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For example, do they use flow charts or Excel or what?

What is a "natural" approach to quests? Well I think every sort of "choice and consequence" (to use an awful buzzword) branch needs a hard risk/reward gameplay scenario, but it needs to be veiled to keep the right brain happy. And when you have a hard limit on available XP it becomes so precious that the player is no longer making choices on their own merits. Maybe this is just a point of view that comes from weaknesses in my own playstyle, though. Always at odds with myself because I want to make choices based on exposition and my character's skillset, but OCD enough that I need to get as much XP as possible. And yeah, the whole quicksave/quickload thing. That said I did play all the way through Vampire Bloodlines without the limited XP being a problem (limited money is another issue, though)

The problem is that having a limited amount of XP in the world emphasizes a min/max powergamer approach to every quest instead of a natural one. I think there should be minute XP rewards for pretty much anything that uses your skillset. Make it up to the player if he or she wants to grind, but make it so it's not necessary and so you can grind as any character archetype, not just combat.

Oh, anyway: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

I'd argue that while Bioshock is certainly more intellectual than Halo, as far as an actual game goes that's still just all flash. The gameplay in Bioshock was a severe disappointment.

Not to mention, that it features some great swamps I thought the swamps were the best part of the entire game. By Far. WHich lead to a somewhat disappointing experience overall. The faction war concept could have worked, but the maps weren't really large enough to support that level of conflict. If there had been triple the territory perhaps, and the factions had been less static, the whole thing could have been pretty cool. I don't think map size was the problem. I think it came down to -Capturing and defending territory were the only things the AI had to do so they'd be constantly doing it-- and you'd be constantly bothered about it. -Enemies respawn with such regularity that it's hard to care about a point you've fought for 80 times already -Some faction wars were dependent on the AI moving from one area to another. The game had... problems with that. -You had no control over the AI, so you couldn't say "Hey gang, let's go capture Mutant Dog Valley!" You had to wait for them to feel like it on their own. Trying to convince my faction to actually advance the front proved difficult at times. The faction war concept could have worked if it, well, WORKED.

This is my list of demands for improving new vegas over fallout 3: First of all: Story and characters Second of all: Include a third person over the shoulder view that one can actually use in combat. [some time later] Five Hundredth and Eighty Second of all...

For the amount of times Fallout 3 crashes I want an autosave every 3 minutes

I'm not defending Fallout 1, it did weapon balance terribly. Why take multiple combat skills if one is good enough? Exactly! If you want to play a character who uses combat to get out of every situation, one skill shouldn't be enough to carry you!

The Marksman skill thing would be interesting in a new franchise with a system similar to Fallout, but I think Fallout is too deeply entrenched in its own lingo by now to make such a radical change. It'd be like making a Fallout with a "Wisdom" stat, it would feel absoloutely filthy.

Uhhhh, why? Unless your cpu is being cooled by a paper fan it should be fine.

Well, maybe this is meta knowledge, but it's easy to intuit that rocket launchers and laser rifles are obviously going to be more powerful than pistols and knives and therefore be "end-game" stuff. Plus if you're focused on being a "combat guy" then you tag and develop multiple weapon skills to cover all your bases. Either way, even accounting for total ignorance if you tag energy weapons you know you're going to be useless until you find one. Which is why you'd have to rely on the other skills you've tagged like Sneak or Speech and avoid combat to get you through up until then.

Then why allow someone to buy the Big Guns skill at all at low levels? There's no other skill in the game that has an effective restriction to using it in the second half of the game. If you tagged Science and didn't get to use it for the first seven hours of your first playthrough, wouldn't that be kind of irritating? On the other hand, Small Guns loses effectiveness in the second half of the game (okay, okay. it should but clearly doesn't in Fallout 1 and 2) Isn't that supposed to be the trade off? Be really good at combat early but be outclassed later on or stink early on and be great later? The difference between the combat skills and Science is that Science is for very specific situations where the designer says "Okay, let's put a terminal here and let you solve the quest that way", but combat is always an available alternative to just about any situation. So if you make Big Guns viable the whole way through then the player could coast through the game on that skill alone. But I guess modern rpg design is all about "Well, if the player wants to coast through on one combat skill alone, let them" which I totally disagree with, but it's an angle that's been proven to work with audiences and in that case a complete Big Guns arc would make sense.

