So whats your thoughts on how fallout 4 dealt with its guns?

[Von Faustien]

Do you like the small number of base weapons with high amounts of customization?

Or did you like how past games had a large amount of none modable guns with set functionality?(minor upgrades aside)


I think a more middle ground would have been nice myself maybe keep pistols pistols and long guns long guns instead of making most the same gun with diffrent mods and i miss the 10mill submachine gun that was mainstay since fallout 1 and has been in every game reducing it to a mod on the pistol that doesnt even make it look like the old smg kind of sucked

[WC4L420]

I never really liked automatic guns in any fallout. The damage was never high enough for me to justify the use, and usually ammo for automatics was a little more then common rifle rounds.

Personally ive been a huge fan of the plasma weapons, and letting us have a plasma shotgun is a wet dream to me. So im for the gun customization.

Base weapon count is pretty high for me honestly. And having the CC add ons i think theres another 13 weapons added. So im good on guns in the game.

Only thing i would like to have seen is them take away recoil from laser weapons. Light has barely any kind of mass and would not produce any recoil. It is exactly the same as if you had a laser pointer and turn it on.

If not remove the recoil then at least give some lore and explain why the damn laser weapons have recoil.

Plasma i can understand the recoil, Thats ionized gas that your pushing out a barrel at about 1200 feet per second. Id assume theres some recoil to that.

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by DirtyMeatSack:

I never really liked automatic guns in any fallout. The damage was never high enough for me to justify the use, and usually ammo for automatics was a little more then common rifle rounds.

Personally ive been a huge fan of the plasma weapons, and letting us have a plasma shotgun is a wet dream to me. So im for the gun customization.

Base weapon count is pretty high for me honestly. And having the CC add ons i think theres another 13 weapons added. So im good on guns in the game.

Only thing i would like to have seen is them take away recoil from laser weapons. Light has barely any kind of mass and would not produce any recoil. It is exactly the same as if you had a laser pointer and turn it on.

If not remove the recoil then at least give some lore and explain why the damn laser weapons have recoil.

Plasma i can understand the recoil, Thats ionized gas that your pushing out a barrel at about 1200 feet per second. Id assume theres some recoil to that.

yeah recoil on the lasers is dumb.

[Cop Unit 12]

I will say that the gun play is great and I dont mind having less base guns since in the other 3d fallout games most unique guns were just different base guns with unique stats anyway. Now there are some missing weapons in fallout 4 from the base game (a non pipe 38 round firearm as an a example) but besides that I'd say yes overall. I do wish some weapons were still in the game (10mm smg is a good one) but many of them were made up for the new weapon system. The only 2 things that suffered from the new system are melee and automatics. Melee is near worthless because stealth was nerfed into oblivion (thanks skyrim) and Automatics had to be nerfed due to the new gun play.

[Iron Knights]

I have a YUGE problem with how Michael Moore designed all weapons in Fallout 4.
Fantasy guns, through and through.

[Vali Riversong]

I'm disappointed guns are either: Single Shot Pistol, Auto Pistol, Single Shot Rifle, Auto Rifle and Big Gun. As for mods and customization I feel it did it great, and the guns feel good to shoot. Just wish that the guns weren't just classed into like 5 categories and that there was ammo types in the base game.

[Iron Knights]

