FO: NV

[bhlaab]

I think bickering and Beth hating has actually improved by splitting the topics, and this is true even though hardly anyone either reads or posts in the story topic, which is sad. I'm afraid that they'll close it, but I guess it won't matter if no one contributes to it anyhow. *shrug*

 

Well what is there to say about the story besides posting our own awful fanfic-type ideas

[Aristes]

I think bickering and Beth hating has actually improved by splitting the topics, and this is true even though hardly anyone either reads or posts in the story topic, which is sad. I'm afraid that they'll close it, but I guess it won't matter if no one contributes to it anyhow. *shrug*

 

Well what is there to say about the story besides posting our own awful fanfic-type ideas

 

Ouch! Aw well, I like to exchange awful fanfic-type ideas with other folks.

[cronicler]

Vats needs to be pruned down thats for sure. As Gromnir mentioned it is a great tool for those "oh, sh***!" moments and personally I cant see any better way to implement targeted shots in FP mode without depending on Player skills and depending on Character skills. The Holywood aspects like slow motion, the extra damage resistance are not really good ideas and I would vote for them to be scrapped with the exception of getting slow-mo on "Massive" critical hits now and then. Even then not more than once a minute or 2 in heavy combat or specially on important story Villains.

 

Another part of Vats that needs balancing is the hit detection. Vats should be an "instant hit spell" that has its calculations based on the time you fire the bullet instead f the moment at the end of flight which takes much longer due to slow mo. Removing the physics calculations might crate weird animations now and then but it is preferable to having bullets striking invisible pixels,

 

As I have said before, I would love to see a "Pause" option that gives you 3rd person bird eye view of the area, where you can examine the battlefield and give order to your henchman, squad, squads. Then again considering the ultra stupid AI, It might be even better to scrap the companions that follow you into combat altogether.

 

The Movement rates do need an Overhaul too. Typically a person can move at speed 1 backwards, Speed 1,2,3 or 4 forwards and speed .75 laterally. In the game you move at Speed 2 in all directions and this really causes the animation to become "skating", feeling no connection to be on the ground..

Edited May 15, 2009 by cronicler

[bhlaab]

I hope the 3rd person camera is reworked. Something where you can rotate around your character, like in Mass Effect but with the ability to pan in and out with the mouse wheel. You could go to standard RE4 style when you have your weapon drawn. Or at the very least a diagonal running animation so you don't ice skate.

 

One thing that really needs to be fixed is the way the third person camera can't be obstructed. If it hits a wall or something it tries to zoom in to get around it. For example, when I had fawkes following me the camera would go insane because it wasn't allowed to clip through him.

Edited May 15, 2009 by bhlaab

[GreasyDogMeat]

What, am I the only one who liked the slow-mo?

[cronicler]

It wouldn't be so bad if the character turned 45' to move diagonally while keeping his upper body facing forward.....

Ummm yeah, it needs a new animation

 

Slow Mo was nice but if you used VATS all the time, it got very boring. I wouldn't say no to a switch to control the amount of slow mo procs. (All the time, sometimes, rarely, only on crits, only on massive or deadly crits, never etc.)

Edited May 15, 2009 by cronicler

[Pidesco]

What, am I the only one who liked the slow-mo?

 

 

Yes. It draws out fights that already are pretty repetitive without it.

[jero cvmi]

Basically, i think the most important thing they can do about gameplay, is to make the game playable in 3rd person.

Crosshairs that are projected on what the character is looking at, instead of being fixed in the center of the screen. And fully rotatable floating camera.

 

As for VATS, i really missed the groin and eye shots, as tactical elements -chance to blind/knock down/insta-kill.

And VATS's major flaw is that you can't target body parts while in unarmed/melee. If they fix these, the rest are details IMO.

 

Concerning skills, It's cool that some skills are merged, however a seperate throwing skill to throw ashtrays and teddybears around -without a special weapon- would be nice.

And if they, for the first time, managed to make a truly meaningful gambling skill, especially since it's Vegas and all, that would be more than welcome.

 

What I really hate about the skills in fallout 3 is that tagging a skill doesn't mean you specialize in it, because you just get a starting bonus which you can later negate by putting points on other skills. The old style of tagging, where points spent on tagged skills were doubled, helped build more specialized characters.

 

And a little more involved formulas for stats to govern skills would be interesting. I'd like some skills to involve more than one stats.

 

Also, more tweaks that aren't that important to me, but would be nice:

 

-Different types of ammo and armor modifiers.

