I've been challenged!? Neato!
Copy and paste of Interplay post:
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J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
So what if they can't pick all the right perks the first time they play? Who cares?
I think maybe the people who played Fallout and got insanely frustrated because the game punished them for making arbitrary, uniformed opinions, causing them to find more frustration and misery than fun. They might care.
I never got into the Glow the first time I played Fallout. No matter how many times I moved my mouse over that damn hole, I never found a thing to click on. Being pissed, I saved my game there, and went to run through the rest of the game, until my screen went white and I died.
Took me a while to figure out I'd died of radiation. Go figure.
So I grabbed a save game from before the hole and finished the game by shooting everything. The first people I shot up were the Gunrunners. Ever take out the Gunrunners with a shitty Small Guns skill and a Sniper Rifle? It ain't easy. I did it though. Save. Reload. Save. Reload. Then, with that Plasma Rifle, I tried to use it, and never shot a damn thing. Looking at the stats I could see it was a useful weapon too (also going by the number of times I got killed by the damn thing by Gabriel as I tried to take him and his gang out). So I kept putting points into Energy Weapons. Then I hit a level that allowed me to "tag another skill". So I tagged Energy Weapons. It went from somewhere about 80-90% up to 200% and I think I essentially lost a bunch of skill points in the process.
I never did get into the Glow, and it pissed me off. So I hit the net and found a thread on NMA that said "rope on the beam" and all of a sudden, there it was, clean as day. I reloaded Fallout, got into the Glow, joined the Brotherhood of Steel and talked the Master into suicide.
That's when Fallout really hit me. Here I am, playing a game I'd just finished, and by my own stupidity more than anything else, missed out on a whole section of the game, yet I'd still finished it and saved the world. Yet by just getting into the Glow, I had found a whole new side of the game that I had previously missed. A whole new side that I enjoyed too.
I don't think I ever talked to Zax with my first character either. I think I couldn't get the power on. So I couldn't get Zax back online to talk to him. What did I do? I gave up and played Diablo.. No wait! That's wrong... I restarted. Got repair and science and did the Glow again and killed the Master again.
Was I frustrated that I couldn't get into the Glow the first time? Hell yeah. Did it piss me off? Hell yeah. That's why I "cheated" and went on the net for an answer.
The funny thing is, with all this talk on skills, I didn't fail to get into the Glow because of the lack of a skill. I didn't get in because I didn't see the beam in the middle and I didn't realise I could put a rope on it.
The point is, I enjoyed the game. Ignoring the point that I missed a part of the game for a while, I still enjoyed it, and I still managed to finish the game. Better yet, I enjoyed it even more when I played it again and finished what I couldn't do the first time.
How people deal with frustration is up to them. Some people get frustrated and give up, you can't help them. Others will get frustrated and find an answer.
J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
A precisely built Small Guns specialist can beat Fallout, this is true, you're right. A crippled wheezing Energy Weapons part-timer can also beat Fallout. The uninformed player has no way to know this "magical path" through the game, and is effectively punished if they attempt to use Small Guns in a casual way.
Someone who doesn't get into the Glow, can't retrieve the "Ancient Disk". They then can't get into the Brotherhood of Steel. Without getting into the Brotherhood of Steel, they can't learn that Mutants are sterile from Vree. Then, no matter how high their Speech skill, I'm pretty sure they can't talk the Master into suicide (From memory, I'm pretty sure Vree's autopsy holodisk is a pre-requisite of that).
Which skill category does "failing to use a rope on a beam" fall into?
To more directly answer your point though, Fallout does relay the "importance of the Big weapons" to the player pretty clearly. Just talk to anybody about the Gun Runners, you'll find they sell some of the best weaponry in the game. What do they sell? Energy Weapons and Big Guns. It's made apparent, from about the Hub and onwards, that the Big Guns and Energy Weapons are the weapons to get, if you want to kick some serious butt. The Brotherhood of Steel don't use Sniper Rifles and Shotguns. They've got two guys with miniguns holding down their fort. The Super Mutants don't attack you with knives and Hunting Rifles, they attack you with miniguns and laser rifles. It's a pretty obvious clue to ANY gamer, that if you're tougher opponents are using tougher weapons, then you might want to get some of those tougher weapons.
