Since Fallout 4 came out a few years ago, people have said the gunplay was a massive improvement over Fallout New Vegas's gunplay. To me, this wasn't so. New Vegas doesn't have good gunplay, but would I say it's better than Fallout 4's? Kind of. NV has weapon degradation and different ammo types, these basic things that Fallout 4 didn't have. But this isn't a New Vegas vs Fallout 4 topic, this is just Fallout 4 has bad gunplay.
F.E.A.R was released in 2005 for Windows, the game was praised for it's shooting mechanics and brilliant AI. Why do I bring up F.E.A.R? Well that's really due to this game being the greatest shooter of all time. Bold claim, I know. I don't think there has been a shooter close to F.E.A.R's brilliant gameplay. There have been good shooters like Crysis, GTA 5, DOOM 2016 and others but nothing on the level of F.E.A.R.

Comparing F.E.A.R and Fallout 4, the differences is night and day.

So, what makes gunplay good? There are a lot of things that go into to make a good shooter. Tracer rounds, good gun design, good sound design, bullet impacts on the environment and enemies and especially good AI.
Fallout 4's weapon design is a hit or miss. The Gauss Rifle looks awful when it's original design in Fallout 3 looked better and the Institute weapons looked quite good. F.E.A.R's designs looked all good. This is important for a weapon to look good, handle well and sound good because it can put players off from using them. The shotgun in F.E.A.R is utterly brilliant to use, it sounds awesome, looks great and it destroys offices, walls and enemies in the manner of sheer fucking brilliance, this is a weapon I love to use. There isn't really a weapon in Fallout 4 that can handle as well as the shotgun from F.E.A.R.
Environmental damage is important because it allows the player to understand the weapons they are using and how powerful they are. Throwing a grenade in F.E.A.R destroys almost anything in it's path and damages anything close by, destroying concrete, blowing windows out and obliterating the enemies into pools of blood. Fallout 4's grenades is a ball of poof that makes a bang noise, how boring.
Now the most important thing in a shooter is good AI. Enemies will flank you, create cover, throw grenades to lure you out of cover, fall back and even communicate with their buddies, refusing to move up sometimes. F.E.A.R's AI is regarded as the best AI in video games, how far we have regressed in modern shooters. Fallout 4's AI... like any terrible shooter on the market is like, Call of Duty for example, enemies will either run in front of you to get shoot, stay behind one cover and won't move away or stand in the open to get shoot.
I may have treated this as F.E.A.R vs Fallout 4 topic, but that isn't my intention. F.E.A.R was used as an example, I could have used Crysis and my argument would be very similar. I keep seeing people praise Fallout 4 for being a great shooter when in reality, it sucks.

I agree with you but not because of weapon degradation, which is more of a game mechanic than gun play, but with how weapons and bullets behave in Fallout 4.

If you compare Fallout 4s gun play to unmodded Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it is vastly superior because Bethesda improved on their weapon animations so that it "looks" realistic. But just because they improved on this does not mean it has good gun play.

The recoil on their guns is still off(shaky cam and random bullet spread for recoil, seriously), inefficient bolt action animations and bullets still magically disappear after traveling a certain distance instead of having bullet drop. The list goes on but Fallout 4 is definitely an improvement in terms of weapon animation compared to Fallout 3/New Vegas that it almost feels like an actual shooter(almost).

Agreed with ahyuser001.
I think when people say "great gunplay" they are comparing it to the other entries in the series until modded
And if you do it's not hard to see why.

After all you remember, "" aiming "" in FO3? Where the camera zoomed in a tiny bit?
FO4 gives us grenade hot key and weapon bashing right off the bat, we for once didn't have to mod that in which by my reckoning puts FO4 gunplay on about the same level as "Medal of Honour - frontline" on the PS2

I don't think weapon animations makes Fallout 4's gunplay better than New Vegas's. Don't get me wrong, Bethesda did a good job with the animation for weapons. But New Vegas has a lot of good weapon design with decent sound design while Fallout 4's is hit or miss. I believe this is important because it can put people off from using them.
The big difference between 4's and New Vegas's gunplay is that 4's is a fast paced, resembling Call of Duty. The game doesn't require you to think, you get power armour early on, you have enough ammunition to kill everything and anything in your sight, there's honestly no skill required. F.E.A.R is definitely fast paced but it's competent fast paced shooter. Fighting against the enemies can be challenging but they can be cut down fast with slow mo, explosive barrels, shooting thrown grenades, etc.

