FO4, more testing gameplay

nah, i'm still on the OG version never updated my game because i'm not stupid like most people lol, but yeah i do sometimes listen to podcasts while i game, mostly listen to music though.

@KEEPER: Oh? How did you manage that? An offline pirated copy? Because that's one certain way to avoid forced updates.

@Toki: on PC through steam you change FO4's appmanifest file to read only and that prevents the updates, but also only run the game on the script extender only, also if you are on GOG, they haven't muddied the water with any of the next gen updates. you can do the same thing with any game so long as it has an appmanifest file.

@KEEPER: Cool. I have Windows 7 though so I have no choice but to pirate games that require Steam spyware. This is assuming I can buy the game on disc to begin with. No disc version = no buy/pirate it. I don't buy NFTs.

@KEEPER: I just watched a game of Fallout Dust. A true hostile wasteland experience. Rips out all the boring modernized NPC dialogue. The older games had more masculinity in this regard. Instead Dust has enemies everywhere in high numbers. There's another mod for FO4 called Fallout Frost made by the same team. Dust is New Vegas. Unfortunately there's no trading, Barter it seems. Only a few non-hostile NPCs around.

@Toki: i played Frost it was tough, but i didn't like the gameplay loop, it was too empty too hard to use a gun lol, like i started off with a 10 mm gun and the sway on that gun from the Frost mod made me miss damn near every shot, requiring me to only fight with melee, like people talk about how great survival is in FO4 but they don't have a fucking clue what survival is until they try Frost on easy difficulty lol, and the power armor is so god damn slow and everything is so damn hard to do or use, it is brutal. i honestly couldn't do a full playthrough, i did it for about a day and i wanted something more forgiving, so instead of using Frost i opted to using the nuclear winter mod and played it with the survival mod called Advanced needs 76, which was a more perfect way to play, nuclear winter mod is kind of cool as it adds cold and warmth to the game, it's something that i thought Frost would add to the game but all they did was made radiation more plentiful, i get the idea behind Frost as a concept of the events during the nuclear winter setting after the great war, everything is supposed to be dark cold and wet and toxic as hell, i mean if you like survival it's great for you, but i'm not that much into survival as a setting, it's fun every once in a while but it's not really addicting unless that's the only thing you enjoy, i mean at that point you might as well ditch FO altogether and just play a game that has all these mechanics and more built-into the game and there are plenty of indy games that offer this, but for myself the game has to have a story and some other elements to make that gameplay loop fun and engaging, like if it doesn't have a story and i mean a real story backing it, than for myself it's simply not worth playing for very long, i might play it for a little bit, but eventually i will go back to the story because that's what i crave the most. like an example of a game i tried to get into was No Mans Sky, it's a great proc gen resource survival game, but it's not fun to me because it has pretty much no story, not saying Starfield is any better, i wouldn't know since i have not played the game, but based on ppl's reviews it looks like trash, however i have played NMS and that game looks much worse on every spectrum except for flying your ship outside of that it's no diffrent from Starfield except that Starfield has a story, poorly written sure, but it still has a story in which NMS doesn't, i have tried to get into NMS many times and every time they do an update to that game it gets worse imo because they focus too much on the proc gen mechanics and avoid the story, to myself that's just meaningless gameplay something only an Autist could get into and think is good.

@Toki: the older games did have dialogue even the isometric games had dialogue, sure the dialogue wasn't this modern audience nonsense i agree with that. i find it a little weird people prefer the silent protagonist, i happen to like that bethesda gave the player a voice for once, i mean god damn bethesda has been living in the past forever so to me it was nice having them join the 21st century for once, but i also understand the perspective against it when people want to read the text in their voice and tone, instead i feel bethesda should present the dialogue for all gamers and make that a built-in function that the player can switch on or off at any time, because there will always be players who hate it and some who like it, one good thing bethesda did recently in Starfield is they made the survival mechanics involve choice in how the player wants to play in survival instead of a base way to play in survival, so it offers more freedom in how someone wants to play it, so in the future you are playing with a cool mod that changes the gameplay and you need to make an adjustment you can do it through this menu, this is what i feel most of their games need when it comes to the choices in the mechanics and how they work, they still need to fix player choice when it comes to story and missions and improving on their writing but the mechanics need to reflect a lot more choice in playstyles.

