J.E. Sawyer on Fallout weapon skills

Yeah and it's not just failing, I can understand from a developers point of view an aversion for allowing people to really fail (like LucasArts adventures vs many others where you could screw up). But I'm not sure I like this thing about ALL skills being equally useful from the beginning, if going EW meant a more difficult beginning, but an edge later in the game that's perfectly valid to me. Your character was isolated from the world and so wouldn't know if EW were rare, and if you find they are, well that adds to the replay value of the game.

Instead of making all weapons skills equal like in NV the focus should be in differentiating them more. Its also has a realism problem, going around with Big guns isn't really practical (they burn through ammo, are heavy, can't really aim shots...) unless you are the heavy guy of a party, but FO was never really party based...

It would be cool I think if they really tried to differentiate the skills, big guns more for support and dealing heavy damage to difficult foes, small guns as very useful specially early on, but never quite reaching the punch of EW which are rare until quite later into the game.

Or something. Or maybe I'm just talking nonsense.
 
Brother None said:
There's no point to playing a video game if it doesn't allow me to fail.
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Absolutely true.

Games nowadays don't pose enough challenge to the player, most of them, that is. Challenge which is properly devised to frustrate the player to some point and give him a hard time at moments is something which should be present in games. Shouldn't be unsolvable or so frustrating that it forces players into uninstalling the game, of course, but it should make the player reconsider what they are doing and pay for their mistakes, should they make such.

Failure should always be an option. Modern gaming makes me spoiled, to be honest. I sometimes have a hard time beating games I've played when I was a lot younger. Of course, many things factor into this, but getting used to comfort most games nowadays offer is not very good.

Games just got so overly...casual. In a way, that is a good thing, more people playing and paying, but it often kills some points of gaming, if you ask me.
 
Brother None said:
Fail is a separate question though. You can beat Fallout with any character build, but you can make things very difficult for yourself.

And yeah, that philosophy is very popular now, and it's very, very wrong. There's no point to playing a video game if it doesn't allow me to fail.
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I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying there's nothing wrong with having skills that are useless? :?
 
Geech said:
In the original Fallout, I never really had an issue making the transition from small guns to energy weapons or big guns. It actually felt pretty natural to me.
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Because the best small guns (.223 pistol and sniper rifle) were far behind minigun, rocket launcher, alien blaster and plasma rifle (especially the turbo one). You had to move on, unless you really enjoyed punishment; I mean, c'mon, if you raid the military base or the cathedral waving a .223, how many turns can your Vault Dweller survive minigun bursts and rocket launches before a critical lands in?

In Fallout 2, the gauss rifle can be as awesome as the pulse rifle and the vindicator minigun; also, the are more small gun options to hold onto until a gauss rifle can be bought (G11 and FAL-HPFA come to mind).

Laser always got the short end of the stick in both games, which was sad... in F:NV, they can be deadly in sneak attack criticals.
 
I've said it before, somewhere, that there's nothing wrong with reducing the number of skills as long as you don't allow the player to maximize all the remaining skills. You could have just a marksmanship skill for ranged attacks with an adaptive formula depending on what weapon is equipped. Say perception + agility x (z + 20%) where z is either your repair skill for normal guns, your science skill for energy weapons, explosives for explosives and melee for throwing. Personally I thought there were far too many energy weapons floating around in New Vegas, made it seem more like space marines than post apocalyptic.
 
Makenshi said:
Because the best small guns (.223 pistol and sniper rifle) were far behind minigun, rocket launcher, alien blaster and plasma rifle (especially the turbo one). You had to move on, unless you really enjoyed punishment; I mean, c'mon, if you raid the military base or the cathedral waving a .223, how many turns can your Vault Dweller survive minigun bursts and rocket launches before a critical lands in?
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Totally, and I think that's perfectly reasonable.
 
Well, as long as the game is upfront about how the skills work and their utility, I don't think there's anything bad in letting the player screw up things and make them difficult for him/herself, the problem is when you fail upfront at character creation and discover that 6/7 hours later (something downright impossible in the new titles, since skills have so little impact on the gameplay experience anyway).

