Planet Fallout interviews Alan Nanes

[Brother None]

GameSpy's Fallout site softballed a bunch of questions to Alan Nanes for the Ultimate Epic Spectacular Awesome Broken Steel Interview.<blockquote>- Rebalancing the game for the new level 30 cap was a difficult task? Can you tell us more about the process?

Since we originally balanced the game for a cap at level 20, many players already have skills that are maxed out at 100. We knew this would be an issue when we were rebalancing for level 30, so our focus was on the new enemies and their abilities or equipment. We had a lot of saves to test from, thanks to our team keeping their saves from the original Fallout 3 testing, and they covered the gamut of player archetypes. We took these saves through Broken Steel and ran them across the newly populated Wasteland to see how they’d fare against our new challenges. If something was too powerful, we’d dial it back a bit, and if something was too easy, we’d amp it up. This meant having meetings quite often to get together and go over all the data, then taking the meeting results back to the editor and making adjustments until we felt we had it right.</blockquote>

 

[Beelzebud]

They really don't do any game design or planning at all do they?

It really is just a matter of adding "cool stuff" and tweaking things as you go. No planning at all. It's no wonder the game world is a disconnected mess that you don't even have to see 90% of to complete the game.

 

[eternaut]

It's amazing these people stay on business. And making tons of cash.
Guess it speaks poorly of the "spirit of the times", when the uninspired and the improvised get rewarded.

 

[Eternal]

They really don't do any game design or planning at all do they?

It really is just a matter of adding "cool stuff" and tweaking things as you go. No planning at all. It's no wonder the game world is a disconnected mess that you don't even have to see 90% of to complete the game.

Not to defend bethesda, but thats a lot of how balance testing works, they obviously had an idea before hand and had to make sure it worked. However I feel that they did it in the wrong way if all they did was load up their old saves like it suggests.

Since we originally balanced the game for a cap at level 20, many players already have skills that are maxed out at 100.

WHY?! WHY?! I don't recall a SINGLE play of Fallout 1 or 2 where I maxed out a single skill. NOT ONE PLAY. Usually at most I had around 3-4 skills near 100% and 1-2skills around 150% and everything else varied. And that was only if I abused one of the merchants who sold books and purchased tons of them.

Can anyone tell me what the closest you could get to maxing out all your SPECIAL stats was in FO1 or 2? (without save hacking)

 

[Yellow]

Fallout 2:

ST: 2 (+4 APA, +2 bruiser, +1 perk, +1 chip) = 10
PE: 8 (+1 chip, +1 perk) = 10
EN: 7 (+1 perk) = 8
CH: 7 (+1 chip, +1 perk, +1 shades) = 10
IN: 8 (+1 perk, +1 chip) = 10
AG: 9 (+1 perk) = 10
LK: 6 (+2 zeta scan, +1 perk) = 9

 

[Eternal]

Wow yellow, looks like you could get pretty close to perfect in fallout 2, but it also looks like it took A LOT of work and a VERY specific build. While I think its still a bad idea, it is certainly slightly more excusable than Bethesda's 1perk. Especially since in FO2 you still couldn't max out all your skills, or even half of them. Either way I'm glad I didn't ever take that route in FO2 it'd ruin any semblance of balance for me.

I wonder if you pickup the "almost retarded" perk in FO3, without picking up any of the SPECIAL bobble heads first if you could then max out your stats by picking up the bobble heads.

Also its kind of silly that the Almost Perfect perk pretty much negates any reason to get any of the 10 levels of Hard Training perk for extra SPECIAL.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Not to defend bethesda, but thats a lot of how balance testing works, they obviously had an idea before hand and had to make sure it worked. However I feel that they did it in the wrong way if all they did was load up their old saves like it suggests.

You can run the numbers to get it pretty close and then you play test it to do the final tweaks, the problem is that Bethesda prefers to skip the planning, design, and balance stage and get right into playing the game. It's a piss poor method of balancing a system.

EDIT: Glad to see my question from that other interview which didn't ask any submitted questions got worked into this, too bad it was made past tense and suggested that they succeeded in rebalancing the game...

 

[Lexx]

Fallout 2:

Fallout 2 is not as good as Fallout 1.

 

[Blackened]

I'm pretty sure it could take me a single day, and maybe a single hour, to think of better perks than those! Out of all those, I will pick just 3 of them, and one of these three is ridiculous (Almost Perfect). It screws all who took Intense Training.

@Lexx: I like Fallout 1 much too. Though it's hard for me to compare it with Fallout 2. Maybe I haven't played them enough. I'm working on this lately.

