Fallout find!

[Slowtrain]

[loot stayed in dungeons.

 

 

Free standing loot did. But container contents changed as you leveled; loot was taken from leveled lists same as Oblivion. Encounter monsters were also pulled from leveled lists. You're right though that humanoid NPCs did not level, at least most of them, that is probably a big difference right there. No more bandits in glass armor wielding Daederc warhammers.

[Tale]

Creatures were scaled against a level 20 character, when levels tell relatively little about combat ability in their system.

 

 

What do you mean? that sounds interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what it means.

In Oblivion/Morrowind, a level is gained because a certain number of major skills are increased a specific number of times. It doesn't matter what major skills at all or how much each is raised. If someone gets to level 20 off the skills sneak, alchemy, and short sword his combat ability may have gone up anywhere between 20 to 60 points. There's too much variation in what it takes to obtain a level and the benefits from a level to judge combat ability by level.

[Slowtrain]

Creatures were scaled against a level 20 character, when levels tell relatively little about combat ability in their system.

 

 

What do you mean? that sounds interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what it means.

In Oblivion/Morrowind, a level is gained because a certain number of major skills are increased a specific number of times. It doesn't matter what major skills at all or how much each is raised. If someone gets to level 20 off the skills sneak, alchemy, and short sword his combat ability may have gone up anywhere between 20 to 60 points. There's too much variation in what it takes to obtain a level and the benefits from a level to judge combat ability by level.

 

 

Oh yeah, I totally agree. Good luck finishing the game if you spend all your time in Oblivion leveling by increasing your acrobatics and athletics and speechcraft. They'll be blotting your player character up with a mop.

[Tale]

[loot stayed in dungeons.

 

 

Free standing loot did. But container contents changed as you leveled; loot was taken from leveled lists same as Oblivion. Encounter monsters were also pulled from leveled lists. You're right though that humanoid NPCs did not level, at least most of them, that is probably a big difference right there. No more bandits in glass armor wielding Daederc warhammers.

Free standing loot is important. It was removed in Oblivion and completely replaced by rusty iron. Free standing loot is important because it gives a sense of discovery and helps lend to an almost Indiana Jones style feel of adventure because that's a chance to find something ridiculously valuable at the bottom of a dungeon, something it often did. Oblivion, the only time you have a chance of finding anything valuable is later in the game.

 

Encounter monsters were pulled from a leveled list that used a different scale than Oblivion does. Oblivion uses a harsher scale.

[Walsingham]

Equally it was sub-moronic to have everyone level up with you. It meant that being level 20 was no more fun than being level 1. Utter *lapses into a variety of expletives culled from five continents*

[Tale]

Creatures were scaled against a level 20 character, when levels tell relatively little about combat ability in their system.

 

 

What do you mean? that sounds interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what it means.

In Oblivion/Morrowind, a level is gained because a certain number of major skills are increased a specific number of times. It doesn't matter what major skills at all or how much each is raised. If someone gets to level 20 off the skills sneak, alchemy, and short sword his combat ability may have gone up anywhere between 20 to 60 points. There's too much variation in what it takes to obtain a level and the benefits from a level to judge combat ability by level.

 

 

Oh yeah, I totally agree. Good luck finishing the game if you spend all your time in Oblivion leveling by increasing your acrobatics and athletics and speechcraft. They'll be blotting your player character up with a mop.

 

I got my character up by using sneak, short swords, acrobatics, and light armor. None of which is useful against the monsters that reflect melee damage back at you. I didn't have that much HP.

[Slowtrain]

Free standing loot is important. It was removed in Oblivion and completely replaced by rusty iron. Free standing loot is important because it gives a sense of discovery and helps lend to an almost Indiana Jones style feel of adventure because that's a chance to find something ridiculously valuable at the bottom of a dungeon, something it often did. Oblivion, the only time you have a chance of finding anything valuable is later in the game.

 

 

That's a really good point. There was a lot of cool free standing loot in Morrowind. I had forgotten that. Plus if you managed to beat some high level npcs early you could get their cool stuff as well. Oblivion dropped all that. The environment just feels too controlled.

[Sand]

In any case, instead of it being Oblivion with Guns it will be Morrowind with Guns, but with Oblivion's dialogue system. I don't see how this is a substantial improvement.

[Tale]

Because Morrowind WAS AWESOME!

[Slowtrain]

In any case, instead of it being Oblivion with Guns it will be Morrowind with Guns, but with Oblivion's dialogue system. I don't see how this is a substantial improvement.

 

 

Not really though. FO3 is using an XP based system not a learn by doing system. Big honking difference to leveling and gameplay in either MW or OB right there.

 

Learn by doing system are incredibly hard to balance and almost invariably result in broken games.

[metadigital]

What? They don't have any creative ideas of there own?

Do creative ideas of their own come with the built in hype of the Fallout franchise?

