Prone Squanderer
A bit of a Sillius Soddus.
It is in New Vegas, however given how easy it can be to repair stuff it's unlikely you'll see them that much, at least later on in game.
EDIT:
Classic Fallout Gameplay Flaws (Also New Vegas)
- Thread starter TerminallyChill
- Start date
It is in New Vegas, however given how easy it can be to repair stuff it's unlikely you'll see them that much, at least later on in game.
EDIT:
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
I think the fact that I wasn't sure about a mechanic in a game which I have played and studied obsessively for years should tell you everything you need to know about New Vegas's repair system.
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
You can run into the jamming animation mostly early on because you get mostly guns with crap condition and there aren't many guns lying around to fix them. After that though, very rare to run into that animation.
Then again, i play always on Hard and above, so enemies take more damage to die. Therefore increasing the chance to get the animation in early game.
Last edited:
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
My usual play style of "collect every wrench, roll of duct tape, and scrap electronics pile you see" probably doesn't help my chances of seeing these animations either, since I'm pretty much always walking around with 10 weapon repair kits. Talk about bias...
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I also think New Vegas repair system isn't all that bad. You get some kick ass perks if you invest into Repair like Jury Rigging (love this one because it makes repairing unique weapons much easier). So investing into Repair is not absolutely worthless.
I do agree if it kept the Fallout 3 thing of only being able to repair until a certain condition based on your current skill would have made the repair system better.
I do agree if it kept the Fallout 3 thing of only being able to repair until a certain condition based on your current skill would have made the repair system better.
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
Don't get me wrong, Jury Rigging is cool, but it's largely a convenience thanks to the existence of shit like weapon repair kits and the lack of a condition cap. As it stands, the repair mechanics in New Vegas are way too easy, even on the hardest difficulties, which is likely because I don't think Josh Sawyer really wanted equipment degredation in the first place. This is also related to there being far too much available ammo in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Limiting ammo and making weapons harder to repair forces players to use alternative strategies and elevates the value of perks like Jury Rigging.
On a side note, even without the perk, investing into Repair was already made more useful through the crafting system and its combination with Traps.
Ediros
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
To me weapon and armour durability is the thing that really is the reason the repair is like this. I mean, if I had to look for a power armour to fix my Enclave Power Armour after each fight, it would be too much of a hassle.
There wasn't this system in the first game. In real life, one armour fails to protect it becomes worthless, in Fallout, you could get shot and never repair anything.
So weapons and armour having durability is not a bad idea, but the pace at which they degrade is absolutely ridiculous. I always cheat and give myself Raul's perks to not spend thousands of cap on repairs after every fight.
It was even worse in shitout 3, where you started to lose damage and armour almost immediately.
And let's not forget shitout 4, which scrapped the durability for almost everything, except power armour, which can be destroyed by a baby gun, due to the way it works.
There wasn't this system in the first game. In real life, one armour fails to protect it becomes worthless, in Fallout, you could get shot and never repair anything.
So weapons and armour having durability is not a bad idea, but the pace at which they degrade is absolutely ridiculous. I always cheat and give myself Raul's perks to not spend thousands of cap on repairs after every fight.
It was even worse in shitout 3, where you started to lose damage and armour almost immediately.
And let's not forget shitout 4, which scrapped the durability for almost everything, except power armour, which can be destroyed by a baby gun, due to the way it works.
President_Peaches
First time out of the vault
Its kinda a shame that it will be rare for most players to see those animations. I agree with what others have said that the repair skill should have worked more like F3. I think to balance it out repair kits should have repaired more of the item (but still limited to player's repair skill) and been available from vendors.
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
Yeah, I completely agree with this. The system in Fallout 3 is actually pretty decent, but the numbers are awful. A fully repaired gun should take thousands of shots before you see any negative effects (unless your Luck is horrible or it takes combat damage). It should ideally take a ton of work to repair things, but once repaired they'll take a ton of abuse. Equipment in Fallout 3 and New Vegas behaves like it was all made out of cheap plastic.
Something else Fallout 3 improved over the originals? Science. While the hacking minigame is fucking atrocious, the implementation of terminals as a sort of alternate lock for high tech doors and information was a nice touch, if slightly overused. It gave the Science skill more of a consistent functional use, and reinforced Fallout's design philosophy of providing multiple ways to solve one problem. Deus Ex Human Revolution (which also has an equally annoying hacking minigame), expanded on this further by routinely giving computers access to robots and security cameras, which allowed players to fuck with enemies by proxy.
President_Peaches
First time out of the vault
But at the same time, the Bestheda Fallouts got rid of being able to break open doors and safes with explosives, so its not a net gain. I agree that it is quite convenient for many builds to be able to use either science or lockpicking.
