R.Graves
Confirmed Retard
this was already solved as far back as 1987 with the invention of an overworld and random encounters so i dont have to physcially walk through a bunch randomly generated nothing for 3 real weeks to get to shady sands
My two cents: How bethesda should unfuck itself.
- Thread starter PsychoSniper
- Start date
Morgan_
Duckerz
Not similar enough to be compared imo. Navigable world maps are nice but it wont have the effect of having to trek the wasteland. Going from one major sttlement to another and it being a big deal that you can't just fast travel between or cover in 10 minutes would be good in its own way. Throw in a camping mechanic to boot.
Fast travel options should take effort to unlock. You'll at least have wasteland there to be explored at your leisure either way.
Fast travel options should take effort to unlock. You'll at least have wasteland there to be explored at your leisure either way.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
That's never been an issue for me; so long as the generated land becomes permanent on the map—it's not nothing, it's the game world. Arcanum does this btw.
I heartily disagree with all three of these. Fast Travel [so called] should be entirely a user preference...provided that there are equal risks to traversing the ground. It's tantamount to not paying attention—not caring to be interested. New Vegas was insidious in this, with having crippled legs disable fast traveling—absurd; that is the most probable situation in the game when the player would most want to avail themselves of map-travel. Instead of raising the encounter risk, they had the player hobble along at limping pace to get back to a town with a doctor. The player should never be forced to to give a damn about the distance unless they elect to experience it. Cyan's 'Riven' solved this easily in FPP, where the player could simply click on any visited area in the distance to instantly teleport there. This spared them the tedium of backtracking through countless liminal areas.
The primary concern with map-travel is not whether it should be available (it should always), it is to prevent exploitation of it, like in Oblivion, where the player can quaff a strength potion to carry 1000 pounds of junk from one town to another on the other side of the continent because the game doesn't track spell duration during map travel. An interesting note is that FO3 does track travel time. It takes three hours to walk from Vault 101 to Rivet City—but as far as I can tell, the game does nothing with this information; what a waste.
The —cost— of map travel is inattentiveness, missing out on found treasures, secrets, and new acquaintances from the trip... and that should be their choice to make.
Camping mechanics are sketchy, and usually bad; Pillars Of Eternity's was obscene. Realms of Arkania's was best in class IMO.
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Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Maybe, i don't know, put items in your inventory that fix broken limbs? If you want to avoid wobbling back to an area to heal broken limbs, maybe come prepared to do it on the fly.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
... and yet if you don't have any of those in the moment, you have a 15 minute realtime walk to go get them. 
That's lunacy.
Imagine if Fallout pulled that on the player at Vault 15, or at West-Tek for not bringing a rope; making the trek map-screen by map-screen rather than by clicking the destination on the overland map.
There is a masochistic mod that someone made for Morrowind, where the player loiters on the back of the silt strider while it walks the distance in real time. This is fun exactly once per path...and afterwards saps your life away.
That's lunacy.Imagine if Fallout pulled that on the player at Vault 15, or at West-Tek for not bringing a rope; making the trek map-screen by map-screen rather than by clicking the destination on the overland map.
There is a masochistic mod that someone made for Morrowind, where the player loiters on the back of the silt strider while it walks the distance in real time. This is fun exactly once per path...and afterwards saps your life away.
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Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Yes, consequences for a player not preparing, truly insane.... and yet if you don't have any of those in the moment, you have a 15 minute realtime walk to go get them.
Should we blame the game for the player not bringing health items and thus dying? C'mon now.
I mean, i bet many players didn't knew about the rope and when they got to the spot in Vault 15 they had to backtrack to get it.
A quick google search gave me results of people asking where is the rope for vault 15.
Morgan_
Duckerz
It's not that I think this is the best way to design an open world game, but rather if implemented well could make for a good experience.
Isn't that what happened to quite a few players? One of those rites of innitation for noobs. You seem to have a similar view as Aonuma does on Zelda game design and what he refers to as not interupting the tempo of the game. Not a criticism, it just reminds me of that.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
What are you talking about? Preparedness is not the issue [~how could it be?], but the consequences are the PC's own; sure they're kicking themselves on the walk back, or in NV it takes them three times as long, but that's no excuse to inflict this nuisance upon the player.
