• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Eurogamer: Why I'm tired of Fallout 4 encumbrance

kavanf1

Member
Why can't my horse move in a straight line ?? And why can't it travel all the way across the chessboard in one move ??

Game's rules. Fun is a risk/reward deal, being rewarded for taking the right choice, for working around restraints. Do I take everything with me so I can face any situation or do I travel light so I can loot away ?

The fact the journalist thought it was worth writing an article to express how he personally doesn't like thing is silly.
Its a perfectly fine mechanic, which has valid gameplay reasons to be there.
Not for everyone, sure.
Just like anything else.
It's also perfectly valid to critique it when the drivers for picking up stuff have changed so fundamentally since the previous games.
 

Menthuss

Member
Fallout 4 is barely an RPG anymore at this point and now people want to have the weight limit removed as well? It's one of the few remaining elements in the game that force you to make choices (do I take all this junk with me or that cool but super heavy weapon?) :/
 

dumbo

Member
It's a weird problem, as it's one that should solve itself.
- when a location is 'cleared', all the junk should go into a "bucket".
- over time, any settlers you assign to a 'salvage' bench should magically retrieve junk from those "buckets" within range of the settlement. (prioritizing anything on your 'flagged' list). e.g. 10 items/day/salvager.

In that manner, multiple settlements become useful, the main character still has limited loot but he doesn't feel like he 'needs' to collect so much.
 
The slippery slope that Bethesda fans wants to make their game essentially god-jesus simulator is real.

"We want our choices and actions matter! As long as it is not penalizes in any way possible." "Immersion is number one! Until it no longer fun." People want immersion but when faced with such consequences of immersion they go back to the golden rule of "game should be fun". This is the same bunch who want games to be treated as an art, or on the same standing as movies. Yet they want games to coddled them, to give them as much as convenience as possible, ignoring the theme and the artistic goal that a game try to make when they meet with "annoying" mechanics. If gamers become interchangeable with oxymoron, I wouldn't in the slightest surprised.



Good observation. I'm a astute defender of encumbrance in Demon's Souls because it served a role within a game. It contributes to the game much larger picture of choices, and makes The Nexus a safe haven in its truest sense. Yet many people can't see this and with weak argument of mere annoyance they dismissed as it is.

It's not a mere annoyance, it's ultimately a non-issue. As long as you remember to deposit whatever you don't need between levels, you rarely if ever hit go over your item burden. Hell, I regularly play on Soul Level 1 where your Item Burden is very low (it scales with Vitality) and I can easily carry 3 different weapons, a shield, a catalyst, a talisman, my armor set, over 99 grass, 99 spice, all the rings in the game, sometimes a bow and various other consumables. And despite that I still have room to pick up random stuff in levels I'm in. For a normal character it should never be a serious concern. It merely punishes you for forgetting busy work. That's not good design. And the idea that this adds to immersion is just plain silly, we're well past the point of getting into the very video gamey element of being able to carry a truck load worth of supplies in our pockets.
 
I actually enjoy encumbrance in games because it adds to the decision making process. Part of the challenge is deciding what to keep and what to discard, it forces you to make tough decisions. Those decisions are what make games fun for me.

The ability to carry everything and anything takes away from the challenge for me.

The same for me. If the game came without encumbrance, then I would wait for a mod to add it.
 

sofa

Member
It's a weird problem, as it's one that should solve itself.
- when a location is 'cleared', all the junk should go into a "bucket".
- over time, any settlers you assign to a 'salvage' bench should magically retrieve junk from those "buckets" within range of the settlement. (prioritizing anything on your 'flagged' list). e.g. 10 items/day/salvager.

In that manner, multiple settlements become useful, the main character still has limited loot but he doesn't feel like he 'needs' to collect so much.

This. Hoarding a shit ton of junk basically is needed to build settlement, but Bethesda didn't feel the need to make it work in a organic way with it. The way encumbering is tedious is due to their incompetence.
 

Coll1der

Banned
You know what, aiming is such an outdated mechanic. I have a job and kids, I don't have time for that aiming bullshit. They should just remove that.

Why so salty, mate? People are talking about a certain gameplay decision by Bethesda, it's not about getting rid of weight limit in all RPGs to come in any form.
 
If they really cared about encumbrance than the default loot window that appears when you mouse over things would show weight and value like it did in New Vegas and Fallout 3. The fact that these things aren't shown anymore shows that they really want you to just grab everything.
 

