Gromnir

any word on a 1.04 patch? we finally found the expansion at a more reasonable price, but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... and a whole laundry list o' other minor bugs. we looked at bio boards briefly and saw no mention of 1.04 for more than a couple weeks. HA! Good Fun!

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World. same rationale worked for big guns. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons. so, early lasers... or is there some other kinda weapon you have in mind? tasers? again, since you raised the spectre o' early game absence o' energy weapons, am curious as to how you "fixed." personally, am fine with "weak" energy weapons being available from start of game, but am curious how josh implemented. HA! Good Fun!

am in san joaquin valley o' CA... is 1:00pm and the temp is a balmy 62 F (am crappy at conversions... 16.5 C?) is late May, and am looking at forecast for this week: rain and no high temp above 70 F (20C?) surely these is the End of Days. HA! Good Fun!

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons." am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon? HA! Good Fun!

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. our problems with fo3 skills were legion... but will limit to but a couple key points for the nonce. fo3 skills point availability and awards were relative straightforward and simple, which is a Good thing. unfortunately, it were rather easy for a player to become proficient in every skill due to availability o' exp and the seeming minimal proficiency threshold for most combat related skills. didn't need 100 in a combat skill to be extreme proficient... so problem of excessive points were actual worse than some suggest. 1) am hopeful that obsidian fixed combat mechanics so that there is a genuine reason for adding points into a combat skill beyond some minimal threshold value. we never figured out the exact numbers, but it frequent seemed as if there were hardly any genuine advantage to raising a combat skill beyond 45 or 50%... which is stoopid. am hopeful that obsidian fixed so that adding skill points to a combat skill beyond minimum thresholds is actually meaningful to gameplay. 2) am hopeful that 100 points won't get you 100% typically, we is opposed to unnecessary complications of da rulez. nevertheless, we thinks that there shoulds be a mechanic for promoting skill choice diversity as well as specialization. unlike previous fo games, fo3's cap at 100 makes sense, but am not thinking you needs have 100 skill points equal 100% in a skill. if it actual takes 50 points to get from 90 to 100 in a skill, then perhaps a player will consider the advantages o' diversification over specialization, no? developers and testers may decide to play with the numbers a bit, but increasing skill point costs at 50, 75, 85, and 90 might be worthy o' consideration... at the very least, such a progression will chew up loads o' exp. 'course, in returning to our first point, there must needs be a genuine reward to makes such costs worthy o' consideration. HA! Good Fun!

merging big and small don't bother us in the least. however, am more concerned that energy is separate. given how previous fo games approached ranged weapons, energy weapons were a skill that became useful later in game but largely pointless at the beginning. am not a fan of having a Super-Skill that is worthless for 10-20 hours o' gameplay. josh is unlikely to make energy weapons as overpowered as previous developers has been willing to do, but one wonders how the face o' fo will change if there is useful 'mounts o' energy weapons and ammo early in game. every third bandit gots a laser rifle? HA! Good Fun!

from our pov, the strength o' fo3 were not its gameplay or story elements but rather the degree to which bethesda managed to capture the feel o' a Fallout washington dc. the quirky, retro-sci-fi freak show that is fallout were realized in a rather inspired choice o' Americana steeped locales... the best character in fo3 were the setting itself. HA! Good Fun!

And that's what I think is cool - people who want it can have it, people who don't don't. Cool stuff. Even better would be if less aids = more xp. Or something. that causes problems. more xp results in your character being tougher... which makes game easier. more gold/jink/money more exp more 1007 all such stuff means that developers must find additional ways to stay ahead o' the curve. am understanding that for most folks playing a crpg, some kinda Reward is expected, but such rewards is typical at odds with the seeming goal o' a feature intended to increase the difficulty o' a game. developers necessarily needs adopt seemingly ridiculous scaling options and other less palatable solutions. ... actually, awarding less xp would seem to be a more effective solution, but am betting that most players would balk at such an obvious means o' increasing game difficulty. HA! Good Fun!

i'll actually go ahead and agree with this. i enjoyed CoP quite a lot (though Pripyat itself was a huge disappointment, imo) and never found eating/sleeping/taking cover/etc to be tedious. it helped animate even further for me the sense of survival in The Zone. no, i think he was just asking for a less juvenile form of discourse (speaking of, do you larp as an ogre/troll in real life too? like...at work and socially?) *shrugs* sometimes the line dividing irony and hypocrisy is thin. Gromnir can turn off the ogre/troll in rl... am doubting you can say the same. in any event, we appreciate josh's post-before-you-think style as it frequent results in him divulging perhaps more than he might otherwise do 'pon reflection, but his post count clearly refutes twink's theory. the number o' Gromnir posts josh has responded to in the past is not easily counted, and sadly obsidian's most loquacious developer is perhaps more likely to respond to respond to inane posts and obvious trolls than genuine queries. dunno, maybe is a cathartic thing. regardless, it would seem that the restless corpse o' lord british, forever choking 'pon poisoned bread, will once again rise from its grave to plague gamers in yet another franchise. oh joy. HA! Good Fun!

