Further Level Cap Increases Could Unbalance 'Fallout 3'
- Thread starter Dragula
- Start date
hence why critical hits have the "critical" in it. Just like a lethal wound is lethal. I dont know what is there hard to understand from a role playing point.
Stanislao Moulinsky
Vault Fossil
Having random one-hit kill attacks isn't good design. Especially in a game like Fallout where if the main character dies the game ends.
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
That's verisimilitude. In real life if you catch a bullet in the wrong place, you're dead. Even if you're wearing armor, a randomly flying bullet can end you in an instant.
That's why games have a save/load feature. If you can't fail, how rewarding is it to succeed?
Stanislao Moulinsky
Vault Fossil
You can fail even without that. The only thing that a design choice like that does is forcing you to save everytime there's a battle.
FO1/2's combat system was far from perfect. Very far actually. But at least it wasn't a joke like FO3. I intentionally made a character with minimum INT and PER, nothing put into small guns, max STR and pretty much all points dumped into unarmed, playing on hard. It was a cakewalk. At the end I was killing Enclave soldiers in 3 to 4 punches with spiked knuckles. No skill, no PLAYER intelligence required. And that's only talking about the combat, the actual "role-playing" and storytelling... forget it.
Cimmerian Nights
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Bethesda pander to munchkin gamers?
Making characters godlike to a self-defeating level for a RPG?
From Todd Howard?
Totally making skills and stats impotent by allowing every build to max out?
Color me shocked. Who could see this coming?
No, this isn't Oblivion with Guns.
Making characters godlike to a self-defeating level for a RPG?
From Todd Howard?
Totally making skills and stats impotent by allowing every build to max out?
Color me shocked. Who could see this coming?
No, this isn't Oblivion with Guns.
Well thats one aspect cRPGs particiularly those with PNP roots in them. As one explained nicely its meant to somewhat have a form of verisimilitude. The exact same thing that counts for the player also count for the enemy and allows you to eventualy kill larger opponents with a well placed shoot as like for the eyes. A shot to the groin in the past games even had the chance to bypass the armor values completely.Stanislao Moulinsky said:
If you dont like such kind of mechanics. thats O.K. but calling it bad "design" is not. Is Chess bad design cause you maybe dont like to play a game with tourns? No it isnt. Its just not your taste.
And sadly that is the issue with Fallout 3 as it was made for people in mind that liked Fallout for the setting. Not the mechanics behind it or the gameplay in the first place. THough you can not have the game alone without some of its mechanics as seen with the gameplay around dialogues which have in Fallout 3 almost no meaning. In F1/2 it had some depending on the stats you choose you would get different dialogues and no it was not all only about "intelligence", granted it was one of the more important stats but intelligence allone would not give you dialogues or quests that need a high skill in Doktor for example or Science. In Fallout 3 those kind of "answers" regarding medicine or Science are more or less just pure cosmetic and do not really chance much of your game.
Of course its clear that no system not even Fallout 1s system was perfect. Proably far away from it. But if I would have to choose between Fallout 3s Oblivionised System or Fallout 1 I would know which one to choose. As it simpyl offers a lot more options and more diversity. It makes for a more challanging game in general which is the point.
Crni Vuk said:
Not to mention that it is solidly identified as being a system where the success of attacks--and actions in general--are hinged on the said system (generating numbers, percentages, etc.). Take, in contrast, the bizarre and frustrating system of Fallout 3 which is some conglomeration of a pseudo-FPS and a pseudo-Turn Based system.
Just like its many sisters (Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, etc. etc.) the Fallout Turn Based system does what the system is designed to do and the player understands that--or needs to learn to. There is no confusion; any sympathetic and experienced player understands that these numbers are being 'rolled' to determine status of the actions of their character(s). There isn't really anything that indicates to the contrary in these games aside from the player's consciousness ("how the hell did I just miss that super mutant when he was standing right beside me and I was using a shot-gun?"). That is where suspension of disbelief takes over.
With the system in Fallout 3, however, one is inclined to think that, when not in 'VATS', if they snipe someone in the head, said person should be killed or something close to it. However, I have found that these pre-conceived beliefs (generously provided by true FPS games) often only disappoint, leaving me annoyed and frustrated that the game is telling me I didn't just do what I did. A cross-hair destroys suspension of disbelief.
