New California is a huge disappointment

[Baskert]

Everything up until you leave Vault 18 is amazing. The dialogue, memos, branching quests...everything in the first 6-7 hours (what I assume was previously the Project Brazil release) just gets you so hyped up for the rest of the ‘full game’ experience waiting beyond the vault door.

Unfortunately once you leave Vault 18 the mod falls flat. The world is bland, empty, and extremely small. The story manages to hold some interest, but ultimately devolves into a very linear progression where you are funneled from point A to B with large, empty spaces in between.

It really feels like the devs poured a huge amount of effort into the beginning of the game and certain sections (Al-sec mine) but cobbled the rest of the open world and storyline together in a few weeks. This was marketed as a complete standalone fallout game, but really boils down to an extended quest with some open areas. Have to say I am as disappointed with this mod as I was fallout 4...at least I didn’t pay $60 though!

[AbsynthMinded]

You would rather no one try to make anything for anyone? FFS. Thanks for your opinion. I for one am thrilled to have more content that wasn't made by Bethesda. 4 is an abomination, 76 is a cash grab. I hope these folks continue to make more. I hope many donate to them for that purpose.

Other than complain, what good are ya up to?

[[LockTheCock.com] Eska]

I'm greatful about everything this mod has to offer, be it positives or negatives. I'm greatful for everything the 2 developers gave to us, a true fallout game we've always wanted. I hope they continue to make more and Godspeed to them.

The devs wrote out something on their page and i think this goes out to you.

"People who review us poorly always have the same 4 complaints, not understanding that those are optional and skippable, so I want to make sure that message is out there loud and clear before I do anything about it in the engine.

Remember that this is a BETA. Your feedback right now is part of our team's direction and leadership. You are helping us fix the mod and improve it!

Your feedback is just as important as my own leadership.

If you tell me something is wrong with my mod, my job now is to try and fix it.

We got the foundations done and got it all held up. now we need help shoring it up.

That is how a BETA do.

#1 -- We don't like the combat.
Solution: There are non-combat paths for every situation.

Don't like Patriots vs Vault Security? Go science and support the fight. You can get through it having never killed anyone. Turrets, robots, all kinds of things. You just can't talk down Bragg because, uh, have you met him?

Don't want to fight the Enclave Storm Troopers? Don't. Did you not hear "RUN KID DON'T FIGHT THESE GUYS YOU WON'T WIN!"

Don't like the Pinehaven house? Skip it. Your companions don't want to skip it so you lose them, but that's part of your role play. Battle Fatigue wears off in 3 in-game days.

Don't like getting stuck at the I-15 fight? Use the missile. No combat, good job. Vargas as long as you get her to Noss by way of the wash can tank him too. So can ALPHA.

Don't like the Union City gate fight? You can hang back and it resolves itself mostly.

Don't like the battle at The Power Relay? Restore power by way of Marius. Never fire a shot. Same with the Water, never need to kill anything.

Don't like fighting the Super Mutants? Don't, just run as you were told to do. Fighting not only isn't necessary but you're not intended to do it. If you do, good job I guess, but... knowing the spawns are infinite and not leaving is like a guy blowing a fire hose with his mouth over the spigot and his hand on the lever yelling through garbled drowning barks, "it just never stops when will it end?"

There are thousands of mutants dude. There are 10,000 raiders in the Pass. If you know the spawns are infinite in the lore and you know the game can't render them all at once... am I missing something here? I feel like this isn't my fault somehow.

Even the final battles you can totally skip with the right Dialogue. Father? Charm and persuade him to fight the Enclave for you. Let Annai fight Chevy. Speech kill Bragg by twisting his head around after getting his full backstory.

At this point if you have played long enough to write me a review saying all this was forced, you've played long enough to know there is an alternative to all of it.

We literally have a High Luck path where Luck effectively wins the game for you by itself. It's hilarious.

You would have to be looking for reasons to complain at this point because you're doing it to yourself. Do you just not like me? Did I hurt you? What's going on here?

What I think I can do is add in more obvious non-combat features and tools to improve the "behind the lines non-combat" route.

It obviously has to be light. We have no staff available to mod that stuff in.

I thought about giving the player a stimpack "weapon" they can use to heal companions and friendly NPCs, making the player a support character role.

If you have Robco Certified, a recommended mod, obviously you can build and repair robots in addition to our base mechanics like the turrets and terminals and other science related paths.

We're just chronically understaffed and modders tend to refuse to help us over and over.

You can't imagine the heartache of being rejected like that for years only to release and they still don't care.

#2 -- You hate companions. They're course, they're edgy, they get everywhere.