Prone Squanderer
A bit of a Sillius Soddus.
It could be worse, they could be Far Cry 2 guns.
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I enjoyed Far Cry 2 quite a lot but damn, did the guns break so easily. I had to go to a safehouse regularly to replace my currents weapons for ones in better condition.
As soon i saw my weapon just looking a bit rusty, i just knew i had to replace them or run the risk of the thing breaking in my hand.
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
Yeah, it's a real shame there were no Fallouts where you could get into the same room by picking a lock, hacking a computer, or blowing something up. This may sound redundant at first, but if you take into account that each of these methods could require a different level of skill in each, it adds a lot of depth to the game.
@Gizmojunk mentioned in another thread that an action-for-action combat system like the ones found in games like SuperHot or the Mystery Dungeon series would have really fit well in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I have no issues with a first person viewpoint or shooters, but in a game with such rigid feeling action controls, turn based combat would have been the better route in my eyes. Fallout 4 did address a lot of these issues by implementing things like a dynamic crosshair, true recoil, and enemy knockback. It's still disappointing these were the kinds of things they chose to prioritize, though...
James Snowscoran
Still Mildly Glowing
Redundant in the sense that they didn't have enough content associated with them to justify being separate skills.
Traps had some use in one place, Mr. Bishop's top floor, for his assassination or breaking silently into the safe. But you could assassinate him with just repair anyway. None of the regular traps in the game were deadly unless you were on your last HP for whatever reason. The raised plates were detectable without any investments in traps and door traps needed to be checked for actively, which I don't think many people did on every door and container in the game.
Barter was pointless because it didn't affect selling prices, so since you could always get a good price for your looted weaponry you typically had enough stuff to trade for whatever you needed at any point in the game.
Gambling was a binary thing in that you either had enough points in it that you could just hold down the '1' button for infinite slot machine winnings, or it was low enough that you didn't bother with gambling. Of course, the extra money was largely superfluous because the economy didn't work very well as described above.
Throwing was a supremely worthless combat skill with no real uses except for the highly situational and rare pulse grenade. You can observe the poor yakuza in combat with mobsters and see how well it worked out for them.
First aid was just a gimped version of doctor but with skill books. Didn't add anything to the game.
I think Sneak and Steal also qualifies as really niche. There aren't a whole lot of places where they come in particularly handy.
The core problem is that F1/2's SPECIAL system of character creation had a lot of pitfalls for new players. It's very easy to come out of it with a supremely gimped character if you don't know which skills are worth tagging and what traits are worth picking ahead of time. Then you find yourself able to neither beat Klint in combat nor talk your way out of fighting him and quit before finishing the tutorial.
NMLevesque
Commie Ghost
I used stealth in most of my battles in both games actually. With a long ranged weapon it basically means taking a series of free shots by ending and reentering combat without alerting anyone. Or getting a free hit and forcing only one enemy to come closer while the rest stand around uninterested in fighting.
D
Deleted member 93956
Guest
For gimped skills for instance, the completely logical in a subsistance apocalyptic economy "Barter" skill is basically pointless in Fallout 1. There's just basically nothing meaningful to buy, let alone anything you actually need to progress further past the Rope on Shady Sands. And you can loot/steal them anyway. Luckily all the other games made a good use of the skill as usually relative to the need to ressuply. Fallout 2 generally had it better because of the exsistance of ridiculously expensive rare weapons and other items with high price points. AFAIK bribes were also more common and reliable.
A good use of the resource management abilities of the character plus good loot distribution to feed back into it can make the gameplay loop way more engaging for the most part. I'd say the Fallout series is actually quite good at this but in every single installment they have their respective caveats. That's why I like when they at least try to embrace that like in Dead Money.
A good use of the resource management abilities of the character plus good loot distribution to feed back into it can make the gameplay loop way more engaging for the most part. I'd say the Fallout series is actually quite good at this but in every single installment they have their respective caveats. That's why I like when they at least try to embrace that like in Dead Money.
James Snowscoran
Still Mildly Glowing
I'm familiar with the technique, and it's a valid point. I don't use it myself since it feels abusive of the fairly basic AI, and I do feel that it qualifies as niche- it's definitely not obvious enough that most new players would know or find out about it over the course of a normal playthrough.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
@James Snowscoran Redundant means duplicate or overlapping. None of the skills overlapped. It was a deliberate point of the game that differently skilled characters could succeed by their own means.
________
________
Sneak was superb. It hid the PC's actions from NPCs. You could sneak a peek into someone's containers—while they were in the room. In combat, if you started the round in Sneak mode, and killed your opponent on your first turn—nobody nearby would notice it.
