist you can pick up some radiant quests there too but those corpses never despawn for me so I don't recommend them.

[Balmas]

For the past few days, I've been kinda turning Fallout 4 over in my mind--what it did right, where it went wrong, things that could have been better, and so forth. (It seems to be a common idea, as both Gopher and VinylicPumaGaming did their own versions of this subject.) I kinda wanted to explore these ideas with the thread in general, get y'all's opinions on it. I'd like to start on what it did right, as it seems terrible to just jump in on ragging on Fallout 4. Don't worry, that will come. Oh, boy will it come.

So what did Fallout 4 do right, and what did I like?

Well, the first thing to come to mind is the graphics. I know, I know, Bethesda usually puts a lot of their energy into making their game pretty. However, they really hit the nail on the head in this game. The effects are better, like godrays, ambient occlusion, much better explosions, prettier laser and plasma effects. The player character (and other NPCS) look like actual people, instead of Ken dolls that have gone slightly runny. Gone are the unpleasant puke-green and pus-yellow filters from 3 and New Vegas, respectively. Weather effects mean that the Commonwealth actually have a source of water that didn't dry up 199 years ago (and yes, I'm still salty about Fallout 3's main quest making no friggin' sense whatsoever). All in all, Fallout 4 actually looks and feels like a more photo-realistic world than anything Bethesda has put out in this or the Elder Scrolls series before.

This immersion is greatly aided by the decreased number of loading screens in the world. I remember being blown away in my first day in the Commonwealth because you could walk pretty much everywhere and explore everywhere without needing to go through an extended loading screen. I could leave the Vault, explore every room in Sanctuary, rummage through nearly every building in Concord, search all of the shops in Lexington, all without seeing that intrusive "You are playing a game" screen that I'd gotten so used to in New Vegas.

And of course, we can't forget the crafting improvements. I loved the ability to change my weapons to fit my needs and desires, although the crafting system straddles the line between what was done well and what needs improvement, as most of the options on the list were either good or practically useless.

Settlement building was another thing that I really enjoyed, that provided hours of building fun, and which should have been so much better. That will probably get its own post in its own right, so I won't talk about it much here.

And finally, we have the much better gun play. In Fallout 4, there's actually a choice between VATS and aiming; in previous Fallouts, if you didn't have a bullet-time mod, you were pretty much forced into letting the computer aim for you, because aiming manually in F3 and NV felt like you perpetually had about three seconds of lag between when you told it to do something and when it actually happened. It feels like if there is an equivalent of Project Nevada or FWE made, there will be much less to add, as the base game already has things like sprint keys, grenade hotkeys, and alternate vision modes.

What say y'all? Anything that you think I've missed?

[factotum]

Build stuff in settlements. Build and scrap and build and scrap. There's diminishing returns but for a while you'll level like mad.

I watched a Nerdcubed playthrough of the game where, after rescuing Preston Garvey and the others, he just spent the next few episodes building a huge fortress at the entrance to Sanctuary Hills. I think he was already level 8 by the time he finished that!

@Balmas: I actually liked what they did with the levelling up system in Fallout 4. Yes, it arguably dumbed it down, but it dumbed it down in a good way--there was still enough complexity to allow for significantly different builds, but it was streamlined and fun to use. The changes to VATs also worked well, because it didn't feel like you were putting a complete brake onto combat the way it did in 3 and NV.

[GloatingSwine]

@Balmas: I actually liked what they did with the levelling up system in Fallout 4. Yes, it arguably dumbed it down, but it dumbed it down in a good way--there was still enough complexity to allow for significantly different builds, but it was streamlined and fun to use.

I would agree that there are multiple viable builds, but level locking the perks as well as locking them to SPECIAL meant you were taking too many filler and duff perks because you couldn't have the ones you wanted yet.

I would have preferred less levels with more freedom to spend the perk points.

