Fallout: New Vegas

[Thorton_AP]

Sawyer is making it sound like the game will push you into specializing instead of the jack of all trades approach of Fallout 3, and that's definitely a good thing (at least from my point of view.. some will hate the thing, since they probably didn't like the character development aspect of the game and played it as an action-adventure).

 

I find this to be a double edged sword. A game like Arcanum forced you to specialize to an extent that I didn't like it. I think Jack of All Trades should be just as viable as full on specialization. This would mean that at the end game, there are still doors that do not require 100% lockpicking to be picked sort of stuff, and so on.

 

To simplify the example: Make it so that you aren't penalized for not going full guns or full lockpicking, with half guns half lockpicking still being suitable. You can't do everything that a full one way can do, but you can do the other skill at a proficient enough level that it lends you certain advantages over a fully specialized character.

 

I'm a bit worried that AP will also require too much specialization as well.

 

The point is, in Fallout 3 EVERY character ended up a jack of all trades by the time you reached level 20. That's what I meant when I said that the system will push you into specializing : if you can either be GOOD at something or 'ok' at everything it's ok, if you end being GOOD at everything by the end, no matter how much you try to gimp your character.. that's the epitome of bad design for a character development system in an RPG imho.

 

This is why I cited Arcanum, not Fallout 3. It has to be well designed to allow your character to enjoy success regardless of their build. The fact that I went jack of all trades in Arcanum eventually blocked the game for me as I couldn't proceed past some of the encounters.

 

On a personal level, I do not think that it should be possible to ever "gimp" your character. I do agree with your notion that characters should not be experts at everything though. Never meant to give that impression.

[Slowtrain]

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons."

 

am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon?

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, based on what Josh has said, that some of the more powerful weapons may not be availiable as early or as easily in NV as they were in Fallout 3.

 

In fo3 it was pretty easy to pick up as mingun or gatling laser as son as you stepped out the vault door at level 2. Which was neccessary of course for people who had characters with Big Guns or Energy Weapons. With a rebalance of skills, it shouldn't be neccessary to fling some high-end piece of hardware at the game just to make the skill system work.

[TwinkieGorilla]

The point is, in Fallout 3 EVERY character ended up a jack of all trades by the time you reached level 20.

 

20? please. by 10 i realized nothing i put into SPECIAL meant ****-all (not to mention any in-game decisions for that matter).

[WorstUsernameEver]

This is why I cited Arcanum, not Fallout 3. It has to be well designed to allow your character to enjoy success regardless of their build. The fact that I went jack of all trades in Arcanum eventually blocked the game for me as I couldn't proceed past some of the encounters.

 

On a personal level, I do not think that it should be possible to ever "gimp" your character. I do agree with your notion that characters should not be experts at everything though. Never meant to give that impression.

 

Never played Arcanum (I will buy it from GoG sooner or later), but I was just trying to clarify my point, not trying to put words into your mouth, so sorry if I came across as condescending or something like that, it absolutely wasn't my intention.

[Thorton_AP]

LOL no worries. I was just clarifying my point

[J.E. Sawyer]

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons."

 

am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon?

 

HA! Good Fun!

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

[mkreku]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

 

It's not just 'grouping' weapons, is 'different character builds', which in turns mean a character will be better with some weapons than another character. Simple enough, and part of the appeal of rpgs to me.

Truth be told, I just don't think it would fit the game.

[Gromnir]

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons."

 

am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon?

 

HA! Good Fun!

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

 

so, early lasers... or is there some other kinda weapon you have in mind? tasers? again, since you raised the spectre o' early game absence o' energy weapons, am curious as to how you "fixed." personally, am fine with "weak" energy weapons being available from start of game, but am curious how josh implemented.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[J.E. Sawyer]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

We also have a lot of weapons, so hopefully you will be satisfied with the selection.

[CoM_Solaufein]

And if not there will always be mods that add in a lot of weapons and such.

[Oner]

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World.

