Why are battles so small?

Discussion in 'Fallout 4' started by KillerBee256, Dec 11, 2015.

  1. Crni Vuk

    Crni Vuk M4A3 Oldfag oTO Orderite

    Nov 25, 2008
    Well, you can bend any engine only so much before it starts to run into issues. And as someone else once explained, Bethesda is not making engines or doing lots of tech-stuff. They design content and visuals. Updating already existing assets. And when you think about it, Fallout 4 is in many ways a Fallout 3 with new paint job thrown over it.
     
  2. Ben Soto

    Ben Soto Professional Salt Shaker

    731
    Jul 7, 2014
    I don't think it's as bad as Source 2013 still using the same editor that Quake used.

    Actually, no, I take that back. Both Source and the Quake engine are magnificent engines.
     
  3. Monco

    Monco The Duck of Death

    136
    Nov 4, 2015
    At least Valve is finally making a new engine
     
  4. Stanislao Moulinsky

    Stanislao Moulinsky Vault Fossil

    Jul 16, 2009
    Source doesn't allow streaming. "Magnificent", right. Try "outdated".
     
  5. GeorgieBest

    GeorgieBest First time out of the vault

    80
    Dec 14, 2015
    Because the engine sucks.
    Thread closed/.
     
  6. Stone Cold Robert House

    Stone Cold Robert House Mojave Rattlesnake

    157
    Jul 6, 2015
    Another thing to consider when it comes to huge battles in games like this, in addition to the aforementioned engine limitations. I recently did some tests, using a computer that could run large scale battles smoothly, with Oblivion, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. I first spawned two opposing groups of NPCs not much larger than the groups you'd encounter in the vanilla game. Went pretty well and playing through it was good gameplay. Afterwards, I spawned an absurd number of NPCs and tried the scenario again. In all three games, the same behavior was observed: it was a mess and barely felt like a battle. The AI simply isn't programmed to work on scenarios with so many enemies, and so you get a bunch of NPCs just bumping into each other, shooting at nothing, running forward and pushing their allies, with only a few actually being positioned well enough to really fight the other side... at that point it just breaks the player's immersion and gameplay because the battle isn't working at all. I haven't done this in Fallout 4, but I imagine you would get similar results.

    What I'm trying to say here is that if NPC combat behavior isn't made with large scale battles already in mind, they don't work really well at all. You CAN make them happen, but it's hardly interesting gameplay because you'll be paying more attention to the inane strategies employed by the AI than actually enjoying it. Now, there are games which have huge battles and it works, but that's because they were, logically, made with those battles already in mind. The current Fallout games aren't supposed to have so many NPCs in the same field so they just act awkwardly when placed there. Couple that with the fact most consoles and PCs would never be able to render that many actors smoothly and you understand why it's not technically feasible.
     
  7. Crni Vuk

    Crni Vuk M4A3 Oldfag oTO Orderite

    Nov 25, 2008
    • [Like] [Like] x 2
  8. Hassknecht

    Hassknecht For hate's sake. Staff Member Admin Orderite Board Cop oTO

    Aug 16, 2010
    I agree with Stone Cold Robert House. The AI is the biggest issue here, it simply doesn't work well with big battles. The NPCs don't take proper cover (or at least they don't stay in it; they just love charging at you as soon as possible), they don't do suppressing fire, they don't really do flanking maneuvers. They're supposed to fight one-on-one, more or less, and tactical decisions for large groups work way different than for really small groups.
    But I guess that's a problem for all games, not just Fallout 4; simulating a large, modern battle is exceptionally hard, I imagine.
     
    • [Like] [Like] x 1
  9. Spacemunkey

    Spacemunkey Vault Senior Citizen

    Dec 4, 2015
    I find games that compartmentalize large battles work really well, imo. Dragon Age Origins comes to mind, while not perfect the end game still felt like a smaller part of a large battle and not a 5v5 pve like Bethesda makes.
     
  10. MercenarySnake

    MercenarySnake Kept you waiting huh?

    Aug 22, 2015
    It's hard to forget how bad the animations are in the game. So why the hell is liberty prime in Boston?
     
  11. Ninja

    Ninja Who?

    243
    Dec 15, 2015
    Because the BoS couldn't be arsed to find an excavator.
     
    • [Like] [Like] x 1
  12. KillerBee256

    KillerBee256 Still Mildly Glowing

    212
    Oct 31, 2008
    Those videos are just depressing, what Bethesda's fan base likes is the antithesis of what fallout use to be.
     
    • [Like] [Like] x 2
  13. MercenarySnake

    MercenarySnake Kept you waiting huh?

    Aug 22, 2015
    Am I the only one that found those videos boring to watch?
     
  14. Khannis

    Khannis Rebuilding America

    145
    Jul 3, 2015
    The only thing redeeming about Liberty Prime's video is that Frank Klepacki's Hell March is an amazing song, so I could bear to watch most of it.
     
    • [Like] [Like] x 1
  15. MercenarySnake

    MercenarySnake Kept you waiting huh?

    Aug 22, 2015
    That video didn't do that song any sort of justice.
     
  16. Khannis

    Khannis Rebuilding America

    145
    Jul 3, 2015
    No it didn't. But it kinda softens the blow a bit, you know? At least you can focus on a good song and some commie lines instead of how Bethesda is ruining Fallout.
     
  17. Eumesmopo

    Eumesmopo Learned to love the bomb

    323
    Dec 6, 2012
    Unreal Engine 1 and Unreal Engine 4 are completely different and are several generations apart. The Gamebryo engine that Bethesda is still using, on the other hand, is the exact same engine as the one they used on Morrowind, albeit with modifications.
     
  18. Placeholder

    Placeholder Please go on...

    25
    Dec 17, 2015
    Red alert had great battle, for the time. Now we look at Total War. (Or more TW DLC...)

    Sadly the artefacting audio gave me a headache (in the video).


    Edit : What's hilarious about the netimmerse/gamebryo/creation engine is that, if Bethesda didn't named it Creation Engine for Skyrim and named it for Fallout 4, people would still argue the same thing. xD
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2015
  19. MercenarySnake

    MercenarySnake Kept you waiting huh?

    Aug 22, 2015
    Don't make me get out the putting whipped cream on shit quote...
     
  20. Placeholder

    Placeholder Please go on...

    25
    Dec 17, 2015
    That depends, what type of cream, where did it come from... Someone could be interested...
     
    • [Like] [Like] x 2