Then let them die or save them and send them away.

Role play a loner. It is in fact the "canon" path.

You're annoyed you're being forced to babysit these NPCs, you should realize you can fire them at any time and still be the good guy. Ben even tells you as much repeatedly. The fact that you wrote me a review saying the NPC telling you it isn't forced is a character you were forced to take is just...

It's impossible to be more clear about this unless I jump into your game and in my voice tell you out loud in immersion breaking terms, "hey pal, you can just ditch these people if you don't want them here. Fire button or send them home. It's right there."

I guess I could make it more clear in the objectives?

Writing (Optional) on EVERY objective in the mod is kinda hard, so that's kinda weird feeling.

The Pinehaven house is only required with companions. Battle fatigue wears off in 3 days. Just go rest and there you go. So people saying we forced them to doit, that's just not true, and I'm not sure if it's a failure to communicate or if they are already looking for an opportunity to gut punch me in a review and at that point they're just looking for more comments twisting the screws.

#3 -- The Caravan Quest I'm FORCED to take is 30 minutes of walking.

At this point you must have joined me in seeing this pattern of blatant wilful ignorance in seeing another alternative to all of these things.

Maybe these reviewers have been playing other games too long and they just aren't seeing an alternative. They were trained to just follow the map marker and do that. They think because it is suggested it is law.

The long walk is there for immersive role players, not people who are already frustrated. Jameson and the Jarl both tell you -- "hey, just go on ahead and meet us there. You're not one of us. We don't want you here anyway."

Then you did it anyway and said I forced you to do it?

What?

Just -- what?

You had, all these options...

The only fix for this I see is to just cut the option to follow them. And that's it.

It is optional, through and through. You can literally watch them walk away and fast travel to the end at any time. You can walk halfway and then fast travel, you can kill all of them suddenly out in the desert and still complete the quest...

Like honestly, it's like being told you had to stare at a decorative plant for 30 minutes to level up.

I did *not* force you to do that.

That is not on me.

#4 -- The story falls flat after the Vault.

This is the first of the 4 where I agree and have no defense. There are reasons, but no one cares and I get that. The world is harsh man. It wasn't good enough despite my best efforts. I agree, I could have done a lot better, but I didn't. That's on me.

The companions run out of content, and that reason, while I'm totally okay taking the blame for it, that's not what I wanted, it's just what I was left with given the situation I was in. It wouldn't have happened if we had a budget and my writing partners hadn't flaked out on me. I should have just cut them all.

You could say I shoehorned the ending in and the mod is too linear -- and I'd agree again, I've said so for years in all my dev diaries. We couldn't convince the modding community to come join us. I tried, begged and pleaded. The ones who did join did so temporarily before they abandoned us with broken and half finished scripts with so little progress after months of patience that we ultimately ripped it out and did it ourselves.

This is all volunteer. No budget.

I can't attract, capture, and retain staff. That's just it, there's nothing else to say.

Either we compromised quality and a coherent vision or we just did it alone. And that last one is what we did, plugged away alone, for 7 years.

So to sum up --

This is my first released game project. There will be many more over the next decade or two hopefully with a budget fitting of their scope and scale. I can accept the critiques and learn from them.

But honestly? A lot of these critiques just tell me that there is a group of you I just can't serve, and it's better not to try try at all.

So I'm not listening to that message. It's lame, and it's not serving to help anyone.

This is still in BETA.

It's a rough launch, I know. But that is the nature of developing large projects.

A BETA is intended to serve as the first touch on the public with a large audience.

You never know what is going to happen. That's why you have a BETA.

This is that BETA, and the feed back you're sending me is a final judgment telling me it's not worth these years of my life?

Dude.

The message you just sent me is that we're not good enough, so quit. We're not the best so we're inferior, we can't fix it, so go die.

Are you okay?

Are you having a bad time?

Are you unhappy with yourself and your life?

That isn't a healthy message to send someone. Who hurt you? Did you do it to yourself?

You can blame us for using this old creaky engine and pushing it to its limits, fine. We're working on it behind the scenes based on this open test and fixing bugs at a fever pitch. You say the exact same thing to Bethesda, whether they deserve it or not is up to your opinion. I don't share it, I think it's a fantastic company, but I do love-hate this engine more so this Saturday than I did on Tuesday, believe me.

