Bodybag said:
No, but Gothic 2 was made by professional game makers. According to your argument, professional game makers don't release broken combat systems. Facts are: they do.
But seriously, don't devolve this thread into hair-splitting
Shacknews: Fallout 3 like Oblivion with exploding heads
- Thread starter Per
- Start date
No, but Gothic 2 was made by professional game makers. According to your argument, professional game makers don't release broken combat systems. Facts are: they do.
But seriously, don't devolve this thread into hair-splitting
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Brother None said:
Are you saying combat outside of VATS isn't governed by die rolls/character stats? Where did they say this?
No, according to my argument professional game maker Bethesda doesn't ship games with key core components, such as combat, broken. At least in the only other Bethesda game I've played so far. Why would they bother with small arms skills if the player could just ignore them while shooting?
True but on the other hand I remember Morrowind and its sucky combat system in which you could miss your target 30 times in a row even though you were standing so close to it that you could litteraly smell its filthy breath. If you choose a first person perspective and especially real time then you better forget about dice rolls, especially with firearms because it soon becomes frustrating for the player. That's just my opinion though, and I could be wrong.
Bodybag said:
Governed by die rolls = you click on something, a chance factor is rolled on and you hit or miss
Outside VATS, you simply have an aiming rectangle and then when you click the mouse button the bullet goes roughly in the direction of the rectangle. How close it actually is to the rectangle is determined by your skills.
This has been discussed in more than one earlier preview. This isn't the same as dice rolls. You don't aim at a mutant's head, click and then suddenly miss completely.
BB said:
That's not what you actually said, but like I said: no hairsplitting.
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Brother None said:
Rectangle, or reticule? Or is the reticule a rectangle? Doesn't matter, it seems a little lame, and I hope that can be chalked up to another communication mishap between dev and journalist. I like my way better, ie chance to hit is chance to hit.
STILL, it doesn't really sound like I can go all Quake 2 on the game and expect to be anything but carrion fodder without pumping some skill points into Small Guns, so what's the big deal, again? That I have to MANUALLY AIM my dude's crosshairs to do it? BFD, sign me up.
Here's what I actually said, without splitting any hairs:
ME said:
F3 is Oblivion with guns, right? WINK
Black seems to think that the player, if he's l337 enough, can simply ignore combat skills and just twitch his way through the game. If what you posted is true then that's not the case. Thanks for clearing that up, BN
DarkCorp
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
bodybag said:
Well if I was L33T enough to jump/strafe side to side/run, I am sure I would get close enough to bash someones face in with melee weapons or hit them with a gun regardless of stats. Wow what I just said sounds suspiciously like Counterstrike.
Well that is unless its based on stats so heavily that even a point blank execution style shot to the head is going to miss.
I like how you failed to mention how much twitch skill is needed to survive in a real time game where guys constantly shoot at you. How trying to avoid constant bullets/grenades/angry mutants trying to punch in your face with a power fist (or chasing down those cowardly ones who constantly run away) is pretty much all about twitch skills just like CS, TF2, Quakes, etc, etc.
VDweller
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Good point. There is no way professional game makers would ship a broken game.Bodybag said:
Didn't do what? Allowed you to beat the game without skills? It did.
In Oblivion your to hit chance is determined by your twitch skills (i.e. you always hit, basically), but the damage is determined by your weapon skill, 'cause that's like an RPG and shit. So:
a) killing someone is a matter of patience and healing potions
b) getting a weapon with extra magic damage makes you an ubar fighter without any skills at all.
Let's say at low skill levels your damage is 8, and at high levels your damage is 15. The difference isn't huge. Now, enchant that weapon to do extra 20 points of damage. Since you always hit, that's 28 guaranteed points. Ok, at high levels it could have been 33, but the difference is meaningless.
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
VDweller said:
BN already interrupted that quote to score the same point, buddy. Points off for originality
Twitch skills in this instance being clicking left mouse when right in front of an enemy.
I'll concede that Oblivion isn't a good analogue for Fallout 3 in terms of combat, since they seem to go about it in completely different ways, namely in Oblivion you can't get better at fighting by simply dumping skill points into figting skills; you become more skilled by actually using the skills.
Also, I know there's a strict no splitting hairs policy here, but the difference bwteen 8 and 15 is almost 50%! You're a RPG guy, for fuck's sake!
Briosafreak
Lived Through the Heat Death
VDweller
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
My point was that Oblivion was shipped with a pretty shitty combat system.Bodybag said:
Almost 50% you say?Also, I know there's a strict no splitting hairs policy here, but the difference bwteen 8 and 15 is almost 50%! You're a RPG guy, for fuck's sake!
