Gromnir

I can see fighting on truck-back as functionally identical to to fighting in a room with dynamic hazards. I bet not falling off the truck would be about the same thing as not stepping off the edge of a wall; And you can't take a truck into a man-hole, or subway, so the VtV combat would only occur in wide outdoor spaces (though it would be neat if the NPC hitting a bump (or rolling over an opponent) would shift the truck/or car such that the PC risked falling off if they weren't careful. What I'd like in a game turned FPP explorer is for the game to include climbing as a full feature. (quick non-sequitur) kotor had these stoopid minigames where player would gets attacked when traveling between star systems. player would sudden be manning gun turret and would fight off tie-fighter analogues. lame. keep simple like kotor where fighting in vehicle is little more than a shooter interlude, and is wasted. maybe does like mass effect? probable not what you want, eh? turn into genuine vehicle combat and you need rules to gets a whole lot more robust... not to mention the graphics concerns to make look good. have seen the crpg mounted combat arguments and requests for over a decade now... have also heard developers explain why they choose not to do. developers has been pretty convincing on this issue in past and some o' the terrible attempts by bethesda and bioware doe not convince us otherwise. HA! Good Fun!

is you changing overland map too? fine... end up with fo:t. vehicles moved you faster than foot and cut down on chances o' being attacked. sure didn't seem to add ... and don't get us started on the problems with forcing characters to bake bread. some anachronisms should be left to die, molder and be forgotten. HA! Good Fun!

If there are vast tracks of barren [and flat] wasteland, then an NPC can drive from point A to B while the PC defends the vehicle from attack (similar to the train levels in Blood in a way), or the PC can drive the vehicle and get close enough for the NPC's to make shots at their attackers. Consider a pick-up truck with raiders trying to leap onto the truck bed and overtake you, or steal something that you have, and the player must deal with them and not fall off the truck. ~It'd be tricky. but I think the way (if done at all) is to study Mad Max. It worked pretty well in the PnP games called "After The Bomb" made by Palladium Books. the problem with mad max example is that 90% of game would then be vehicle combat. is same stuff that keeps mounted combat out of most crpgs. getting mounted combat into game would add a considerable level o' complexity and sophistication... but demands o' doing so are high, and pay-off is... again, if is just fast travel and pack mule, then why? if is genuine true vehicle combat, then you is potentially making a whole second combat system... not to mention all the graphic resources needed. am simply not seeing cost v. benefit... specially given afct that we ain't talking 'bout real long term development neither. HA! Good Fun!

if main function o' vehicle were fast travel, would it genuine be worth the trouble... hit exit grid or whatever and now you is in your 1958 edsel? store extra 100t in trunk? if is gonna have vehicles shouldn't there be ore to it... and if not, then what is point... other than flavor? HA! Good Fun!

dunno how to make vehicles genuine useful. add a pilot skill and specific creates opportunities for vehicle use? (ok, we can see how to make useful, am simply not convinced that such efforts is worth efforts) typical we see see vehicles thrown into a crpg as a minor side aspect or as a quick travel and pack mule device... am not sure such stuff is worth effort considering how little is typical added to game. HA! Good Fun!

