Fixing Fallout 4's Raiders 

Your first criticism of Raiders is the one I had for FO4: there are just too many of them. Boston and thereabouts is so thick with them that they outnumber settlers drastically in the early game, which means they would have most likely moved on or starved by the time we show up. Historically, even conquerors didn't generally outnumber the townsfolk.

I think Libertalia should've been a raider trading hub that you could visit freely or gain access to by doing quests for the Trigger Men

It honestly feels like Bethesda doesn't know how to write outside of those location backstories scribbled in the notes or «go there and kill that guy». Even Nuka World has just a pair of named characters per gang. Imagine if Legion only had a random centurion as a lore-dump guy, or NCR didn't exist outside of the Strip Embassy.

I always found it weird how they decided to give a lot of raider bosses names and personalities and methods, then put all that entirely on notes you can loot off their corpses. Bosco was bitten by a mongrel and was driven mad with rabies. You find this info on his terminal, and you can't use it to try to motivate his underlings to start a coup because you killed them to get to it. Red Tourette and Tower Tom have a rivalry going on, which you find out by decapitating them and reading their secret diary. Ack Ack literally has no notes, and bafflingly you never actually learn her name or anything about her beyond her in-game nametag. I've been doing a sort of rewrite project for Fallout 4, and my plan for the raiders is that the independent questline is driven by the goal to reestablish the CPG. Some of the options for potential seats are occupied by raiders... If, of course, you can find some that will be reasonable enough for it. Less raiders in the council means less infighting, but getting raider bosses to join likely means they will follow you, the strongest and meanest guy around, and you get extra votes. I have turned this funny shooter game into a political simulator, basically.

The numbers of raiders has led me to dread the shooter aspect of the game. It feels so boring and bland with such a never ending clone army. I'll never forget how silly it was when I saw a raider gang that peacefully existed half a block from Supermutants, and vice versa.

I would expand the other human "bad guy" factions to replace raiders in certain areas, The Triggermen is such a cool group that gets practically no focus outside of Nick Valentine's opening quest. Maybe they are the most "social acceptable" raiders, doing things like extortion and chem dealing. As long as the triggermen get their money, they leave you alone. That is a deal that some in the commonwealth would be happy to accept, especially if they get some protection and trade in return. Bam, now you have sightly more variety. Now instead of just shooting Mad Max rejects, sometimes you shoot Godfather rejects.

Bethesda makes giant worlds and populates them with mindless creatures for you to shoot/cast spells on.

i like the swamp raider cult idea, with the ones with guns are higher ranking ones only being snipers that make every shot count, joining them if possible or at least talk to them we can talk to one of these snipers and we can learn about their background.

The cut content of the Combat Zone (i.e. the place where you find Cait) is at least one good bit of evidence that there might have originally been intentions to have a deeper experience with raiders in the game - but obviously, that was abandoned at some point during development.

Honestly, the game would be more convincing if a lot of the Raiders on the map instead had mutant insects. I would also note that just like Raiders, there are also arguably way too many feral ghouls as well. Ghouls were supposed to be a small fraction of the population that survived high radiation exposure. The number of feral ghouls in numerous parts of Massachusetts in Fallout 4, almost makes it seem like almost everyone became a ghoul who wasn’t in a Vault, not to mention super mutants or other monsters would kill out feral ghouls for making their own residence. A Yao Guai would want safe residence in a cave or abandoned house and wouldn’t tolerate feral ghouls inside or around it. I mean the reason why Necropolis worked was because it was stated that Ghouls from many areas all came to that area and congregated inside Necropolis. I thought the gunners were just another Talon Company.

