FO: NV (General Discussion)

[Niten_Ryu]

Isnt the game quite hard if you play on the hardest difficulty with hardcore enabled?

 

It can be hard, at least for certain build and certain companions. For example my explosives / melee character was ripped apart one or two shot by pack of deathclaws. With Boone it was ok as he usually killed one before they reach me and I probably could knock other 2 down. When I tired same with Cass, only way I could survive was to lure 'em one at the time or make huge minefield.

 

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

Basically Ceasars tent full of mobs, deathclaw packs, "Legendary" deathclaw, NCR route final boss, huge packs of those flying bugs (when cass in group) were the difficult battles in the game... and that small room with 3 ceasars elites before the "House always Wins part 2" location. Some of those encounter only happen if you choose certain pathway for the final quest so they are at least in theory optional (and some can be solved with high enough speech).

[HoonDing]

Everything gets ripped apart by deathclaws. Their attacks ignore DT, which is cheating. Also, giant mantises seem to ignore DT completely. So, your

[mkreku]

So that's why ED-E died so quickly in there! He survived the fiends outside, but a few tiny insects took him down in no time.

[Cantousent]

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.

[Orchomene]

I think I'll lower the XP gain when killing critters, like dividing by 5. That should be sufficient to enjoy a game without leveling too quickly. I would then just have to do quest to gain levels.

[LadyCrimson]

@ cant - never felt insulted! Was just saying how it's strange because I do think of myself as much more than a casual player, but not a particularly hardcore one as I'd define it. And especially the past few years, not much of an active one either. I do tend to become very obsessive compulsive when a game (or anything else) truly grabs me & that's when I get hardcore...and start posting on forums...but it's not super typical. It's like how I'll make time to watch all the baseball games, but I don't care about stats/trading at all & couldn't tell you who's in the Hall of Fame or why...

[Kaftan Barlast]

For me, my sense of esthetics is making the game very difficult at times because 1) I refuse to wear ugly armor 2) I dont use guns that look weird like the massively oversized hunting shotgun

 

 

Everything gets ripped apart by deathclaws. Their attacks ignore DT, which is cheating. Also, giant mantises seem to ignore DT completely. So, your

[Tigranes]

I'm going at my first playthrough with Hard/Hardcore and no, it's still too easy. On anything less it probably feels like you're swimming in XP. Due to similar mechanics, FNV suffers from the same disease as FO3 and Oblivion, where after Level 10 you hit that point where you have heaps of money, can get past most skillcheck challenges and can kill most things, and basically the challenge is sapped out of the game. Oblivion had it worst with the bad levelscaling, FNV seems to be slightly better, but still, it's way too easy.

 

And the thing with that is, in an exploration game, a lot of the anticipation, tactical planning, adrenaline, enjoyment, immersion and ultimately reason to keep going really suffers when you are just a God. You don't need to loot that corpse or chest, you already have tens of thousands of caps. You don't care about a quest reward of 200 XP, you're max level and there's 1/3 of the game to go. You don't even bother with your best weapons because you can shoot everything to dead in seconds anyway, etc...

 

Anyway. Despite that FNV is awesomely addictive so far. I've just finished my first round of going through the Strip's families diong all the quests, now going to tackle the outlying regions in the North. Level 22, and to be honest, I should be level 15 or so at this point, I feel. I think a 30% reduction in all XP would do it... or, to do it better, halving the kill & skillcheck XPs, then quarter reduction in quest XPs, then eliminating the stupid Challenge XPs.

 

Bug-wise five or six random crashes in 25-30 hours, but hell, given how bloody instant saving, loading and game starting is, I think it's pretty benign. I might have run into a quest bug with Cass, which might be more annoying if there's more of them, but generally game runs great.

[sorophx]

halving the kill & skillcheck XP

I'd say get rid of it completely.

[mkreku]

Oh yeah, those challenge experience points really were over the top. I mean, the game forces me to defend myself against all sorts of monsters, and every weapon had at least one challenge associated. It is inevitable that I'll be racking these challenges up in no-time. Hell, I even think there was a challenge for completing 50 challenges!

 

I like the challenges, but did they really have to give xp too? If everything you do grants you a heap of xp, you quickly devalue the meaning of xp.

[HoonDing]

Without XP, one might as well go play STALKER, which does both survival & shooting way better. And atmosphere. And AI.

