The Fallout 4 Thread (Tunnel Snakes Rule and if you disagree I will kill you)

[Emma]

The 1.5 patch is finally out of beta. It actually launched two days ago on Steam. Consoles usually get the patches about ten days after PC. So we can expect it on consoles within two weeks. Here's the final patch notes:

New Features

• New Survival difficulty
• Survival adds additional challenges including no fast travel, saving only when you sleep, increased lethality, diseases, fatigue, danger and more. See the in-game Help menu for more details.
• Characters set to Survival difficulty appear under their own Character Selection filter
• Third person camera movement improvements when player is close up against walls and other objects

Fixes

• General stability and performance improvements
• Fixed rare crash related to reloading a save that relies on Automatron
• Fixed issue with the robot workbench camera not moving properly immediately after canceling out of the menu
• Fixed issue with perks being repeatedly added when reloading a saved game while in robot workbench
• Fixed issue with Ada not properly traveling to an assigned settlement
• Robots can now be assigned as settlement vendors
• Fixed issue with "Appropriation" where blueprints would not appear properly if the container had already been looted prior to getting the quest
• In "The Nuclear Option," entering the Institute using the targeting helmet on Power Armor no longer inadvertently causes the player to go into combat, and become stuck in the Institute
• Fixed distance check with Robotics Expert perk
• While in Workshop mode, if the Jump button is remapped, the Y or Triangle button can still be used to jump
• Fixed issue with "Defend the Castle" where speaking to Ronnie Shaw would not properly complete the quest
• During "The Nuclear Option," fast traveling away from the Institute immediately after inserting the relay targeting sequence holotape will no longer block progression
• Fixed issue where Workshop placed light bulbs would occasionally not light properly
• Fixed occasional flashing issue with entering and exiting Power Armor
• Fixed issue where terminals would not work properly after downloading and initializing an Add-On from the Add-Ons menu

I didn't want to play much of the first two DLCs yet until this patch was out. It fixes a number of issues with Automatron. The vender thing bothered me, I wanted to be able to do that. It also fixes the broken radiant Institute quest, Appropriation, which was useful for grinding approval with X6-88 to get his perk before you had to choose to betray the Institute.

Mod support is not included in this patch even on PC. That's still considered a beta on PC and will not be included on the consoles in this patch. Instead we'll get a beta for mods on the Xbox One later on in May, and then later in June on the PS4.

 

[DoomDash]

I'm pretty excited about this one. '

 

[Emma]

I didn't see it in the trailer, though I might have missed it from the excitement, but the DLC's release date is May 19th.
The official story synopsis is:

In Far Harbor, a new case from Valentine’s Detective Agency leads you on a search for a young woman and a secret colony of synths. Travel off the coast of Maine to the mysterious island of Far Harbor, where higher levels of radiation have created a more feral world. Navigate through the growing conflict between the synths, the Children of Atom, and the local townspeople. Will you work towards bringing peace to Far Harbor, and at what cost?

 

[DoomDash]

I didn't see it in the trailer, though I might have missed it from the excitement, but the DLC's release date is May 19th.
The official story synopsis is:

Kind of like the Silver Shroud story being under utilized, I think the detective work with Nick could have been far larger, and far more challenging. Imagine actually having to solve some seriously difficult cases without the use of in game UI hints. This is why Fallout 4 bothers me so much, it had all the potential to have a lot more depth and interesting things going on but it just ended up full of under utilization's.

Hopefully the DLC ads some seriously fun detective work.

 

[Emma]

I am actually a bit worried paid mods will be rearing their ugly head again and will be introduced to Fallout 4 on all three systems.

There are few things that indicate this might be the case. First of all, no Bethesda game that has an official mod utility has delayed the release of that utility this long. The rest of them were released with the game. Second, when paid mods were removed last year, it was never said that they were gone for good. I'm willing to bet they thought they couldn't edge into an ingrained mod community, but that they might be able to for a new game.

There's also precedent on consoles. Microsoft and Sony have traditionally put a hard limit, that's never been disclosed to public as far as I know, on the number of free content items any game can have compared to the number of paid items. To release more free DLC, games were forced to remove existing free ones, or consolidate them into bundles, or release more paid DLC. This is the reason why so many multiplayer games with free DLC have paid in-game money DLCs. It is also why, for instance, the current gen versions of Grand Theft Auto 5 abandoned listing their regular updates as DLC and instead integrate them into regular base game patches. So this isn't a distant past thing, it's still going on. The mods thing is new territory, but it's not unreasonable to assume Microsoft and Sony will require some kind of monetary compromise. It could be that every mod will have a small charge. Maybe it'd be limited to Gold/PS-Plus members only? Or that it'd require a separate subscription, or even reviving the "online pass" concept to instead enable mods.