New Vegas certainly has a good assortment of weapons to choose from compared to Fallout 4 where you only get one of each weapon category(except assault rifles).

It just turns me off when guns do not behave like guns as seen with how guns behave in New Vegas especially if it is a cool looking gun like the assault rifle(I used the word gun too many times huh). I guess it is a subjective argument but that is what I look at when I rate a game's gun play and by that Fallout 4's gun play is superior to New Vegas but it lacks weapon variety.

My reasoning for the badness of Fallout 4's combat is: Terrible AI. In older games, such as condemned criminal origins, FEAR, Stalker or even Half-Life 1, enemies hid, flanked, used cover effectively, dealt with snipers well, and had smart stealth mechanics. In fallout 4, you can be 1000 miles away and miss a shot with a suppressed weapon, and every enemy from Gunner's Plaza to Downtown Boston knows your exact location. There's no losing them in combat like in Watch Dogs, no cover based stealth like Deus Ex, nothing. Also, enemies don't react at all to being hit. What's up with that? The reason people think the fallout 4 gunplay is great is because it has fluid animations, working ironsights with transitions, and smooth fluid movement. But you see almost no reaction from the Environment or enemies when you hit them, enemies are as dumb as ever, running at you with a switchblade, popping out of cover for ages, flanking in plain sight. The game is praised for being competent compared to previous titles, a running theme with fallout 4 critics, sadly.

ahyuser001 wrote:

New Vegas certainly has a good assortment of weapons to choose from compared to Fallout 4 where you only get one of each weapon category(except assault rifles).

It just turns me off when guns do not behave like guns as seen with how guns behave in New Vegas especially if it is a cool looking gun like the assault rifle(I used the word gun too many times huh). I guess it is a subjective argument but that is what I look at when I rate a game's gun play and by that Fallout 4's gun play is superior to New Vegas but it lacks weapon variety.

AGREE! fo4 was a step forward and a step back weapon/ weapon variety wise. like for example the game should have had a pump action shotgun it for starters. and the whole going to a bench to change a weapon to armor piercing is kinda bad VS in new vegas changing your ammo type to AP rounds was not only a good mechanic but it made logical sense.  also requiring a bench to install attachments was kinda a bad thing as well. i can see using a bench to upgrade gun internals or creating attachments but not for installing scopes or silencers/suppressors.

Hmm, I think I have to respectively disagree on that statement. I felt Fallout 4 was a big improvement over the previous titles. Even with some recoil mods and fixes for the artificial weapon sway New Vegas/3 had it still feels janky (probably a limitation of Gamebryo).

I do however miss having different ammo types you could craft and weapon/armour degradation. It's what made hording viable in New Vegas.

That being said, whether it was an improvement or not it lead to the series being an FPS with RPG elements and not the other way around. I also agree on the dumb "scope bobble" that 4 had. It was like Battlefield 4's recoil before it was patched years ago.

I mean I'd love the next Elder Scrolls to have Dark Messiah's combat system, but not at the cost of skimming out the other elements of what the series is known for.

I agree that FO4 had bad shooting, but that's all I really agree with here. I don't think FEAR was "the greatest shooter of all time". That's a very bold claim to any shooter. It was fairly mediocre. You held ass loads of ammo so you could go through the whole game just using 1 gun. Pretty much every weapon was accurate so they didn't have downsides. They were also all fairly powerful. You could probably beat the whole game with just a pistol. The little gimmick they had where you use the D-Pad to lean, while ok in concept, never really had much use. I never found myself using it because it was awkward and could end up screwing you over because your thumb would have to leave the movement stick. Just peering around the corner by moving an inch was easier and didn't make much of a difference. If they simply did it automatically when you were against a wall like most shooters do, I think it would have been better and used more. So I don't agree that FEAR is the epitome of shooters. It was pretty average as far as shooting mechanics go.