 

-Traits. Major issue. Having the option to have a birthmark with a positive and a negative side added great replayability in the original games.

 

-Drugs. I really miss the junky simulator: Initial high with sideffects, withdrawal, cold turkey when addicted.

Drugs work a little like magic potions now, there's no sideffect, no withdrawal, and i think addiction just causes damage? i could be wrong here.

 

-Criticall miss. Self injury, jamming weapons, dropping weapons, all those added a great deal of interest and realism, it's sad they're gone.

 

Generally, i'd like to see optional things have an upside and a downside for the character. This was completely absent from fallout3 as a philosophy- everything you could do was a bonus.

[HoonDing]

I'm not all for completely removing slow-mo... I've experimented a bit with VATS overhaul mods & without the slow-mo one often finds oneself swarmed by enemies which can be brutal against giant radscorpions or similar melee enemies especially when one removes the 'god mode' VATS i.e. enemies doing 100% damage instead of the 10%.

 

Maybe there should be a new option to use AP on slow-mo for those occasional tight moments?

[CoM_Solaufein]

What, am I the only one who liked the slow-mo?

Nah. I liked it.

[Kjarista]

Regular gunplay was akward, maybe it was just the lack of auto-aim (which is fine if used well) or just clunky controls.

 

Regular gameplay...combat without VATS gets annoying when the mob is very close and doing what I call the Oblivion kite...running around you like a Bnet kiddie doing WoW PvP. I might resort to VATS in that situation. Otherwise, at longer ranges, I didn't feel that the combat controls were awkward. With a little practice, one can effectively lead moving targets and compensate for sniper rifle trajectories.

 

Get up on that bridge near Dukov's with your sniper rifle and practice on the raiders in the camp down by the river. Good moderate-longer range shots. It won't take long to learn how to lead targets and compensate for the off borsighted crosshairs of the standard sniper rifle.

 

Not using VATS doesn't take that much more player skill...it's not close to the skill needed for most shooters, for example, and the various weapons can be used as designed.

[Gizmo]

Basically, i think the most important thing they can do about gameplay, is to make the game playable in 3rd person.

Crosshairs that are projected on what the character is looking at, instead of being fixed in the center of the screen. And fully rotatable floating camera.

Absolutely ~and that's something that they should [hopefully] release as an Obsidian FO3 mod

(along with any other beneficial changes worked out that could be made compatible with the first game.)

Edited May 15, 2009 by Gizmo

[Syraxis]

What, am I the only one who liked the slow-mo?

 

I liked it... the first two hundred times.

[Jaesun]

As Sawyer already stated, it does not sound like they can do much with VATS, because of the way it was coded. But maybe they will be able to get around that.

[Gizmo]

As Sawyer already stated, it does not sound like they can do much with VATS, because of the way it was coded. But maybe they will be able to get around that.

Disable it entirely.

 

~Actually... How hard could it be to code a new menu with the original 8 targets and have the PC shoot when it exits, and have the shot "upgraded" based on the original (or modified original) critical damage tables?

 

Mods can kill with a script, and set aggression and equipped weapons. A modified Vats could set a critical effect on the attack... Why not abandon the original VATS all together? (It was flawed when it worked as planned anyway).

 

*I say "junk it"

Edited May 15, 2009 by Gizmo

[TwinkieGorilla]

all your VATS are belong to Bethesda.

[CoM_Solaufein]

As Sawyer already stated, it does not sound like they can do much with VATS, because of the way it was coded. But maybe they will be able to get around that.

No need to, works just fine. Now they do need to make additions like groin and eye shots.

[cronicler]

I'm sorry Lucian but you are glossing over the unbalanced, over the top parts of the system. Like most parts of the games mechanics, the vats also needs some serious maintenance

[Enoch]

I never got the "eye shot" thing. Unless your target is 2 feet away and completely motionless (or 10 feet, if it's a japanese cartoon character), there is no difference at all between aiming at the head and aiming at the eyes. How does giving us an option to target eyes improve the game in any way?

 

(Groin shots are more plausible, but pretty embarrassingly childish. Really, when is the last time anyone over the age of 10 laughed at a groin injury joke? And, yes, I'm including the FO1-2 flavor text in this category.)

[Gfted1]

(Groin shots are more plausible, but pretty embarrassingly childish. Really, when is the last time anyone over the age of 10 laughed at a groin injury joke? And, yes, I'm including the FO1-2 flavor text in this category.)