[Spore]

hey guys just started Fallout 4, I'm at level 10, any ideas on how best to level for a crafter build? I die a lot in fights and I mostly want to make cool stuff, and don't really care for the main story, and I'm wondering if there are any good ways to go about it.

Quests give good XP with the least amount of combat involved. After that you really should pick up anything you need to improve your weapons. Give your armor deeper pockets and if you are unable to sneak by, you should probably invest a bit of scrap into a Power Armor frame with T-45 or Raider Mk II.

And I hope you have at least the Rifle perk (automatic weapons combined with Scrounger works too)

[factotum]

I would agree that there are multiple viable builds, but level locking the perks as well as locking them to SPECIAL meant you were taking too many filler and duff perks because you couldn't have the ones you wanted yet.

You don't have to spend perk points immediately, and in a lot of cases you would not want to do so, because of the level locking you mention--if you have 3 or 4 perks you want that all unlock at the same level, you don't want to be waiting for several levels afterward to get them all.

[Triaxx]

Ah, didn't get what kind of crafting you wanted. Then all you need is to have enough stats, and then wander around killing anything that tries to kill you.

Me, I loot compulsively, and so I always played Survival style, meaning slowly larger loops from my home base, falling back to craft gun upgrades as I get levels and junk. I also play heavily modded, so I use the recycler from Manufacturing Extended which is an add-on to Contraptions. It basically breaks junk down into components so you know what you have at a glance.

[GloatingSwine]

You don't have to spend perk points immediately, and in a lot of cases you would not want to do so, because of the level locking you mention--if you have 3 or 4 perks you want that all unlock at the same level, you don't want to be waiting for several levels afterward to get them all.

Yeah, that's not great either. Levelling systems where you have points and the best thing to do is not spend them make levelling less satisfying.

[The_Jackal]

Yeah, that's not great either. Levelling systems where you have points and the best thing to do is not spend them make levelling less satisfying.

I think that's necessary to make the difficulty scaling work. Otherwise, what's to stop you from maxing out Rifleman at level 6? I don't think the problem is the level requirements, so much as the lack of pre-requisites. The FO4 talent bingo board lets you pick and choose exactly what you want to get, which ironically, means that you can't gate stronger talents behind weaker ones. I like Skyrim's system better, because while maybe you didn't care about getting a point into Eagle Eye or Critical Shot because they were kind of spud talents by themselves, but the better stuff was gated on your picking them up. Skyrim's balance was a hot mess, but that's because of how they implemented their crafting and armor mechanics. But having played both a fair bit, I like Skyrim's approach better.

[GloatingSwine]

I think that's necessary to make the difficulty scaling work. Otherwise, what's to stop you from maxing out Rifleman at level 6?

That presumes the level scaling does in fact work.

In a good levelling system what would stop you maxing Rifleman early on is other interesting choices that were more useful than "%damage". In fact you could probably do away with %damage skills entirely and add more things that added more interesting effects to weapons instead.

[Triaxx]

Hopefully Project Louisiana is a new Obsidian based Fallout so we can have something new to play.

[GloatingSwine]

Hopefully Project Louisiana is a new Obsidian based Fallout so we can have something new to play.

Project Louisiana is Pillars of Eternity 2. (Obsidian major projects are always named after US states)

[Triaxx]

A trademark registered for Fallout: New Orleans seems to suggest otherwise. Still, I'm sure we'll find out.

[The_Jackal]

That presumes the level scaling does in fact work.

Not quite. It presumes that the difficulty scaling could be WORSE. Which is not the same thing as saying it couldn't be better.

In a good levelling system what would stop you maxing Rifleman early on is other interesting choices that were more useful than "%damage". In fact you could probably do away with %damage skills entirely and add more things that added more interesting effects to weapons instead.