No. Not a one of them. Every single player left by the exit grid to the overland map, and clicked on a destination—if they didn't rage quit first.
(As opposed to visiting every logical map level contiguously between them and the nearest town.)
*This is technically doable in Arcanum, but it's certainly not their intention.
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Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Then what it is? You are complaining about the slow walking disabling fast travel, i'm arguing that it's the player's fault for not preparing for it by not bringing the item to heal it on the spot.
The consequences are applied to the player and it's up to them to deal with it. And thus bring the damn item that heals it, the end.
Broken limbs already have barely any tangible effect in New Vegas and you are basically saying that last vestige of its effect should have been removed. How is that a good thing?
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
Then it's poor design to force the player to waste their time unnecessarily; when the walk can be simply assumed.
That's not a positive effect, it's detrimental cosmetics—not during combat or attempted retreat, but when there are no hostilities or contested activity, the actions can just be assumed. The dude walked back to town... the player doesn't have to walk with him.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Yes, actual tangible consequences for not preparing are bad design now. Sure.
I get that you don't like New Vegas, but this is one of the silliest things to complain about to me.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
What?
We are not talking about the same topic. I am not talking about any in-game consequences; why are you? I am talking about a UI issue; faulty UI menu; developer brain farting...in general, or in the case of NV specifically with the conditional absence of map travel.
This makes no sense.
Would you apply that to attack damage as well? Have the player become dehydrated while playing a PC without water? You are describing in-game situations, and I am describing use of the hud/menu features.
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Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
I agree that punishing players for not being prepared by wasting their time with tedious and lengthy backtracking is not fun game design. The consequence should be that fast traveling with broken legs drastically increases the amount of ingame time that passes. The only issue with that is that ingame time is meaningless in NV. There are no timed quests, you can take literally forever and nothing will change. Which is why timed quests are a good thing and all you Fallout 1 time limit haters can suck my balls.
R.Graves
Confirmed Retard
Wild how many people in here suggesting the worst ideas I've ever heard like they'd be an improvement. Real humans have a hard time making an interesting open world that's fun to explore what makes you guys think an ai or so rng is gonna be able to pull it off lmao
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
Is this about the suggested use of procedural terrain above? It is an egregious mistake to assume the intention is to rely upon AI to build a game world. The intention is to use AI to fill in necessary space on demand that is not worth having a human spend time on it.
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R.Graves
Confirmed Retard
I think it's beyond goofy to suggest that content isn't worth a person spending the time to even make but is somehow worth every player having to trudge through and interact with. Luckily as this clearly doesn't make ANY sense at all we've invented something called an overworld to enforce scale without waste neither the devs nor the players time.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
It's beyond goofy to expect (or actually implement) a wasteland or salt-flat with interesting landmarks and side quests; it's a true to life trudge through a lot of nothing.
That's just arguing our own points back at us as though it somehow puts us in the wrong. Nobody has suggested players having to trudge through, or interact with generated land; the generated land comes into being when the player chooses to visit it, or gets waylaid by ambush—have you played Fallout or Wasteland 2? This is what's meant by describing the land as 'not worth having a human spend time on it'.
—that's the point.
In Fallout 2, when the car runs out of energy, the game generates a suitable map location for the car to exist upon the overland map. This is the only event in the game where the PC would need to return to a generated space. However a game could support choosing to stash items (, companions, or NPCs) on the overland map using the same behavior should the player wish to do so. The only incentive to trudge through any of that land is if the game occasionally puts items or locations out there in it... and that's exactly what Fallout 1 & 2 did; the only difference being that the suggestion was to serialize the generated land after it's made, allowing an accurate return to the location, rather than newly generating it.
In Wasteland 2 the overland map behaves like a hybrid of Fallout:Tactics, and Fallout 1; the party goes where the player clicks, and space erupts where needed to facilitate random and scripted encounters. IIRC Arcanum starts with a mostly blank map that fills in the tiles as needed; the recent and future FO titles could have trivially done the same.
