Kjarista

Witcher is one of the games I've wanted to play but haven't gotten around to. This is a nice move for me.

If you want to try a real MMO, try Gemstone from Simultronics. Complex character design, extensive and even "scientific" magic system, friendly spells can kill players. Haven't played in several years, so I'm unaware of any changes. It's a professional MuD, so no graphics. It's certainly not for everyone, bu no graphical MMO can beet it's completelness and complexity.

They will use stimpacks. Reverse pickpocketing is the only in game way I know of, except for using the console commands to give them equipment or make them essential (on PC). There are several mods. Using something like FOMM to manage mods makes them easy to manage load order and toggle on/off. I would suggest using mods. If you have Broken Steel, chances are that the caravan merchants, left to their own devices, will get killed by Enclave patrols, and it's not uncommon to find them dead from normal mobs.

What, in your dreams? You sound like a 12 year old.

There are plenty of us out there who really like these games, warts and all, and I'm sure that most folks are willing to overlook faults in their favorite games as well. I've put hundreds of hours into each of these games, and yes, there are faults...some substantial, but these are still great games.

Probably because they are not crappy games. Fallout 3 deserves great reviews. We all understand the problems the traditional franchise fans have with FO3, and I can certainly understand why many folks who post here have problems with the game, but it's still an excellent game.

I read that a lot these days about Fallout 2. I'm not sure how much truth there is to it, or how much it is just the thing to say atm. I didn't play a lot of Fallout 2 (compared to Fallout) so my memory of it is not very good. The areas that I do remember best: Klamath, The Den, Redding, I don't recall as being silly or having any particular silliness associated with them. Perhaps some examples from those who remember Fallout 2 better than I do would be in order. The biggest problem with FO2 for me were the special encounters, which were out of character and out of the gameworld. Encounters like the Monty Python Bridgekeeper, Star Trek space shuttle, and many others were, to me, inappropriate for an RPG. I don't mind humor, even a bit of silly humor, but it can be done in character, and consistent with the gameworld.

Let's hope so. Wouldn't that be interesting...being able to mod with resources from both games.

Apparently, games that have killing children are banned in many countries, so I doubt it will be done.

Because the Obsidian board has a large and diverse set of posters. Those 11.6 million people who play World of Warcraft are all flash in the pan and have been for five years now. Hmm.. I don't know about that.. if we assume that the votes represent gamers in general, that still means that 25% of all gamers play MMOs, that's a pretty huge share. And ~50% have played it in the past and might come back for a good title.. I would be pretty happy with those numbers if I was running a MMO buisness. I think that many gamers, particularly RPG players, tend to not be interested in the social aspects of MMOs, and that social aspect, ultimately, may be the only feature that makes MMOs worthwhile. If we grade MMOs using single player standards, they don't fare well. I still play WoW, not because of what the game provides as much as hwat my friends and guildmates provide....the social interaction, the shared experience.

I read your post and though ti was cool. It is always ncie when a developer antic[ates the player and you do something like you did, and Boom, the game has an answer. That is classic crog dev work righ there. ANd, yeah, sorry for the gun talk. I don't usually go on like that, but the inconsistency of the "Chinese Assault Rifle" being present in such numbers and that it fires a NATO round, is just one of those odd little things that sits in my head when I play FO3 and bugs me. I mean, yeah its a game so who cares. But I would argue, why do something inconsistent in a gameworld if you don't have to? Well, there aren't that many Chinese assault rifles around, and there are still Chinese (ghouls) all over Mama Doche's and little stashes of bodies all over the Wasteland. Regardless, a weapon is only good if there is ammo for it, and it may ahve been possible that the CARs were rechambered, either by wAstelanders, using AR parts, or by the Chinese themselves, with the idea of using captured American ammo. (US ARmy had conversion kits in stock in Korea designed to rechamber N. Korean AKs to 7.62 NATO). All conjecture, of course. Frankly, the ammo type really doesn't bother me that much. I figure if ammo is being manufactured somewhere, the caliber selection would bound to be very limited.

It's just as quiet over there, with the same sort of speculation. This is the worst time in the development cycle for us....we know it's coming, but we don't know anything about it.

The Beth devs made it sound like any news would be posted over there. Who knows, though.

I'd agree with this, and add that some of these side quests should be placed far away from the quest hubs, so that there is more reason to explore the world. This assumes, of course, that there is a world to explore, and not just hot spots on an overland map.

part of the problem with no-win scenarios is the expectation of the player. TO some degree crpgs have trained us that there will always be a "trick" or a "hidden" catch that makes a scenario winnable. If we could be retrained a bit to not try so hard to make every scenario winnable maybe it wouldn;t be so frustrating for people? I understand the argument, but the purpose of a product is to meet and satisfy the expectations of the customer, not vice versa.

