r/fo4 • u/Correct-Anteater-286 • 13h ago
How unstable FO4 is actually?
Hi! I've been seeing a lot of people complaining about the frame crashing all the time. However, I never had it crashing? For a while I tried some pirates version, then I bought the base game, and a couple of months ago I bought the Anniversary upgrade. I probably have a couple of hundred hours in the game by now. First I played on my old laptop on low settings, now I play it on Ultra on my newer workstation laptop.
So, realistically how unstable the game is? What could be the main issues that cause crashing; bad specs, mods or the gremlins?
5
u/PurpleAd3134 13h ago
7k hours and never a crash on ultra. I have always used a mid-range gaming PC. I recall Todd saying that consoles didn't allow them to use their full potential.
5
u/Mooncubus 12h ago
It runs fine to me and the recent updates have improved it a lot. I typically only ever really get mod related crashes.
I have a decent PC these days though.
8
u/Dont_Care_Meh Survivor 13h ago
I'm convinced it's a console thing. I have played it on three generations of PCs over the ages (game is that old!) and I don't have any issues at all. Nothing. That's both with a few mods (<10) and vanilla. The game itself can be goofy, like dying from walking into cars, but not crashy. Am I lucky? I don't know. But all I can relay is my personal experience.
2
u/sign-through 12h ago edited 12h ago
I’ve always played on FO4 on console, and I think it runs great on both PlayStation 4 and 5. The latest updates have been super, for me. I prefer a closely matched to vanilla mod experience, so that probably helps, I don’t use many mods.
2
u/LiveLaughLob0t0my 10h ago
I had no issues on the Xbox one x. But the og xb1 experience is shockingly bad since an update around 2017/18ish. Haven’t tried it recently as don’t have one to try it on.
When I switched to my first budget PC around 2021 the game ran absolutely fine and even now with 500 mods and a relatively ok but not high end pc it runs great too… and it still runs totally fine on my Xbox one x. Not that I use it that much anymore.
2
u/PurpleAd3134 13h ago
I don't have any issues at all Same, 1 laptop and 2 PCs, midrange gaming and not top end.
4
u/Piper-Bob 13h ago
On my PC it crashes maybe once a month, if that. I have well over 1000 hours on PC. I only have a couple appearance mods.
On my OG xbox one it was initially rock solid. If I disconnect my xbox from the internet and install FO4 from the disc, it doesn't crash at all. But then if I connect it and let it update it gets super unstable to where walking around in downtown Boston is pretty much impossible.
2
u/fastfreddy68 13h ago
I had a similar experience. OG XBONE was terrible. Downtown Boston was absolutely out of the question, and after a couple years if the save file got too big (roughly 20-30 hours of gameplay) it became unplayable. Load, walk, crash. The stability problem was the reason I refused to play survival, and eventually had to quit playing the game.
I switched to PC and it’s been pretty solid. I still play with some mods so I can enjoy survival without worrying about a crash ruining hours of gameplay.
I’ve done playthroughs with bigger mods as well like sim settlements 2 and it’s pretty damn stable.
4
u/ObiwanKenny 13h ago
I rarely have crashes. I use the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch and just a few light mods. On my current play through I will get a crash once every two weeks or so roughly one crash per 40 to 50 hours. This is on PC. I see all these horror stories about it crashing, stuttering and just acting weird and I think to myself what are they doing. I suspect it's players who heavily mod the game that have the most problems but I'm sure we'll get some "I don't mod at all it it crashes every 10 minutes" posts.
2
u/rs_obsidian Idiot Savant 13h ago
Anniversary Edition fixed some performance issues. I have GOTY edition and it crashes every few hours. I made the mistake of rebuilding Sanc and now I cannot fast travel there without it crashing anymore.
2
u/Practical_Patient824 13h ago
Typically it runs fine, there’s just really specific things that the game engine can struggle with, like a certain part of downtown Boston that always lags.
More specifically people that complain are the ones who update the game with pre-existing saves, all the creation club stuff is bloating save files and causing the game to check if you can access the new stuff just causing corruption in saves and more loading screens.
If you routinely delete older saves you can prevent most of the damage
2
u/newforestwalker 12h ago
I have goty from gog, locked at 163 I think. Over 350 mods. Took my time sorted several times using loot. No problems no crashes over 2000 hours. Anniversary caused so many problems, beside the fact that you get hit with loads of unnecessary and unwanted quests as soon as you leave the vault. Most of them are broken in some way, some don't work at all. Get goty on gog, it's stable, has a gazillion mods and won't get messed around aka steam
2
u/Wonderful_Two_6710 12h ago
Unmodded on PC, it's always been very stable for me, with CTDs and lockups rare.
Modded, well, that's another story.
2
u/Obvious-Animator6090 11h ago
It’s surprisingly stable on Nintendo switch 2. Only crashed once and it wasn’t really a crash just an infinite loading screen when trying to open the basement in the electrical hobbyist club. I’m enjoying being forced to play with no mods. Not a fan of the anniversary edition creations content being a requirement but honestly it’s running smoother than I expected.
2
2
u/Prometheus2025 11h ago
On PS4 non-pro it would crash on me all the time. Became unplayable. On PS5 non-pro it runs excellent.
2
u/rabies_lover_271K 13h ago
I cannot go ANYWHERE near Faneuil hall. game will crash 15 steps into entering that area. Can’t place any MILAs around that side because of the crash risk.
