Cantousent

Hmmm, damned mods deleted the bot post!

Many thanks, sir. I won't go out of my way to get the caps, but I'll return if I manage to get 51.

Okay, I did a quest for the Crimson Caravan and found a place to turn in the Star bottle caps. My question is, how many of the damned things will I need and is it worth it to gather them? I don't need to be spoiled on whatever I get for doing it, just if it's interesting or whatnot. How many of these caps do I need 'cause I'm tired of returning after I get another few and finding out I don't have enough.

Not to intrude on what seems to be a private conversation, but I'll probably respond to this affirmation where I see it. New Vegas takes something I enjoyed (Fallout 3) and increases that enjoyment. You have given no compelling reason to prefer the DC wasteland other than your personal tastes. I don't know if that's arbitrary or not. Frankly, most things in life are arbitrary. Regardless, no matter how often you affirm it, there is no objective reason to prefer the DC wasteland. I respect that you prefer it. I just don't accept that it's because of some golden standard. The best you could affirm is that the majority of players agree with your assertion, which is probably hard to prove. You enjoy the DC wasteland. Fine. But your tastes are not inherently better in any quantifiable way. That's why I don't argue that the New Vegas wasteland is better. I argue that I like it more.

In Fallout 1 and 2, you could still get knocked out from a lucky shot. That's the thing about Fallouts. Critical hits could be game enders no matter where you were. That's the other thing. You're fighting some epic battle and a called shot crit to the eyes would essentially end it all for either side.

Once again, because I can repeat myself also, I think the setting is compelling. Not just the natural landmarks in the physical setting, but the whole New Vegas gestalt. I don't know about Pop, but I'm not giving Obsids a pass. Obsidian doesn't need one. As for Fallout 1 and 2, Fallout 2 might still be my favorite Fallout. Frankly, I've enjoyed every Fallout so far. I've probably spent more time playing Fallout 2 than the rest, but I'm quite taken by New Vegas.

"the vegas desert o' fo3 is a bleak place with very little personality to be calling its own... and perhaps that is a genuine recreation, but if so then the obsidian shoulda' chosen an alternative location." That might be true for you, but the New Vegas wasteland has much more personality for me. I guess that's the point I didn't make above. It's not that I disagree with your arguments so much as we are fundamentally opposed as to the premise itself. Maybe most folks think the way you do, but that won't change the fact that New Vegas has tons of personality for me. ...And it would definitely have different personality set in, say, Yosemite in the Central Valley or the Grand Canyon in Arizona or Zion National Park in Utah. New Vegas doesn't have some generic desert feel. Once again, I admit that you have a valid point if you say that I've been to each of these locations and so that might color my judgment. The fact is, for whatever reason, I see New Vegas as a place filled with personality. Of course, I enjoyed the atmosphere and personality in Fallout 3 also.

For all our differences of opinion over the years, Gromnir, our tastes in games has always been by and large the same. I'm surprised to find that your New Vegas experiences are so different from my own. Two things in particular come to mind: the nature of the Las Vegas area and the rpg aspect of the game. To take the latter first, I guess it depends on what you mean by role playing. If you simply mean playing the role of your character, I think New Vegas does marginally better, but I don

I actually don't disagree with that. I guess... okay... alright, I look at it this way, the good thing about the bobbleheads is that they provide something neat for the players to collect during the game. The problem with them is that many of them are fairly easy to find early in Fallout 3 and they provide a substantial benefit. I can't remember offhand how much they give to each skill, but 15 springs to mind. Whatever it was, it was a big bump in a skill system that maxes out at one hundred. I seem to recall that they gave a bump to SPECIAL stats also. The snowglobes provide a solution by providing a collectible item that doesn't unbalance the game by yielding these big bumps in skills and stats. The downside is that they really don't give the player any practical incentive to collect them. Now, I think I don't think I was very clear in my earlier post because I identified a problem. The truth is, I haven't gone out of my way to find snowglobes, but I didn't really go out of my way to collect bobbleheads either. The only thing I can say is that I do get a kick out finding snowglobes, but it isn't really a draw for me. I mean, it's kind of a cool little gimmicky thing that I enjoy for what it is. For someone like me, who enjoys the game so greatly already, it doesn't provide much of a draw. That's probably because I'm already hooked before I see my first snowglobe. ...And I've only found two anyhow.

The problem with the change from bobbleheads to snowglobes is not only do the snowglobes net the character something virtually useless, they net the character something that is almost sure to be entirely useless by the time he can cash them in. It's not just caps. It's caps after the midgame crit path.

My current run is my most extensive. I have reached Idolized with Goodsprings, Boomers, and the NCR. I could probably get to be Idolized by the Followers if I just donated more drugs. I'm Liked by quite a few and villified by some. I've gone totally RPG in that I don't take quests I don't think the PC would take and I even ended up giving the chop to some NCR back room drug runner, although it didn't end up costing me rep. This time I took the Explorer perk. I know I know. It's probably not the best use of a perk, but I really rather don't like VATS and I want to scour the area. My PC is probably an explorer first and foremost anyhow. When I do my non armor wearing sneak guy next run, I might try to be friends with Caesar's Legion and see how that works out for me. Harle, there are quite a few joinable NPCs. If you fulfil the preconditions to have them join, then the option will become available in chat. Probably the most obvious one is in Novac. Do you want spoilers for joinable NPCs?