Please critique those game play elements in your own words instead of modifying mine. 'cause by doing so the critique is changed in some meaningful way? *shrug* regardless, if food and ammo runs may be avoided by means o' the hardcore toggle, then we ain't seeing a problem. "strategic" concerns that only impact the number o' tedious trips we needs make back to "base" (or wherever we has ammo/food stashed) doesn't boost fun-factor for Gromnir... though we does understand that some folks enjoy such stuff. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

Eating/sleeping are in STALKER: Call of Pripyat and honestly it never feels annoying (to me). It's just something you have to strategically plan for by carrying a small amount of food and returning to base occasionally (which doesn't genuinely make the game more enjoyable, but does become tedious after the first dozen or so food-runs). CoP also uses ammo weight, so inventory management is more involved overall, (but fo3 insta-travel effectively nerfs any strategic factors related to weighted inventory, thus making it a rather pointless theoretical addition to fo:nv). fixed HA! Good Fun!

atomic power by uncle tupelo the song were original released in the early 50's by the louvin brothers... and it were not meant to be funny. gets us in the mood for more fallout. HA! Good Fun!

no. it's not really about "funny" for me. oh, well of course that settles everything. but then again, no. if you ain't one o' the folks that thought fo were serious biz with very little funny, then our comments were not directed at you and your reply is pointless. *shrug* can debate all day long regarding whether fo were successful funny, but the notion that fo (the original) were not intended to be funny is hardly worthy of argument. is a considerable 'mount o' intended funny/camp in fo, but is seeming that the serious hardcore fo fan is very likely to have missed the humor. regardless, am pleased to hear that uncle fergie ain't swallowing the revisionist history o' the Faithful in this regard: there will be ha-ha in fo:nv. HA! Good Fun!

hmm. Do you really consider this box art discussion a lather? Seems more like a musing. Or a pondering. no doubt you could describe any fo issue discussed in this place as a "musing" or "pondering." wouldn't be appropriate, but you could do so. HA! Good Fun!

is a crock. scientists and doctors is terrible at debunking. hire a magician... or maybe a few prison inmates. wanna find out how the guy is sneaking in food and water? gets folks who is good at sleight-o-hand and sneaking to do the debunking. HA! Good Fun!

little bits o' funny is fine. Ernest Goes To Fallout? Not so much. As for the box art? *shrug* Why not talk about it? It's there; we can see it; the developers don't guive us much of substance to discuss. I don't think anybody here is expecting or desiring our discussion to cause Beth to redo the box art. It's just fodder for the mill, as it were. have been down this road before. clearly some o' the hardcore fans has inexplicably missed the funny already in their beloved fallout... zoom, right over your heads. even so, we agrees that some flavors/types o' funny works better in fallout than does others. as for the box art? keep talking 'bout it. we likes funny, so watching folks work themselves into a lather over box art and titles is something we would encourage. omg, dragon age is the worst title ever... way to go bioware. did you see the fo:nv box art? how completely generic. box art. *chuckle* HA! Good Fun! ps alternative suggested title: Fallout: The Caine Mutiny.

see, was that really so hard? now it really does almost feels like we is at nma, dac or codex. 'course the obsidian language filter still musses up the replication to some degree. HA! Good Fun!

maybe a 50' tall buxom woman would satisfy the purists... but then you would be adding humor, and we all know that fo ain't 'posed to be funny. HA! Good Fun! ps is we really debating box-art? Box-art? why not title as well?

am believing that numbers you present is the starting level for the given server. HA! Good Fun!

fixed HA! Good Fun!

... is a bit like hearing that a person has managed to fill a 1-gallon container with their own collected toenail clippings, or bellybutton lint. 'pon learning o' the exploits o' yet another edmund hillary, we experience a fleeting, morbid curiosity that impels us to ask why a person would bother to dedicate themselves to such a dubious goal, but then we happily dismiss the peculiar hobbyist's distraction du jour as representative o' the human condition's disturbingly common carnival side-show attraction quality. HA! Good Fun!

a sinatra gang and fergie suggesting that fo:nv will have more humor? clearly obsidian doesn't "get" fo. HA! Good Fun!

the first matrix had a kewl factor due as much to the aesthetic as the material. we loathe keanu reeves... and the story as a whole had that kinda ridiculous anime quality that keeps us from being able to appreciate Japanese sci-fi. nevertheless, matrix, at the time, looked amazing... and Larry Fishburn and Joe Pantloliano were excellent... as were Elrond. "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson." HA! Good Fun!

the last two decades has kinda been weak for sci-fi... at least as far as Gromnir is concerned. from late 60s (Planet of the Apes, 2001... to name a few) through the 70s (Clockwork Orange, Star Wars, Alien, Mad Max... and numerous others) and into the early 80s (Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Terminator & Aliens) there were some absolute fantastic sci-fi films. sadly, we would have a hard time come up with even 5 sci-films we thought of as genuine fantastic since 1985... though it is nice that we finally got a decent star trek film. proviso: if we throw comic book superhero flicks into the mix as sci-fi, then we can add a few recent movies into the pot. Dark Knight and Iron Man were excellent. HA! Good Fun!