We need more tribals

Cyberpunk 2077 had an interesting mechanic for different gangs. If you go all out and kill a lot of them, they send out squads to deal with you. But if you're in and out unseen, you're fine

Raiders in the earlier games were factions called raiders by the NPCs Raiders in later games are just raiders

At least with Skyrim you can compartmentalize the fact, that Skyrim is suppose to be much bigger than it actually is. So you can kind of excuse why there are so many bandits in Skyrim. With FO4, you really can’t do the same. Since, it based on a city and its surroundings locations. While Skyrim is a province on a massive continent. And the funniest thing about FO4 raider population, is that they’re 40 named raider locations in the base game. While, Skyrim only has 28 named bandit locations, in its base game.

Good point, with soo many Lovecraft references and cryptids youd think there would be more Bandit cults built around their worship, I mean they did do that in 76 with the Mothmen, but still

Fun fact, at least in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, raiders really aren’t the same species as normal humans. Their unique dirty skin texture is tied to a specific raider race.

Imagine if other games were allowed to use the nemesis system

It’s because Todd Howard hates what Fallout really is- a Post-Post Apocalypse, Fo4 functions as if the world descended into chaos like 20 years beforehand, rather than 200+ years. That’s another reason why the NCR & Courier’s canonically rebuilt civilizations are nowhere to be found in the Amazon series lmao.

"B-b-b-buh-but thinking is HAAAARD!" Is what I imagine most developers would respond.

The Forged The Dunwich Borers Raiders The Corvega Raiders The Backstreet Apparel Raiders The Hallucigen Raiders The Raiders you kill for the Abernathy family The Easy City Downs Raiders The Pickman Gallery Raiders There's a Raider gang in some subway tunnels not far from Diamond City There's another gang near Natick Banks Sully Mathis's Mirelurk farming gang Not sure if the Raiders at the Combat Zone count as a gang There's a gang at one of the breweries The Libertalia Raiders There's a gang holed up at the end of one of the bridges in Boston There's another gang on a boat and cargo barge stuck in the middle of a canal in the Cambridge area because it crashed into a bridge Those Norwegian ghoul sailors who technically aren't really raiders, but are considered as such by the game and are hostile to the player because of the language barrier These are all the ones I could think of off the top of my head

