I think it's less popular mainly due to the lack of real replay value. This is just gathered from word of mouth as I've yet to beat the main story yet and can't weigh in myself. From what I hear, it's so strict in terms of backstory that it really limits any kind of role-playing. This coupled with how every choice you make is essentially the same. These two things make just about any playthrough too similar to the next and people can get bored of that. To add to it, the modding community seems almost barren. Sure, there are more mods than there were in New Vegas, but not many of the mods really "wow" many people and most are just small tweaks. New Vegas had a ton of game changing mods that could really impact the game. I've only really seen one FO4 mod that drastically changes the game and that's FROST.

Another possible reason is that Bethesda has been getting rather "lazy". They've been relying too much on the modding community to fix their games or add onto them. Without the modding community, Bethesda games would not be so popular. Bethesda knows that modders will buy the games solely for the mods so that means they don't have to do as much as they normally should/would. Why make a grade A sandwich when the customer wants to take it apart and add their own ingredients anyways?

So far I'm really enjoying the settlement management even if it's a bit buggy at times. People say it feels "tacked on" and I can understand that, but I still enjoy it a lot. I always like managing things and it kind of filled a hole in my "game desire". Normally to fill this particular "desire" by playing minecraft with a mod called Custom NPCs. This essentially gives you in-game tools to create your own RPG. I would use this mod and create whole settlements with functioning shops and NPCs. I did this solely because I loved creating these things. They were pretty much ready to be played, but most of my fun was just making them and I rarely played them. FO4 fulfills this "hobby". It lets me design whole towns. My only gripe is that I wish it was a bit more indepth, but some mods help with this by adding additional objects/jobs.

I play both The Sims as well as Cities: Skylines... so I totally understand a desire to "create" in a digital world. I also liked the settlement building in FO4... my only gripe is that the controls are a little clunky and unrefined. I like the idea and the additional building assets you can find on the Nexus are pretty awesome. Like I said, I'm not going to be the type to sit here behind a screen, wielding my laptop like Excalibur and screaming how FO4 sucks and those who like it are just to stupid and unrefined to know any better. That's just not me.

The existence of the cornucopia of "settlement" mods on Nexus and other sites show that, people do like the settlement system... even if they're unanimous in their loathing of Preston Garvey, lol.

In my opinion, the atmosphere, art design and world-building of Fallout 4 are what I always wanted... I like that Bethesda strayed away, to an extent, from the black-and-white morality of FO3. (Brotherhood are Bigoted Neo-Fuedalists, Railroad doesn't give a damn about the wasteland at large, Institute is really only as bad as it is since Shaun took over and Minutemen are compassionate but too naive for their own good.) But the main plot and sidequests are pretty safe there just isn't a lot there to encourage replay.

With that said, I got a platinum trophy on FO4 without any save-scumming... so I loved it... but I can see it's flaws as well. Also I think all the *Workshop DLC's* were a joke, total filler. (I did like the Vault-Tec one though). I'm too inept to build a vault in GECK, so that was as close as I was going to get to living out my little "Vault Fan-Fiction"

With all that said, I maintain that it's not fair, or honest to regard FO4 as 100% good or 100% bad.

I think its because in general it gets old easily, but so does new vegas. Also, It just is a different game.

So I see alot of arguments here for why it ain't as good as FNV such as lack of replay value etc.

But I beg to differ, I have spent soooooooo many hours just building settlements so no replay value my ass.

And yes story is lacking in comparison and RPG elements have be dumb down, but gun play went up! Yay!

HOWEVER!

I think its not as popular because of F4SE. Same reason SSE isn't as popular, lack of SKSE64.

Yes they are out, but still in infancy. The Skyrim modding scene EXPLODED when SKSE came out.
But if we are to compare between FO3 and FNV only, FO3 & FNV's mechanics allowed for alot more creative freedom.

For example (these are things in FO4 are irked me on a mod user level):

Lack of holsters - yes we have a mod for weapons appearing as holstered weapons but I have to make a separate mesh every time I add a gun. Which I CBF sometimes unless it's a MUST HAVE gun which makes me drool all over. Further, this only limits the guns I add because of either no holster, no support for holsters or I CBF.

Clipping - There was a reason Bethesda told obsidian to not include a ghoul race/super-mutant race, because you would have to remake every piece of gear. I am sure everyone knows how many armors this website has put out and how hard it is to do it, but its one piece of gear as opposed to various add-ons on top that create clippings so bad my eyes bleed. Again more CBF factor here for modders and mod users alike.

Settlement Building - And the point of it is? I mean whats the end goal here? Am I playing Sim City? No, all I get are bragging rights. Yes its cool and like I said I spent hours on it and this portion of the game probably gets the most attention but its lost in context as far as story goes.

Overall, I think mechanics are mostly to blame. Paid Mods hasn't helped the situation either.