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Briosafreak said:
Cool. So it's not a die roll, but it is governed by character skill. And "some randomness". In other words, just because I would totally pwn Black in CS doesn't mean I can go running around braining people in F3 without lvl'n up my dude.
VDweller said:
Yeah, 53.33(repeating). It's pretty close!
Bodybag said:
Put a little more thought into it though. It came across to me as a sort of expanding crosshair, like Deus Ex or something.
Your skill doesn't dictate exactly whether or not it hits the enemy, it merely decides the trajectory of the bullet, if it flies closer to where your crosshair is located or farther away.
It's not exactly terrible, but still, it's totally stupid, if that's the way it actually works then real time combat will turn into a random mess of bullets flying in unspecified directions without actually concerning whatever you're shooting at.
I guess it makes more sense conceptually, but what if you're decked out in full power armor with a minigun and pumped up with drugs and just shove your gun into a mutant's face and unload at close range so your bullets can't possibly miss?
That doesn't sound like the depth Fallout's combat had, it sounds more like a completely irregular method of defining the player's crosshair.
Eyenixon said:
If I remember rightly, in the original FOs you could be right next to your enemy and still miss, and even drop your weapon. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't agree with Bodybag though. Prior experience with FPSs would have to help with sighting and evading enemies in FO3, just as they do in an FPS. As BN said, FPS experience shouldn't make you better at a game that's supposedly a "hard core" RPG.
Bodybag said:
I think VDweller was reiterating this because you didn't seem to understand what you'd said previously. Did you end up working it out?
Mick
Morbus
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Good.Bodybag said:
Bernard Bumner
Still Mildly Glowing
re: The Glowing Ones...
The ghosts of past lives thing is potentially interesting but not original, e.g. System Shock 2, and carried over into Bioshock.
(Also, this is going to be a much more effective dramatic device if they are zombie ghouls, rather than authentic Fallout types. Let's hope that not every ghoul in the game is similarly lobotomized.)
The ghosts of past lives thing is potentially interesting but not original, e.g. System Shock 2, and carried over into Bioshock.
(Also, this is going to be a much more effective dramatic device if they are zombie ghouls, rather than authentic Fallout types. Let's hope that not every ghoul in the game is similarly lobotomized.)
requiem_for_a_starfury
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Character skill? Where do you get that, it just says your skill, not your skill points or your character's skill just 'your skill'. That could mean anything, when I read the interview first time I took it as player skill, especially after the list of shooters they referenced for research and previews talking about escaping the intense action by going into VATS.Bodybag said:
Whether it's player or character skill though he was still only talking about hitting a target. Even on console games with the best auto aiming system going if you are too slow at bringing your gun to bear or don't have the cursor anywhere near your target you are going to fail and that's purely down to player skill. So anyone with good fps induced reactions is going to have an easier time playing than others. Even if they can't ignore their weapon skills and boost their non combat skills above and beyond, like you could in Deus Ex.
retardation
First time out of the vault
hi
bodybag who is that in your avatar is it the indian from "one flew over the cuckoo's nest"
there's nothing i'm typing here that ought to be taken as a direct reply to anything anybody said in this thread ever.
i popped an ambien about 35 minutes before i started writing and like with george lucas and his "the force", if anything that i do ever doesn't make sense or sounds stupid, that's what i'm blaming it on
um i dont really read forums much so i dont know if this has all been said before. whatever you can just ignore me.
I think that a lot of debates on the various forums are examining the "wrong end" of the combat system in their endeavor to determine to what extent it is like or unlike a standard first-person-shooter's combat system. That is to say, in this thread and in numerous others across various internet boards, the debate over the FPS/RPG nature of VATS/FO3 seems to center upon the hit/accuracy/damage calculation of shots, as if it were only in this petty exchange of numerical values that the "key" lies to understand how far Fallout 3's combat strays from the original form that we enjoyed - and how much it could possibly venture into a realm that we would find ourselves averse to.
But first, a few brief interminable comments on the state of our simultaneous union and disunion, which apparently caused a brief rumpus in this very thread. Hairsplitting.
