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How I play Fallout 4 to keep it fun

CerebralHawk

Active Member
Messages
172
As someone who's played Fallout 4 since the very first day (or maybe the second; since I preordered, I only got 4GB of the game on the install disc, and had to install the rest over what then was a 10MBit DSL connection, so, not sure if it was done by the first day), I basically don't like the game anymore... or rather, the main quest. I like the assault on Fort Hagan, but after that, the game can take a flying leap. The assault on Libertalia is also cool, but you don't need the Institute quest to do it, you just need it for that one named raider. The rest of the raiders, and better yet Le Fusil T... The Terrible Shotgun... is still there. So is the perk mag. Anyway, my Fallout 4 game looks and plays a bit different to the experience Bethesda delivered back in 2015. So, let's get started.

First of all, I use the unofficial Fallout 4 patch and CBBE — not for nudity, but for compatibility with other clothing mods. I always cringe when a female raider is stripped bare, and though I could use the "never nude" option, it's kind of un-immersive. So, I just try to not take the base outfit unless I really want it. And mostly I don't, since my own base layer is either a clean Vault suit, or something like road leathers... later, it'll be something I can put ballistic weave on. I also use a ton of cosmetic mods you could either take or leave. I won't go into them here. I also use a sorting mod to make junk weigh nothing (cheats, I know, but IDGAF) and to make the workbench not take Vault 81 and other "valuable" scrap when you "store all scrap." There are a few of those, and I won't get into my choices there, either. I mainly just want to go over my 'core' experience. Modding is not about following instructions, it's about building your very own load order. Lastly, I'm only linking to the Nexus because that's what I use. Feel free to check the mod description to see if it exists on Bethesda's site if you're an Xbox player, or just search. Many of these mods are. However, PlayStation users probably shouldn't read too much into this thread as Sony has really hamstrung the modding experience on PS4, and with Microsoft owning ZeniMax now, I don't see Sony relenting on their stupid policy, and there were no signs of them doing so before the acquisition. PS4 players are awesome (norespawns on YouTube/Reddit being a huge influence on me as a builder; he started on PS4) but you guys got cheated. Feel bad for you, but PC is really the way to go, I just want to point out that that's not from a place of console hate (I own a PS3, 360, XB1S, and 3DS in addition to a gaming desktop and a gaming laptop), but rather of love for the open nature of the PC as a gaming platform.

I start with Start Me Up. This mod lets you create your character, but as soon as you try to leave the pre-war bathroom, you're presented with three options. The first lets you play out the pre-war stuff (boring). The second skips it and drops you in Vault 111. The third lets you make a character who is not Shaun's parent and instead is just someone living on the surface. You have a bunch of options here. You can start in a few different places. You can be a member of a faction. You can choose to start with some stuff, a little stuff, or a good amount of stuff. And you can choose your starting level. Generally I like to be a Vault Enthusiast with some stuff at level 1. This places me at Deacon's Vault 111 overlook, so I grab the water, head down to 111's entrance and loot outside, then head into Sanctuary and begin my game like normal.

Traits and More Perks changes how I play. The "more perks" I generally ignore (you have to craft them, and the requirements are really high), but the traits are cool. Specifically, I take Memento Mori, which doubles all your experience, but also makes you take double damage across the board. Also, all healing items heal you less, and more slowly. Unto the Breach makes you move 15% faster and your AP regenerates 25% faster, but you take 25% more damage from all weapons (including your own, so beware of Spray n' Pray and guns like it — best to give these to companions, but only after you've taken the rank in the Inspirational perk that makes it impossible for your companions to harm you). Generally, this means I gain levels quickly, especially early game, but I also get killed a lot. I have to be a lot more strategic with fights, and the Corvega assault is very difficult. So is taking Outpost Zimonja.

Oh, I play on Normal, until I hit level 50, then I turn it up to Hard. At level 100, I turn it up to Very Hard. However, this is a WIP (all mod lists are, always), so I'm thinking of turning it up to Hard at 25 and Very Hard at 50. I may even do it sooner than that, eventually. Very Hard is really not that hard vs Normal, it just means you take more damage, but if you have four ranks in Toughness and Ballistic Weave v5, you're laughing off a lot of damage anyway. You also do less damage, but with guns like Overseers Guardian... it really doesn't matter. And Spray n' Pray is straight up broken when you have Demolitions Expert maxed, and the Explosives bobblehead... the game kinda stops being fun when you can swat legendary Deathclaws like flies.

