Dogmeat was better as a snack than as an ally.

D

deadsanta

First time out of the vault
Seriously, I've had 3 allies now: Sydney, Charon and Dogmeat, and I cannot stand any of them. Here are the bad points:

1. The AI NPC pathing in this game is as broken or moreso than FO1-2, how many times have you watched Dogmeat run back and forth in front of a curb, a hole or a small rock, somehow unable to navigate past it successfully?
2. All NPC's will aggro whatever happens to be nearby, running through locked doors and getting stuck in terrain, or getting way the hell ahead of you, such that they are just insta-killed by a train of 6-7 mobs. The only reason I save/load anymore is a vain attempt to keep my allies alive.
3. Inventory control. It's worse than FO2, it might be as bad as FO1, I can't remember if you could do more with your allies in that game, it certainly felt like it.
4. Shot blocking. Typically a fight will start and then a second later Charon will run to pb range with his shottie while I spend most of the fight trying to get a clear shot on his opponent. "Engage from range" or something would be nice, "Stay out of my fire arc" would be better, and you know they can do it, since the game already has psychic roaches that avoid my cross-hairs.
5. Door/path blocking. Seriously they need to make the NPCs collision-free or make you able to just shove them all over the place, waking up with dogmeat blocking my bedroom door and spending 30 secs moving him every single day gets old fast.
6. Some indoor maps flat out broken for NPC's. They will just refuse to enter some areas, doors on interior maps especially, Charon is just sitting outside a zone-border interior door in the Nuka-Cola factory as I type this. He isn't trying to reach me by other means, he's just refusing to enter the offices. I've had this happen a few times now, Dunwich bldg, a couple others.

NPC's are just collectable headaches, pick them up and then leave them at your house as living decorations is my advice. In my game, Dogmeat had a heroic death in the Reilly's Rangers mission arc, bravely charging down a hall, and around two corners, into a group of supermutants with miniguns.

I honored his sacrifice by eating him with a side of Potato Crisps in the hospital vending area (There is no chapel). He was delicious.
 
deadsanta said:
. In my game, Dogmeat had a heroic death in the Reilly's Rangers mission arc, bravely charging down a hall, and around two corners, into a group of supermutants with miniguns.

I honored his sacrifice by eating him with a side of Potato Crisps in the hospital vending area (There is no chapel). He was delicious.
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take some redbull with you it helps a lot to ease the pain (honorable sacrifice), and flyyyyy
 
Dogmeat just dies way too fast to be useful and all the other helpers seriously fuck up the third person camera. Telling them to stay put usually ends with them wandering off and getting themselves killed.

The only follower I've liked so far is the woman in the declaration of independence quest.

It's really a shame, because Fallout 2 was so much cooler as this weird sort of Motley Crew of Outcasts Versus the World adventure
 
Agreed, they're more liabilities than allies.

A particularly memorable moment was when I was with Star Paladin something and stumbled into a raider compound. After killing the raiders, I saw an electrified cage with a Super Mutant Behemoth inside. And guess what... the stupid shit Star Paladin takes out her super sledge, opens the gate (the electricity effect only prevents the player and behemoth from opening it) and I'm sure you can imagine what happens next.

Also, every five minutes I look back and Dogmeat plus my follower are both gone, stuck on some invisible piece of terrain. Sometimes they'll reappear behind you after a while. Another time, after using Star Paladin as a pack mule, she disappeared - permanently, along with all my stuff. Presumably getting stuck in a piece of terrain then getting slaughtered by wasteland critters.
 
Crap, I hope I don't have to deal with this stuff when I play through the game. But I probably will.

Why hasn't the AI gotten better? Oblivion and Morrowind had very very similar problems. :|

You'd think the staff would have learned by now.
 
At point 5.

That's why i told Dogmeat to stay put next to the bedroom (where the table and chair is). Now a days he isn't in my way no more.

Imo the most anoying thing about Allies is that they tend to shoot when i tend to get past that 1 mirelurk. Instead of having to deal off with 4 or 5 off them...
 
Lonewulf said:
Crap, I hope I don't have to deal with this stuff when I play through the game. But I probably will.