Hearkening back to the criticals discussion, it makes sense that one could be hit with a 600 damage critical given the proper circumstances (although, I have not seen such damage because I usually equip my characters with armor and don't stand next to people with miniguns). If its a reoccurring issue, the flaw is not in the game, but with the player.
UncannyGarlic
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Great game except that battles take way too long (mostly due to the animations).Kashrlyyk said:
That entirely depends on the design of the system but in truth it works fine for Fallout because of saving and loading. Does it mean that you'll be quick saving and quick loading a lot? Yep. Is that bad design? It all depends on the system (Fallout does fine with it because it's rare to fight for an hour, get killed, and loose that hour of gameplay [that would be a player error]). The big flaw in Fallout's combat is it's lack of cover and such.Stanislao Moulinsky said:
...and this is bad? I think it's good when combat in a game is difficult enough to kill the player regularly. Can it be frustrating? Yes. Does it prevent characters who suck with weapons from being able to fight their way through the game? Yes, very effectively.Stanislao Moulinsky said:
It's not my favorite system. I personally really like Alternity's system greatly for gun combat and it is even harsher than Fallout's system with 3 levels of health (stun, wound, and mortal) with each point of mortal damage requiring a doctor to heal and usually results in the character permanently loosing stat points.
Kashrlyyk said:
Funny you mentioned Wiz 8, i just got it, and was gonna give it a spin. Any pointers?
OT: Fallout's TB tactical combat was far from perfect, it was quite basic compared to X-com or JA. But it waaaaaaaaaaaaay more "roleplayish" (?), the randomness of it always made it somewhat tense, no matter how strong your PC was.
Crni Vuk said:
I can attest to this fact. The first Fallout game I played was Fallout 3 (yeah, yeah, I know). When I got Fallout 1, my first character was made very similar to my Fallout 3 character, and let me tell you cats, I didn't get very far. Kept dying and all that jazz. Eventually I got sick of dying and reloading and just looked up a walkthrough to figure out some good skills and stuff when building a character (and now I die a lot less, yay!
).Raising the level cap, again, seems a bit stupid and a waste of time. Perhaps they should use this "let's dish out more DLC!" energy to, I don't know, get better staff and work on improving their games! Hell, if they made a good balanced game to begin with, we wouldn't have all this DLC thrown at us.
fallout_fan
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Doesnt Fallout 3 unbalance Fallout 3?
Stanislao Moulinsky
Vault Fossil
Crni Vuk said:
It's not a matter of taste. I really think it's bad design. What can you do to avoid a painful death if the god or random numbers goes against you? Don't let the enemy never hit you? I could understand if those criticals dealt...dunno...double the max damage of the weapon or something like that, because there's a chance you can survive that while putting you in danger anyway. But criticals that deals more damage than any kind of HP you could ever get? Come oooon.
I agree. God Hand and Forbidden Siren are two of my favourite games and they can be frustratingly hard. But this isn't the same thing, this isn't "fair" difficulty, those are cheap shots.
Also, I always saw save scumming as a bad thing.
Well, if you don't rise your battle skills you wouldn't be able to hit an elephant (unlike FO3) so this really isn't necessary for balancing purposes.
eternaut said:
1) Search the internet and download the "wiz8fast.zip".
2) NEVER EVER USE THE SPELL "SLOW"!!!!!!!!!
3) Don´t enter the first town for the first time without using your level ups. There is a bug that bogs up the level of enemies then.
4) Fights can contain theoretically an unlimited amount of enemies! So watch out for your stamina (everything needs stamina: attacking AND evading/getting hit), you don´t want to become unconscious in a fight. There are several places where enemies path cross. DON'T GET SURROUNDED!!!
5) Skills increase with usage and by distributing points when you level up. So using low damage weapons or standing around can be used to power level some skills.
6) Most enemies scale with your level. That can, if you are not careful, cause a problem with your skill levels, which largely determines your abilities in combat.
7) Conditions and mass spells can really hurt your party. Keep up the protections.
8) Excluding some weird party combinations, members of your party will die!
9) Bards and Gagdeteers rock.
10) Elementals rock, too!
From the top of my head. Anything else or something specific?
Stanislao Moulinsky
Vault Fossil
Black said:
And...? Save/Load shouldn't be a gameplay feature. At least not of this kind.
Wait, I'm not saying that the player should never die but a game should never kill the player without giving him a chance, even a small one, to survive. With those criticals there's no chance to survive and the player can't do anything to prevent death.