jero cvmi

Did you try to apply the patches and high resolution mod to it? i've ordered it mainly because the high resolution mod doesn't work with my old copy...

Because they do it for charity.

Hehe no, i was playing Bloodlines at that moment actually, that 5year old game with 5 different unarmed and melee animations per player class Is Fallen Earth any good?

Absolutely. Damage types, i had forgotten about that. It would be a neat addition to bring back the old damage types and maybe some new ones like slashing/ piercing/ bashing damage. On a different topic, how about some variety in unarmed attacks? Maybe start off with the standard punch and kick and unlock new ones as you increase your skill, like in fallout 2? It would make unarmed characters more interesting i think. And we'd get to see animated piercing kicks )

I'd like to add that when something happens all the time, it's as uninteresting as when it doesn't happen at all, with the exception that it might also become tiresome. Weapons and armor wearing down all the time was tiresome and the novelty wore out pretty fast. I' d prefer that armor would get damaged only if the player got critically hit, and that the concept of critical miss/weapon jam was reintroduced to damage weapons.

i don't understand the correlation of number of different weapons vs. how much condition affects damage. For me, what's important is to have different weapons that are actually different, which means each one has its own benefits and drawbacks and suits a certain playstyle, and that these pros and cons are balanced so that i don't ultimately always use the same weapon. For example: in Fallout 2, you could decide wether you want close quarters carnage and pick the sawed off shotgun, or open air sniper action and go for the hunting rifle. Equally powerful, awesome and memorable, different styles. And that extended for most guns, all had their benefits and drawbacks, you picked your favourite ones that suited your playstyle and most of the time it was a nice gaming experience. Then again there's Fallout 3, where you just find a chinese rifle and stop worrying about small guns. As for the condition/ damage thing, i think it's a different issue. Basically i think it's accuracy that should decrease with condition, not damage. Also: how about bringing back AP/FMJ/JHP ammo types?

[intelligence]So you're saying it's an RPG? I find the "it's not an rpg" argument pretty void, too. I never cared about where a game gets filed under, RPG, FPS, RTS, BBQ or any other 3 Letter Acronym, and i don't think there's anything more boring than a "what's an RPG" discussion. The point is that Fallout 3 was a game full of choices, but all of them were as meaningless as what kind of beard your character would have. And you could change even that later in the game. You could always do whatever you want regardless of your choices, and the outcome was always more or less the same. You could tag a skill and max all others. You could nuke a town and keep your local grocer and questgiver. That was not the way the original Fallout worked, and for anyone who's not used to playing this type of dress-up-and-play-pretend game and wanted to play a Fallout sequel, not an Elder Scrolls sequel, it was frustrating as expected. In fact, i think it would be less frustrating if they skipped the whole stats and skills and dialogue "options" thing altogether, and made a GTA-style sandbox game, that would make more sense than having some numbers that do essentially nothing.

... well that's the special olympics version of what i was talking about but yeah why not exactly. especially if that's not what you get paid for.

What do you mean ny "cleaning out" and "burn the old"? People who will buy what they're sold will always be there by the millions, and so will be others that are more picky. All of them will find something that fits their tastes sooner or later. If a company chooses to cater to the first group, they can completely ignore the other. Does McDonalds care about what hardcore vegans have to say about their cuisine? Why would Bethesda care about what NMA has to say about their game? They're not their target group, plain and simple. Does that mean that all criticism should stop? Why? Bashing the stupidity of mass culture is fun. As a matter of fact, it should be an olympic sport.

dart gun and nuka grenades aside, the rest of the custom weapons didn't make much sense. I mean, if you have to have a flaming sword, a plasma torch a la kotor 2 would be far more believable than a blade with flamethrower fuel, no? i'd prefer to be able to build simple, more sane stuff like slingshots, tomahawks, molotov coctails, zip guns etc. along with the possibility to modify your arms like adding scopes and sawing barrels, stuff like that would make far more sense IMO.

Question to the developers: Do you have access to the source of the game engine, or just a higher level interface/library like the GECK?

also, can we have some subtitles for the radio transmissions please? we're not all native engrish speakers...

Mildly off-topic, but has anyone played Fallout 2 lootable armor mod? In that mod, repair skill defines what kinds of armor you can scavenge from your enemies. Better repair skill -> better lewt. Also: how about that fallout 3 schematics thingy? i don't remember, did crafting items from schematics involve repair skill? crafting items was kind of fun. i wish there were more everyday makeshift items you could craft, like slingshots and molotov coctails vs. wacky nonsense items like shishkebab.

I think the essential differnce here is "equipped" vs. "in inventory." You lose a layer of choice if you get bonuses from items in your pack. If you don a mechanic's outfit you don't get the benefits of wearing another type of armor. No, i don't think so. "equipped" vs. "in inventory" is 2 clicks away, right before attempting to use the repair skill. Which is fine, you could force the player to holster their weapon and equip a tool to get the repair bonus, would be the same thing plus some more clicking. Anyway, all i'm saying is being able to look like Bob Builder or a scientist in white robes was nice; But clothes having skill bonuses, when there are so many tools lying around that don't play any role apart from being junk, was a little ...frustrating.

On the other hand, it's the only game ever that i've had way more fun discussing than actually playing.