I mean, down-voting a first issue beta is like punishing a starving newborn by not feeding it, so you're already not aware of the part you are playing in making the situation worse just by doing what you feel is right to you without thinking of the consequences. This is our first major Public Testing Phase on the largest fallout mod ever made and released of all time, made for free with all volunteer time and resources, primarily by 2 men with day job careers who face some insurmountable odds: the established community all but abandoned us when we asked for help, the tools have a love-hate relationship with functionality, there was hardly any documentation on all this stuff, and we had to manage all the logistics ourselves in addition to release.

Pointing out what is wrong without saying, "hey man, here is what i see that you can do to fix this given what I saw," is just irresponsible.

Your job as a BETA tester is to review in a constructive way.

You got this mod for free, constructive C&C is payment.

If your honest opinion is ♥♥♥♥ it, this is trash. Take it. Fine, sure, but that's the message I receive on what to do with our project. I disagree, I think it could be better, but we've served more people who enjoy it than hate is so far, so I'm listening to their feedback, and I'm ignoring you.

Sorry. You're just not helping.

You're the human embodiment of the voie in the back of your head that says, "you're worthless, just quit, nothing you do is good enough, give up."

We all have that voice in our heads.

It's not our friend.

And when you say it to other people, neither are you.

We don't listen to the downer troll voice. It's not helping. It's not our friend.

Overcoming obstacles in spite of that voice telling you you're not good enough and just worthless IS HOW YOU MAKE PROGRESS.

So what I'm telling the negative reviewers is: your feedback is noted, but it's not helpful. We aren't listening. Thank you for your time but please don't come back.

My loyalty is to my team and my players who provide constructive and encouraging C&C so we can finish this mod and lock it up tight.

For them.

Not me. Not a review score. For the players who enjoy it.

Thta's where my efforts go. That is what I care about.

We never claimed to be AAA and flawless. Professional quality? Yeah, as close as we can get it. But right out the gate? We warned you there would be unforeseen problems on first contact. We're fixing it.

Stick around, it gets better.

1.0 is December 15th or around there."

[red255]

yeah, not worth the lengthy response. TC has an attitude problem. Not worth fixing, his opinions are void.

[Draescan]

Believe it or not, every complaint about a mod isn't a declaration that it's awful, and mods that are good can also still have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ parts about them.

[Red Arrow]

Mod is buggy and World is sorta empty with raider or ncr spawns as the only reason to pay attention but otherwise the story is well worked out. It’s not really something worth exploring the open world but designed to play a story that people really worked hard on. The mic quality is surprisingly varied from the different actors but don’t blame your issue on the devs giving u a choice to abandon everyone and make it on your own. Hardcore mode however is not something I can recommend if u wanna to keep everyone alive. I had to turn it to easy in order to fight my way out of some situations. Or turn off hardcore and book it lol.

[easymoneysniper]

Cool! go say this on the mod page

[kritzkrieg]

Originally posted by Chalklit:

Everything up until you leave Vault 18 is amazing. The dialogue, memos, branching quests...everything in the first 6-7 hours (what I assume was previously the Project Brazil release) just gets you so hyped up for the rest of the ‘full game’ experience waiting beyond the vault door.

Unfortunately once you leave Vault 18 the mod falls flat. The world is bland, empty, and extremely small. The story manages to hold some interest, but ultimately devolves into a very linear progression where you are funneled from point A to B with large, empty spaces in between.

It really feels like the devs poured a huge amount of effort into the beginning of the game and certain sections (Al-sec mine) but cobbled the rest of the open world and storyline together in a few weeks. This was marketed as a complete standalone fallout game, but really boils down to an extended quest with some open areas. Have to say I am as disappointed with this mod as I was fallout 4...at least I didn’t pay $60 though!

♥♥♥♥ you, this is the most amazing game you will EVER play. honestly, how do you not see this as GOTY material?
eh, game of the ♥♥♥♥ing century even.
this game has CONSTANT ACTION, an AMAZING STORY, FLESHED OUT CHARACTERS, COOL AS HELL WEAPONS, ADVANCED VISUALS, SUPERB VOICE ACTING and many MANY more things to prove how fantastic of a video game this truly is.
i cannot even believe you would even think to type something as false as that.
you know it and i know it, this game is the most breathtaking piece of media you will ever experience and you are LYING if you say otherwise.
i don't care about your feelings, only FACTS!!!!!1!!
so play this game again. buy it. yes, BUY IT!
if you don't, then your argument is invalid.
or really if you think that this game is anything below a 10/10, your argument IS invalid.
♥♥♥♥ you.

[kritzkrieg]

Originally posted by Eska:

I'm greatful about everything this mod has to offer, be it positives or negatives. I'm greatful for everything the 2 developers gave to us, a true fallout game we've always wanted. I hope they continue to make more and Godspeed to them.