 

[Jim Cojones]

Fallout 2:

ST: 2 (+4 APA, +2 bruiser, +1 perk, +1 chip) = 10
PE: 8 (+1 chip, +1 perk) = 10
EN: 7 (+1 perk) = 8
CH: 7 (+1 chip, +1 perk, +1 shades) = 10
IN: 8 (+1 perk, +1 chip) = 10
AG: 9 (+1 perk) = 10
LK: 6 (+2 zeta scan, +1 perk) = 9

Yeah, you can max out almost all stats if you use shitty build which require:
- wasting perks gained through 21 levels (while in Fallout 3 you're forced to pick +stat perk because there is nothing else interesting to choose),
- taking bruiser which is one of the worst traits,
- playing most of the game with 2 ST which mean you can't carry almost anything or use any weapon properly.

 

[Khan FurSainty]

Fallout 2:

Fallout 2 is not as good as Fallout 1.

Can't argue here.

 

[Briosafreak]

EDIT: Glad to see my question from that other interview which didn't ask any submitted questions got worked into this, too bad it was made past tense and suggested that they succeeded in rebalancing the game...

What interview? And it's Planet Fallout, BN, not Gamespy.

Oh and Happy Birthday Brother None

 

[Brother None]

Fallout 2...

...did not have a level cap (well, 99, but still)

And it's Planet Fallout, BN, not Gamespy

GameSpy's Fallout site? Yesno?

 

[UncannyGarlic]

What interview? And it's Planet Fallout, BN, not Gamespy.

It's a pretty obvious question so I have no doubt that you guys came up with it on your own. I was talking about the last Adrenaline Vault one where they requested questions from their forum and Bethesda's forum then didn't ask any of them. There was also a poll on BSGF and my question, one about how they were going to rebalance SPECIAL for level 30, was one of the more voted for ones. That said, AV seems to delete their question threads after the podcast is actually posted (no clue why) and my name wasn't on the question because I'm banned from their forums, though I have no clue as to why (probably my questions for their first interview?).

Oh and Happy Birthday Brother None

Happy bday!!

 

[Seymour the spore plant]

Since we originally balanced the game for a cap at level 20, many players already have skills that are maxed out at 100. We knew this would be an issue when we were rebalancing for level 30, so our focus was on the new enemies and their abilities or equipment.

That's precious. "We knew it would be hard work, so we did nothing instead".

Not that the Failout skill system wasn't completely unsalvageable bullshit to begin with, but to opt for simply not tweaking it at all and instead buffing enemies up is truly something. If Bethesda is going to be this lazy, they might as well bring back level scaling instead.

 

[cronicler]

Sigh. We took a working system, found out that using both stats and (some) skill levels to determine which speech options you can use than putting in speech checks were too realistic for our "desired" fan base of mindless consumers (we are still weeding out the ones who can think).
Also that old and pre-historic stupid approach made the game too restrictive: You could not be war god with imba warrior skillz and a mind smarter than 190 IQ who knows everything and can do unbelivable ehsplosons!!...

 

[Joervol]

In both fallout 1 and 2 you could make a pretty strong character that would find no challenge while playing, but the fact was that you had to knew what you were doing PLUS you still didn't end maxed out in every skill, so you would still need to replay the game to see everything and be everything.

SPECIAL, perks, skills etc did need some tweaking in my opinion. To be honest, for example that +1 to all stats was simply too much if you knew some things about the game (who cared about the -10% to skills? seriously).

However, instead of fixing the issues that previous fallouts had (pretty much balance issues), they made the system to not care what you pick! That's a working solution!.... i guess!

PS: in fallout 2 you could make a very strong character without taking bruiser or gimping you strength, but you did have to gimp something, (either luck, or a combination of endurance and luck) combined with the +1 to all stats (don't remember the name ). Plus, you needed the various chips for the brotherhood console. Like i said before, you still needed to know a lot of things about the game to pull it off without dying every 30 seconds in combat, so you can't say that fallout 2 promoted godlike characters.

 

[Beelzebud]

Yeah the big difference between Fallout, and even Fallout 2, over Fallout 3 is that for the first two games you had to really know the games inside and out to be able to make a perfect build like that.

In Fallout 3 it happened on my first play through, by accident...

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Yeah the big difference between Fallout, and even Fallout 2, over Fallout 3 is that for the first two games you had to really know the games inside and out to be able to make a perfect build like that.

In Fallout 3 it happened on my first play through, by accident...

It's not hard to do and you can do it with a number of builds. Hell, I think that people figured out some builds that did it before the game was even released. With Broken Steel it's hard to make a build that isn't perfect.

 

[cronicler]

Lets see; 5 in all stats (Int needs to be at least 3 or you need the +skill point perk) and a pistol with some ammo to start, preferably silenced. Voila, give up 10 hours of your life to grind and you have a 10-10-10-100-100-100 character now. you don't even have the chance to botch.

*You only need to get your skills to 40% with skill points. with 10 in each stat you will have 15 to 20 base in each stat. You still can't max skills with 2 or 1 int without a perk.