How excited are you for Fallout 4?

Walpknut said:
What's wrong with casualization? Are you even serious?
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Yes.

They haven't gone too far? They just gutted the entire Skill system and reduced dialogue to four choices at a time....
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While I am on the fence about the dialogue -- I can see ways this might benefit the series in the future, but I can also see how it could hurt the RPG aspect -- I never really found the skill system "as we've always had it" to be all that compelling anyway, and it was frankly far too punishing for its own good. Far too often did I come across something necessary to continue the game's main story and I didn't have a high enough associated skill level to do it without cheating. Now, I'm not sure what to make of all these rumors about the skill system, but if they're true, I'd have to see the new system in action first before I pass judgement on it. Same with the dialogue change. We don't know enough yet without actually playing the game ourselves to pass judgement on something.

I've said this before, in other threads -- I love the classic Fallouts. I play them often. That being said, they don't really do a good job -- for me -- of immersing me into the world, largely because of their presentation. Bethesda has some work to do, yeah, but so far their games have done a better job of immersing me than the classics ever could. The 3D world spaces actually give me a sense of exploration and the game being open-world, which is something I value highly in a game nowadays.

It's not like you won't have to micro-manage other aspects of the game anyway -- those settlements look like an activity that'll keep you constantly on your toes. What sense would it make to juggle min/maxing skill levels on top of that?

Oh, and in point of fact? Dialogue choices were ALWAYS just four choices at a time. It's just more evident now because they're tied to the action buttons on a controller rather than selected from a dialogue box. That being said, again, I am on the fence about this new dialogue system. I rather liked the old one.
 
No offense, but if you think the Skill system being punishing was a bad thing then you should probably stop playing RPGS, because that's what they are supposed to do, reward specialization while also closing off things you didn't focus on.

Always four choices? Have yo uactually played the Fallout games? There were character that had so many dialogue choices that even with the scroll of the list they required a "More" button to acces the rest. Hell in New Vegas companions have dialogue tress inside dialogue trees and multiple important NPCs have multiple ways of accesing special dialogue or even Bypassing parts of quests. No Bark even has a lot of dialogue paths to acces his knowledge with a lot of hilarity to the lines yo ucan choose. So saying it has always been only 4 choices is your a lie, simple as that.

And this is exactly why casualization is bad, people have become far too complicent, tey want things to just come to them and the spirit of the Fallout games gets dilluted into just a God Hiking Simulator were you are an unstoppable killing machine with no weak points. But seeing how you think a game mechanic being punishing is bad I doubt you'll see a problem with that. Next Fallout game will have QTE VATS sequences to make it even easier to kill everything.
 
Walpknut said:
No offense, but if you think the Skill system being punishing was a bad thing then you should probably stop playing RPGS, because that's what they are supposed to do, reward specialization while also closing off things you didn't focus on.

Always four choices? Have yo uactually played the Fallout games? There were character that had so many dialogue choices that even with the scroll of the list they required a "More" button to acces the rest. Hell in New Vegas companions have dialogue tress inside dialogue trees and multiple important NPCs have multiple ways of accesing special dialogue or even Bypassing parts of quests. No Bark even has a lot of dialogue paths to acces his knowledge with a lot of hilarity to the lines yo ucan choose. So saying it has always been only 4 choices is your a lie, simple as that.

And this is exactly why casualization is bad, people have become far too complicent, tey want things to just come to them and the spirit of the Fallout games gets dilluted into just a God Hiking Simulator were you are an unstoppable killing machine with no weak points. But seeing how you think a game mechanic being punishing is bad I doubt you'll see a problem with that. Next Fallout game will have QTE VATS sequences to make it even easier to kill everything.
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This may come as a surprise to you, but I don't play games for their "genre." I don't play Fallout because it's an RPG, I play it because I like the setting and I enjoy the level of freedom it affords me, as well as the compelling backstory behind it. I also really like to shoot things or, when possible, negotiate. I'd probably like the skill system more if it wasn't so damned necessary to have ALL the skills at 100 just to get anything done. That's really the only problem I have with the games, so as long as the new system actually works and flows well, I'll be happy. If not, I'll gladly accept the old system back.