Bethesda's desire for infinite raiders gave me an idea. So, you wipe out all the named raider bosses and their gangs. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Settlements still have "Raider Troubles", and you go on business as usual, and the more observant players would notice that when unmasking some of these raiders, they all have the exact same face. Okay, Bethesda laziness, right? Eventually, settlers or other npcs would comment on crimes being committed by the same guy on a seemingly impossible spree. More raiders with the same face. Something's going on. You dig a little deeper and find whole armies made of this one guy. Some mercenaries get with you and help track these clones back to a vault repurposed by the Institute. Now your choices are presented to you, these mercs see the caps in being paid to defend against an unending horde of raiders. You could side with the raider for evil playthroughs, you could just take him out and shut it down. You could repurpose the machine to make synth livestock, but at the cost of it taking much more time effort and wrangling scientific types across the wasteland. It always weirded me out how the institute had basically cloning technology and yet never bothered to use them to make armies of seemingly upstanding people for the surface world to rally behind. If the Institute truly believed the synths were just machines to be programmed, why not program them to be good people or shrewd diplomats? Better yet, why not just create the gen 3's with the operating systems of the gen 1 and 2's? You know, the ones that don't try to escape barring two exception as opposed to the seemingly hundreds of gen 3's? Me personally, I would've taken the Institute's motto of 'Mankind redefined" to its extreme by having the Institute be the true foil to the Brotherhood. Sure, have the synths, but have them be robots in people's skins like Nick, but more convincing. The people below ground are the people in the skins of machines. Cyborgs and mechanized robobrains so advanced, they'd look like something from the Mechanicus from Warhammer 40k or from the Bay transformers. Sure, you can still have the fallout aestetic, but I always felt the Institute with its synth-heavy ost and sterile white and plastic-centric design geared more towards a 70's sci fi than anything seen previously in the series. Father and other NPC's in the Institute would be basically machines and supercomputers with small hints at their human pasts. Father would be a man in a vat connected to some kind of cerebral matrix so he can run the show while still being preserved. The irony can be that he is still a boy, but has been alive so long that mentally, he's still the aloof old man we see in-game. The cancer "subplot" can be retooled to something like "My life support systems are failing. I didn't alarm anyone because I'm ready to get out and grow up. I let you out before anyone else could experiment on you or forget about you. I know what it's like to be trapped." but depending on how the main quest is resolved, his body is so used to being suspended in fluid that his immune system is compromised and his bones too weak, meaning he won't survive very long without heavy technological assistance, which only the Institute could provide. You could have a touching moment with him akin to Darth Vader's last words with Luke. He'll finally get to see his parent's face and not from behind a screen or separated by glass. I'd still have human NPC's, but have it operate like any cult or corporation. The more privileged your position, the more augmentations you have towards your job. The department head meetings would be all screens and you'd be the awkward human sitting in a room full of semi-immortal cyborgs. Now the idea of you being named successor or at least the caretaker of the systems really seems laughable. The player could then abdicate responsibility to one of these heads at risk of causing more infighting down the road. Dr. Li being a cyborg would really make the BOS (If the Liberty Prime quest MUST be in this game) really face what they think is man and machine too closely linked. It could all be a backroom deal that even Maxson has to begrudgingly admit must be done for the greater good, then have a secretive element in the brotherhood ask you to "deal with her" afterwards. You could have another railroad quest to get her out of town, do the deed, Making the institute more cyborg-based would also marry well with the Automaton DLC. Maybe we could even have a provision to make any Institute players become cyborgs too and they could upgrade themselves (to a more limited extent) TLDR: Have the infinite raider thing connect to the institute by cloning/synths. Make the big players in the Institute inhuman cyborgs with more human-like synths, at least that way they're not just boring out of touch guys in labcoats. if nothing else, it would've made the institute and raiders seem more connected as opposed to how isolated from one another they feel in-game. I know that's the point, but the goal of all this was to make the institute have as big an impact as the Master and the Unity did in Fallout 1

I think a good idea for a raider gang could of been minutemen deserters, they would be found in old settlements (eg in hangman’s ally) wore the minutemen uniform and could of have some kind of authoritarian voice lines like saying they with the minutemen even though now they just raiders.

Bro was shooting Cait

This might be the reason why I liked Fallout 3 more then Fallout 4. These guys were too active on too many places. They felt like cannonfodder because of the ammount of raiders there are. Atleast for me that is.

A bit of a controversial take but I prefer how the raiders where handled in Fallout 76 than they were in 4. Raiders had a leader, different factions, formed cults and could also be reasoned with (unlike the mindless bullet fodder in 4)

Yea, raiders would be drug lords... all raiders would trade, but they would primarily trade chems, actual raiding would be limited to rival drug gangs which raiders would fight for territory and resources, which they would cultivate. All raiders would farm, they would simply farm stuff for chems instead of crops, they would also hunt and gather, and they would raise animals. Raiders would almost never raid "settlements" because they need those people as customers. Raiders would also not be hostile, they would want to trade with people, yea you might get mugged or extorted or even kidnapped wandering into a raider camp, but not killed, they don't want the commonwealth's farmers dead, they want them alive to do the farming the raiders don't want to do. That is how "raiders" should work, as drug lords or contraband smugglers or even hired muscle, not as indiscriminate murderers, and they should fight each other, not the populace of the commonwealth that provide all the stuff they need but don't want to actually do the work to provide for themselves.

For the point about the lack of leadership, that's inaccurate to a point. Plenty of raider controlled buildings/areas have a named boss and presumably higher ranking raiders like Raider Veterans would, in lore, have some leadership capabilites

You have very cool takes and interesting points about my Favorite Fallout game, and I wish your channel would get noticed more. But I think the reason why they don't organize/unite is because: 1. They aren't very intelligent or smart and rather use brute tactics as shown in dialogue or journal entries. 2. The chems they take could change them psychologically and make them more aggressive to each other like the Fiends in New Vegas. 3. Most of the raiders wouldn't trust each other and most of them are too greedy. 4. Some of the Raider gangs are Ghouls and people in the Fallout series don't take too kindly to them.