[Enoch]

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.

[RPGmasterBoo]

The trouble with this game is that nothing significant happens until you come to New Vegas. And if you're thorough, there's a lot of playing until then.

 

I didn't mind, but I can see some people being bored.

[Starwars]

And I haven't gotten terribly far yet, but I could see F:NV falling short in the "why should I keep playing?" department for a lot of people. The moment-to-moment gameplay (read: combat) isn't all that compelling-- certainly not enough to keep a player entertained by that alone for 40+ hours. The game presents the player with an interesting mystery at the opening, but it solves it roughly 1/3rd the way through the main plot. Further motivation to continue depends mostly on either compulsive exploratory/completionist motivations, or on the player buying into the gameworld and caring about what happens to it. Everybody has a different tolerance for the former, and the latter is very difficult to pull off.

 

But that is basically the case of the Fallouts. I had no immediate reason to care for Vault 13 in Fallout 1 either. The worlds are designed to be open so that you can roleplay a character with different views each time. It's not driven by emotions like how F3 tried to do it (and failed miserably imo).

I mean, that is basically what you're saying. But it's not a flaw of the game, it's just a different way of going about it than we tend to see in other RPGs today (which are loaded with cutscenes and 'ooh drama and emotions!' moments).

 

What I can see though is how people can get burned out on a playthrough. I think New Vegas is much better played if you're not going crazy trying to do everything there is to do in the gameworld. Create a character concept, do quests which would feel natural to do for that character. I ended my first playthrough at level 25 and I think it would've feel strained to take it further than that. So now I play a whole different character, who does different things, explore different places and ally with different people.

Edited November 9, 2010 by Starwars

[Bos_hybrid]

I think New Vegas is much better played if you're not going crazy trying to do everything there is to do in the gameworld. Create a character concept, do quests which would feel natural to do for that character. I ended my first playthrough at level 25 and I think it would've feel strained to take it further than that. So now I play a whole different character, who does different things, explore different places and ally with different people.

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this.

[Blodhemn]

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

lol

[Slowtrain]

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 remember when I played FO3 without a slow-down mod. My pc was level 14 and I had only explored a tiny portion of the map and hadn't done any quests except the megaton ones. I realized at that point that I was going to hit the level cap long long long before I had explored even a moderate portion of the world and followed the quest lines further. So I dl'ed a mod which increased the XP required to gain levels by a huge amount and started over. Much better experience.

 

 

I have no problem with level caps, but once I hit them I usually stop playing. I don't find crpgs interesting enough to play without the gameplay mechanic of character development engaging me. The leveling speed of Fallout 3 (and Oblivion) was so out of whack with the size of the game, it was totoally ridiculous.

 

There's no need to have super fast leveling in a giant game with so much to do. I can only assume that it has to do with the average adolesecent having the attention span of a gnat and getting bored if they don't level every 10 minutes.

[Slowtrain]

As it was now, I spent 75% of the game being level 30 and not increasing my character one iota, except for the occasional skill book and unique weapon. It got boring fast.

 

 

Yeah, see I couldn't play like this. It would be too boring CRPGs need the carrot of character development to keepme going. Generally speaking, although there may be the occasional exception.

 

I much prefer that a crpg be balanced so that the level cap/max development levels are essentially unreachable except through extreme effort. Like in Fallout 1. I finished my first playthrough at around level 15 (Level cap 21) and it was only in a later playthrough that through massive farming of xp I was able to reach the cap ( just to check out the sniper perk!).

[sorophx]

Like in Fallout 1. I finished my first playthrough at around level 15 (Level cap 21) and it was only in a later playthrough that through massive farming of xp I was able to reach the cap ( just to check out the sniper perk!).

exactly

[Niten_Ryu]

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

lol

 

I wonder what's the funny part? Did I miss some obvious solution (very hard / hardcore) ?

 

I didn't put any points on speech or barter. Ceasar was dead (I chose "do Ceasar still give you orders from beyond the grave") and battle couldn't be avoided. I'm buffeded with med-x, slasher, psycho and wear light armor (whole game in light armor to make sneaking optimal). Boss does power attack and I fall down (getting up takes long time and this was the only encounter where I'd hit the dirt). At this point there's at least 3-5 adds (tough legionares). Boss moves much faster then my Agi 5 character. And has huge amount of health.

