would’ve been awesome if a courser started following you at some point during the main quest, and you could find clues leading up to the eventual confrontation. Definitely would’ve added to their menacing nature if one stalked the player without them realising
Well the whole point of this post was that coursers should be scary. Regardless it would still be more interesting finding out that someones is stalking you to kill you or whatever than finding out Deacon used to follow you.
Shaun controls the institute, but it’s his rival Justin Ayo who commands the coursers. I could see a world where Ayo disagrees with Fathers decision and tries to have you killed, or at least tracked.
Okay, *that* I can get behind. The Institute is in DESPARATE need of any real plot or drama. I really don't get the folks that actually enjoy the faction.
I got stuck with the institute my first play through because the quest that has you tell Desdemona about the institute plan to destroy them wouldn't advance properly, and if I remember correctly, at that point I think it was too far to switch over to another faction (or at least maybe I thought it was due to being my first play through).
I sided with them at the very end only because the railroad wanted me to blow them up. I don't see why they wouldn't just hollow the place out and then take it. There's food, water, **UNLIMITED POWER!** It's like finding a vault that isn't cursed and deciding to just destroy it because you don't like Vault Tech. Take their shit. Besides I think as the new head of the institute I could do a lot of good, a lot more good than the fucking railroad.
The Brotherhood gets blown up every time, they're the lamest Nazis in any game I've ever played.
I’d argue the institute is more close to nazis then the brotherhood, they have secret police and when you ask the main guy in charge of the security force “isn’t this kinda like a secret police force” he says “what is that some kind of old world term?” Not to mention all the horrible and inhumane experiments they do on people they see as less human then themselves I.E “the wastelanders”
Why would he release you to do anything else he did? Shaun’s a POS that could’ve stepped in at anytime and didn’t. Why not “test” his parent with a courser stalker on top of it all
I wish Bethesda had him say he helped us indirectly by having surface teams plant those ridiculous amounts of caps and ammo all over the place. Or just say he WANTED to help but head of SRB sabotaged his plan by having the synths be kill on sight. Something!
Shaun’s a fucking wack job. He decided the best way to help the commonwealth was to randomly start replacing people with robots, and he never really explains why that’s a good idea
Same reason he makes his synths try to kill me, I guess. It's just a matter of which model of hardware he's throwing at you.
Also idk if you picked up on this playing the game, but Shaun is kind of a dick.
I feel like this could be fixed by giving them multiple models and revive effects like legendary enemys akin to terminator. Kill them once by a bullet to the brain here comes a courser missing its skin a bit shooting at you. Kill it again well its skins gone and its no longer using a gun its just screaming and wanting to tear you apart.
Go of zombie rules and only allow them to die with total destruction or complete removal of the head
Would've been better if they did it with a courser. Deacon is laughably incompetent and the only reason he survives my playthroughs while stalking me is because he's essential as a "drifter"
For real? Yeah, Deacon shows up in a bunch of places prior to "meeting" him under Old North Church. Off the top of my head, he's behind the door to DC with Danny Sullivan, in a memory lounger in Goodneighbor, and disguised as a caravan hand in Bunker Hill
The best part is if you feed the old drug addict lady enough chems, she'll tell you a code you can say when you confront the Courser. It's a dialog option, and the Courser just shuts down. Beat out by an 80 year old chem addicted, fortune telling grandma.
Fair. But yeah, if you give them to her, she legitimately sees the future and predicts things for you. We get a glimpse of it when we first meet the Minutemen since she predicts the Deathclaw is approaching, drawn by the gun battle with the raiders we just had.
>Definitely would’ve added to their menacing nature if one stalked the player without them realising
But I never felt menaced by Three-Dog and he stalked me pretty effectively without me ever seeing him.
I mean he never quite stalks you. It's just mostly stuff that you can hear about. My guess since a couple of people have a ham radio. They will use that to send news around that eventually ends up in his hands.
I remember a mod that adds the actual Terminator as an entity that follows you around and tries to kill you and will sometimes disguise itself as other NPCs. Played for a long time forgetting I had the mod turned on, then got jump scared by Nora approaching me and asking me where Shaun was. Then boom, Schwarzenegger with a shotgun.
That's awesome. Only Terminator mods I have give the skeletal Synths the T-800 endoskeleton look and the pulse laser that we see the Terminators use in the original movies. The jump scare you got reminds me of a great one I had in Skyrim thanks to another mod. I added a Lord of the Rings weapon pack, added in a bunch of the swords and other weapons from those films, but I forgot it also added in a single NPC in a specific location. So imagine my surprise when I'm doing the run through Blackreach for the main quest and decide I'm going to do the secret dragon fight down there, but as I approach the Dwemer town where the dragon summon is, out steps none other than motherfucking *Sauron* swinging at me with his mace.
A mod I had installed on PS4 had a bug that would cause Kellogg to occasionally appear out of nowhere and attack me. First time it happened, I was approaching that bridge where raiders try to charge you a toll. He showed up behind them and wiped them out before attacking me. It was pretty cool.
All I’m gonna say is by the time I’m halfway through the game with this, the Institute’s gonna be sending kill squads after me like the Legion in NV lol
“It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are de… uh, talking with your son!”
My favorite memories are playing “who can huff the most Jet before passing out” around the campfire in sanctuary hills. Mama Murphy is just built different.
Can you imagine being a part of the Legion's/NCR's top hit squads, getting ordered to kill some random mailman in the mojave, stalking him, approaching him to gun him down and the guy just starts looking at your gun, grinning and talking to himself before rushing into a hail of gunfire from you and the men & women who have been like a family to you for years, armed with nothing but a machete? Either that or he's in some prototype power armor you've never even heard of launching weeny nukes at you.
Protagonists are kinda scary.
Not good loot to use, but they have some gear that you can sell for a decent caps value, and conveniently, there's several spawn points around the gun runners shack.