FO4 shooting, in my opinion, was actually worse than NV. Sure, it looked more fluid and prettier, but that was about it. I can't tell you how many times my reticle was lined up perfectly around an enemies head with not even a sliver of a gap at point blank range ended up missing multiple shots. At least in NV, you hit what you were aiming at(provided it was an accurate gun). Full auto in 4 was not viable at all due to the terrible accuracy and the brutal recoil. Not only that, but ammo in general was harder to stockpile unless it was .38. I find myself not touching my 5.56 rifle for hours so I can save up a measly 300-400 rounds so I can actually use the gun to its fullest extent. The DLC weapons are the worst in this regard unless you're in the DLC lands where the ammo is more plentiful. Good luck finding 7.72 in the Commonwealth. Your handmade rifle will be empty in a few shootouts and become dead weight. Merchants were also a problem in that they barely sold enough ammo. They'd sell enough .38, shotgun(assuming you weren't going full auto), 10mm, and .308, but fusioncell, cryo, flame, 5mm, and 5.56 were only sold in small quantities so they really weren't viable. Then they made it so all merchants take forever to restock which made stockpiling enough ammo even more tedious.

Then there is also the issue with the guns in 4 just being garbage. A fully upgraded sniper should be an incredibly deadly weapon, not a gun that takes multiple shots to kill a target with 3rof, and more swaying than a country barn dance. Snipers were not worth it at all. Pretty much every weapon was just as bad. Poor damage, poor selection, poor recoil, etc. Because they were so weak and had poor accuracy with high recoil, you had to use more ammo, but that coincides with the fact that stockpiling ammo was a huge hassle. There was a reason why the default weapon of most players was the rattling laser. It was powerful, ammo was actually easier to stockpile as 1 core would last you a long time with the right perks, and was automatic with tolerable recoil. It was meant to be the gun that you used sparingly, but it's actually the smarter choice of weaponry due to all the problems I mentioned. It doesn't have good range, but how often do you really need to snipe in the game? Even with a silenced rifle in full stealth gear you may only get 1 stealth kill because for some reason every enemy can hear the shell casing hit the floor. Stealth was absolutely terrible in FO4 which effected combat. In NV, you could actually manage to stealth kill an entire base with practically no points on stealth, but even with maxed out stealth skills in 4 with a silenced gun and sneak gear, you can be spotted easily.

So I'd say that NV had better shooting mechanics. Sure, it was clunky and wasn't as pretty looking, but the recoil was reasonable, ammo was plentiful and easy to stockpile(aside form mini-nukes), and the guns weren't inaccurate as hell. The guns, while not perfect, were good. Sure, they had some balancing issues in the sense that you mostly ever found early game weapons, no matter how far you were into the game(I get that they don't want a level 1 player finding a marksman carbine, but it'd be nice if they made the enemies get new weapons instead of using cowboy repeaters for the entirety of the game). The weapon condition was also a good factor. It affected how useful your gun was in fights so you had to swap out your weapons based on how much HP it had and not just based on the combat situation and how much ammo you had for it. In 4, given at how pretty much every weapon is samey, you could use nothing but a 10mm pistol for every situation and not notice.

@"RangerGUN" You can`t really compare an action open-world rpg with a fps. The fps is just that, a shooter, the gunplay is essential in this genre, whereas the open-world rpg has to focus on much more things( FEAR = linear, one core game mechanic , Fallout 4 = open world, several mechanics). Don`t get me wrong, Fallout 4 is a terrible, terrible game compared to its predecessors, mediocre in everything and horrible as a rpg. But if you expect such a game to have gunplay as good as a genre, that almost solely focuses on combat, you maybe have unrealistic expectations to the devs and their time on hand. Last but not least, several points you mentioned have nothing to do with gunplay at all. Although i agree that FO4's AI is terrible and several weapon designs are just awful, they have no relation to gunplay, but to gameplay in general. Again, in my opinion FO4 is the weakest of the "modern" Fallouts, but its gunplay is a vast improvement over the previous games in certain areas. Controlling, aiming and firering the guns got much better in FO4. In comparison to New Vegas, almost every gun feels the same to shoot, and it doesn't really make a difference if you mod the weapon or not, still feels quite the same. I still consider the gunplay of FO4 better, because it made combat more playable than before.

I personally hated most (if not all) the weapons we got in FO4. FNV is superior in terms of gunplay in most regards. The weapon sounds in FO4 were all terrible for the most part (underwhelming and weak).

