Barter and Speech

A

APTYP

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
How many of you spent your precious skill points on the Barter skill? Not many, I see. Sure, you can buy stuff cheaper, but you can find or steal most of the precious weapons and armor anyway, so why would you need to spend the skill points on Barter when you have Small Guns, Energy Guns and Science skills below perfect?

That's why I suggest to unite the Barter and Speech skills into one - after all, the haggling is all about the speech.



http://www.nma-fallout.com/cgi-bin/forum/ForumID5/786.shtml#11

zero-x's bitter words after his encounter with roshambo:

"I agree with you but there comes a fuckin point i dont know who roquirbo thinks he is but I at least you didnt really criticize me and i appreciate that i hate people who fuck with my ideas when i didnt say shit to em and yes he is the kind of guy i would take a scalpel tear his head open the take an hammer use the end to samsh through the medulla and use the nail pull as a pry to pull back the top of the skull revealing a brain (small but brain nontheless)and take desert eagle magnum and blow it through his fucking spine as he still breath and then rip out his heart and show him how black it is before he dies but as you said thats illegal well cya"
 
Guessed that it would be a good idea.

Talking about skils I thought about the books. How will they dissappear after reading!? And how would u learn more by reading the same book over and over again? I actually thought of spliting one book into a few, like there is a set of 5 books of "Deans Electronics", and so on. You can still read them for unlimited times, but the chance of you getting a rise in skill would be lower and lower.

e.g.
first time u read, 100% chance 5% skill up.
second time, 50% chance 4% skill up
and so on...
so at 20th time, u'll get:

1% chance, 1% up.....
 
This sounds familiar: something doesn't work quite right so we should just remove it. It's that Oakden Attitude again, and I don't like it. I think a better idea would be to make stealing more difficult and killing people to get items more costly. If ammo was less readily available (The "wider variety of guns and ammo, but less of each type" idea) then putting points in barter might start to look like a good idea.
 
>How many of you spent your
>precious skill points on the
>Barter skill? Not many, I
>see. Sure, you can buy
>stuff cheaper, but you can
>find or steal most of
>the precious weapons and armor
>anyway, so why would you
>need to spend the skill
>points on Barter when you
>have Small Guns, Energy Guns
>and Science skills below perfect?

Yeah, I remember my friend was thinking of spending a tag on his speech skill until I advised him otherwise. It is just plain worthless since all the speech options depend on your intelligence and charisma, not really your speech skill.

>That's why I suggest to unite
>the Barter and Speech skills
>into one - after all,
>the haggling is all about
>the speech.

There are quite a few "lemon" skills like:

First Aid (totally worthless)
Doctor (except for the ability to heal your broken bones/eyes, this is worthless, stimpacks are better)
Outdoorsman (since when does this really matter?)
Lock Picks (this one could be used more instead)
Gambling (well.. I never use it).
Stealing (just keep reloading).

For bartering, you should be able to haggle with the store owners over prices, maybe then it will be useful. For speech, maybe have more instances where persuasion is more important than just knowing what to say.

For stealings, you shouldn't even be able to up the stat yourself. If you successfully steal, you gain skills in stealing, and there are certain people and places that REQUIRE a certain skill level or you will ALWAYS fail. NPCs should also be more observant when I put dynamite in their store to blow open their stockroom door....

For lockpicking, the player should gain experience working with specific types of locks. It would also be fun if you had to actually mess with the locks themselves and risk getting caught in the act.

The first aid skill could be improved by letting the skill dictate how many health points you recover per unit of time when wandering the desert.

Maybe the doctor skill could be used for removing bullets from your buddies or yourself.. still.. it seems kind of worthless.

-Xotor-

[div align=center]

http://www.poseidonet.f2s.com/files/nostupid.gif
[/div]
 
>If you successfully steal, you gain skills in stealing

Well the idea is good but it might happen out that you may continue to steal on a same guy which have a low "resistance" against steal (like that singing guy in VC) to gain exp and skill points....

>First Aid (totally worthless)
>Doctor (except for the ability to heal your broken bones/eyes, >this is worthless, stimpacks are better)

This two are useless only from the temples to klamath in FO2. I guess it would only be useful if:

Poison, radiation, addiction won't go off by resting, and drugs for curing them are rare. In this way the two skills would be a bit useful...

BTW is there any new skills to add in after we get rid of those "lemons" ?
 
Xotor:

It'd be nice if a Speech skill determined the success of telling a lie :) Just like in haggling/barter :) :) Hey, I found a new player class (besides Fighter, Thief, and Diplomat) - a Businessman! :) Goes nicely with the idea of Elite-ish Fallout, too.
First Aid would be useful if it could work in combat mode, sort of a small but renewable (with time) supply of stimpacks. And the Doctor skill could heal much more health points (15 points min.) than it does right now and can be applied without limit, but it could only be used outside combat mode.
Outdoorsman skill - how about reducing the time penalty to travel across the rough terrain, and maybe adding a bonus to radiation and poison resistance? Combined with the chance of noticing the enemy, I think it'd make it much more useful.
As for stealing skill... I'm thinking about skill vs. perception contest, and if the NPC fails a Luck roll, the item will be successfully "expropriated" :) But the whole saving system is a major problem with all random rolls, and there is no easy solution to it without changing the saving system.