Are there any interesting effects they add to weapons that don't involve, directly or indirectly, increasing damage? Bloody mess? Damage. Black Widow? Damage. Mister Sandman? Damage. Action Boy? Damage. It's not like there's a lot of places to go with a FPS. It's not like an Assassin's Creed type game where you unlock new maneuvers (the only one I can think of like that in Fallout 4 is Pain Train, which is pretty lame). The problem with the Assassin's Creed approach is that type of game doesn't offer much scope for creativity. Everyone get the SAME skill set, and the types of enemies you face determine which bits of the toolkit you'll use, ie: This guy can't be harmed from the front, so use your 'vault over him' move.

I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that raw damage perks don't have a place in progression games. They do. I just think that the decision to flatten the perk tree was an experiment which didn't pan out that well. Without the ability to gate good perks behind spud perks, it creates the impression that you've just got nothing worth spending points on. Also, the 20% per perk point scaling is probably altogether too strong. It creates 'threshold levels' where you suddenly get a LOT stronger, and then there's the level immediately prior to unlocking the next gun perk, when it feels like you're shooting spitballs.

But at the end of the day, I think FO4 is pretty servicable, warts and all. I'd prefer if they'd done a better job balancing the weapons, and for aesthetic reasons, I'd also prefer if they'd let you continue to add mods and improvements to 10mm pistols and pipe guns above Gun Nut 2.

[GloatingSwine]

A trademark registered for Fallout: New Orleans seems to suggest otherwise. Still, I'm sure we'll find out.

This is the promo image from it. It's clearly a reference to and quote from Eder.

Are there any interesting effects they add to weapons that don't involve, directly or indirectly, increasing damage? Bloody mess? Damage. Black Widow? Damage. Mister Sandman? Damage. Action Boy? Damage. It's not like there's a lot of places to go with a FPS. It's not like an Assassin's Creed type game where you unlock new maneuvers (the only one I can think of like that in Fallout 4 is Pain Train, which is pretty lame). The problem with the Assassin's Creed approach is that type of game doesn't offer much scope for creativity. Everyone get the SAME skill set, and the types of enemies you face determine which bits of the toolkit you'll use, ie: This guy can't be harmed from the front, so use your 'vault over him' move.

There are plenty of interesting ones you could have that could give conditional damage. Like a perk that increases damage from shotguns if the enemy's armour is under a certain threshold, or one that gives increased headshot damage against targets over a certain distance away, or increased melee damage from behind or for a short time after blocking, and so on. Things that aren't dull and automatic but feed into a system where you actually have a build for your character.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

My two cents on what Bethesda did right, and where they could improve:

What They Did Right

* Palette and character design. I will agree with Balamas that this is a core strength, but I'm actually going to cite a different, and possibly contradictory reason: Because it isn't photo-realistic. It is a stylized technique which creates verisimilitude, even when you have blatantly non-human but human-like enemies like Super Mutants without falling off the Uncanny Valley. The physics engine is deliberately NOT uber-realistic, because that isn't going to support their cinematic style which they have been building. They have a deliberate skew, because it just feels so good to see your opponent flying after blowing his head off. That sort of thing is totally unrealistic... but it is extremely cinematic and that's the name of their game.

* Open World design. True to Bethesda design, you can get almost anywhere you want at any time you want... assuming you can get through the meatwall. The game subtly channels you to certain areas because they aren't as dangerous as others, but you can theoretically 'rush' practically any area, so long as you can survive it.

* The level/perk system. At first, I wasn't very happy with this, but I've come to see its strengths. In F:NV, there was a skill-based system, and the perks augmented the skills. In FO4, there are no skills. Your character is assumed to be relatively skilled with basic functions. He can hack entry-level terminals, and can pick basic-tier locks. And it requires perk investment to get more. Also, with the open-ending leveling system, there is the *hope* that you can do literally everything, eventually. It isn't actually going to happen, of course, but the implication is 'you can really be and do everything', which is a huge draw to the new player.

* Gear Modding system. I love it. I love everything about it. Instead of needing a hundred plus different weapons, you have a few solid core weapons that can be modded to give them various properties that in effective give you that list of hundred plus weapons without cluttering things up. Having said that, we're going to be mentioning this elsewhere.