TL;DR: "My argument wasn't against the skill system being punishing, the argument was against it being TOO punishing, to the point of needless cruelty and disabling you from getting anywhere. It was a game-breaking mechanic. Consequences are good, but not if they prevent you from progressing at all."

But this is all subjective opinion anyway. Feel free to disagree, but don't you fucking dare attack me like I feel you're getting close to doing.
 
First of all, I agree that you're entitled to your opinion, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying Fallout for the reasons you describe, though I myself continue to play the games while sharing many of Walpknut's reservations. It'd be foolish and elitist to judge someone for how they get their kicks, as long as it's not raping puppies or being a chode on Xbox live. Like it or not, though, the console-driven simplification and hybridization of the RPG genre is a reality, and for a lot of people that's a problem.

It is true that, functionally speaking, a lot of the conversations in the older games were limited to a small handful of forks at a given time, considering how many led down the same paths, but I'd say doing this to the dialogue system is a real red flag. Having some of those redundant options was imporant to the "conversation game," to allow you to feel more agency over your character's personality and to make the correct path less obvious. Dialogue and stealth are no longer play experiences in and of themselves in the same sort of way that combat is. You say you favor diplomacy-- consider how often you got to talk your way out of something and how satisfying it was to do so in New Vegas or Fallout 2, with their multiple branching skill-based options, vs. how seldom it could actually get you out of a bloodbath in Fallout 3, the first game in the series where a pacifist playthrough was literally impossible and the one where they forced you to shoot the only reasonable antagonist in the face at the end if your speech wasn't maxed.

As to the skill system, if you'll forgive me, I can't think of a single instance in any of the prior games where your skill point choices presented any significant impediment to beating the game. Even disregarding that there were quest hubs specifically to level you up at key points if you needed it (through questing and exploring the world, which you've agreed is one of the things that interested you most), the whole point was that each critical quest (and most of the others) had multiple solutions tied to multiple diverse skills, and usually a few least common denominator options tied to cash or combat which almost literally any character had access to. You could win most fights in F2 with a 2-endurance peacenik if you played your cards right with party and weapon selection and perhaps some combat difficulty fiddling, and since skills and SPECIAL were tied in significantly with core design, drugs and skill items could also help immensely. Plenty of people have finished the original games and explored them reasonably thoroughly with every non-tagged skill around 70 or 80, and this is back when the max on skills was 2- or 3-hundred.

In short, I respect your opinion, but I just don't see it.
 
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SMBComix said:
Oh, and in point of fact? Dialogue choices were ALWAYS just four choices at a time. It's just more evident now because they're tied to the action buttons on a controller rather than selected from a dialogue box. That being said, again, I am on the fence about this new dialogue system. I rather liked the old one.
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Wrong. In all of the main title Fallout games, how many dialogue choices that would be available was dependent on who you were talking to you, and what situation you and the person you were communicating to were in.
 
What RPG and role-playing is to Pete Hines (from gamespot)

""If you want to pick flowers and make potions all day, then that's what you're role-playing," he said. "If you want to go shoot everybody in the head with a laser-musket, then that's what you're role-playing."

Oh god..
 
"If you want to look for hidden blocks and collect coins all day, then that's what you're role-playing. If you want to go shoot every goomba in the face with a fire flower, then that's what you're role-playing."
 
Remember how you could get kicked out of Vaukt city if you pissed the Oversser off enough? Or how you could even get a hug from her if you were low intellgience? THat's the kind of thing this Dialogue cross system with no skill associated and a foced characterization will completely make disappear, it was lready kind of dilluted out in FO3 and New Vegas, altho you could potentially get Caesar pissed at you in the middle of his quest line if you pestered him enough. If everythig is reduced to simplistic "yes and no" paths then the richness of the story telling and roleplaying is completely lost. The difference between "did you go an tell Fantastic that youcame here to replace him and then got to learn about him and through skill checks got the quest anyway and "Talk to NPC choose 2 word dialogue options, see what happens, Two word options are direction coded so if you want to be a Goody two shoes jsut choose right, left is for evil" Is night and day. Not being able to be intentionally stupid, or even choosing the skill check you were gonna fail becaise the line attached to the failed one was so hilarious that you just wanted to see the reaction of the NPC are an integral part of Roleplaying.

