OldFatGuy: I have upwards of 6000 hours into this game, most of it on the Steam version. I transferred to the GOG version on April 25, 2024 because I play perma-death and I didn't want to upgrade in the middle of a game (the next gen "update" added some new content) so my plan was to upgrade when I died and had to start over. LOL, that still hasn't happened yet.

I can see ZERO differences between the games themselves, which makes sense since I'm sure the basic games are the same. But I do see, what I'll call "performance issues" although not what most folks normally think of as performance issues (usually FPS related). I see no difference in FPS, stuttering, crashing, etc.

However, I do notice a difference in three areas, and am curious as to whether anyone else has played both and if they're seeing the same thing.

1) When I double click on the F4 icon on the desktop, it takes two to three times longer for the launch screen to come up than it does in Steam.

2)When I click PLAY on the launch screen, it takes two to three times longer for the game to start (black screen for a longer period of time). Keep in mind, in both cases we're still just talking seconds. Maybe a difference of say on the Steam version 2-4 seconds whereas on the GOG version is more like 4-10 seconds.

3)My exit saves (I play survival only) fail WAY more often in the GOG version than the Steam version. The Steam version is not without failure, as I would encounter it once or twice a month maybe. But just since I've switched to the GOG version, I've already seen more than 7 exit save failures. [NOTE: Playing survival means saving can only occur when you sleep on a "bed" or when you exit. So, if I'm playing and RL intervenes and I must quit quickly, I will just quit, relying on the exit save to work. And when it doesn't, you lose all the progress you've made from the last time you slept.] This really hurt once when I had gone two game days without sleep, my sleep deprivation was at it's max, and I had one of my medical providers show up so I had to quit. That one really peeved me... but I've been peeved a couple of times with the Steam version too as that one it happens too, just seemingly not as often if my first few weeks with the GOG version seems to attest. I would recommend players of either version who play survival to attempt to sleep before you quit, as that way even if the exit save doesn't work, the regular sleep auto save offers a backup.

I am wondering about numbers 1 and 2 above, and wondering if there's something "in the game" that is looking to "hook up" with Steam or something and that's why the delays are longer??? Does that sound like a reasonable first guess?

Just wanted to post my observations here and see if there other "two way" players and they have noticed this as well.

Have a great weekend everybody, I know I will!!! In all the 8 years of playing this, and the literally likely hundreds of games I've played due to dying, I am on this very game at level 88 which is tied for the highest level I've reached before dying so far. I hope to break that record this weekend. And who knows, after all these failures in all these hours and games, maybe the one where I had to migrate from Steam to GOG will be the one I finally reach my goal of beating the game and all DLC's on survival playing perma-death. Ironic.

OldFatGuy: Yeah, I think that's right. I was thinking it was looking for the client, but perhaps it's the connection to CC that it's looking for.

As I said, it's nothing major (not like the looooooooooooooooooooonnnnngggg loading times in this game), but it is definitely noticeable and I think your explanation is most likely the right one. Thank you.

If anyone else is reading and has played both, and in particular both in survival made, I'd be interested in hearing your experience with the exit saves because I am definitely seeing it fail more on GOG than Steam. But it's possible that's a system specific thing for me (FTR, I have 2X2TB SSD's in RAID that makes it like 1X4TB where it is supposed to increase speed by utilizing both together... perhaps this is affecting my exit save success rate... though you would think it would be the same with either GOG or Steam version if that were the case. I dunno). Just would love to hear if anyone else has played both version on survival. (Must be survival because I don't think exit saves are a thing in the other difficulty options.)

Luficer144: I'm more interested in your RIG and if you have problems with weapon debris. Without a steam launcher forcing you to use Vulkan OpenGl. I got a 3060 12gb and no weapon debris problems.

OldFatGuy: I've never tried having Weapon Debris on before as I had heard it wouldn't work with any Nvidia after, I dunno, was it the 980 series or something? I'll give it a go and see but your 3060 is ahead of mine. Mine is 2000 series, can't recall which one. I'll look at that and see too before I post back here.

diziet_sma: Is the desktop icon launching via GOG Galaxy? I know that launching a game through galaxy takes longer for me than just running the game exe.

diziet

OldFatGuy: I have upwards of 6000 hours into this game, most of it on the Steam version. I transferred to the GOG version on April 25, 2024 because I play perma-death and I didn't want to upgrade in the middle of a game (the next gen "update" added some new content) so my plan was to upgrade when I died and had to start over. LOL, that still hasn't happened yet.