It's the same reason people use the Railgun in Quake. It's pretty hard not to notice the extreme damage the weapon causes.
J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
Imagine if they tag Doctor, Gambling, and Science and actually expect to realistically play through the game for the first time. Is that a naive assumption for the player? Is the idea that a game designer should typically try to make skills of equal cost have equal worth throughout the game so bizarre that players should expect to re-start the game two or three times until they find what the designer had intended?
I think someone who tagged those three skills and uses them exclusively thoughout the game is either a veteran Fallout player after a different experience or a newbie who wants to ignore the fact that his enemies are shooting at him and no matter how much he wants to try and heal himself, fighting back might be a better solution.
They would have to ignore all 6 weapons skills, speech and lockpick. Incidentally, I don't disagree with you on this. Being able to use mutiple skills to complete a game is a benefit. It's certainly better than pathetic the Fallout 2 ending. However, I also think there's a limit. There's a point where the player has to learn about survival in the wastes and there's a point where the player has to realise that not every skill will allow him to kill the Master. For example, gambling the Master to death shouldn't be an option. I also seriously doubt that any gamer, playing Fallout for the first time, would think it would be an option.
J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
By the way, you're not, by chance, fixing Fallout for multiplayer? Are you...?
What would the number of gun skills have anything to do with multiplayer? Please, delve deep into your mind, pore over all holy and scientific books of the last millennium, and point me towards the shard of universal knowledge lodged itself into your mind, inspiring you with the idea that the number of weapon skills in a game had even the thinnest thread of relationship to any aspect of multiplayer whatsoever.
Not the number of weapons skills, but your strange and bizarre desire to make duel pistols cause the same amount of damage as a minigun, or as a Plasma Rifle. Tell me why someone wielding twin Desert Eagles should be able to deal as much damage as someone wielding a Plasma Rifle. That seems to me to be the way you're going and it doesn't make sense. Big Guns are Big Guns for a reason. Energy Weapons are Energy Weapons for a reason. There's power in them thar guns!
J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
You want to know where these ideas are coming from? In 1997, I played Fallout, and I thought, "Hey, this is pretty cool." Then I played it over and over and over again and thought, "Still pretty cool, but these aspects of the system suck." Then I got offered a job working at Interplay and I took it, thinking, "Someday I will get to work on Fallout 3." Four years later, I started working on Van Buren. I replayed the Fallout games and watched other people with a variety of different levels of FO experience play the game. The results weren't too surprising: players with loads of FO experience waltzed through the game without any challenge whatsoever. They avoided all "worthless" perks and skills, and dominated everything. Players without that experience often made "mistakes" because either the system or the tools used by the system in the world had a secret pattern to them that they were not aware of. So, in short, many of the things I thought in 1997 still seem broken to me in the SPECIAL system.
If you take that as a flaw, than any system you design is going to be flawed. ANY game, can very easily be beaten by "those who know" vs "those who don't". I can play Arcanum again. I know what skills I need to "ace the game", and I know what skills to avoid. I know how to get the maximum XP out of most quests and I know how to get the followers I want. In short, it makes the game easier. That's not why I replay it though.
Take Fallout 1. My favourite character in FO1 is the 10 Intelligence, 10 Perception, 10 Agility sniper. By level 3, I have Small Guns at 200%. I usually tag Small Guns, Energy Weapons and Speech (Usually just 'cause I need something else to tag). By the end of the game, I can get max XP from most quests and as a result, usually have a character that can talk, shoot, repair, "science", lockpick or steal anything I want to. I get most of my enjoyment from the combat system (I enjoy the turn-based combat and the weapons). I use this character when I want to "get everything I can".
