Slowtrain

I think a small number of highly differentiated, cleary defined skills is preferable to a large number of fuzzy skills that overlap in somewhat arbitrary ways. The point of an rpg is hacking a computer/repairing an electrical bypass to achieve a particular goal, not simply to use a particular skill. Repair is already a vital skill for firearms-orientated characters though, while science isn't necessarily so, and could be actually linked to crafting (I believe it worked like that in Van Buren) and a host of other things. So I'd prefer if they kept both skills, not because we have AWESUM MOAR SKILLZ!11!!ONE but because they could expanded into two rather different and equally important gameplay elements that do not overlap. Yep, as long as the skills are each useful in their own right, then it's fine. I would argue though that the whole repairing armor/weapons stuff is tedious busywork and adds nothing to the game. Using the repair skill in the gameworld is much more interesting, though it could easily be combined with science. And how granular do you get? DO you separate mechanical repair from electronic repair, for instance? Is repairing something that already exists and once worked different from building something new from scratch?

Actually, I think the wealthy part is enough. Just like anything else, wealth buys a lot of tolerance.

I think a small number of highly differentiated, cleary defined skills is preferable to a large number of fuzzy skills that overlap in somewhat arbitrary ways. The point of an rpg is hacking a computer/repairing an electrical bypass to achieve a particular goal, not simply to use a particular skill.

And I think it's both (science for software, repair for hardware). DO EET Or combine the skills into one. Which I personally don't think is a bad idea. I would say that if skills are so similar that the boundary between them is pretty iffy, then they should just be one skill. Granularity of skills is fine, as long as it has a very clear point.

Yep, I do agree that the consistency is the most important aspect by far. Also balance, of course. A lot of confusion can be prevented of course by having info easily available in the UI. So even though I don't intuitively consider jellied gasoline (or whatever FO3 flamer fuel is) as an energy weapon type ammo (other than in the reductive sense I mentioned previously), as long as something in the UI plainly says: "Hey, dummy, this is an energy weapon!) then in the end that is fine.

*shrug* Since every weapon is about transferring energy in some form, by reduction every weapon is an energy weapon. Ideally, I think Obs shoud just have one skill called accuracy and leave it at that. Any time something is thrown or shot, the acccuracy skill is checked. In a game like Fallout there's really no reason for anything more granular than that. There's lot of other non-combat skills that would be fun and interesting to include. However, if the devs insist on keeping some sort of weapon skill categorization than it's best to do it in a logical way. Josh has already said that if a weapon uses energy cells of soem srt than its an energy weapon. The flamer does no such thing. So it fails developer logic immediately. As icing on the cake, it also fails real-world logic.

I worked one job where in our departmental lunches people would sit around and talk endlessly an in exacting detail about all the different televion programs that were on. Most of these were shows that I had never heard of though apparently everybody else had. They would dissect all the actors and characters and reality competitions to obsessively insane degrees, yet nobody ever considered it weird. But if I had tried the same things with crpgs, it wouldn't have been too long before I was eating alone. Every day. For the rest of my time there. But would there have been any real difference between the 2 discussions? Not really.

I'd also point out relative to one of the articles points that one of the first thing film makers did was make porn movies. And they're astill at it today and doing quite well financially SOme obsessions appear to transcend particular hobbies and interests. Ergo: a fascination with naughty bits isn't a gaming issue.

I'm not really sold on putting the flamer in the energy weapons category. It's a hard fit in anything but maybe explsoives woud be better since it is more of a specialist demolition-type weapon, similar to explosves and many AoE weapons. Also, speaking of explosions, sometimes setting things on fire causes them to explode, so it's still a weapon that causes explosions, even if indirectly. I think it could also work in repair as sort of a handbuilt gadgety-type device, that's half-weapon, half arcane contraption. edit: strictly speaking about avoiding confusion in weapon category, the idea of a flamer as an energy weapon is both confusing and non-intuitive to me.