The issue that I have is that the raiders don’t have any other jobs. If you look at areas of the real world that are unstable, you see that people in gangs/militias tend to fight part time and do other things part time to support themselves and their families. Raiders are from somewhere, and live somewhere. This has to be considered when writing a story. Fallout did this with the Khans and the Legion and then stopped doing it

I think part of the issue is the handling of scale. In Fallout 1 and 2 you can easely meet more raiders than friendly NPCs but it works because the scale feels much larger the towns, villages and settlements you visist are rarely seen in their entirety. You always have at least one of the corners of the map with houses or farmlands just out of bounds, implying that there's more people of in the distance, just in a part of town that's not relevant to you. If you all the cities together have 300 hundred minimally interactable NPCs all together you still can still tell there's hundreds if not thousands more of them just around the corner out of the way. So when you kill 600 hundred raiders you don't end up feeling like you wiped 2/3rds of the wasteland. With New Vegas Obsidian realised that, being a much more contained area generic raiders would break the immersion if you though about it while Bethesda, if they did realise this just didn't care. And you can tell it's a factor of caring because Morrowind has a good handle of scale. The humanoid enemies all have some reason for being where they are and the ones that don't need extensive background are all either interdimensional creatures that can pop up whenever, or animals that can easely be abstracted as being small portions of the population that are filtering in the areas that you visit.

So i definetly agree with your criticism here. But food for thought, i think what most of us miss is that fallout 4 is almost a 2nd post apocolypse, society did recover alot, but then about 20ish years (im estimating but could have been 20-40 years unless it is clarified in the lore somewhere) society collapsed again, with the death of the cpg, infighting to follow, the splintering of the minutemen, eventual collapse against the gunners, and manipulation by the institute leading to effectively a renewed apocolypse. I don't think it is well shown, especially with the way settlements are designed (or lack there of) but i do think that is largely why the commonwealth is the way it is. I think you could fix the raiders but a few ways: 1. Have the settlements be populated and designed already, you could still help ally them, even be able to add or edit them, but that would increase the population and supplies of the peaceful population in comparison. 2. Reduce the respawning of raiders a tad. 3. As you described give them identity. But honestly i would accept generic "raiders" similar to how if i drive in a bad area and get harrassed by a gang im not always gonna know what gang they are specifically. But my problem is they need to be more then chem addicted killers. Have slavers, chem addicts, chem dealers, gangs that "offer protection" to settlements or traders, the fight club group, a killer group, cannibals, desperate farmers turned raiders or minutemen turned raiders, and maybe yes some other dark adult content (think cook-cook). Because then they would feel more real, sadistic killers wouldn't exsist to this extent, but people who kill easily but have other motivators (food, money, power, chems, s**, etc) make more sense. 4. Like you said, make them not default hostile, they could operate more like the gunners do, telling you to get away from their area, if you come in they attack, or some could have dialog. 5. It would also help if people wouldn't ask you to "clear out" the raiders solo. Cause that's insane, it makes it feel like they are animals that people just assume a normal guard or merc can kill slews of raiders. When the institute has you do it you have synth relay grenades for reinforcement, and a courser who is elite and advanced. The BOS usually you see squads around, have danse with you, have a vertibird, power armor, reinforcement is implied. Railroad you have a specific single target not the whole group. But the minutemen or settlements just expect you, a random traveler or general, to kill a dozen raiders on your own. You should have specific targets, or focus more on defense objectives, talk to Jared instead, save a hostage without having to kill the raiders, have minutemen reinforcement, even be able to send squads without you to resolve it like in assassins cred brotherhood. This would make it feel more grounded, and yes technically some that already can be done that way, but the design assumes you will kill all the raiders to save the hostage or all the corvega raiders to get to Jared. Lastly i like your take as looking at them more like pirate groups instead of how people usually (including me) look at them as crime gangs. I think with the lack of universal societal structure their formation could be more perceived that way, then we could look at why people joined pirate groups and how they operated and build the raider groups around that idea. Where as the "raiders" located in more structured areas (ala new vegas, or in fo4 think the triggermen or groups next to dismond city) look at those more as crime groups, they'd also be less violent and crazy. Which to bethesda's credit i think we see a lot of these thoughts already in their when you read terminals, and listen to lore, the problem is the settlements, quest and dungeon design, radiant design, and the npc's being tied to the same generic barks. But when you stealth and listen to some stuff you hear interesting stuff about the raiders at times but then you wait too long or start a fight and they revert to the same generic sadostic chem addict killer dialog. Last thing id love to see, is a game where you maybe have 1 main quest line, but like in New vegas you have a bunch of different little groups you need to deal with, but instead what if you need to ally with a bunch of warlords, mercenaries and settlements, and maybe you can make an alliance of raiders to deal with the main questline. (Yes similar to nuka world, but integrated in the main line)