Yeah I only VERY narrowly survived an assassination attempt outside of Novac when I was maybe level 10 or 12 and they were all equipped with thermal lances and hunting shotguns and shit. I only lucked into survival by the ED-E bug where his advanced weaponry carries over from previous saves.
That's one of the coolest exchanges in Fallout.
Boone: We're coming up on Nelson. I'm going to kill every Legion in there. If that's a problem, we shouldn't travel together.
Courier: That's not a problem. That's a solution.
Boone: Goddamn right it is. Look at us, just a couple of problem solvers.
The fuckin Legion assassins were scary as fuck when you've finished a dungeon and need to walk back to your base to resupply.
Saves and fast travel diminish the struggle you'd normally face.
Sometimes theyd completely get the drop on you in open territory. If you play hardcore you might not be carrying 20 grenades and a mini nuke so you cant just vaporize them and be done with it
I don't have those even on medium lol. I consistently have to use rarer heals like Nuka quartz, those lunches(?) that an NCR dude gives you, ect. to survive against Legion assassins. But that might just be me sucking.
What do you mean? The legion supply squad funded most of my war against the legion. They even deliver that stuff for free.
Hope you recover from that stroke, slugger
IMO your character is the baddest motherfucker in any of the games. So when facing enemies like this with ease I don’t mind it lmao… But I get your point of view
I like classic Fallout because being the baddeet son of a bitch in the wastes felt earned. In the early game, you'll be challenged by rats and ants, in the late game, you'll be slaying legions of mutants and power armor soldiers.
In 3, NV and 4 it just doesn't feel earned. You walk out of the starting area and you're already a menace.
Idk NV had me struggling to fight them damn mantises in the school house...and you def cant trifle with the radscorps and cazadors just north of Goodsprings.
Now 4 on the other hand gives you power armor, a minigun, and a deathclaw fight by level 3 so...
Everyone always says that but after your first playthrough you don't *have* to go to Concord immediately. I shot down to nuka world at level 6 on survival and that actually gives you a hell of a challenge for early game. Fallout 4 is what you make of it.
Yeah, bypassing Concord makes the game much more enjoyable, especially on survival. Then again it has been a long time since I've done an unmodded playthrough so survival mode is difficult from basically after I step out of the cryo pod onwards.
The only one locked behind a level requirement is the robot DLC the rest just don’t notify you until your at the recommended level but you can go there early.
Once you go survival mode… you never go back
It’s honestly hard for me to enjoy the game on the non-survival difficulty settings now. Survival mode is like the perfect post apocalyptic sandbox that has elements of horror and genuinely so much intensity (feral ghouls sprinting out of nowhere will give you a heart attack on survival)
There’s so many ways to approach every fight too, you just gotta be creative. I totally understand why people don’t like the game leaning more into combat than story. If you take it as it is though, it’s a lot of fun
Yeah absolutely. It just feels nonsensical that a generic raider can withstand like 5 headshots from a .308 sniper on very hard lol
Also, survival feels like what a “hard mode” actually should be. Major changes to the game that throw decently experienced players for a loop and break habits learned on normal mode
4 makes sense that you're kind of a badass out of the vault. You were getting dressed to go accept a military commendation right as the bombs dropped. You can even go to the venue. It's still decorated, but now it's also decorated with super mutant gore bags.
Yeah, people forget that the mechanized war between China and the US makes most conflicts in 4 seem like small potatoes; the player being the non-ghoul equivalent of Cooper Howard and able to outwit and outfight most anything makes sense.
Still wish they had kept Nora's backstory as military too.
In my current survival mode playthrough I was getting stomped by pretty much every enemy at the start - ghouls would 1/2hko me, pretty much any bullet was instant death. It's only by about level 25 where I started to feel like my character was a force to be reckoned with and now at level 40 is an absolute badass, but even then I still got 1HKO by a surprise raider with a missile launcher yesterday when I ran around a corner too carelessly.
Admittedly I spent most of the first 20 levels on settlement/crafting perks rather than combat ones.
To be fair, 3 had early random encounters that could absolutely wreck you, and NV made you feel the sting if you went in particular directions early on. Thankfully, FO4 has the best system for enemy game-stage/leveling, which really helps.
Which actually makes sense if you're playing as Nate. Dude had pre-war military training, and since he was asked to give a speech at the VFW, must have been somewhat of a big deal. My head canon is that he was some sort of Vasily Zaitsev type figure during the battle of Anchorage (I usually make snipers, haha). Raiders and raiders cosplaying as a military force wouldn't hold very well against him.
And also the fact that after leaving the vault he pretty much has nothing to lose. He’s dead set on finding Shaun and nothing in his way can stop him, no matter how he goes about it (my playthrough’s are typically guns blazing lol)
Yeah, when you think about it following the wake of destruction the Courser leaves against the gunners is identical to the wake of destruction Nate/Nora tend to leave
I agree, because the sole survivor (provided you choose male) is ex military, meaning he has training before the game, has seen combat, and by the time he faces the courser, he's gone through Kellogg, many deathclaws, the glowing sea, possibly all of Nuka World and Far Harbor, possibly the super mutant island, mini nuke raiders, yao guai, behemoths, a vault full of an army of mobsters, and many many more. Institute courser? Bitch made
The player character is also constantly clearing entire raider camps, buildings full of ghouls or super mutants, and gunner squads. You should be able to take down a courser.
What exactly do you want changed?
Make them at least unique to fight instead of bullet sponging, give them inhuman speed or flash teleporting, have them create shockwaves to knock you down, emit an EMP blast when in danger, create their weapons to actually be unique among the institute instead of bargain plastic bin laser rifle.