First of all combat engagement distance is a mere 300m. Where most ballistic rifle rounds are accurate to 600m and kill up to 1.5km.
Second, you have fantasy "combat rifle" using a pistol .45 ACP round, where in reality it would be the 5.56x45mm or .308cal. (7.62x51mm). You cannot modify the combat rifle to shoot .308cal. with an Automatic mode.
Third, their 5.56mm is a WWI water cooled HEAVY MACHINEGUN that should weigh something like 200lbs., definitely not a carry weapon.
Fourth, pipe guns in reality would be a lot heavier than factory made guns, but can be made from scrap. Factory guns are made of light steel, aluminum & plastic. Pipe guns would be lead, galvanized steel & such.
Fifth, "snub nose" is the famous .38cal. Police Detective or Private Eye revolver pistol, here it is in .44cal. unrealistic. The .38cal. 5in. barrel Revolver was also an issued PD pistol for about 40 years. It is a close round to the popular 9mm.
Sixth, 10mm is a try hard (but fails) wannabe .44cal. Magnum, it is not. It's not popular in most circles and it would not be so widely available as the 9mm. The popular handgun post WWII became the 1911 .45cal. ACP which is NOT REPRESENTED HERE FOR SOME REASON. (Russian Bias Anyone ?)
Seventh, .50cal. aka 12.7x99mm (or Russian 12.7x101mm) are the most powerful rounds you can get & muzzle energy (punching power or penetration by default) is 12x that of a normal rifle. So a standard .50cal. rifle could ignore regular armor and penetrate power armor. It does not. The .50cal. rifle has an accurate effective range of 1.5km and kills up to 4.5km.
Eighth, the Russian rifle STG-47 (Kalashnikov my ass, Schmeisser & Co. imprisoned in Russia worked at A.K.'s Labs) 7.62x39mm (an inferior caliber to the 7.62x51mm, less powder, less range, less accuracy) IS represented at Nuka World and the gangs. Russian bias confirmed.
Nineth, lack of an AR-15/M-16 is absurd in the face of the STG-47.
Tenth, the shot penetration to armor ratios are not properly calculated, you could be in power armor with 860 (X-01 VI) damage protection and still get hurt by small rounds that do little damage. Likewise for Radiation, supposed to block 300 but you still get radiated.
Eleventh, unlike video games by totality, if you pull out a magazine with 3 rounds left and dump it while reloading a full one, YOU LOSE THE 3 ROUNDS. Still having all rounds is Unrealistic.
Twelve, large beasts have more armor than a tank, because bones do not get shattered by bullets and laser cannot cut through... REALLY ???
Not even the end of my rant, will think up more as this thread develops.

[DouglasGrave]

I love the customization, and the grip swap between "pistol" and "rifle" is mostly sensible, being limited to pipe weapons, lasers, and plasma guns, while ballistic production models usually don't swap. But the "handmade rifle" from Nuka World being able to switch is kind of stupid.

I agree on the 10mm pistol's appearance, since too many of its forms (including the standard one) lack the classic chunky front end.

[ghpstage]

Too many of the weapons start with much too similar or even identical stat values, particularly range, accuracy and RoF and far too many mod parts pop up with identical name and stats across too many weapons.
A good chunk of weapon parts and effects fail to respect the (often derpy) game rules, leaving a lot of stuff either obsolete before you get it or extremely niche.

I have no problem with a system involving heavy customisation in concept, but in FO4 it was one of a number of things (including bugs, wonky mechanics, bad stats, balkanised weapon groups etc) that combined to almost completely remove meaningful weapon variety.

I would lean toward having more base weapons, each with more specific custom options that were thought through.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Von Faustien:

yeah recoil on the lasers is dumb.

George Lucas said it best when people ranted about there is no sound in space for Star Wars.
"It is my fantasy world and in my fantasy world there is sound in space."

Apply that same concept to pencils having lead, two tin cans and a flag makes a bed, etc.

[Elbmek]

Dont like FO4 weapons so use modern tech wpns mod.

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

tbh that's one thing they sorta did good in fallout 4 vs other fallouts. The customization for both power armors, armors, and weapons. That and the legendary items. It's now only locked behind perks and lvls but after you breech that threshold around lvl 50 i think for the best items in-game you start getting a ton of great legendary stats, items, armors, etc. also setting the thing to have armorer, blacksmith, weapon expert, and science.

Power armor especially can be uniquely customized and not just the same 3-4 variants. Armor is the same and now you can choose the side effects like longer chem duration or more defense, more carry weight, etc. The guns overall are fantastic. You have like 1 10mm variant but there's like 1000 ways to customize it. Also no degradation. it's no longer hoard like 10000 guns to fix 1 gun or to sell them all. Now you can scrap them and customize 1 gun you find like etc. The name thing was icing on the cake for customization.

It's actually much better this way. You still get SOME legendary unique weapons but overall you can just find normal variants of guns and armors around the commonwealth.also for the most part another thing is encouraging companions before you do the main quest lines making it better to get their stats boosting perks early on.

