Slowtrain

It's pretty unfortunate that both of their last 2 major projects have had such massive problems. Normally, with two consecutive projects having such problems, one would have no choice but to assume it's the developer's failure, but in this case, since both projects also have Sega involved, it's not so clear cut as to where the problems might lie.

The repair skill affected the starting condition of your created item, but not whether you could craft the weapon or not.

An approach which worked very well in Deus Ex. SO it's hardly a bad thing. Invisible War, which allowed a sex choice in character creation was a massively inferior game, so there's really no correlation that such a choice makes a game better. Nobody is saying it makes the game better, people are arguing that it would make the game more appealing to them. Putting the choice into a crappy game won't make them game any better and the other way around, why should it? Yeah, all I'm saying is that a good game without character choices is still a good game and a bad game with character choices is still a bad game. I'm not trying to define or dictate what should appeal to people. If someone wants to not play Deus Ex because they are female and if they can't play the pc as a female the game doesn't appeal to them, that's fine. But they are missing out on a well made game. From my point of view, quality games being as scarce as they are, it's not something that is worth not experincing a good game over. But to each their own. We can't make the same argument for AP, of course, yet simply because we don't know how good the game is going to be.

You guys are close to convincing me to buy the game. *balances on the edge of the indecision fence*

Sure, if it can be integrated into interactions with the gameworld. That should be the skill's main purpose; the repair weapons/armor part should be secondary. I recognize that it takes time to implement skill interaction with the gameworld though. So if FO:NV is still mostly a combat=based action game, then probably it's a waste of time to do much else but stuff that affects combat. Absolutely. It would be pretty hard to play the game without ever using it, although if you wnated to really chase around after high condition armor and weapons it might be possible. It would be nice if all the repair npcs, with the exception of the upgraded traveling merchants (who usually end up dead anyway), didn't suck so bad at repair.

Sure, why not. I'm not arguing against the CONCEPT of a repair skill, I'm just saying that the limited way Beth has used it since MW (I don't think Daggerfall had a repair skill, weapons just wore out unless you took them to a smith for repair), isn't all that interesting to me. And in FO3 it became annoying.

I don't disagree in that I've never really seen a Repair skill really well utilized in terms of gameplay. I understand its just easier to tie it to something like weapon/armor condition and be done with it. From my point of view, crpgs aren't about repairing equipment. It doesn't interest me. If its a fairly abstract and simplified system such as Oblivion's, where I could just go to an armorer, buy some hammers, carry them in my inventory, and click on them as neccessary to effect repairs, then its not such a big deal. It is still not interesting, but the inconvenience is so minor, that it is not much of an issue. But in Fallout 3 I had to spend time chasing down spare weapons and armor, for no reason other than to repair the ones I was already using. It was time I wasn't interested in spending on something so tangential to the rpg experience. I would have been quite happy with a rifle and armor that never lost condition and getting on with the parts of the game I enjoyed. It was inconvenient and uninteresting and not really avoidable. Again, if some people like repairing stuff, then it won't be a problem for them obviously.

No it doesn't. CRPG's are about quests, talking with people, making choices, seeing neat places, and meeting interesting characters. When skills are used to effect those ends, then its a useful skill. When a skill just exists to govern a self-contained minigame, then its a waste of time. Now, obviously, if someone belives that item repair is an important part of the crpg experience then they are going to want a repair skill. I don't happen to believe that. Obviously.

An approach which worked very well in Deus Ex. SO it's hardly a bad thing. Invisible War, which allowed a sex choice in character creation was a massively inferior game, so there's really no correlation that such a choice makes a game better.

I love the raiders. They always crack me up.

But does it need to? Does that make the game a better CRPG? I suppose with enough time and effort anything can be written into a gameworld deep enough to make it useful, but aren't there better ways to utilize a repair skill than weapon damage and bullet spread?

Yeah, I just don't see how a highly complex repair system for weapons and armor makes a crpg any better, unless a huge focus of the game is on repairing weapons and armor, like some kind of repair sim or something. Barring that it just becomes busywork, stuff the developer puts in to justify the skill but which doesn't actually add anything to the game. I've played too many good crpgs that had no item/armor/weapon repair and I never even noticed the absence of such, so I'm all for just dropping it in NV. WHich won't happen, though.

FO3 AI ftw!

Isn't Protectron supposed to be a civilian model? It would make sense for it not to be build for withstanding multiple plasma hits. Kinda like mall cops:) They show up a lot in security positions, so I would rate them higher than a civilian guard. I'm not saying they should be awesome combat engines, especially since I think part of the humor is that they are so poor, but it would be nice bumping up their hit points and damage output a bit. There's a big jump in threat from a Protrectron to a Robobrain, maybe just close that gap a little bit.

One still managed to kill a BoS Outcast from a squad of three when I played. lol. Awesome. The Outcast must have been previously wounded though. No way a Protrectron kills an outcast 1 on 3.

I would just drop it. Repairing weapons and armor has never been that important to a good crpg. However, the repair skill SHOULD be used in the gameworld, for dialogue checks, quest options, item modifications etc and so forth. But Bethesda has never been about that. their concept of a repair skill has always been nothing more than busywork. At least in Oblivion and Morrowind the busywork wasn't terribly annoying. In FO3, it is.

Wearable overalls that enhance your repair skills is simply dumb. Happily skill points in FO3 were so bloated that I never had to bother with any of that skill enhancng gear since even low int characters were done with important skill point distributions by level 10.

If you remove the ingot hunt and the time spent walking across all those catwalks, the total play time for the Pitt is about 7 minutes. That's pretty lame.

I like the Sentry bots & Mister Gutsy's. With these around patrolling the wasteland, I can believe there's not much 'wildlife' left. I agree. The bots were pretty well done. I would have like to see the Protrectron's made a bit stronger. It doesn't take much more than a good sneeze to put one of those down, which seems kind of silly for something called a Protrectron.

True. We'll see how it plays out. I wouldn't be surprised to see him return as some alien-reanimated being of some sort.

I think it would have been more impressive had he been around for half a season or something. Killing off a character whose had a grand total of 5 minutes screen time is like killing off the red shirt who beams down with Kirk and Spock. It's hard to make it have much of an impact.

Well, I gave three reasons why I think the repair system is one of the highlights of Fallout 3's gameplay design. Care to tell me why you hate it so much? It adds nothing to the game yet is highly annoying?

The guy was dying anyway. Not much of a sacrifice really, since his outcome was going to be the same either way.