Our sad situation is such a miserable swamp of inaction that it practically compels any serious discussion to revolve around the ultimately fruitless splitting of hairs. After all, from what other condition could such ubiquity of hair-splitting occur apart from the single one that we face; one in which every miserly-hoarded half-crumb of genuine information is given over the edge of the gold satin tablecloth with a blase pinky-flick from Pete, then rolls past (as it did before Oblivion) the rowed clutching digits of vermin arrayed in gauntlet formation, every one of them in madchattering paroxysms of ecstacy at the merest opening to nibble and drool upon "THE WORD" as it tumbleweeds dumbly by them with all of the nobility and elegance of a spheroid and glutinous turd until, finally, as it concludes its corkscrew slalom up-and-through-and-tween-and-twixt the coiled Food Chain, the vermin having had their fair fill and their share of fun with what is now "I I- F V CPL", in a state barely recognizable it wheezes to a final stop in the center of our debating circle and -- what could such a sad little speck of nothing signify in our forced-speculative debate? What can it mean, what can we do with it, what manner of progress will it catalyze? What kernel of content was there in this paltry "exclusive," or in that insipid "interview?" What was at the core, what is at the essence of this meagre morsel of data? When we dissect it, what are we to find?
Nothing more than the slightest, wiry strand of Emil Pagliarulo's crimson pubic hair. We are given hairs and we must split them. And then we must wash our hands thoroughly.
Owing to that state of affairs, I think it becomes extremely important to - for but a moment, until we've, you know, something better to do - discard those half-truths, these quasi-rumors, all those wild-eyed distractions, and on the basis of the 100% known or 100% knowable, engage in a reasoned exchange of qualified and quantified values until we arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion. Sounds like giggles, right? Well, argue smarter, save time, over faster, less spam, more time to do something slightly less a waste of fleeting life.
What that means, concretely and concisely, in the context of this thread, is that a great deal more insight into the fundamentals of the system now being debated can be gleaned from a cursory examination of the non-VATS combat system employed in FO3, specifically the way stats are utilized, which, once considered on its own and in its entirety, apart from VATS which can be plugged back in later, offers a more incisive viewpoint of the gameplay differentation between Fallout3, the Originals, and other real-time-turn-based games. By weighing its relation to the Agility stat, RT combat and VATS-stasisplay on the one hand and to "twitch skills" on the other, we can arrive at a much more accurate conception of just what the game will play like, and where it's real "base" lies in the spectrum of genres; that is to say, where its loyalties really lie. And it's the sort of thing that nobody needs to have seen the demo in order to understand.
The reason why this is a surer guide than the previously employed hit-chance (in VATS and out) train of thought is that it encompasses, directly and indrectly, a larger "slice" of the total gameplay system as regards the specific question of to what degree the importance of stats is being diminished in the interests of appealing to twitch skills. Additionally, it's obvious that VATS is Bethesda's big secret weapon to reconcile turn-based and real-time gameplay; by initially neglecting it in our examination of the combat system, and then adding it back in after said examination has concluded, we can achieve a more balanced understanding of the combat system's framework and execution.
We are all aware of how agility/dexterity affect dodging/missing - generally and in general terms - in traditional RPGs: the stats rule, and mathematics weighs your fate with absolute stoicism. Your Luck - either your own for real or the digitally quantified measure your character's - is your only saviour. Likewise, none of us is bereft of experience when it comes to the mechanics governing the dodging of attack in first-person-shooters: if you slow on the arrow-keys, fumble your mouse, or blink too often - you die in a frantic, senseless scramble. Unless you got da skillz.
I say this in anticipation of serial contrarians who will insist that there's all kinds of ownage to be had with less-than-1337 skillz: That's not the point of the argument. I myself am brilliant at FPS. In Red Orchestra your butthole will eat my Mosin-Nagant sideways. However, the idea of my FPS skills determining - or encompassing - what I am able to accomplish in an RPG game is abhorrent to me, being contrary to the spirit - and the promise - of the genre.
There is no FPS game with fun combat - non-cheathacked combat - in which it is only your speed moving a mouse on a 2-dimensional plane that leads directly to your success. A game in which that was the only condition for victory would be a watered-down version of Whack-a-Mole. In FPS games, and certainly in the kind of game that Fallout3 is trying to become, the following skills are essential: Situational awareness, erratic depth perception applied to a quantum process (leading shots), visual acuity, color, shade and tone seperation, the speed of your tactical calculation, coordination of dextrous interplay between various keyboard buttons, exploits of game mechanics (in MP modes), a faster machine/connection, sharp hearing for audio cues and a machine that can output them adequately, a grand monitor, etc. - these additional skills and qualities all are only of essential importance to combat gameplay when the game has become a real-time first-person shooter of the complexity characteristic of contemporary releases. Yes, color-blindness can negatively impact your turn-based RPG experience, but if you think that either a valid or a clever argument, you're being a precious little shit. As for anything else that you think is in a gray area, it can be overcome in a TB game by simply - taking your time. Can't do that in RT.