I really wish Beth Devs would help out the guys on SKSE64 and F4SE. They talk about building a game, a framework for modders but its desperately lacking given modders have to make script extenders and unofficial patches. Though Beth is still alot better than alot of other devs out there.

Sorry, I digress

In my opinion Bethesda has ruined the fallout franchise thus far, while they brought it from the old games into new generation gaming they ruined what fallout is all about, that is the story, the gritty choices you should have in post apocalyptic america. They took away from that in Fallout 3, put the story into a Good Vs Bad situation which should have never been done. Then New Vegas came out, great game probably because it had some of the original developers working on it. There was no good or bad outcome, every faction had their own appeals and flaws. It was based on player choice, fallout 4 forces you to take a role as either a prewar veteran which is practical or a prewar lawyer which is ridiculous. They took away the rpg element of creating your own character (with your own story).

After taking away the first major thing in Fallout 4, then they give you a backstory about a kid that you aren't in anyway attached to that you must find and retrieve. They leave gaping plot holes in the story such as to why wipe out all the vault inhabitants when they could all be just as viable subjects, why let your dad wander the wasteland to find you if you're the one who woke him up, why the brotherhood has to be in every single game as some "good guy" representation and somehow never lose. Fallout isn't about power armor, its about the story and it seems like they inject the brotherhood into every single game just to add power armor to it.

They have a beautiful engine with much potential but the story sucked, it was awful, it was short and a lot of things were forced upon you. I personally wanted to murder Preston Garvey (Why wasn't that an option?) things of that nature were just left out and instead you're forced to do things like join the minutemen and somehow obtain the leader role in 30 seconds time.. The DLC content was even worse, not only did they charge nearly twice what the game cost for that pack of worthless content, but it was garbage, yay settlement building? yeah you can spend hours on that but obviously you have to cause the story isn't worth a crap lol.

If by some miracle they figure out how to write an honest to god fallout game, take fallout 1,2 or van buren, then apply that to Fallout 4's amazing engine then you'll have a replaying worthy game. I really wish they would take the brotherhood down a few notches that's for sure and stop painting them as some kind of good guy messiah crap. The west coast brotherhood is real, they're ruthless and only care about tech. As is fitting in the fallout world, they should go with a lore ending destroying the brotherhood in the commonwealth, with the institute prevailing, then having New vegas lore with an independent ending where both the legion and NCR take massive losses and also get nuked. This would create the ability for new factions to become prominent while still keeping those factions as well.

@nichoice Well said the lack of a proper F4SE really holds things back.@Enclave216 we can only hope a modder will write a DLC sized epic quest.

I definitely hope so, there's some decent mods but they haven't quite captured me like Fallout New Vegas DLC content and mod content. A tale of the Enclave is good and is improving so there's hope yet but I'd have liked a real story to work with.

@Enclave216 There is a really good bounty mod out on the nexus. Not much of a story but it's well acted and it's fun how they steal your stuff and you can track them down. Eventually you get hired for bounties but I haven't got that far yet. I've been too busy modding.

annex77 wrote:

@nichoice Well said the lack of a proper F4SE really holds things back.@Enclave216 we can only hope a modder will write a DLC sized epic quest.

Yes, this is my opinion as well. The reason FVN and even Skyrim (32bit) enjoyed such development was due to the script extensions making many more mods possible and many of the current mods easier to implement. (as opposed to having to script the entire thing out side of the extender where possible.)

It is just do difficult to do what was done in the past that I suspect many have left. That combined with the various things that Bethesda has been doing company wise.. causing many experienced modders to get fed up and just plain quit, Fallout 4 I suspect will be slow to develop further if it does at all. (I hear that the latest changes due to the new CC has caused massive issue with load orders of non CC mods for example. Not sure if this is the case)

I use to mess around with the geck but that was on New Vegas, Fallout 4 I haven't really tried due to I haven't found the replay value like with New Vegas. I just don't possess the skill to make heavy scripted mods for Fallout 4. I wish I did though cause Fallout 4 definitely needs an orbital strike mod lol.

Every person who has played any Fallout game will have a different complaint about all of them. To me FO3 had a terrible story and NV was a barren land with not much to do without mods. While I do not mind most things from FO4 such as the voiced protagonist I do see why some people dislike it, personally I would have just put an option at the beginning of the game to play with voice on or off.

The game did feel rushed and most of the characters in it I found I just didn't care about, but the thing that I disliked the most about the game was the DLCs, to me they was lazy made with most of them being simple item add ons to the game, I didn't know I was playing the sims. I just hope they learn from the feedback people give them, but with how things have been lately with their creation club idea, I think we would better off sending a letter to Santa.

after playing FO4 for god knows how many hours there were some things i missed. A proper rebuild the commonwealth with the minutemenn, not just the eternal settlement, but a proper unification with say diamond city. the gunners had a lot of potensial aswell, but they are just a weel equiped enemy faction, they could have been so much more. And then there are the lack of towns and such. FNV had several townes and bases scattered around the map, and it made it feel less empty in my opinion.

settlement building was never Bethesda intention in development of FO4, but after the release of popular mod on FO3 & then FNV; the first ever created mod by modding community, RTS - Real Time Settler by arcoolka and ripvanwinkle111. it's so popular at the time it got into gaming magazine that I think, Bethesda take noticed of it, & this could work well with FO4, bethesda has realized that their game engine is capable of something wild like, & their decision to let community middling with it far proof of the present right now, if there were a bugs glitches, don't worry, our beloved community will fix it in no time, you wanted our cut content that was supposed to in fo4? don't worry modders can do that to!