Nimajneb

Member
It's a weird problem, as it's one that should solve itself.
- when a location is 'cleared', all the junk should go into a "bucket".
- over time, any settlers you assign to a 'salvage' bench should magically retrieve junk from those "buckets" within range of the settlement. (prioritizing anything on your 'flagged' list). e.g. 10 items/day/salvager.

In that manner, multiple settlements become useful, the main character still has limited loot but he doesn't feel like he 'needs' to collect so much.

This is actually a really good idea. It gives you a reason to maintain multiple settlements, gives an advantage to having many settlers, and reduces crap hauling. Someone really needs to make a salvage crew mod.
 
If they really cared about encumbrance than the default loot window that appears when you mouse over things would show weight and value like it did in New Vegas and Fallout 3. The fact that these things aren't shown anymore shows that they really want you to just grab everything.

If you press the "transfer" button on a container (dunno what it is on PC, sorry) it gives you pretty much the same item interface as the previous games.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
Why so salty, mate? People are talking about a certain gameplay decision by Bethesda, it's not about getting rid of weight limit in all RPGs to come in any form.

I am salty because if enough people whine, we see the results in the sequel. I have no issue with people using a console to cheat encumbrance, or using a mod, or even asking for a mod. I don't get to tell you how to have fun. But people going 'This shit needs to be removed' pisses me off. You can only strip the game of so many rpg quirks before it loses its identity. Stop trying to spoil stuff for the rest of us because you can't be arsed to use one of the many, many tools the game gives you to transport things.

Anyone who asks 'I have inventory issues, please help' in the FO4 thread gets met with a lot more understanding from me.
 
If you press the "transfer" button on a container (dunno what it is on PC, sorry) it gives you pretty much the same item interface as the previous games.

Yeah, and that's not the default loot window. That's a menu deep. When you moused over things in Fallout 3 or NV, without going into a menu, their weight and value were displayed.

I am salty because if enough people whine, we see the results in the sequel. I have no issue with people using a console to cheat encumbrance, or using a mod, or even asking for a mod. I don't get to tell you how to have fun. But people going 'This shit needs to be removed' pisses me off. You can only strip the game of so many rpg quirks before it loses its identity. Stop trying to spoil stuff for the rest of us because you can't be arsed to use one of the many, many tools the game gives you to transport things.

Anyone who asks 'I have inventory issues, please help' in the FO4 thread gets met with a lot more understanding from me.

I think you're misunderstanding where a lot of people are coming from. I gave myself 1000 encumbrance, but I'd gladly welcome a game based around a much stricter inventory system. People aren't against Fallout 4s encumbrance because they hate encumbrance, (well, some are, obviously), most of them are disabling it or complaining about it because the implementation in Fallout 4 is fucking terrible. I'd rather have no mechanic than a bad one.
 

Fret

Member
The encumbrance shouldn't be linear, it should slow you down as you hold more things, would make for a far more interesting and less annoying system
 
The encumbrance shouldn't be linear, it should slow you down as you hold more things, would make for a far more interesting and less annoying system

It actually sounds like a much more annoying system, unless the slowdown starts at specific level, that's set pretty high.
 

Fret

Member
It actually sounds like a much more annoying system, unless the slowdown starts at specific level, that's set pretty high.

Yeah that's what I mean, after you hold more than 250 weight in items you start to go slower and it maxes out at around 350 or something. Would give more meaning/consequences to holding more items. It feels a bit cheap to just pick up a book and immediately not being able to run.
 

Haunted

Member
The encumbrance shouldn't be linear, it should slow you down as you hold more things, would make for a far more interesting and less annoying system
Bag-of-Holding-Me-Down.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/SmvGcrW.webm
 

Doc_Drop

Member
It's also perfectly valid to critique it when the drivers for picking up stuff have changed so fundamentally since the previous games.

This is a fair point, I think there should have been a slightly more elegant solution due to junk actually being of use now. I haven't encountered it yet or it's not in this Fallout, but the perk that halves the weight of anything that weighs 2 or below would really be useful in this instance.

On the other hand, I am a firm believer that the problem mainly stems from people not being able to make choices regarding what they're carrying and end up picking everything up regardless of use. Only carrying what you need when venturing out into a new area is a necessity. You also don't need one of every gun type, or multiple guns using the same ammo. With regards to junk, just tag for search whilst in your workbenches anything that you need and leave anything else (i.e. steel only objects are not worth picking up, whilst objects with springs, screws, and oil are very useful)

I do expect a mod or two that will really help in this regard going forward, but I also appreciate that shouldn't be an excuse for Bethesda and does not help the console audience all that much. There's nothing stopping Bethesda from patching things though, and given it's only been out for a week I'm hopeful
 
I find it funny that of all the RPG mechanics Bethesda removed from Fallout 4, encumbrance wasn't one of them.