Political Correctness, a cancer of creativity. Like I said, that hasnt stopped games before. sure it has. you is a troika fan, right? every game developer in world were aware that if you wanted to sell your game in germany, you couldn't have graphic depictions o' child killing. nevertheless, troika forgot or didn't care 'cause they acted all shocked and surprised when they found out that they couldn't release toee with killable children. resulted in some silliness and funky quests. is probable ok to lampoon religion and evangelists and such stuff... is any number o' games that does so. that being said, target catholic church or mormons may be problematic. pentecostals? is a pretty easy target and am not thinking they gots any noteworthy PACs. make funnies directed at religion is worth doing, but the Publisher (not obsidian) is eventually gonna be the folks that gotta deal with whichever organized religion is cheesed off by game content, so am not surprised that those publishers often ere on side o' caution. from publisher pov it simply not make sense to alienate and enrage major religious groups when what you is trying to do is sell games. here is a suggestion that is unlikely to ever see light o' day: use obsidian's fallout game as a platform for abortion debate. in a post apocalyptic setting there is gonna be ample opportunities to depict abortion from multiple povs. am betting that any number o' ambitious game writers would love to work on a fallout abortion clinic... Dr. Bob's Abortion Clinic & _________. ammo shop? brothel? fine meats? whatever. nevertheless, in spite o' possibilities, is it really worth the aggravation... inviting all kinds o' problems. oh, and Gromnir is dead set against adding anymore skills than bethesda used in fo3-- couldn't even balance and get appropriate use out o' those skills they already has and folks wanna resurrect outdoorsman and doctor n' such.... and gamble has been so busted and subject to abuse in every fallout game we ever played that am genuine surprised folks would actual suggest bringing that nightmare back. HA! Good Fun!

is not as if mlb has ignored steroids. even pre-balco there were more than a couple attempts by the commissioner to implement a genuine drug testing policy... but the player's union rejected. baseball player's union is on a whole different level than the other major pro sports. HA! Good Fun!

never saw a point to first aid in fo or fo2. doctor were rare useful 'cause crippling happened infrequent. we got no problem with the med skills being combined, 'cause having 'em separate not really work in fo 1 or 2. as much as fo:t is maligned by the faithful, am recalling that doctor skill became very useful in that game... first aid uses would eventual result in the "bandaged" status and you would have to doctor up anyways. typical we boosted stitch's dr skill through the roof, but ignored first aid in favor o' small guns or other such. keeps the combined fo3 medical skill and return usefulness by eliminating the stimpack solution for handling crippled limbs, blindness or concussion. HA! Good Fun!

battlestar galactica: embittered sex-bots destroy humanity... again. old yeller: gun wielding minor slays dog hero. HA! Good Fun!

If there is Lake Mead, I guess it should be there if it is not destroyed by the vicious hands of Obsidian designers atom bombs. am hoping they destroy... least partial. no lake mead and the remains o' the partial destroyed dam? got some nifty potential. one thing to keep in mind is that if we wanna keep true to original fallouts, then the joinable npcs gotta stay crap. most memorable jnpc from fo were a dog? mad props to the interplay/black isle writers who handled dogmeat's dialogues. am actual not so concerned 'bout the critical path story... am more concerned with individual characters and the tangential side-quests stories. keeps world big and open AND has a compelling critical path? sadly, we expect that obsidian, likes every other recent developer, will try to unravel the gordian knot. just sever the damn thing and be done with it. am curious to see how obsidian addresses antagonistic demands regarding illusion o' freedom and a tight and compelling critical path storyline. don't expect both. HA! Good Fun!

suggestions: 1) retool special. it were broken in fo3 and it were just as broken in fo 1 and fo2. players can max all but 2 skills by end of game? wacky unbalanced feats? how many fallout games has we seen and special ain't improved much. d&d has even gone through multiple revisions since late 90s. 2) abandon the notion that limited ammo result in balanced weapons. is amazing how tenacious the developers hold onto this one. how did you use the lincoln repeater? ever really ran out of ammo or did yous simply use ol'painless for the ghouls and pathetic stuff and then whip out the lincoln for the giant rad scorpions and deathclaws. 3) vats? less than 50% in small arms vats were more than enough to waste virtual enemy... seems wrong to Gromnir. 4) more Danny Kaye, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald... and if you can get some early Etta James. 5) hoover dam is such a kewl (if over-used) las vegas location just for starters HA! Good Fun!

