Fallout 4

I'm a fan of computer games that provide interactive and customizable traveling companions. Series like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate are among my favorite. 

Why do I like traveling companions? For starters they give me the illusion that I am not alone. I also derive satisfaction from maintaining a party. I enjoy getting to know each of my party members. Helping them level up, choose their specialty, unlock their special abilities. I enjoy making sure everyone has the best gear I can find for them. The time I invest not only creates a connection with my companions, but it brings a new level of satisfaction to each fight. I don't win battles with button clicks, luck or shear numbers. I win them with forethought, planning and due diligence. This is the companion experience I try to bring to the games I mod. 

An important question that comes up from time to time is why my mods impose follower limits. 

First, I should clarify that my mods allow users to recruit every follower the game has to offer and store them in a portable home base. This is the same basic system that every Bioware game uses: Users can collect every companion option the game offers, but they must choose a subset of those companions for each major mission or dungeon dive. And this makes sense for several reasons:

--== Game Balance ==--

If the original game expects the protagonist to be playing alone or maybe with a single companion, the encounters will be designed with that assumption. So when a mod lets you walk around with multiple followers, it creates game balance issues. There is only so much I can do about this, but limiting the max followers is certainly a good starting point and helps me feel like I am not creating a cheat mod.

--== Map Design ==--

Games have maps and your companions need to get around. When a game is designed for 1 or less companions, the maps reflect that: Narrow hallways, cramped elevators and small doorways create bottlenecks. Even with my current limits, I find it difficult to get around in many games. 

--== Memory/Poly Count ==--

Some games I have modded like Fallout 4 support Consoles. Anytime you make a mod that you plan on releasing to consoles, you must be mindful of older hardware. In other words, keep the poly counts down and make the code as memory and CPU efficient as you can. An obvious way to keep poly counts down is to limit the max number of followers. 

--== Gold Standard ==--

Then there is tradition. Look at some of the old-school titles like Baldur's Gate, Never Winter Nights, Icewind Dale and the Gold Box games of the 80s. 4 to 6 companions is and has always been the standard of CRPGs. Modern hardware can allow larger parties, but that doesn't remove practical limitations like the ones discussed above. Shove too many people into a room and no one is going to be able to move. Take on too many companions, and you wont have time to get to know or customize anyone.

--== The cost of Advanced Features/AI==--

I have listed a number of reasons above for keeping the follower limit down. As I implement my mods, knowing that limit factors into the features I decided to add. Take something like catch up on weapon draw. Would such a feature make sense if you had 50 companions? Would a wall of NPC bodies appear around the player every time they pulled their weapon out?  Would it make sense to let 50 NPCs interject into your conversations? Other features are expensive to implement from a CPU and memory perspective. Advanced Combat AI is not cheap. There is a reason the original games didn't provide better AI for everyone.

Point here is that my mods would have fewer features if I didn't have follower caps. This is a trade-off that many users must understand. You can either have lots of simple/dumb followers, or a smaller group of elite and feature rich followers. If you want both, you normally end up with an unstable and buggy game.

SUMMARY

Tradition, game balance, small interior spaces and technical trade-offs are important reasons for follower limits. But the most important reason is that players have the opportunity to get to know their companions. My Follower mods will never be about forming squads or raiding parties of nameless NPCs. They will always be about building a small diverse team of specialized companions that you eventually get to know and care about. That is not going to happen if you haul 15, 50 or 100 NPCs around with you everywhere.

So there are my reasons and why my own mods impose limits. I hope after reading this users can appreciate my reasons for imposing those limits. And for users who still want more followers, there are plenty of great mods here at the nexus that can meet your needs. Thank you for your time and feel free to PM me your comments.