The devs wrote out something on their page and i think this goes out to you.

"People who review us poorly always have the same 4 complaints, not understanding that those are optional and skippable, so I want to make sure that message is out there loud and clear before I do anything about it in the engine.

Remember that this is a BETA. Your feedback right now is part of our team's direction and leadership. You are helping us fix the mod and improve it!

Your feedback is just as important as my own leadership.

If you tell me something is wrong with my mod, my job now is to try and fix it.

We got the foundations done and got it all held up. now we need help shoring it up.

That is how a BETA do.

#1 -- We don't like the combat.
Solution: There are non-combat paths for every situation.

Don't like Patriots vs Vault Security? Go science and support the fight. You can get through it having never killed anyone. Turrets, robots, all kinds of things. You just can't talk down Bragg because, uh, have you met him?

Don't want to fight the Enclave Storm Troopers? Don't. Did you not hear "RUN KID DON'T FIGHT THESE GUYS YOU WON'T WIN!"

Don't like the Pinehaven house? Skip it. Your companions don't want to skip it so you lose them, but that's part of your role play. Battle Fatigue wears off in 3 in-game days.

Don't like getting stuck at the I-15 fight? Use the missile. No combat, good job. Vargas as long as you get her to Noss by way of the wash can tank him too. So can ALPHA.

Don't like the Union City gate fight? You can hang back and it resolves itself mostly.

Don't like the battle at The Power Relay? Restore power by way of Marius. Never fire a shot. Same with the Water, never need to kill anything.

Don't like fighting the Super Mutants? Don't, just run as you were told to do. Fighting not only isn't necessary but you're not intended to do it. If you do, good job I guess, but... knowing the spawns are infinite and not leaving is like a guy blowing a fire hose with his mouth over the spigot and his hand on the lever yelling through garbled drowning barks, "it just never stops when will it end?"

There are thousands of mutants dude. There are 10,000 raiders in the Pass. If you know the spawns are infinite in the lore and you know the game can't render them all at once... am I missing something here? I feel like this isn't my fault somehow.

Even the final battles you can totally skip with the right Dialogue. Father? Charm and persuade him to fight the Enclave for you. Let Annai fight Chevy. Speech kill Bragg by twisting his head around after getting his full backstory.

At this point if you have played long enough to write me a review saying all this was forced, you've played long enough to know there is an alternative to all of it.

We literally have a High Luck path where Luck effectively wins the game for you by itself. It's hilarious.

You would have to be looking for reasons to complain at this point because you're doing it to yourself. Do you just not like me? Did I hurt you? What's going on here?

What I think I can do is add in more obvious non-combat features and tools to improve the "behind the lines non-combat" route.

It obviously has to be light. We have no staff available to mod that stuff in.

I thought about giving the player a stimpack "weapon" they can use to heal companions and friendly NPCs, making the player a support character role.

If you have Robco Certified, a recommended mod, obviously you can build and repair robots in addition to our base mechanics like the turrets and terminals and other science related paths.

We're just chronically understaffed and modders tend to refuse to help us over and over.

You can't imagine the heartache of being rejected like that for years only to release and they still don't care.

#2 -- You hate companions. They're course, they're edgy, they get everywhere.

Then let them die or save them and send them away.

Role play a loner. It is in fact the "canon" path.

You're annoyed you're being forced to babysit these NPCs, you should realize you can fire them at any time and still be the good guy. Ben even tells you as much repeatedly. The fact that you wrote me a review saying the NPC telling you it isn't forced is a character you were forced to take is just...

It's impossible to be more clear about this unless I jump into your game and in my voice tell you out loud in immersion breaking terms, "hey pal, you can just ditch these people if you don't want them here. Fire button or send them home. It's right there."

I guess I could make it more clear in the objectives?

Writing (Optional) on EVERY objective in the mod is kinda hard, so that's kinda weird feeling.

The Pinehaven house is only required with companions. Battle fatigue wears off in 3 days. Just go rest and there you go. So people saying we forced them to doit, that's just not true, and I'm not sure if it's a failure to communicate or if they are already looking for an opportunity to gut punch me in a review and at that point they're just looking for more comments twisting the screws.

#3 -- The Caravan Quest I'm FORCED to take is 30 minutes of walking.

At this point you must have joined me in seeing this pattern of blatant wilful ignorance in seeing another alternative to all of these things.

Maybe these reviewers have been playing other games too long and they just aren't seeing an alternative. They were trained to just follow the map marker and do that. They think because it is suggested it is law.