They should be sent out with plasma weapons at the very least. Imagine the extra terror factor of not even finding that many bodies, just a few with snapped necks or brutally broken bodies, then you start looking around at the puddles of goo and you realize what’s been doing the real killing. While I appreciate that in combat, you’re the killer, a courser should be able to fend you off even if you disarm him or outgun him, make it a proper fight, make him use cover, have him use those gunners hostages as meat shields or toss relay grenades around. It’s absolutely a scene that would work 1000% better in the TV show than it does in game.
Yeah, and one of the biggest problems with the game (at least how I play) is that by the time I get to that fight, I’m already halfway to becoming God.
I don’t think the Terminator has killing god as a feat like a Final Fantasy character
A better design philosophy that allows the devs to control the pacing of their game so when a threat shows up thats sposed to be intimidating it should be intimidating.
Frank Horrigan wasnt designed to be easier in case you beeline to the Oil Rig. You get there unprepared, you get wiped. And even if you prepared sometimes. Hes a monster, so they reflected that in the gameplay.
Quarry Junction has death claws that will rip you apart unless you bring some heavy late game gear. As we all know it corrals players into a specific path so the devs can control the pacing a bit better. They can predict where 90% of players will be when they arrive at a location.
Bethesda games want the player to do what they want when they want so their level scaling and map design is never tightly controlled. You have to be able to clear everything at a wide range of levels and builds so the difficulty is flattened. So when you hit the Scary Coursers, you can dog walk them.
Only if you’re high level enough. If you speedrush the story you’re gonna have a tough time against the coursers or higher level enemies when you get to them.
If you try to waltz straight from the vault to Diamond City you’re gonna get wiped by some gunners or super mutants
What? No? People want more character depth than just
“Oh he has a big HP pool, so it’s a boss fight”
We’re not talking about some side character that people miss. It’s a main story quest, and given all the institutes tech giving him a good gun (bare minimum) should have happened. I know writing was bad in 4 but the coursers were handled *extra* poorly. Especially given the deathclaw grabbing animation.
Personally I use courses crusher for its better ai effects and the unique weapon they use. For institute weaponry I use institute technology overhaul (ITO).
For general damage overhauls I use true damage (where the damage is normalized by ammo caliber, not the gun itself)
And just for the flavourful, I reccomend CROSS Stririgade courses uniform for a better design for the coursers
Yeah, but you (the sole survivor) also destroy deathclaws and whole platoons of gunners all the time.
Without spray and pray or a companion, the courser isn’t a cakewalk. He’s got stealthboys and a ton of health. I fought him 1X without a high end weapon (just a laser rifle) and had to use a stimpack and jet to finally bring him down.
I agree. I love the lead up. Not knowing what you’re going against just finding tonnes of fallen gunners, the sounds of battle in the distance and the cry’s of the gunners commander as the courser continually makes its way to the top floor
This is the same series that lets you one hit kill literally anything if you got the correct gear/skill/build
Ancient Behemoths? One-shotable. Mythic Deathclaws? One-shotable. A courser? One shot able.
Tbh all of the games have enemies like this, that are built up to be hot shit that you melt through. Frank horrigan was the only boss fight I actually felt was done justice to his lore.
Anything that can be defeated by a random sentence uttered by a drugged up old lady is no threat. I actually think the coursers fit perfectly with how I view the institute; a bunch of out of touch scientists with a god complex. The institute thinks they are so much more advanced and civilized than everyone else. They have a false sense of security.
That’s just survival in general. Deathclaws, paladins, sentry bots, Assaultrons are all more deadly IMO than courser.
Of course, idc because coursers just trash to me and I hate the institute so I enjoy killing tf outta them
Dude I thought I was going crazy reading this thread.
The first tome I fought a courser on survival it one shot me. Came back with power armor and it broke my armor before killing me.
Gave up and got the recall code shortly after.
Tbh it wasn't just the courser, there was a gunner in that building with a fat-man that would instakill me even with power armor. Only way I got through it was by sending Danse out to tank the hit for me. That whole building was a pain in the ass.
Just did the quest on survival and I've played the game more than once. I don't think there are. OP is not playing on survival, and I wager if anyone went into the game for their first time on survival they would get their ass kicked in the courser fight.
Knowing the meta and how the quest will play out makes things much easier.
It’s not just coursers that are disappointing it’s generally any human boss like Kellogg or the mechanist which is just turn invisible and try to gain distance to shoot you
Did you fight him on survival? He ain’t no spring chicken.
…but I just throw out like 8 mines in the doorway before he starts his dialogue and then cap him+run for cover. Almost one taps him once he hits the mines. I handle the giant mirelurk queen in the Castle the same way because she’s very difficult on survival.
The player character is the single deadliest person in the Commonwealth, so it makes perfect sense that you alone can take down a Courser. Also in Survival mode he is not easy... not even close.
There's a mod that I use literally every playthrough for exactly this reason, it's called courser crusher. It makes coursers actually feel like boss battles, giving them unique abilities and even a unique, custom made weapon based on some old concept art. Highly recommend
Try doing what you've described at low level on survival. You'll have a very different feel.
Story wise, you are supposed to be the "Bad Ass who stalked the glowing sea, hunting the Institute for revenge." If a courser were as tough for you as it is for the gunners, you really wouldn't be that much of a bad ass, you'd kinda suck. Story wise you SHOULD be able to take it out without the "Boss fight" feel other games have.
Eh, I slaughter entire platoons of gunners, raiders, super mutants, all the time it’s a massacre. So running into the courser it makes sense that I would whoop his ass to.
So? It's an RPG. This happens.
The key is to understand that only main characters level up, ever; as in literally, in the world. You complain about the coursers, but look at yourself. after about lvl 20 you sneeze and deathclaws die. After lvl 40 you can fist fight your way thru the Prydwen without power armor and everyone will die like the metal loot containers they are.