I also feel that the weapon animations were too basic. Reloading wasn't intense and there wasn't enough going on for the animations to be engaging. That being said, I don't think that animations need to be extremely flashy either (Battlefield 4 comes to mind) but I do think there is a balancing act between practicality and visual engagement.  

Compare that to FNV which has much better sound design and weapon animation for a game that was released years before FO4. Not saying that New Vegas has perfect gunplay by any means, but I resonate with the argument being made here.

Overall, I think this is an important discussion to have. Defining gunplay is what I feel is sort of difficult for most people because it could encompass many aspects of the game that others wouldn't even think about.

Oh great... Another one of 'these' posts. For Pete's sake...
I'm not even going to weigh in and go against the popular opinion.
I don't speak for all of us - But those of us who appreciate Fallout 4 in some form or another get dreadfully tired of having to debate the obvious against some really steadfast bias.

@IIHawkerII It's a discussion about fallout 4's shitty AI and gunplay, dude. Can you not see that, or do you just look at any criticism of fallout 4 and call it a circle jerk?

The only thing I disliked in Fallout 4's combat system with ranged weapons was the huge crosshairs and not being able to repair weapons. New Vegas had perks tied to interacting with your weapons more such as Jury Rigging. I also agree with RecceSniper on the weapon animations. I enjoyed most of the pistol and assault rifle animations in Fallout New Vegas but in Fallout 4 it's like your character doesn't even care if they get shot at, they will reload in the most calm manner possible.

@Jacksonelhage
My problem is the complete lack of objectivity when comparing elements of the two games.
Particularly when speaking to gunplay, and that's leaving out combat as a whole...

People pull out the old 'Well, I like this part in New Vegas more than this part in Fallout 4' therefore New Vegas's is good and 4's is poor. I can't believe some of these statements... Enemy AI in NV? You mean running backward and unloading your weapon or getting onto a high rock where the enemy can't reach you and watching them charge into the rock below you? Hell... In Fallout 4 at-least enemies take cover and use grenades...
VATS has been improved, Animations are far easier on the eyes (Even if you don't like them, you can't ignore how stiff the animations in NV look these days.), The implementation of gun-bashing and a grenade hotkey as standard? Better laser and plasma effects, extensive weapon modification... It's going to be hard to stand there and say NV has better gunplay than Fallout 4 and that the formula regressed instead of being improved on.

( Apparently I have to state it, but I'm far from a fan of Fallout 4. I consider New Vegas the superior title - But credit where credit is due. )

@IIHawkerII You do realize the hypocrisy in your posts right? You criticize people for saying they liked older aspects more and then do the exact opposite. How exactly is that any different than what you're doing? Also, if you don't want to read threads like this you could simply not click on them. There are plenty of other things to jump in on.

Not everyone liked the changes in 4's combat and you have to accept that. While I did like the grenade hotkey, that's about it. The bashing was far too OP to the point that it did more damage than some guns. You could 1-hit raiders with bashing. Pretty much eliminates the need for a CQC gun like a shotgun. The enemy AI was hardly an improvement. While it was nice that they would seek cover, it also made them run away far too often and most fights I got in ended up with me having to hunt down the one raider who hid behind a wall(not running away) as if waiting for me. The weapon modification system was good in concept, but poorly executed. Some weapons had horrible modifications. Like the Flamer. It had weak damage so you had to give it modifications to be stronger, but in doing so, you sacrificed all of it's already limited range. It pretty much becomes a useless weapon because at that range you might as well run the 5 foot distance and melee them once. Modifying weapons also became a necessity rather than a luxury. Morgan Freeman forbid I want my gun to look cool, but you have to sacrifice appearance for any edge you can get because of how terrible all the guns are. There's a reason why one of the top mods on the Nexus is a damage overhaul mod. It's because of that mod that I can now make my weapons look cool without having to worry about scraping up any damage boost I can manage. 4 also dropped the ball on enemies in general. All you basically ever fight is Raiders, super mutants who feel just like raiders, and mirelurks who like to run away often. The only times you really see anything else is if you're in the glowing sea in which case you come across scorpions which instantly pop up behind you and deathclaws. What really sucked with the enemies was the leveling system. They kept getting tougher with each level you got. That's ok for early game, but once you get to mid game, it defeats the purpose of levelling up and once you max out every stat, you reached your peak but they still keep climbing. So at level 100+, you have a set limit to how much damage you can put out, but enemies keep getting more and more health. I remember one file I was like level 140 and I had to run around spraying nearly 1000 fusion cell shots from one of my strongest guns against 4 skull scorpions, 3 hunter scorpions, and 2 other kinds I can't remember the names of. It just turned into me running in circles(just like your criticism of NV about jumping on rocks), but this one took about 15 minutes. That's not good combat. That's boring as shit. There's another bad thing about the enemies as well. All enemies have these different types like Glowing, albino, hunter, etc, but the loot is always the same. It really takes the rewarding feeling out of beating a tougher enemy when it drops the same junk items as the weakest variant. It'd be nice if the bigger ones dropped more to compensate, but they don't. This made me avoid fighting many enemies because I couldn't be bothered. I didn't feel compelled to kill them unless they got in my way. At least in NV, the different variants of enemies usually had different loot to go with their different health and strength. I felt compelled to kill those enemies because the reward was a nice gun or armor that I could sell for a good price. The rewards in 4 were pieces of armor or weak guns that were a dime a dozen because 4 lacked any real variety in terms of guns and armor. Sorry, I just don't consider a bolt-action pipe rifle or a double barrel shotgun a good reason to clear out those raiders. The total value of those guns would be a handful of caps while clearing out a group of NV raiders could give you some guns that could be repaired and yield a couple hundred caps.