+1 But i'd be happy with less changes than what you're proposing. I'd like to just be able to fast travel to any location even before visiting them for the first time, and always have the chance to encounter someone/something while fast travelling (so that fast travelling doesn't work like a cheat), and the ability to skip encounters depending on outdoorsman skill. Also i'd like to automatically discover locations while fast travelling depending on Perception, and have the option to stop there instead of initial destination. +1 I never understood why wearing a mechanic's outfit increases repair skill, while carrying a wrench in your inventory doesnt. I'd like to see tools etc. instead of magic clothes. ..and give the ability to heal in VATS at the cost of action points. YAY! Superstimpaks with their side effects, ofcourse- Death By Superstimpak. Interesting ideas there, but i'd be fine if they just brought the old addiction system back, it worked perfect IMO. Naw, that was redundant i think. +100000 tl;dr, too much detail-micromanagement IMO. But yes, i aggree about the part on skill affecting accuracy not damage, it's been discussed a lot here. If i just had the option of spending action points in VATS moving-healing-inventorying instead of just shooting, i'd be fine. Oh and the ever popular request of called shots in mellee/ unarmed mode. AND THE GROIN SHOT. DONT FORGET THE GROIN SHOT. I disaggree, the minigames were well implemented and quite the funnest part of the game for me. They just got old after the millionth time. I think some variety would help, like having different kinds of locks that work differently, and different kinds of riddles for hacking instead of playing mastermind all the time. I miss the geeky terminal riddles of Fallout 2. Then of course you should always have a character skill based chance of skipping the minigame if you're bored to play it, i don't know why they didn't implement it in Fallout 3. My own contribution to your suggestions: Bring back the critical failure concept please. I want to be able to play a character with Luck = 1 and just CRITICALLY FAIL AT EVERYTHING.

eh, how'd you do that? i had a minigun and a AK-47 ar whatever it's called few minutes after i left megaton. I wouldn't call it hard as much as repetitive. yeah they're so damn many it just doesn't make any sense.

Alternatively, i'd like to see a Tragic: the Garnering minigame. With Elder Scrolls-themed cards.

rented copy, no manual, in my short playthrough i didn't discover i could do that without resting

Yes there is, i wasted a lot of time in the tutorial and ended up getting out of the vault at night, thus losing the awsum "you see the light of day for the first time in your life" blinding effect. Also i remember sometimes i fast travelled back to Megaton from the wasteland and arrived late at night, and i didn't have my own house yet, or money to pay for the room, so i wandered around aimlessly all night waiting for the shops to open so i can sell my loot.

the first thing i thought was "why does he look like john malkowitz with a white wig?"

Apart from that the issue isn't whether playing a game is art or not, it's about designing/inventing a game. It's all in the way one defines art of course, and where you draw the line with craftsmanship. For me, it's the motivation that counts: art = craftsmanship that's deployed for the purpose of expression of ideas, feelings, needs... I'm not so sure if games are/were made with expression in mind, or with the goal of finding a way to kill time enjoyably and/or train some skills. But as far as craftsmanship genious is concerned, if the inventors of chess, backgammon and soccer were known, they'd be up there with DaVinci. Folk games like backgammon, much like folk music, are often looked down upon, just because there's noone to take the credit for them.

wat where

As a 30 year old who played Torment for the first time in 2008, i beg to differ. Torment is great for anyone who enjoys computer DnD, macabre atmosphere, mind boggling quests and well-written walls of text. Age and nostalgia are pretty irrelevant, for me at least. On the other hand, i'm curious how many people here would find Torment's story interesting, if they were completely unfamiliar with the DnD setting. I think it's considered a "niche" game because it's mainly targeted at DnD players. edit: My favorite thing about Torment is that it's set in a fantasy setting, and yet in the whole game there is only 1 magic sword, and you can't use it. I <3 Torment.

damn, i read this discussion and now i'm hooked on Bloodlines again I think not rewarding non-boss kills with XP in Bloodlines also has to do with VtM progression system. There is no levelling and the XP points you get can be attributed directly as skill points. Since you can have at most 5 points per skill, XP points throughout the game have to be scarce. It would be a huge change to the SPECIAL system, but I think it would be interesting to play a Fallout game without levelling, where all progression, perks skills and all, is tied directly to quests you've done and locations you've visited. In most RPGs i've played (well pretty much all of them apart from Bloodlines), the inbalance between XPs from killing and other kind of XPs comes from the fact that enemies are SO DAMN MANY. And sometimes they RESPAWN. Fallout 3 is the extreme example of this: While there is a certain, finite number of quests to do, locks and pockets to pick, terminals to hack, things to fix etc. tied to every location, on the other hand you can just run around in circles in the wastes and kill rats FOREVER. The result is that even if you try to do everything in the game that doesn't require killing, the vast majority of your XPs still comes from killing the hords of random creatures you meet on your way. The classic Fallouts also had this problem, where you had to face countless enemies in random encounters. That was somewhat balanced by the scarcity of ammo and supplies, which made you think twice before leaving town. On a sidenote, scarcity is an important thing for a wasteland setting. I'd rather have XP reward for everything you do that involves using a skill -including fighting, and more scarce ammo and supplies, and just a fixed number of non respawning enemies in and around every location. Different gameplay styles would be rewarded more fairly that way.