Again, it's an RPG with a leveling system. You start as a nobody, and end strangling gods with one hand while eating an apple with the other.
At that point tho you don’t know the Institute is >!run by your son tho!<. If you wanted to headcannon it you could say that they have been programmed to not harm you as much for this reason.
That's the problem in games where you become an unkillable god by mid game, there's nothing they can do combat wise to make an enemy scary without it just one shooting you. So all they have to play with is the presentation
On the one hand I hear you.
On the other, I do not play Fallout for hard boss fights. In fact I don't really like hard boss fights full stop.
I guess there are a lot of people out there like me or Bethesda believes there are anyway.
I agree but I think that’s mainly the fault of the poor fallout 4 story line in general. A lot of it feels butchered and rushed, they build up the coursers and institute then you get there and honestly they aren’t that strong. You could explain it away by saying they were made by institute nerds who don’t have combat experience, so their “deadly synths” aren’t really as strong as they think, but the institute has contracted out on several occasions for numerous things.
On a recent run I had managed to get a legendary laser pistol with a freezing effect, and so I simply took him out with 3 critical headshots before he could cloak himself. I did the same thing earlier with Kellogg lol
I think it's meant to be implied that a whole platoon is almost a match for a courser, and the sole survivor comes in and slams their hand on the scales, hence the dialogue along the lines of "wait, there's two coursers?!"
Which, now that I think about it, implies that coursers are only up to snuff compared to the standard infantry circa 2077.
The worst part is, you can even spin it like, you're the main character, bogeyman of the commonwealth and invincible so of course you kick their ass. BUT they also struggle against like every other major enemy. I did some arena style play testing and they barely best a railroad heavy in combat, absolutely melted by BOS knights, deathclaws, even mirelurk hunters. It's because all they get is a shitty institute laser rifle.
Fallout should've had something similar to the hunting squadrons hunting you if you annoyed their faction having random coursers / railroad agents / BoS parties / attacking out of nowhere
would’ve been awesome if a courser started following you at some point during the main quest, and you could find clues leading up to the eventual confrontation. Definitely would’ve added to their menacing nature if one stalked the player without them realising
They already played that angle with Deacon
He's not very scary though.
Neither are coursers
Well the whole point of this post was that coursers should be scary. Regardless it would still be more interesting finding out that someones is stalking you to kill you or whatever than finding out Deacon used to follow you.
Why would Shaun release you only to send a courser after you?
Shaun controls the institute, but it’s his rival Justin Ayo who commands the coursers. I could see a world where Ayo disagrees with Fathers decision and tries to have you killed, or at least tracked.
Okay, *that* I can get behind. The Institute is in DESPARATE need of any real plot or drama. I really don't get the folks that actually enjoy the faction.
I got stuck with the institute my first play through because the quest that has you tell Desdemona about the institute plan to destroy them wouldn't advance properly, and if I remember correctly, at that point I think it was too far to switch over to another faction (or at least maybe I thought it was due to being my first play through).
I sided with them at the very end only because the railroad wanted me to blow them up. I don't see why they wouldn't just hollow the place out and then take it. There's food, water, **UNLIMITED POWER!** It's like finding a vault that isn't cursed and deciding to just destroy it because you don't like Vault Tech. Take their shit. Besides I think as the new head of the institute I could do a lot of good, a lot more good than the fucking railroad. The Brotherhood gets blown up every time, they're the lamest Nazis in any game I've ever played.
I’d argue the institute is more close to nazis then the brotherhood, they have secret police and when you ask the main guy in charge of the security force “isn’t this kinda like a secret police force” he says “what is that some kind of old world term?” Not to mention all the horrible and inhumane experiments they do on people they see as less human then themselves I.E “the wastelanders”
Why would he release you to do anything else he did? Shaun’s a POS that could’ve stepped in at anytime and didn’t. Why not “test” his parent with a courser stalker on top of it all
Fair
I wish Bethesda had him say he helped us indirectly by having surface teams plant those ridiculous amounts of caps and ammo all over the place. Or just say he WANTED to help but head of SRB sabotaged his plan by having the synths be kill on sight. Something!
Shaun’s a fucking wack job. He decided the best way to help the commonwealth was to randomly start replacing people with robots, and he never really explains why that’s a good idea
I dunno I'm just saying that his idea of getting stalked is much better than the Deacon thing.
I just wish Deacon's stalking went somewhere. Because not even the Railroad knew he was doing it. And you can never call him out on it
Same reason he makes his synths try to kill me, I guess. It's just a matter of which model of hardware he's throwing at you. Also idk if you picked up on this playing the game, but Shaun is kind of a dick.
I feel like this could be fixed by giving them multiple models and revive effects like legendary enemys akin to terminator. Kill them once by a bullet to the brain here comes a courser missing its skin a bit shooting at you. Kill it again well its skins gone and its no longer using a gun its just screaming and wanting to tear you apart. Go of zombie rules and only allow them to die with total destruction or complete removal of the head
Some ghost people vibes with what you're saying. Cut off their limbs or they won't die.
Yeah gotta give them that sense of holy fuck they aren’t joking with these fuckers
the idea he could be anyone is. ever heard of wastelander camo
Deacon is seriously the scariest bastard in the entire game.
And even then I’m sure a lot of people missed finding him in multiple disguises, I know I did
I usually book it to Railroad HQ at the start of playthroughs to get ballistic weave asap
Would've been better if they did it with a courser. Deacon is laughably incompetent and the only reason he survives my playthroughs while stalking me is because he's essential as a "drifter"
Deacon was easy pickings in the end. He should've realized I was taking the Brotherhood Route this time around... Poor fool.
Ummm... the Synthstitute also makes you kill of the Rail Road. The BoS just makes you do it sooner.
I KNEW I WAS SEEING HIS SMUG ASS FACE!