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CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
The above summarizes the general advice posted on the Bethesda forums by the Fallout fans, prior to, and following the release of FO3; mid 2007-09.
(Especially the filling of the empty space with proceduraly generated content).
The only thing they listened to (and used it as if their own idea) was the suggested change to the power armor as later seen in FO4.
*Even the Jones Soda deal was fan suggested years before...They haven't got an original [non-detrimental] idea between them all in their collective hive-mind; which I've always suspected to play out in conference probably like the Brawndo argument.
God, I hate the new power armor.
My every build now has to be around damage reduction without it.
PsychoSniper
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
They made power armor a generic frame that's identical with cosmetic outer plates.
I wouldn't mind it so much if each frame were a specific model and actually different.
Older T-45 suits/frames running off of the batteries works, they're early model suits and lack the refinement of later models, losing power should just lock the player to super slow strength check based movement speed until the player exits, and it should be painfully slow, but also be the easiest to salvage as far as skill checks go.
T-51b is the pinnacle of pre-appoc tech, and as the infocard clearly states it has its own micro reactor, power shouldn't be an issue for a fully repaired suit, ones found in the wild should start to be having the issue of the reactors fuel having degraded and lowered power regeneration, but that should only mean power regenerates slower, it should still have infinite power, and this gives science skill something to do at high levels: refurbish and refuel the suits power plant, or remove the reactor unit and replace with a T45 battery unit as an interim solution when you have the repair skill but not the science skill to refuel it.
Enclave advanced power armor is much newer and in most cases should still have a full power reactor.
Brotherhood T-65 should be treated as a BOS post war mod of old T45 suits, heavier armor, but still uses the battery in most cases.
As for the gameplay, the plates are basically like armor in Oblivion, you take enough damage and your armor just falls off leaving you 'naked'.
That's dumb, especially when it's a swarm of low leveled critters or something with low damage.
DT/DR as done in new Vegas handled it right, if the attack is too low leveled it shouldn't even scratch the power armor, so rats and weaker critters just have no effect upon the armor, and just walking should inflict damage on them if stepped on.
Do something similar with weaker guns and mele weapons, just have no effect unless it's a critical hit at the eyes or reactor module, and even then have those parts have their own health value that you can repair if the requesite skills are high enough or you find a vendor capable of it.
Now, for suit mods, funny and reasonable stuff needs to be added.
Using a minigun or belt fed ?
You should be able to mount a drum/container for the ammo, provided you craft/find/but one, that lets the weapons ammo capacity grow significantly.
Also, stop with the full auto does less damage mechanic, gun balance in further games should be based around the bullet, with the barrel length affecting range/accuracy and projectile speed and having a modifier to apply to the rounds base damage, shorter barrels doing lower damage, but barrels over a certain length having both sway and momentum affected by the players strength and agility (mitigated or removed by power armor).
Each gun, both its weight and ammo type, has different sway/momentum values, higher momentum mostly meaning longer barreled weapons cannot be snap aimed as easily and the aim will bounce around a little, with sway being how steady you can keep a weapon when aimed at a target, strength and agility should be the main factors for this, with weapon skills also having a lesser effect since a skilled shooter would do better with a too heavy gun than an unskilled shooter.
Edge cases would be things like shotguns or mini guns, since shotguns are spread based unless using slugs, and miniguns have additional sway and momentum issues due to the barrels rotation.
All of that would also give gun mods more of a purpose, a bipod let's a sneaking player stabilize a longer barreled rifle, a compensator reduces how much recoil throws the guns aim around on screen, etc.
I mean it's a RPG not a MilSim, but that doesn't mean RPG mechanics can't be used to express realism, and holding that standard would actually make balance easier too.
Now, energy weapons, I'd say have that stuff be greatly simplified, weapon weight/length barrel sway remains in effect, but otherwise they should have no real recoil or such, at most a jerk at lower skill levels due to trigger pull that any gun skill over a certain level mitigated and removes.
Tenebris
It Wandered In From the Wastes
i wish they didn't cut mutant invasion time limit from the game