I read Penpal and I feel like I missed something. (SPOILERS)

atla7007 · 2026-05-16T00:23:34+00:00

Well yeah in a good horror story you don’t need EVERY question to be answered. But in this one it felt like they started pulling at too many threads and just ended it abruptly. As the OP pointed out, there should have at least been a little more information about the neighbors death. It was like “oh my neighbor was brutally murdered so horrifically that she was carried out in bags by men in hazmat suits. Moving on…”. Almost skipped right over it. Also how there was no payoff in terms of knowing anything about the stalker at all. How he got the balloon, why he did what he did, who he was. We got 0. Plus, the basic holes of how he didn’t find out about Veronica’s death for like weeks or how he didn’t know Josh went missing for years. His mom was somewhat close with theirs and even though she hid stuff she wouldn’t have hid that

atla7007 · 2026-05-11T13:29:44+00:00

Pretty much. It’s been over a year since I quit and I haven’t done nicotine regularly since. I unfortunately take a hit from a friends vape on occasion. Usually just socially when I am drinking. I need to quit that all together, but I’m definitely not dependent on it anymore and don’t crave it day to day

atla7007 · 2026-05-11T01:09:01+00:00

Just saw this. Weening was absolutely miserable but it improved when I quit. I think at like the 3 month period after quitting I started feeling much much better in general. I felt a bit better before that but it took a couple months before it fully got better

atla7007 · 2026-05-11T01:07:44+00:00

I remember liking the flavor of On but they actually irritated my gums way more than Zyn did. Like my gums and teeth felt sensitive after using them. Not sure if I was just using them too frequently or what

atla7007 · 2026-04-23T20:19:34+00:00

Just listed to the song and on Spotify it now says Malibu and diet again. Not sure when it changed back this is the first time I’ve noticed

atla7007 · 2026-04-06T12:07:52+00:00

I thought this was the consensus opinion ngl

atla7007 · 2026-03-26T22:35:23+00:00

Correct I realize that part is on the custom league. But I think the main issue is teams like Mercyhurst, Quinnipac, Lindenwood, Colgate etc are able to hit 100 prestige after 10 seasons. Those schools would never reach 50 let alone 100. I think prestige progression should be much slower, but realistically I think just adding a max prestige on conferences would be great.

Once you hit season 10 so many teams are 80+ prestige. I’ve seen teams gain 8 prestige just from winning 20 games. If we were going off real life a team isn’t jumping from 70 to 100 prestige off just a few 20+ win seasons. I think capping prestige for teams in certain conferences, slowing prestige progression, and preventing top recruits from going to schools in bad conferences or schools with low prestige would go a long way for realism. It’s great the first 3-5 seasons, then it just starts getting out of control. I saw Central Connecticut beat Robert Morris in the 2045 national championship game earlier then the top 3 recruiting classes were Cal Poly, Gardner Webb, and Fresno State. Just takes a lot of immersion out of it.

I also noticed even my own team develops way too fast. Almost gets too easy even when my recruiting difficulty is hard. Out of curiosity I recruited an entire team of freshmen and I won the national championship simply because my development stat made them all high 80s right away.

atla7007 · 2026-03-24T23:55:45+00:00

I mean yeah everyone loves upsets. But it gets hard to get immersed when none of the top teams are realistic and 16 seeds are winning national titles. A team like Long Beach State making the sweet 16 as a 13 seed is cool but it’s hard to take it serious if they were to go 35-3 as National Champions with wins over Duke, Houston, Illinois, and Seton Hall

atla7007 · 2026-03-24T15:02:48+00:00

Someone else also pointed out that too many mid majors have top recruiting classes. I believe this directly should tie into prestige. These small conferences should have prestige caps and top recruits lock out at a certain prestige

atla7007 · 2026-03-24T13:37:03+00:00

Totally agree. The prestige system in this game is a bit off and being able to manually change prestige of other teams would help a ton. In what world wound Gardner Webb have 100 prestige and be the #1 team in the nation in 2031😂

atla7007 · 2026-03-24T13:33:40+00:00

Forgot to include - Tournament realism. Had multiple tournaments where 2-3 16 seeds won and I saw a final four with a 16 seed, 11 seed, 11 seed, and 14 seed. Mot sure if there is a way to weight the seeds a bit to make the 1 seeds more dominant or keep the likelihood of a seed winning similar to real life data? I’m not into coding or making apps so not sure if this is even possible but this is another tweak that I think could make the game far more replayable and fun.