there is also an optional thing they can do about player dialogue, and it involves an LLM, i would prefer an LLM that is trained to be offline because i hate online only games, but my guess is they would focus more on online LLM's that they can constantly update the game with, i have already seen modders make this happen using programs such as ChatGPT and some other programs to make it possible, basically modders have created a way to talk to NPC's in skyrim using only their voice and their own words instead of written dialogue, so they can use their own voice and their own words however they like and the NPC which is being powered by AI will respond to the player with an AI response that has been integrated into the games lore and character, the issue with this setup is it is very complicated, game devs would have to figure out a way to make this work, my guess is they would have to jump in on VR more to make something like this possible, include a mic on the headset is my guess and from there all the game needs is to offer this kind of interaction with NPC's in the game that are trained on the lore of the game and can offer support for voices to these NPC's and response time to the player, the online LLM's seem to have a dramatic delay in responses which is why i like the idea of an offline LLM that can respond much faster. this is my prediction in how gaming in the future will exist.

i thought you moved to Linux the last time we chat?

@KEEPER: I obviously haven't looked at Frost because I hate 4. However I did notice the gun sway in Dust. I generally don't really care about story in games. At least not too much of it. One of the few games I enjoy talking to NPCs is Vampire Bloodlines 1. I never got Linux or anything. I simply use older Windows which isn't a problem most of the time. The fact Steam stopped working just made my decision easy. I don't have to use that obnoxious app anymore to simply load up a single player game. ("Update required. Buy Starfield Early Access.") I despise advertising and have more free room on my drives because Steam itself takes up GBs.

@KEEPER: If you like amusing dialogue I advise checking out Fallout 1 and 2. Those games have more realistic gender roles for example. It's simply brutal all-around. There's a few characters who get voices and animated faces. I prefer not to have my character's voice in an RPG that lets you design your own character. From what I remember Nora's voice is quite sexy so at least there's that. It could have been much worse.

@Toki: yeah i agree because that's exactly what i would do if i couldn't afford to upgrade, hell right now i'm on win ten but i have a few copies of Linux versions on a flashdrive ready to make the move when it's needed, but my machine can't make it to win 11 even if i wanted to make the move i can't and it's a blessing in disguise i suppose, and i agree with your mentality when it comes to update required bullshit, i hate that shit with a passion, and it's even worse for some game developer's i no longer purchase any games from like Ubisoft that force their fucking account bullshit and launcher bullshit on players, but it's not just Ubi that pulls this kind of shit, it's rockstar, take 2, EA, like fuck all these dipshits, or i almost forgot the biggest one PSN, i will never accept that shit no matter what.

@Toki: i don't mind the players voice, for both Nate or Nora, i think they both sound fine but i get why some players don't like it, it's just some written dialogue that bethesda creates in games like Oblivion or Skyrim or FO3 always felt uncanny valley and off to me, the silent protag mentality is nice some of the time, a lot of people explain that they can't get into the whole voiced protag thing because they want to read the text in their voice using their own tone, but in my experience my own voice reading the text isn't always so perfect, you don't always get the tone through the text because they put in text that says something you wouldn't normally say even though the character is supposed to be you, it just never feels like you either way, so that's one reason why i prefer the voice acting of the player because the tone for that written line is what was written for that tone and charactor, however i could see a game one day hopefully in the future that uses an well trained LLM that interfaces with the players voice so there is no longer a need for written text from the players perspective, meaning you can use your own words and your own tone during any conversation with the NPC in question who has been trained in the lore of the game and doesn't break that 4th wall to the degree that they still feel like they are apart of the game. i saw some modders do something like this as an experimental mod for skyrim and it's not half bad, but this is the only thing i would agree to take out the voiced player because you can truly use your own words and express them the way you want and that could really make it all transformative in gameplay, problem is this would require a mic on the players side, i suppose they would make VR headsets work like this, but i feel it should be open to all technologies that provide a mic for the player instead of a dedicated controller for that kind of interface, you know it's funny but i think they could have created something like this in the xbox connect days as that device was built for voice commands, i used it in skyrim mostly for shouts, but it would have been cool for NPC dialogue, but back then they wouldn't have been able to do the offline LLM AI thing, the technology just wasn't all there.