What they are doing is a complete devolution of the experience.
 
A devolution in some directions even as the game evolves (perhaps mutates might be more thematically appropriate?) in so, so many others. It's perhaps too easy to make cynical cracks sometimes (seriously, Mr. Hines, I do not think that word means what you think it means), but that doesn't change the fact that they've gone hugely ambitious here and they're offering something that's not really found elsewhere, or at least combining a bunch of things that you usually only find on a smaller scale.

It's really a question of priorities and tastes. I'm happy to get a huge, fun, distracting wasteland simulator no matter how you dress it up. I'm especially happy when it's highly moddable and you can shore it up where you feel it's lacking. It is not and it will likely never again be the Fallout experience that I'm looking for. But at this point, honestly, the name is incidental-- they're not so much Fallout games as they are games that happen to be titled "Fallout." This game is going to come out. The game is going to be fun. The game is going to succeed whether I play it or not. I don't think it's impossible to enjoy the new games and lament the loss of the old magic at the same time. Some obviously disagree, and that's no less valid a stance.
 
If this game didn't have the Fallout name on it I wouldn't get bothered so much by that.
I mean I was actually kind of excited at first when they showed the Shelter and Weapon customization, then everything started falling in place the more I looked at what was being shown the worse I felt about it, the removal of Skills in particular made me get super pissed and sad.
Altho I can't say I will like the game by it's own, I played Skyrim without having ANY experience with TES (not a fan of medieval fantasy, but the VIking flavor to it appealed to me) and I still ended up putting it off until I found mods that made it enjoyable to me. I think it's gonna be the same with 4 if I manage to force myself to ignore the title and "enjoy" it for what it is. Bethesda's school of deisgn runs in complete opposition with what I value in games, even in dumb fun, so it's alittle harder for me.
 
Has it been confirmed that skills have been replaced with perks or is this still conjecture based on that one photo? I googled and didnt find anything
 
Walpknut said:
Is not one photo. It's basically every part of the demo that showed the UI.
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Ive only seen the one that says "science level 2 req" but ill take your word for it.

If thats the case I would be disappointed on the surface it would seem to be a dumbing down of the game but Im still going to reserve judgement until more info is out.
 
Just for clarity:
-The Pipboy doesn't have a Skills tab, only SPECIAL and a "Perk chart"

-Special stat descriptions don't mention Skill points and all the effects of the stats are generic battle effects and a token mention of "Bartering" only in temrs of prices and a percentage for "charming people" in conversation.

-Character Creation jumps from SPECIAL allocation to gameplay, with no trait selection or skill tagging.

-The aforementioned Crafting UI listing Science as a perk with ranks rather than a skill with values.
 
I think a perk chart where you buy a "rank" of each skill as a perk wouldn't really be all that bad of a change, especially if each of these "skill perks" was restricted by SPECIAL and you got a perk each level. Functionally I don't think it'd be significantly different. I just hope you don't get a free skill level for each bobblehead you find. That was something utterly retarded that was in Fallout 3.
 
ChildServices said:
I think a perk chart where you buy a "rank" of each skill as a perk wouldn't really be all that bad of a change, especially if each of these "skill perks" was restricted by SPECIAL and you got a perk each level. Functionally I don't think it'd be significantly different. I just hope you don't get a free skill level for each bobblehead you find. That was something utterly retarded that was in Fallout 3.
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If all the skills are present and its ranks instead of points it wouldnt be majorly different, you presumably would still be able to determine your characters strengths and weaknesses as you level up
 
Not really the same, if all Perks become just percentage increases in combat then that doesn't solve the issue with the dialogue system and alternate quest solving. Furthermore then that means Perks are gonna be boring as crap.
 
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