People like skills, perks managing, deep dialogue system? Fuck that! They hate encumbrance? Keep it in!

None of those systems was ever deep, not even on the 2D games. Putting 1 or 20 points into small guns or lockpicking never feel remarkable at all.
 

RPGam3r

Member
I like encumbrance. I wouldn't want to be able to pickup everything, and it also now gives me easy excuse to travel back to base and offload, build, mod etc.

Encumbrance requires the gamer to make decisions.
 

Breads

Banned
And here I am wishing there was a hardcore mode of Fallout 4 where ammo has weight again like NV's HC mode and FO 1 and 2.
 
I like encumbrance. I wouldn't want to be able to pickup everything, and it also now gives me easy excuse to travel back to base and offload, build, mod etc.

Encumbrance requires the gamer to make decisions.

I agree. I think it's interesting game design that can bring lot into the game. NV's HC mode was manna from heaven.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
Ha! I remembered the game. State of Decay. Had a mechanic where you called in people to loot a place for you.

There. That would solve everything. Have a settlement nearby? Call in some scavs to pick a place clean after you've murdered the inhabitants.
 

Doc_Drop

Member
Ha! I remembered the game. State of Decay. Had a mechanic where you called in people to loot a place for you.

There. That would solve everything. Have a settlement nearby? Call in some scavs to pick a place clean after you've murdered the inhabitants.

This would really be a good solution. Also, upgradable team members - the higher the level the more pack Brahmin they can use. You could also have them sacked by raiders so you need to upgrade their defences and armour. You could even include the ability to set their path in the Commonwealth in order to get different gear
 
The problem with Fallout 4 isn't encumbrance; it's the inventory management system. There should be better ways of categorising items, and depositing/withdrawing/selling them accordingly.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
The problem with Fallout 4 isn't encumbrance; it's the inventory management system. There should be better ways of categorising items, and depositing/withdrawing/selling them accordingly.

The enhances UI mod will be out within a week or three. Remember Skyrim's vanilla UI? Fucking terrible. The modded one was absolute bliss. Much better use of screen real estate to convey information, use icons instead to quickly identify things, color coded number comparisons and better filtering options.
 
I agree and disagree to an extent

Encumbrance makes sense, it adds to the strategy and realism, its never been too much of an issue in fallout before, unless you looted 15 rocket launchers and a load of power armour from a base and wanted to carry it, sure the loot! but its not realistic

HOWEVER

Fallout 4 actively makes use of the junk items and encourages you to take them with you! those abraxo cleaners only useful on the odd time in Fallout 3/Nv? well they have components you need, that 10 weight piece of shit you'd never have picked up before? components you need, all those crappy raider armours? components!

So you max out your weight in no time! you should be allowed to break down the junk in the pipboy or more frequently into to very low weight components or have all the stores of the settlements linked in a sort of chest like resident evil used

right now i'm constantly having to return to Sanctuary to off load my junk into the stores

but perhaps thats the point? encouraging you to return to the settlements and do them up

Still

I freaking love Fallout 4 so far and the minor annoyance of weight isn't spoiling anything really so far - and as i type i realise i've never transferred anything to a companion as yet....
 

Breads

Banned
The problem with Fallout 4 isn't encumbrance; it's the inventory management system. There should be better ways of categorising items, and depositing/withdrawing/selling them accordingly.

This is the real issue.

Because junk plays a huge factor there needs to be a way to select multiple items/ all items within a category you specify. Something else that's needed is a way to add weight to specific items like soft highlighting (single click for stacked items) to include/ exclude them from "deposit/ take all" commands.

While we're at it there should be a shop command to just break junk down to their base components. In my game I have collected over 13,000 pieces of junk and I feel actively discouraged from working on other settlements because of how tedious is to have both a weight system and hundreds of items without a way to sort them.

So yeah I want more inventory management - not less.

The enhances UI mod will be out within a week or three. Remember Skyrim's vanilla UI? Fucking terrible. The modded one was absolute bliss. Much better use of screen real estate to convey information, use icons instead to quickly identify things, color coded number comparisons and better filtering options.

yes. YES. Mods like the Alchemy UI mods for example are exactly what I want.
 