Death claws and the intelligent Death claws next for discussion

Pirate raiders would have been cool and its the perfect location for them, a third of the map is water ffs Another post apocalypse game that did a great job on its raiders was Rage which was published by bethesda, all the factions where distinct and worked slightly different, its a shame that bethesda just doesn't care anymore because they have all these great examples to look back at but they dont

the more and more mods come out for fallout 4 the more i relize how fucking lazy bethesda was either with their story, playrole and details such as shame

I think the nuka world gangs should have been base game as a build up for the dlc like how new vegas teased pretty much every DLC in each one as they came out.

Raiders kinda went from criminal gangs or tribes living in harsh conditions that incentivised raiding over settling to Reagen style boogeymen. They pop out of the ground heavily armed and full of the weed drugs, got nothing in thier head but "ooga booga me wanna shoot ya" and you never have to feel bad about mowing them down because of (usually off screen) evil. They're LOTR Orcs is what i'd say but even LOTR humanizes orcs more. Love your fixes, changing the nameplates and getting creative with their armor sets (or even customizing an existing piece to better reflect certain gangs) is a perfectly feasible and super effective way of doing things. The only issue i can think of is the audio lines as being the part where the costs scale pretty out of control.

Something funny about 3 and 4 compared to new vegas is in new vegas you sometimes forget radiers are a thing

I like your opinions on this topic! It would have been cool if Bethesda integrated more of Nuka World into the Commonwealth by either unifying, absorbing or eliminating the various raider groups (Corvega, Ration Stockpile, Libertalia etc.). Would have been a great opportunity for fleshing them out more. If you read their terminals, all of these groups are aware of each other and comment on their activities. Bosco would have been a great Pack lieutenant, for example. Eventually challenging Mason for leadership and you as the overboss decide how it should proceed.

They should also behave with some sort of intelligence. When you first come upon a new Raider territory, they should challenge you with perimeter guards and allow you the chance to form a relationship with their particular Raider tribe rather than being automatically hostile. Additionally, if you are taken to see their leader, they should strip you of all your weapons (Subject to a Sneak skill check to hide some on your person) before you are allowed entry into their inner sanctum, presumably putting you at a disadvantage. I always hated how in New Vegas the Fiends were such a well-written raider tribe, but then they allow you to walk into Vault 3, right up to Motor-Runner fully armed and ready to kill everyone. If I were a raider faction, all new audiences with the king would be stripped of weapons, and stripped of armor down to their skivvies or plainclothes.

