Replay-ability (Reasons to re play Fallouts)

lolpop109

lolpop109

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Modder
So basically I have been thinking about the reasons for replaying the fallouts game. To also help me in making my own mod. I want to take look at all the games in the fallout Series.


I will start with saying the primary reason is to side with different factions. I personally made many different characters in FV for siding with different NCR and etc. Of course certain faction offer different quest and offers different role-play leading to ..........

Role-play Even linear quest and non locked out quest can offer replay-ability too. This can be because slight different choices even if they lead to same outcome. Quest with different outcomes can be of course the strong thing for replay however this can be hard to implement for every quest.


Character creation ; If different skills have different effects then this can be a big factor. If skills actually unlock things and play apart of the game weather that is unlocking new dialogue (Meaningful or not) or new items or rewards.


So to conclude Chose and specif skill related option are key to providing replay-ability and make it worth while for players to role-play a new character.


Would love to here what you thinks effect replay-ability and ways the it could be implemented
 
lolpop109 said:
So basically I have been thinking about the reasons for replaying the fallouts game. To also help me in making my own mod. I want to take look at all the games in the fallout Series.


I will start with saying the primary reason is to side with different factions. I personally made many different characters in FV for siding with different NCR and etc. Of course certain faction offer different quest and offers different role-play leading to ..........

Role-play Even linear quest and non locked out quest can offer replay-ability too. This can be because slight different choices even if they lead to same outcome. Quest with different outcomes can be of course the strong thing for replay however this can be hard to implement for every quest.


Character creation ; If different skills have different effects then this can be a big factor. If skills actually unlock things and play apart of the game weather that is unlocking new dialogue (Meaningful or not) or new items or rewards.


So to conclude Chose and specif skill related option are key to providing replay-ability and make it worth while for players to role-play a new character.


Would love to here what you thinks effect replay-ability and ways the it could be implemented
Click to expand...

I will go with NV for this one.

To me it comes down to freedom of choice, how you play your characters, different consequences of your actions.

At the end of NV, we get slides that describe what our actions brought to the wasteland and it makes me wonder, if it was the best choice I could take, the choice that my own character would make.

In NV you can play as a dumb as brick idiot, who still gets things done by using his muscules or playing sophisticated charmer, who convinces everyone to their will. You can choose their background, choice of actions, how will they react on different situations.

To me replayability, comes from the fact, that I can discover something new, change the outcome I was dissatisfied with, play the game as somebody different.

Other example, Persona 4 golden:

Depending on your responses, you can get some really funny stuff, exploring all the endings, falling in love with different characters and such.

While, I thoroughly enjoyed Persona 4 golden, I have put about 250 hours in it, while in NV I have about 900.

In the end, NV is something that I love replaying, because there is always something new I could miss, some things I did not know and some ways I have not played before. (I never completed the Legion questline for example)
 
I think one of the most important things is being able to switch gameplay styles, e.g. in combat you can go from a (sneaky) sniper, to all-out big guns, to all out melee and back to a sneaky melee character and have them all be fun and usable for most if not all quests.
This also applies to the non-combat, i.e. can I solve this quest using only speech skills? Only stealth? Only some other non-speech non-combat skills (science/repair or the like)? How important is stealth for solving the quest in this manner?

Essentially the Science Boy, Diplomacy Boy, Stealth Boy, Combat Boy paths from Van Buren, with some of them interacting in different ways.
Don't have to make all quests be solvable by each one, but make each quest solvable by at least two of them independently, maybe with some small side-benefit if you specced into the remaining two.

Naturally, different playstyles should often lead to different story / reward outcomes.
Whether some are objectively worse than the other (especially the reward) or they are all balanced should really be up to you I guess. Underrail does a good job, despite some quest solutions being objectively worse than others, especially in the Oculus questline.

Say you get a quest to disable some computer in some base. Quest-giver wants it done quietly, maybe with a bonus if you can salvage some info or something from the computer while you're there.
Get something like
  • Talk your way in
    • Disable (salvage optional and/or skill dependent), talk your way out.
    • Make stuff go boom, can't salvage but can still talk your way out.
  • Sneak in
    • Disable, sneak out.
    • Boom, sneak out.
  • Fight your way in
    • Disable, walk out
    • Blow it up, who cares
Here there's no direct ScienceBoy solution, but rather the three others branch on whether you have it as a primary/secondary character skill.
Lots of ways this could go. Like say an alarm goes off if you salvage the thing. And the power goes out if you make stuff explode. So if you sneak in and salvage, it's harder to sneak out, but if you sneak in and explode, it's easier. Maybe similar for speech.
You could even have the best reward being for killing everyone and then getting the salvage despite the questgiver saying subtlety is preferred, though it's hard to say whether players would feel tricked by this or think it's a pleasant surprise.

Without gameplay variety like this, replayability would come down to simply picking different dialogue options to branch the story, meaning that the gameplay will become tiresome on the second time around, if not during the first.

And that is not to say that picking different dialogue options could not impact the stuff outlined above.
E.g. your relationship with either faction can impact the difficulty or story outcomes. Like if you're already working for the base guys, you can get it done easier without them knowing and still work for both, or sell out the quest-giver which could cut-off any further quests there or lead to some kind of double-agent scenario where base guys pretend you did the quest like questgiver wanted, then opening up an otherwise unavailable quest to spy on questgiver or something.