If I were in a competition to finish Fallout 1 with the most XP, or in the shortest time possible, I'd take the above character in a heartbeat... but I've never been in a Fallout competition.
I sometimes play with other styles though. There's my favourite "the throwing guy" who always manages to run out of grenades, or money to buy grenades, or both. Then there's the runner-up "Mr. Pathetic" who just Gambles his life away and has no combat skills what-so-ever. He's an excellent doctor though.
My point is, I have fun with each character, and unless I deliberately attempt to ruin my chances (by avoiding speech, lockpick or all combat skills) then I can usually finish the game. When worse comes to worse though, that door to the nuke under the Master can be blown up with enough dynamite.
Fallout isn't just about beating it better than "anyone else". It's about finding things others didn't by getting a skill others neglected or taking an options others didn't think of. It's not about ignoring the world around you and focussing on skills that aren't useful most of the time.
J.E. Sawyer";p="470082 said:
Also, you never answered my previous question: if you were desinging a post-apocalyptic RPG for the first time, would you divide up skills exactly as they were in Fallout? Why or why not?
Well, you've never answered my question about splitting up the list of weapons in Fallout 2 into your version of Small Guns vs Big Guns. I did that myself in a post a couple above this, and haven't heard anything from you about it since.
But, if I was designing a post-apoc RPG for the first time, I'd probably make the same mistakes the Fallout team did. It'd be my first time after-all.
I'm sure Tim Cain & Co made the three Gun categories for a reason. I'm also sure they put in all the rest of those skills for a reason.
If I take your question as:
What do I see as problems in Fallout and how would I fix them?
Then the answer is: Make the skills more useful, as in Fallout 2. There needs to be options to use the skills in some significant places, so that people who take a certain skill are rewarded with some benefit that no other player can gain.
The ending needs to have variety like Fallout 1. The Fallout 2 ending let the game down. Speech, Combat, "Thief skills" should be the main options. I should be able to sneak into the Enclave and sneak out. I should be able to talk my way in and talk people out of thier actions. I should also be able to shoot my way through.
I'd also keep this in mind: No matter what I do, there will always be flaws. There will always be that way to create the perfect character, there will also be a way to create a completely useless character. No matter how much I adjust the perks or tweak the wepons, there will always, statistically, be one weapon and perk combination that can beat the game hands down, unless you deliberately balance this with several weapons (IE: Make enough perks that if selected, a Desert Eagle can cause as much damage as a Plasma Rifle).
However, the game world and the situations that occur in that game world should make it abundantly clear to the player what kind of skills they need to make it through. They should realise the skills that will serve them in the end and they should be able to progress towards them, even if they make some hideous choice right at the start.
If I tag Doctor, Gambling, and Science my first time through, then events I encounter in the game should make me realise that I need some combat skills. The game should give me ample opportunity to realise this, and leave me enough time to alter my character as I progress. Remember, the skills in Fallout 1 don't cost any more than 1 point to get. If I average 15 skill points per level, I can still get a high enough score in any stat to make it through, provided I realise that the Doctor skill is only useful for healing AFTER I've been shot, that all Gambling does is get me money and buying my way through isn't an option in most parts, and Science is almost useless without repair in some situations.
Oddly enough though, I find your "Small Guns" vs "Big Guns" selection bizarre. It's never EVER been a suggestion raised by anyone but yourself. Most of the fans have heard of the "Pistols, Rifles, Big Guns" selection since Fallout came out. But cutting the firearms categories down to two would be something I'd never do.
There's one final skill choice that hasn't been mentioned though. The person who chooses nothing. It is entirely possible to run through Fallout, level-up and never put skill points into anything. You just let them sit there at the bottom, incrementing with each level. If someone wants to be that stupid though, then hey, that's up to them.
