Sawyer returns

Briosafreak

Briosafreak

Lived Through the Heat Death
Well time to move on for Black Isle Studios.
J.E. Sawyer has returned to the discussions on the upcoming Fallout3, er, i mean Project Van Buren, with a few ideas worth of a discussion:
<blockquote> The plasma rifle and turbo plasma rifle are, statistically speaking, far better than any other weapon in Fallout 1. Big guns are pretty powerful, but ammo weighs a ton, the weapons weigh a ton, and they chew ammo rapidly.

My general thoughts on the firearm issues are spread over a number of threads, but can be summarized as follows:

* Two firearm categories: small guns (1-handed) and big guns (2-handed). This means a laser pistol would be a small gun and a plasma rifle would be a big gun.

* Weapon categories should do different things, not be inherently "better" than each other. Thus, the following proposals:

* Big guns take up both item slots. If you want to switch to another weapon while using a big gun, you're spending 4 AP to go into inventory. Suck it up.

* Small guns, generally speaking, use lower caliber (and lower damage) rounds, but can be placed in one-hand. Though this doesn't mean OMG DUAL WIELD EVERY DAY, it means that you can switch back and forth between two types of guns, or a gun and grenades, etc. without needing to go into inventory.

* Allow people to use two identical small guns simultaneously at large penalties. Give access to a high small guns requirement perk that lowers these penalties.

* Let big guns be appropriately accurate at long ranges, but disallow the ability to make called shots with big guns when within one hex of an enemy.

* Do not make plasma > laser > conventional. Rather, make each weapon type fill a niche. Conventional weapons are good for shooting things at normal gun battle ranges, doing ballistic damage to unarmored, fleshy targets. Plasma weapons are shorter range weapons that do a high amount of heat damage and can be charged for more damaging single attacks (even without making a called shot), thereby blowing out thresholds on demand. Laser weapons are long range weapons with exceptional accuracy. They might even do less damage than a conventional weapon, but they are perfect for a sniper making targeted attacks.

* Make the chance of critical failure based off of the reliability/complexity of the weapon. Why do people still use revolvers today even though they can get a higher ROF from autoloaders?

I'm sure you guys can think of other ways to balance these elements out. The point is that I am not as concerned with how things seem as much as how things are. If you tell me that dual-wielding pistols "seems" unrealistic but I know that small guns "really" suck, I'm more concerned about the latter. </blockquote>
If you do know of other ways just join this discussion here.
 
Good idea is with the conventional, plasma and laser weapons range and also with using two guns at the same time.

But the idea with one handed weapons being small guns and two handed being big ones is... well isn't good.

And also using a big gun will mean having both inventory slots occupied. This sucks as hell!
 
Having both inventory slots occupied is a fair price in exchange for a huge firepower IMO. I also like his idea with small and big guns. I would prefer hunting, pipe, assault, etc. rilfes to be counted as small guns, though.
 
they do need 3 categories, just not big, small, and energy...
they need big, small, and huge guns..

small guns being 1 handed guns , big guns being rifles etc, and huge guns being flamers, miniguns, rocket launchers and so on..

big and huge guns taking up 2 slots is fair i think.. it was realy easy to run arround with 2 miniguns and switch between to prevent the cost of reloading for 2 turns ( usually enough to wipe out the band of mutants i just ran into.. )

if you have to hold it with 2 hands, then 2 hands should be full..


there ought to be a maintenance thing as well, not an active one, just a degredation of weapons with critical failure possibilities increasing over time.

Mechanical guns just relying on the basic repair skill, and energy, relying on a combination of science and repair skills...

if you don't have a high enough science skill to know how to clean the lenses and stuff then the weapons should become less accurate too..
 
Well, in Fallout, one handed weapons aren't weak, that's the problem. The .223 pistol may not be a turbo plasma rifle, but it's certainly a lofty weapon. Going around with two .223 pistols would be pretty damned uber.

Now imagine Fallout 2's weapon set.. and the gauss pistol... times two.