Of course this all depends on how badly you want your workload to spiral out of control on the basis of a single quest.
 
Last edited:
Ediros said:
I will go with NV for this one.

To me it comes down to freedom of choice, how you play your characters, different consequences of your actions.

At the end of NV, we get slides that describe what our actions brought to the wasteland and it makes me wonder, if it was the best choice I could take, the choice that my own character would make.

In NV you can play as a dumb as brick idiot, who still gets things done by using his muscules or playing sophisticated charmer, who convinces everyone to their will. You can choose their background, choice of actions, how will they react on different situations.

To me replayability, comes from the fact, that I can discover something new, change the outcome I was dissatisfied with, play the game as somebody different.

Other example, Persona 4 golden:

Depending on your responses, you can get some really funny stuff, exploring all the endings, falling in love with different characters and such.

While, I thoroughly enjoyed Persona 4 golden, I have put about 250 hours in it, while in NV I have about 900.

In the end, NV is something that I love replaying, because there is always something new I could miss, some things I did not know and some ways I have not played before. (I never completed the Legion questline for example)
Click to expand...


Okay I see. I think the inclusion of many small things to discover is also an interesting idea. To put in small thing that people might miss is defiantly key to wanting to replay. This can defiantly something I focus that will add detail to the mod. The ending slides are a good idea however I think that be out of the question for the moment as mod but we will see.
 
PlanHex said:
I think one of the most important things is being able to switch gameplay styles, e.g. in combat you can go from a (sneaky) sniper, to all-out big guns, to all out melee and back to a sneaky melee character and have them all be fun and usable for most if not all quests.
This also applies to the non-combat, i.e. can I solve this quest using only speech skills? Only stealth? Only some other non-speech non-combat skills (science/repair or the like)? How important is stealth for solving the quest in this manner?

Essentially the Science Boy, Diplomacy Boy, Stealth Boy, Combat Boy paths from Van Buren, with some of them interacting in different ways.
Don't have to make all quests be solvable by each one, but make each quest solvable by at least two of them independently, maybe with some small side-benefit if you specced into the remaining two.

Naturally, different playstyles should often lead to different story / reward outcomes.
Whether some are objectively worse than the other (especially the reward) or they are all balanced should really be up to you I guess. Underrail does a good job, despite some quest solutions being objectively worse than others, especially in the Oculus questline.

Say you get a quest to disable some computer in some base. Quest-giver wants it done quietly, maybe with a bonus if you can salvage some info or something from the computer while you're there.
Get something like
  • Talk your way in
    • Disable (salvage optional and/or skill dependent), talk your way out.
    • Make stuff go boom, can't salvage but can still talk your way out.
  • Sneak in
    • Disable, sneak out.
    • Boom, sneak out.
  • Fight your way in
    • Disable, walk out
    • Blow it up, who cares
Here there's no direct ScienceBoy solution, but rather the three others branch on whether you have it as a primary/secondary character skill.
Lots of ways this could go. Like say an alarm goes off if you salvage the thing. And the power goes out if you make stuff explode. So if you sneak in and salvage, it's harder to sneak out, but if you sneak in and explode, it's easier. Maybe similar for speech.
You could even have the best reward being for killing everyone and then getting the salvage despite the questgiver saying subtlety is preferred, though it's hard to say whether players would feel tricked by this or think it's a pleasant surprise.

Without gameplay variety like this, replayability would come down to simply picking different dialogue options to branch the story, meaning that the gameplay will become tiresome on the second time around, if not during the first.

And that is not to say that picking different dialogue options could not impact the stuff outlined above.
E.g. your relationship with either faction can impact the difficulty or story outcomes. Like if you're already working for the base guys, you can get it done easier without them knowing and still work for both, or sell out the quest-giver which could cut-off any further quests there or lead to some kind of double-agent scenario where base guys pretend you did the quest like questgiver wanted, then opening up an otherwise unavailable quest to spy on questgiver or something.

Of course this all depends on how badly you want your workload to spiral out of control on the basis of a single quest.
Click to expand...

Okay some good points. To focus of the two of the points there. I might need people to Play test style in future to see how that goes. To make sure there is different plat styles work (I guess in theory it should do). Optional quest options is a good idea for different for condition. I don't think it will be available to use all the time but defiantly in certain quests
 
There are also reputation titles, like childkiller, slaver, married, pornstar etc, that can have a varying degree of influence. Also, in Fo1-Fo2, you can set up challenge, like killing everyone, killing nobody, having low int\ch, trying to go to endgame locations with weak companions and keep them alive etc...
 
Sometime, I replay a game just for repeating that experience.

Good game, is like some great movies such as Saving Private Ryan, Top Gun or those from Audrey Hepburn, is worth watching again even you have watched it so many times.

Some crap gamer on the other hand, are so crap that they become a cult icon. You "replay" it for a good laugh.

Unfortunately, FO3 & 4 are neither of those.
 
I don't have the funds to by new games often. The last game I purchased was FFXV andI bought it for christmas. I replay games since I don't get new games often.
 
Wasteland Wanderer said:
I don't have the funds to by new games often. The last game I purchased was FFXV andI bought it for christmas. I replay games since I don't get new games often.
Click to expand...

Well seeming as my mod is free thats pretty hand ;)

I loved the last of us but never really felt like replaying it though :/
 
Does the mod already exist or is it just a couple of ideas?
 
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