It's not the mouse-pushing and clicking that makes a first-person shooter what it is relative to what a turn-based game is. Rather, it is something much more kinetic: It's the frenetic infernal ballet of evasion and anticipation on a blue-hot iron stage, surging and sizzling anew on the pounding of Player1's every rapidfire heartbeat, spent shells flung ascatter onscreen in an approximation of the beady sweat you spray each time that the belch of Hell mutters down in the black of the DX10.C-shaded corridor, jarring your perception and yanking your head, eyes glued to the monitor's shadow-veiled edges, in the direction from whence annihilation may strike. The aforementioned is the extreme of FPS spectrum. The further that Fallout 3's combat system takes us from that state, the nearer we are relatively to, if not RPG's, then at least something that isn't purely reflexskillz-driven.
There is much, much more to this argument about the great divergence of FO3's combat from proper RPG combat than what happens to a "hit chance" after you click the button that makes the gun fire, and whether the action is paused when the calculation is made; the qualities listed above, and abover still, and dozens of others, are all, to varying degrees, more important than hit calculation methods in the alienation of many TB-RPG players from the new combat system. And it's the reliance upon all the flashy hassle of all that junk listed above that seperates the combat experience of RT and VATS from TB.
It goes without saying that what a lot of traditional RPG players want when they play an RPG (especially one that is meant to be a sequel to their favorite) is that the various plots and characters, which together are everything to these players' enjoyment of the game, can be interacted with and explored by means of cerebral and not reflexive gameplay mechanisms, thereby making the game an exercise in wit, cunning, calculation, deception, empathy and intellect - instead of a thumb-exercise.
CnC dialogue trees are cerebral; twitchy minigames to linearly chat are not. Foreseeing the need to build up a certain stat to unlock and doing so through weighing various mathematical figures and multipliers is cerebral; playing an unloseable minigame that ignores or overrides your skill is not. Finding and following clues, all on your own, to riches and excitement is cerebral; following an arrow is not. Balancing your character's motivations with his or her abilities and opportunities, in combat and in questing, is cerebral; button-mashing for the 14th linear buttonmashing kill-quest in a row is not. Experiencing the game wholly on the virtue of your twitchskillz, which in the end determine whether and whither you explore and experience, while the importance of the thought process in enhancing the adventure is dulled, dimmed and diluted, is not cerebral -- it is, instead, totally retarded, done by and for retards, who by all appearances would seem never to have read a single good book or watched a single good film. It is that malignant process - not the lack or addition of any bullet-pointed feature - that causes the RPG player to feel abused by the developers for the sake of the mass moronic market.
But then there are other RPG players who haven't really a choice in the matter. It doesn't just tip a balance for them, forcing them to rough out the bad to get to the good - it sweeps them off of the playing field entirely. Those RPG players who are not inclined to a sufficient degree to any of those traits listed (now far) above are handicapped to the point that their enjoyment of the game is shaken roughly, not stirred, with a twist of lemon...AIDS. Terminal, fatal; they can't get into the game at all. They'd rather read and ponder than click off a hundred rounds into racing zombies. And that stinks because it's precisely those kind of RPG players who made the franchise and its setting -- even the whole fucking genre -- worth anything to anybody in the first place, as they were the most loyal supporters of the best products. The goons now taking away their toys and rebranding them for jocks and blood-drunk ADHD-kids owe their plasma screens and faux-mo's (with customary soul patch) all to them: the poor, mild-mannered RPG fans who now are seeing one of their sacred relics stolen-away from the holy treasure trove by outsiders in off-the-rack suits, and before their very eyes their relics being "restored" by this antipodal cult of the invaders.
Ok - but what the fuck has that to do with any of the shit we were talking about?, which was the combat system? you may very well ask me as you wipe belly-sweat off of yourself with one hand while the other feeds stale Cheese Puffs past your braces. well i'll tell you dont get mad at me
We've established that turn-based combat and real-time combat are wholly distinct categories and conditions. The experience is incomparable; the mental and physical processes determining aptitude and enjoyment in each are widely divergent and distinct. Any attempt to formulate a hybrid system between them results in an entirely new species, or perhaps an altered breed of an existing hybrid species, for better or worse (and the possibility is not excluded that one could be "better" than anything else, at some point in the future) -- but never can there result the ideal mutant, good half of the father and good half of the other father (because videogames are gay), because each one is so distinct from the other that, between the two extremes, there can be no harmony; concisely, it'll suck a duck. The gulf between the parents is impassable, though the groddy little mutant offspring are free to play in the ravine, and we can hope that one may evolve fun in the future. But I digress. Often.