I love this channels videos. I always find myself thinking about the logistics of Fallout and your videos always thoroughly explore such topics. I also think some background music would be a nice touch

I’m 2:53 in and what your saying about them seeming to have no real goal is correct they’re aimless which is a valid criticism that said there are different raider gangs the main issue is because they all just say raider above their head it’s hard to tell which groups are affiliated with what gangs which is a skill issue on Bethesda’s part. Cool you got to that.

“Viking” was a job rather than a people, which translates as ‘raider’. They were fully formed cultures rather than just murder hobos, and went out seasonally to gather wealth on top of their farming/fishing communities. Pirates had rigid codes to manage the behaviour of their raiders and even managed to establish towns and communities Furiosa & Fury road does better world building for their ‘raiders’ and Hemsworths character arc could be inspiration for RP as a leader as you try to keep the unruly mob together A system similar to the ‘nemesis’ system which allows you to interact with raiders and have them evolve according to players actions. Pulling together raider groups to dominate the wasteland could be a faction players create out of the chaos. Good chat, I’ll be including your points in my Fallout PnP sourcebook.

I'm so appreciative to see a video like this

Fix the gunners, Great concept with little to no backing at all. It’s sad to see a militarititic faction like them have nothing to support themselves

The funny thing is if you play the nuka world dlc the massive takeover thing you were talking about, actually happens and become the dominant faction with the player leading them

Is there any lore available with specific Raiders factions? I really would like to make a song or 2 about the topic but my knowdledge falls short on this part

Here is the list of raider gangs you often come across in the Commonwealth Wasteland alone: 1. The Forged 2. Sparta's gang in BADTFL 3. Cinder's gang in Revere Beach Station 4. Boomer's gang in Outpost Zimonga 5. Red Tourette's gang in the Federal Ration Stockpile and, by extension, Lonely Chapel 6. Slough's gang in Quincy Quarries 7. Bosco's gang in D.B. Technical High School 8. Ack-Ack's gang in the USAF Olivia 9. Chancer's gang in the Andrew Station 10. Helter Skelter's gang in Malden Station 11. Sinjin's gang in Milton General Hospital 12. Clutch's gang in Backstreet Apparel 13. Tower Tom's gang in Beantown Brewery 14. Jared's gang in Corvega Assembly Plant 15. Walter's gang in Walden Pond 16. Lefty's gang in Parsons Insane Asylum 17. Sully Mathis' gang in Thicket Excavation Quarry 18. Bedlam's gang in Dunwich Borers Quarry 19. Rust Devils 20. Ricca's gang in College Square

It would have been cool if the raiders in the main game turned friendly if you have very evil karma and sided with the Nuka-World gangs.

The gangs themselves exist, the gang leaders even have their own quirks, shown through computer logs. I think the best change would be to add an infamy & relations system. Perhaps some gangs are more bloodthirsty, while others are merely territorial and prefer extortion over violence (Triggermen and Libertalia are great candidates for this). Perhaps if you kill members of a gang, they'll send hitsquads after you while you're in their territory. Perhaps gangs have rivals and allies. Gangs may call for reinforcements from allies if they're cornered by the player, and to combat this the player must kill the leaders of the allied gangs, ending their alliances (though after a certain amount of time the new leaders will revitilize the alliance). Meanwhile, rival gangs attack each other on sight, and will turn the border area between the two into a fortified warzone. And perhaps for the endgame there may be a powerful gang from outside the Commonwealth, appearing all over the map with a combination of their own elite Volunteers and some meatshield Deserters from the destroyed gangs.

Yes! I agree a lot of your criticisms! I could see the raiders in the Boston area being different than the ones outside of it. It would be cool that raiders form alliances and maybe even make dealings with other factions like the Gunners or Triggermen. Giving them a distinct identity would have helped a lot at world building. This is why I liked gangs in Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 where they have different cultures, behaviors, and backgrounds from one another.