So in my opinion, FO4 had a shiny new paintjob for combat and a grenade hotkey for pros. The cons heavily outweigh them in my opinion. I don't feel any satisfaction when I kill enemies. I only felt relief that I didn't have to hunt them down or deal with instant tele-digging enemies anymore.

@Wertologist You've missed the point. People can like or dislike whatever they choose - My problem is when people put something down based on subjective opinions. You can dislike the improvements made to gunplay, that's your perogative - But please, atleast acknowledge that they are in-fact improvements, be objective.

If I were to buy two cars, a classy vintage one and a flashy sports car - Sure, I might like the vintage car a lot more personally based on my tastes, but I have to acknowledge that the sports car certainly is a lot faster.
Hopefully you get the analogy and better understand my post.

( And I'll be honest, I didn't read the huge block of un-formatted text, just skimmed over it. )
EDIT: Have now - Let's go one by one.

- Gun-bashing, yup. OP in some areas where you were fighting enemies way below your level or sneaking up on people on the easiest difficulty. To be honest, I'd rather have 'easy' gun bashing than none at all.

- Enemy AI hiding, sounds subjective to me. Would be perfectly reasonable to run and hide if you're the last one standing with a guy that just shot up all your mates. Works with my logic.

- As opposed to FNV's similar visual modifications albeit fewer of them with less choice? To be honest, I've never had an issue where I had to sacrifice the look I wanted in a weapon for stats. ( And I'll always take style over stats. )

- Calling BS on enemy types - In all honesty, you should be saying that about NV. You're 99% of the time going to be fighting human enemies - Whereas in F4, every bloody beast in the commonwealth had it's own unique gimmick. Molerats tunnel, Bloodbugs drain you and spit it back, Sentry bots, Radscorpions, ghoul dismemberment, etc, etc - Almost every enemy type had a special tactic that was most effective against them. Whereas in NV, the most mechanically complex enemy I can remember are the Nightkin popping out of stealth.

- I'll definitely agree that the levelling system was a huge flop in F4, while it was nice to never be caught mid level up like in 3 or NV, it sacrificed way too much in terms of gameplay. ( And if a fight turns into a drawn out 15 minute laser show, maybe you should consider retreating? )

- I've got literally no Idea what you're talking about as to loot. I thought it was comparable with NV as to selling prices with a plus (Albeit slight one) in the legendary system which would often make finishing off legendary enemies a nice little cap investment. ( Also, again, you're comparing human enemies to non-human enemies, what you get from one is what they have equipped. But I'll agree that NV definitely had more variety in loot. But that's outside of gunplay. )

Howdy all

Well I actually like each for being unique honestly.
My take is this:
Fallout 4:
I loved the graphics and animations, the lighting and such really got better as well as character creation and customizing.  Weapon animations and movements felt like they had weight and was all around better.
When playing in third person watching your character move their torso and everything it feels more like they are actually moving and interacting with the ground they are running on as opposed to fallout 3 and NV where there legs move but it feels like they are just floating on the ground.