You cannot serve both real TB and real RT, so sayeth the Book, Boyarski 3:16. But we can play God by genetically splicing them, and Beth is tentacle-tips deep in the burbling vats, knitting a new helix. They are compelled to drop genetic traits of RPG and TB gameplay in order to artificially implant DNA from RT FPSs. The answer to everyone's constantly-yammered question lies in what, precisely, has Beth dropped? And it's my contention that if you put VATS out of your mind just a bit, examine the system, then reintroduce VATS, then you'll gain some insight.
But before I stop repeating myself and begin getting to a point, now's a good time to tell you all about me.
In any RPG I play that allows (and they all do or else they aren't RPGs), I play a high-Agility character. I do this to compensate for my gross obesity in real life, naturally. Anyway, as a result, I tend to depend upon that statistic negating a certain portion of the damage that my character receives, in order to balance out the relatively lesser damage that my character will be capable of inflicting (or absorbing) due to choosing, as a matter of necessity, lesser values in stats such as Strength. Endurance, and whichever other stats may govern magical attacks and defences. This is usually accomplished in turn-based games, or even some RT RPGs, by higher dexterity or agility values giving increasingly larger boosts to one's character's chance to dodge attacks or, to phrase it another way, for the attacker to miss. Another possible solution to addressing the balance between builds is to give high-agi characters bonus methods of attack, such as extra proficiency with ranged weapons, small weapons, or the (increased) possibility of critical strikes.
Basically, in standard RPG games in which you get to pick or craft your own character (and you do so in the original Fallouts and ostensibly so in Oblivion, comment forthcoming) you can count on the game to give you some kind of balance at the foundational stage, upon which you can build (or depend) to eventually conflate this impersonal, heartless mass of flagged features and number-loaded spreadsheets with your ideal conception of the character whose adventure you want to guide and experience (unless you're playing Oblivion, which cheated "balance" by having no seperate or differentiated paths TO balance but only a series of statistics with automated and universally maximizable progress, and likewise cheated the concept of developing a character by giving you no means by which to effect the world, plots, or characters, other than through the paltry number of meagre linear choices that Bethesda created and offered.)
So, at this point in our study of RPG's, we've got the choice of Agility, and it has a clear affect on how often I avoid damage in battle. It's a stat. As a stat, it (along with Dexterity, which is almost always its synonymous replacement) governs in almost all RPGs - in fact, in all that I can think of offhand - your character's chance to dodge or to be missed. It is how you make up for lack of brawn. That's how you get a character that is nimble and spry. It's a hallmark of RPG's, and typically has a more demonstrable effect in TB RPGs than RT ones, though in RT it is by no means treated the same way uniformly -- or, in any case that I know of, as poorly as it is in FO3.
One of the screenshots released by Bethesda actually shows the PipBoy screen displaying the Agility stat's information page. The text is as follows: Agility Effects your Small Guns and Sneak skills, and the number of Action Points available for V.A.T.S. So, it's clear: this isn't speculation, this is actual gameplay mechanics, that in combat agility will do bugger all to protect you from getting hit. Stealth is what happens before and maybe after combat, so the boost to sneak is irrelevant here.
No mention there of dodging. Not a word about speed whilst running. No hint of its chance to cause an enemy to miss an attack against you. The question looms ever larger: well, then how the fuck do you dodge something (once you're under fire from it) now? The only logical answer is: with twitch, my darling. When do you dodge? In combat. How can you dodge? By moving with the keyboard or, if I'm the game's target audience, my XBox 360 controller. What do you do in VATS? Standing still - not dodging, as you cannot move in VATS. (and we're still ignoring VATS anyway, but, just to get that out of the way.) The prosecution rests: In Fallout3, you have not only lost the secondary value of one previously important stat, but you have also lost the ONLY means by which a stat could aid your defense. There is no way to avoid GAME OVER (end of adventure, byebye) without your twitchy dodging skills and bunny hopping. That is a characteristic not of turn-based RPGs, and not even of well-designed RT RPGs -- only of RT FPS. Approximately half of the combat-related gameplay in Fallout 3, therefore, is indistinguishable from the combat gameplay of FPS - even when counting VATS.
Offense is the best defense!, comes the clarion call from the clickity keys of some forum member who is still recovering from the shock of Rudy Giuliani's dropping from the US Presidential race. He continues, "If Agility gives you AP, and AP can murder things up real good without twitchy play cuzza VATS, then how is it difrunt in the final balance sheet of damage?"
That brings us to VATS, because VATS works solely on the basis of exchanging AP for fired shots. And damnit, I didn't want to get into that yet, because if we do it now, we gotta finish this thing in pieces. But, I'll admit that you have a good point, Buford, so I'll do this for you.