This is probably the best post we're going to get with regard to explaining the two sides of this particular argument in one succinct line. (FWIW, I'm in mkreku's camp. Gameplay in Fallout had its charms, but said charms got old pretty fast, often leaving frustration in their wake.) the hardest thing 'bout discussing fallout at codex and nma: pointing out gameplay shortcomings. sure, you can gets some leeway if you criticize plot or character development, but suggest that fallout and special were a woefully unbalanced system and you is in for a long battle. point out that there were obvious more efficacious skills, abilities, weapons, perks and feats and you gets attacked like rangers at omaha beach. Gromnir thinks special is a nifty system, but is flawed... also agree with fergie that the fallout tb combat could be soul numbing. ... while toee were a wretched game on many levels, we thinks it actually did an admirable job in streamlining tb combat... even large numbers o' combatants didn't result in the kinda tedium that were common in fallout. HA! Good Fun!

10s of thousands? was told by a md friend o' ours that the swine flu is being referred to as an infodemic by the vast majority o' doctors. 'course anybody who has been to a md for a tough to diagnose condition is aware that medicine is more art and less science than we would all like to believe. HA! Good Fun!

I disagree. It started out as a GURPS experiment that grew into the Fallout experience/setting. But I believe the Fallout setting grew bigger than that archaic game system. Of course, there's no way of proving either for or against in this case. Funny though that I played Fallout despite its combat/gameplay system, while you seem to have played it because of its combat/gameplay system. our recollection is that josh sawyer were pretty dismissive of the gurps & fallout connection. sure, he ain't a conclusive kinda authority, but he did suggest that those folks who wished to take credit from cain and give to GURPS were being ridiculous. seems that mkreku would have sawyer support on this issue. mark the calender? HA! Good Fun!

need chemicals? probably not... but shouldn't the player's health be paramount? use ibuprofen to bring down swelling. use anti-biotic to stave off infections. use steroids to help recovery from serious injury. sure, makes an effort to distinguish healing medications/chemicals from performance enhancers is understandable, but as has been pointed out already, sometimes the line 'tween the two is... fuzzy. HA! Good Fun!

Troika tried, and failed. am thinking you give too much credit to troika. they failed 'cause they were crappy at managing their projects and not 'cause o' romantic ideals. HA! Good Fun!

Oh, please, grow up or something. Sheesh. Its a game. The purpose of a company is to make a product that makes them money and Bethesda had the rights to do anything they want with Fallout if that makes them money. Crying about it on the Internet isn't going to change a damn thing. Also, hoping is a waste of time. Crap in one hand, hope in the other, and see which one gets full first. is absolutely nothing wrong with fans trying to convince developers to make games that satisfy said fan... regardless o' the economic realities. is all kinda stuff that show up in games that not help the bottom line. after working the 5th straight 80 hour week, you better find some way to make game design more than a projected profit margin. that being said, vis is complete correct that ignoring business realities is all kinds o' foolish. hope that a developer ignores economically prudent in favor o' the True Believer's manifesto is, at best, silly. have never understood the fans that seems to think that they gots proprietary rights to a game 'cause they played many times and spends hours of free time on a game message board. even so, asking not hurt. 'course, Gromnir has seen vis ask for some pretty wacky stuff. Gromnir has asked for wacky stuff. *shrug* as have noted before, our curiosity is peeked 'cause am not sure why the true believers would choose to use the "true fallout" argument to create change... still ain't got an answer to that one. not seem to be a compelling argument save for when used to convince other true believers. HA! Good Fun!

"I am confident that they will create something akin to KOTOR2's upgrade system" eh? ok, we agree with you. kotor and kotor2 had same basic combat and same basic character development... added some prestige classes and feats, right? story telling and dialogues was similar from a mechanics perspective... am s'posing that thematically kotor2 were arguably darker, but as it were still lucas/star wars is tough to say how much o' the pap consistency o' the story were obsidian choice or publisher choice. personally we were not impressed with the influence system and have criticized it numerous times... but it were a new feature and if you liked then we s'pose it were a good thing. obsidian fixed loads o' little things... like interface issues and some o' the persistent bugs... though they did create a few additional problems with their tweekage. regardless, there were loads o' little things wrong with kotor, so fixing many such little things were a big task. item creation were a big change in kotor2... though it were kinda busted and unbalanced. am not sure if item creation in kotor2 deserves to be in the win column. other than the last 1/8th of game, we thought that kotor2 were noticeable superior to kotor... better story telling, characters, and being a sequel kotor2 the game simply had more... stuff. last 1/8th o' game... well, that is better left in past, right? *shrug* is tough to figure out True Believers. we witnessed first-hand how troika gots a free pass from many of the faithful. perhaps obsidian is now the successor to the birthright of cain. would be nice for obsidian. HA! Good Fun!

