Cantousent

Monte, I don't think it will ever happen in a major title. Players like themselves some kill xp. It just makes balancing experience a bit harder with some folks leveling too quickly for their tastes and others feeling underpowered by midgame.

One thing about experience is that I'd like to see all non-quest experience out of the game. I'd like to see all non quest experience out of all straight RPGs. The player should get experience based on the outcome of the quest, not the method. There might be five ways of completing the quest, but two methods yield the best results. In those cases, I can see offering added exp for the optimal results. That way, the player is still reward for investing in, say, speech and/or science, but the character doesn't get an added reward for actually using the skills. Instead, using the skills yields a better result and thus more experience.

So, I literally stumbled onto these 'aliens' because I thought their spaceship looking thing was a weird looking building. I polish them off and get, among other things, the alien blaster. now, I took energy weapons, and so I assumed my skill would be just fine for the blaster, but I saw that it took special ammo that I haven't seen in stores. I thought that I'd save it for a rainy day weapon since, even though I had 165 rounds, each round is precious. Fast forward a couple game weeks. I'm trying to skulk around the outside of the Sloan Quarry doing a quest when the Deathclaw broodmother comes after me. For all the easy chatter, I think Deathclaws are pretty tough hombres, so I run to Boone, who's holding the ammo for me, and then to ED-E, who's holding the actual blaster, equip it and turn expecting to die because the bitch is running so fast that she's right on top of me. I got off a few shots and lo and behold, a glowing blue puddle. The Deathbabies come up and one shot each. Holy crap, that blaster is complete badness. I've never found it previously.

Not really until I saw LC's post, but then I did think about it. However, I guess you could say that I must have been thinking about it in the back of my head without knowing it to have such specific thoughts to post. :Cant's wolfish grin icon: I don't know. Call me a hopeless romantic, but my favorite romance in any game is between the nameless one and the ghost in PS:T.

I get such a kick out of Boone. I was running around and we were literally swarmed by those blue stinging insects. As he died he said, "Heh. I always knew you'd get me killed." lol I love it. Veronica is a sweeite, I guess, but apparently my male characater is not her type. Plus she yacks constantly. Charming, but grating sometimes. ...And Cass is definitely damaged goods. So's Boone, for that matter, although I've never thought of romancing him. Never really considered romancing any of the npcs. There doesn't seem to be the option and I'm happy that the romances, if they're in the game, aren't intrusive.

I've always thought that STALKER was overrated. Not grossly overrated, but overrated nonetheless. I enjoyed playing it, but New Vegas is so much better on so many levels. I wouldn't mind a game crafted to be low level, especially in a fantasy setting where it's not a matter of the most powerful specific weapon so much as a whole host of powerful abilites and weapons spread over a party.

Might I sugget you don't talk to any npcs and don't loot any bodies or containers? lol I kid! I kid! Maybe, after the current run, I'll create something new for me. A complete thief. No, not an assassin. I mean I will try to sneak everywhere and see how many times I can avoid killing anything. I'll try to kill as many folks I do have to kill by picking their pockets and slipping in some explosives. I don't know, not the way I usually play, but it might be interesting.

I forgot about that. There were three ol' broads who tried to beat me down melee style if I remember correctly. But all sorts of things seem to be weirdly different. The first game I started I didn't finish but I actually ended up doing quests for both the Powder Gangers and NCR until I sided with the NCR and stormed the prison. In the next two games, I was attacked on sight by the Powder Gangers and I never got a quest from the NCR to storm the prison. I figure the first time my defending Ringo (or whatever that traders name is) didn't earn me as bad of a rep for some reason maybe. Dunno.

Oh, you're most certainly hard core, LC. Don't take it as an insult. In fact, I think it's great that you're finding new ways to enjoy the game and, after all, why shouldn't you? You paid for it and now you're making it last longer. Hell, that's awesome. ...And I don't mean any insult to anyone else either. I've found some really good games by reading suggestions from you guys. A couple of dogs, also, but more diamonds than coal to be sure. I was more commenting in a general sense. Specifically to me, this game could not be more suited to my desires. They pretty much did virtually everything I thought they should do with New Vegas. I mean, I really wish they could have included a little more North, but that's an irrational desire on my part. They included so much more area than I thought they would that it's insane to ask for for more. The game is sprawling. Like you guys have said, that's the problem. The game is so huge that you can level to max and then beat the badness out of everything in sight with impugnity. Irrational or not, I wish it could have gone up to Valley of Fire. One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I considered not buying this title and I'm so glad I did. It makes me think maybe I should purchase Alpha Protocol now.

I think there's a good chance that the majority of players don't even finish the game. I took the time to get all the achievements on Portal and then looked through the list. Just shy of 60% of the people had earned the Fratricide achievement, which is necessary to finish the game. Just shy of 47% of the people had earned Heartbreaker, which the player receives after finishing the game. Now, I suppose that some of the achievements might not record for one reason or another, but there's still a discrepancy between earning a midway achievement and the endgame achievement. A lot of folks must never have made it midway through and even more must have failed to reach the end.