3
1
u/_PrincessHarley_ 13h ago
I think I've only ever had it crash once in all my years playing. Far more frequently I get bugs and glitches, that can be frustrating but not game ruining. (I played on an older PC for about half of my playtime, and on a new, more powerful PC for the rest)
1
u/iIIchangethislater 13h ago
My game is fairly heavily modded now but in the last few weeks I put a lot of hours into a vanilla playthrough. I didn't get a single crash, not to say it was a totally smooth experience but the game never stopped. The issues I had were the same old ones like a loading screen taking over a minute seemingly for no reason (Cambridge police station was a big culprit for this and the main reason I sided with the institute this time) and then it was just the same old bugs that have been in the game forever. Covenant quest items not appearing, Emogene Cabot, "recruitable" NPCs not working etc.
1
u/Cynical_Hater 13h ago
It was a fucking nightmare for me on Xbox one S. Upgraded to Series X years ago and it was a night and day difference. Its not crash proof or perfect but its a hell of an improvement over last Gen consoles.
1
1
u/ANoobInDisguise 13h ago
With Addictol and good mod vetting, I only crash if the game has been running for an embarassingly long time.
1
u/Admirable-Mention728 13h ago edited 12h ago
For PC, I can't play effectively with a fresh install and unmodified settings due to the frame rate. I either cap it at around 60 FPS somehow or things get rather unstable.
Following the TMR installation and introducing a few select mods my way though, everything's been fine.
1
u/Xboxbox145 Minutemen 12h ago
In my experience playing base Fallout 4 solely on PC, it wasn’t that unstable. A couple crashes and FPS dropped in some area downtown, but nothing that made me feel like it was unplayable.
However with mods like Addictol, High Physics FPS Fix, Unofficial Patch, Community Fixes Merged, and PRP. I haven’t had any real instability in the game.
1
u/BandOfBudgies 12h ago
It's pretty stable on Xbox Series X, but it will crash sometimes especially if you use mods.
1
u/DasArtmab 12h ago
I’m on the PC about as stable as that hot chick/guy your friends warned you about. However, I play a very heavily modded version of it
1
u/elizat_c 12h ago
Mine crashes all the time on PS5, no mods. No idea why it keeps happening. When I used to play on Xbox One S a few years ago it didn't crash at all.
1
u/cbsson 12h ago
I've had very few actual crashes over the years with Steam, maybe 3 or 4? Most of my Steam FO4 issues have been related to textures not loading, which is normally corrected with a hard re-start of the game. I did have a problem with the FPS being too high, but that was my fault for not locking it down to 60 FPS.
I've tried playing FO4 on GOG (to avoid auto updates) but went back to Steam after a major, unfixable bug with Automatron.
1
u/Effective_Put_5209 12h ago
On PC. I only have like 50 mods and it crashes to the desktop once every few days. I think I might have experienced one crash when I was playing the vanilla game. It is probably people who have a lot of mods and then they get issues.
1
u/geckothesteve 11h ago
It’s fairly stable on PC now. I’m only running UFO4P and the survival console enabler and haven’t had a single crash in the last 100h. I’ve got 3600+ hours in the game, 300h of that in the last 12 months. After the anniversary edition dropped I think I had one ctd.
1
u/screwyoujor 11h ago
Mine doesn't become unstable till I'm a few hundred hours in with half my settlements having reset the build limit bar five times and all my caravans link to sanctuary so Cambridge becomes a warzone of pure chaos.
1
u/Less_Kick9718 11h ago
Survival difficulty as long as I restart every couple of hours there is no problem.
Other difficulties no problem at all.
1
u/Newftube 11h ago
On PS4 (roughly 400 hours)I only ever had issues when running mods, when running vanilla it was perfectly fine.
Since getting a desktop I ended up putting another 2000+ hours into it and discounting crashes from mod-related issues*, I don't run into issues very often.
Usually if I do have a problem it was related to the steam overlay, me minimizing the game window or the computer going into sleep mode. I did notice that loading the same save file a few times the game would CTD.
On some older/less capable machines you might run into some memory issues, and oddly enough i've never experienced the oft-reported low FPS issues in Boston, despite traversing it constantly as part of survival.
*Buffout 4 is great for this, it creates a crash log and deposits it into your file directory if the game crashes.
1
u/ermghoti 10h ago
SeriesX. It comes and goes. Just went through a bad stretch, it was gagging after an hour or so consistently, around Quincy while I was clearing it.
1
u/samurai0 9h ago
There’s a vats bug that regularly crashes everything I ever put it on about once every three to four hours. There’s a mod for it other than that it’s an area bug. Downtown Boston mostly.
1
u/VarietyMage 6h ago
The main instability issues are memory leaks in the engine (this has been known for 20 years), and peculiar bugs, like when you look toward the ground and smoke comes from your jetpack even if you didn't use it (which is a sign of an impending CTD, exit and re-enter the power armor to stop the CTD). Long play sessions (8+ hours) without rebooting can cause the engine to go crazy, like putting your jetpack on sideways, and it stays that way (save, exit, reboot, start from the save).
Auto-saving never seemed to work properly in F3 or F4 - turn it off (and delete the exit save, every time).
I generally reboot every 4 hours of playtime, just to be safe. If I do that, and exit/re-enter my power armor as necessary, the game's pretty stable.
1
u/7aminthemorning 5h ago
Depends on how unstable you want it to be lol .. thing with Bethesda games is the more you play the more unstable it gets .. it's fine for say the first 30hrs or so but the more deeper you go the more shit starts actin weird
1
u/Better_Win316 12h ago
Usually the only time I have issues with crashing is because of the mods I installed. Otherwise the game seems to run okay.
8
u/Twistedtropical 13h ago
Better consoles or pc specs will run better. From personal experience, i went from playing on my old Xbox, had crashes. Now I play on the Xbox series x and I still crash, but not as often!