Death is an archaic mechanic, too. Having to reload saves is annoying, you should just be invincible all the time.
It's all about subjectively balancing what you want the game to be.
These games are so big and expansive in what they offer to different people, yet at the same time it's one of Bethesda's greatest strengths that they're leaving their games to be so flexible and moddable.
I'm sure there are people out there who don't think you're really playing Fallout until you have to manage tightly balanced hunger and thirst systems, fighting for true survival out there in the wasteland. Others don't want to bother with inventory management and the encumbrance limit. Yet others enable godmode and noclip and just fly through the wasteland, taking the content tourist route, poking in to see the sights here and there - the beautiful thing is that all are valid approaches to experiencing that game and it's all down to personal taste.
Bethesda aren't good enough to properly balance their game for everyone out there, so the best they can do (and they found this out years ago) is to leave these things up to their players. I strongly believe that this kind of player-chosen flexibility is a large part of their popularity post Oblivion.
Never really played Fallout that much myself, but that reminds me exactly of Demon's Souls. yes, I'm sure these upgrade materials WOULD way a fuckton because they're rocks, but every time it happens you just get annoyed and end up leaving the materials there. Thankfully they got rid of it for the later games, but I can definitely see how it would be an issue. Is there any way to upgrade your weight load in Fallout? Or rather, how much of an issue is it?
Demon's Souls is an interesting example, because while they had a pretty annoying inventory management weight limit, they then let you use all your upgrade materials straight from Stockpile Thomas, even though you were miles away upgrading your weapons in the Blacksmith's place.
Obviously the devs thought while it was ok to have the player adhere to their "realistic" rules of inventory management, it would be too bothersome and frustrating to force the player to carry the upgrade materials with them while visiting the blacksmith. That, apparently, crossed the line for them in terms of keeping a sense of realism vs reducing user friendliness. So again, it's all a matter of balancing. It makes sense that they took that mechanic out of the series completely for the sequels yet kept the (important, meaningful) equipment weight mechanic.
Why not just dump all your equipment to your partner in the wastelands???? Damn I hate when people who write articles don't even know the mechanics of the game they are playing
Granted fallout4 can be more vague than a from software title at times but your companion is a walking chest for you to dump weighty objects into
If it doesn't really matter from an in-world standpoint and your companions are magical walking chests anyway, I'd rather cut down on one or two additional screens of inventory management with a console command.