* Settlement Building. I love the concept. Home Base type mods were some of the most popular in F:NV, and the Sink was effectively designed to be the Ultimate Base (further augmented with the Sink-O-Matic mod). While not an unqualified success (see later critique), the ability to set up a relatively secure base for you to do all your modding and crafting and such which can produce certain items (food and water and adhesive) in bulk quantity is pretty awesome.

Where they could improve:

* Game Balance. Ultimately, this is the single biggest failure. Honestly, it needs a systemic change from top to bottom. Actually, what it needs is F3 is to F:NV as FO4 is to this'. Take the awesome mechanics that I was talking about earlier, and build an actual game with it. This is where the Gear Modding system kind of breaks down as well. Some weapons are just... completely worthless (SMG's anyone?), whereas others are CLEAR outliers in effectiveness. The numbers need to be redone. The weapons re-conceptualized. There's no need for an SMG when you have an Automatic Combat Rifle that uses the same ammo to FAR greater effect or the Automatic Pipe Pistol that uses cheaper and more plentiful ammo to the same effect and a third the weight.

* Plot. Just... don't get me started. Please. I can hand-wave finding viable 200 year old food (that's just a case of loot table manipulation), but the main plot is just brain-burning bad. Bethesda, hire a damn writer worth the paper he's given to write with instead of a cubicle maze full of rabid monkeys.

* Scaling Difficulty. There's a right way to do this, and a wrong way to do this. You took the wrong way. A mob with 10,000 hit points does not make for a difficult encounter, it makes for a tedious grinding encounter that chews through ammo and makes combat not worth bothering with. And by the late game, the player has too many 'no, sorry, I don't want to play with you' buttons. It takes all the fun out of the game. At least D3 managed to do the scaling thing properly by giving the player the ability to scale their damage appropriately so it took roughly the same time. But once you get your certain perks, around level 50 or so, nothing the player can do will be able to further increase their damage output, while mob hit point totals continue to skyrocket. This is bad.

Settlement Management. Ugh, where to start. Okay, so the idea of having settlements is an awesome one. You've got forward bases and outposts and resupply depots scattered across the map for you to return to at need. This is good. But good lord... first off, don't FORCE people to do it if they don't want to, and for heaven's sake, fix the damn raider system! I've got 200+ laser turrets and rocket launchers around my base? Those raiders don't stand a chance. If I've encircled my base with walls? The raiders need to deal with that BEFORE being able to enter my base, not just warp in. This needs a re-balance for sure. The frequency thing also needs a re-write. I don't want to spend 90% of the time coming to the rescue of every damn settlement every two seconds or risk losing stuff just because I was not physically present to actually witness them being turned into chunky salsa by the base defenses, as opposed to having a MINIMUM flat chance of auto-failing to defend no matter how many base defenses I have.

[Avilan the Grey]

Why does game balance matter in a single player game?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Why does game balance matter in a single player game?

wut.

Not sure if serious or trolling. Game balance is the single most important aspect of ANY game, single or multiplayer.

Wait... did I just fail a Detect Scarcasm check?

[GloatingSwine]

Why does game balance matter in a single player game?

If the game is well balanced the player's decisions are more interesting because more of them are viable. If the game is poorly balanced it tends to fall into degenerate strategies. Fallout 3 has shotgun sneak critting as its degenerate strategy, it's clearly so far better than everything else and it's the only way to address the ridiculous HP pools in late game, whilst Fallout 4 tried as hard as it could to make automatic weapons nonviable, stealth ridiculously overpowered, and rifle weapons clearly better than pistols outside of specific edge cases because they have armour piercing on the Rifleman perk so even at the same damage number the rifle does more.

In a decently balanced game you don't get those "just clearly better" strategies, so you actually get to make choices that aren't just wrong.

If you want to use an Assault Rifle instead of a Scout Rifle in eg. Destiny you aren't playing Destiny wrong. If you want to use an automatic Assault Rifle instead of a semiauto Combat Rifle in Fallout 4, you are playing Fallout 4 wrong. And I didn't say so, Bethesda's game balance said so.