What I didnt like in Fallout 4, the story where you are pretty stuck being a parent and looking for your kid but are always sidetracked by stupid things like planting potatoes, honestly if someone took my kid alot of people would die, and there would not be alot of talking involved, that just made the game kind of unbelievable for me.. voiced protagonist felt unnecessary, at least to me.  I was hoping for a larger variety of guns and armor in the Vanilla game and the overall design of the weapons was pretty underwhelming.

Now,
Fallout NV
What I liked: The story was good, It felt that there was alot you could do on your way to get revenge.  Interactions with groups and factions greatly affected the story.  Caesars Legion, were suppose to be the bad guys, but realistically factions like that I can see spring up after a nuke war.  They were believable unlike the Evil faction in Fallout 4, the Institute.. which is the Enclave but they speak softer to you. (Genocide, Human experimentation, taking and experimenting on settlements crops then killing the settlement, Genetic Superiority the whole thing).  Fallout NV BOS was also better and they didnt try to make them "dirty" like in fallout 4, Bethesda realizing that Fallout 3 BOS was too good high and noble and wanting harder faction choices made them harsher which was how they were suppose to be (In NV) as opposed to Fallout 4 where the BOS (were not explained well at all, its just they show up to fight the institute).  So definitely the factions in NV are better as well as the story.

Now what i didnt like about NV:
Customizing weapons in New Vegas was kind of bland, even after gun runners, you had different types of ammo but it felt largely the same on all of my play through. Weapon degradation.... was fucking retarded I can not imagine anything else so dumb... I fired a full magazine out of a weapon that has full health if not almost full health and the weapon breaks.  If this were the case wars would be fought with sticks and stones.  The weapon degradation aspects felt so far removed from anything it was game breaking and I had to mod that first thing.

The animations were really bad in third person, your character seemed weightless and almost floated over the land while their legs kicked (not run, not walk... it felt like they just kicked and flailed). When you turn at the Torso in third person it had the appearance that your upper body wasnt even really attached to your lower body and was more a turret than a whole person.

so, the TL;DR for all the impatient people with the attention span of a gold fish is this:

Fallout 4:
Good: Animations, Lighting, Character Creation and over all Graphics Improvements
Bad: Story and Factions felt awkward, lack of good weapon selections (not modding choices of weapons just variety of weapons to mod), Voiced Protagonist.

Fallout NV:
Good: Story was unique (Nothing so noble just pure and simple revenge) Factions didnt feel like cookie cut outs and cliche.  The DLC felt Amazing, the new areas felt worth the money.
Bad: Animations, graphics (it was an older game, but even then vanilla stuff felt kinda...) Lack of good Vanilla weapon Variety even with gun runners.

@IIHawkerII
>You've missed the point. People can like or dislike whatever they choose - My problem is when people put something down based on subjective opinions.

But that's the whole point of the thread. Our opinions of the changes. Opinions, by definition, are subjective. You're complaining about people giving opinions in a thread about opinions while you do the exact same thing.

>But please, atleast acknowledge that they are in-fact improvements, be objective.

Except not everyone agrees they are improvements. Not everyone agrees that the pros outweigh the cons. Just as a lot of people didn't think Windows 8 was an improvement of Windows 7. Just because it comes out after does not mean it is an improvement. As you just said, that's subjective. Why is it bad when others dislike it and it's just their opinions, but when you like it, it's objective? I thought I was very fair and objective in my reviews of the game, but you still gave my a rep down and didn't even show how you disagreed with anything I said. That just shows salt.

Here's the definition of improve: make or become better. "Better" is entirely subjective in this situation which is what everyone but you is talking about in this thread. So how is someone not liking the completely subjective "improvements" not being objective when the whole point of the thread was to discuss our thoughts and opinions on the combat? By default, any discussion about whether something was "good" or "bad" is entirely subjective and opinion based. Why is it factual when you chime in?

>If I were to buy two cars, a classy vintage one and a flashy sports car - Sure, I might like the vintage car a lot more personally based on my tastes, but I have to acknowledge that the sports car certainly is a lot faster.

Except that's not an accurate analogy to this situation. What you deem as "better" is entirely subjective. It's your opinion. It's not factual so stop trying to act like it is. A better analogy would be that you're trying to make a sandwich and have the option of plain bread or toasted bread. Your PB&J might be more enjoyable one way more than the other. Some might consider toasting the bread to be an improvement, but that's not to your taste as you don't like the crunch. It's entirely subjective when talking about "improvements".