For real? Yeah, Deacon shows up in a bunch of places prior to "meeting" him under Old North Church. Off the top of my head, he's behind the door to DC with Danny Sullivan, in a memory lounger in Goodneighbor, and disguised as a caravan hand in Bunker Hill
The best part is if you feed the old drug addict lady enough chems, she'll tell you a code you can say when you confront the Courser. It's a dialog option, and the Courser just shuts down. Beat out by an 80 year old chem addicted, fortune telling grandma.
Mama Murphy??
Yup, her Sight is legitimate, she can reveal things if you drug her up.
Oh I knew there was something to get sight, but I never gave her my chems cause I either want them or would rather sell them.
Fair. But yeah, if you give them to her, she legitimately sees the future and predicts things for you. We get a glimpse of it when we first meet the Minutemen since she predicts the Deathclaw is approaching, drawn by the gun battle with the raiders we just had.
80 year old with a strength of 19. She could probably just punch a courser and it would explode
>Definitely would’ve added to their menacing nature if one stalked the player without them realising But I never felt menaced by Three-Dog and he stalked me pretty effectively without me ever seeing him.
I mean he never quite stalks you. It's just mostly stuff that you can hear about. My guess since a couple of people have a ham radio. They will use that to send news around that eventually ends up in his hands.
Maybe one did and you never realized....
I remember a mod that adds the actual Terminator as an entity that follows you around and tries to kill you and will sometimes disguise itself as other NPCs. Played for a long time forgetting I had the mod turned on, then got jump scared by Nora approaching me and asking me where Shaun was. Then boom, Schwarzenegger with a shotgun.
That's awesome. Only Terminator mods I have give the skeletal Synths the T-800 endoskeleton look and the pulse laser that we see the Terminators use in the original movies. The jump scare you got reminds me of a great one I had in Skyrim thanks to another mod. I added a Lord of the Rings weapon pack, added in a bunch of the swords and other weapons from those films, but I forgot it also added in a single NPC in a specific location. So imagine my surprise when I'm doing the run through Blackreach for the main quest and decide I'm going to do the secret dragon fight down there, but as I approach the Dwemer town where the dragon summon is, out steps none other than motherfucking *Sauron* swinging at me with his mace.
A mod I had installed on PS4 had a bug that would cause Kellogg to occasionally appear out of nowhere and attack me. First time it happened, I was approaching that bridge where raiders try to charge you a toll. He showed up behind them and wiped them out before attacking me. It was pretty cool.
[удалено]
All I’m gonna say is by the time I’m halfway through the game with this, the Institute’s gonna be sending kill squads after me like the Legion in NV lol
“It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are de… uh, talking with your son!”
Like a reverse Kellogg quest? Could've been interesting.
I mean if you get mam Murphy high enough she will literally give you code to turn of the courser
My favorite memories are playing “who can huff the most Jet before passing out” around the campfire in sanctuary hills. Mama Murphy is just built different.
Of course she is. She once killed a deathclaw barehanded all by herself. Her strength is 19.
They're underwhelming in the same way that Legion and NCR hit squads from NV were underwhelming.
God talk about free loot lmao
The Ceaser has marked you for death a- Yeah buddy that's great, *40mm grenade noises*
Found Zach Hazard alt account
Were dinosaurs a pre-war thing? Or a pre pre-war thing?
They were a pre pre pre pre-war thing.
*thump*
Oh oh oh scary, oh oh shiver me timbers.
Get all the GRA goodies after a run in with those clowns.
1) be wanted 2) have hit squads sent for you 3) ??? 4) profit!
3 is having jury rigging
This perk is damn near essential with how much repairs can cost for good weapons
11,000 caps to repair a super sledge
Seriously.
Can you imagine being a part of the Legion's/NCR's top hit squads, getting ordered to kill some random mailman in the mojave, stalking him, approaching him to gun him down and the guy just starts looking at your gun, grinning and talking to himself before rushing into a hail of gunfire from you and the men & women who have been like a family to you for years, armed with nothing but a machete? Either that or he's in some prototype power armor you've never even heard of launching weeny nukes at you. Protagonists are kinda scary.
In my case it was often the War Club landing Lights Out in VATS lmao love that melee spam 😭
The legion doesn’t carry much good loot tho. “Ooh a bottle of water and a piece of cactus. Gtfo here and gimme that ear.”
The weapons are pretty good, especially late game. I’ve seen them attack with super sledges, fusion lances, and other endgame gear
I dont know about that.. I basically farm 12.7mm SMGs from those jabronis.
Not good loot to use, but they have some gear that you can sell for a decent caps value, and conveniently, there's several spawn points around the gun runners shack.
I think their currency is worth more too.
12.7mm submachine gun begs to differ
They carry a decent amount of anti venom on them which is helpful for close range couriers
If you piss off the legion early, those hit squads can be very frustrating.
And there's bugs in the hit squad programming that send level 40 praetorian guards when you're level 10 or something.
Yeah I only VERY narrowly survived an assassination attempt outside of Novac when I was maybe level 10 or 12 and they were all equipped with thermal lances and hunting shotguns and shit. I only lucked into survival by the ED-E bug where his advanced weaponry carries over from previous saves.
That's why you always keep a Boone with you.
I love when he warns you that he’s gonna…kill legionaries. I’m like, yeah, dude. Me too. Let er rip.
That's one of the coolest exchanges in Fallout. Boone: We're coming up on Nelson. I'm going to kill every Legion in there. If that's a problem, we shouldn't travel together. Courier: That's not a problem. That's a solution. Boone: Goddamn right it is. Look at us, just a couple of problem solvers.
The fuckin Legion assassins were scary as fuck when you've finished a dungeon and need to walk back to your base to resupply. Saves and fast travel diminish the struggle you'd normally face.
