That's because the world was being rebuilt. Part of that is war between sides with different ideologies. There's a point where basic necessities like clean food and water, shelter, and so on become commonplace. There are dozens of farms in the wasteland and clean water from the dam. Towns built along the highways. Traders and immigrants from the west. People won't be content to sit in shitty shacks barely eking out a living off irradiated food and mud-water. Not only that, the BoS in F3 were awful white-knight paladins and protectors of the poor and righteous, while the BoS in literally every other game were xenophobic technophiles who kept to themselves.
I can understand why you wouldn't like the change in pace, though. There wasn't a lot of wasteland survival going on in NV outside of hardcore mode. I could've done with more wrecked cityscapes and less society as well.
They want to cash in on a series and create an MMO that's "successful" just like Bioware did with TOR. What they don't realize is that a lot of the sales from games like Oblivion and Skyrim are coming from consoles. Those players wouldn't get a PC MMO because it's not the kind of game they'd be interested in. As for the PC fanbase, they're mostly, if not all there for the mods. What they're catering to is a non-existent audience. Something like Skyrim with co-op play would bring them a lot more revenue, would please most of their fanbase, and wouldn't be nearly as large and risky as making an MMO.
OI DER PATTY GALLOWAY HO HO
I did really like his design and character, though.