The long walk is there for immersive role players, not people who are already frustrated. Jameson and the Jarl both tell you -- "hey, just go on ahead and meet us there. You're not one of us. We don't want you here anyway."

Then you did it anyway and said I forced you to do it?

What?

Just -- what?

You had, all these options...

The only fix for this I see is to just cut the option to follow them. And that's it.

It is optional, through and through. You can literally watch them walk away and fast travel to the end at any time. You can walk halfway and then fast travel, you can kill all of them suddenly out in the desert and still complete the quest...

Like honestly, it's like being told you had to stare at a decorative plant for 30 minutes to level up.

I did *not* force you to do that.

That is not on me.

#4 -- The story falls flat after the Vault.

This is the first of the 4 where I agree and have no defense. There are reasons, but no one cares and I get that. The world is harsh man. It wasn't good enough despite my best efforts. I agree, I could have done a lot better, but I didn't. That's on me.

The companions run out of content, and that reason, while I'm totally okay taking the blame for it, that's not what I wanted, it's just what I was left with given the situation I was in. It wouldn't have happened if we had a budget and my writing partners hadn't flaked out on me. I should have just cut them all.

You could say I shoehorned the ending in and the mod is too linear -- and I'd agree again, I've said so for years in all my dev diaries. We couldn't convince the modding community to come join us. I tried, begged and pleaded. The ones who did join did so temporarily before they abandoned us with broken and half finished scripts with so little progress after months of patience that we ultimately ripped it out and did it ourselves.

This is all volunteer. No budget.

I can't attract, capture, and retain staff. That's just it, there's nothing else to say.

Either we compromised quality and a coherent vision or we just did it alone. And that last one is what we did, plugged away alone, for 7 years.

So to sum up --

This is my first released game project. There will be many more over the next decade or two hopefully with a budget fitting of their scope and scale. I can accept the critiques and learn from them.

But honestly? A lot of these critiques just tell me that there is a group of you I just can't serve, and it's better not to try try at all.

So I'm not listening to that message. It's lame, and it's not serving to help anyone.

This is still in BETA.

It's a rough launch, I know. But that is the nature of developing large projects.

A BETA is intended to serve as the first touch on the public with a large audience.

You never know what is going to happen. That's why you have a BETA.

This is that BETA, and the feed back you're sending me is a final judgment telling me it's not worth these years of my life?

Dude.

The message you just sent me is that we're not good enough, so quit. We're not the best so we're inferior, we can't fix it, so go die.

Are you okay?

Are you having a bad time?

Are you unhappy with yourself and your life?

That isn't a healthy message to send someone. Who hurt you? Did you do it to yourself?

You can blame us for using this old creaky engine and pushing it to its limits, fine. We're working on it behind the scenes based on this open test and fixing bugs at a fever pitch. You say the exact same thing to Bethesda, whether they deserve it or not is up to your opinion. I don't share it, I think it's a fantastic company, but I do love-hate this engine more so this Saturday than I did on Tuesday, believe me.

I mean, down-voting a first issue beta is like punishing a starving newborn by not feeding it, so you're already not aware of the part you are playing in making the situation worse just by doing what you feel is right to you without thinking of the consequences. This is our first major Public Testing Phase on the largest fallout mod ever made and released of all time, made for free with all volunteer time and resources, primarily by 2 men with day job careers who face some insurmountable odds: the established community all but abandoned us when we asked for help, the tools have a love-hate relationship with functionality, there was hardly any documentation on all this stuff, and we had to manage all the logistics ourselves in addition to release.

Pointing out what is wrong without saying, "hey man, here is what i see that you can do to fix this given what I saw," is just irresponsible.

Your job as a BETA tester is to review in a constructive way.

You got this mod for free, constructive C&C is payment.

If your honest opinion is ♥♥♥♥ it, this is trash. Take it. Fine, sure, but that's the message I receive on what to do with our project. I disagree, I think it could be better, but we've served more people who enjoy it than hate is so far, so I'm listening to their feedback, and I'm ignoring you.

Sorry. You're just not helping.

You're the human embodiment of the voie in the back of your head that says, "you're worthless, just quit, nothing you do is good enough, give up."

We all have that voice in our heads.

It's not our friend.

And when you say it to other people, neither are you.

We don't listen to the downer troll voice. It's not helping. It's not our friend.

Overcoming obstacles in spite of that voice telling you you're not good enough and just worthless IS HOW YOU MAKE PROGRESS.

So what I'm telling the negative reviewers is: your feedback is noted, but it's not helpful. We aren't listening. Thank you for your time but please don't come back.

My loyalty is to my team and my players who provide constructive and encouraging C&C so we can finish this mod and lock it up tight.