Btw, since the discussion interested me and I hadn't considered the weighted skills option that much before Brother None chimed in, I asked this to Sawyer on Formspring:
What about "weighted skills" where you have to spend more points to raise some skill compared to others? It was suggested on NMA, and it's only one of many ways you could differentiate between "core" skills and "late-game/less used" skills.

I'm not sure that really solves the problem of late game skills, but it does address relative skill imbalance. For a late game skill, you could use a skill system that branches at certain points. E.g. you could have Energy Weapons open up only after you are 10th level and have 50 in Guns and Science.
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EDIT: Btw, I'm feeling weird.. am I seriously the only guy that had no problems completing the original game with a sniper rifle? That thing critted the Super Mutants something fierce.
 
Absolutely true. The first Fallout is pretty balanced in this regard. Small guns do have a lower damage output by the end of the game, but with a high critical chance they're as good as energy weapons, without being a skill point sink.

As for JES, I don't think he's a proponent of frictionless gaming. He specifically makes mention that he wanted/wants to make different playstyles (melee/guns/explosives/energy weapons) have different benefits and challenges, while maintaining the validity of each play style.
 
Geech said:
Makenshi said:
Because the best small guns (.223 pistol and sniper rifle) were far behind minigun, rocket launcher, alien blaster and plasma rifle (especially the turbo one). You had to move on, unless you really enjoyed punishment; I mean, c'mon, if you raid the military base or the cathedral waving a .223, how many turns can your Vault Dweller survive minigun bursts and rocket launches before a critical lands in?
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Totally, and I think that's perfectly reasonable.
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I disagree. While wepon skills shouldn't be perfectly equal any given offensive skill should be powerful enough to keep you alive throughout the whole game. Otherwise it's the game dictating your character.
 
Geech said:
Has Sawyer ever explained this desire to have every skill be useful from the beginning of the game?
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I believe that he's just trying to make the game appeal to casual, 'completionist' players. Usually, these are first-time players who want to be able to choose some skills that appeal to them, and then go on and conquer the world no matter what.

I'm against that because I like to roleplay, even on my first time, by creating a character who could essentially be bad at survival, or good. Fact is, they could introduce a GURPS-like system, such as Guns are +5p and Energy Weapons are -5p, since the latter are more useful, meaning that if you choose EW you'd have to tag a worse passive/active skill to make sure that you balance your character out to 0p.

Once again, kind of restrictive, not my type of play. I prefer to screw things up, but it allows to roleplay at the very least (something I did in Arcanum :)).
 
I kind of wish we had the chance to see how the original team (Jesse Heining was quite outspoken about the weapon skills subject here on the past) would have fixed the problems with the original iteration of SPECIAL. We saw a bit of that in Fallout 2 and Tactics, but the first had a very rushed development cycle and the second had only Chris Taylor on the team and a different focus altogether. :(
 
Tagaziel said:
Absolutely true. The first Fallout is pretty balanced in this regard. Small guns do have a lower damage output by the end of the game, but with a high critical chance they're as good as energy weapons, without being a skill point sink.
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I once stumbled upon the Red-Ryder BB gun special encounter (F1) early in the game, and was killing everything left, right and center with critical shots to the eyes. The games balance with such a powerful weapon was distorted, but that was just a very lucky encounter. But small guns, with careful planning can get you through the game.

There are plenty of battles in Fallout where the player will fail once or twice, but changing the strategy usually will overcome a tough challenge, that's what made Fallout so enjoyable. I don't see the point of 'casualising' a game like Fallout.

Even though Baldur's Gate and D&D are a different world to Fallout, everyone knew a Mage at low levels was rubbish, but you persisted because at higher levels the spells could change the course of a battle. The various classes were never balanced, at low levels fighters ruled, and at high levels Mages ruled, that's OK, the challenge was reaching those high levels.

With Fallout generally you started with small guns or unarmed and changed to big guns at about level 10, and finally energy weapons. You went through a progression, I never found a problem with that. Anyway the world of Fallout should be armed with simple side arms, lasers and mini-guns should be very rare.
 
I welcome these skill changes with open arms. To me, as Pixote already said, Miniguns or Energy weapons feel more like endgame weaponry, even from their looks etc. I hated how I could find laser or even plasma pistols very early in New Vegas (not even mentioning how ugly they are).

