Slowtrain

Gotta love the Bethie forums.

All my gaming life I've loved open, free form games. ANd not just crpgs. FLight sims with dynamic campaigns, space sims like the X universe, tactical combat games like XCOM and Jag 2. I generally prefer games that let me do what I want to do over games with tightly wound stories. However, Bethesda's post-Daggerfall attempts at freeform worlds had made me less and less a fan of those sorts of games, especially when they are done by Bethesda. Really, its quite remarkable that Bethesda has managed to take my favorite type of game and make me not really like it anymore. Far Cry 2, which wasn't even that great a game, was in some ways a better free form game than anything Beth has done since Daggerfall.

However, it doesn't explain why so many people bought the game. If it hadn't sold well, then, I wouldn't even bother to try to figure it out. People bought the game because they wanted a crpg. After the bought the game they discovered the leveling rates were completely b0rked. I don't know if you remember, but almost immediately after Oblivion came out, even before people had started making mods, people were complaining about the leveling rate and everybody started making metagamed characters that put their most used/automatic skills in minor slots and filled up the major slots with skills they either didn't use or whose usage could be controlled. Just to slow down the leveling. Once large mods like miods like OOO started appearing and other smaller mods that made changes only to the skill systems/leveling rates, pc players could staop doing this, but console players still had no choice. Oblivion is a worst-case scenario and FO3 wasn't AS bad, but Bethesda apppears to believe in super fast leveling even though there's a large number of players who don't like it.

Ninjas can walk on water. Can a Spartan do that?

I don't think the leveling rate in either game contributed to its success or failure. As show by the number of mods that change the leveling rate for both games (and for Oblivion the number of mods that attempt to complete rework the entire horribly broken skill.levelign system), a lot of people don't like the levelign rates thta Bethesda gives their games. Its illogical from a design pov: huge big world with lots of combat that EMPHASIZES exploration combined with a super high leveling rate. The games go by way too fast. Oblivion especially. But Bethesda appears to BELIEVE it is what people want. I just think they are terrified of boring customers with short attention spans

lol @ people defending any aspect of Oblivion. I'm just glad FO3 wasn't THAT messed up. The leveling rate is totally ridiculous though. Its like Beth is afraid everyone who might buy their game has ADD and if they are not rewarded with constant string level ups, they won't buy it.

Warriors on The History Channel has an episode on SPartan's tomorrow night at 10 gmt-5. Should be cool

I really don't understand how a company can seriously endorse an non-refundable activation limit in a world where OS's get reinstalled fairly frequently, simply due to malware, hardware failures, configuration issues, and general once a year maintenance. meh.

For some bizarre reason I have a hankering to play IWD2. I didn't even like it very much. :/

Spartan won?

I think the number one question is: How interesting will the main story be?

otoh, FO3 has an assload of problems and there's no reason to simply wave the pom-poms either. FO3 has fewer problems than Oblivion, true, which is always a cause for hope for Bethie's future.

Josh, Are you guys going to be allowed by Bethesda to possibly change things like adding traits, changing tag skill implementaion, changing number of perk granting levels, or is that stuff not open for you guys to mess around with? It would be nice to know if there's even any point in talking about it and/or getting our hopes up for that sort of change.

Interesting perks would be nice as well. Maybe more like the original 1 every three levels, but make them more interesting and useful than most of the ones Beth used. Again, a smaller number of choices, but make each choice more significant. Which Bethesda seems incapable of doing. Also, I would prefer the original take on tag skills: have a tag skill receive double the points spent vs a flat +15 point bonus. The double points implementaion works better to define your character over the long term plus it makes the choice of tag skills more significant to how your character is going to play. Again, a more consequential and important choice that what Beth implemented.

We had some discussions in our most recent Fallout 3 thread, which has fallen back a few pages by now.

Sure, but you can still drink out of it to restore health while increasing your radcount. Its a "tactical" decision. lol.

I would only add that I do think some of the quests had potential, but such potential is never developed. They never go anywhere or lead to anything that has ramifications for your character. The quests just kinda...end. And leave me with a real sense of how utterly pointless that just was. Bethesda definitely believes in quantity over quality: they throw out a bunch of things, but instead of developing those things to the point where they have significance, Bethie instead just throws out a bunch more things, and then more and then still more. I guess their thinking is that if they throw out enough ****, people won't realize how utterly devoid of meaning and conseqence it all is.

I don't care about gameworld size. Unless you are going to make it "size" on the scale of Daggerfall, it doesn't matter to me. What does matter is a terrible story, pancake flat characters, an unresponsive world, insane reptitve gameplay, and a total lack of consequences. Why not make the world much smaller and eliminate all the totally aimless exploration of a bunch of places that all look the same and contain the same enemies and instead concentrate on fixing all the above problems instead?

Spartan vs Ninja is on right now! Somebody will have to tell me who wins, but I bet its the ninja because they can blind people with flash bombs and hurl throwing stars.

Three words: Story, story, and story. ANd one more word: characters. Actually, I'd kinda disagree here. The main problem with Fallout 3 isn't the story, but rather how bloody unreactive the whole game world is. Nothing you do has any effect around you, and the world never ever pushes back. The problem is that Fallout 3 is deader than a wasteland, and personally I think that has to be the starting point for New Vegas if Obsidian wants to take the game anywhere. I'm not going to disagree with you because I think that is a big problem as well. I just think that if the game had a good story, the deadness of Fallout 3 wouldn't have been so noticeable. A good story that really holds your attention can really compensate for a lot of problems in a game. Mostly because you are too busy paying attention to the story that is unfolding to notice the problems.

Three words: Story, story, and story. ANd one more word: characters. dumping or overhauling VATS, creating a better crafting system (no more guns that whistle like a train engine when they fire, plz) , and adding real factions to gameplay are all good as well. But story and characters are where Fallout 3 failed so badly; its also the easiest thing to upgrade; and it is what Obsidian appears to do best. QUestion is: would Bethesda allow it?

Congrats. You just did a more interesting SPECIAL check in one post than Bethesda managed in an entire game.

Well, that's pretty much what I expect it to be. It will likely be somewhat of an expansion pack to Fallout 3, just released as a standalone title, and not requiring the original game. I wonder if it will be priced as an xpack. [intelligence] Probably not

It went right over Bethie's heads. They completely failed to get the concept. The only thing they did right on a consistent basis was [strength] Tell me or I'll smash your face. WHich is fine as far as it goes, but strength leading to persuasion through intimidation is the easiest and least interesting of all possible SPECIAL dialogue checks.

Honestly, either one woud help. If Obsidian's Fallout is going to have story and characters of the same incredibly limited depth as Beth's fallout, then they need to improve the combat drastically, because the writing sure isn't going to carry the game. Otoh, if Obsidian manages to scale up the story and characters to the point where they become interesting, then the combat can probably stay as it is, since it would now be so much less important. I would personally love it if Obsidian reduced the amount of combat in the game and upped the amount of character interaction.