I never understood the big deal about fast leveling. I mean, yeah, you level fairly fast, but why does it stick in folks' craw so much? Serious question. Maybe someone could make me understand.

I purchased my copy on STEAM and something mkreku said makes me think he did two. Not that two of us here consitutes some sort of statistical significance or anything. I like the good natured at start trait. The one that nerfs combat but adds to a host of noncombat stuff. You really only need one combat skill, which you can tag, and those noncombat skills really help throughout the entire game. Plus, with a high intelligence, you can seriously ramp up a good three or four skills really fast, which includes yoru combat pick and a few others. This game really rewards science builds for both practical and rpg purposes.

Actually, I have a Gauss Rifle I got out of some beer brewing hide-out northwest of Las Vegas. The five charge per shot consumption is brutal, but would probably be worth it if my sneak were worth a damn this time around.

I'm sure that Obsidian is better off with sequels for established franchises, but I would wager that they're still interested in creating a viable franchise of their own. I guess it just depends on whether they want to play it safe forever or take another chance on something new. I never played Alpha Protocol. Over the past few years I've stopped purchasing games as often and so I'm choosier about those titles I do buy. No Alpha Protocol or Mass Effect, for example. I've more or less gone away from rpgs to fpses, but New Vegas has whetted my appetite for good RPGs. I'm sure I'll pick up the DAO sequel as well as Dungeon Seige 3, but I hope that Obsidian develops a new RPG setting.

I think the game is heavily weighted to guns over energy weapons, but you can beat the game well enough using Energy weapons nevertheless. Since armor has such an impact on my energy weapon choices, I did invest a lot of effort in crit, which has helped to even the odds a bit. Still, the early game is so perversely weighted to standard firearms that I don't even use the laser pistol until I've leveled several times. On the other hand, you don't gimp yourself by choosing energy weapons. You merely don't fight quite as well. In that respect, the design is perfectly valid. Sure, the complaint that you will probably resort to standard firearms at some point, especially in the early game, is a legitimate complaint, but it doesn't equate to a particularly onerous burden on the player. *If* a player could make the game unwinnable by choosing energy weapons, *then* it would be a terrible flaw in the design.

lol I'm sure they'd make out pretty well. I haven't been following Obsids lately. Not for probably over a year, at least. Anyhow, New Vegas moves them forward quite a bit, so maybe they can start a new franchise. I never purchased Alpha Protocol, but it doesn't seem that one took off in the same way New Vegas has. Hopefully Obsidian can create a new game universe and really move on from there. In the meantime, I'm lovin' New Vegas.

Something weird happened this game. In the previous two games, remote camp Delta was sacked by the legion by the time I got to Novac. This time, however, the camp is still safe and I've already been to all sorts of places. I went after the Legion and rescued some prisoners and knocked off a ton of Legion folk this time, so maybe that saves the camp?

Oh, that bites. I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip on raiders. Keeping that in mind, I'll just return to raider camps to make food.

That's my experience also. On Hardcore mode, if I want my companions to survive, I have to leave them in some areas and go forward on my own. Ironically, it's a lot harder to keep my companions alive than myself. I rarely die, even alone, while my companions, particularly ED-E, will occasionally bite the dust. Okay, guys, where the hell are all the campfires? It's the most irritating thing. I'm either blind or they don't have any campfires in Novac. I thought, starting this run on HC mode, that cooking my own food would be a must. As it is, though, the mechanic hasn't really played much into my game. Not to mention the fact that I don't see many places to cook food anyhow. The H2O meter is only one that really has impact so far. Only been playing a couple of game weeks, though, so it might get tougher later. I don't care about the difficulty. Easy is fine as far as I'm concerned. I'm only doing HC mode to see what special goodies I get for finishing that way.

I don't think finishing the game is entirely neseccary to give an informed opinion. I'm not talking about folks here. We often give initial impressions, so that's par for the course, but even a professional journalist could give a substantial review without finishing the game. However, that impression should be backed by a significant amount of gameplay. New Vegas is so huge that a player could certainly recommend the game before completion and I bet that there is a substantial number of player who play well over 40 hours, are thrilled with the pruchase, but who nonetheless never complete the game. The downside of reviewing the game before the end is that you can't always provide informed commentary on plot twists or factions. For example, I liked the idea of the Legion quite a bit. I was looking forward to it, but by the end of the game I felt that the effort fell somewhat short. I still enjoyed the Legion, though. I enjoyed DAO quite a bit, but I've enjoyed New Vegas quite a bit more. I think the backstory in both is quite dark, but the unfolding story is much darker in New Vegas. Fallout 2 has long been my favorite game in the series, but I honestly think New Vegas actually takes the top for me now. I'd have to see what I think after a year or so though. :Cant's wry grin icon:

I finished Veronica's quest without replacing the originial Elder I didn't replace the original elder but when I finished Veronica's quest I didn't like the result. I went back and replaced the original elder with Hardin and Hardin never actually took over the job after that. Now, let me tell you, McNammara (or whatever his name is) thought outside the box sufficiently to disobey an order from the previous elder and fight his way to Hidden Springs. He was flexible enough to break the Chains in order to send out clandestine scouts. It seems to me that he should have been willing to listen to Veronica, but he flat refused even conceding that his path would result in the death of the BoS. My point is, having started the quest with McNammara in place, I couldn't replace him with Hardin later. Hardin, even after over a week of ingame time, failed to take the reings. ...And I can only assume that Hardin would've listened to reason. If he doesn't, then the BoS can go screw themselves. Idiot sticks.