Factor in the One Hander trait, and you have a shitload of potency there.

That's the main problem with his ideas, here. You're going from a decently balanced system, then doubling the damage potential in one area, claiming it's for balance. The end result is you have a system where those pistols suddenly become the Turbo Plasma Rifle of Fallout 3, a weapon that's obviously beyond the scale of the others. Gauss pistols are pretty damned powerful as it stands, debatable on whether they were better than the rifle, so double that and see what problems pop out.

The guass rifle required one additional AP to fire, and did a max damge base of 43. The pistol took 4AP to fire, and did 32 max damage base. So, two guass pistols would be 64 base damage. Factor in that 2MM EC has a 3/2 damage bonus, and you have the weapon doing a base+bonus max damage of 96 points and the rifle does 64 points base+bonus, and it'd take more time to fire. Balance? Hey, where'd it go?!

Even if you lessened the gauss pistol stats so that dual wield was equivalent to the rifle, you'd end up fucking the non dual wield user by basically forcing them to dual wield just to get anything out of the skill.

So, yeah, there's problems with the ideas there. Big ones.
 
I guess guns akimbo are pretty dumb then. Why don't you reregister on IPLY forum and beat some sense into JES, SP? Oh, and maintaing guns would be nice, I think.
 
deadlus said:
I guess guns akimbo are pretty dumb then. Why don't you reregister on IPLY forum and beat some sense into JES, SP? Oh, and maintaing guns would be nice, I think.
Click to expand...


Maybe because TechWizz banned him from those boards, with no valid reason...
 
Saint_Proverbius said:
That's the main problem with his ideas, here. You're going from a decently balanced system, then doubling the damage potential in one area, claiming it's for balance. The end result is you have a system where those pistols suddenly become the Turbo Plasma Rifle of Fallout 3, a weapon that's obviously beyond the scale of the others. Gauss pistols are pretty damned powerful as it stands, debatable on whether they were better than the rifle, so double that and see what problems pop out.
Click to expand...

And it doesn't end with the pistols...
The Fallout system (At least in Fallout 1) was pretty well balanced, now, you can go and change it, but why?

You have a working system, some tweaking might be in order, but changing it for no apparent reason? I don't see the point.

Also, I don't see why pistols and rifles should be seperated into different categoris.
I'd hate to have to spend my skill points in two different weapon skills, just to get the option to use all of the "normal" weapons.
This, basicly, puts more empahiss on combat skills, which is un-needed.

The three basic gun skills in Fallout should be kept the same.
 
Maybe because TechWizz banned him from those boards, with no valid reason...
Click to expand...
Yeah I know he's banned, thats why I wrote about reregistering, Killzig had done that and was able to post (not for long, though).
 
Another thing I find problematic about his approach is that it's too much like a D&D deal. Basically, you have pistols or rifles as your choice. Either you have two handed or one handed weapons instead of a distinction based on a more arbitrary classification.

The problem that results from this is that say early in Fallout, you have a hunting rifle for ranged attacking with Small Arms and a 10MM SMG for up close. Both are relatively early game weapons, and using Fallout's system allows you to switch from one to the other as needed.

Under JE Sawyer's proposed idea, you have a choice of a pistol or an SMG if you're using the one handed skill. In other words, there really is less of a choice than in Fallout, since an SMG can also fire single shot.

In other words, just to have the basic choice early in the game, when you don't have gobs of skill points allocated because you've levelled up a dozen or two times.. you have to develop two skills just to use a rifle and an SMG.

This is like the problem with profficiencies in 2nd Edition D&D where you end up locking your character in to a type of weapon at early levels because you haven't had enough points to diversify, so you're running around with one or the other for a long, long time.

That type of thinking also seems to screw up JE's whole rifles > pistols argument. If pistols are so weak, then why the hell would anyone ever pick that skill in the beginning?
 
It seems JE is trying hard to force changes into the system...

I wonder why? Is he feeling bad using a pre-made system in a game he has lead design on?
 
Realism?

Realism?