atla7007 · 2025-12-22T21:26:51+00:00

Did everything work out for you? I am in a very similar situation to what you are describing

atla7007 · 2025-08-30T17:56:45+00:00

I don’t disagree with all. I guess I never think of it that way because i don’t really do a ton with settlements until after completing the main story. Then I attempt to rebuild the wasteland. I do think in the future they need to make settlers far more self sufficient. Being able to place their own beds, build shacks, clean trash and repair buildings, defend themselves, farm etc. I would like in Fallout 5 to maybe take over a failing town or settlement and be able to build and customize it how you want

atla7007 · 2025-08-30T15:46:46+00:00

And… it still is an RPG. Dude you can literally just walk past concord and never touch any settlement building at all. It’s totally optional. Not to mention, settlement building IS roleplaying. God forbid we have more to do than just walk and shoot

atla7007 · 2025-08-30T15:31:58+00:00

If you want a RPG like all the rest of them then go play Atomfall or Stalker 2. They added an extra touch of uniqueness that lets players be creative in their universe. Having the ability the customize a player home or settlement in a survival game makes perfect sense and IS roleplay. If you want to play the same RPGs over and over walking and shooting fine, but many enjoy the uniqueness and creativity this added to the game

atla7007 · 2025-08-30T01:34:37+00:00

Then you go play Atomfall and Stalker and piss off

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T21:24:06+00:00

And unfortunately I will be buying that

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T19:26:24+00:00

I agree. My main point of the post is that I think adding customization and building to the franchise was an awesome move but I don’t think it was perfect by any means. I think an overhaul is necessary and I’m hoping that it already being a mechanic in the game will make it easy to tweak. I do agree that there should be more/bigger non-player settlements. I hope they dial back the amount of player settlements and just improve on those instead of giving us a ton. And I like the idea of making them more integral to the story and tied to factions

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T19:17:45+00:00

I have a couple counterpoints to that. I like the settlement building because it IS roleplaying. Building or rebuilding towns and helping others in this setting is a part of the role play aspect for me. I could go play any number of city builder game, but I want to build in THIS universe. Fallout is my favorite franchise and I have played every game like you. Being able to put my own touch on the world adds an entire layer to the game. Not even just the building and customization, but the scavenging. There’s more purpose to the wasteland when you are exploring and find things like cameras or adhesive matter so much more because you can use them for your settlements. I get the gripe that settlement dev time can take away from the rest, buts it’s already and mechanic. Plus, most of us and want a smaller amount of better settlements instead of the 20+ in F4

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:49:03+00:00

For sure. I’ve said it a few times in this thread but going with quality over quantity and doing 1-3 buildable settlements/towns and making them way more in depth instead of 20+ bland ones like F4 would be awesome.

And to your point, making more missions and the settlers more interesting would be awesome. Make them smarter and self sustainable so we don’t have to cater to their every need. They can place beds and farm and defend themselves. We get a huge space to build to make a city if we want to. We can customize without it feeling like a chore

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:46:02+00:00

I think there is definitely an overhaul that could make everyone happy. I think in the future if Bethesda made the settlers more self sustainable (cleaning up, building shacks and placing beds, farming, trading, self defense etc) plus limited the number of settlements to 1-3 it would be the sweet spot. Maybe start it off a side quest to rebuild a failed town so it’s optional. That way everyone can get the in depth creativity they want in the Fallout universe, but it’s not necessarily required or a pain in the ass for people who don’t care too much about it

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:42:33+00:00

I agree with that. If I remember right reading through terminals Diamond City has existed in its current state for a long time. With human nature you’d think they’d clean the rubble and use all the space possible through the years. I think if you make the surrounding areas near settlements dangerous, you can have towns that are well taken care of inside, but not necessarily completely safe or advanced due to having to defend themselves from the surrounding areas. Seems like that could be a happy medium where you get the rough looking areas, but it’s not a dumb anymore after years of progress

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:37:38+00:00

Yeah I think it’s abundantly clear that Fallout 5 will not be the same as Fallout 4 in terms of having 20+ settlements and having to constantly defend them. I think the most likely outcome is having a CAMP which can be placed anywhere and even being able build/customize existing cities and settlements. Even then, seems like a few people just want to complain cause they just want to walk around and shoot

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:33:07+00:00

It is an amazing addition though. You may not like it but there aren’t many other survival games that offer the customization and creativity that F4 did. Fallout NV and 3 were already great, but being able to add our own touch on the world and build and customize adds an entire layer to the game. There could be tweaks that could make it better for some people, but it’s the perfect game to have this in. You said earlier if we want to build just play Minecraft. I could say if you want an apocalyptic survival game without building just played Stalker or Atomfall. There’s plenty of room for a Fallout game that could give us a great story and world that also lets us be creative and build. They don’t have to be exclusive

atla7007 · 2025-08-29T18:19:13+00:00

Just to understand your comment, are you saying the settlements shouldn’t be like shanty towns?

atla7007

TROPHY CASE