@Toki: but yeah i like a game that has a story, otherwise i might play it for half a day, but then i will crave something else that has a story driven kind of deal, bethesda does ok, i know some people don't like their writing and to a degree they are right, but i feel some people just pile on because it's what everyone else is doing, and i'm an individual and try to have my own opinions on things and try not to jump in with the mob attacking something, i have my own thoughts and opinions, but some of their arguments i agree with, not all of them as some people like to make shit up just to pour more gasoline on a fire to get more engagement for their content, an example i listen to a mostly grounded guy in gaming named Luke Stephens, and like i said he's mostly grounded in his advice, but there are times where he will repeat a lie like most modders left Starfield when it was only one dude, the rest of the modders are still modding the game now, but because that lie became popular and people kept saying it as a definitive truth, everyone now believes the lie, and so he comes off disingenuous and a liar because he perpetuated the lie himself without questioning anything, but generally i agree with his takes as i believe he has a lot of good thoughts on any given topic when it comes to gaming. so again i try not to become one with the mob and try to have my own thoughts and opinions on things.

@KEEPER: I could technically afford to get a new PC right now with newer OS. However if it ain't broke don't fix it. In the last five years I saw two games I wanted but they require Windows 10. I can live without them. I just hope it never affects internet sites such as this one or YT. I find it so strange how Steam did that. Backroom deal with Microsoft? Either way lesson learned about paying money for digital products. It's my mistake as well as Steam. The best thing about Steam is how easy it is to use Workshop mods for some games. It's just click to add, even easier than Nexus Mod Manager. Also the screenshot and artwork sections can be filled with amusing memes or 2D waifus. The discussions are a shitshow however. Arguments everywhere about everything including lots of woke people wanting Steam to ban sexy New Vegas mods or something.

@KEEPER: For writing I find Fallout 3 to be extremely boring and sanitized. I like the game though because of the wasteland which only has random encounters and hostiles. The small amount of safe zones such as Megaton. Lots of exploring without friendly NPC faction right around the corner. NV is far better with story and factions. More interesting NPCs to talk to. But it's still sort of cucked sometimes compared to the classic games. I wish there was more open space without NCR and Legion camps everywhere. I don't even know how Starfield works. I assume it's Fallout 4 with more cash shop purchases required. Housing, inventory, weapons, vehicles, all with a credit card. It seems more optional in Fallout 4 because you still have the command console I hope.

@Toki: yeah there is always woke retards trying to bring everyone and everything to their level of morality and often end up fucking things up for the rest of us who just want to game in peace, i tried the modding on steam when i first came to PC back then i didn't understand how to install from the nexus and even viewed the site as if it was a scam or somewhere i could potentially get viruses from, eventually though i watched youtubers who did mod reviews of mods used on the nexus and my fear of possible viruses were lowered and eventually i learned how to use the site, now at the time they didn't have the stupid restrictions outside of what was legal content, clearly anything copyright was shut down or deleted, but they didn't have anything against nude mods or sex mods it was a great place, steam was a bit more held back on that aspect as they didn't want that stuff, but someone could easily get away with it as steam doesn't really check what people are uploading, but there will always be the special retard woke morons who fuck it up for everyone else who gets shit shut down.

@Toki: i don't know if it was a backdoor thing with Microsoft as it was more of an upgrade to the steam app itself, like you know how it is with old android version cell phones when it comes to upgrading an app, at some point that version of android is no longer supported for that app and you have to upgrade your system to use the new version of that app, technology advances and will continue to advance no matter what you think, on the subject, i think they did the upgrade for not only operating on better windows hardware but also to do their whole linux thing and to make their app have more features, i often hear people praise steam for their launcher in comparison to other game launchers like Epic games, or GOG or anything Microsoft has, people generally just trust steam over all the other competition out there because they continually innovate their ecosystem so that it can offer more now and down the road. i think for you it will eventually meet a point where you might have to make the move to linux, and there is nothing wrong with that, that's what i'm going to do as i don't want to touch win 11 at all.