Relative to point 5 ( I think): It's often the case that when people are into particular hobbies or interests that fall even slightly outside the mainstream they often get labeled in deragotory terms. I've seen it happen with model rocketry, ham-radio enthusiasts, collectors of all sorts, non-commericial/non-realistic artists. I could go on and on. In the US, one doesn't have to do much to get labelled as "weird" In the US anyway there are only a few things that it's safe to be "really into" and still be cool. Sports, guns, American Hollywood movies, Television, cheap beer, anything that makes money. Those interests, even taken to pretty extreme levels, will generally not marginalize you. Of course, there's a point for anything where extremism crosses the line into marginalization, regardless of how culturally embraced a particular interest is. SO yeah, if you're into gaming people look at you funny. But they also look at you funny if you spend your weekends shooting off plastic rockets in the park. So, since you're never going to win, why bother fighting.

I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, based on what Josh has said, that some of the more powerful weapons may not be availiable as early or as easily in NV as they were in Fallout 3. In fo3 it was pretty easy to pick up as mingun or gatling laser as son as you stepped out the vault door at level 2. Which was neccessary of course for people who had characters with Big Guns or Energy Weapons. With a rebalance of skills, it shouldn't be neccessary to fling some high-end piece of hardware at the game just to make the skill system work.

Problem is, a lot of them don't like any change. Period. Also DaC and the Codex. The pre-emininent skill-based combat games such as XCOm and JAgged 2, only had 1 marksmanship skill that covered EVERY SINGLE weapon in those games. And it still didn't mean that EVERY character was as useful with EVERY weapon. There were very definite reasons for who carried what. If it was good enough for those games, where complex firearms combat was much more important to the game design, it's good enough for Fallout.

seeing as Mr. Sawyer seems to have fairly good instincts about his mechanical tweaks. That he does. I disagree with the details of his decisions sometimes, but overall I think his approach to game design mechanics and balance is great. So far pretty much every change that has come out, I find to be positive.

Wait, are the posters at Bethsoft upset about the merging of Big Guns into other skills? If so, they're idiots. To be blunt. It's an effective solution. I would have gone farther and merged energy weapons into other skills (you only need one skill to cover anything that points and shoots non AoE, but I can see Josh's rationale behind keeping EW seperate.

That's definitely a worthwhile thought. And probably a good way to go. Also, there's the SS2 way of simply requring certain stat/skill numbers before you can use a particular weapon, though the start/skills themselves have no effect on how the weapon performs. Otoh though, Deus Ex managed to make the accuracy/damage/weapon skill thing work pretty well in a first person rpg format, and I found it be a very rewardign experience (minus a few problems).

I agree, and this has been a problem with Bethesda crpgs since MW. It is so easy to raise and max your skills and skills seem to have a less than profound impact on the game (MW was the exception here; MW skills levels had an impact. Said impact was much reduced in Oblivion) that, for me, it really makes the whole charcter development aspect of their crpgs much less interesting. Like others here, I think FO3's strengths were the exploration/atmosphere of the game, not the crpg aspects. The over-abundancr of skill points in FO3 was a bit nuts. Bethesda can get some slack for that maybe since this has been their first crpg to use XP/skill points vs their traditonal learn-by-doing approach. Perhaps they simply over-estimated on the skill points. Also agree. The impact of combat skills seemed to be very downplayed in FO3. Once a character had 50% there was never much reason to push a combat skill higher. I remember the first time I really pushed my small guns skill with a character and was quite disappointed how little effect there seemed to be from going from 50-100%. Was there some effect? Sure. But it could have been a lot more impressive. I also felt that characters with a very low combat skill weren't bad enough at it. I had plenty of small guns charcters who were still reasonbly effective at very low levels, when, more interesting would have been to have them lucky not to shoot themselves in the foot. Critical failures would have been fun, perhaps. Given how easy it was to raise skills in FO3, there is really no reason that they should not have had considerably more impact on the gameplay. Yep, I think that would be a nice addition as well. The same effect can also be achieved to some degree, in a more simple fashion, simply by severely limiting the amount of skill points in the game and increasing the impact of skills. Ideally, a player wouldn't have enough skill points to do everything well and, since skills had impact, woudl have to make hard choices about where to put those precious skill points. But your approach is also good.