Doyle:

I'm not proposing to "just remove it", and you will see it if you will read my post again. A skill must prove its right for existence, and be added/removed/modified on a need basis, just like what I'm proposing. Right now, both Barter and Speech are pretty useless when compared to other skills like Small/Energy Guns and Science, but together they just might become a great skill to tag.

InSaNe:

I'd rewrite the most of the skill system, but that will hardly look like a Fallout game... Just like making self-increasing skills might be too revolutionary for Fallout. Nah, I say we tinker with skills and their implementations, patching some of the holes in gameplay, and leave the revolutionary stuff for our own games :)



http://www.nma-fallout.com/cgi-bin/forum/ForumID5/786.shtml#11

zero-x's bitter words after his encounter with roshambo:

"I agree with you but there comes a fuckin point i dont know who roquirbo thinks he is but I at least you didnt really criticize me and i appreciate that i hate people who fuck with my ideas when i didnt say shit to em and yes he is the kind of guy i would take a scalpel tear his head open the take an hammer use the end to samsh through the medulla and use the nail pull as a pry to pull back the top of the skull revealing a brain (small but brain nontheless)and take desert eagle magnum and blow it through his fucking spine as he still breath and then rip out his heart and show him how black it is before he dies but as you said thats illegal well cya"
 
"A skill must prove its right for existence"

A skill is not a living thing, it is a tool. Like all tools, the wielder must *know* himself and *know* the tool. If the user does not *know* himself and does not *know* the tool, then he can never hope to use the tool properly. You say that the skill is flawed, but to that I offer a question: How can you be sure that it is not the developer that is flawed in his implementation?

"together they just might become a great skill to tag."

To this I offer a question: If both skills apart are useless, how can both skills together be good?
 
>First Aid would be useful if
>it could work in combat
>mode, sort of a small
>but renewable (with time) supply
>of stimpacks. And the Doctor
>skill could heal much more
>health points (15 points min.)
>than it does right now
>and can be applied without
>limit, but it could only
>be used outside combat mode.

Maybe major wounds should actually continue to sap away hit points and minor ones heal less if you don't apply some sort of dressing to them. I mean, there is infection, wear and tear on the injured parts, and other factors that would slow the healing process. Stimpacks are great, but they're kind of unrealistic and take away from the First-Aid/Doctor skills. Plus they're so cheap that it is better just to up your combat or stealing skills to take stimpacks than to research better Doctor or First Aid skills.

>Outdoorsman skill - how about reducing
>the time penalty to travel
>across the rough terrain, and
>maybe adding a bonus to
>radiation and poison resistance?

Reduced travel time would be good, that would make the skill a lot more worthwhile.

-Xotor-

[div align=center]

http://www.poseidonet.f2s.com/files/nostupid.gif
[/div]
 
>Maybe major wounds should actually continue to sap away hit >points and minor ones heal less if you don't apply some sort of >dressing to them. I mean, there is infection, wear and tear on >the injured parts, and other factors that would slow the >healing process. Stimpacks are great, but they're kind of >unrealistic and take away from the First-Aid/Doctor skills. >Plus they're so cheap that it is better just to up your combat >or stealing skills to take stimpacks than to research better >Doctor or First Aid skills.

Yes that a great idea. You could just make stimpacks REEEAALLLY expensive, too. Combat characters probably wouldn't have any money troubles with all the killing and looting and all.

Doyle:

>To this I offer a question: If both skills apart are useless, >how can both skills together be good?

Because you can only choose 3 tag skills. Having them as one might make it more useful.

-Smaug

"I am become death. The destroyer of worlds."
 
Well, the developer WAS flawed. That's why his creation was flawed. Maybe they didn't have time, or they thought it was a pretty balanced skill or whatever.

The skills are not useless, but doubtlessly much less useful than some other skills I mentioned above. Of course, you still need to tweak the Speech skill (maybe make it determine the success of lying, as I said before).



http://www.nma-fallout.com/cgi-bin/forum/ForumID5/786.shtml#11

zero-x's bitter words after his encounter with roshambo:

"I agree with you but there comes a fuckin point i dont know who roquirbo thinks he is but I at least you didnt really criticize me and i appreciate that i hate people who fuck with my ideas when i didnt say shit to em and yes he is the kind of guy i would take a scalpel tear his head open the take an hammer use the end to samsh through the medulla and use the nail pull as a pry to pull back the top of the skull revealing a brain (small but brain nontheless)and take desert eagle magnum and blow it through his fucking spine as he still breath and then rip out his heart and show him how black it is before he dies but as you said thats illegal well cya"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top