For starters, VATS operates during combat. Your agility does nothing to preserve your character while outside of VATS, unless you're sneaking and not being detected. Assuming that VATS is a feature that you "pull up" manually during combat, it's reasonable to assume that, perhaps not every time, but certainly a lot of the time, you will already be under fire when you have the opportunity to go into VATS. You may already have lost health, or found yourself in a poor tactical position, by the time you get the interface up. Because VATS is completely optional, and because it has "points" and takes time to recharge, and because it does not at all operate on the basis of "turns" (which is the ONLY way it could be called turn-based), what VATS really comes down to is - it's just a way for Beth to give the non-1337 a chance to, occassionally, when they have points, be able to get a few more shots off with probably a slightly better chance of hitting, and ergo be able to - eventually, and after playing through battles at a snails pace - get to some kind of end of the game. It holds the world in stasis so that you can pick and choose which bodypart (except for THAT one, naughty Black Isle!) you want to destroy. Immediately before, and immediately after, and at certain points during, it's twitch %100 - because no stats govern your defense or movement, and the stats that do govern your accuracy are all weighted to the placement of your reticule. So even if you've 10 Perception and 150 in Small Guns, if your mousing is off, you're fucked, and actually the less spread that you've got, likewise it follows the more accurate you HAVE to be, thereby making things even harder on the non-1337 who'd prefer to think their way through a game than buttonmash it - unless you have APs, which will then be promptly used, and you're back to where you started - twitch town - for at least half of the time.
And so, the damage doesn't even out in the end, because you are not constantly in VATS during the whole of combat for every single instance of combat. Not to mention the fact that if you maxed Agility in order to play in VATS as much as possible, thereby minimizing your time in twitchplay, you'd certainly be nerfing other stats that you'd want higher; some of these might be related to combat, and that would be further imbalancing. But the real point is that, when the game is about how fast you move your mouse and how fooled by a computer your senses allow themselves to be, it's not smart anymore - and for the trads, smart is where the fun's at. That simple fact negates any and all arguments about the particulars of game mechanics.
In any case, you're still twitch-playing to move yourself about at every point during a firefight. Unless maxed Agility lets you stay in VATS indefinitely, then it isn't even, because then the position of the player using VATS to play and the player who is 1337 is as follows: the RPG player twitchgames his way into position, uses his AP to unload at once, then must go and hide - using twitchplay to take cover - until he has enough AP to attack again. Meanwhile, the 1337 player can use up his AP for bonus attacks, then finish off the beasties in realtime. Therefore, the RPG player gets half the opportunities that the console kiddie gets. VATS is exposed as nothing more than an attack booster - one that makes the game barely playable for the traditional RPG player, and that makes the game all the more easy for console kiddies.
FO3 has FPS-style running and dodging. No stats. All twitch.
FO3 has twitch-based attacking, because the statistics are only expressed THROUGH the twitch-paced, FPS-standard gameplay. It is far more FPS than it is RPG, and it negates entirely the possibility of being a badass sniper if you yourself are not capable of manipulating a mouse and a keyboard in a way that comes off like a badass sniper.
All twitch. Nothing resembling a turn. And VATS adds nothing but a few more "DPS" to your weapon. Sure, there's something "new" there - but nothing that isn't FPS, and nothing that's remotely RPG. The combat system has experienced a sea change and there's logic in the head of anyone who would argue against that.
I don't see how FO3's combat is anything other than twitch with a flavor of stat-based penalties, plus an attack boost in the form of VATS that does as little good ultimately for trads as for console kiddies, being completely auxiliary to the main combat system, which is Oblivion/FPS style and the game's default mode.
The popular definition of RPG has changed. Now it seems to mean stats of any kind, having even the smallest impact - and everything else is inconsequential, subject to complete neglect or contradiction. The Godfather: The Game is every bit the RPG that Oblivion is, and only slightly less the RPG than it seems like Fallout3 will be.
why do i type this CRAP >
bodybag who is that in your avatar is it the indian from "one flew over the cuckoo's nest"
there's nothing i'm typing here that ought to be taken as a direct reply to anything anybody said in this thread ever.
i popped an ambien about 35 minutes before i started writing and like with george lucas and his "the force", if anything that i do ever doesn't make sense or sounds stupid, that's what i'm blaming it on
um i dont really read forums much so i dont know if this has all been said before. whatever you can just ignore me.
