Slowtrain

XCOM: APoc is one of the most criminally underrated games ever. True it deviates a lot from the gameplay of the first 2, which earns it a lot of scorn from xcomphiles, but it is a FANTASTIC strategic and tactical game. And amazingly enough it works well in either rt mode or tb mode.

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 totally see your point and agree that could be a problem. The key as I see it is to make part of the story about dealing with the consequences of the choices. In other words, the story doesn't end with the choices, rather it ends when the consequences have been dealt with, as best they can be. But the game still responds dynamically throughout the second "phase"

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 don't think it is neccessary to write enormous branching critical paths to just give consequences some teeth.

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.

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.

That's true. Too much change brings a lot of uncertainty. However, I do think removing or minimizing the slomo would be welcomed by many and would probabkly make the game more playable.

I think it would be neat if instead of making the "final" or "climactic" choice at the last minute of a game, the "final" choice is made at the mid-point of the game, and the remainder of the game is dealing with the consequences of the choices that have been made. Rather than just getting an end movie showing what happened because of what you chose. Again to me, personally, its those consequences that are so dang important. Its the consequences that I, as a player, want to see and deal with. Be a part of.

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.

Fewer choices; more consequences. If a crpg has 5000 choices but none of them matter, then it is a complete waste of time. If a crpg has 3 (three!) choices and they all have a major consequences, then it is probably a crpg worth playing. The one choice I dislike more than any though is the 11th hour choice, the one you make in the very last moments of the game to decide which end movie plays for you. Much more awesome to make the final outcome of you crpg experience a cumulative result of the 3 or 4 major choices that you made along the way. I used to be much bigger fan of the non-linear, free form, side quests up the wazoo, crpg experience. But somewhere along the line it just stopped doing much for me.

Well, I'm not militantly opposed to a lot of sidequests and less importance on the critical path. I've just begun to feel over the years that sidequests rarely ever leave me feeling satisfied with a gaming experience, mostrly because they just feel too inconsequential and pointless. IF really good sidequests could be done, that somehow tied into the gameworld very strongly, I would be OK with that as well. When I play a crpg, I just really like to feel that the actions of my player character are having a real impact on the gameworld. Sidquests, I 've found over the years, tend to be pretty disposable. "Go save my farm from raiders" "why?" "I'll give you my custom .223 pistol!" meh.

I think disconnecting the % chance to hit from skill level would make a big difference. I just don't think that works all that smoothly in a first person action game.

Honestly, I'd love to see VATS tossed out altogether and the FPS combat brought up to par with Fear 1 and STALKER: SOC. But yeah, that's not going to happen, is it.

I'm just talking generally. You can plant a mile long string of mines down a corridor and a whole bunch of raiders will chase you right down the corridor. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM No more raiders. Its funny as hell, but it's pretty weak AI.

I really think the stupidity of the human AI in running over your landmines one after another like a moron, is a pretty huge design flaw. If you plant them in an obvious place, they should see them and either avoid them or attempt to disarm them. Using mines against the AI is really an exploit at this point.

I think that part of the problem is that skill levels don't play enough of a role in determining combat proficiency. When I first played FO3 I always raised my weapon skills as fast as possible, but it didn't take long before I relized that there wasn't a huge difference between a 90 small guns and a 30 small guns. In my curent game, I am level 7 and my highest weapon skill is big guns at 55% (melee at 50, energy at 20, small guns at 12), and I am in no hurry to raise any of them. My character is etremely effective with the magnum even with a 12 skill. I think that's some not so good game design. If a game is going to have skills, that sheould have a significant impact on the game, otherwise leave them out.

Yeah, I would guess that you are probably right, and, just as you say, that WOULD be enough to make it worthwhile to play. But, still, until we hear otherwise, I am going on both the assumption and that hope that Obsidian might be able to do some tinkering under the hood, and maybe add some neat features like a flashlight or a slightly more interesting VATS or a slightly more interesting weapon mod system or whatever. We shall see. It WOULD be nice to get some more official news about the scope of the game.

You really enjoy sitting through all those slomo animations, don't you? I just don't have the patience for it, and given that VATS has no significant tactical use that makes it interesting, those slomos really make it an unpleasant experience for me. ergo, I don't use it. Except very rarely when I get annoyed at the AI and just want it to hold still so I can shoot it.

Yes, or at least it would alter the balance as I understand it. hmmm. That's too bad. Still, there would be other ways of dealing with the same issue in a roundabout way. For example If you made VATS combat more interesting by providing more options, perhaps it would feel more engaging and so the slomo wouldn't be quite as tedious. Or you could make VATS combat more lethal, so it uses fewer shots and resolves quicker, thus minimzing the number of slomo animations that need to be watched. Or thirdly, you could spruce up the RT combat a bit so VATS doesn't get used so much.

ANother small thing I'd like to see would be an actual flashlight with a directed beam rather than a diffuse glow that only lights the ground about a meter ahead. I've seen flashlights in plenty of games whether its Half Life, Far Cry, Stalker (headlamp), and they work much better for actually navigating around in the dark. You could also make the light glow larger and brighter but then it might kill some of the ambience of creeping around in the dark. FLashlights keep the ambience better than a general glow, but are less annoying. edit: also. nightvison scopes and/or goggles would be pretty cool also. edit: FLIR also There's a lot of cool ways to make exploring in darkness fun!

but if you have fast travel, than running speed is real only important in combat. And if you sacrificed points of your agi than you have them to spend somewhere else: int, end, whatever. The point would be to differentiate player characters. There's no reason to think faster movement would overpower the agi stat. All the developers have to do is make sure each stat has important positive effects so that sacrificing one stat and builiding another, does not make your character gimped, but rather makes it different. The GIfted trait in FO1 and 2 was supremely overpowered so most people took it. That's just bad game design. Overpowered stats would only exist because of bad design.

Do you mean that making the shoot/hit/death animations play out in RT would create problems? Or are you referring to something else? (That I must have read past)

If there are changes to VATS, I would like to se those changes increase the tactical options within VATS to make it more interesting to use. For example, adding the option to make a carefully aimed shot at the cost of significantly more APS. ALso adding the ability to access inventory within VATS at the cost of APS. Simply adding a groin shot option doesn't really do much to make VATS more interesting. I would also like to see the slo-mo eliminated. It siomply takes way too much time to play those long drawn out animations on every shot. MAybe just resrve the slo mo for super nasty critical hits or something.

I thought the Witcher's way of doing it, not seeing the consequences of your actions until much later, was kind of cool. On the down side though, I didn't think many of the consequences were all that significant. But I really love the idea that the player character is forced to make a choice but won't know the consequences of that choice until it is far far far too late to reload. It is a cool way of forcing the player to live with their actions. Especially if those consequences are significant.