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Eurogamer: Why I'm tired of Fallout 4 encumbrance

I've kind of changed my opinion on this recently and now I'm honestly a fan of encumbrance. It broke my compulsion to pick up every little thing that I find in an RPG. It also helps keep a game economy in balance since I don't pick up every single piece of equipment or weaponry that I find in the world to sell back to a vendor.

To me it's a part of my anti-hoarding philosophy in gaming- I spend the money I get, use my consumables etc. No longer do I just sit on everything waiting for a rainy day only to find out that I beat the game and never used any of those items that I kept in reserve.
 
Either be full hardcore or don't, having encumbrance but bullets, stimpaks, bottlecaps having no weight is bullshit. I used the set carry weight command in my first playthrough, but I won't in my second when modders release a true hardcore mode, like the New Vegas ones, with food, water, sleep meters, where every single bullet, stimpak and cap has weight, and no fast travel.
 
Maybe if we make enough of a stink, this mechanic will go away. Then again, we've complained for years and years about escort missions and forced stealth sections in otherwise non-stealth titles and yet they still get put into games so who knows.
 
I always assumed there was some crazy disconnect between developers leaving encumbrance in, and people hating the mechanic. Now I come in here and see people actually like it? I'm sort of flabbergasted.

Anyhow, I went with the PC version for three reasons: better framerate, the ability to mod it later (once I've beat it), and to get rid of encumbrance. I'm not cheating my way through locks or terminals beyond my skill, but encumbrance is just a matter of saving myself a little bit of time. I know how I play these games - if I have to deal with encumbrance, I'll just grab a bunch of stuff, fast travel to offload it, fast travel back to gather more stuff, fast travel to offload it, etc. This just cuts out those intermediate steps.
 

MrDaravon

Member
It's always sucked, but it sucks in Fallout 4 especially because now all that shit you ignored in the past games you need to pick up and take back to settlements for resources.

Plus I think generally players will have less strength/carry weight due to the new perk system, and the fact that non-charisma builds suffer with settlements so that is hogging quite a few SPECIAL points.

Yeah, I didn't know about the Charisma issue holding you back so severely until I was a ways into the game. You can't open goddamn shops until you have the 2nd level of a perk that requires you to have 6 Charisma. I had to spend all of my level ups from 24 to 30 putting points into Charisma, so I could then put two points in this perk, just so I could open up shops. It's crazy.
 

antitrop

Member
Am I the only one that had the foresight to put some points into strength/+carry perk so I wouldn't have to take trips back to town?

I've done that once in 20 hours.

I went Lone Wanderer, never had a serious issue with carry weight. You don't have to do a STR build.
 

Phinor

Member
Removing/fixing things like this little by little made WoW worse game overall. Now WoW has some other issues as well, but when everything is streamlined and nothing is annoying you, something is lost. Ultimately it also made new content in WoW last for a shorter time. No grinding, no resist gear, no exploration, no riding from place to place, it all makes the game feel smaller, less varied.

I'm kind of happy how flawed Fallout 4 still is. Obviously game ending bugs shouldn't exist (especially on consoles as you don't have console to fix these issues) but little bugs and annoyances here and there are.. well, part of the experience.

Plus, you can make it part of the gameplay experience through strength, carrying capacity perks etc. That's also something WoW has lost over time. All characters are pretty much identical. Even items are identical. Item level might vary a bit, but they are basically the same.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
Instantly modded out the carry limit.

Doesn't this feel like cheating to you?

In a game where (with the default limits) I can already carry 20 guns and a few suits of armor, instantly switching between them at random? Where I then switch to 3rd person view, and none of the mountain of gear I'm holding is visible?

Nah, the realism is already destroyed by Bethesda, so why limit myself to the level of implausibility that they chose?

We're past the point of completely unrealistic, so why not go a step further?
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
One of the most frustrating parts of Bethesda games is inventory management. I always feel like I'm spending an eternity dicking around in menus. It isn't fun. Because people have a hard-on for picking up fruit, tin cans, and nails it creates this problem. They are amazed by this bloat. Wowee zowee I can stack up a pile of cheese wheels in this game. Whoopty-freaking-do.
 
Yep. My least favorite thing is inventory management and crafting which WRPGs have an abundance of. I don't want to build cool stuff. I want to find cool stuff hidden in the world or pay someone who has cool stuff to give me their stuff. I want to be an adventurer, not a garbage collector.
 

collige

Banned
This. So much this. Encumbrance was an issue in Fallout 3/NV, but the majority of that was caused by being a hoarder a lot of the time. The problem with Fallout 4 is that they made literally 99.9% of the items in the entire world useful, which is good! But they didn't do anything within the game system to deal with handling all of that junk (which was useless 95%+ of the time in previous games).
I understand the sentiment, but in practice the crafting materials you get from the vast majority of items can easily be found at pretty much every other location. The only difference now is that instead of considering the caps/weight ration for picking up junk you also have to take into account crafting materials as well. It feels like people are mindlessly hoarding crafting materials instead of going into each outing knowing what materials they need to accomplish their goals at a settlement.
 