For them.

Not me. Not a review score. For the players who enjoy it.

Thta's where my efforts go. That is what I care about.

We never claimed to be AAA and flawless. Professional quality? Yeah, as close as we can get it. But right out the gate? We warned you there would be unforeseen problems on first contact. We're fixing it.

Stick around, it gets better.

1.0 is December 15th or around there."

loser

[Sanguinius]

I was pretty letdown after the beginning as well, enough so that i uninstalled it and went back to TTW.

[G-Man's left sock]

I found it overall rather boring and highly predictable.

This is not me having an issue with mods.

This is me finding that one in particular just not really worth the precious harddrive space it took.

I can appreciate the insane effort that went into it without liking it.

[Vyvyvn]

You can sure skip the combat with the science path!

..Providing you pass not one but TWO 50 science skill checks. And maybe a 75 if you want the broken robot. In the -prologue-

Also no matter how 'badass' a villain is, Having to spend 2 clips in headshots to bring one down does not inspire confidence in balancing.

[G-Man's left sock]

Originally posted by MsMorgan:

Originally posted by Jehnzedd:

I found it overall rather boring and highly predictable.

This is not me having an issue with mods.

This is me finding that one in particular just not really worth the precious harddrive space it took.

I can appreciate the insane effort that went into it without liking it.

♥♥♥♥ you, this is the most amazing game you will EVER play. honestly, how do you not see this as GOTY material?
eh, game of the ♥♥♥♥ing century even.
this game has CONSTANT ACTION, an AMAZING STORY, FLESHED OUT CHARACTERS, COOL AS HELL WEAPONS, ADVANCED VISUALS, SUPERB VOICE ACTING and many MANY more things to prove how fantastic of a video game this truly is.
i cannot even believe you would even think to type something as false as that.
you know it and i know it, this game is the most breathtaking piece of media you will ever experience and you are LYING if you say otherwise.
i don't care about your feelings, only FACTS!!!!!1!!
so play this game again. buy it. yes, BUY IT!
if you don't, then your argument is invalid.
or really if you think that this game is anything below a 10/10, your argument IS invalid.
♥♥♥♥ you.

Either you're a bot or a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moron, either of which negates anything you have to say.

[Weaselly]

I found New California to be a colossal let-down.

From a modding perspective? Yeah, it's pretty incredible! This is a new game, built on an old engine. It's fantastic what has been done in the mod.

Now, from a writing perspective? I can't stand it. The whole thing felt like a predictable slog that I was just trudging through, waiting for it to end. The perks are nice. The early gameplay is fantastic. After you leave the vault, however, it's like inspiration left the developer.

From a technical standpoint, I like the mod. From a writing standpoint, I do not. As an amateur writer and hobbyist programmer looking to one-day make their own game, I get the pain of the dev. Still. Circumstances do not disallow criticism.

[webartist30]

Originally posted by Eska:

I'm greatful about everything this mod has to offer, be it positives or negatives. I'm greatful for everything the 2 developers gave to us, a true fallout game we've always wanted. I hope they continue to make more and Godspeed to them.

The devs wrote out something on their page and i think this goes out to you.

"People who review us poorly always have the same 4 complaints, not understanding that those are optional and skippable, so I want to make sure that message is out there loud and clear before I do anything about it in the engine.

Remember that this is a BETA. Your feedback right now is part of our team's direction and leadership. You are helping us fix the mod and improve it!

Your feedback is just as important as my own leadership.

If you tell me something is wrong with my mod, my job now is to try and fix it.

We got the foundations done and got it all held up. now we need help shoring it up.

That is how a BETA do.

#1 -- We don't like the combat.
Solution: There are non-combat paths for every situation.

Don't like Patriots vs Vault Security? Go science and support the fight. You can get through it having never killed anyone. Turrets, robots, all kinds of things. You just can't talk down Bragg because, uh, have you met him?

Don't want to fight the Enclave Storm Troopers? Don't. Did you not hear "RUN KID DON'T FIGHT THESE GUYS YOU WON'T WIN!"

Don't like the Pinehaven house? Skip it. Your companions don't want to skip it so you lose them, but that's part of your role play. Battle Fatigue wears off in 3 in-game days.

Don't like getting stuck at the I-15 fight? Use the missile. No combat, good job. Vargas as long as you get her to Noss by way of the wash can tank him too. So can ALPHA.

Don't like the Union City gate fight? You can hang back and it resolves itself mostly.

Don't like the battle at The Power Relay? Restore power by way of Marius. Never fire a shot. Same with the Water, never need to kill anything.