[Triaxx]

Ah, good, we've reached this point: OHMG, Dis ar teh WRNG WY 2 PLY. Y U NO Min/Max!

Seriously, just because it's not the absolute optimal way to play the game, does not make it wrong. This I will argue forever.

I largely agree with Shneekey, which is an odd feeling. The points I disagree aren't that bad.

Gear modding is awesome, but the default titling system is awful. Marksman's automatic tactical pipe rifle? I don't need bullets, I can bludgeon the enemy with the title. Good thing we can rename things.

I won't argue game balance. That's a no-win situation, though I agree the presence of bullet sponges is symptomatic. (And it's been around since Morrowind, so there's no point complaining now.)

As for the Settlement, the problem I find is that they couldn't seem to make up their minds about what they were doing with it. If the changes had been purely aesthetic, that would have been one thing. I can run around decorating the place however I want, la-di-da! Or purely functional: I'm going to build this thing that makes mines, and that one that makes bullets, and then this big water making thing so I can sell/drink it.

Either make it completely cosmetic, or totally essential.

---

Ah, I see they posted another image. Oh well.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ah, good, we've reached this point: OHMG, Dis ar teh WRNG WY 2 PLY. Y U NO Min/Max!

Seriously, just because it's not the absolute optimal way to play the game, does not make it wrong. This I will argue forever.

While I will agree with this, I'd also like to point out that you don't want to get to the point of Stormwind Fallacy.

Case in point: the SMG. It is an objectively BAD weapon. It serves zero purpose in the game, other than as a trap for the unwary. An automatic pipe pistol matches it for stats for a third of the weight. If you really want, swap out the grip for a stock and make it a rifle, it's still lighter than the SMG, and does the same thing. Or you can grab the Combat Rifle and turn it into an auto. It uses the same ammo as the SMG... about twice as effectively.

There's 'not min/maxing', then there's 'literally no mechanical reason to ever pick this weapon up'.

I largely agree with Shneekey, which is an odd feeling. The points I disagree aren't that bad.

Gear modding is awesome, but the default titling system is awful. Marksman's automatic tactical pipe rifle? I don't need bullets, I can bludgeon the enemy with the title. Good thing we can rename things.

I won't argue game balance. That's a no-win situation, though I agree the presence of bullet sponges is symptomatic. (And it's been around since Morrowind, so there's no point complaining now.)

As for the Settlement, the problem I find is that they couldn't seem to make up their minds about what they were doing with it. If the changes had been purely aesthetic, that would have been one thing. I can run around decorating the place however I want, la-di-da! Or purely functional: I'm going to build this thing that makes mines, and that one that makes bullets, and then this big water making thing so I can sell/drink it.

Either make it completely cosmetic, or totally essential.

---

Ah, I see they posted another image. Oh well.

I'll have to respectfully disagree on the last topic. Something can be both aesthetic and functional, they are not mutually exclusive. They can do both, and do both at the same time.

[Triaxx]

I would disagree in some rare cases. I had a Crippling SMG that was an absolute monster because of the rate of fire it could pour out. Not a knock down weapon, but extremely useful. It does shine in one other aspect, that none of the others do. It's got a Rate of Fire that's completely unmatched by any of the other guns. Only the Minigun and Laser Gatling beat it, and both have much more expensive/rare ammo.

I will spare the comment about Stormwind only applying to RPG's. The point is taken, but for whatever reason, it's in the heads of those discussing it, that the only application of the assault rifle is as an Automatic, which very few weapons shine as. It's super effective as a Battle Rifle, especially with the Advanced Receiver, making it hit hard and fire quick. 5.56 also weighs less than it's direct competition in .308, and .50. .45 still beat's it, but it's kind of impossible to beat that for weight/damage.

I meant they should have focused more on one or the other, instead of trying and failing to do both adequately.