cronicler

GFWL actually offers the most stable and minimalist networking platform for games out there. It's just that you need to get ok on every single data change (patch hotfix whatever) and it takes about 2 weeks for 2 megs or 2 gigs of patch to be given green light at least. Not to mention the whole crap feels ro unnecessary for single player games and all the other usual whines and spirits.

I know you are going to hate me but... Aren't these perks... Well silly? I mean 9 in all stats + bobble head... Reincarnating dogmeat... I see only "26 AGL 7 Nerves of Steel: Action Points are regenerated much faster." that actually changes something in the game play. the others just feel... random fillers...

Oh joy! Here comes another trainer for the qt event bonanza on horizon

Oh my, oh, oh, bwahahahahuhahauhahauhuhuhhahaa.... Oh dear... I have this very very bad suspicion that we are going to get some very vicious easter eggs based on things we battle about in this thread... And a quick question if I may Mr Sawyer, What is your opinion on mini-games generally? Not the forced you need to play pipes or mastermind to hack this thing ones but the more, side-game ones like Pazaak from Kotor, Tragic The Gathering from original FO and the Dragon Dice from Witcher? Is there any chance of seeing such games.... Umm please disregard that last bit. No whining or begging for game related facts, before you decide you are ready to tell, from me.

Actually that drinking from toilet pipes and other water access points is a viable survival technique if you get trapped by an earthquake or something but after a nuclear war? Erm don't know... How the hell did those pipes have water pressure and 200 years etc were a bit iffy points. That gimmick would have been fine for game that takes place after an earthquake but not really fitting in after the bombs

The ritual still happens but (I'm not sure if this part is actually related by script) I had a huge crashing noise after it and had half the map on alarm

Crashgirl: Or you can just leave it out, like the devs left out the need for going to the bathroom behind a tree. What? haven't you played Leisure Suit Larry: Magna **** Laude? Oh yes we were talking about FO3 here

Oh and I have to share this treasure with you. In one mission you need to drag a dead body to a sacrificial spot to complete a ritual with blood. Guess what happens if you bring a dead rat to the sacrificial altar instead?

Erm, Ak 47s are really an exception to the general weapon needs to be honest. There are tons of examples where an 47 was subjected to real idiotic conditions like having a tank run over it or similar extreme things and the gun still managed to fire somehow. Sure it sucks beyond 250 meters and the ammo weighs a ton but it is the ultimate form in soldier proof at the moment.

Actually the game is balanced around 1 to 6 of each item per mission (6 being for things like broadheads and 1 or 2 for rare things like noisemakers, bombs etc). The little fact that I am playing a dragon-blooded makes this list so weird. I also have a little pile worth of 20k gold sitting somewhere in my wallet in the form of gold knifes, copper spoons, silver forks, cornucopia of gems and a few full sized portraits.

I think giving the player the ability to "destroy" the useless weapons to gather some resources and then letting him to use those minimally weighing resources to fix his stuff would have been the best option. Sure if you want to make it complex, create different resources like electronic spare parts, mechanichal spare parts and so on and make different items require different parts to be repaired (amount based on your repair skill) Also there is a little thing called condition and then there is another thing called cleanness. A weapon (more precisely the barrel) does not really become useless in 20 shots unless you are using a monster caliber with extra heavy load. I could accept rifles needing some maintenance (with 1 or 2 spare parts) and cleaning every 100 bullets or so and a real heavy maintenance every 1000 bullets requiring like 10 or 20 parts. ATM the weapons just become useless after... 50 shots and also the ineffectiveness of them aggravates this problem. (Coupled with the weird way skills work and all...)

Well lets just count Garret's arsenal Shall we? (I'm basing this mostly on the 3rd game with adding some old items from first 2) Blackjack Dagger Shortsword (T2) Short bow -30 Broadside Arrows -25 Water Arrows -20 Moss Arrows -15 Fire Arrows -5 Gas Arrows -5 Noisemaker Arrows -5 Rope Arrows (T2) Grenades: -20 Flash Bombs -5 Gas Bombs -5 Oil -5 Holy Water -10 Health Potions He is not really light on the arms department is he? BTW playing a miser right now, only cashing in the coins and not buying or using stuff unless I absolutely have to. Also no killing or blackjacking (any humanoids) either. Just did the clock tower mission and until now I have expended 2 or 3 water arrows, 8 fire arrows (to hunt undead in the ship) and a total of 2x4 elemental arrows shot into the pagan cocoon.

