DevBlog: Carry Weight. (Patreon)
Content
Carry Weight in FO4 is a terrible mechanic.
For starters, encumbrance is just bad - it takes the game's most boring mechanic (movement) and makes it more boring. And don't even get me started on how janky this shit is under the hood. If I could rip out the entire system and just replace it with a grid system like Stalker or Diablo II, I would. (Side Note: I've always love the runeword system from D2, and I'm sad nobodies figured out how to include it in a bethesda game). Sadly, that's just not an option in the creation engine.
I just release an update for the [Load Out](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/78015) mod that completely reworks that mod's functionality, that is probably about as close as I can get to "fixing" the system. Being encumbered causes fatigue to accumulate (based on how much you are carrying), investing in Strong Back makes traveling longer distances while encumbered easier, and carrying a backpack increases the amount of stuff you can carry but doesn't decrease the amount of fatigue damage you take. The amount of design time and iteration on this system took to figure out was way more than I normally spend on this kind of this.
The final piece of the puzzle now before I can send out a Pre-Release is figuring out what to do with Backpacks, specifically the ones from Backpacks of the Commonwealth. That mod is something of a bloated mess due to feature creep, and it's not really designed with survival in mind. I'd remove it entirely, but I suspect the first thing everyone would do is add it back in. I've previously gone through a couple iterations of reduxing the mod, but nothing is quite where I want it.