 

In hardcore mode health items ain't instant. That's not even the main problem as I could survive rather long time but my companions would die and at some point and then boss would stunlock me with the help of his numerous adds. If you manage to keep distance to boss, it starts to throw granades. Thankfully my character resist 'em rather good, thanks to certain perk but explosions can still throw you around.

[Tale]

Without XP, one might as well go play STALKER, which does both survival & shooting way better. And atmosphere. And AI.

Is that really what you see when you look at this game? Shooting, survival, and XP?

 

I should hope you're in the minority. Let me know when Stalker gets casinos, companions, and complex side quests.

[Orchomene]

I'm going at my first playthrough with Hard/Hardcore and no, it's still too easy. On anything less it probably feels like you're swimming in XP. Due to similar mechanics, FNV suffers from the same disease as FO3 and Oblivion, where after Level 10 you hit that point where you have heaps of money, can get past most skillcheck challenges and can kill most things, and basically the challenge is sapped out of the game. Oblivion had it worst with the bad levelscaling, FNV seems to be slightly better, but still, it's way too easy.

 

In most locations, but with a level 25 I've had a very tough time at quarry junction. I had to reload several times before finding a good tactic against those deathclaws that kept coming by groups of three.

[pmp10]

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

lol

 

I wonder what's the funny part? Did I miss some obvious solution (very hard / hardcore) ?

 

I didn't put any points on speech or barter. Ceasar was dead (I chose "do Ceasar still give you orders from beyond the grave") and battle couldn't be avoided. I'm buffeded with med-x, slasher, psycho and wear light armor (whole game in light armor to make sneaking optimal). Boss does power attack and I fall down (getting up takes long time and this was the only encounter where I'd hit the dirt). At this point there's at least 3-5 adds (tough legionares). Boss moves much faster then my Agi 5 character. And has huge amount of health.

What level were you and did you make a stealth oriented character?

Final bosses are immune to sneak and without higher level weapons they can hardly be hurt at all.

[Orchomene]

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

lol

 

I wonder what's the funny part? Did I miss some obvious solution (very hard / hardcore) ?

 

I didn't put any points on speech or barter. Ceasar was dead (I chose "do Ceasar still give you orders from beyond the grave") and battle couldn't be avoided. I'm buffeded with med-x, slasher, psycho and wear light armor (whole game in light armor to make sneaking optimal). Boss does power attack and I fall down (getting up takes long time and this was the only encounter where I'd hit the dirt). At this point there's at least 3-5 adds (tough legionares). Boss moves much faster then my Agi 5 character. And has huge amount of health.

 

In hardcore mode health items ain't instant. That's not even the main problem as I could survive rather long time but my companions would die and at some point and then boss would stunlock me with the help of his numerous adds. If you manage to keep distance to boss, it starts to throw granades. Thankfully my character resist 'em rather good, thanks to certain perk but explosions can still throw you around.

 

A first sniper shot from distance to get him near zero HP is helping a lot. Then he comes for the small discussion and you may be able to hit him with melee/unarmed.

[Blodhemn]

I went for full NCR route so final battle was stupidly difficult. I had to mine the bosses pathway + his retreat location. Obviously a metagame solution for the problem but didn't want to load several hours old save, so I could resupply more efficently for the final battle. Oh yeah, and I wanted to keep companions alive.

 

lol

 

I wonder what's the funny part? Did I miss some obvious solution (very hard / hardcore) ?

 

I didn't put any points on speech or barter. Ceasar was dead (I chose "do Ceasar still give you orders from beyond the grave") and battle couldn't be avoided. I'm buffeded with med-x, slasher, psycho and wear light armor (whole game in light armor to make sneaking optimal). Boss does power attack and I fall down (getting up takes long time and this was the only encounter where I'd hit the dirt). At this point there's at least 3-5 adds (tough legionares). Boss moves much faster then my Agi 5 character. And has huge amount of health.

 

In hardcore mode health items ain't instant. That's not even the main problem as I could survive rather long time but my companions would die and at some point and then boss would stunlock me with the help of his numerous adds. If you manage to keep distance to boss, it starts to throw granades. Thankfully my character resist 'em rather good, thanks to certain perk but explosions can still throw you around.

 

I was laughing at the solution of having to mine the boss's surroundings so meticulously and the way you retold your predicament. Basically, having a laugh at your misfortunes because it's funny in a way.