If the filling of 2 hand slots is to add realism, than the range and accuracy
factors "could" balance the issue. If that's the true intention.

I haven't spend a lot of time following J.E. , and...., well, but, (for my intention is to put a little negitive spin here) the trend of the threads does seem to add first person shooter gun lore and micro managing squad tactics with NPC's.
I'm not saying J.E. is initiating each "novel" concept, BUT the other contributers are. In this atmosphere, a lot of changes will be entertained,
and it remains to be seen what kind of "legs" this guns akimbo has.


Sunday Blue Grass on the radio, and I got a short tale. Well it involves bears, so it's got to be short....

Met a Montanian recent, and I couldn't answer all his questions about hunting in the "East". He wondered if there was still
rifle hunting in Ohio and Virginia, or was it all shotgun,........, and somewhere he mentioned the bear situation in Montana requires the
option of hand guns.

Carried a modern clip fed weapon in a shoulder
houlster, AND a big revolver. Maybe he was show boating a bit, AND, I'm convinced he'd have one or the other handy, if a bear came stalking towards the sound of gun shots. Bear can associate gun
fire with men, AND MEAT, so hunger might over rule any apprehension
of monkeys.

Well it does seem to be 'a' consensus that the handgun is the one to have when in bear charging range. When you smell the bear's stink it's too late to be seeking a tree, whether you be Darwinian Ape, or Son of Adam.

I have yet to hear anyone tell of having TWO handguns firing akimbo, tho. Maybe the relivance of time and motion is interceding here. Let's say ACTION POINTS are a real consideration in this situation. Imagine that.

Assuming the "trend" of these I'play threads are for "realism". Will the time and motion analogue, action points, validate the "realistic" use of two HAND guns akimbo? Will trick shooting be an UBER level X-teen perk with 150 plus points in the appropriate skill, like the developement
of UBER melee characters, or candy chrome to bait the "young and restless" with underdeveloped social--RPG--skills?

This flavor of "Realism" a Trojan Horse? Expect the next REEAL THANG will be PSYonics and "bullet time".

Fallout 3 as Science-FANTASy.

4too
 
realistically, you can walk arround with a pistol in each hand and fire them at the same time.. but your accuracy would deminish with the second shot.. since the first causes recoil and knocks your aim off..
so you should get reduced damage to the second pistol shot when firing both, maybe half or quarter what a sinlg shot would be.. so you'd only get a 25 percent increase in damage rather than doubling it.

it is equally possible to carry a small SMG in each hand, and again fire them at the same time, but firing a smg 1 handed is even worse than a pistol because of the recoil.. and it would be damn near useless firing on semi auto..

it would be damn near impossible to use a rifle 1 handed..

Give an accuracy bonus when using pistols with the second "hand" slot empty, since it would be used to steady the shot..
 
Uh... Realistically, your accuracy would be diminished from the very first shot, because you couldn't actually aim the pistols. You might be able to hit someone, but there's no way you could do so with any accuracy.
 
what i was saying was that to some extent, you could aim at a target with a pistol in each hand, pull the trigger on both at the same time from your perspective, but one would fire before the other since even if you were good enough to apply the exact same ammount of pressure to each trigger at exactly the same time, the manufacturing tolerances on the pistols would not be exactly identical..

which would cause you to start to move due to the recoil and throw the trajectory of the second shot off..

and thats why i said about getting an accuracy bonus when using a pistol in one hand while the other "hand" slot is empty, because you could steady the pistol..


and yes i get your point that you can't look down 2 guns sights at the same time, so the second shot would not be aimed in the first place..
 
i personally don't care what weapon system they use. i don't think gameplay of Fallout 3 will be completely and unrecoverably ruined by a dreadful and unforgivable flaw such as being able to use two pistols at once or not being able to switch between a minigun and a rocket launcher without accessing your inventory (and yes, that was sarcasm :roll: ).
 
ColJack, that might be fine and "realistic", but it still doesn't fit into the 50's sci-fi pulp and movie homage, where the Fallout setting takes its roots.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top