 

I honestly wouldn't have cared about the game if it hadn't been named Fallout. But since it is, I see multiple threads on this forum with at least one active every single day. Mere exposure effect has won me over and I'll probably buy the damned thing.

 

The reason it has Fallout on the box and how the game is being designed is the primary reason why I am not buying the game.

 

Real time, first person combat with Action Points spent as Mana

Forced to play a 19 year old

Oblivion styled Dialogue system (can we say conversation minigame anyone?)

Nuclear powered sling shot

and so forth and so on.

 

I have yet read anything about this game that makes me want to buy it.

You had given up gaming forever, yesterday, so no great loss then.

[Tale]

Learn by doing system are incredibly hard to balance and almost invariably result in broken games.

I don't think it's actually that hard to balance as long as the're willing to get into serious playtesting for refinements. I mentioned in either this thread or another the game Sin: Emergence and it's dynamic difficulty system. Yes, it was broken at release but it was fixed in the first patch and worked like a charm after that. It took into account speed through the game, ammo, accuracy, health, armor and probably other things I can't think of off the top of my head. How they popularly explain it is similar to L4D's director, it has several systems running that take into account these factors and are specially trained to alter encounters to keep the values within a specified limit.

 

What this showed to me is that a dynamic difficulty system can work with complex variables because even though it broke, it was fixed and ultimately worked. For it to work in a learning by doing RPG, you simply mimic that system. You need systems monitoring the players progress, health, mana, time spent in combat and dynamically adjust the encounters along these variables individually. If he's moving too slow (taking too long to kill enemies), lower the HP or armor of the enemy. If he's lower in health than he should be, lower their damage. If he's killing enemies way too fast or has too much health, try reversing it. If he's killing way too many enemies without even being hit, try including more ranged or stealth detecting NPCs.

 

This is complex and by that simple fact, it can probably be considered hard. However, it seems reasonably doable.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Tale

[Slowtrain]

I dunno, Tale. Regardless of the difficulty of instuting such a system in a crpg, which is generally a considerbly more complex environment than an FPS (I never played Emergence so I can't compare directly), such a dynamic system would seem even worse han Oblivion's level scaling at creating a bland environment. It doesn't sound very fun to me anyway. I would rather have a game where hard is hard and as you get better, you do better.

 

 

Doing worse because you are doing better sounds hideously tedious.

[Tale]

I dunno, Tale. Regardless of the difficulty of instuting such a system in a crpg, which is generally a considerbly more complex environment than an FPS (I never played Emergence so I can't compare directly), such a dynamic system would seem even worse han Oblivion's level scaling at creating a bland environment. It doesn't sound very fun to me anyway. I would rather have a game where hard is hard and as you get better, you do better.

 

 

Doing worse because you are doing better sounds hideously tedious.

That's the thing, nothing about what I suggested means you'll do worse, the same, or better. It's up to the developers.

 

If they want to make the directors operate for different optimal values dependent upon level, that's up to them. They can make it easier, harder, or strive for the same difficulty.

 

At the very least, if applied properly it can be used to give the world an intelligence it lacked. How many times have your enemies faced your extremely mighty avatar of doom yet still insisted on sending only 5 bandits because they're too stupid to recognize the danger you pose to them, even though you just slaughtered your way through massive hordes with ease. No no, that was luck. This time, these 5 bandits, they'll stop him and help me establish world domination.

[Slowtrain]

At the very least, if applied properly it can be used to give the world an intelligence it lacked. How many times have your enemies faced your extremely mighty avatar of doom yet still insisted on sending only 5 bandits because they're too stupid to recognize the danger you pose to them, even though you just slaughtered your way through massive hordes with ease. No no, that was luck. This time, these 5 bandits, they'll stop him and help me establish world domination.

 

Well, I would be up for that. AN end to the Fallout syndrome of being attacked by a unarmored thug with a knife when your avatar is wearing hardened power armor and carrying the turbo plasma rifle. ooops. BAD IDEA, SIR.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Forced to play a 19 year old

 

The PC will leave the Vault at age 19. This isn't forcing the PC to always be of the same age; it's likely comparable to the Fallouts' minimum starting age of 16.

[mkreku]

Learn by doing system are incredibly hard to balance and almost invariably result in broken games.

Wasteland had a learn by doing system that actually worked. Or maybe I was so young when I played the game that I was too stupid to realize the system was abusable.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Well, I would be up for that. An end to the Fallout syndrome of being attacked by a unarmored thug with a knife when your avatar is wearing hardened power armor and carrying the turbo plasma rifle. ooops. BAD IDEA, SIR.

 

I think every single encounter of those I experienced started with the thugs just running away from my PC, they never seemed to charge head on. The problem, I think, is that the map used areas to spawn enemy groups. Travelling around between San Fran and Navarro never triggered Highwaymen, for instance, so it was mostly a challenge. The odd trip back to Vault City or Redding triggered them more often.

