Dirty Smuggler
First time out of the vault
There are many factions in this game; The Enclave, Brotherhood of Steel, Brotherhood Outcasts, Talon Company, Raiders, Slavers and the Children of the Atom, the Institute, the Railroad, the Temple of the Union. In a sense perhaps also the Ghouls of the Underground.
The number of factions is big enough and they are diverse enough, but the way they are done is way too simplistic. It kills immersion. There is too much unrealistic black vs white stuff going on.
It is a shame because there is so much potential here. Potential for a giant subset of quests based on faction politics. But to have that the line between good guys and bad guys must be blurred.
It must be more like the mob quests in New Reno. The Scottish (Irish?) redneck-whiskey mob was less "bad" than the Italian mobs but not at all by much. Idealy it would even become something as complex, varied and moraly ambigious as the factions in Planescape: Torment.
First, no faction should always shoot on sight. Even if they can not stand you, because of your reputation, they might have a job for a resourceful outsider. Of course they might decide not to pay you in the end, or decide to ambush you on your way back, or something, but simply making raiders and mercenaries into mindless drones that kill on sight is silly.
The BoS on the other hand is silly in the other extreme, they are "goody two shoes". They are too virtous. They feel more like Paladins from the Forgotten Realms D&D setting than something fit for the post-apocalypse. What is worse, they have next to no flaws of the Paladins. If they are to be so good they should at least be presented as more of a hardheaded, trigger happy, do-gooder type. Perhaps the Capital Wasteland chapter of the BoS should be particularly fanatical, self-righteous and willing to bust civilian heads for relatively minor sins.
Or maybe they are becoming more and more aggressive and it is actually the Enclave who are the underdogs and they keep attacking the Enclave and making their lives miserable for them, while the Enclave has actually reformed to an extent albeit they stil have the kooky racist ideas? Maybe there is an option to help overthrow the boss of the Brotherhood and help a less stubborn and fanatical member take charge. Or there is an option to sabotage Liberty Prime for the Enclave? Or an option to help any number of factions get their hands on the megaton bomb so they can pressure BoS into leaving them alone?
Also the Slavers are a major charicature. Where is the market for all these slaves? Slaves are useless if slavery is outlawed everywhere. Paradise Falls is a slaver outpost and a market not a town. Every free person in there is a slave hunter. Slavers should be legalists and suckers for the law and campaigning in certain towns for slavery to be introduced. All the while rationalising it as the only way to move forward economicaly in a post-apocalyptic world. They should have sleazy lawyer scribe types as well as the slave huners.
Perhaps there could be a town where a player could nudge things into this direction only for the town to see a huge influx of very cheap slave labour (since lately the slavers have not made much sales and had been fallen on hard times the supply has been much more than the demand bringing down the price). And this cheap labour would in the short term actually help the town in a noticeable way, seemingly vindicating the slaver`s economic arguments.
And it is polical nonsense that just anyone may become a slave provided that he is collared. It is impossible to establish or maintain a slaveholding order in this way. There must always be a group of people who can not become slaves under normal circumstances or slavery can not be maintained because it is a threat to all people and therefore all will be opposed to it. In reality it would only make sense if only say ghouls, raiders, unfostered orphans, the heavily indebted, bums, vagrants and outsiders from outside the CW could be enslaved. It would also do wonders for the slavers economic arguments seeing how they could argue what they do is target people who are not productive and force them to be productive and contribute to advancement of CW by enslaving them.
And there are way too many raiders. Economicaly it does not make sense for there to be so many raiders raiding so few producers. To make them plausible they should be reworked in a major way. They could be made to function like a contemporary variety of the old times Huns and Mongols. Instead of mindless induvidualistic killers that are more like animals than humans they could be a seperate culture, a seperate way of life. They could be nomadic scavangers, who are also thiefs or robbers of opportunity and who usually move in smaller bands, but occassionaly gather to join in a massive raid that can easily threaten a whole town.
They could have some pretty crazy cultural norms, like marriage for them meaning a male kidnapping a female preferably from some settlement or at least from another raider band. Instead of mindless retards they can be cool motherfuckers, you would want to ride with. They can be land pirates! They can have a charismatic, half-crazy, Jack Sparrow like character for a leader, except he would be enormously fat, permanentely high on mescaline, have a giant black beard and would interrupt his sentances with barking and howling!
The bottom line is the player must be pushed away from the good guys somewhat and seduced by the bad guys to an extent. Currently unless a player makes a consciouss decision to be a pyschotic evilomaniac he will finish the game as a goody two shoes. This is idiotic. Playing in a way where you "go with the flow" should result in you in retrospect doing almost as many favours for the "bad guys" as for the "good guys".