Moff

Member
I feel witcher 3 solved this very well, especially after the stash.
most crafting mats weigh next to nothing, only armor and weapons really weigh a lot.
 

DeaviL

Banned
I like encumbrance, it's a balancing act between what stats you want and what you want to pick up.
Also, it balances how quickly you earn money.
Junk doesn't weigh enough to actually stop me, it's usually that extra piece of armor that i just have to pick up which doesn't have good value but has a lot of weight.

Just don't pick up absolutely everything, you'll survive.
 

kavanf1

Member
I just go back to a place and loot it afterwards if I want resources for settlement building. I'm not one of those "I WILL GO TO THIS LOCATION ONCE, AND I MEAN ONLY ONCE!" players.

That's not why I mod the carry weight, it's a choice based on my limited gaming time (three kids, job etc) to allow me to spend the time I do have doing stuff I enjoy, as opposed to tedious shite.
 
The argument for encumbrance has got nothing to do with realism.

Without encumberance, the game would be broken. You could hoard absolutely everything, meaning money and components would be trivial to accumulate.
 
I like equip weight as a mechanic. I'm more ambivalent about item encumbrance, particularly in games with fast-travel and tons of items. The choice between shuttling shit home and pressing on without it has substantial psychological consequences (boredom and frustration versus plain frustration) but almost no gameplay consequences. It takes something like Fallout NV's hardcore mode to make that storage run significant.
 
This is the precise reason why I play RPGs on PC.First thing I do is to install a mod to get rid of weight limit. Did that with Skyrim, W3 and now FO4.
Games are much more fun that way
 

tuxfool

Banned
The argument for encumbrance has got nothing to do with realism.

Without encumberance, the game would be broken. You could hoard absolutely everything, meaning money and components would be trivial to accumulate.

Also do people really enjoy manipulating huge lists of inventory items?
 
The guy's stripping every Raider he finds down to their undies, I'd say this isn't a Fallout problem, it's a Wesley Yin-Poole problem. You don't even need multiples of any weapon or apparel because there's no repairing in Fallout 4.

You kind of do if it has a mod you like. Or if you want to scrap the armor for parts.
 

kavanf1

Member
I understand the sentiment, but in practice the crafting materials you get from the vast majority of items can easily be found at pretty much every other location. The only difference now is that instead of considering the caps/weight ration for picking up junk you also have to take into account crafting materials as well. It feels like people are mindlessly hoarding crafting materials instead of going into each outing knowing what materials they need to accomplish their goals at a settlement.

What you need to consider though is there are dozens of ways to play this game. I rarely have goals when I start a session of Fallout. Usually I just pick a spot on the horizon and think let's see what's over this way. The shit I collect is a consequence of this play style. I don't want to have to meticulously plan what I do every time I leave Sanctuary (or wherever).
 
I would be just fine with encumbrance being removed, I mean it's not like you don't have to hold a strong suspension of disbelief while playing games already anyways.

I like the way Souls deals with item weight. Keep as much stuff in your inventory as you want but move the weight penalty over to the character instead so you are only being penalized by wearing gear that is too heavy for you or if you have too much equipped. That system works fine and does not effect the immersion at all.
 
I've been playing no fast travel and very rarely do I give companions loot. You just need to manage your inventory and return home every now and then to dump off as much stuff as you can.

It's a part of the fun for me; and I think it could even be harder. Bullets and key items don't even have weight.
 

Steel

Banned
Honestly, I'm kinda baffled that they decided to remove the repair and maintenence mechanic from previous Fallout, give you shitloads of ammo and then proceed to make all junk useful without tweaking encumberance. I find myself slow-walking back to my nearest settlement after every dungeon dive, or, failing that, making a second trip to the dungeon afterward purely for looting purposes.

I've been playing no fast travel and very rarely do I give companions loot. You just need to manage your inventory and return home every now and then to dump off as much stuff as you can.

It's a part of the fun for me; and I think it could even be harder. Bullets and key items don't even have weight.

Honestly one of the reasons I liked Fallout New Vegas's hardcore mode.
 

Kusagari

Member
That's why the first thing I did was make it so this wouldn't be an issue on PC.

Weight limits are not fun and add nothing to games.
 
This has probably been mentioned by now, but with player-build settlements in the game, there should also be an option to call a caravan to pick up your stuff and take it back to the settlement. To make it interesting, you run the risk (affected by luck) of your caravan running into raiders. If your caravan is sufficiently prepared they can stand their ground and you would end up with even more loot. If not... well... you can imagine.
 

MrDaravon

Member
I understand the sentiment, but in practice the crafting materials you get from the vast majority of items can easily be found at pretty much every other location. The only difference now is that instead of considering the caps/weight ration for picking up junk you also have to take into account crafting materials as well. It feels like people are mindlessly hoarding crafting materials instead of going into each outing knowing what materials they need to accomplish their goals at a settlement.