 

Then again, considering the ungodly suplly of Jet they carry you could always reason their discernment was lacking

[Dark_Raven]

Real time, first person combat with Action Points spent as Mana

Forced to play a 19 year old

Oblivion styled Dialogue system (can we say conversation minigame anyone?)

Nuclear powered sling shot

and so forth and so on.

 

I have yet read anything about this game that makes me want to buy it.

A list of stupidity. I shall enjoy this game!

[dunniteowl]

Gentlemen, let's tone down the bigotry regarding America. If they're so rubbish at building things how come they're the only country to have gone to the Moon?

 

And Dunniteowl, putting a can of gasoline in there isn't stupid. They probably expected us to be using atomics or something by now. Then we'd damn well NEED the gasoline.

 

[rant]I wonder how much gasoline there'd be in a metal can hidden away for FIFTY YEARS, don't you? As to Americans and bigotry, you'd be hard pressed to find any country that doesn't look down on America in one way another, including America. Note my location. I am from the USA and my own country and it's people are amazing to me. Like I said, land of contradictions and strange juxtapositions. I never said putting a can of gasoline in there was stupid, I didn't even imply it. There is a lot of common everyday sense to some things people do, even if the next things coming out of their mouths is complete non-sense. I just did the whole Okie thing for fun.

 

And yes, we went to the Moon, and then promptly forgot about what the benefits to a long term, focussed and dedicated space program could potentially get us. I was mad at age 26, because I wasn't anywhere close to being able to get a job in space unless I was an astronaut. I thought, on that day in August, 1968, when I saw Niel Armstrong descend the ladder of the Eagle, that in 18 years, I'd be able to work on the moon, or in orbit, for some company that made a real space station, not this POS that is called the ISS. (sorry, got carried away there...)

 

I guess I'm still a bit ticked that, now, at 46, twenty years later, I still couldn't possibly get a job in space unless I am already an astronaut. Where did we go wrong on that one? Like I said, the land of contradictions and strange juxtapositions.[/rant]

 

As to FO3 and it's craptactular potential: I'm just going to have to sit the fence and wait and see. I hold no preconcieved notions about how Bethesda is going to screw it up or make it better. I sit here and hope that they do their level best to stay true to the atmosphere and overall mechanics of the game system, though not slavish dedication to it, which, imnsho, would be a real killer to the overall creative process in the first place. I would be willing to wager that even if the original design team were able to be pulled together into this thing, get the creative reigns and lead the way, it still wouldn't be able to cleave completely to the originals. Too much time has passed and the flames tend to burn out. Even the banked ashes of the original content producers, stoked again with zeal, cash and time to produce, still couldn't make an FO3 that would fall right in line with the other two. Too many things have changed, graphically, game engine, coding for physics in the game world, etc.

 

If I were someone with the opportunity, I would probably be thinking: Holy cow, now I can make the Fallout I would have made back then if this technology were available when I first got cracking!" Wouldn't you try to take advantage of anything that came out that might make your vision more like what you first had in mind? Or wouldn't you be tempted to see how much farther you can stretch your talents and ideas with all this new stuff?

 

So I say, let them have their shot, don't hold too much in contempt for it not being a dead knockoff of the originals and let the game stand on it's created merits, not the perceptions of what we think it's going to end up being like.

 

But they better have some real creative talent involved and, from my perspective, their toughest critical success or failure is going to be able to recreate the sensation and atmosphere of the originals in large ways. That isn't going to be achieved with only nostalgic recreated visuals and the InkSpots on their sound track. I am willing to see what they do before I decide it's going to be good or not.

 

warmest regards,

dunniteowl

[theslug]

Side note: Moon landing was staged in the Nevada desert.

[metadigital]

Historical note: Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on 20 July 1969.

Personal note: I want to work in space, too.

[Atreides]

As long as there's real dialogue and my rig can squeeze some decent FPS out of the game I think there's a good chance I may enjoy this. I'm really impressed with how they integrated story and tutorial/character creation!

[Dark_Raven]

Oh how very sad this is.

[Guard Dog]

What? They don't have any creative ideas of there own?

Do creative ideas of their own come with the built in hype of the Fallout franchise?

 

I honestly wouldn't have cared about the game if it hadn't been named Fallout. But since it is, I see multiple threads on this forum with at least one active every single day. Mere exposure effect has won me over and I'll probably buy the damned thing.

 

The reason it has Fallout on the box and how the game is being designed is the primary reason why I am not buying the game.

 

Real time, first person combat with Action Points spent as Mana

Forced to play a 19 year old

Oblivion styled Dialogue system (can we say conversation minigame anyone?)

Nuclear powered sling shot

and so forth and so on.

 

I have yet read anything about this game that makes me want to buy it.

You had given up gaming forever, yesterday, so no great loss then.

 

I believe that is called "hoisted on his own petard".