[Niten_Ryu]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

 

I agree. Actually I'd remove whole skill and let game mechanics handle the whole thing similar to FPS and let (few) perks to improve aiming, reloading speed and possible special attacks or aimbots (VATs, dead eye, whatever system new Splinter Cell use, bullet time ect ect).

[TwinkieGorilla]

I agree. Actually I'd remove whole skill and let game mechanics handle the whole thing similar to FPS and let (few) perks to improve aiming, reloading speed and possible special attacks or aimbots (VATs, dead eye, whatever system new Splinter Cell use, bullet time ect ect).

 

oh, totally. that sounds so Fallout to me! and while we're at it let's cut out all dialogue trees/choices and replace them with cut-scenes and romantic interest mini-games. heck, we could even phase the pop-a-mole combat out of it so you can just roam the wasteland decorating your house!

[Aram]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

We also have a lot of weapons, so hopefully you will be satisfied with the selection.

Need more details.

[mkreku]

I agree. Actually I'd remove whole skill and let game mechanics handle the whole thing similar to FPS and let (few) perks to improve aiming, reloading speed and possible special attacks or aimbots (VATs, dead eye, whatever system new Splinter Cell use, bullet time ect ect).

That would work too. Did in Deus Ex. If it would make the game better, I'm all for it.

 

 

oh, totally. that sounds so Fallout to me! and while we're at it let's cut out all dialogue trees/choices and replace them with cut-scenes and romantic interest mini-games. heck, we could even phase the pop-a-mole combat out of it so you can just roam the wasteland decorating your house!

Oh, so it's those little combat details that's making it "not Fallout" this time, is it. Not the fact that they've turned a 2D game with turn based combat into a 3D game with real-time and optional pseudo turn based combat. I get it now.

 

Whining for whining's sake sure must be fun seeing as you do so much of it.

Edited May 24, 2010 by mkreku

[Nemo0071]

I agree. Actually I'd remove whole skill and let game mechanics handle the whole thing similar to FPS and let (few) perks to improve aiming, reloading speed and possible special attacks or aimbots (VATs, dead eye, whatever system new Splinter Cell use, bullet time ect ect).

 

oh, totally. that sounds so Fallout to me! and while we're at it let's cut out all dialogue trees/choices and replace them with cut-scenes and romantic interest mini-games. heck, we could even phase the pop-a-mole combat out of it so you can just roam the wasteland decorating your house!

Although it doesn't sound Fallout, it is perfectly reasonable in any game with real-time combat (be it FPS, TPS, RPG or something in between). I believe designers have a hard time balancing player-controlled and skill-controlled combat, and that is why something like V.A.T.S. was created; to give the points put in combat skills more importance. I would even say Bethsoft deliberately made V.A.T.S. more enjoyable & beneficial than RTC to "point" people in the "right direction", but that's just speculation on my part...

 

By simple logic, the more direct control a particular style / genre / POV gives the player, the less numbers needed in the game. Who knows, maybe in the future, there'll be cRPGs which takes your spoken voice via a microphone and process it as a "dialogue option", but of course in this case options would be almost infinite, similar to manual aiming. Would that kind of game be less of an RPG? Not as far as I'm concerned. It would simply be a game that Twinkie doesn't like. Maybe.

 

Oh, FYI, I love decorating my house.

[Syraxis]

Why are people so concerned with how they group the weapons? I wouldn't mind it if they grouped all weapons into a generic "combat" skill and got it over with. All I care for is more variety amongst the weapons themselves. Not one 10mm pistol as the only handgun, one Magnum as the only revolver and so on. Give me a choice! Give me more unique weapons! Let me mod my arsenal! That's all I care about.

 

I don't see why we can't have multiple weapon categories and a huge variety of weapons in the said various categories.

 

What I'm trying to say is if it was an either/or scenario.

Edited May 24, 2010 by Syraxis

[Gromnir]

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World.

 

 

same rationale worked for big guns.