Right, but like I said part of the problem early on is you don't have a good way of knowing what you will need or not need. Also for most of the common stuff like wood, steel, etc you're absolutely right, but it still takes a while to get there for a lot of materials. I'm about 60 hours in, and up until a few hours ago I picked up literally every single item in the game I came across, about 120 discovered locations in all. Every single one.

I STILL do not have enough of certain materials to fully build and deck out the ~10-12 Settlements I have right now. Now because I've gotten to the point I'm at now I have a relatively short list (about 10 or so) of materials that are rare or not easily obtained and I just have those flagged now so it works out for me personally, but it took me a long time to get to this point.

Regardless it could still be handled much better. I still like my idea of being able to send your follower back to a settlement with items, it's a fairly easy and quick fix that actually makes some sort of contextual sense as well.
 
I hope you guys know theres a marking feature so you dont have to keep everything up? You can mark ingredients and materials you require. When you come across an item that has those marked items theres a magniflying glass icon next to the name.

You dont have to pick everything up!
 

gai_shain

Member
Enough that there's no way you can convince me circumventing the mechanic with console commands isn't cheating.

Well that also makes alot of non visual mods cheating doesnt it?

Also if dks2 wasnt online I wouldnt have called people setting adaptability to 100 or whatever cheaters either because it was just a bother and a step back compared to previous games. Even though you could just level it up normally at the expense of other stats. If people never played online did this its obviously also fine
 

Steel

Banned
I understand the sentiment, but in practice the crafting materials you get from the vast majority of items can easily be found at pretty much every other location. The only difference now is that instead of considering the caps/weight ration for picking up junk you also have to take into account crafting materials as well. It feels like people are mindlessly hoarding crafting materials instead of going into each outing knowing what materials they need to accomplish their goals at a settlement.

If you're deep into settlement building, you literally need everything you can get your hands on.

Yeah it's annoying and pointless. Dark Souls got rid of encumbrance and didn't suffer for it at all.

Yeah, I liked how Dark Souls only accounted for the stuff you were equipped with, but it's a very different system.
 

collige

Banned
I like equip weight as a mechanic. I'm more ambivalent about item encumbrance, particularly in games with fast-travel and tons of items. The choice between shuttling shit home and pressing on without it has substantial psychological consequences (boredom and frustration versus plain frustration) but almost no gameplay consequences. It takes something like Fallout NV's hardcore mode to make that storage run significant.

The two are intertwined. Doing runs to a location purely for looting junk is absolutely part of gameplay.
 
I'd say a good solution would be to keep the weight system as-is, but allow the ability to send your companion back to whatever town you choose to dump anything you give them, similar to Torchlight 2. You trade losing your companion for 5-10 minutes or whatever but in return only have to spend a few seconds dumping your junk (or whatever) tab on them and telling them to go. Would seem fair to me and make some amount of sense in the world at least.

Yeah, instead of throwing out the mechanic entirely, since the game seems to be designed around collecting everything, make better systems for collecting and managing all that stuff.

Can your settlers collect raw materials for you?
Can you break down weapons, armor or other in the field? Or do you have to go to a bench?
 
I'm for the first time okay with encumbrance because the entire focus of this game is picking up shit. Literally just you are a shit collector and you collect the fuck out of shit. That's all fallout 4 is. There's a quest, but it just takes you to buildings to pick up shit. And there's a story, but really it's not as important as the plot of Joe the Shit Picker Upper.

BUT

who thought it was okay to NOT LINK THE WORKBENCHES BY DEFAULT

The fact that's a perk is bullshit. Now I have to fast travel back to sanctuary constantly which is just annoying and stupid.

Shit picking up shitty shit game.

im actually ok with it, and it kinda makes sense. like why would work benches so far apart share inventory. you would need someone to be able to move supplies back and forth. and to be able to organize and execute that, youd need to have some decent leadership.
 

Ferrio

Banned
The encumberance system is just busy work. There's nothing interesting or challenging about it, it just pads the game and breaks up the action.

If you want an encumberance system make it equipment burden, not inventory.
 
Encumbrance is OK but it's too much in WRPGs. It's just silly tedious game design. If some people like it sure, that's fine, but get the fuck out of the way for me..... encumbrance is so dumb.

In both Witcher 2 and Fallout 4 it's just annoying as shite lmao.

Thank god for cheats on PC.

In Witcher 2 there is a mod to take out weight for items completely, which is fucking awesome.

For Fallout 4, in console (press ~)

player.modav carryweight X

Will add X to your carryweight. I leave mine at 500 total.

You can subtract from carryweight with the same command, just use a negative number (e.g. -50 in place of X).

Don't use "force" command in the cheat otherwise it will not adjust when you level up and will bypass stuff, mod is much better.
 
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