The number of factions is big enough and they are diverse enough, but the way they are done is way too simplistic. It kills immersion. There is too much unrealistic black vs white stuff going on.
It is a shame because there is so much potential here. Potential for a giant subset of quests based on faction politics. But to have that the line between good guys and bad guys must be blurred.
It must be more like the mob quests in New Reno. The Scottish (Irish?) redneck-whiskey mob was less "bad" than the Italian mobs but not at all by much. Idealy it would even become something as complex, varied and moraly ambigious as the factions in Planescape: Torment.
First, no faction should always shoot on sight. Even if they can not stand you, because of your reputation, they might have a job for a resourceful outsider. Of course they might decide not to pay you in the end, or decide to ambush you on your way back, or something, but simply making raiders and mercenaries into mindless drones that kill on sight is silly.
The BoS on the other hand is silly in the other extreme, they are "goody two shoes". They are too virtous. They feel more like Paladins from the Forgotten Realms D&D setting than something fit for the post-apocalypse. What is worse, they have next to no flaws of the Paladins. If they are to be so good they should at least be presented as more of a hardheaded, trigger happy, do-gooder type. Perhaps the Capital Wasteland chapter of the BoS should be particularly fanatical, self-righteous and willing to bust civilian heads for relatively minor sins.
Or maybe they are becoming more and more aggressive and it is actually the Enclave who are the underdogs and they keep attacking the Enclave and making their lives miserable for them, while the Enclave has actually reformed to an extent albeit they stil have the kooky racist ideas? Maybe there is an option to help overthrow the boss of the Brotherhood and help a less stubborn and fanatical member take charge. Or there is an option to sabotage Liberty Prime for the Enclave? Or an option to help any number of factions get their hands on the megaton bomb so they can pressure BoS into leaving them alone?
Also the Slavers are a major charicature. Where is the market for all these slaves? Slaves are useless if slavery is outlawed everywhere. Paradise Falls is a slaver outpost and a market not a town. Every free person in there is a slave hunter. Slavers should be legalists and suckers for the law and campaigning in certain towns for slavery to be introduced. All the while rationalising it as the only way to move forward economicaly in a post-apocalyptic world. They should have sleazy lawyer scribe types as well as the slave huners.
Perhaps there could be a town where a player could nudge things into this direction only for the town to see a huge influx of very cheap slave labour (since lately the slavers have not made much sales and had been fallen on hard times the supply has been much more than the demand bringing down the price). And this cheap labour would in the short term actually help the town in a noticeable way, seemingly vindicating the slaver`s economic arguments.
And it is polical nonsense that just anyone may become a slave provided that he is collared. It is impossible to establish or maintain a slaveholding order in this way. There must always be a group of people who can not become slaves under normal circumstances or slavery can not be maintained because it is a threat to all people and therefore all will be opposed to it. In reality it would only make sense if only say ghouls, raiders, unfostered orphans, the heavily indebted, bums, vagrants and outsiders from outside the CW could be enslaved. It would also do wonders for the slavers economic arguments seeing how they could argue what they do is target people who are not productive and force them to be productive and contribute to advancement of CW by enslaving them.
And there are way too many raiders. Economicaly it does not make sense for there to be so many raiders raiding so few producers. To make them plausible they should be reworked in a major way. They could be made to function like a contemporary variety of the old times Huns and Mongols. Instead of mindless induvidualistic killers that are more like animals than humans they could be a seperate culture, a seperate way of life. They could be nomadic scavangers, who are also thiefs or robbers of opportunity and who usually move in smaller bands, but occassionaly gather to join in a massive raid that can easily threaten a whole town.
They could have some pretty crazy cultural norms, like marriage for them meaning a male kidnapping a female preferably from some settlement or at least from another raider band. Instead of mindless retards they can be cool motherfuckers, you would want to ride with. They can be land pirates! They can have a charismatic, half-crazy, Jack Sparrow like character for a leader, except he would be enormously fat, permanentely high on mescaline, have a giant black beard and would interrupt his sentances with barking and howling!
The bottom line is the player must be pushed away from the good guys somewhat and seduced by the bad guys to an extent. Currently unless a player makes a consciouss decision to be a pyschotic evilomaniac he will finish the game as a goody two shoes. This is idiotic. Playing in a way where you "go with the flow" should result in you in retrospect doing almost as many favours for the "bad guys" as for the "good guys".