@ ziggy "No, your point that " "we"(who?) want The Return Of Ye Olde Fallouts and it's not happening because fallout3 sold millions of copies" is pointless for the same reason, i just reversed your logic." don't put something in quotes if Gromnir didn't actually say. is a kinda lying. also, am not sure what you think the peter hines quote means... more than we suspect peter hines meant. the infinite monkey theorem is always good for a laugh. wanna a neato quote from chrisA wherein he observes that gameplay is more important than story/writing? "a game's story should always be secondary to gameplay". can also dig up a quote where the lead developer for iwd2 admitted that he had virtual 0 time to come up with the story for that game. am not sure you know what you think you know. @ gizmo sure they is gonna tinker and fiddle with stuff. listen to josh sawyer talk 'bout how illegitimate vats combat were makes us think that he would like to do tweaking... but how much? 'nuff so that it no longer resembles fo3? doubt it. HA! Good Fun!

am recalling that uncle fergie once admitted that fallout's tb combat could be soul-numbing. don't hold your breath on the tb combat. hey, if troika had done a better job with toee it mighta created a tb crpg renaissance... but as toee were a big-fat failure... regardless, am still not seeing what is motivation for obsidian to substantial deviate from what bethesda did. yeah, as many o' the obsidian guys worked on van buren and probably feels like they got cheated out of an opportunity to finish, they may wanna try and incorporate some o' their vb ideas into their new fo game. that being said, they is making a follow-up game to bethesda's extremely successful fo offering. am still not seeing what is obsidan motivation to make wholesale changes... which is what the True Believers seems to want. HA! Good Fun!

similar to vols point, steroids and the steroid/hgh combos is a great way to speed up the healing process. given the length o' the baseball season, virtual everybody plays hurt, so the steroid stuff has a use other than hitting ball farther. is our understanding that for years the most popular baseball drug were amphetamines... need something to function on last couple o' days o' a road trip. friend o' ours who played pro ball in the early 90s mentioned that montreal games were some o' the worst for visiting greenie usage. have never personal been to montreal, but am understanding that their pr0n industry is quite active, and young players would rarely get a full night rest before a game in montreal. Gromnir were a bench warmer in college... played football. probably coulda' been a starter in the pac ten, but we were more concerned 'bout grades as we knew we had no shot at the pros. that being said, if somebody offered us a drug that woulda' made us a NFL caliber player but would shorten our life expectancy by 15 years, we woulda' taken in a heartbeat. now, as we is on the doorstep o' 40, am not so sure how we would decide... but at age 19-20... no-brainer-- take the 'roids. lose some hair, get back acne and die of cancer in 30 years? sure, why not? HA! Good Fun!

am not recalling which sportswriter pointed out that to get caught by the mlb's current drug testing policy you gotta be a complete idiot. haven't actually watched a baseball game since the strike year... which is a real shame since the white sox finally won the series a few years ago. HA! Good Fun!

Ha!... I was wrong... (I guess my mind is too finely tuned*) * no sweat... and am secure enough to admit that we enjoyed douglas adams' books... in spite o' fact that admitting appreciation of his works carries similar stigma as babylon 5 geekdom and monty python quotes. HA! Good Fun!