I'd make small guns and melee weapons weaker across the board so that they're less effective near the 'end' of the game. This means you either have to rely on your non-combat skills or start developing your character towards upper-tier weapons. I'd make energy weapons and big guns have comparable damage, but different in execution. The idea of Big Guns is either you pray and spray with the minigun or get splash damage with rockets. It's unlikely that you'd miss with EVERY shot of a minigun or SO wildly with the rocket launcher so you're guaranteed at least a little bit of damage with each shot to compensate for the ammo expenses. Meanwhile, one shot from a plasma rifle would do as much damage as a full minigun barrage, but if you miss then you've completely wasted your shot. I'd also make Unarmed focused almost specifically on disabling your opponant by crippling their limbs to make up for the fact that it's kind of a ridiculous combat path-- especially if your firsts end up hurting more than bullets. Throwing/Explosives, screw it. Just make landmines fall under "Traps" and ditch the grenades. They sucked in Fallout 1 and 2 and they never hit in VATS in Fallout 3 no matter how high your skill was anyways.

Really? Because what stood out for me in Fallout 3 and Oblivion was how so much of what I wanted to do was artificially blocked because they didn't want to have to design around silly things like the player thinking outside of the box

Should have died in 1995?

-Planescape Torment used the Infinity Engine -Bioware at least look like they're trying -Baldur's Gate was a respectable game -Bioware is quite good at character animation, cutscene direction, voice acting, even dialogue -Neverwinter Nights, while having a lacking OC, was a very interesting new direction to take in terms of online gameplay and editing tools -Morrowind was great if you don't try to pretend it's an RPG -Fallout 3 could have been worse -Oblivion could have been, uh, unmoddable -The Bethesda message boards are run by very... efficient moderators -Bethesda's creative directors are very competent businessmen

Making these unlockable just seems silly to me

It's 8/6 The game WAS the big announcement

Even without changing the fast travel system at all you can't travel during fights or from inside dungeons

Indie goes turn based because the mainstream devs refuse to

I am so! excited!

The person who does barely anything should have a much harder time than the person who does it all. why? and even if it is, how much harder should it be? perhaps maybe you should look at in the reverse... game is only sooooo easy 'cause you chose to waste so much time on game. why complain 'bout ease? imply do less or don't use the stimpacks if you do not wish to use 'em. for folks who plays critical path there probably don't seem like an overabundance o' stims, and for folks like you and Gromnir, well, we can simply choose to show a little restraint. reasoning works equal as well if burden is placed on the hardcore fanatic as 'posed to the casual gamer. or, you could put in a mechanic that makes stims less useful as you use more of 'em... in any event, the weight stuff is a joke. HA! Good Fun! You can say the weight stuff is a joke for weapons and armor as well, then. And here's why: the point of an rpg is to do quests to get rewards in either XP or items in order to topple greater challenges. If you choose not to do the quests or level up then you don't get the benefits and the game is harder. What about the players who want to teleport instantly to the end boss? Shouldn't they get that right, and isn't it up to the hardcore player to go out of his way to actually see the game's, yknow, content? How about I just open the DVD case and there's a slip of paper inside that says YOU! ARE! A! WINNER! so I don't even have to put the disc in and can skip straight to that warm fuzzy affirmation.

I don't think anything in an rpg should have an arbitrary limit.

The animation in Fallout 3 is terrible and the NPCs reek of automation over artistic design. For example, every male human has the exact same body as every other male human with a different head stapled onto it.