The most important aspect of this criticism as a game design is the Ludonarrative aspect. The fact that even though the Raiders are "baddies". You the player are most definitely the worse human in the lore of Fallout 4. Literally a mass murdering savage killing for fun. The game has poor design for why you would even go towards the Raiders most of the time aside from a crappy settlement quest line. You just go for experience, loot, and the thrill of killing because you can't do it in real life. There is no purpose to it really. Unlike the true Fallout 1 and 2 games that had concience and reason to Raiders, not to mention it was near impossible to kill them unless you were deep into the game and came back. This is unfortunately the flaw of Bethesda taking on the IP. They are Fantasy game devs. Raiders are just reskined skeletons/monsters/etc. Obviously Fallout 4 is just a reskin and that is precisely why it falls abyssmally short of the actual IP and lore. Fallout is an adult game, it requires more finesse than just "bad guy, therefore kill" function. The only other game I can think of that came close to Fallout is Mass Effect 1.

I like to say it’s immersive that they’re all just random raiders to me the other games having different gangs and in depth lore is because that player character is basically on the same footing just another survivor but in fo4 the player himself doesn’t associate with just surviving the waste to me the player character doesn’t even think twice they’re all basically the same person except when he/she goes to Nuka world and is introduced into the idea then knowing some raider gangs themselves that otherwise would he nameless nuka raiders with a couple boss battles and even then all of or most of the raiders in fo4 belong to a certain raider group like how the first raider gang you encounter come from Corvega

its almost like the writers didnt care (or werent payed enough) to design factions around every human enemy in the game

There is so much that could be done with raiders. Imagine if they could take over settlement areas and launch attacks on near by areas expanding against each other and slowly growing in numbers. Each gang should use different weapon types. Imagine running into an energy weapon group stationed out of an old industrial area. There could be tribal groups who you can only tell apart if you have taken a peek or feat to become knowledgeable in their ways that could allow you to pass through their lands. I actually don’t have a problem with some of them being mindless I think it should be played up. These gangs have had 200 years of chem use including while pregnant. Them becoming ravenous brain damaged lunatics who can barely speak seems great. Basically ghouls but with just enough thought to use weapons they find.

Fallout 76 actually does this better. Raiders are split into groups around the map, not all attack you right away, etc.

My thing is, when you gave your reasons as to why people might become raiders, 2 of the 3 reasons you gave (addicts, and people wanting to protect their family/homes from raiders) probably don’t care about overthrowing diamond city and other major settlements. People just wanting to protect their families probably don’t want to subject others to that on such a massive scale, and addicts probably don’t care how large or powerful their group becomes, as long as they have easy access to chems, and having a raider ruled commonwealth might make that harder. I do get what you’re saying and I do like the way fallout new Vegas did it best, having a bunch of more organized small gangs and then having friends in place of raiders

Great video, and this is a great idea for a mod

I really love your videos. I'm a modder for Fallout 4, because I love the game, but it lacks many things I would want it to include. So you give me many ideas. There are too many raiders. In nature, a rule of thumb is that with each rank in the food chain, the biomass reduces by a factor of ten. So if you have 10 tons of plants, the ecosystem feeds 1 ton of herbivores. Raiders are carnivores in this comparison. It feels like there are 10 times more raiders than settles, which is bizarre. I have to find a solution for that. Maybe replacing raider camps (that are irrelevant for quests) with creature spawns?

Spacers have all of these problems and worse in Starfield.

Look, although there can be raider factions, they tend to be small, 'cause the term, raider, covers a lot. Some are roaming gangs, but some are local youths trying their luck. In the case of locals, they may move on to become a threat somewhere else, but locally they're like highwaymen. They just want to shoot their shot, but not necessarily wipe out the locals, 'cause some of them may be family. Most raiders settle down, once they get old and conservative. A lot of the settlers probably used to be raiders.

I managed to name more than half without looking them up. I still agree with your video though.

YES! MORE! CRITICIZE BETHESDA MORE! Seriously tho thank you.