Altairre

Member
you are picking up things you want to try, but are too afraid to throw away what you don't need.

It's not about being afraid to throw away anything it's about not wanting to deal with it at that moment because I'm on a quest and want to get on with the game. Again, it's just tedious to me and doesn't add anything. I'd rather deal with it later all at once.

People are always going to minmax their time. It's a far better value to simply pick up literally everything and make frequent fast travel pit stops than to hem and haw over what to grab off a raiders body or a junk pile in a lab. Grabbing all the junk is simply too advantageous in every way. If they really wanted an encumbrance system, they'd make it so that carrying more than a few weapons and armour, in addition to supplies would already take up most of your inventory. Instead you have a large inventory literally made for clearing rooms, but you'll run out halfway through a dungeon. It poorly incentivizes the behaviour they want. They want you to carefully scrounge and pick only things you really need or have value. But because it's so easy to pick stuff up, and even the smallest inventory space is 220 and has room for like 5-6 entire rooms of stuff, the player learns early to pick up literally everything and then gets frustrated when they run out of space just shy of finishing an area and then ends up spending all that min maxing encumbrance time every single time they pick up an item from then on before fast traveling.

As it is now, due to fast travel and infinite containers, your encumbrance is basically infinite already, and people removing the encumbrance limit are merely saving themselves trips, they're not depriving themselves of the "true scavenging experience" because the game itself discourages that by having areas so littered with useful items.

If they really wanted people to scrounge they'd make your inventory incredibly limited and make more items in the world actual junk again, leaving high quality ceramics, ammo, steel, etc valuable and worth scrounging over.

The worst part is that in vanilla New Vegas, I got a lot closer to the intended scrounging gameplay style than here, because in new vegas, so much had little value that I actively pored through shacks and cellars for legitimately useful items, whereas here, everything has some value so fuck it just spam X/A on the entire room.

Very well put, to say it in your own words: "Perfect!"

Can't believe people are bitching about this.

Is this your first rpg? were you expecting a normal shooter? have you read what your stats do? looked into your perks yet? you realise your companion can carry your shit for you? you tried power armor yet? why the fuck are you trying to pick everything up when the world has 4000% more shit than you need? You realise you can store the heavy crap in a container and come back later, right?

You want the limit removed? Ask Bethesda to add a new difficulty level under easy. Asking for it to be removed across the board is going to lead to FO5 being an even more dumbed down product.

Because when people criticise the implementation of a certain mechanic in a RPG, clearly all they want is an easy mode and not a real RPG (I want the old dialogue system back as well for example). This attitude totally doesn't shut down any discussion at all. It's not even about the idea of an encumbrance mechanic in general to me, I just think that the implementation in F4 is pretty poor. You do not and that's okay too. No need to talk down to the people that disagree with you.

The problem with Fallout 4 isn't encumbrance; it's the inventory management system. There should be better ways of categorising items, and depositing/withdrawing/selling them accordingly.

That too, the inventory management system is extremely poor.
 
I like the idea someone had of being able to send stuff back to your settlement. Still stops you from being able to carry around every gun imaginable and just cuts up the fast travel - stash - fast travel back - pick up- fast travel - stash - fast travel back shite that is no one's idea of fun. Write in a messenger or postal service or let dogmeat carry it back for you or something.
 

Fret

Member
I'd be interested to see how modders improve the pipboy UI, its not impossible but definitely a harder task than Skyrim due to less screen real estate & it being on a physical 3d object within the world
 

Breads

Banned
I'd be interested to see how modders improve the pipboy UI, its not impossible but definitely a harder task than Skyrim due to less screen real estate & it being on a physical 3d object within the world

I imagine one of the first mods is going to be an overlay that replaces the pipboy.
 
Why so salty, mate? People are talking about a certain gameplay decision by Bethesda, it's not about getting rid of weight limit in all RPGs to come in any form.

It is for me. I don't find it fun here, haven't ever found it fun anywhere, and would be a happy man if it never popped up in a game that otherwise interests me again.

Games for fun and entertainment, and encumbrance mechanics provide neither (for me).

It's crazy to me that so many of you are insistent on trying to paint those in my position as unreasonable instead of simply recognizing that we have different ideas of what is fun.
 

King_Moc

Banned
Fallout 4 is barely an RPG anymore at this point and now people want to have the weight limit removed as well? It's one of the few remaining elements in the game that force you to make choices (do I take all this junk with me or that cool but super heavy weapon?) :/

It doesn't, because you can just fast travel right back and pick the rest up anyway. The only issue with dropping the weight limit is that it breaks the stat allocation, as strength becomes almost useless, which aloes you to go OP on some other stats.
 