 

*raises hand*

 

I guess Ill take the bullet for this one. I laugh like a bufoon every time I see an America's Funniest Home Videos episode that includes some kid severly racking his nuts in a skateboard trick gone bad.

[TwinkieGorilla]

I never got the "eye shot" thing. Unless your target is 2 feet away and completely motionless (or 10 feet, if it's a japanese cartoon character), there is no difference at all between aiming at the head and aiming at the eyes. How does giving us an option to target eyes improve the game in any way?

 

never played the originals, i take it. this is the difference:

 

 

(Groin shots are more plausible, but pretty embarrassingly childish. Really, when is the last time anyone over the age of 10 laughed at a groin injury joke? And, yes, I'm including the FO1-2 flavor text in this category.)

 

why childish? it's a pretty standard method of fighting...to momentarily cripple your opponent. sure it might be a "cheap shot" but there ain't nothing funny about getting hit down there to me.

[Gizmo]

I never got the "eye shot" thing. Unless your target is 2 feet away and completely motionless (or 10 feet, if it's a japanese cartoon character), there is no difference at all between aiming at the head and aiming at the eyes. How does giving us an option to target eyes improve the game in any way?

What Twink said above, and also that the original games dealt with 8 static targets, whose purpose was to allow the Player to gamble against their PC's skill with the weapon for a chance at greater damage and/or effects at the greater cost of using an aimed shot. The eye shot was always the hardest and had some great possible gains.

 

VATS in FO3 has no real similarity in the sense that VATS seems to gauge by proximity alone, instead of a defined increasing risk for gains ~and that the costs in general are meaningless with the new "decorative" version of AP's.

Edited May 15, 2009 by Gizmo

[Gromnir]

I never got the "eye shot" thing. Unless your target is 2 feet away and completely motionless (or 10 feet, if it's a japanese cartoon character), there is no difference at all between aiming at the head and aiming at the eyes. How does giving us an option to target eyes improve the game in any way?

What Twink said above,

 

too bad twink weren't responsive. enoch weren't questioning how fo1 and fo2 used eye shots and applied damages n' such... he were questioning the rationale behind including such targetables.

 

to answer enoch question, there ain't no sound reasoning for having eyes targetable for ranged weapons. melee is slight different. eye-gouging is quite effective in hand-to-hand. groin shots is more ha-ha than serious, as Gromnir would choose a couple other easier to target weak-spots before groin, but groin is a valid hand-to-hand target. the fo tb combat system applies to both ranged and melee/hand-to-hand, so is gonna be overlap and discontinuity.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 15, 2009 by Gromnir

[Pop]

In the Paleolithic era I brought up the absurdity of groin shots at NMA and it was widely claimed that no, groin shots were not included for humor at all, but instead were included as an easier means of knockout when headshots were less likely to succeed. I found this reasoning to be a bit flawed as I had gone through the Fallouts with super-powerful characters exclusively groin-shotting people for fun (because it was a valid and useful way of doing battle more than anything, of course) and it seemed like I only got knockouts with massive crits. Most crits produced a knockdown with the enemy getting back to his feet directly after the shot. Some crits had recovery the next turn. But it was never as useful as an arm or leg crit.

 

Tactics made groin shots marginally more useful in that they "winded" the opponent, knocking down their max APs.

[Enoch]

I've played FO1-2 several times, and I know what the in-game effects of eye targeting are. (Answer: they're an extremely unbalanced way to manipulate the games' very powerful critical hit systems.) I get that fans of the tactical details of FO1-2 want more options than arms/legs/head, and that targeting the eyes/groin were useful tactical options in the older games. (And by "eyes/groin," I mean "eyes." And by "useful," I mean "the clearly optimal strategy in all situations once your skills are high enough to get a success rate over 70% or so.") But my core question, I guess, is why should Obsidian spend the time and resources to add more targetable body parts to the FO3-based system they'll be using in F:NV?

 

Now, I admit that I was thinking about guns, and wasn't considering the melee targeting rationales that Gromnir mentions. That's a point in favor of more options, but only if melee combat targeting is already on the "add" list. (It seems to me like this would involve a lot of additional animation resources, so I could see it being skipped as too costly.) But still, the majority of combat in the game is gunplay, and I still don't really see how additional targetable body parts would be worthwhile in that context. (If you want to be even close to realistic, the chance to hit the eyes with a firearm should really never get higher than 10%, unless you're firing at a paralyzed Bette Davis from 5 feet away.)