I think that a lot of debates on the various forums are examining the "wrong end" of the combat system in their endeavor to determine to what extent it is like or unlike a standard first-person-shooter's combat system. That is to say, in this thread and in numerous others across various internet boards, the debate over the FPS/RPG nature of VATS/FO3 seems to center upon the hit/accuracy/damage calculation of shots, as if it were only in this petty exchange of numerical values that the "key" lies to understand how far Fallout 3's combat strays from the original form that we enjoyed - and how much it could possibly venture into a realm that we would find ourselves averse to.
But first, a few brief interminable comments on the state of our simultaneous union and disunion, which apparently caused a brief rumpus in this very thread. Hairsplitting.
Our sad situation is such a miserable swamp of inaction that it practically compels any serious discussion to revolve around the ultimately fruitless splitting of hairs. After all, from what other condition could such ubiquity of hair-splitting occur apart from the single one that we face; one in which every miserly-hoarded half-crumb of genuine information is given over the edge of the gold satin tablecloth with a blase pinky-flick from Pete, then rolls past (as it did before Oblivion) the rowed clutching digits of vermin arrayed in gauntlet formation, every one of them in madchattering paroxysms of ecstacy at the merest opening to nibble and drool upon "THE WORD" as it tumbleweeds dumbly by them with all of the nobility and elegance of a spheroid and glutinous turd until, finally, as it concludes its corkscrew slalom up-and-through-and-tween-and-twixt the coiled Food Chain, the vermin having had their fair fill and their share of fun with what is now "I I- F V CPL", in a state barely recognizable it wheezes to a final stop in the center of our debating circle and -- what could such a sad little speck of nothing signify in our forced-speculative debate? What can it mean, what can we do with it, what manner of progress will it catalyze? What kernel of content was there in this paltry "exclusive," or in that insipid "interview?" What was at the core, what is at the essence of this meagre morsel of data? When we dissect it, what are we to find?
Nothing more than the slightest, wiry strand of Emil Pagliarulo's crimson pubic hair. We are given hairs and we must split them. And then we must wash our hands thoroughly.
Owing to that state of affairs, I think it becomes extremely important to - for but a moment, until we've, you know, something better to do - discard those half-truths, these quasi-rumors, all those wild-eyed distractions, and on the basis of the 100% known or 100% knowable, engage in a reasoned exchange of qualified and quantified values until we arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion. Sounds like giggles, right? Well, argue smarter, save time, over faster, less spam, more time to do something slightly less a waste of fleeting life.
What that means, concretely and concisely, in the context of this thread, is that a great deal more insight into the fundamentals of the system now being debated can be gleaned from a cursory examination of the non-VATS combat system employed in FO3, specifically the way stats are utilized, which, once considered on its own and in its entirety, apart from VATS which can be plugged back in later, offers a more incisive viewpoint of the gameplay differentation between Fallout3, the Originals, and other real-time-turn-based games. By weighing its relation to the Agility stat, RT combat and VATS-stasisplay on the one hand and to "twitch skills" on the other, we can arrive at a much more accurate conception of just what the game will play like, and where it's real "base" lies in the spectrum of genres; that is to say, where its loyalties really lie. And it's the sort of thing that nobody needs to have seen the demo in order to understand.
The reason why this is a surer guide than the previously employed hit-chance (in VATS and out) train of thought is that it encompasses, directly and indrectly, a larger "slice" of the total gameplay system as regards the specific question of to what degree the importance of stats is being diminished in the interests of appealing to twitch skills. Additionally, it's obvious that VATS is Bethesda's big secret weapon to reconcile turn-based and real-time gameplay; by initially neglecting it in our examination of the combat system, and then adding it back in after said examination has concluded, we can achieve a more balanced understanding of the combat system's framework and execution.
We are all aware of how agility/dexterity affect dodging/missing - generally and in general terms - in traditional RPGs: the stats rule, and mathematics weighs your fate with absolute stoicism. Your Luck - either your own for real or the digitally quantified measure your character's - is your only saviour. Likewise, none of us is bereft of experience when it comes to the mechanics governing the dodging of attack in first-person-shooters: if you slow on the arrow-keys, fumble your mouse, or blink too often - you die in a frantic, senseless scramble. Unless you got da skillz.
I say this in anticipation of serial contrarians who will insist that there's all kinds of ownage to be had with less-than-1337 skillz: That's not the point of the argument. I myself am brilliant at FPS. In Red Orchestra your butthole will eat my Mosin-Nagant sideways. However, the idea of my FPS skills determining - or encompassing - what I am able to accomplish in an RPG game is abhorrent to me, being contrary to the spirit - and the promise - of the genre.