For perks, I use Creative Perks. It changes how a lot of perks work. For some where the mod author thought they were overpowered, they dial them back a little bit, and for some that were useless (like VANS), they added features to make them worth taking. Now it's a lot harder to choose perks. Good thing I level twice as fast. I also try to get to END 10 so I can take the first rank of that perk (Au Natural), which gives me a 20% XP boost when I'm not under the effect of any chem. The next couple ranks are worth getting Endurance up to 10, too. Unless you use chems, in which case, never mind. I also like that pickpocket and lockpick are now combined, with the other perk letting you create lock forcing tools that let you skip the minigame, at the cost of the tool (they're crafted, and the requirements are fair). This is not a cheat mod, but depending on how you play, it can make you more powerful. I take perks that increase my move speed, so I run at the speed of vanilla sprinting, just about. I also swim fast, making the trip to Spectacle Island a trip worth making. (I mainly go for the bobblehead, I don't like it as a settlement.)

And for settlements, aside from Sim Settlements 2, which I just added, I don't like the recruitment beacons, and disable them as soon as I've built them. Instead, I use two mods that do the same thing — Tales From The Commonwealth and Recruitable Settlers. They just add named settlers throughout the Commonwealth (often, both mods add their NPCs to the same location!) that you can hire and send to a settlement at no cost and with no speech check. They just say something like, "I hear you're looking for settlers," you say, "Come work for me?" and choose a settlement, and they tell you they'll see you there in a day or two. I role play the hell out of settlement building to the point where I really look a settler over and try to think about where they'd be a good fit. They all have the same personality (not talking about Sim Settlements 2 settlers, haven't met those yet) so I have to make one up in my head. Like I envision the young woman was abused by raiders, escaped with a caravan, and was taken in by the Abernathy family, or that all ghouls I meet share Wiseman's vision for The Slog and want to make a settlement that rivals Diamond City, at least in offerings, if not security (though we do alright there, as well).

As for other mods... I use some for a while and then stop using them. There are some that fix little things, but for the core experience, it's those five I mentioned above, plus my difficulty increases. Oh, if you want my starting SPECIAL, it's S4-P4-E3-C6-I6-A1-L4, OR 4436614. AGI 1 sounds scary, but it's really not, especially if you don't use VATS.

What do you use to make Fallout 4 more fun after all these years?
 
Prior to SS2, I was using SS1 - 3 in one with Manufacturing Extended and Better Manufacturing. I spend a lot of time building factories in my industrial settlements. It was kinda neat letting machines break down junk, weapons, armor and ammo. Then use a bunch of hoppers and sorters to direct the components to the builders to make something useful.
 
I play weird, too. 3000+ hours and never did the story. I'm a writer and I am mostly interested in characters. I get bored playing the same character straight through, so I developed a system. I roll on a chart of characters to determine whom I will play for a level. There is a chance to add a new character as well. Each character has a DnD style alignment, a weapon preference, hated and loved faction which controls some choices, An rpg class from a list of 100 for roleplay, a background, a chance to wear glasses, and other traits.

Each time a character levels up, the perk is chosen by dice roll based upon the characters class and weapon preference. This roll is weighted to develop charisma/Local; leader as that one perk is so essential to having fun.

I start the game with Start Me Up. I used to use a different start mod, but someone here set me straight. Each character is assigned one random settlement when they are created. At the end of each level, there is a chance for the character to be allowed a new companion, gain a random settlement, or roll on the wildcard chart.

I've been playing this way since Oblivion. This system puts limitations on what I can do and forces me to adapt and change playstyles based on circumstances. This has kept the game very fresh and fun for me, which is why I am over 3000 hours on it. And I STILL haven't been to Nukaworld or played with the Vault Building DLC. I'm a mod collecting junky and this system allows for the integration of some mods without me having to decide which ones to use. I also have other stupid rules like, if I give a companion or settler a firearm, I have to give them 40 ammo with it (120 for automatics and 500 for miniguns).

Anyway, if more of you have weirdo ways of playing or silly rules, I would love to hear them.
 
I used to play D&D, though once a D&D player, always a D&D player. Thus, it might be more accurate to say I'm just between games. Not that I'm anything special at it, I love my chaotic good elf rogues, but I have a whole family of them (used Xanathar's guide to make a family for the first one, turns out he has two or three sisters (I forget) and an adopted brother, so I made character sheets for all of them. I've used three (the adopted brother and one sister). So next time I play, I can either start with a premade character (well, just her history, she doesn't have to be a rogue) or make a new one. But, I like keeping it in the fam... oh, that sounds wrong, but, you get the idea.

It sounds like you have a pretty cool way of playing, maybe you should publish your chart or whatever it is you're going off of. That sounds fun. I've actually started packing a melee weapon since, why not, and they don't use ammo. Also, why waste ammo on bugs and molerats? So now in addition to my three pistols (avoiding rifles since the cheat guns are both rifles) I've found myself an electrified Chinese officer's sword. 22 damage and fast, good enough for small stuff.