A much more natural way to do this is to make a general Arms skill, divided into Pistols/Smgs, Rifles/Machine Guns and Heavy Weaponry. This way you can specialize in a particular playstyle depending on your weapon of choice and as the game progresses you get access to eventual energy weaponry and so on. That's the system I'll be using aswell.

Ofcourse, other people don't feel like energy stuff should be mid-to-endgame weaponry, but to me it feels just wrong. ;)
 
Sub-Human said:
I believe that he's just trying to make the game appeal to casual, 'completionist' players. Usually, these are first-time players who want to be able to choose some skills that appeal to them, and then go on and conquer the world no matter what.

I'm against that because I like to roleplay, even on my first time, by creating a character who could essentially be bad at survival, or good. Fact is, they could introduce a GURPS-like system, such as Guns are +5p and Energy Weapons are -5p, since the latter are more useful, meaning that if you choose EW you'd have to tag a worse passive/active skill to make sure that you balance your character out to 0p.
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Errr, no. JES repeatedly stated, and this is corroborated by how gameplay is structured in New Vegas, that he wants each skill to have a distinct playstyle associated with it: different for guns, energy weapons, explosives and melee/unarmed. This is hardly an approach to appeal to the casual (and completionist is *not* casual gaming BTW) gamer, but rather to give more meaning to characters and their skills.

Compare that to the original Fallout 1/2, where Throwing was completely useless and Big Guns were too cumbersome to be used by anyone other than Marcus. In New Vegas, each combat skill is worthwhile and demands a different playstyle, whereas picking Big Guns and Throwing in either of the classics would be effectively creating a cripple.
 
Tagaziel said:
Compare that to the original Fallout 1/2, where Throwing was completely useless and Big Guns were too cumbersome to be used by anyone other than Marcus. In New Vegas, each combat skill is worthwhile and demands a different playstyle, whereas picking Big Guns and Throwing in either of the classics would be effectively creating a cripple.
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Well, yes and no, Guns and Energy differences are mostly flavor and they play the same for the most part, even Sawyer admitted that.
 
WorstUsernameEver said:
Tagaziel said:
Compare that to the original Fallout 1/2, where Throwing was completely useless and Big Guns were too cumbersome to be used by anyone other than Marcus. In New Vegas, each combat skill is worthwhile and demands a different playstyle, whereas picking Big Guns and Throwing in either of the classics would be effectively creating a cripple.
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Well, yes and no, Guns and Energy differences are mostly flavor and they play the same for the most part, even Sawyer admitted that.
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This, plus I also don't really get what was so "cumbersome" with Big guns in Fallout1/2. I never had problems with it and had a fun playthrough using these weapons. I agree however that the Throwing skill was really underdeveloped.
 
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
I disagree. While wepon skills shouldn't be perfectly equal any given offensive skill should be powerful enough to keep you alive throughout the whole game. Otherwise it's the game dictating your character.
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Weapon progression is pretty minor aspect of your character, and the game designers will always be dictating that to a certain degree. For example, it's pretty much not possible to use the varmint rifle for all of New Vegas, even if you really, really wanted to play Varmint Killin' Stan, the varmint rifle slinging, devil-may-care mercenary. That's not a problem.
 
Ratslayer, 5.56mm Match/AP ammunition and sneak shots perhaps?

On the subject of heavy weapons in Fallout: I consider them cumbersome due to the amount of ammunition they require and weight they have. Sure, they have a high damage output, but preclude looting and require too much maintenance to be worth it. Particularly since the combat shotgun is just as good, if not better.
 
Geech said:
Weapon progression is pretty minor aspect of your character, and the game designers will always be dictating that to a certain degree. For example, it's pretty much not possible to use the varmint rifle for all of New Vegas, even if you really, really wanted to play Varmint Killin' Stan, the varmint rifle slinging, devil-may-care mercenary. That's not a problem.
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That's...not the same thing. Using a weak weapon is a self imposed challenge. There's nothing preventing you from using a more powerful gun and you don't suffer any handicap in doing so. But when you are raising a skill you are using up a finite resource (skill points). It's not like I can raise Small Guns and when that skill becomes too weak 'clone' those points for the EW and Big Guns skills. If I have to raise those what's the point of having different skills, then?
 
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