Sure, but if we want those consequences to effectively change the game world, each consequence, in combination, dramatically increases the number of outcomes (squares it? It's been a long time since I studied statistics), and each outcome needs to take into account potentially a great number of world factors. These things get complex real fast. Some consequences are easier...like the ones that only affect the state of the character. If you go down the evil path, for example, you should expect real world consequences of that action. Social consequences like this are a bit easier, if we have a robust faction system. Thing is, from our other discussion, the player is going to have to feel that they are "winning", no matter what they do, because if they think they are losing, they will complain and quit playing. We'd like to see this game being sold a year or two after published, if possible.

TO me, that is just totally crazy. And I am not knocking on Bethesda here. I'm quite sure they did it because they knew if they didn't people would complain, and they probably just didn't want to hear it. There are other games, like shooters, where consequences are not important (or even important at all), but in a crpg, I think they really have to be. It's waht roleplaying is all about. Besides, since video games are infinitely replayable, you can always go back a second time and not blow up megaton and do the quests then. I agree with you here, but if the developer want to get good return on investment, teh game has to appeal to more of the market than the roleplayers, which has traditionally been niche.

The only problem with that relates to what Pop mentioned briefly earlier. It is hard to balance the game for both RT combat and for VATS. WHat works well in one area, works not so well in another. And what you end up with is two competing systems, neither of which really works. If the game was actually dedictated to VATS-only combat and a lot of effort was put into making VATS-only combat balanced and enjoyable and interesting, it would probably be pretty fun. The gam, to me anyway, seems that it is balanced for non VATS combat. Using VATS makes the game much easier. Since I don't much care for VATS, I like it that way, but tastes differ.

Well, I want a gold plated Ferrari, but I settle for a Focus because I can't afford the Ferrari. It would be possible to load a game with decisions that branch in combination that would make the national telecom grid look lame, but imagine th cost of that. The cutscenes in teh original fallouts were fun, I thought, and they were easy to do. Heavily branched quests are not easy to do.

I think that's right. We can hope for improvements in dialogue and story, perhaps better sets of choices and consequences, but I agree that it's not likely that any of the major systems are going to change much.

There has been a long standing discussion in the MMO world about how many players just don't like to be held accountable for "bad" in game decisions. Conversly, almost, many players seem to want to play evil characters without suffering any consequences for doing so. Keep in mind here taht these players are probably not RPG players. You see the result of this in FO3. Destroy Megaton and you can still complete the Survival Guide quests. Don't like being totally evil? There are ways to fix that in game. The trick then, is to challenge RPG players and still have the game remain approachable to non RPG players.

I'd like to see the whole VATS thing removed. WHy the heck do you need it for in a first person action game anyway? Just make all your targets have location specific damage, and if you manage to shoot someone in the groin in real time combat, then great, location specific damage + criticals + whatever extra effects you want. FO3 needs to embrace its first person action game nature; not try to hide from it. There were a lot of people complaining that they didn't want real time combat because they thought that such a system would have player skill trump character skill. Some folks even argued that they couldn't play shooters. I find FO3 to require minimal physical skill, as do most people, I think.

Need not be mutually exclusive. The earlier Fallouts provided many side quests of course, and the decisions made on those quests played a big part determining the ending cutscenes. many of the quests didn't really change the world, but it was fun to see how your decisions changed the future. This sort of thing would be much easier to code, I'd guess, and and it's still somewhat satisfying.

In the demo of Fallout, it was hilarious, though. As Chris Avellone mentioned in a relatively new interview, Van Buren was to have a twist in this scheme. From RPG Designer Hates RPGs

I noticed that too. I chalked it up to a desire on the part of supafans to be against whatever it is that Bethsoft was doing. Perhaps the old Fallouts are too similar to the new ones in their structure. With KOTOR and NWN and other games of their type, when you're on the main quest you're on the main quest, whereas in the Fallouts, you're going to Navarro to pick up the key fob but there are 6 or 7 other different things you can do while you're there, and the steps you have to take to advance the main storyline aren't portrayed as being particularly important. I liked that about Fallouts 1 and 2 (it was more the case in 2 but whatever) I think that's what I mean by linear. I would like any quests, especially the MQ to be sufficiently open to leave it to do other things, and then pick it up later. I don't want to be railroaded down the main quest with no other options, which to me, is a big problem in many RPGs these days, and it's probably THE reason I tend to like playing Beth games.