@Toki: it's been a very long time since i played FO3, and at the time i wasn't really a fan of their games in general, i didn't really become a fan until skyrim i kind of played some of Oblivion and Morrowind but not enough to really say i played them to know much about them, what i do remember from FO3 was the ending stories of blowing up a town or the brotherhood of steel liberty prime war, i remember feeling disappointed that the game just ends after that mission, i remember being pissed off that you can't just continue existing and doing other missions in the game, so i stayed away from the fallout games because at the time i viewed them as shit which is why i skipped out on FONV, also i hated the way these games looked and functioned, i remember thinking they were so held back in comparison to so many other games, but like i said when skyrim came out i was willing to look passed the issues of the game because i think bethesda made a good enough game for once that i could finally enjoy their games, FO4 was a bit hard to get into i will say, but i eventually played some more and some more and eventually started to like some aspects to it and noticed some new things they added that worked better than skyrim, but not all things are better of course, there is always something that is still better in skyrim than FO4, like melee combat, in FO4 melee combat is absolute dogshit and i wish it was better, like i was expecting to equip a shield or something on the ground to use as a shield and also have a gun in my other hand, but no the melee in FO4 is an afterthought that you typically don't want to use unless you do a mele build and only play that build in your gameplay loop, but sadly the game was meant to be mostly gun oriented, some mods are used to help that aspect, but they simply don't do a good enough job to really make that build work right. like an example is there are mods that are meant to remove guns from the game and none of them really work well enough, so there are mods that make NPC's guns actually run out of ammo, but the games dynamic loot often has ammo in random containers in the game and enemy NPC's can loot other NPC's or containers to use ammo they find so you have to find mods that make everything in the world empty to prevent that stupid situation, there is no mod that offers a complete solution to make the game cater to that melee build completely so you always end up adding all these mods just to make that gameplay loop work for you. i have made it work, but nothing works like you might think in the end, you just have to be willing to work with the shit that isn't perfect and never will be.

@Toki: well i just tried to install FONV and well long story short, i tried to mod the game and everything was too complicated and i couldn't get shit to work the game is a god damn mess i didn't want to deal with, so i refunded it, fuck that fucking game it's way worse than the FO4 update situation.

i'm so fucking pissed i can't see straight, part of me is thinking of going to fucking GOG to install the fucking game, but my motivation is at an all time low and it feels like that's going to be just as much of a shit show, there is always some fucking bullshit that stops you from getting to the point of making anything work. what's sad is i found a controller mod that i was going to use, and now i just lost all hope, i don't care anymore.

@KEEPER: Just pirate it. That's the problem. App DRM. I always had success with a free program called x360ce for a USB controller. Bethesda games have Xinput ready to go. I simply drop a copy of the x360 program into the game, and customize the shoulder buttons. What exactly is the controller mod? I would tell you to buy a disc version but it goes to Steam DRM anyways so F em.

@Toki: the controller wasn't the issue, it was mods that no longer support this game and i couldn't finish the set up no matter how hard i tried, the required mods were no longer compatible for some reason, the modder left notes to refund the game because he couldn't support it, so i suppose your right i should pirate the game, because i really don't want to go to GOG.

@KEEPER: The worst part is FO4 is a live service. Always evolving. That's why I stick with older games and they are more masculine anyways.

@Toki: true, but when you block the updates, that is mostly avoided, as for the masculine reason, i don't typically play a game for that reason alone, i mean it would be nice, but i also don't want it to be with the forced propaganda of the woke shit either, the game just needs to be fun and run well and allow as much freedom as possible in how you want to play, for myself that part comes in the form of modding, and most mods for FO4 are supported without much issue because people are still playing the game, the only people having issues right now are the ones playing the updated shit or console players.

i have a theory of what could be happening to the updated FO4, and it has to do directly with their payed mods system, basically bethesda never checks mods which means anyone can upload anything they damn well please, and some modders will upload shitty mods on purpose to flood the creations with shitty mods that are way to expensive, but it's also possible someone might have uploaded some script to fuck with bethesda, because when doing any of these updates it involves gamers updating installing all the mods in creations that aren't activated but they are still downloaded and it's possible a modder could have sabotaged the system, again bethesda doesn't ever checks shit in their own system, or it's them who are fucking this up, it's a little hard to say at the moment, but that's just my theory based on what the consensus of modders is in these live service games.

through out the years i have seen some really petty shit from modders, in both skyrim and FO4 just to get back at someone and it's often over petty shit. like in skyrim back in 2015 i think it was, a modder by the name of Apallodown took all of his mods off of the nexus simply because he found out most people who liked his mods were Trump supporters so he hid his mods for up to a decade, some people had some of his mods and would share them on various posts in all that time, but yeah the guy was angry because he didn't like most of his audience liked Trump lol, fucking retarded petty vindictive shit, but i have seen other modders have similar attitudes, so you kind of end up walking on eggshells with some of these people. hell i was blocked by a modder for telling him the truth of why people ghost him in comments, i told him the cold hard truth that he's kind of a prick in the comments and that's why people avoid talking to him, he didn't like that i told him the truth instead of a kind lie and so he blocked me lol, fucking petty little snow flake retard that one lol.

