“I built this city... literally...”

The recent survival mode seems to add some great needs for survival, including rebalancing the odds by making everything more vulnerable to damage, which is a great way to do it.

There is one small issue though, your reduced carry weight and inability to fast travel (legitimately that is, there are still tricks around it from what I read). Now this wouldn't be much of an issue in the game itself, you just have to manage what you carry better. But the problem is one of the games components, settlement building.

The big point about it is, you still have to carry everything for settlement building on your own.

I already made a suggestion on the Fallout reddit what could solve this, having designated dropoff points for your stuff which is then automatically converted into materials for settlements and dropped off into a connected one and scavenger troops that scour secured areas for resources.

If you want to read up on the post itself and some more details check the link to it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/4f1uuk/suggestion_scavenger_troops/

The main point this brings up is that you need to do everything yourself which would normally be expected of a whole team of people. In some games this is fine as you do get superhuman space and carrying capacity such as in minecraft, or you can finish tasks in an extremely short time.

However this does somewhat stand in the way of games attempting realism and more sim like aspects.

If crafting something takes time and you need to a lot of it be able to assign this job to others.

If you need a lot of a certain material see if you can assign others to gather it or have a way for it to be delivered to your location.

If there are several fields to tent be able to give that job to others, to FO4s credit you can do that at least and assign transport BETWEEN settlements.

"It's a very very... dead world..."

This is an issue that has largely plagued open world games and, while it has gotten better, still kinda does. That the game worlds feel somewhat devoid of life.

In the real world you often have many small animals around you, birds flying about and chirping, insects buzzing, rusting in the grass and brushes and the like.
In many games however those are absent or relegated to predetermined events. Due to this, the game world feels a lot more sterile than it should be.

A small test you can make is turning off the games music, if it suddenly feels to silent and lifeless you know that there isn't enough ambient noise and things happening to make it work without it.

Adding animals would improve this a lot. Having flies and other insects buzz about, crickets jumping when you walk through higher grass, seeing small lizards and squirrels scurry about, spiders crawl over dungeon walls, birds flying about... All these would greatly enhance the atmosphere.
And similarly this would reinforce the opposite. Suddenly coming into an area that is dead silent and devoid of life adds to a great creep factor.

Now the main issue often brought up with it is resources and development time. Adding small animals take processing power, modeling them and adding sounds takes time to develop.
However for open world games this should have a much higher priority as the game world feeling alive and interactive. Only developing the mere minimum needed to make the world work has the effect of leaving it somewhat dead.

Another issue that is mentioned is “what would you do with those animals”. Here's the thing, you wouldn't necessarily do anything with them aside ones large enough to actually interact with. They would largely be there for the atmosphere. Nor would they all simply attack you.
Not every creature in the world has to be there to be used or to attack you. They could still react aggressive when cornered or be killed for a few drops but otherwise they would simply be “there”. After all, nobody would complain about the grass simply being there, even though that could even be used for some purposes.

As a few side notes.

• Small animals would do with relatively low poly models from a distance and only change to more high definition details when up close.
• Larger bugs can be a very simple model and small ones like flies simply sprites.
• Most small animals would simply flee unless you lure them so their AI would not need to be too great.
• Some small creatures would attack such as snakes, scorpion and larger spiders making high grass more dangerous but would be prevented by wearing boots.-They would not need preset spawn spots but simply an area defined spawn rate and areas where they can spawn (grass, forest, water...). The game doesn't need to track them so they can simply be despawned and respawned when an area is changed.
• Some small insects could become a danger when swarmed such as bees and ants, for that a swarm could simply be a lingering area effect.

Critical Flaw: “Let me repeat that again, again...”

Been a while I wrote one of these, and this will be a relatively short one.


This is something quite a few open world games with companions are guilty of.
You think of giving your companions some snappy catchphrases for combat or certain situations, huh? Here's a good suggestion, DON'T DO IT unless you have a few hundred phrases they can chose from!

I think by far the worst offender so far is “Risen 3” where your companions each have a felt dozen of phrases for initiating and closing combat. In a game where you initiate combat several hundred times you can imagine they start to repeat... a few times.
Doc Bones, who is one of your earliest companions seems to be an avid TF2 player seeing how many times he shouts making a hat out of someones skin.

Similarly the Fallout games fall victim to that, by the 50th time you hear about sweating not being an option for Nick Valentine in FO4, or how much Veronica in New Vegas wants a dress you kinda feel like unfriending them with both hands around the neck.

And sadly the same counts for enemies that keep cycling though their phrases again and again. Especially when the phrases are rather specific to the situation and yet keep happening.


A solution for this is as simple as it's inconvenient, have the voice actors record more than just a few repeat phrases, optimally make a few hundred phrases, additionally make it so their phrases can be interrupted when they get hit or are under fire as if they HAD to stop.
Similarly for the attacking enemies do it like F.E.A.R did and make most of their phrases short and generic expressions, “Move”, “Take Cover”, “I'M HIT”, “Flank”, NEED HELP” and such. And again, if they have catchphrases, record SEVERAL of them, not just a handful.
Also make their phrases more apropriate to the situation. Don't have them shout like an idiot while you are sneaking or a long one liner in a heated combat or while nearly dead.

As a final suggestion, at least for your companions. Have an option to tell them “SHUT UP!”