Brios is who you're thinking, not Briareus, which is what the link puts on top. i have no clue who the guy who the link goes to is. he were a Developer for black isle... you not see title o' thread and follow back to origin? perhaps now you is seeing the point o' the post? a black isle developer speaks to the questionable commercial success o' fallout. bad 'cess to twinks, zigs and gorillas. oh, and chrisA has gotten plenty o' millage from ps:t... but that were kinda the high water mark for him. sorry, but unlike aristes, we were pretty damned unimpressed with the motb joinable npcs. each character were a cliche-- with a hook. 'stead o' the textbook cleric/paladin that questions faith... we gets a winged chick who literal only sees in black n' white. make the character a male-human paladin and who gives dove a second thought, eh? gann... a jolly-rogue womanizer... with mommy issues? makes an elf and how quick you thinks we hear "cliche"? worst of all, we never made no connection with the titular character... can't even recall his name. is not that motb were horrible, but am not thinking it were particularly great work for chrisA. at some point somebody should pull chrisA aside and tell him that characters should be profound, rather than trying to make 'em say lots o' profound stuff. maybe has chrisA read children's books like "the phantom tollbooth" or gaiman's "coraline". heck, gaiman's adult characters not go 'round vomiting forth coffee shop grade existential philosophy... 'cept for maybe in American Gods. kids books is great for beating the excessive introspection habit out o' young authors, 'cause young readers simply don't get such stuff. make chrisA write his characters as if they is speaking to a 10-year old. ravel weren't profound 'cause o' what she said, but 'cause o' how she were used to advance story. kreia were an excellent character as well, though she got a little preachy... but in a star wars jedi that kinda goes with the territory to some degree. don't get us wrong, chrisA has produced some fantastic work... his targos stuff in iwd2 were high point o' the game. even so, he is miss almost as often as he is hit. HA! Good Fun!

"i don't see why Fallout: New Vegas has to be a mindless boom-fest, in order to be successful." what is it with you people and logic? never asked for such or suggested such, so your point is... pointless. regardless, if you wanna follow obsidian career, we is game. kotor2 followed same basic model as did kotor... just added more stuff. used same basic rules and character development choices and you still gots same kinda epic save-the-galaxy scenario. all npcs stay on ebon hawk and you chat up between missions. the influence bit was added to kotor 2, but again, it were hardly a complete change in npc interactions were it. folks who were expecting kotor2 to be similar to kotor were not disappointed. nwn2 made some substantial changes to nwn2, but it were still recognizable epic fantasy, and unlike kotor, the sp aspect of nwn took some considerable criticism. the fallout faction as aristes labeled you folks, is hardly similar in numbers to the folks who complained 'bout the nwn sp aspect. even so, with nwn2 you got nwn... but with a functional party. used many o' the existing prestige classes but didn't make lots of wholesale changes. many of the changes obsidian made to nwn2 were stuff that the modding community had already done to nwn themselves... kinda likes how ad&d was little more than a codification o' the most popular house rules for d&d backs in 1978. is understating the value of obsidian input as they did not simply utilize fan-made mods in nwn2, but nwn2 were recognizable as nwn. is actual amusing to recollect iwd2. iwd were a black isle game, but in spite of super-speed development cycle, black isle tries to bootstrap iwd2 from ad&d to d&d 3e. am actually thinking they did a pretty good job with that, but is probable one o' the more dramatic changes we seen by the obsidian/black isle folks for a sequel or expansion project. oh, and HoW... is perhaps one o' the more laughably misguided crpg expansions we seen in a decade. you wanna reference the small number o' talented fo folks who is current at obsidian? well how 'bout the HoW folks. HoW were an expansion o' iwd and 'cause it were so short and so underwhelming, the black isle folks created totl, a free supplement to HoW... and a pretty darn good one. even so, is not as if obsidian/black isle has a irreproachable record with expansions and sequels... throw Torn into mix (ain't gonna blame that on interplay, is you?) as an example o' the work o' the talented folks now at obsidian? *shrug* as for literacy o' obsidian... am s'posing you is making a dig at bethesda--- suggest that fo3 turned out the way it did 'cause their writers were... illiterate? yes, very amusing. still not a particular convincing argument though, is it? HA! Good Fun!