sadly that movie "the invention of lying" was correct, people don't like hearing the truth, they prefer a lie because it saves them from the consequences of the truth that makes them feel bad lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWSx0bBiNIs

@KEEPER: I've been playing the first game recently. Have you ever even tried those? I know it's different but the combat is like chess/strategy. Or have you tried STALKER? Fallout 1 and 2 also have complete mods such as Fallout Nevada. Here's a channel with full mods being displayed in amusing summaries. https://www.youtube.com/@Warlockracy/videos

Original Fallout Online lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3mK1yVnWM

@Toki: yeah we have had this conversation before, i don't like isometric anything, there was a time back in the 80s when i would give it a try, but these days i just hate that style of gameplay, i also don't play top down 2D sides scrollers or turn based combat or RTS. the game's got to be 3D 1st or 3rd person or nothing at all, however i also won't touch VR, maybe one day when it's in your head and it's like the matrix lol.

however i might try fallout bakersfield, it is in that isometric style but it's a mix or hybrid of styles, it's in 1st person and isometric, now i'm not a fan of it if it's super slow, but if they can make it fast enough to reflect a modern game, i might check it out.

@KEEPER: Oh right. Bakersfield is GZDoom which is awesome. Sadly they only have Necropolis from Fallout 1 which is a single location. The art of it is incredible though. I love the old UI art with the rustic Pip-boy. So much more inspired than how Fallout 3 started the generic icons for items and everything. Then New Vegas has the bling bling Pip-boy which is just stupid. Or the mods which turn a Pip-boy into a tablet. I like the old weathered look instead.

@Toki: i never cared about the look or the art style, all i care about is it's function and being able to see the UI clearly without art getting in the damn way.

i mean you can care about what it looks like in the 3rd person, but i just don't care about seeing it when it's style is meant to obstruct the view of the menu, like there is a reason why people in say skyrim use SkyUI mod, it's clean and big and offers all the bells and whistles and detail that players want and need to see and it doesn't obstruct the view of that UI, there are mods in FO4 that make this happen like that one i personally use called Baka full screen pipboy, there is also a terminal optional mod that does the same thing, like i get that bethesda wanted to animate these things but the animation is super jank and looks really stupid, it's like sex animations, it can be done but it will look really dumb and uncanny, this is typically why bethesda does the fade to black thing because they know no matter how hard they try their engine will always make the game look like shit with some animations, in my opinion they should just stick to what they know works in their engine and stop this experimentation that doesn't work or just looks dumb, they have improved on some things here and there, but some things no matter how much they work on always look dumb and are not practical in their engine.

@KEEPER: Yeah I have Darnified UI for Fallout 3. The default UI is made for consoles and TVs. In the older games the UI doesn't get in the way because it's more of a strategy game with windows and the bottom bar. What I'm talking about is the degradation of art in newer games. For example Rome 1 Total War UI with roman pillars compared to Rome 2 which has no artistic flavor. The Rome 1 remake looks awful as well.

@Toki: i have no way of knowing what that is, since i have not gotten into that game, i'm not into RTS games

however i looked up that mod for FO3 and it looks interesting, it looks like the main mod was taken down by the author for some reason, probably some petty modder bs like always lol. however it looks like there is a version of the same mod for the old Oblivion game on the nexus

i don't know what it is, but most modders i come across are the most petty people you will ever know, they bitch and moan over the smallest things and do petty shit just to get back at people.

@KEEPER: Yeah Darnified got taken down a long time ago. If you're interested it should be in Gopher's mod tutorials on another site hopefully. Let me see if I can find the video with it.

@Toki: Doesn't look good with the links. I have the files for basic Fallout 3 and I believe New Vegas uses the same. Give me a place to upload and I can hand it over to you if you want. Not sure if I can share that through uploading in chat messages here or not. It may be easier to get the Tales of Two Wastelands version.

Here's an example video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?....v=aqCzCXEydwU&li

@KEEPER: I found something but it says Fallout 3. Again it may work with New Vegas because they are the same game basically. https://modsreloaded.com/darnified-ui-f3

@KEEPER: Thankfully I got all the mods I wanted a long time ago before Nexus became Clown World.

@KEEPER: Older Total War is not RTS. It's empire management on a grand map using real history. Combined with real time battles that use large legions of soldiers and you can pause the battlefield at any time to contemplate. Or go crazy with mods and turn the game into Lord of the Rings epic battles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?....v=iqapo22txPk&li