> And I'll be honest, I didn't read the huge block of un-formatted text, just skimmed over it.

So you just downrepped it without even reading it? You sound saltier than the dead sea, brah.

>Gun-bashing, yup. OP in some areas where you were fighting enemies way below your level or sneaking up on people on the easiest difficulty. To be honest, I'd rather have 'easy' gun bashing than none at all.

On the easiest difficulty? I play on the hardest and most enemies go down with one bash. Once you max out that bash skill, they drop like flies. Your bashing becomes stronger than bullets. I'd rather have no mechanic than a mechanic that makes the game stupidly easy. That's how you make it boring.

>Enemy AI hiding, sounds subjective to me. Would be perfectly reasonable to run and hide if you're the last one standing with a guy that just shot up all your mates. Works with my logic.

Not subjective. I'm telling you what happened. This one is factual. Most of the time, they aren't hiding. The AI makes them run behind a wall/object to get cover to shoot, but most of the time that wall/object they choose is on the other side of the complex past all the other walls/objects they could hide behind so then I have to scour the whole building to find the one raider who ran across a factory to find a better shot. They weren't running and begging for mercy. Their guns were up and they shot me as soon as I walked around the corner. The AI is far from flawless. I wouldn't call it an improvement when I have to deal with this constantly.

>As opposed to FNV's similar visual modifications albeit fewer of them with less choice? To be honest, I've never had an issue where I had to sacrifice the look I wanted in a weapon for stats. ( And I'll always take style over stats. )

I never said NV's weapon modification was good. I just said that 4's was bad and hurt the game rather than help it. They didn't properly flesh out the modification system so it backfired. It very well could have been great if they actually fleshed it out, but they didn't. I know NV's isn't that great. I never even implied I thought it was. Don't make so many assumptions.

>Calling BS on enemy types - In all honesty, you should be saying that about NV. You're 99% of the time going to be fighting human enemies - Whereas in F4, every bloody beast in the commonwealth had it's own unique gimmick. Molerats tunnel, Bloodbugs drain you and spit it back, Sentry bots, Radscorpions, ghoul dismemberment, etc, etc - Almost every enemy type had a special tactic that was most effective against them. Whereas in NV, the most mechanically complex enemy I can remember are the Nightkin popping out of stealth.

Which most of those enemies are not too common. Like 80% of fights I got into were with raiders, mutants, and mirelurks. They are by far the most frequent enemies in the game. After multiple playthroughs, I've only really killed a handful of bloodbugs and most of those kills were from starting a new game with the two scripted ones by the dead brahmin. Ghoul dismemberment was cool, but it's overshadowed at how annoying ghouls became to fight. Them constantly dodging your already inaccurate guns became annoying real fast. Molerats and scorpions were annoying to fight because they would be halfway across the map, dig down, then appear directly behind you almost instantaneously. If you were fighting more than one, one of them was bound to dig back down even if it was right next to you and you have to sit and wait for it to come back up. That gets old real fast.

But way to ignore everything I focused on when I mentioned the poor variety. The whole reason I mentioned variety is because there were big problems with it and you just glossed over those so you could pick one part. Yeah, if you take a list of the types of enemies in both, they'd both look fairly diverse. What you need to look at is how often you'll be fighting said diverse enemies. The most common enemies you'll be fighting in 4 are the main 3 I mentioned. Raiders, super mutants, and mirelurks. Most of the locations in the game(and therefor quests) are in the city which is the raider and mutant territory so you will be fighting those mostly. Yeah, you'd probably fight the other ones a bit more often if you went outside the city, but you rarely ever need to do that. Far more quests are inside the raider/mutant territory than there are outside them so you will be fighting those most often. The major downside to that is that they both feel practically the same and are everywhere. Every other street corner is a raider/mutant checkpoint. It'd be a bit more excusable if there was more variety in them, but pretty much every raider is the exact same and only differ in how much health they have. Mutants are worse in that they're just raiders with more health and less variety. Mirelurks are only common because there is so much water. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it gets boring and annoying having to fight so many. They have broken AI too. They often run from me because the AI tells them the path to me isn't the one directly between us so they run around looking for a way to get to me which means I have to hunt them down(like the problem with the raiders). So I don't consider it more diverse because you're mostly fighting 3 enemy types which two of them are practically the same.