Whats funny is that Of course with no surprise. New Vegas did this. Sure you got your Normal typical Raiders, but you also go Minor Factions of Raider gangs. You got The Powder Gangers. The Khans and The Fiends. All hold territory. Bethesdas Main problem is their world is big yet simultaneously too small. The Only factions barely hold any territory thats not infested by someone else. And when they do there is no conflict between the groups. This is why you end up with the main fancyions seeming like they barely exist while the world is outnumbered entirely by animals and raiders. Some of the raiders Should be named and hold official territory, being a true faction that is in conflict with their neighbors. Would fill out the world a bit and justify these are Not Just raiders. They are a hostile occupying nation

I say raiders stay the same but you can kill of all gunners and super mutants and synths

Look at Kenshi for a great handling of this. It's a harsh post-apocalyptic world with fortified cities that are very selective about granting citizenship, you have slavery, religious fanaticism, constant friction between even the smaller factions... and the minor factions and different bandit sides are really fleshed out. You have starving bandits, who are just the lowest of the low on the pecking order and serve as the first hurdle for your character to overcome, you have dust bandits who are a bit more of a threat, you have the crab weirdos at the coast and so on. Interactivity and logical conclusions, that's all that decent worldbuilding really is.

For my raider level signifiers I'd keep all the same "scum, psycho, survivalist, etc" but change it so they aren't called raiders but have their special little faction name instead. Maybe make the level 1 ones who otherwise would just be called "raider" into "*faction* raider"

Great video. Now if only bethesda cared about fallout like you do

Some valid criticisms but if you actually read the terminals and stuff they already are in larger gangs and even small empires

Yahweh, agoycus :^)

It feels like Fallout 4 was trying to streamline being a fallout game. A lot of the base game is full of radiant quests, generic kill quests, and recycled stuff from the previous games. It's not very immersive

I dig it

I have to disagree with this video.I actually really like the base game raiders, mainly because I'm a weirdo who likes to read every terminal or note. And I think that's what the issue comes down to, most people just kill all the raiders and take the quest item without trying to learn about the gang. If you include all the lore for each gang, the argument of "All of these raiders are the same" really just boils down to what they wear and the voice lines they have. You bring up the Forged, who I'd say don't have that much more lore compared to any other given gang, but they wear different clothes and have some unique lines so they're good in your book.

16:26 so basically Mafia 3?

ok now fix the main story pls

I agree it's a wasted opportunity to make more of the game but I think raiders are fine the way they are, besides an overabundance and being a stones throw away from other hostile entities. raiders are not a faction, it's an id tag, they could be tagged wastelanders in red or scavengers but they're tagged as raiders to denote specific behavior. you say they take crops and supplies because it's easier than farming but they only take out of necessity. an observation of raider locations show tortured and mutilated bodies similar to super mutants. raiders are antisocial phycopathic sadistic nihilists. such people exist today but in a post apocalyptic wasteland you can imagine there's likely more people to lose belief in meaning to life and value to life. they don't value their lives or the lives of others, they exist to ride the high of drugs and torturing the weak and helpless, so no they're not a faction and don't group up or cooperate with others staying in small groups of people they may have grown to value, trust or at least tolerate for the time being.

Yippee

It was such a poor game development At least in previous games they were in various groups, many of which you could work with. Raiders in F4 bother me so much

The monotone of your voice actually reminds me of the Legion from FNV

My brother in Christ the Soviet Union killed more people than the Nazi’s who killed 4 million people in camps. The idea that a bunch of self interested people wouldn’t exist and infight one another in a place with no unified laws or culture makes perfect sense. I love fallout new Vegas but not every faction needs 10hours of exposition.

"i would prefer that Bethesda moves away from the looter shooter model" i agree with everything in this video except for this statement. Fallout 4 may have the weakest writing in the series but it is by far the best game.

ai voice?

bro it is a video game

I know that the Mordor games have this under copyright, but how do you feel about something based off the Nemesis System? I always liked how it created a built-in hierarchy, rivalries and aliances between the boss characters.