Don't like fighting the Super Mutants? Don't, just run as you were told to do. Fighting not only isn't necessary but you're not intended to do it. If you do, good job I guess, but... knowing the spawns are infinite and not leaving is like a guy blowing a fire hose with his mouth over the spigot and his hand on the lever yelling through garbled drowning barks, "it just never stops when will it end?"

There are thousands of mutants dude. There are 10,000 raiders in the Pass. If you know the spawns are infinite in the lore and you know the game can't render them all at once... am I missing something here? I feel like this isn't my fault somehow.

Even the final battles you can totally skip with the right Dialogue. Father? Charm and persuade him to fight the Enclave for you. Let Annai fight Chevy. Speech kill Bragg by twisting his head around after getting his full backstory.

At this point if you have played long enough to write me a review saying all this was forced, you've played long enough to know there is an alternative to all of it.

We literally have a High Luck path where Luck effectively wins the game for you by itself. It's hilarious.

You would have to be looking for reasons to complain at this point because you're doing it to yourself. Do you just not like me? Did I hurt you? What's going on here?

What I think I can do is add in more obvious non-combat features and tools to improve the "behind the lines non-combat" route.

It obviously has to be light. We have no staff available to mod that stuff in.

I thought about giving the player a stimpack "weapon" they can use to heal companions and friendly NPCs, making the player a support character role.

If you have Robco Certified, a recommended mod, obviously you can build and repair robots in addition to our base mechanics like the turrets and terminals and other science related paths.

We're just chronically understaffed and modders tend to refuse to help us over and over.

You can't imagine the heartache of being rejected like that for years only to release and they still don't care.

#2 -- You hate companions. They're course, they're edgy, they get everywhere.

Then let them die or save them and send them away.

Role play a loner. It is in fact the "canon" path.

You're annoyed you're being forced to babysit these NPCs, you should realize you can fire them at any time and still be the good guy. Ben even tells you as much repeatedly. The fact that you wrote me a review saying the NPC telling you it isn't forced is a character you were forced to take is just...

It's impossible to be more clear about this unless I jump into your game and in my voice tell you out loud in immersion breaking terms, "hey pal, you can just ditch these people if you don't want them here. Fire button or send them home. It's right there."

I guess I could make it more clear in the objectives?

Writing (Optional) on EVERY objective in the mod is kinda hard, so that's kinda weird feeling.

The Pinehaven house is only required with companions. Battle fatigue wears off in 3 days. Just go rest and there you go. So people saying we forced them to doit, that's just not true, and I'm not sure if it's a failure to communicate or if they are already looking for an opportunity to gut punch me in a review and at that point they're just looking for more comments twisting the screws.

#3 -- The Caravan Quest I'm FORCED to take is 30 minutes of walking.

At this point you must have joined me in seeing this pattern of blatant wilful ignorance in seeing another alternative to all of these things.

Maybe these reviewers have been playing other games too long and they just aren't seeing an alternative. They were trained to just follow the map marker and do that. They think because it is suggested it is law.

The long walk is there for immersive role players, not people who are already frustrated. Jameson and the Jarl both tell you -- "hey, just go on ahead and meet us there. You're not one of us. We don't want you here anyway."

Then you did it anyway and said I forced you to do it?

What?

Just -- what?

You had, all these options...

The only fix for this I see is to just cut the option to follow them. And that's it.

It is optional, through and through. You can literally watch them walk away and fast travel to the end at any time. You can walk halfway and then fast travel, you can kill all of them suddenly out in the desert and still complete the quest...

Like honestly, it's like being told you had to stare at a decorative plant for 30 minutes to level up.

I did *not* force you to do that.

That is not on me.

#4 -- The story falls flat after the Vault.

This is the first of the 4 where I agree and have no defense. There are reasons, but no one cares and I get that. The world is harsh man. It wasn't good enough despite my best efforts. I agree, I could have done a lot better, but I didn't. That's on me.

The companions run out of content, and that reason, while I'm totally okay taking the blame for it, that's not what I wanted, it's just what I was left with given the situation I was in. It wouldn't have happened if we had a budget and my writing partners hadn't flaked out on me. I should have just cut them all.

You could say I shoehorned the ending in and the mod is too linear -- and I'd agree again, I've said so for years in all my dev diaries. We couldn't convince the modding community to come join us. I tried, begged and pleaded. The ones who did join did so temporarily before they abandoned us with broken and half finished scripts with so little progress after months of patience that we ultimately ripped it out and did it ourselves.

This is all volunteer. No budget.