Erm... Wait.... Second... Umm... Bluescreen.... No no no! please god no! I did not mean putting flashlights on plasma weapons or additional barrels on laser weapons! I just wanted some tinkering with normal ballistic weapons. How can you tinker with a plasma rifle? 100 science and repair and a lot of manuals maybe? I tried to mean that if we are going to be stuck with this part of the game (and so far B. seems to be insistent on it) then I would really like some enhancements in this area too, not a gunz! moar gunz! aboVa all gunz! rant... Tigranes: I would have love to see a game that uses Thief's stealth mechanics but even in that game with all the good Reactive AI you could have really weird things happen like a guy looking for you in 3rd floor and this fact alerting other guys at the other end of the house. Its stealth and AI mechanisims worked but were also prone to breakdowns a lot. They also required generally a lot of effort to produce a small game play area. I guess I am comparing every FPS game's voice acting to those in Thief 3 even this day because of this. Fallout is a sandbox game so I guess this rules out Thief's stealth mechanics outright. Sure I would love to see some "missions" that you can take as a thief to rob places that use these kinds of mechanics but for the general game, these mechanics don't offer stable enough behaviour to employ with random locations.

Actually Purkake is right up to a point; we don't really need all the guns from JA2 1.13 (500+ Weapons containing nearly every caliber in use today last time I checked) but having somewhat detailed weapons and related stuff would be nice. It does not have to be too detailed but I would have liked to be able to add scopes, flashlights, laser pointers and other basic stuff. Maybe ability to modify my weapons a bit with Beta or C mags. Alternate ammo types like tracer, hollow point or Ap (don't think we could find really high tech ammo like AET or Glaser rounds in a PA setting. Nor would match ammo...) Purk: I'm really with you on this sentiment. however with the shift to FPS and very unusable stealth game play (Compared to thief or deus ex stealth that is, not your average modern shooter stealth) the Combat part is more and more the rage. Heck I haven't really seen anything from the 3rd game or its expansions that didn't really try to sell itself by its combat. Sure I do hope that Obsidian can break these chains but if they can't (totally) break these modern and popular game play bits then I sure hope they make these parts a bit better. Aristes will you stop editing in so much stuff in please? Just add in a new post! :wink:

Realistic calibers and damages are just some minor wants of my own tbh. I tried to implement them as a mod but the game is hard-coded in such a way that you can't make weapons use alternate ammos (like birdshot, buckshot, Slugs for shotguns) or ammos with different effects. Also the crafting sysem is harcoded in such a way that you can't really craft weapons that are flagged as "sold by vendor" and other weird restrictions. and so on. Anyway the detailed guns etc are for the gun nuts' or people from bear's pit's tastes. I just want to see the possibility to mod them into the game become real by tweaking the improvements Obsidian might make in crafting and weapon types.

Ay Ay Ayy! Look GDM, despite looking like the guys who uphold the great standards of ages past to stop the tide of change, We did and we do bash Fallout 2 too. That game was just a collection of: Consolidated, Corrected and Refined Game engine from fallout one, injected with 1 years worth of creative products from the BIS. The whole game was basically a giant expansion/stuff/quest pack. The parts of it did not fit. It leaked like a sleeve. Like fallout 3 its saving grace was the amount of things it contained. We don't deny these points. we just argue / want to influence the new game to be better than the 1998 stuff in areas like stories, sandbox and all.

*Insert Evil Laughter in the lines of "Har Har Har Har!" * Actually those bullet calibers were taken directly from another pre-historic title called Jagged Alliance 2 I haven't even started going gun nutty over you yet. Sure I would love to have a crafting system that allows you to craft your own generic rifle with selected calibers and attachments (Picanny rails and basic modern AR frames would be rare I think, so its back to guns made from lead water pipes and fitted with "somethings" as shoulder stocks. ) but that would be streching things to demand from devs :=). If they can just put in the Dr and alternate ammos into the hard-coded game files I can mod the rest in Edit: Guys please don't start the realistic vs consistent in itself debate again. It has some basic rules like no transistors only vacuum tubes for normal and optical for cutting edge technology. Radiation acts as a poison and can cause mutations. there are anti poison, i mean anti radiation drugs that can make you well. F.E.V. makes things stronger and smarter (if it works ) Among these rules it usually stays consistent if not really realistic. We should be arguing to get a coherent whole instead of fragmented pieces left scattered on the playing field

Ah those manly mans man games. Ok. Sorry to bother. /wave

Err.. Could you explain that a bit, And please remember that the linked discussion if from 3 years ago when all we could do was modding the 2nd game and going over the released design documents for the games at the Vault.

Hey! Don't you dare throwing mud on my preciousss Thief 3. I have spent so many long minutes hugging walls to hide in tight places... Umm or are you talking about Mirror's Edge and Assasin's Creed? or? *The user has encountered a logic error* What go you mean space simulations are gone? I have those beautiful games called Homeworld 2 , Hegemony , Nexus: Jupiter Incident and Space Colony sitting in front of me.