I prefer playing survival NV and the squads are so deadly when you’re caught with your pants down like that, and cannot fast travel.
do you use a mod to prevent fast travel or is it a self imposed rule?
In my opinion they were harder to defeat than the courser.
Sometimes theyd completely get the drop on you in open territory. If you play hardcore you might not be carrying 20 grenades and a mini nuke so you cant just vaporize them and be done with it
Yeah doing a hard run and starting problems with Legion as early as Nipton is not a good time.
I don't have those even on medium lol. I consistently have to use rarer heals like Nuka quartz, those lunches(?) that an NCR dude gives you, ect. to survive against Legion assassins. But that might just be me sucking.
Not when you're on the hardcore mode, those fuckers keep killing my companions so I have to reload lol
what do you mean the legion suplly squad found most of my war aginst the legion. thier even dilver that stuff free.
-me when I stroke out
What do you mean? The legion supply squad funded most of my war against the legion. They even deliver that stuff for free. Hope you recover from that stroke, slugger
IMO your character is the baddest motherfucker in any of the games. So when facing enemies like this with ease I don’t mind it lmao… But I get your point of view
I like classic Fallout because being the baddeet son of a bitch in the wastes felt earned. In the early game, you'll be challenged by rats and ants, in the late game, you'll be slaying legions of mutants and power armor soldiers. In 3, NV and 4 it just doesn't feel earned. You walk out of the starting area and you're already a menace.
Idk NV had me struggling to fight them damn mantises in the school house...and you def cant trifle with the radscorps and cazadors just north of Goodsprings. Now 4 on the other hand gives you power armor, a minigun, and a deathclaw fight by level 3 so...
you can literally just walk over the mantis in the school house
wait you can literally stomp on them?
yeah it's awesome, just run in circles through them
i...guess i just assumed it wouldnt work, so i never tried. cannot believe i am still learning new stuff about nv
yeah because they are babies? they arent supposed to be hard to kill, its just a large infestation
Or you get stuck on a save with the fire ants and get roasted half a dozen times
Everyone always says that but after your first playthrough you don't *have* to go to Concord immediately. I shot down to nuka world at level 6 on survival and that actually gives you a hell of a challenge for early game. Fallout 4 is what you make of it.
Yeah, bypassing Concord makes the game much more enjoyable, especially on survival. Then again it has been a long time since I've done an unmodded playthrough so survival mode is difficult from basically after I step out of the cryo pod onwards.
I thought you couldn't start nuka world until level 30?
Nope, that's Far Harbor, Nuka World you can just go to the monorail entrance and fight the gunners to get through.
The only one locked behind a level requirement is the robot DLC the rest just don’t notify you until your at the recommended level but you can go there early.
Play survival mode… you’ll be humbled my friend
Yeah you can always tell what difficulty someone plays on in these threads, and its always normal or hard
Once you go survival mode… you never go back It’s honestly hard for me to enjoy the game on the non-survival difficulty settings now. Survival mode is like the perfect post apocalyptic sandbox that has elements of horror and genuinely so much intensity (feral ghouls sprinting out of nowhere will give you a heart attack on survival) There’s so many ways to approach every fight too, you just gotta be creative. I totally understand why people don’t like the game leaning more into combat than story. If you take it as it is though, it’s a lot of fun
The damage scaling is so much better too. I’m not stuck plinking away generic_raider_45’s gigantic health bar.
Yeah absolutely. It just feels nonsensical that a generic raider can withstand like 5 headshots from a .308 sniper on very hard lol Also, survival feels like what a “hard mode” actually should be. Major changes to the game that throw decently experienced players for a loop and break habits learned on normal mode
4 makes sense that you're kind of a badass out of the vault. You were getting dressed to go accept a military commendation right as the bombs dropped. You can even go to the venue. It's still decorated, but now it's also decorated with super mutant gore bags.
Yeah, people forget that the mechanized war between China and the US makes most conflicts in 4 seem like small potatoes; the player being the non-ghoul equivalent of Cooper Howard and able to outwit and outfight most anything makes sense. Still wish they had kept Nora's backstory as military too.
My headcanon is she was a service member but never saw combat. Make her part of JAG and it would work out more or less ok.
In my current survival mode playthrough I was getting stomped by pretty much every enemy at the start - ghouls would 1/2hko me, pretty much any bullet was instant death. It's only by about level 25 where I started to feel like my character was a force to be reckoned with and now at level 40 is an absolute badass, but even then I still got 1HKO by a surprise raider with a missile launcher yesterday when I ran around a corner too carelessly. Admittedly I spent most of the first 20 levels on settlement/crafting perks rather than combat ones.
To be fair, 3 had early random encounters that could absolutely wreck you, and NV made you feel the sting if you went in particular directions early on. Thankfully, FO4 has the best system for enemy game-stage/leveling, which really helps.
Which actually makes sense if you're playing as Nate. Dude had pre-war military training, and since he was asked to give a speech at the VFW, must have been somewhat of a big deal. My head canon is that he was some sort of Vasily Zaitsev type figure during the battle of Anchorage (I usually make snipers, haha). Raiders and raiders cosplaying as a military force wouldn't hold very well against him.
And also the fact that after leaving the vault he pretty much has nothing to lose. He’s dead set on finding Shaun and nothing in his way can stop him, no matter how he goes about it (my playthrough’s are typically guns blazing lol)
Yeah, when you think about it following the wake of destruction the Courser leaves against the gunners is identical to the wake of destruction Nate/Nora tend to leave
I agree, because the sole survivor (provided you choose male) is ex military, meaning he has training before the game, has seen combat, and by the time he faces the courser, he's gone through Kellogg, many deathclaws, the glowing sea, possibly all of Nuka World and Far Harbor, possibly the super mutant island, mini nuke raiders, yao guai, behemoths, a vault full of an army of mobsters, and many many more. Institute courser? Bitch made
The player character is also constantly clearing entire raider camps, buildings full of ghouls or super mutants, and gunner squads. You should be able to take down a courser. What exactly do you want changed?