Tell me about it. I finally had to give up on Cass' quest because it was completely messed up because I'd done various quests for all sorts of folks in the interim. On the other hand, I don't see exactly why it needed to be messed up. All the things necessary to do the quest in either direction were still there. Also, I screwed up the damned BoS questline for Veronica because I didn't replace McNammara. I got robbed, I tells ya! lol Now I'm going to play it on hardmode. I'm in Primm right now and so far so good. Hardcore does actually give some incentive to learn how to cook at least. Well... to get a good supply of Lad's Life more accurately.

I just started a new game tonight and I think the background music while talking to the Doc in Goodsprings is heavily influenced by PS:T. I can't quite place it, but I'm thinking of installing PS:T yet one more time to see. Also, I have a shovel and I'm sorely tempted to dig up the graves. From what I understand, it doesn't hit Karma, although it does give you some sort of gravedigger achievement or something.

Thanks LC! Yeah, that problem with the BoS was probably the most irritating thing so far, but I didn't post it because it wasn't a design problem. The game is quite clear about the consequences of wearing faction garb.

That's a bummer, Hurlshot. One thing that kept driving me crazy is that the BoS attacked me every time I used their secret passphrase. I tried all sorts of stuff. Finally, they let me in when I switched out Boone for Veronica since I remembered she'd told me she was BoS before I had her hit the bricks. Bingo! When I thought back on it, though, I was wearing NCR armor, and the Brotherhood was probably hostile for that reason. I'd switched out the NCR armor for regular Combat armor when I switched out Boone for Veronica, so that probably did the trick right there. The reason I'm saying this is, maybe using the password to get in puts them in a hostile state and that's what's crashing your game. No matter what the reason, having a consistent game crashing bug is bad. For shame, Obsids. Meanwhile, to balance all my fanboy commentary, I would like to point out some things that irritate me. As I've said, I love the game and would recommend it to anyone based on my own personal experiences, but there are still things that do nag at me from time to time while I play. First of all, Karma. Some folks simply don't understand that, for players who really want to be the good/bad guy, Karma is a reward in and of itself. On the other hand, I find that my rep with various factions does the trick. It's still cool, for players of my bent, to see various states of golden boy goodness on my character sheet. So, while I don't necessarily need Karma in the game, it's works. Nevertheless, Karma, because it relies on an outside judgment of morality, poses a lot of problems for me. For example, stealing is bad. Sure. I can accept that. However, when I suddenly find myself killing the Van Graffs in self defense, I don't see any point in calling it stealing any more. They are all dead and I consider the loot I get to be the spoils of war. I didn't go in to murder their sorry, ignorant asses. They attacked me and I turned them into puddles of glowing green goo. Just like I take the loot off of all the raiders who attack me, I think the Van Graff's place should be fair game. There are factions that I consider hostile from the very start and feel no guilt in smiting offhand. Those factions can change from game to game, but I don't think I'm stealing when I purposefully go into a Legion camp and put them all six feet under and then subsequently loot their camp because we are currently in a state of war. I would feel the same way if I chose to help the Legion and ransacked an NCR base. This is why I more and more like the idea of leaving the morality of any action up to the player. Nonetheless, my goodness on the Karma scale is so high and my need to take stuff that would impact my Karma is so slight that it's not a big issue. It's just something I think should be handled differently. Plus, I don't think Karma, even as a holdover from previous games, would cause much of an uproar by its absence. In my case, it would probably make my heart grow fonder of the game. There is one thing that I found.... not so much irritating as... I dunno? There is a quest line where I thought the devs should have made the Fabius Maximus character the better choice. I mean, he had a fatal flaw that made it so the player was almost forced to take action if they wanted a good outcome, but games press the player constantly to take action where real life wouldn't always reward it. Put a quest line in there and the player is almost compelled to do it, but the fact is that sometimes it is better not to take action right away and, often enough, not to take action at all. It's kind of hard to explain without specfics but I don't want to put spoilers in this thread. I don't think the player should get exp rewards for picking locks, hacking computers, etc. It encourages folks like me to hack the terminal but leave the door locked so I can also get an exp reward for picking the lock. ...Or not taking the password off a corpse because I know I can hack the terminal and then go back to pick up the password. I have held for many years that the player should get rewards based on the outcome, not on the method. Still, unlike Karma, which most folks would probably not miss in gameplay, I think getting rid of the exp rewards for trivial things would actually make a lot of players angry. Anyhow, most of these things are more or less philosophical arguments and so by and large pointless. The things that New Vegas got right in terms of philosophy by far outweighs what it got wrong.