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Dheuster

14 comments

  1. IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
    IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
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    I personally disagree with your reasoning. Now, I'm fully aware that this is your mod, and believe me if I knew how I'd make my own. But I really do think that while a follower limit is understandable, five is simply too few and I would prefer a minimum of seven or eight. In Skyrim, where you had follower options out the wazoo in the vanilla game, it would make sense, but Fallout 4 has a much smaller pool of potential companions, especially when you consider the amount of companions added by mods that could take a spot in the five. I, for instance, consider Curie, Nick, Codsworth, Piper and Cait to be essential companions, but I'd also like to be able to recruit, say, Danse to go along with them, or any of the three followers from Tales from the Commonwealth or the three from Fusion City Rising, who also take up slots. The current limit seems incredibly draconian. As for your reasons:
    1: Game balance: look, I understand where you're coming from here but there are plenty of "more difficult combat" mods on the Nexus to solve this issue, or you can do what I do and give your companions purposefully underpowered weapons so they don't steal your kills.
    2: Map design: You literally have an option in your own mod to turn off collision with companions. This is only as much of a problem as you want to make it.
    3: Memory/poly count: Okay, I get where you're coming from here as well. But let's be brutally honest here: more people play these games on PC. Furthermore, I'm just going to be blunt here and admit I don't know whether it's particularly difficult to maybe spin off the current version into one intended for consoles and have a higher limit for the PC mod.
    4: Gold Standard/Tradition: Again, I feel I have to be blunt here and say that those games are not Fallout 4: you're comparing apples to oranges. I could comment that the Lord of the Rings books had a ten-person party, and be just as relevant.

    In your section on the cost of advanced features you mention the catchup on weapon with "50 followers". I know you're being hyperbolic for rhetoric's sake but let's be honest here: no one would ever have that many companions. Counting the DLC, there are a total of seventeen companions and even then you almost certainly wouldn't have them all at once. At an absolute maximum, I would say fifteen would be far more reasonable, but I'm sorry, five is too few. Seven or eight seems much fairer to me. I understand you're worried about players having "the opportunity to get to know their companions" but a slightly larger party size isn't going to make that any more difficult.

    I apologise for the long comment, and if I sound entitled, rude or whiny. I'm just trying to put across an alternate view, because sometimes hearing the other side of an argument can provide valuable perspective. Ramble over :)
    1. Dheuster
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      I like feedback. Let me speak to some of your points.
      1) I don't want to create a mod that effectively forces users to install other mods they may not want.
      2) No-collision was added to make things more convenient when exploring. It doesn't solve the close-quarter combat issue. See, it only applies to the player. If you bump into to a follower, they teleport behind you, but followers still bump into each other and get in each others way. Teleporting resets pathing and combat AI (nothing I can do about that), so if I added it to all followers, they would just constantly teleport away from fights as they bumped into each other over and over again. It would completely break combat. 
      3) Hate to break your bubble, but I have always had more XBOX users than PC users. PC downloads (as of this post) : 128,691. XBox downloads (as of this post): 207,507
      4) Name a single (unmodded) game with 6 or more computer-controlled companions that travel with/beside you for most of the game. The closest I can think of are the real-time tactics games like civilization and starcraft. But in those games you are commanding units that carry out orders, not people with names that you get to know and care about. There may be one out their I have overlooked, but I feel confident if such a game exists, it is certainly the exception and not the rule.
    2. IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
      IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
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      Oh wow, I didn't think you'd actually reply. Well, here are my counterarguments, and some more points of my own
      1: Good point, but A: the option is there, and B: you can do what I do and give your companions purposefully underpowered weapons so they don't steal your kills.
      2: That does make sense, definitely, but as far as I can see a small increase to the max limit won't exacerbate this problem too much.
      3: Oh wow, really? I stand corrected. However, I don't think this affects my argument that you could in theory spin off the current version into one intended for consoles and have a higher limit for the PC mod.
      4: Okay, this is an interesting point you're using here and one that, while I can see the other side of the argument, I still disagree with. Firstly, I still feel that you're comparing apples to oranges and prizing tradition over innovation. (The fact that this is pretty much the opposite of the entire moral of the Fallout series is rather amusing), but alright, let me try on a different way of looking at the issue. Take the last heavily squad-focused game I played, the Mass Effect trilogy. Now, while it is true you have a two-squadmate limit on missions in ME, this is for story reasons that don't apply to Fallout 4, namely that Shepard and company are trying to be quick, covert, and careful. However, in the down time between missions, you can talk to and grow to understand a pool of companions that is larger than five. The same would apply to a hypothetical AFT version with a higher follower limit: you get to know them in the down time when you're at your settlement or home, where you chat to your circle of friends, just like in real life.
      Furthermore, you can talk about unmodded games, but this is still a mod, and when you look at the history of mods similar to AFT they have a much higher follower limit, if they have one at all. Take Skyrim. EFF has a limit of 100, which even I admit is too many as I've mentioned before, while UFO has the much fairer limit of 15.