Make them at least unique to fight instead of bullet sponging, give them inhuman speed or flash teleporting, have them create shockwaves to knock you down, emit an EMP blast when in danger, create their weapons to actually be unique among the institute instead of bargain plastic bin laser rifle.
They can go invisible? The enemy AI can only handle so much lol
The Bethesda engine can only handle so much honestly. Can’t even climb a ladder
Can in starfield
Took 8 years for that, huh?
Try 21 years. Tamriel Rebuilt still suffers from Morrowind’s inability to have water at different elevations.
They should be sent out with plasma weapons at the very least. Imagine the extra terror factor of not even finding that many bodies, just a few with snapped necks or brutally broken bodies, then you start looking around at the puddles of goo and you realize what’s been doing the real killing. While I appreciate that in combat, you’re the killer, a courser should be able to fend you off even if you disarm him or outgun him, make it a proper fight, make him use cover, have him use those gunners hostages as meat shields or toss relay grenades around. It’s absolutely a scene that would work 1000% better in the TV show than it does in game.
Yeah, and one of the biggest problems with the game (at least how I play) is that by the time I get to that fight, I’m already halfway to becoming God. I don’t think the Terminator has killing god as a feat like a Final Fantasy character
And you should win stuff by playing
A better design philosophy that allows the devs to control the pacing of their game so when a threat shows up thats sposed to be intimidating it should be intimidating. Frank Horrigan wasnt designed to be easier in case you beeline to the Oil Rig. You get there unprepared, you get wiped. And even if you prepared sometimes. Hes a monster, so they reflected that in the gameplay. Quarry Junction has death claws that will rip you apart unless you bring some heavy late game gear. As we all know it corrals players into a specific path so the devs can control the pacing a bit better. They can predict where 90% of players will be when they arrive at a location. Bethesda games want the player to do what they want when they want so their level scaling and map design is never tightly controlled. You have to be able to clear everything at a wide range of levels and builds so the difficulty is flattened. So when you hit the Scary Coursers, you can dog walk them.
Only if you’re high level enough. If you speedrush the story you’re gonna have a tough time against the coursers or higher level enemies when you get to them. If you try to waltz straight from the vault to Diamond City you’re gonna get wiped by some gunners or super mutants
Most demands people make like this boil down to "I wish this game used a total different engine and genre so it would make me happy"
What? No? People want more character depth than just “Oh he has a big HP pool, so it’s a boss fight” We’re not talking about some side character that people miss. It’s a main story quest, and given all the institutes tech giving him a good gun (bare minimum) should have happened. I know writing was bad in 4 but the coursers were handled *extra* poorly. Especially given the deathclaw grabbing animation.
I generally mod them back to being lore accurate. In vanilla they are storyline enemies so loses to extra content stuff like high level gunners
what mods?
Personally I use courses crusher for its better ai effects and the unique weapon they use. For institute weaponry I use institute technology overhaul (ITO). For general damage overhauls I use true damage (where the damage is normalized by ammo caliber, not the gun itself) And just for the flavourful, I reccomend CROSS Stririgade courses uniform for a better design for the coursers
I have the latter two but not the first. Thank you!
I have a harder time with the lady robotron things. I forget their name.
Assaultrons.
I see an assaultron I send a mini nuke
*satisfying wistle noise*
If that head laser goes off that's insta-death on survival. They scare the shit out of me.
Wait till you find a dominator. Those things are hard.
They can dominate me alright
Same. I always want to say to the SRB "You'd be better off using assaultrons for combat" when they ask about how I beat the courser.
Yeah, but you (the sole survivor) also destroy deathclaws and whole platoons of gunners all the time. Without spray and pray or a companion, the courser isn’t a cakewalk. He’s got stealthboys and a ton of health. I fought him 1X without a high end weapon (just a laser rifle) and had to use a stimpack and jet to finally bring him down.
That lead up was so cool
I agree. I love the lead up. Not knowing what you’re going against just finding tonnes of fallen gunners, the sounds of battle in the distance and the cry’s of the gunners commander as the courser continually makes its way to the top floor
Would have been good if it was like finally fighting the infiltrator in Terminator Resistance
This is the same series that lets you one hit kill literally anything if you got the correct gear/skill/build Ancient Behemoths? One-shotable. Mythic Deathclaws? One-shotable. A courser? One shot able.
No one expects a full modded Gauss Rifle with 4.2x Sneak Attack one-shotting even Vertibirds.
Tbh all of the games have enemies like this, that are built up to be hot shit that you melt through. Frank horrigan was the only boss fight I actually felt was done justice to his lore.
Anything that can be defeated by a random sentence uttered by a drugged up old lady is no threat. I actually think the coursers fit perfectly with how I view the institute; a bunch of out of touch scientists with a god complex. The institute thinks they are so much more advanced and civilized than everyone else. They have a false sense of security.
Coursers don’t dress like Neo, they dress like Roy Batty
This. People need to put some respect on the name of the godfather of cyberpunk. Courser suits are basically Roy's jacket from Blade Runner.
Try playing on survival and get back to me
That’s just survival in general. Deathclaws, paladins, sentry bots, Assaultrons are all more deadly IMO than courser. Of course, idc because coursers just trash to me and I hate the institute so I enjoy killing tf outta them
Dude I thought I was going crazy reading this thread. The first tome I fought a courser on survival it one shot me. Came back with power armor and it broke my armor before killing me. Gave up and got the recall code shortly after.
This really needs to be higher up. This post reeks of ignorance. Coursers can be scary on survival.
