so.... Hearthstone... that's a mistake on my part. As some of you have pointed out, I actually meant "Hearthfire", the DLC for Skyrim that allows you to build player homes. my bad.

Well my biggest issue with nukaworld, is that you have to ruin your previous gameplay to take full advantage of it. There should be an option to assemble a strike force of the Minuteman and throw the raiders out

The only thing I think besides these changes that would also be cool, was an alternative ending to the main storyline. An ending where the raiders reign supreme. It would require a change in post game content, since raiders wouldnt be a problem anymore. But I think it would really fit as a solo faction victory. As no other faction can work together with raiders.

The best fix is convince gage to go legit. You convince them the raider life style is doomed in the long run and go ligite. The operators(the most liked of the 3) would go along wit it. As a reward you get them to team up with main factions side with and accualy turn nuka world in to a trade hub. Using it to supply your settliments with resorces.

I may be a victim of mandela myself but I distinctly recall being able to get the Open Season quest from Preston during a dialogue where he's like "this is crazy, right? You're not actually going to side with the raiders?" and you can say "no of course not, let's smoke these turkeys"

My biggest issue with this dlc is lack of opcion to clear out the entire nuka world with Minutemen/Brotherhood of Steel/Railroad/Institute, and then remained there as new npc occupying the entire park. We have somthing similar with Far Harbor DLC were factions like Brotherhood of Steel, Institute could attack Arcadia, Railroad would work with them in the future.

You mention a Single Gang Ending, but I want a three Gang Ending. Isn’t that the point, that you’re supposed to be able to do what Colter couldn’t and get all three gangs to follow you willingly? I think through a combo of Raider Settlements and Side Quests, it should be possible. Maybe also at the last interaction, getting the Rebel Gang that takes over the power plant to stand down by passing a series of speech checks. You’d probably have to speech check each leader to get them not to kill the Rebel Gang Leader.

The most glaring problems in Nuka World are, for me, two things:
1. You can't get your fraction to come over, your forced to be a raider. I really wanted to bring the force of the Brotherhood down on these raiders so badly!
2. Once your done nothing really regenerates. Once they are dead no new things happen= no replay value

I'd love it if we had the option of getting Evan to become the leader of Nuka World :)

There should’ve been a minutemen ending, so when Shank sends you back to the commonwealth you got an optional quest to see Preston Garvey and tell him you’ve had to do whatever it is the raiders asked, and then build up to do a full scale freedom takeover of nukaworld

9:50 I have found a solution for you, I recently did Nuka World and by bringing Preston with me and as soon as I was able to get into the same room with Gage after he helps you kill Colter you kill him right there and Open Season starts automatically plus by doing it right then and there Preston will stay happy with you since you didn't give Gage or the raiders any chance to coerce you into being a raider.
It was pretty fun taking on all three gangs.

An idea I had for open season is that you could convince some of the lower rank raiders to mutiny against their bosses. After open season, there’s a massive power vacuum, so having some reformed raiders could fix that. Ex operators could run stores, Ex disciples could provide security, and Ex pack could help you deal with wildlife

One additional thing i think should have been done. Give the player a perk for completing open season. Even if it is something simple like "take 10% damages from Raiders". makes you feel like you have to ignore most of the story of the DLC if you kill the raiders (which I do in almost every playthough)

Honestly it makes sense that preston dosen't forgive you. You help rebuild the Minutemen you become his friend then boom you just betray him by becoming a raider. Preston before meeting you lost everything, all his friends, all his hope. The man wanted to throw his life away, he wanted to die. And you betraying him? Well he lost his only true friend. So it makes sense he wouldn't want anything to do with a backstabbing traitor on a personal level.

But if you do your dirt before becoming his friend hes willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You two didn't know eachother therefore if you are serious about redemption then theres room to develop a friendship because theres no betrayal getting in the way. Theres no doubts of "he'll probably try to betray me again if i get to close "

what i hate about open season is that the slaves dont even know that they are free at the ende that nuka world does not turn into a real settlement and real trade city like diamond city ...

One of the ideas I have had for a while on Nuka World is to add additional conquerable regions as well as additional groups, traders and slaves that have needs. You need to balance the desires of the raiders with the needs of all the people for food, goods, etc. The raiders need to eat even if they don't think about it very much so the slaves have to have land to farm and enough farm land to feed everyone, the Nuka Town traders need areas to scavenge parts and items from to sell to the raiders so once again you have to give some amount of land to that effort as well. Balance each group while keeping the raiders from turning on you because they don't se the needs of the whole at all until it's too late. Make it possible to mismanage the whole place into a disaster with everyone either abandoning the park or going to war with each other.

The reason why there kind of needs to be at least 2 gangs in the ending is because the over boss leverages the gangs against each others to maintain his position and stability. If the operators were the only gang left they would need to decide to work with you and out of the goodness of their heart share their caps with you. (Basically one gang has no need for an over boss) However, I agree with you that there should be an option to conspire with one gang to take over the park. There should probably also be an ending where all three gang survive.

not to mention that Bethesda really didn't take in count their own Survival difficulty with the DLC.

the raider side of quests has you travelling between commonwealth and nuka world multiple times (when setting up raider bases), but since fast travel isn't a thing for survival, you're forced to watch the opening Nuka Express ride each time you enter Nuka World

I loved Nukaworld mainly for the setting and what it added to the vanilla fallout 4 loop. They absolutely nailed the feeling of a defunct theme park, and the variety of the different zones and the thematic details of each really made going through them memorable even though the underlying narrative left a lot to be desired. I love that a lot of the background characters really stand out and are given little moments- Dixie of the Disciples (who I get the feeling had a lot of cut content tied to her), Cito in the jungle zone with the ghoulrillas (ridiculous character, yes, but this series has plenty). I love that Sierra Petrovita gets a little mission and is oblivious to the fact that she's surrounded by raiders. Far Harbor had a compelling narrative and some great locations as well, but it was very bleak for the most part, both in story and setting. Nuka World is a big bright joke of a DLC and I love it.

Things I would love to see:

Assimilate other raider tribes into the Nuka World gangs; Turning The Forged, Rust Devils, Trappers, and maybe even the Gunners / Triggermen.
Quest to bring the Hallucinogen gas to the Operators to use in a modified Minuteman Artillery system to certain locations and turn the settlements/targets crazy.
Shakedown good neighbor, Bunker hill, and Dimond city for caps, chems, booze, etc. by either threatening them or attacking and eliminating key figures.
Faction Rivals: if the minuteman/Brotherhood/Institute/railroad are still around they will actively work against you.
More involvement in settling disputes between gang bosses; cast judgement on disobedient raiders type of thing.

I’m genuinely surprised you didn’t mention a way to keep all three gangs. I split it up 2 - 2 - 1 on my first playthrough was pissed that I essentially wasted a park on a gang what would betray me. I really think there should have been a way to make all 3 gangs happy if you went full raider. Like in older fallout games this dlc would have had that ending where a gang betrays you every time unless you FULLY committed to being an evil raider overlord, doing all the side quests and Mabye getting some unique dialogue you can only get doing  the most “raider” things for quests and dialogue checks.