I can't attract, capture, and retain staff. That's just it, there's nothing else to say.

Either we compromised quality and a coherent vision or we just did it alone. And that last one is what we did, plugged away alone, for 7 years.

So to sum up --

This is my first released game project. There will be many more over the next decade or two hopefully with a budget fitting of their scope and scale. I can accept the critiques and learn from them.

But honestly? A lot of these critiques just tell me that there is a group of you I just can't serve, and it's better not to try try at all.

So I'm not listening to that message. It's lame, and it's not serving to help anyone.

This is still in BETA.

It's a rough launch, I know. But that is the nature of developing large projects.

A BETA is intended to serve as the first touch on the public with a large audience.

You never know what is going to happen. That's why you have a BETA.

This is that BETA, and the feed back you're sending me is a final judgment telling me it's not worth these years of my life?

Dude.

The message you just sent me is that we're not good enough, so quit. We're not the best so we're inferior, we can't fix it, so go die.

Are you okay?

Are you having a bad time?

Are you unhappy with yourself and your life?

That isn't a healthy message to send someone. Who hurt you? Did you do it to yourself?

You can blame us for using this old creaky engine and pushing it to its limits, fine. We're working on it behind the scenes based on this open test and fixing bugs at a fever pitch. You say the exact same thing to Bethesda, whether they deserve it or not is up to your opinion. I don't share it, I think it's a fantastic company, but I do love-hate this engine more so this Saturday than I did on Tuesday, believe me.

I mean, down-voting a first issue beta is like punishing a starving newborn by not feeding it, so you're already not aware of the part you are playing in making the situation worse just by doing what you feel is right to you without thinking of the consequences. This is our first major Public Testing Phase on the largest fallout mod ever made and released of all time, made for free with all volunteer time and resources, primarily by 2 men with day job careers who face some insurmountable odds: the established community all but abandoned us when we asked for help, the tools have a love-hate relationship with functionality, there was hardly any documentation on all this stuff, and we had to manage all the logistics ourselves in addition to release.

Pointing out what is wrong without saying, "hey man, here is what i see that you can do to fix this given what I saw," is just irresponsible.

Your job as a BETA tester is to review in a constructive way.

You got this mod for free, constructive C&C is payment.

If your honest opinion is ♥♥♥♥ it, this is trash. Take it. Fine, sure, but that's the message I receive on what to do with our project. I disagree, I think it could be better, but we've served more people who enjoy it than hate is so far, so I'm listening to their feedback, and I'm ignoring you.

Sorry. You're just not helping.

You're the human embodiment of the voie in the back of your head that says, "you're worthless, just quit, nothing you do is good enough, give up."

We all have that voice in our heads.

It's not our friend.

And when you say it to other people, neither are you.

We don't listen to the downer troll voice. It's not helping. It's not our friend.

Overcoming obstacles in spite of that voice telling you you're not good enough and just worthless IS HOW YOU MAKE PROGRESS.

So what I'm telling the negative reviewers is: your feedback is noted, but it's not helpful. We aren't listening. Thank you for your time but please don't come back.

My loyalty is to my team and my players who provide constructive and encouraging C&C so we can finish this mod and lock it up tight.

For them.

Not me. Not a review score. For the players who enjoy it.

Thta's where my efforts go. That is what I care about.

We never claimed to be AAA and flawless. Professional quality? Yeah, as close as we can get it. But right out the gate? We warned you there would be unforeseen problems on first contact. We're fixing it.

Stick around, it gets better.

1.0 is December 15th or around there."

GOOD GOD!!!!!!!! An excellent read (dude or dudette)!!!! I am playing the science route right now and IMO it is easier to not have to confront enemies when I have 5 companions. BUT... Damn I love this game, it is like the unloved step kid in the Fallout family :)

[JustNotG00d]

Are there just a few whiners in this forum, geesh. I am sorry. I apologize for the lack of manners to the developers. But, just realize, you could invent a pen that does all the writing for you, just by thinking of the words and someone would complain about the color of the pen cap. I think that there is a lot of work done here, and I thank you. I have created a few things and I also get criticism in all forms for very small, picky things. The ones that feel okay about what you create will often be silent.

Yes, there have been some rough spots.

I am currently trying a more difficult route, the Warrior Path and trying to do some of the science stuff. Its a little hard to get around this way. I would like to get the robot companions and fix the computer, but having a hard time figuring it out. I had to restart, as I found some suggestions that I was not able to go back and do them as I had chosen wrong in a few conversations.

Keep up the hard work and ignore some of these people who just like to see their name on the screen with a lot of BS complaints.