And... most damning, and disturbing, of all. Steam recently made an update to the Steam Workshop where workshop item creators are treated with this message when they're viewing their own items in workshops:

Right on the heels of the PC version of Fallout 4 getting official mod support, but before its official Steam Workshop launches.

I wanted to think this was gone. But it looks like it's not.

 

[Dan]

I am actually a bit worried paid mods will be rearing their ugly head again and will be introduced to Fallout 4 on all three systems.

There are few things that indicate this might be the case. First of all, no Bethesda game that has an official mod utility has delayed the release of that utility this long. The rest of them were released with the game. Second, when paid mods were removed last year, it was never said that they were gone for good. I'm willing to bet they thought they couldn't edge into an ingrained mod community, but that they might be able to for a new game.

There's also precedent on consoles. Microsoft and Sony have traditionally put a hard limit, that's never been disclosed to public as far as I know, on the number of free content items any game can have compared to the number of paid items. To release more free DLC, games were forced to remove existing free ones, or consolidate them into bundles, or release more paid DLC. This is the reason why so many multiplayer games with free DLC have paid in-game money DLCs. It is also why, for instance, the current gen versions of Grand Theft Auto 5 abandoned listing their regular updates as DLC and instead integrate them into regular base game patches. So this isn't a distant past thing, it's still going on. The mods thing is new territory, but it's not unreasonable to assume Microsoft and Sony will require some kind of monetary compromise. It could be that every mod will have a small charge. Maybe it'd be limited to Gold/PS-Plus members only? Or that it'd require a separate subscription, or even reviving the "online pass" concept to instead enable mods.

And... most damning, and disturbing, of all. Steam recently made an update to the Steam Workshop where workshop item creators are treated with this message when they're viewing their own items in workshops:

Right on the heels of the PC version of Fallout 4 getting official mod support, but before its official Steam Workshop launches.

I wanted to think this was gone. But it looks like it's not.

So did I, but we all knew part 2 of this fiasco was going to strike again. Let's hope for the same outcome.

 

[Emma]

There's a little more detail here:
http://gamerant.com/steam-update-paid-mod-123/
There were terms like "author controlled monetization" and "profit splitting" added to Steam's translation strings.

 

[DoomDash]

I think paid for mods are fine if its done right. I think Steam jumped the gun and didn't handle it properly. Honestly I'd like something built into steam that's kind of like a pay what you want type system, and whatever you do decide to pay can be split among steam/creator/developer.

 

[Emma]

I think paid for mods are fine if its done right. I think Steam jumped the gun and didn't handle it properly. Honestly I'd like something built into steam that's kind of like a pay what you want type system, and whatever you do decide to pay can be split among steam/creator/developer.

Paid mods are never alright. There are a lot of different reasons why. I'll try to run them down.

First is the obvious, building on the property of someone else. Maybe you're using a character from another franchise, or perhaps you're building off someone else's mod. Steam and Bethesda never considered this the first time. And they only considered the first half this time and ignored the second. Right away one of Steam's showcase mods was a case of content theft that Steam blantantly ignored.

But on the second, it's actually something that's absolutely necessary for a healthy mod community. The spark that made mods so great in Morrowind through Skyrim is cooperation, sharing of ideas, and building on top of each other's work. The community would not be stealing each other's ideas, but rather would be freely sharing them and inviting others to build on them. It, for instance, lead a lot of mods to support standards of body replacement mods in each game, Most mods to support a popular UI replacement mod in Skyrim. Mods supporting script extenders. Companion mods sharing innovations with each other. Paid mods completely ignore the situation of mods being dependent upon one another. If you buy one mod, you'd have to buy another, or many several others, for it to work proprerly because of how interconnected the modding community usually is. This is not a situation that is going away and it's not something that Steam even bothered to think about.

Modding and gaming itself would not be what it is today if mods were always paid. Companions, or any character you have to escort, before Morrowind modding, were horrible. It was the Morrowind modding community that fixed them by working together and sharing ideas and breakthroughs, and encouraging each other to build on top of each other's work. Everyone in the gaming industry utilized these ideas for their own followers and escort situations. If the mods were paid, the rest of the industry would never have been able to use these innovations and the innovations would never have happened. Instead of sharing what they've learned, each new discovery would have been a jealously guarded secret. Modders never would have worked together, they never would have built upon each other's ideas. We never would have gotten the far more functional companions we enjoy in gaming today.