I can see ZERO differences between the games themselves, which makes sense since I'm sure the basic games are the same. But I do see, what I'll call "performance issues" although not what most folks normally think of as performance issues (usually FPS related). I see no difference in FPS, stuttering, crashing, etc.

However, I do notice a difference in three areas, and am curious as to whether anyone else has played both and if they're seeing the same thing.

1) When I double click on the F4 icon on the desktop, it takes two to three times longer for the launch screen to come up than it does in Steam.

2)When I click PLAY on the launch screen, it takes two to three times longer for the game to start (black screen for a longer period of time). Keep in mind, in both cases we're still just talking seconds. Maybe a difference of say on the Steam version 2-4 seconds whereas on the GOG version is more like 4-10 seconds.

3)My exit saves (I play survival only) fail WAY more often in the GOG version than the Steam version. The Steam version is not without failure, as I would encounter it once or twice a month maybe. But just since I've switched to the GOG version, I've already seen more than 7 exit save failures. [NOTE: Playing survival means saving can only occur when you sleep on a "bed" or when you exit. So, if I'm playing and RL intervenes and I must quit quickly, I will just quit, relying on the exit save to work. And when it doesn't, you lose all the progress you've made from the last time you slept.] This really hurt once when I had gone two game days without sleep, my sleep deprivation was at it's max, and I had one of my medical providers show up so I had to quit. That one really peeved me... but I've been peeved a couple of times with the Steam version too as that one it happens too, just seemingly not as often if my first few weeks with the GOG version seems to attest. I would recommend players of either version who play survival to attempt to sleep before you quit, as that way even if the exit save doesn't work, the regular sleep auto save offers a backup.

I am wondering about numbers 1 and 2 above, and wondering if there's something "in the game" that is looking to "hook up" with Steam or something and that's why the delays are longer??? Does that sound like a reasonable first guess?

Just wanted to post my observations here and see if there other "two way" players and they have noticed this as well.

Have a great weekend everybody, I know I will!!! In all the 8 years of playing this, and the literally likely hundreds of games I've played due to dying, I am on this very game at level 88 which is tied for the highest level I've reached before dying so far. I hope to break that record this weekend. And who knows, after all these failures in all these hours and games, maybe the one where I had to migrate from Steam to GOG will be the one I finally reach my goal of beating the game and all DLC's on survival playing perma-death. Ironic.

reallynonessential: On both my PCs, I saw the opposite effect. When I switched to the GOG version of Fallout 4, it loads faster. I have never had an exit save failure so there must be a problem. Do you run mods that cause exit save failures?

OldFatGuy: No mods, never had 'em, never will... unless someday I change my mind. lol That day isn't here and it's not on the horizon. I am 100% certain I won't use them until after I've beaten the game once. Something I have yet to do.

And the exit save failed once AGAIN last night. That's two nights in a row. As stated above, I had failures in the Steam version, but this is way over the top compared to the Steam version. I'm wondering if my specific RAID setup might be contributing, but it seems if that were the case, then they should both fail at roughly the same rate. This is not nearly equal. It has happening more often than not now with the GOG version. With Steam I would get a failure a couple of times a month or so. Not like this.

I'm also wondering whether the fact that Steam saves to the cloud might be what's explaining the difference in failures... but I always thought that mechanic didn't actually occur in the game itself, it was a Steam function that kicked in after quitting.

I dunno. But the longer start up times and the more frequent exit save failures are indeed very, very noticeable.

And for the record, the loading times (such as when you go from inside to outside) appear to both be the same. Very, very, very, loooooooooooonnnnnnnggggggg. lol

OldFatGuy: I'm also wondering whether the fact that Steam saves to the cloud might be what's explaining the difference in failures... but I always thought that mechanic didn't actually occur in the game itself, it was a Steam function that kicked in after quitting.

EV_Gamer: Hi, maybe you could try changing the default save location to use an external pendrive or something? There are some google results of people doing that with "symlinks"? on Windows.
Also, do you backup your exit save before opening the game? When is it exactly failing? Is it after you load the save, or the save is not created?