Why hasn't the AI gotten better? Oblivion and Morrowind had very very similar problems. :|

You'd think the staff would have learned by now.
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They were too busy staying "true" to the series, plus crafting an epic storyline.

Seriously, I don't know why they didn't address the Radiant AI. It seems there were quite a few issues from Oblivion that weren't addressed, but maybe they'll fix it in Oblivion part Deux.

\
 
Pope Viper said:
They were too busy staying "true" to the series, plus crafting an epic storyline.

Seriously, I don't know why they didn't address the Radiant AI. It seems there were quite a few issues from Oblivion that weren't addressed, but maybe they'll fix it in Oblivion part Deux.

\
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Do you mean in ES:V? Or the two OBV X packs that made things worse?
 
Check out the Left 4 Dead demo. Now the A.I. you get for buddies in that, in the Single Player mode, are excellent. They will follow you anywhere you go. Jump over obstacles and debris, are 'aware' of the environment, duck through vents, they will save your ass, cover you, and heal you.

F3 A.I. amounts to simply crap. They are horrible and how this fact is overlooked (among many of the other GLARING issues) in these hundreds of ridiculous reviews is beyond me.
 
Rev. Layle said:
I know you can push followers out of the way, I have to do with Fawkes all the time :)
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The real problem with Fawkes occurs when he's standing directly in front of the door in an area where there's obstructions on both sides of him. It can be near impossible to push him in such a situation., and often you can't get a line to the door to activate it through him.

The AI is definitely one of the most serious flaws of the game.
 
The allies you can get in the game seem to only be good in certain situations. While watching my roomie use Dogmeat, he would handily dispatch raiders and radroaches, or other critters of the waste, but anytime a super mutant rears it's head, the poor pooch would get shot up, thus resulting in reload...after reload...after etc. I personally just got Dogmeat, but I've had Sydney for awhile now, and she was pretty useful. She could take out anything up to a normal super mutant by herself, and no matter where I went in the game, she had little trouble following me, despite her lack of an ability to jump.

Granted, I'm playing the 360 version, and from what I've read the difference in problems between the different consoles is huge. I also have no interest in squad based shooters, or other games that rely heavily on team members with AI, so I really couldn't make a comparison to other games. I'm just saying, if your reading these and have yet to play the game, don't panic and think that Bethesda totally botched everything. There are mistakes with the AI, but with a game of this size, it's going to happen. You don't need the NPC's help most of the time, so it's not like it's ruining the game.
 
heavy_beat,

Most forum residents have played and loved the old Fallout series. There you could have more followers (based on your Charisma), and they offered quite some more personality and interaction.

Granted, they did have a tendancy to spray your back with bursts or run into your line of fire.

As an isometric game, pathfinding wasn't much of an option in a 2D world.

A sidenote: Comparing Fallout 3 to "other squadbased shooters" is a quite curious thing to read. As Fallout 3 was supposed to be a RPG. Or, so we hoped :s
 
I completely agree about ai paths, I'm on 360 and here's a couple of my experiences:

Dogmeat got stuck behind some rocks and couldn't get out at all, I was going to leave him there and hope he spawned away or something, but him being stuck was causing the game to stutter every 5 seconds, it didn't stop until I killed him(I then loaded a previous save to keep the dog).

[spoiler:0c82bdff02]In Vault 87 I left Fawkes in there when I got the GECK, I went back there with Cross later in the game, knowing I would have to part with her to get fawkes. When I got to the hallway where fawkes' cell was she didn't enter with me. I went back outside the door and cross was lying on the ground, so I went back in the hallway to get fawkes.
When I went to Fawkes' cell he was inside it, but now he had a sledgehammer, when I talked to him through the intercom he acted as though I had let him out of the cell in the first place and the dialog I was given is the dialog you are supposed to get if you meet him at the entrance to underworld if you let him out, which I never did. I told him to follow me even though he was still locked inside, then I walked away down the hallway and he magically appeared outside of the cell and was able to follow me.
I went back to the door that cross was at and somehow she was now on the inside of the door, but still laying down on the ground. She wasn't dead yet though, I found that out when I shot her with a dart gun and she said "Ow!", then I killed her.[/spoiler:0c82bdff02]
 
Agreed, Dogmeat sucks. I got him in the Scrapyard and he died by charging the raiders at the Wheaton Armory. I ate him for good measure.
 