________
The Doctor skill was an expensive development path; it could not be improved with books. To be a doctor, the PC had to invest skill points to improve it; and obviously this takes away from other skill development. It's a slow skill (depending on injuries; the more injuries the longer it takes). Its intended use is to correct crippling injuries —this is beyond the First Aid skill. Doctor gave 50XP per successful use, and (like First Aid), there was a consumable Doctor's Kit (bag) that provided a bonus to that skill with each use of it.
Both skills were limited to three uses per day. What this means is that the PC had six opportunities per day, to heal their character or NPC party members (or anyone else!), but only three of these (not six) are attempts to undo crippling injuries. The player has to decide who to risk using the Doctor skill on, and then use the First Aid for anyone else.
It was easily possible to have 80% first Aid, and 35% Doctor. The Doctor skill was a poor (usually less reliable) replacement for First Aid, but it could work to just heal hitpoints in a pinch... but it's a waste, because there could be crippling injuries later on that day, and the attempts would have been used up.
Any PC with 80%-150% in Doctor skill had certainly built their character as a Doctor, instead of a Weapon's Specialist, thief, or diplomat. Such characters serve well as medics for a whole troop of combat NPCs... because those are the ones that would probably be doing the fighting.
_____
________
The point of Barter was to convince/or connive a higher value for trading the PC's goods to others.
Gambling was disappointing, in that it was a skill for winning, instead of a skill for cheat detecting. But it was a way for the PC to easily (and legally) acquire caps.
What game did you play, that the grenades weren't a godsend? ...and used any time the enemies clumped together on the field? Of course there were also throwing knives that used the skill.
________
Steal was useful for stealing... from anyone; and you could give them stuff too—sometimes unwanted stuff.
Sneak was superb. It hid the PC's actions from NPCs. You could sneak a peek into someone's containers—while they were in the room. In combat, if you started the round in Sneak mode, and killed your opponent on your first turn—nobody nearby would notice it.
________
First Aid is not as you say. Fallout 1 & 2 had two medical skills. First Aid was for healing hitpoints, and it gave 25 XP. First Aid allowed for any character style to have access to some level of basic recovery without consumable items. First Aid also could be easily (and permanently) improved via books (with no —long term— need to invest skill points), and received a bonus when using a First Aid kit; this bonus was consumed with each use of the item.
The Doctor skill was an expensive development path; it could not be improved with books. To be a doctor, the PC had to invest skill points to improve it; and obviously this takes away from other skill development. It's a slow skill (depending on injuries; the more injuries the longer it takes). Its intended use is to correct crippling injuries —this is beyond the First Aid skill. Doctor gave 50XP per successful use, and (like First Aid), there was a consumable Doctor's Kit (bag) that provided a bonus to that skill with each use of it.
Both skills were limited to three uses per day. What this means is that the PC had six opportunities per day, to heal their character or NPC party members (or anyone else!), but only three of these (not six) are attempts to undo crippling injuries. The player has to decide who to risk using the Doctor skill on, and then use the First Aid for anyone else.
It was easily possible to have 80% first Aid, and 35% Doctor. The Doctor skill was a poor (usually less reliable) replacement for First Aid, but it could work to just heal hitpoints in a pinch... but it's a waste, because there could be crippling injuries later on that day, and the attempts would have been used up.
Any PC with 80%-150% in Doctor skill had certainly built their character as a Doctor, instead of a Weapon's Specialist, thief, or diplomat. Such characters serve well as medics for a whole troop of combat NPCs... because those are the ones that would probably be doing the fighting.
_____
This is a non-issue for anyone who read the manual. Certain skills are cautioned as being for certain build types.
Last edited:
TerminallyChill
Be excellent to each other.
Ok, but he did clarify what he meant. Many of these skills did not have enough content associated with them, and should have probably been merged as a result. Good RPG design demands that you utilize every possible attribute roughly equally so as to avoid a dominant strategy. There are many skills in the original games that are objectively better than others because the developers implemented them more frequently.
With the janky way that Barter worked, it should probably just have been a Speech or Charisma calculation. Gambling should have been a Luck calculation. Throwing might have been better if it was related to Strength or Unarmed, although I do like how Fallout 3 handled this by merging it with Traps to create Explosives. I don't know what anybody who thinks Sneak is niche is smoking, but it did need to be merged with Steal. First Aid and Doctor were always idiotic to have separate, especially in a game where you can press Z to automatically heal yourself.
Truly well designed games don't need a manual.
I would also like to point out that in many RPGs, you can play as multiple races. It's a missed opportunity that between Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas, you can never build a ghoul or mutant character.
Obsidian wanted the player to be able to play as a Mutant or Ghoul in FNV. Bethesda told them they shouldn't pursue that idea.