[The Inept European]

Generally it's good. I echo most of the concerns already mentioned - lasers lack any obvious advantages, many weapons are sub optimal to the point of uselessness, automatics shouldn't be balanced by low damage, things like sights and silencers should be more interchangeable. Plus of course they confuse receiver types with what should be ammo types, and they never seem to have heard of selective fire, creating a false choice between carrying a semi vs auto weapon.

But mostly it's ok. I would go with ghpstage's suggestion - keep it, but implement it better, fix the inconsistencies and illogical aspects and the goofs and the gaps.

I like the fact that it deliberately avoids the modern firearms fetishism and makes an alternate history timeline for firearms. I dislike when they break with their own idea by intruding things like the stupid Thompson SMG, the stupid raider AK, the stupid cowboy guns, etc. In general the DLC make the gun mix worse in pretty much every case, the radium rifle being about the only exception. (The harpoon gun is ok but it's not a firearm).

[ghpstage]

Older Fallout games made use of a number of different balance levers that were specific to an individual weapon, crit chance multipliers, crit damage, spread, AP cost, shots per VATS attack, item HP and ammo types.
They weren't perfect, sometimes things didn't even function at all, let alone work well but overall it allowed different guns to have their own identity and claim a niche. At worst it provided a framework to build on.

There was nothing wrong with reworking or replacing these levers, but FO4 took a sledgehammer to everything, and rather than building something new simply rearranged the rubble.

Originally posted by Party Time Clown:

Power armor especially can be uniquely customized and not just the same 3-4 variants. Armor is the same and now you can choose the side effects like longer chem duration or more defense, more carry weight, etc. The guns overall are fantastic. You have like 1 10mm variant but there's like 1000 ways to customize it.

The 10mm pistol is one of the worst weapons you could have picked as an example of the good that modding adds.
For a lot of weapons the 'bottom is best' mantra for parts is a bit of an oversimplification, even if it isn't too far from the truth, but for the 10mm it is a near absolute truth. There is no point in having a bunch of options if the best ones are set in stone.

[Elidrin]

I'm pretty meh on Fallout 4 weapons in general. Generally speaking Fallout 4's availability of serviceable weapons and reliable ammo is way way way out there.

The war is 57 years from now in an alternate reality so I can wrap my head around combat rifles firing the same ammo as the submachine gun (Although it's a bit of a stretch hey its fiction and it's their fiction).

BUT by the time the game starts, the weapons are 200 years old or home made and you can pretty much assume that every round you fire has been reloaded way past the point brass should be reloaded (assuming the cases were even brass) and loaded with home made powder with nowhere near the quality of today's ammo. In today's market just getting primers for reloading can be a pain in the rear, after a nuclear holocaust forget it. In all honesty you should be shocked that anything past the pipe rifle even operates and the misfire rate should be absurd. All in all, ammo and prewar weapons are way to common.

For my suspension of disbelief the pipe weapons should have been single shot, breaking open like a shotgun. A bolt action or revolver weapon being very top of the line for every day folks. Firearms should have had a chance of misfire or serious malfunction requiring repairs.

The idea that you can pick up a 10mm pistol in a vault after it has sat there for 200 years and expect it and it's ammo to perform requires science fiction but hey it's their fiction so I will roll with it. The pristine 10mm pistol you walk out of the vault with should have made you a god...til the ammo ran dry. After that it would have made a nice paper weight.

My biggest pet peeve though: The .38 ammo is the most common round across the game world yet only the pipe pistol chambers the round. There are no prewar .38 weapons in the game, very odd. All these bullets made it but no prewar .38 firearms, you would think it would have been the other way around.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

For my suspension of disbelief the pipe weapons should have been single shot, breaking open like a shotgun. A bolt action or revolver weapon being very top of the line for every day folks. Firearms should have had a chance of misfire or serious malfunction requiring repairs.

Personally the term "pipe gun" always sounds like it should be something much cruder, akin to a makeshift hand cannon, rather than a weapon with a proper receiver. Something like this (from the original Battle Angel Alita manga):

https://battleangel.fandom.com/wiki/Pipe_gun?file=BAA04_129_Unnamed_junkie.jpg