I'm actually wondering if Beth will keep some of these changes in Fallout 4 or if they will overhaul the skill system once again. Too soon to think about that probably, but whatever. My guess would be that it entirely depends on how Obs changes are recieved and how the game sells. Bethesda, to their credit, always listens to what people say about their games, gameplay-wise, and tends to make changes in whatever direction they think will make people happy (and sell more games of couse). If the changes are considered successful, I think Beth won't hesitate to move Fallout 4 in the same direction Obsidian takes NV.

I made a 1 int character and disallowed taking any perks that directly gave skill points. I took the perk that doubled skill points from books so findign and reading books was theh only way of adding skill points beyond the most basic 1 int score level allotment. I STILL had my character almost fully developed by around level 12. Part of that of course is becuase I feklt some skills were totally useless, like speech and barter, and didn't develop them at all. lol. I agree. I think all the info on the changes fo NV is pretty positive and it's more of an overhaul than I expected. I like the idea of pointing explosive weapons in the Explosives skill while adding the remaining big guns into the firearms skill. I'm a little concerned about energy weapons remaing a seperate skill, but I think Josh is too aware of things to let the skill get uber. I would like to see the orbital nukerblaster move to the science skill, which makes far and away the most sense and provides some extra reason for having science as a high skill. but I don't expect that to happen. I'm actually surprised that Beth has been OK with so many fairly significant changes to the gameplay. I give them credit for giving Obs the freedom to make so many changes.

I think the Bobble heads and their stat-raising effects are fine. The biggest problem with the stat/skill system in FO3 was the huge number of skill points available within the game. I personally don't think there should be enough skill points in a game to allow a player to come close to maxing out more than a handful of skills. It's one of he reasons I would prefer a return to the tag skill methodology of FO1/2. Make the Tags provide a bigger bonus for the skills you want to base your character around and then greatly reduce the skill points in the game. In that scenario the choices you make for tag skills have a more more pronounced impact. Which I like.

Yeah, I thnk you guys are right. In fact, I played FO3 with a mod that made major reductions to XP and increased the XP required for additonal levels for the exact reason that less XP made the game more fun (and more challenging). So I stand corrected on the more xp thing. Still I think making a lot of the gameplay aids and devices optional (ie toggable) would be a good idea. Just forget about the more xp thing though.

And that's what I think is cool - people who want it can have it, people who don't don't. Cool stuff. Yup. The option factor is great. Option toggles are the way to go, imo. Don't like the HUD? Turn it off. Don't like the compass? Turn it off. Don't like location indicators on the compass? Turn them off. Don't like Fast Travel? Turn it off. Even better would be if less aids = more xp. Or something. ANyway, I think HC mode is a good idea, though I never would have thought to ask for it. The sleep/food part is the least important to me though of all the HC tweaks.

Eating/sleeping are in STALKER: Call of Pripyat and honestly it never feels annoying. It's just something you have to strategically plan for by carrying a small amount of food and returning to base occasionally. CoP also uses ammo weight, so inventory management is more involved overall. I very much enjoyed the STALKER games and didn't find the eating mechanics terribly burdensome either. However, even being the cranky old skool grognard that I am, I understand why people dislike being forced to eat/drink and even sleep in a game. While it may add some small level of additional planning and decision-making, it mostly just comes off as busy-work. Something that is just done becasue it has to be done, without really adding much to the gameplay. If a game was aiming to be a super-realistic exploration sim and proper plannign was a big part of the gameplay, then I could see eating/drinking being more intergral to the gameplay. Remember the old crpg days when you not only had to eat and drink, but your characters had to pack bedrolls and proper footwear and set guards each night! Ahh, those days were something.

Not for me, I definately wont be playing in "Hardcore" mode. That crap is just tediously annoying to me. Totally understandable. I was surprised by the fact that it was being discussed in any sort of positive way.

I thought having to deal with food/drink/sleep etc was too old skool for today's gamers. Did a paradigm shift happen when I wasn't looking?

Hopefully Tag skills will be returned to the Fallout1/2 implementation. SO they are actually a significant long-term game-affecting choice. Yeah, I know Bethesda hates stuff like that, but maybe Obs doesn't.