I think the main reason why is Bethesda put effort on the thing that Fallout fan doesn't really care about. They put a lot of effort into gun and gameplay. While fallout fan want interesting quests and story that make you think. I think the reason is Bethesda want to attract more non-Fallout fans and people who never played fallout before. I personally think fallout 4 suck in the story but the gameplay is definitely better. For me, the reason why I hate 4 is because recently Bethesda is becoming more and more greedy (Over-pricing season pass and creation club).

First let me say that I love both games. I just spend the last two days to merge maybenexttime Fallout 4 Tifa Lockhart Playable Race to my other races and faces without total success. I also did the same thing in FNV not too long ago. Enjoy them all. If we must get into why some people like FNV more than F4 then it will definitely be the depth of the story telling technique FNV use. It is deep and meaningful. F4 on the other hand is more a good shooting game then a ok RPG and part time sim. Oh well. Anything good that can get us out of our boring and hard real life is worth our time and money. Can F4 be more like FNV? Yes they can but they will not do it. Because money talk.

Just like all the Avengers movies. Some people say they are not good movies at all. True in some sense. Because they are so formula like. Every things are set to trigger our sense of joy and pain in the maximum level. Story is the same old heroes journey. But they did a great job to entertain a lot of us. But again they make billions. They may not have the depth but they have the most powerful thing any company can have - huge profit.

Can one do both? I do not know. But I look at Cyberpunk 2077. The creators of it do want to put out a great stable game but the investors want profit NOW. Who to say they are wrong or right? No one can. Another one is Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Kojima want more time to make the game even better and bigger but the other K say enough is good enough. One hand I respect Kojima almost perfection idealism. But on the other hand I also understand as an investors and a company profit margin. I am just thinking out lout and type it as I my thought bring me.

Anyway guy. I love both games. And almost all the Fallout games. Except the PS2 one lol. The hope is the Fallout 5 will be manage by someone that can mange both the quality of the game and the investors satisfaction of profit. Not an easy job for sure. But someone have to do it or our beloved Fallout will go down hill like many other fail franchises.

Well too long already. Love you all.

My personal reason for loving the game, and keep coming back to it, and what I think a lot of people miss, is to play the way you want. (I for instance don't care for companions much), and for a long time, I didn't want to build or use power armor. I have noticed this with Elden ring as well, where the game is supposed to be about exploring it for yourself, there are so many young people looking up the "best" way to play.

vielas1 wrote:

My personal reason for loving the game, and keep coming back to it, and what I think a lot of people miss, is to play the way you want. (I for instance don't care for companions much), and for a long time, I didn't want to build or use power armor. I have noticed this with Elden ring as well, where the game is supposed to be about exploring it for yourself, there are so many young people looking up the "best" way to play.

Agreed. I am now in a stage that I can not play single story game anymore. Only Fallout and this kind of open world freedom like games. Again F4 is not as good in stories telling but can be very good in shooting. But FNV will last longer in all our heart.

people don't tend to like the story or the lack of dialogue choices.

Many of the previous responses reflect in some way or another how I feel regarding Fallout 4, but I would still like to throw my two cents in.
Fallout 4 is one of those games that I tend to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with as it took me quite a bit of time to finally decide what felt off about the game when playing it. My first impression was that it did a pretty great job updating and experimenting with some gameplay mechanics. However, upon progressing through the story it tended to give the impression that the interactions between the player character and NPCs were generally inconsequential-- I was in that world, but not really a part of it.
This ultimately left Fallout 4 feeling a bit like a playground with a post-apocalyptic veneer. This isn’t always necessarily a bad thing, but in appearing so superficial-- and oftentimes unfinished-- Fallout 4 just didn’t quite seem to know what type of game it finally was supposed to be, which appeared to exacerbate its struggle at honing in on any meaningful storytelling.

I've probably mentioned this on another thread but I think it bears repeating that F4 had a lot to live up too especially with FNV which I think is one of the best games of all time. If it wasn't part of such a major IP I believe it would have been better received. I recognize it has some pretty big problems but it did introduce some new game mechanics I enjoyed most notably making Power Armor feel like you are in an actual exosuit. But Fallout games, Bethesda games in general really, only reach their real potential with modding and the voiced over Sole Survivor dialogue choice really made the job harder for modders.