Anyone else feel that way? I know bethesda isn't known for AMAZING combat, and its definitely a huge step up from fallout 3, really. But I go to games like Rainbow 6 siege, or Battlefield, Titanfall, Source engine games, COD, and Far cry, and I still feel really underwhelmed by the gunplay. And its not because its stat based, even the division had really good gunplay, but thats a strictly third person shooter. I don't know how to explain my biggest issue: which is the feel. But I definitely have smaller things to note that may help explain my position:
First off the FOV, is pretty shit, and the guns take up a HUGE amount of space, I have about the same amount of visibility with a upgraded combat shotgun as I do with a fat man. Its difficult to aim as well because of the shit FOV, when ADSing, and no matter how much I change my FOV it still is difficult to aim.
Second, the aiming movement itself is very awkward, while it isn't a twitch shooter, I feel like the movement should be similar in terms of guns. I should be able to recreate my pinpoint twitch shooter accuracy in Fallout 4. Because in rainbow 6 or any of the other shooters I mentioned, I nail headshot after headshot easily. In fallout 4 I use the same tactics as I do on console and put my mouse dead center and move around with WASD and click.
Third is the 3rd person movement. The way it works is a little dumb. So there are two different sets of movement: Gun ready and gun away. With the gun away, you can have your character run forward and be looking behind them, so they can sprint and look behind at the same time. With the gun ready you are always looking dead ahead and your camera is locked unless you are standing still and holding the third person button. I feel as though they should have made it more like GTA where the controls are the same with both your gun ready and away. If you hip fire in third person you should shoot where the camera is aimed as well, like in most third person shooters.
Fourth is the death animations. While obviously the animations for killing enemies are better, they are still pretty, ehh. They look a bit un-natural and cartoony, along with a lot of other impact animations, and it should really look a bit more like rainbow six. I mean, look at this:

Instead we have the awkward animation where you shoot someone in the chest with a shotgun and they turn at a 90 degree angle and go on their back. You know which one Im talking about.

So what do you guys think? How would you improve the combat?

First of all, I would add more weapon types and animations instead of making senseless workshop DLCs. Bethesda, please. I just want a proper shotgun.

They added a lever action that could switch between rifle and shotgun, but screwed up its animations in third person, I would say they were a cheap Chinese knock off, new vegas' lever action animations , The lever action is also proof that fallout 4's engine cannot realistically reload a shotgun, fire one round of the lever action, put 5 rounds in, You can bet that's how a shotgun would work as well

Dio Brando wrote:

First of all, I would add more weapon types and animations instead of making senseless workshop DLCs. Bethesda, please. I just want a proper shotgun.

I feel as though if they made weapon and armour DLC's rather than settlement ones then the fans would be happier. Still not happy because of the lack of quest DLC's but not as upset. IIRC Gun Runners Arsenal was well received.

I'm probably the only person who has this opinion but the combat is aside from a lack of weapons , perks and good animations fine for the most part but it's more that I feel very much the same way when I play fallout 4 ( and even FH) as when I first played vanilla skyrim and that is in the way that it does not surprise me at all anytime , where fnv could take you into a totally different setting at times I find fallout 4 not doing so ( skyrim did this a little better but I explain why later) as I always feel like this is still the same stuff instead of adding new game play or mechanics.

What also very much annoys me while playing the game is the settlement system , so many mods needed before I could even play without quests popping up to save some boring settlement which does not even have it's own history or lore for how it came to be to what it is when you find it.
And never do they communicate with you about what is best for the settlement instead they just assume your capable of making the perfect decision concerning there food , water and defenses.
In Skyrim you could become the leader of a few guilds but you got more respect by earning it and even then you did not get a free pass to do whatever you pleas with there faction while in fallout 4 you don't work up to that you just kill some raiders scrap some stuff and maybe defend a few attacks if you feel like and if you don't they will just be 'unhappy' not enraged or trying to overthrow your ruling no they forget it once you give them another bed.

They don't have desires or dreams like getting a family together or making a change most of them don't even show fear for other hostile factions , they will just stay at there settlement (village more correct in my opinion) and obey the commands of there 'overseer' .

Then you can't even take control of factions , I mean it would have totally rocked if you could play time against one another or make enemies into allies , but no you can't even control the crime faction once you basically showed that your the most capable and powerful leader they could ever wish for.

Also the settlements just feel like a chore , badly explained early game and your always reminded of that all your junk are materials , I used to love to collect junk for the sake of loving the aesthetic and feel of it but now I'm always reminded of the fact that your just carrying materials for boring settlements.