 

*shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Irrelevant]

I should have waited before bitching about the skill merging, it looks like you will still be somewhat able to pick which types of weapons to specialise in.

I do not like my own skills(Except for my intelligence/Perception) to affect the skills of the character I play. From what I understand combat in real-time is affected by the bullet spread of the weapon modified by the weapon skill relevant to that weapon. If the purpose of V.A.T.S. is for it to be used by people who suck at first person shooters(determined by Stats) and realtime for people that are good at first person shooters(determined by personal skill) then I think the way these skills are going to be handled in New Vegas will work; As long as there are some limitations as to how "good" one is allowed to be in real time.

(It would be entertaining for the game to tell a high intelligence character which dialogue options are most like to do what, there was a perk in Fallout 2 that did something similar to this,)

Rate of fire = Attack frequency.

[Fionavar]

Rather than edit threads at this point ... could I request (rhetorically) that we try not to attack/bait through argumentation ... I remain hopeful this will be easy to do ...

 

/ellipses

[WorstUsernameEver]

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World.

 

 

same rationale worked for big guns.

 

*shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

I can understand your rationale grom, but havin' played Fallout 3 with FWE, and with FOOK (not as much as FWE considering that IMHO that mod sucks as an overhaul and has no quality control and internal consistency) I can sympathize with Sawyer's concern about confusing players about what skill is used by certain weapons.

Of two guns that looked very similar, one used small guns and the other big guns, and even with the low-tier big guns placed in the game, small guns ended up being a much more convenient choice, simply because the weapons that fit that category are the overwhelming majority of weapons in the game.

While the weapon categorization proposed by Josh is far from perfect as far as the logic goes, I believe it's clearer to the player (maybe with the exception of the flamer's fuel weapon, but as long as they state that clearly in the skill description I think they're fine) than the original, and now that Fallout has a larger fanbase, that's pretty important, especially considering that it looks like in Fallout : New Vegas weapon skills will be important, so you could unknowingly gimp yourself by using the wrong weapon (and yeah, the skill used by the weapon will be shown in the UI, but some people won't look, trust me).

[jero cvmi]

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons."

 

am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon?

 

HA! Good Fun!

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

[Nemo0071]

Oh, FYI, I love decorating my house.

Oh, FYI, You are everything that is wrong with this generation of gaming.

I'm O.K. with different tastes / opinions about gaming. Let's just keep it civilized.

 

That is all.

 

I should have waited before bitching about the skill merging, it looks like you will still be somewhat able to pick which types of weapons to specialise in.

I do not like my own skills(Except for my intelligence/Perception) to affect the skills of the character I play. From what I understand combat in real-time is affected by the bullet spread of the weapon modified by the weapon skill relevant to that weapon. If the purpose of V.A.T.S. is for it to be used by people who suck at first person shooters(determined by Stats) and realtime for people that are good at first person shooters(determined by personal skill) then I think the way these skills are going to be handled in New Vegas will work; As long as there are some limitations as to how "good" one is allowed to be in real time.

(It would be entertaining for the game to tell a high intelligence character which dialogue options are most like to do what, there was a perk in Fallout 2 that did something similar to this,)

Rate of fire = Attack frequency.

Yes, I think the design choices we've been informed of so far will be succesful in balancing the game between skill-based and real-time combat. Personally, I prefer manual aiming, if it's a viable method in a given game. I used V.A.T.S. most of the time in FO3 because it was "the way to go" for a better experience, imo.

 

If it's an action-RPG with both action and RPG oriented "combat modes", I believe your experience should be satisfying regardless of which one you prefer.

[Amentep]

Oh, FYI, I love decorating my house. >_

 

I would have liked it if it was easier to place objects in the house. And if they didn't move (I kept moving the tricycle out of my walking path only to have it reset after a certain amount of time passed, my carefully placed gnomes would topple over when I wasn't there, etc.)

 

But as its not really a what I'd play the game for, the ease of placing objects ultimately was a non-issue for me.

Edited May 25, 2010 by Amentep