☆ 2017 -The PS4 Diaries Part 21 "My Fallout 4 Snag List " ☆ #PS4 #GamersUnite

I started playing Fallout 4 back in October 2016 as I received it as a birthday present from my wife.

6 months later and I’m still playing this amazing game!

It’s a marvel of a game that keeps me exploring the vast world that Bethesda crafted so well.

I’m still stumbling across parts of the map that I am yet to discover and I have discovered 301 out of 326 available locations in the standard game with no DLC added.

As always though, if you spend this much time with any video game you begin to notice the room for improvement that much more.

I’m going to vent my main improvements that I would like to see and hopefully, you will let me know whether you agree with me and maybe suggest some more improvements.

Map Locations Perk

In Fallout 3 when you reached level 20 you could apply the Explorer Perk which would show all map locations on your map and would enable you to plot how you were going to discover all remaining locations on the map. I’ve spent lots of hours wandering the landscape just praying that I come across a new location and no joy. I’m not sure why I want to discover all locations but it feels like I should do because once I’m done with Fallout 4 I don’t think I’ll ever return.

If there was the Explorer Perk in FO4 then I’d  be a happy lone survivor and a complete completionist!

Tick List For Collectables

I’ve enjoyed the collectables in Fallout 4 and one of my first priorities was to collect all the Bobbleheads. I’d really appreciate some way of working out which ones I have collected and which ones I was still yet to discover. For Bobbleheads it was made easier by the existence of the Bobblehead stand which had a handy space for each Bobblehead you placed onto it. So maybe for comics and reading you could have a collectors tick list as an item to hang up in your chosen settlement and as you collect each book or comic it ticks off the item on the list. I’d love that and it would keep me playing to “collect ‘em all!”

Inventory Listing

When I was trawling through my inventory listing I found a massively annoying design choice in the inventory that meant that Bobbleheads and reading and models and holotapes are all lumped together in one loooooooooong list. 

Bobbleheads weren’t even grouped together in that list as it was done on alphabetical order and the Bobbleheads never started off with the word bobblehead, they began with the Skill that they were associated with instead. This meant that trying to locate all the Bobbleheads you had collected and then put them on the stand was a pain, to say the least! 

All it would take to save this inventory madness would be to have further categories for collectables which you could easily tab to in order to locate your item in seconds rather 

than minutes! Simple but satisfying for us collectors.

Management Of Settlements

I’ve seen a lot of people bad mouthing the settlements system in FO4 but I have to say that I have enjoyed this side of things immensely but it could be so much better.

Hopefully, Bethesda learns from this iteration and improve on the next instalment rather than abandoning the cool idea of settlements. The thing is I don’t think the real time visual system works very well when trying to manage settlers and settlements. Chasing settlers around who are unassigned and then trying to assign them to a job that is on the other side of the settlement is no fun. It’s annoying. I’d rather that this micro-management of settlers was undertaken via an on-screen menu. This could give you an at a glance view of all your settlers and whether they are assigned and what they are assigned to if anything. This would make the management part so much more fun.

The same could be said for the design element of settlements. I longed for a top down view of my settlement with a drag and drop interface to build up shacks and crops and systems. This could function like SIMS while in build mode and then once you are done you could go back into the live mode to see your creations up close and personal.

The real-time settlement management does not work nearly as well as it could and with these improvements, it could become a core part of future releases.

Picking Up Items in Settlement Workshop Mode

I once spent half an hour dropping items onto the floor of a settlement so as I could pick them up the right way up and then painstakingly place them on a shelf. Everything about this process is painful. Finding the sweet spot for placing items on a shelf is a test of patience and then even when you think you have it right it sinks into the shelf, hovers above the shelf or just disappears into thin air! It’s frustrating trying to prettify your settlement with these trinkets and only something that a saddo like me would attempt but if it is this tough to do, then why put it in the video game?

Surely if every shelf had a certain amount of sweet spots that would see your item click into place when you pick something up and place it onto it then we could avoid the floaty feeling of trying to do such a simple thing in the game.

More Storage Furniture Items

Recently I have been scouring the Wasteland / Commonwealth for all sorts of collectables to store in my favourite settlement (Red Rocket Truck Stop). In order to show off my wares, I’ve been trying all sorts of display methods from Pool tables to metal shelves. 

None of them does the job very well and if they do sometimes an NPC will come along and knock over your proud display without a care in the world! 

So, I ask why can’t we have a storage item for each collectable? We have a Bobblehead collectable stand and a magazine rack for magazines and comics. Why can’t we have a cool retro holotapes Rolodex? Or a selection of awesome drinks display cabinets. Maybe we would be able to build a first aid trolley for Stimpaks and RAD-X etc? 

The one that really makes me scratch my head though is why is there no display stand for the model kits that you find dotted around? Very odd and so relatively easy to fix! I’d even buy a storage items DLC pack if it existed!

More Diverse Characters Who Are Interesting

This is an odd one and is a bit subjective. My memories of Fallout 3 were off wandering the Wasteland and uncovering a whole host of sub-groups of characters dotted around the world who are just getting by in the wilderness with no affiliation to a faction or main story line. 

Fallout 4 seems to have less of these moments when you stumble across an odd group of individuals that are living out their odd lives in odd times. It makes the world that little less believable as everyone you come across is affiliated to some faction. The ones that aren’t are generally companions who become affiliated to you eventually assuming you do the right things in their company. Maybe I just yearn for the days of discovering a bunch of weirdos in a cave who have built their own little side story to investigate. 

My one exception to this that I really enjoyed was the Cabot House story arc which was really interesting and a great side quest that I loved playing through. Granted there were probably more examples too but none that stood out and stayed in the memory.

Vehicles

Would vehicles be such a bad addition to the game? 

I’d love the opportunity to pick up parts as I scour the wasteland and build or restore my very own vehicle from days gone by. Just imagine that you stumble across a pristine vintage car in an underground bunker that has been hidden away for centuries. How cool would it be to jump in and explore the Wasteland like it has never been done before? I’d make vehicles available in another instalment of FO but they would be scarce and only available after collecting the parts necessary to build one or hidden deep in the vaults and caves of the game. That way the discovery of a car (or a motorbike or tank) would be an exciting moment rather than a repetitive action like it is in Far Cry 4 or GTA 5.

Fallout 4 is the most involving video game I have ever played but everything can improve and these are my small improvements that I would make to the game.

What Would YOURS Be?

Let Me Know In The Comments Box Below

"STAY FROSTY!"