Yeah, NV had you fighting mostly humans, but at least those humans had variety. They all weren't just carrying pipe weapons and leather armor. Some carried equivalent comparable to pipe gun weapons while some others carried throwing spears. Some carried snipers while some carried lasers. Some charged you with actually lethal melee weapons while some sprayed you with miniguns/incinerators. They all shared the same AI which I won't claim is good, but they all felt different because their weapons/armor made them different. In 4, thanks to the incredibly limited weapon variety, enemies couldn't have this advantage. You'd find one raider with a pipe rifle and another with a pipe rifle with a slightly bigger magazine. They still feel exactly the same. This effects how enjoyable they are to fight and therefor how enjoyable the combat in the game was. A lot of people didn't like it. A lot of people don't think it was an improvement.

>And if a fight turns into a drawn out 15 minute laser show, maybe you should consider retreating?

Yeah, run from a small army of radscorpions who run faster than me and can tele-dig right next to me. The issue wasn't that I couldn't handle them. Their hits weren't that dangerous. It was the fact that it was far too time consuming to be considered enjoyable. A lot of fights turn into this when you're level 100+ thanks to the garbage leveling system.

>I've got literally no Idea what you're talking about as to loot. I thought it was comparable with NV as to selling prices with a plus (Albeit slight one) in the legendary system which would often make finishing off legendary enemies a nice little cap investment. ( Also, again, you're comparing human enemies to non-human enemies, what you get from one is what they have equipped. But I'll agree that NV definitely had more variety in loot. But that's outside of gunplay. )

The selling prices for weapons in 4 was trash. Even with maxed out perks, you get jack for selling looted gear because they're all so crappy. It made it not worth it to even loot the bodies unless they were legendary enemies. In NV, you could loot all the guns, repair them, then sell them for a sizable amount and buy ammo. In 4, you might as well just stick to selling water for caps as looting guns isn't profitable at all. Yeah, legendary enemies dropped some semi-valuable gear, but most enemies were not legendary so that doesn't really help the point. And yeah I'm talking about humanoid enemies because they are by far the most common enemies you will be fighting in 4. But even the non-humanoid enemies suffer from this. Let's say you need some deathclaw meat. You have two options. Either go after the regular deathclaw down the hill or go after the albino deathclaw on the other side of the hill. Both have the same loot drops so you'd have no reason to go after the albino one. If the tougher creatures had better drops than the weaker ones then you'd have a reason to go after them like maybe make it so they drop more meat, but they don't. NV's creatures suffers from this to a degree, but 4 does it far worse.

@SgtSpectre What weapon were you using that broke after one mag? I find that incredibly hard to believe even as an exaggeration. Even if you have the trait that makes them have less health, they still last a good while if at full HP. Like, the Varmint Rifle is one of the worst guns in the game and at full health it can be fired 595 times before it breaks. The equivalent to 119 reloads. I found the weapon degradation a key part of what made combat enjoyable. It made it so you had to swap out your weapons rather than only use one weapon. In 4, you could clear a whole city block of raider camps out with a 10mm pistol. In NV, to do that, you'd want to swap out weapons to avoid breaking them and that could change how you fight as well. Another key aspect of the weapons degrading is it affected the buying/selling prices. You could sell a few .357 revolvers in poor condition to get some ammo or a decent condition rifle to get more ammo. Keeping guns in good condition meant that you could sell them for better prices. This helped make the game better. In 4, pretty much all looted guns sell for the same pittance so there was no real point in looting them. In NV, if your weapon was in poor condition, you could run over to a few dead enemies, grab their weapons, repair them, then be right back into the fight with their own guns. It affected how you fought and how good trading was. I enjoyed that and consider it a plus.

@Wertologist The point of the thread is 'Why Fallout 4 doesn't have good gunplay' - Not, what were your thoughts on the gunplay in Fallout 4. And seriously - You're not even trying, going to hop out of the thread before we completely derail it.

As for down-voting, I did so because you down-voted mine. That's kind of obvious. Hold the 'salt' for yourself, you didn't even acknowledge the points I made in NV's favor. Which makes it sound like you're just out for an argument.