Acheteedo

Member
Nope, I love managing encumbrance and all the headaches that comes with, there are plenty of ways to improve your carrying capacity in Fallout 4, some of which I use, but mainly I rather enjoy the trips back home to dump all the stuff I've found, hardly takes long, and I collect everything I see.
 

Derpcrawler

Member
I think encumbrance is a necessary evil.
And any way, if there isn't a mod out now, im sure there will be one within the week.

You just open console and type "player.modav carryweight 100000". Now you can carry all you want without worrying about it. Forever.

But I guess he might not be playing on PC.

Edit: Damn, didn't notice this thread is 15+ pages long and I quoted first page.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
It is for me. I don't find it fun here, haven't ever found it fun anywhere, and would be a happy man if it never popped up in a game that otherwise interests me again.

Games for fun and entertainment, and encumbrance mechanics provide neither (for me).

It's crazy to me that so many of you are insistent on trying to paint those in my position as unreasonable instead of simply recognizing that we have different ideas of what is fun.

I have clarified my position earlier. Unless you want to get rid of encumbrance for everyone, then I got no beef with you. Feel free to use the console to get rid of the mechanic that bothers you, unless you're on console (use the companion exploit then).
 
I feel like it could do with a revamp, but it shouldn't go away.

It helps balance the game.

I don't really mind being able to carry a ton of things in Bethesda games but if the carry weight was unlimited and I saw my puny Wood Elf was carrying 30 Daedric Armours or my Wanderer was carrying 20 Power Armours and 10 Shotguns....it's a poor analogy but there's a fine line between indulging and respecting the player's ability to manage so it's not uber restrictive and also balancing the game.

If there was some super long dungeon in ES or a location in Fallout that had a ton of legit awesome or valuable items and yet theres no way you could carry it out in one go...that'd be kinda eh. You should reasonably be able to pick up the vast majority of items in a single location in a single trip, imo.
 

Zaptruder

Banned
Encumberance is a good feature in relating more meaning to the rest of the world, forcing players to make decisions as to what they should take.

That's fine.

But the implementation is poor at best. The hard line, you're over the limit is lacking grace to say the least.

A more gradual curve would've been better.

e.g. At 100% limit, lose one speed level. Running is now walking. Sprinting is now running.

At 125%, you can only walk. At 150% you can't fast travel at all.

Another way to mitigate it and give the player more choice would be allowing them to use their followers to go away and dump their gear at the workbench of the settlement of their choice.

That way players need to make the decision on whether or not to keep followers around and gain their combat benefits, or cash in the loot they're holding and wait for them to get back.

Also, another thing that makes this all that much bothersome is getting back to town and spending 10s of minutes sorting out your inventory from your latest trip.

They need to let the player mark items they want to keep in inventory (specific weapons, apparel, 0 weight stuff, aid, etc) and let us dump the rest of it in one button press.
 

Doc_Drop

Member
It's not about being afraid to throw away anything it's about not wanting to deal with it at that moment because I'm on a quest and want to get on with the game. Again, it's just tedious to me and doesn't add anything. I'd rather deal with it later all at once.

The worst part is that in vanilla New Vegas, I got a lot closer to the intended scrounging gameplay style than here, because in new vegas, so much had little value that I actively pored through shacks and cellars for legitimately useful items, whereas here, everything has some value so fuck it just spam X/A on the entire room.

That's kind of what the tagging tool is used for though. You can't honestly say you need everything, or that everything has immense value. Just look at what you want to make during the time you are playing (stuff for armour, stuff for weapons, or stuff for homebases) and then tag them so that when you search you can ignore anything that doesn't serve a direct purpose

You should be allowed to break down the junk in the pipboy or more frequently into to very low weight components

This would be excellent, that way I can get my lovely springs, screws, and oils and leave the steel etc

Another way to mitigate it and give the player more choice would be allowing them to use their followers to go away and dump their gear at the workbench of the settlement of their choice.

The torchlight method was good, send your companion away to sell loot but lose their help in your fights. It's a nice balance
 

Ulysses 31

Member
I'm not that bothered by it but that could be because I played Fallout 3/NV, System Shock 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.


Carrying too much should drain your AP when moving kinda like it does your stamina in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games rather than going 0.1 overweight to cause you to becoming a snail.
 
Top Bottom