That is so funny Tigr. I have an answer for Deathclaws. Alien Blaster. Seriously, Alpha Male? Broodmother? nope. More like piles of blue glowing goo. They're pretty damned tough beasts, though.

I've used D2D a couple of times, as well as GoG, but I'm really taken by STEAM. I'm not casting doubt on the problems other folks have reported, but I have used it very well. I have uninstalled games and downloaded them again later. I"ve put the games on different computers. I think STEAM is awesome. Once you get over the idea that you don't have a physical disk, it's actually quite convenient in many ways. On the other hand, you still have to download the content, so if you uninstall and reinstall later it's not quite as fast.

This is really where I was going before. It's not that I'm 'dissing' survival. It's just that it doesn't seem to have much of an effect outside of crafting. On the other hand, there is at least... one place? Maybe more? where I could use survival.

Mostly, I'm a pack rat when it comes to things like water and, less and less often, food. Ammo can be a pain in Hardcore mode. I have something like a thousand MFC, and it's starts to weigh a pretty penny. What I'll probably stash now that I know there are safe places outside of the Strip, are nuka colas, water, sasparilla, and ammo. I'll take ten of each with me, I think.

There's no doubt that it can be made to work for you. I just see it as not having as high an effort to benefit ratio. I mean, yeah, eat one of those deathclaw omelets and you're regenerating some serious health. That's true even with a modest Survival, which is what I have. I tell you what, if survival made you need *significantly* less water, I might take it so I didn't have to haul around as much water or fast travel back to a water source as often.

I haven't seen any repair quests that can't be rigged up without parts at a high enough repair skill, so that's what I do. Boomers quest, the food processor, the robot (which uses science or repair), elevators and the like. I think Obsids did a good job of making every skill useful in the game depending on style. The one exception is Survival. If Hardcore were more hardcore in terms of preparing food, it would be more important. As it is, you don't ever need food and the best food I've come accross, something Rose's Wasteland Omelet, requires too much stuff. I don't mind doing some WoW style gathering, but carrying around tons of preware food to make stuff that could potentially make the game marginally easier just doesn't do it for me.

That's awesome, Gorgon. Does that stuff remain safe, because that's where my extra goodies are going to go if so.

Yeah, but I would also rather be able to name them whenI save them also. pain in the butt indeed. hehehe Might be the wine talking. Speaking of which, I screwed up my saves tonight because of the vino. Damn it. More important than naming my saves, whoever, is not having my quests break. In three attempts, I have never really figured out what the hell is going on with Cassidy. Oh, I've figured out the story, just not what the hell I'm doing wrong. I mean, the sheer number of quests is quite ambititious (or arduous if you prefer. Don't want to invoke Volo) but it's still a pain that I can't finish the Sorrows quest line. OF course, it's made less of a pan in that I don't really like Cass all that much. Her most redeeming quality is that she can throw down the whiskey.

Ah, time to start working on the remake, Gorth ya glorious bastard.

That's even funnier. hehehe The Boomers are just completely nuts, though. I mean, the kid finishes his talk his Joyous comment about raining ordinance down on the savages. lol I don't know what to make of the Boomers. They're funny and not really bad at heart, but they're a violent bunch. Oh, and congrats on finally achieving your dream of working on a Fallout game. :Cant's huge congratulatory grin icon:

I get a real kick out of Loyal's line. I noticed it for the first time last night. "Once a Republican, always a Republican." lol Comedy. I, for one, am a Republican but I still thought it was funny. Crazy assed Boomers.

I think Obsidian could very easily pull off a starker, grittier game than New Vegas, although there was plenty of 'grit' mixed in with the 'camp' of New Vegas. The problem would be preparing the consumers for the different direction. Heaven knows that the Fallout universe draws out some pretty strong responses in folks. As far as the dog apocalypse, it sounds ridiculous on its face. *shrug* Make a fun game and players like me will enjoy it no matter how laughable it sounds in concept. Hell, look at M.U.L.E. Yeah, mkreku, I think a harsher game would definitely be a lot of fun, but even Fallout 1 wasn't really that harsh. It was way too populated to be the wasteland survival sim some folks recall it to be. Sure, maybe folks can argue that the series took a turn to the zany with Fallout 2, but it frankly didn't have very far to go to get there. The very idea of 'pip boy' is campy enough to put Fallout 1 strait on the road to Fallout 2. I say, pick over the bones of Van Buren for whatever will work in further expansions and try to get into survival horror in other titles. When I first heard about Aliens, I thought it sounded like a bargain bin game at best. Once I got a few glimpses of it, I was stoked. That was a great concept for a survival horror roleplaying game that could have satisfied folks looking for real grit without the camp. I even considered seeing if I could play a little bit of it, but I never got around to asking. I think, in the back of my mind, I was afraid it would ruin some of the surprises for me. If I'd known it would be my only chance to play it at all, I would have definitely given it a shot. What's the worst the answer could have been? No?

I didn't know that, Spider. I've only played Bloodlines out of those titles, but I thought that particular game was the only one that really lived up to the Troika hype. I also didn't realize that it didn't have combat xp, but I also seem to recall that Bloodlines was combat light.

New Vegas isn't slavishly chained to Van Buren canon. I hope they remain similarly unfettered in the future.