Aristes: It is the details that bug us. As it stands now a radscorpion needs 2+ clips of assault riffle ammo emptied on it to be killed. Why not put in different calibers like real life then? 5.56 light weight, man stopping but just tickles the heavy armored foes. 7.62; heavy as hell but can harm man size or armored no problem. .50 caliber or .303 or .308 or Casull... Very heavy very slow rate of fire very hard to control after fist shot. And kills anything. Also the game did not have "ANY" restrictions on the player and that grew boring after a while. Sure running back to your stash for bullets every other minute would be silly but carrying 5000+ bullets, 2000+ energy cells, 1000+ rockets gets out of control too. I know people hate real life examples but your average assistant heavy weapon: missile launcher crew carries about 5 or 7 RPG reloads at most. Sure this is a game but come on, can you imagine how much space 1000 rockets would take up? 20 rockets maybe as this is a game but 1000? and no I didn't really use heavy weapons and since I hunted around a lot they sort of got piled up I guess. I can accept that we shouldn't go as restrictive as RL but going too far in the other direction also distorts the gaming experience. Also on another note: Damage and HPs: I am aware that as an FPS game, the player is going to soak a lot of damage in the game and/but call me weird I like my characters not to be gods. My Immortality should come from my armors instead of my huge pool of HP, Those raiders with puny guns should have trouble against my combat armor or these mutants should uselessly bathe me in lead as My PA shrugs them off and I kill them. I guess it is too far fetched to wish for a low hp / high damage reduction system but here is my wish BTW Check this old thread at NMA, especially Rosh's explanations on fallout time line's electronics and optics. I had always envisioned Pipboy as a somewhat big laptopish thing that you carried on your back and you had the **** Tracy like watch as the manual input port coupled with an extra screen... Edit: Stupid spell checker d*i*c*k Tracy, Detective Tracy dammit.

Actually it is a bit different than no more +skill clothing (And yes I am opposed to clothing that gives bonus to stats. Penalty? Sure but stat bonuses other that Powered1 Armors extra carry capacity and strength enhancements.) But clothes that modify the "effective" skill levels or social reactions are a bit more acceptable. Just not with a heavy handed approach that FO3 took. I can accept there are clothing types that are more appropriate to certain social situations by blending in like wearing a prospector / desert rat clothing when in a bar filled with such types or not wearing such clothes when you are trying to give the impression that you are an important or wealthy a.hole. On the other hand wearing dark colors and duct tapeing all your equipment down does make you more stealthy compared to doing it with regular gear. On the other hand a guy with a sharp mind can understand how these improvements are effective and can be done after facing them once. Leave your backpack and spare equipment in a secure location, tie down your loose gear and go bad guy hunting. I am ok with minor but creative bonuses that stack: By talking to and listening to people you find out that Lady X likes man with feodoras. You gather up some nice **** Tracy clothing, complete with a feodora and handkerchief and meet the said Lady in a social gathering. Since you are like a dream that has come from her fantasies, Her first reactions should be more positive. The rest still depends on your silver tongue Also on this topic, I really want to see some drawbacks associated with items and gear. Sure ductaping your gear makes you more stealthy but it also makes you look ridiculous. A ghilie suit makes you nearly impossible to spot at X meters visually depending on your outdoorsman skill. There are real life maniacs (Usually ccalled special operation branch snipers ) who are so adept at camouflage that you literally need to step on them or their hideout to spot them. On the other hand moving silently in a deployed G. suit is very hard. the thing just catches on every available outcropping. Ever seen a women in a bodyglove like dress try to move quickly? :D The game is already based on a small scale for the skill checks. we don't really need to lower down the required skills as much as 3rd game. Edit: Sorry Scope but i prefer to do my sniping myself and have Buzz as backup . Have you managed to get over the Drassen Counter attack at day 1 or 2 without cheesing out btw?

Currently re-playing Thief 3. I think I am going to miss the old Thief a lot if the rumors that T4 will take place in modern times is true. Sure the 3rd's game play area was too small in some places and the city levels had too many restrictions of free movement after getting the gloves and I was really needing a damn rope here and there but overall I really like the 3rd. Maybe a bit more sandbox options (and for "insert the deity of choice's name here" sake, someone fix the picking up/putting down actions and tie the climb function to a different key than jump. Not to mention refine the physics that can go ape now and then) while keeping the reactive AI and detailed level designs would. Its kind of sad but funny really... As the forerunners in good game play, the Valve is saying that Reactive AI's is the future to make believable and good NPCs, While we had 3 games that refined Reactive AI to a real point in the past and were forgotten... Edit: The pessimist in me is fearing Thief Raider: Modern Age tbh....