Weird, my experience has been that Dogmeat picks up the first enemy, I give that guy a few shots to help him out then I go off and kill others. He's never died, yet.

But I can tell you one thing, if he dies he dies, I won't reload to save the mutt. I went through Wheaten Armory just fine with him though, I'm also now working on the Talon Fort(slow but surely) and Dogmeats never even gotten close to dying, even when I toss missles into the front lines with him and the baddies.

I do agree that most of the allies are worthless though. I had the robot for a while, he was a great mule but everything he attacked first never gave me experience, so I fired his ass.

The dog seems useful though, my perception is low, and apparently Dogmeats is hella high, he growls and points and has come in quite handy so far.
 
Oh man, I totally forgot that you don't get xp for non-dogmeat kills (Charon and Star, i've seen), what's that about? Is it it just last-hit, or is it some % of damage done that determines if you get a reward.

Also, the lack of level-up for your NPCs kinda stinks too... don't they improve over time like me? I know that Dogmeat and Charon never got any better (Well, Charon's armor did, thanks to some dead enclave, but that's minimal).

Also, Charon's shotgun never runs out of ammo, which is inane, but useful on harder difficulties, but Star will burn ammo like a junkie burns jet if you give her a gun and ammo. The inconsistency is puzzling.
 
boer_kameel,

I too am a fan of the old Fallouts, I'm just new to the forum. I was just as disappointed as the others to find out that you could only get one follower plus Dogmeat, and I was even more disappointed to find that they had no real personality. Having run around with Sydney for the past 6 hours, the only thing I've been able to collect about her is that she wants to get drunk. Thats...about it. Seems Charon isn't much different from what I've read.

The reason I brought up squad based shooters is because early on in this thread, Taskeen brought up a game that sounded like one (Though I must admit I have not played the game he mentions), and compared the A.I. to Fallout 3's. I didn't feel that was very fair, considering that they are obviously two totally different games with different points. As you said, Fallout 3 is an RPG.

From my experience so far, I would gladly go back to getting sprayed with bullets rather than deal with the no-personality followers you can get with this new entry. I put some points in Charisma at the beginning of the game thinking I would get multiple followers like in the originals. Guess I was wrong.

All in all, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't think they are useless to have. They do help, and on my game, I'm the only one who's gotten stuck on terrain (three times so far). I have seen Dogmeat get hit by two missiles one after the other, plus a point blank assault rifle barrage, and he came out with no lost hit points, so yeah, he's a trooper.

But even though their useful, I still miss grampy bone...
 
heavy_beat said:
I put some points in Charisma at the beginning of the game thinking I would get multiple followers like in the originals. Guess I was wrong.
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I have the paladin Cross and ghoul Charon at the same time, with a CHA of 6, maybe Cross will always join you, not sure.
I have seen Dogmeat get hit by two missiles one after the other, plus a point blank assault rifle barrage, and he came out with no lost hit points, so yeah, he's a trooper.
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Every NPC autoheals to full after they exit combat mode (although they can take damage between combats, from a mine or whatnot, and won't autoheal).
 
The AI really sucks most of the time. But its very funny too. For example sneaking into a supermutant camp and freeing a hostage is a good show. Just lean back and watch the poor slave trying to escape a horde of big guys with miniguns.

The greatest Trip through the wastelands with an NPC-Comrade was the journey with my father from Vault 112 to Rivet City. He ran in front of me all the way and stopped only to wait for me, when I had problems keeping up with him.

He also stopped to kill any kind of creature he didnt like. Mole Rats for Example. Or a camp of Supermutants. It was a great experience to watch him fight one after another, emptying his revolver, attacking with bare fists, getting knocked down several times (but only to focus for a moment) and re-initiating a new, more powerful blow.

I thought my dad wanted me to be save, so I hid all the time and watched him kill all those bad things. He eventually found a minigun and smashed everything in our path.

My dad is the best!
 
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