You're not missing anything great with Nuka-World or Vault-Tec Building... they're both pretty low effort IMO.

I only have 800 hours, myself. Still feels like a lot. I believe I crossed 1,000 hours on Skyrim, though. It's hard to say, between various consoles and PC. While I only claim PC for my profile, I've played Bethesda games on 360, PS3, and XB1S as well.
 
I am also in the 3K hr club. I have well over 300 mods running nice & smooth. One thing I truly can't stand is the claim that something isn't immersive enough. BullBleep. The game came that way out of the box. What with most raiders carrying only pipe weapons to most settlements looking like a depression era hobo jungle it's a bit much. I get that it was supposed to be post nuclear war, but jeez, does the protagonist have to hold everyone's hand and wipe their ass too? I get a kick out of how Preston appoints the protagonist as General of the Minutemen and proceeds to order them around. Again....BullBleep.
FYI I live in the Commonwealth IRL... Concord / Lexington is only a half hr drive down the highway. I can tell you for certain that Bethesda really took some liberties with the map. The mountains you see around the perimeter doesn't exist. You would have to travel northwest out of town over 2 hrs to get into the Whites up in New Hampshire. Most of the countryside directly surrounding Boston for at least 40 miles is all built up.

So what I have been doing is trying to improve the aesthetics. Playing around with various structure mods is easy enough. I've gotten into using prefab structures and SS interior plots to fill them up. No, I don't go around collecting every scrap of wood and glass. I console code in a 10x set of material shipments once I get a workshop up and running. But this does not mean that I don't pick scrap... more like I selectively pick stuff that is actually worth the weight.

I also cannot stand dressing my PC as a raider or a grubby settler. To that end, I have learned to make mashups of modern clothes using assets from all over the Nexus. The reasoning is simple. Nora was a lawyer before she went into the vault. So if anything, she would gravitate to wearing nicer (and clean) clothing than say.. a settler out scavenging for a grubby dress. Diamond City desperately needs a working laundromat. If anyone would like to see stuff that I've done, just bounce on over to the screenshot thread.
 
FYI I live in the Commonwealth IRL... Concord / Lexington is only a half hr drive down the highway. I can tell you for certain that Bethesda really took some liberties with the map. The mountains you see around the perimeter doesn't exist. You would have to travel northwest out of town over 2 hrs to get into the Whites up in New Hampshire. Most of the countryside directly surrounding Boston for at least 40 miles is all built up.
Bethesda doesn't really take liberties with the map — that's kind of a gross understatement. It's more accurate and reasonable to say that the Commonwealth in Fallout 4 takes inspiration from real-life locations. Many of the popular locations are taken from real locations, but the game map isn't meant to be accurate. It just kinda hits the high notes.

I've never been to Boston — closest I've gotten is parts of Connecticut, and then only very close to the NY border. The game makes me want to visit, but I know it's nowhere close to the same. Because of my love for Deus Ex, I wanted to visit Liberty Island, but I didn't because of the cost, and time. I did visit Castle Clinton and Battery Park, and of course Ground Zero (which isn't in DX). That's a much older game (2000), and a different developer (the late Ion Storm, headed by Warren Spector, who most recently worked on the Epic Mickey series for Disney, and I forget what developer), but still, much the same concept.

Even simpler, it's why you don't see bathrooms on TV, unless it's a plot device. In video games, like TV, you get the interesting 10% of a person's day.
 
Bethesda doesn't really take liberties with the map — that's kind of a gross understatement. It's more accurate and reasonable to say that the Commonwealth in Fallout 4 takes inspiration from real-life locations. Many of the popular locations are taken from real locations, but the game map isn't meant to be accurate. It just kinda hits the high notes.
Excellent point, however as one who lives here, I can be picky. It would be like leaving Times Square off a map of Manhattan. As far as high notes go, Beth missed some golden opportunities. Just to the west of Lexington is a former USAF base called Hanscom. During cold war days, it was home to the Air Force's Electronics Systems Division...ESD for short. Virtually anything to do with radars, electronic warfare, and spacecraft was developed there. Lest I forget, on the edge of the Hanscom property is Lincoln Laboratories. Think Arc Jet on massive quantities of steroids. MIT is still the owner. You can look all these place up on the web if you are into hi tech and history.

LL was originally conceived as a separate aerospace development place. They built the first satellite tracking antennas soon after Sputnik went up. Amongst other things, they developed microwave communication devices. And their Millstone Hill radio astronomy complex out in Westford MA is a part of the VLBA. Plus they have a huge part in building recon satellites for any government agencies that might require such data.

My point is that they left out a lot of places that they might have used for both the BOS and the Institute among others.
 
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