Sigh. Look B. was more concerned about getting the whole thing bigger, more, and all that. Thats probably the reason a lot of parts in the game is so jarring and unpolished. Since when did pointing out things that rusted/not painted/damaged become anathema? Anyway since you guys are intent on shoveling the suggestions under interweb battles, Ill continue with a few more; Detailed character equipment system: Actually this bit is a sore point since the first fallout game. None of the fallout games have used a detailed inventory / equipment slot system up to this date. What does your average outdoors man / infantryman wear? Body and Legs: -Clothing. Preferably suited to the environment you are in. -Armor. These range from external strap on leg-guards and padded outer clothing to Dragon Skin Class 5 body armors. -Carry Harness. These are basically extra pockets (read: quickslots) that you wear over your normal dress. These range from Fisherman's wests to Combat harnesses. (Or strap on bags to holsters in case of legs) Head: -Hats:Protects you from the glare of the sun (Cowboy hats anyone?) or protects your brain from shrapnel (Helmets and so on) -Headgear: LLVS to NVG's, Flashlights, Random small stuff (like a pack of cigarettes or a small booklet) that is attached to your helmet -Glasses: "Survival Hobbyist Rant:" One of the things I hate about the Wilderness aspect in games is forgetting these. On a sunny day it can get really hard on the eyes when you are in the middle of a very shinny desert. You need something to protect your eyes if you are going to trek in such places. And no there are other things than glasses too. you can substitute a light see through cloth that you can wear as a blindfold to lessen the glare. Or you could wear the state of the art "pipboy external glass unit" which not only protects your eyes but also shows you the time, records your actions and even shows you the database entries for the stuff you see. The commander's choice for a tight cohorent AAR. Froım Roboco; tools for the future! Foot: Correct foot gear is the key to the success. You don't want to wear a steel toed and heeled work boots when you are trying to sneak, do you? These could range from soft half boots that allow you to move more silently to comfortable walking boots that allow you to walk a bit faster. Also lets not forget running shoes that allow you to sprint a bit faster and Long Plastic Boots that allow you to cross toxic/harmful terrain (Beware of the fumes thou ) Backpacks: Modern Trekking backpacks with internal supports and straps that fit snugly onto your whole upper body allows people to carry nearly 25% more load in relative comfort. Interestingly the basic design for such modern bags can be traced back to Native Americans, Nomads of the north Europe and central Asia. It would be nice if we can finally see how our guys/gals carry their stuff in this game at last. Such detailed gear system also opens up new possibilities: -More gear means more noise. Drop your backpack, store your excess gear and go bad guy hunting maybe? -Make combat more tactical by restricting players usable equipment to those he carries in his pockets? -Tie in a detailed skill system with crafting system into the gear system? "Oh look while trying to find if there was anything usable in the remains of that old burnt out computer I some parts of "American History Volume MMMCXXI" It talks about native Indian crafts. Maybe I can make something like the backpacks described there instead of these 2 bed sheet carry-bags I use to haul my loot around..." And 1 MAJOR gripe about the equipment. I can understand Glasses giving me a perception of 4 is my perception is even lower (As mine is in RL) but the whole +1 to this stat or +5 to that skill clothing were a bit too much. Sure I can understand a chick giving you cold shoulder if you are wearing a dusty travel outfit or hitting on you after you take a bath and don your fresh and expensive clothes but do we really need to shout these with "This clothing item gives +5 to speech with officials and townspeople. It also makes you a target with higher priority for pickpockets and back alley thugs." The +Skill Clothing brings us back to the Survival Pack:(The post about it was 2 pages ago) The game needs some barriers to direct the players way. No one is disputing that fact. However you can do this by putting a complex combination lock that requires some specific tools like a stethoscope and long thin needles when the player has only bobby pins as lockpicks and encourage the player to find better equipment or you can just take the easy way and give the usual error message of "You need X skill for this action"... Giving the player a basic set of tools to start with then allow him to upgrade his tools by manufacturing them himself with high enough repair and relevant skill (Skill level determines if you can create new designs for the job. Repair level determines if you craft a basic item to access the said action types or some better design that makes your job easier like a more durable tool or whatever) or by just buying/stealing/finding better tools. This way the player can still access some those locked paths without having the "Oh look I have 100% in all skills and stats" problem in the 3rd game. Tigranes: I am not entirely sure but I think I remember someone complaining that VATS was pretty much hard coded and changing things about it was a b... was hard. There were a couple of mods that tried to tone down and speed up the Vats but I don't think any of them managed to speed it up beyond a certain speed....

Well you can just ignore the standing buildings / people still waiting at megaton (for vault to open and start using geck). You can just say that raiders are descendants of the rioters and the LL is just 2nd to 3rd generation and there are many pre-war things still left around. Sure I would have liked a lot more details but this is a basic substitute. The whole game feels "the bombs have just fallen". There isn't enough aging or erosion of things.