      Now, let's look at the current AFT follower limit from a story/immersion perspective. It's the post-apocalypse, 200 years after the bombs dropped. The wasteland is infested with horrifically dangerous creatures; Raiders, Deathclaws, Yao Guai, Stingwings, Bloodbugs, feral ghouls, Mirelurks, rad chickens, the list goes on. Strength in numbers is something any wastelander should know, and if you're playing as the male Sole Survivor he has experience in the military, which also prioritizes working in groups. It makes no sense to suddenly not want someone along because you have five people already. An increased limit of seven or eight would come off less as just inexplicable refusal to bring someone and more as wanting to keep the group large enough to be able to keep itself safe but small enough to move quickly.
      Furthermore, let's look at this from one more separate perspective. As I understand it, the idea behind modding at all is player choice. Increasing the follower limit has one other thing going for it, oxymoronic as it may seem: you don't have to fill every slot. As the people below me have mentioned, limited-follower play - below even your five-companion limit - is quite common, and increasing the limit slightly would allow a wider range of playstyles whilst still allowing a larger party if you choose.

      I apologize again for the long ramble, but five followers not being enough is a point on which I feel rather strongly and I feel it necessary to put my side out there. Again I apologize if I sound entitled, rude or whiny, that is not my intention and I'm trying to keep this all as civil as possible. I'm only asking that the idea of a slightly higher follower limit be considered if this mod is ever updated in the future. :)
    3. IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
      IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
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      Oh, no response. Pity.
    4. IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
      IHaveToDoThisAGAIN
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      Two years later, still no response. Have people really forgotten FO4 so quickly?
    5. Thekillergreece
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      Or, that he's not entitled to answer any further questions when he already answered your initial questions. There's nothing to discuss any further. Answers were given and nothing will change that, so yeah.

      Loving the mod though. To be honest, I feel like 5 companions can be a bit too much so the limit's fine imo. Maybe it depends on your game's difficulty, they would be overkill if you are on very easy/easy/normal difficulty. The higher the game difficulty, the more justified reason to have a squad. This mod gives me a great ability to customize my squad with powerful PMC outfits and weapons. 
    6. free8082002
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      (grab popcorn)
      What I need to edit to raise the number of followers?
    7. mustafa58
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      Here is a Patch for increasing follower limit to 17 instead of 5. Have fun. Mod creators' reasoning did not resonate me so I made a quick patch.
      I personally use mods for entartainment and having fun while expanding what is previously considered impossible for games design. This is personal use only and no guaranties for any sort, I am sharing my personal private made patch.
      AFT_MaxFollowerLimit_17.7z
  2. Wadimiru
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    Well, i like games like Suikoden, where u need to recruit 107 characters, so - when player dont going to learn their motives and backgrounds - it is player`s only problem. But difficulty - is the main point of party size limits in any game. So, yes, 6 people is great party size, after some other mods, making enemy bigger, faster, higher, stop, the last one is not right line :)
  3. Darqcrimson
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    These are valid and reasonable reasons for a follower limit.

    I normally only have at most 4 followers with me and even that seems like more than enough. A party of 5 is decent size to travel with, not sure why you would want anymore in your group.
    1. Reshirou
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      Mine's always one person excluding Codsworth and Ada, Dogmeat, another misc pet, and then a robot (like Codsworth and Ada, or custom.)
  4. jumarbye
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    Well said, indeed. I would much rather have companions I can relate to and get to know than mindless bodies following me. Your mod is excellent and I would not even think of playing without it. Thank you!
  5. lovejam
    lovejam
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    Well put. Thank you for your essential AFT mod.
  6. Naholowaa
    Naholowaa
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    I always thought AFT for Fallout 4 was very fair and balanced as I only quest with two at the most but what makes this mod really special are all the features you can fine tune. I always recommend AFT to anyone who wants a good mod that is not just about companion squads.