If paid mods returned, they would kill modding and stifle innovation. The very thing that was cited for being a reason for doing it. It just doesn't work that way.






In other news, Patch 1.5 is finally out to consoles today. And some news articles, from the same sites that falsely reported that 1.5 was already out, are falsely reporting it as patch 1.6. It.s a 2.3 GB download. Patches are getting very demanding this gen. The initial 500 GB drives on these consoles are just too small for this. Anyway, here's the full patch notes again:

New Features

• New Survival difficulty
• Survival adds additional challenges including no fast travel, saving only when you sleep, increased lethality, diseases, fatigue, danger, and more. See the in-game Help menu for more details.
• Characters set to Survival difficulty appear under their own Character Selection filter
• Third-person camera movement improvements when player is close up against walls and other objects

Fixes

• General stability and performance improvements
• Fixed rare crash related to reloading a save that relies on Automatron
• Fixed issue with the robot workbench camera not moving properly immediately after canceling out of the menu
• Fixed issue with perks being repeatedly added when reloading a saved game while in robot workbench
• Fixed issue with Ada not properly traveling to an assigned settlement
• Robots can now be assigned as settlement vendors
• Fixed issue with "Appropriation" where blueprints would not appear properly if the container had already been looted prior to getting the quest
• In "The Nuclear Option," entering the Institute using the targeting helmet on Power Armor no longer inadvertently causes the player to go into combat, and become stuck in the Institute
• Fixed distance check with Robotics Expert perk
• While in Workshop mode, if the Jump button is remapped, the Y or Triangle button can still be used to jump
• Fixed issue with "Defend the Castle" where speaking to Ronnie Shaw would not properly complete the quest
• During "The Nuclear Option," fast traveling away from the Institute immediately after inserting the relay targeting sequence holotape will no longer block progression
• Fixed issue where Workshop placed light bulbs would occasionally not light properly
• Fixed occasional flashing issue with entering and exiting Power Armor
• Fixed issue where terminals would not work properly after downloading and initializing an Add-On from the Add-Ons menu

 

[DoomDash]

I'm a couple hours into Far Harbor, seems decent so far. It's kinda hard to jump back into the game with so much time off, and having played Doom recently Fallout 4's UI and gun play leaves so much to be desired.

 

[DoomDash]

Not enough money for school. And going to. I'm trying to finish up all the achievements in it so I can play mods. Mods disable achievements, and are releasing tomorrow. And not relevant to this.

I think Far Harbor is pretty good so far, much better than the last ones. The only problem I have now is that I'm extremely overwhelmed in my life in terms of time and where to apply my brain power. Playing Far Harbor is stressful because of that, and I can't fully enjoy it. I might just have to put Fallout 4 on hold and replay it many years later with a bunch of nice pc mods. I have almost 160 hours logged, great value though.

 

[Emma]

I'm hoping Bethesda rolls back on its decision to disable achievements/trophies if you have mods enabled. Particularly because of how there are bugfix mods that fix errors Bethesda refuses to fix, that might prevent you from getting certain achievements in the first place. But regardless I'm going to finish up the game, much faster paced than I normally go. And then keep that save for future DLCs and do achievements on it. Start another playthrough to play at my comfortable pace with mods.

 

[Emma]

https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/738068150156156929

Xbox traffic was 50x the initial #Fallout4 PC mod launch. It's a new world & just the beginning. New features & PS4 support in the works.

For the first 12 hours, it was next to impossible to log into the mods section of the game's main menu. You'd get constant failed to connect to server messages. But honestly that's not surprising it was so much larger. PC gamers were already using, and preferred (and still do prefer) using Nexus. They resented mods on Bethesda.net, especially when Bethesda disabled achievements with mods installed. I'm really hoping Sony pulls a move like they did at the console launch and just lets trophies stay enabled so they can get an edge on this little contest when they launch their Fallout 4 mods. It'll force Microsoft to allow achievements with mods on the Xbox One. But I know that's a slim hope.

Anyway, my reason for the post... what do you think they mean about "new features" for console mods in the works? Do you think they might support the script extender? It's the only really "new" thing that it doesn't have that PC has. that gives its mods an edge. I don't think that's likely though. But... what could they possibly mean by new features?

 

[DoomDash]

I have no idea, but I'm enjoying nude mods that's about it .

 

[Emma]

I have no idea, but I'm enjoying nude mods that's about it .

That offer for me to take your PC rig off your hands still stands....