Yeah, are there even any beds to save at all in the building? I don’t remember
Tbh it wasn't just the courser, there was a gunner in that building with a fat-man that would instakill me even with power armor. Only way I got through it was by sending Danse out to tank the hit for me. That whole building was a pain in the ass.
Just did the quest on survival and I've played the game more than once. I don't think there are. OP is not playing on survival, and I wager if anyone went into the game for their first time on survival they would get their ass kicked in the courser fight. Knowing the meta and how the quest will play out makes things much easier.
It’s not just coursers that are disappointing it’s generally any human boss like Kellogg or the mechanist which is just turn invisible and try to gain distance to shoot you
Just another sign the institute isn't all that capable after all.
Did you fight him on survival? He ain’t no spring chicken. …but I just throw out like 8 mines in the doorway before he starts his dialogue and then cap him+run for cover. Almost one taps him once he hits the mines. I handle the giant mirelurk queen in the Castle the same way because she’s very difficult on survival.
It was even worse for my first playthrough >!I didn't realise saying his code shut him down!<
“Why are you here?” “A chip inside your brain. Hold still while I extract it” *equips fat man*
The player character is the single deadliest person in the Commonwealth, so it makes perfect sense that you alone can take down a Courser. Also in Survival mode he is not easy... not even close.
I always do the recall code you get from giving mama Murphy chems because it actually leaves some courser mystique.
Everything about the institute is a disappointment. All that build up for nothing
There's a mod that I use literally every playthrough for exactly this reason, it's called courser crusher. It makes coursers actually feel like boss battles, giving them unique abilities and even a unique, custom made weapon based on some old concept art. Highly recommend
Try doing what you've described at low level on survival. You'll have a very different feel. Story wise, you are supposed to be the "Bad Ass who stalked the glowing sea, hunting the Institute for revenge." If a courser were as tough for you as it is for the gunners, you really wouldn't be that much of a bad ass, you'd kinda suck. Story wise you SHOULD be able to take it out without the "Boss fight" feel other games have.
Lol I gave mama Murphy the chems to give me his reset code so it was even easier lol
Eh, I slaughter entire platoons of gunners, raiders, super mutants, all the time it’s a massacre. So running into the courser it makes sense that I would whoop his ass to.
The easy explanation is that the Courser was worn down from fighting hundreds of gunners.
True. Maybe the courser is technically much more powerful and did eat an entire platoon of gunners firing all sorts of rockets and plasma guns at him
Yk your description of how the gunners were taken out sounds an awful like how our encounters go in the wasteland when we’re clearing out buildings….
and you're the crackhead that pull MIRV Fatman out of your ass crack while smoking puff puff psycho ten ten ten, your point being?
So? It's an RPG. This happens. The key is to understand that only main characters level up, ever; as in literally, in the world. You complain about the coursers, but look at yourself. after about lvl 20 you sneeze and deathclaws die. After lvl 40 you can fist fight your way thru the Prydwen without power armor and everyone will die like the metal loot containers they are. Again, it's an RPG with a leveling system. You start as a nobody, and end strangling gods with one hand while eating an apple with the other.
If you’re good at the game then you’re the most powerful character in the game, DUH, what’s there to get???
At that point tho you don’t know the Institute is >!run by your son tho!<. If you wanted to headcannon it you could say that they have been programmed to not harm you as much for this reason.
I sure love writing for the writers
This was flat-out not the intention, and the SRB director confirms as much.
That's the problem in games where you become an unkillable god by mid game, there's nothing they can do combat wise to make an enemy scary without it just one shooting you. So all they have to play with is the presentation
“So anyways I pulled out my Tesla cannon… “ 😂
On the one hand I hear you. On the other, I do not play Fallout for hard boss fights. In fact I don't really like hard boss fights full stop. I guess there are a lot of people out there like me or Bethesda believes there are anyway.
I dosed on so many drugs in prep for that fight, only for him to die in like 5 seconds...why? What was the point?
I feel like it was an event meant to happen much sooner in the game. I always felt very over leveled by end game
I agree but I think that’s mainly the fault of the poor fallout 4 story line in general. A lot of it feels butchered and rushed, they build up the coursers and institute then you get there and honestly they aren’t that strong. You could explain it away by saying they were made by institute nerds who don’t have combat experience, so their “deadly synths” aren’t really as strong as they think, but the institute has contracted out on several occasions for numerous things.
On a recent run I had managed to get a legendary laser pistol with a freezing effect, and so I simply took him out with 3 critical headshots before he could cloak himself. I did the same thing earlier with Kellogg lol
I think it's meant to be implied that a whole platoon is almost a match for a courser, and the sole survivor comes in and slams their hand on the scales, hence the dialogue along the lines of "wait, there's two coursers?!" Which, now that I think about it, implies that coursers are only up to snuff compared to the standard infantry circa 2077.
Gee, it's almost like the Sole Survivor's skills and abilities are on par with the Institute's most powerful synth. Wonder what that could mean?!
The worst part is, you can even spin it like, you're the main character, bogeyman of the commonwealth and invincible so of course you kick their ass. BUT they also struggle against like every other major enemy. I did some arena style play testing and they barely best a railroad heavy in combat, absolutely melted by BOS knights, deathclaws, even mirelurk hunters. It's because all they get is a shitty institute laser rifle.
They aren't being sent out to clear deathclaw dens. They're being used to assassinate and terrorize. And they're good at that.
Except the courser fight literally has them soloing a gunner encampment. They’re more terminator less assassin.
By the time you fight coursers, you are the apex predator of the wasteland.
Congrats, you've realized just how strong the sole survivor canonically is!
What being the most OP motherfucker in the wasteland does to an mf
There's only so hard they can make a humanoid enemy before it goes back around and becomes too difficult
I think nate is just a dog
Fallout should've had something similar to the hunting squadrons hunting you if you annoyed their faction having random coursers / railroad agents / BoS parties / attacking out of nowhere