Hope I got my point well across as I tend to get a little lost while typing with bad ordering or chapters.

Lukaboot

I just want to remap the hold breath key to something other than left alt.

It's why i use a controller in these types of games.
Now I know the gunplay is pretty lacking but has anyone tried melee combat?, somehow they put more effort into a satisfying melee system rather than into gun play

I think it's unfair to compare an open world game with various weapons compared to a somewhat competitive FPS like R6. However I do agree that guns take up a lot of the screen space, especially institution weapons and the third person animation is pretty bad. The accuracy issue you bring up is because Fallout 4 isn't a twitch shooter, there really is a lot more "randomness" to it. I personally don't have this problem, I think perks and the points you put into SPECIAL might be a factor in it. I think the reason death animations are "cartoony" is because of the decapitation aspects(limbs flying off etc).

The combat is still a million times better than the previous Fallouts, personally my issue isn't the combat, its the weapon design, some of them feel really out place.

I completely agree, while it is a step up from fo3 and new vegas, it feels awkward in a way. I don't know if it's because I'm not used to the gun play on PC, (Most FPS games are on console for me) but even the clunky shooting of the previous games were easier to adjust to and accuracy was easier to maintain.

Bethesda did a decent job at actually smoothing out the gunplay and making it possible to sustain a firefight without VATS. Firefights in FO3 and FNV were clunky and uninspiring. Unfortunately they failed at making the AI an actual force to be reckoned with. Without mods like Arbitration, I would be storming through raider encampments with little to no resistance. The mod at the very least causes them to fire off pot shots at a distance and increases the range for combat to be initiated. This is something that should have been overhauled in the first place rather than waiting for the community to fix in the first place. The same applies for the third person combat as well. It was improved upon in terms of it smoothly operating yet it feels held back. As a final note, Bethesda really screwed up with mapping ALT as both the melee and grenade key; this really ruined some fun moments.

Either way, an improved AI and a wider variety of animations would be welcomed greatly.

Doggo wrote:

Dio Brando wrote:

First of all, I would add more weapon types and animations instead of making senseless workshop DLCs. Bethesda, please. I just want a proper shotgun.

I feel as though if they made weapon and armour DLC's rather than settlement ones then the fans would be happier. Still not happy because of the lack of quest DLC's but not as upset. IIRC Gun Runners Arsenal was well received.

I totally agree with both you on this topic, unfortunately, Fallout's fan base and mod support is so vast, that I think Bethesda just leaves a lot of that up to the modding community to do themselves. I would love to see a GRA style DLC return for Fallout 4, but I don't see in the cards from Bethesda. They are too focused on Settlement Building/Workshop DLC. I haven't even used half of the workshop content yet, because I have to stop myself, because before I know it, I've spent way too much time building stupid s*** than actually playing the game.

So I've read everyones comments, and I've been able to refine what issues I have:
1: The weapon animations are awkward: The guns 9 times out of 10 take up too much space, which results in awkward camera usage. The lack of different animations for weapons also means that modded weapons often share the same fate. If you haven't tried changing the FOV for fallout 4 and use a modded assault rifle, don't, it looks awful.

2: The recoil is extremely high and uncontrollable. That was a pretty broad statement, but I've found that for many guns, the recoil is extremely high. This wouldn't be as big of an issue as it is, if the recoil were controllable like in other games.

3: The impact animations leave a lot to be desired. When you shoot an enemy in fallout 4 they do one of three things: Don't move a muscle, flinch because they broke a limb, or if you shoot them in the head their head rubber bands back and looks up at a 90 degree angle for a few seconds. It looks like shite. Other games that don't have impact animations or have poor ones (like rainbow 6) make up for that because you don't see them often, in rainbow 6 the animation you see most is death ones, which I have already addressed in my original post.


@Abazor I can't decide if I agree or disagree with you on comparing fallout 4. On one hand, it is an RPG. On the other, it should still feel good when fighting. I agree 100% its better than previous fallout games, my point of the gunplay needing to be improved is this: When you start the game you might have really good aim and really good twitch shooter experience, which translates over to fallout 4. However you still don't do much damage, and have random bullet deviation. This gets ironed out as you level and your weapon skills improve. As for the death animations looking cartoony, I agree and disagree. I feel like they can feel cartoony while still not looking ridiculously unrealistic. Theres one I know of where the character looks like they're having a seizure or heart attack rather than getting shot. I'd like some cooler contextual ones, (enemy grabs throat if they are shot in the throat, ect)