There is no FPS game with fun combat - non-cheathacked combat - in which it is only your speed moving a mouse on a 2-dimensional plane that leads directly to your success. A game in which that was the only condition for victory would be a watered-down version of Whack-a-Mole. In FPS games, and certainly in the kind of game that Fallout3 is trying to become, the following skills are essential: Situational awareness, erratic depth perception applied to a quantum process (leading shots), visual acuity, color, shade and tone seperation, the speed of your tactical calculation, coordination of dextrous interplay between various keyboard buttons, exploits of game mechanics (in MP modes), a faster machine/connection, sharp hearing for audio cues and a machine that can output them adequately, a grand monitor, etc. - these additional skills and qualities all are only of essential importance to combat gameplay when the game has become a real-time first-person shooter of the complexity characteristic of contemporary releases. Yes, color-blindness can negatively impact your turn-based RPG experience, but if you think that either a valid or a clever argument, you're being a precious little shit. As for anything else that you think is in a gray area, it can be overcome in a TB game by simply - taking your time. Can't do that in RT.
It's not the mouse-pushing and clicking that makes a first-person shooter what it is relative to what a turn-based game is. Rather, it is something much more kinetic: It's the frenetic infernal ballet of evasion and anticipation on a blue-hot iron stage, surging and sizzling anew on the pounding of Player1's every rapidfire heartbeat, spent shells flung ascatter onscreen in an approximation of the beady sweat you spray each time that the belch of Hell mutters down in the black of the DX10.C-shaded corridor, jarring your perception and yanking your head, eyes glued to the monitor's shadow-veiled edges, in the direction from whence annihilation may strike. The aforementioned is the extreme of FPS spectrum. The further that Fallout 3's combat system takes us from that state, the nearer we are relatively to, if not RPG's, then at least something that isn't purely reflexskillz-driven.
There is much, much more to this argument about the great divergence of FO3's combat from proper RPG combat than what happens to a "hit chance" after you click the button that makes the gun fire, and whether the action is paused when the calculation is made; the qualities listed above, and abover still, and dozens of others, are all, to varying degrees, more important than hit calculation methods in the alienation of many TB-RPG players from the new combat system. And it's the reliance upon all the flashy hassle of all that junk listed above that seperates the combat experience of RT and VATS from TB.
It goes without saying that what a lot of traditional RPG players want when they play an RPG (especially one that is meant to be a sequel to their favorite) is that the various plots and characters, which together are everything to these players' enjoyment of the game, can be interacted with and explored by means of cerebral and not reflexive gameplay mechanisms, thereby making the game an exercise in wit, cunning, calculation, deception, empathy and intellect - instead of a thumb-exercise.
CnC dialogue trees are cerebral; twitchy minigames to linearly chat are not. Foreseeing the need to build up a certain stat to unlock and doing so through weighing various mathematical figures and multipliers is cerebral; playing an unloseable minigame that ignores or overrides your skill is not. Finding and following clues, all on your own, to riches and excitement is cerebral; following an arrow is not. Balancing your character's motivations with his or her abilities and opportunities, in combat and in questing, is cerebral; button-mashing for the 14th linear buttonmashing kill-quest in a row is not. Experiencing the game wholly on the virtue of your twitchskillz, which in the end determine whether and whither you explore and experience, while the importance of the thought process in enhancing the adventure is dulled, dimmed and diluted, is not cerebral -- it is, instead, totally retarded, done by and for retards, who by all appearances would seem never to have read a single good book or watched a single good film. It is that malignant process - not the lack or addition of any bullet-pointed feature - that causes the RPG player to feel abused by the developers for the sake of the mass moronic market.
But then there are other RPG players who haven't really a choice in the matter. It doesn't just tip a balance for them, forcing them to rough out the bad to get to the good - it sweeps them off of the playing field entirely. Those RPG players who are not inclined to a sufficient degree to any of those traits listed (now far) above are handicapped to the point that their enjoyment of the game is shaken roughly, not stirred, with a twist of lemon...AIDS. Terminal, fatal; they can't get into the game at all. They'd rather read and ponder than click off a hundred rounds into racing zombies. And that stinks because it's precisely those kind of RPG players who made the franchise and its setting -- even the whole fucking genre -- worth anything to anybody in the first place, as they were the most loyal supporters of the best products. The goons now taking away their toys and rebranding them for jocks and blood-drunk ADHD-kids owe their plasma screens and faux-mo's (with customary soul patch) all to them: the poor, mild-mannered RPG fans who now are seeing one of their sacred relics stolen-away from the holy treasure trove by outsiders in off-the-rack suits, and before their very eyes their relics being "restored" by this antipodal cult of the invaders.
Ok - but what the fuck has that to do with any of the shit we were talking about?, which was the combat system? you may very well ask me as you wipe belly-sweat off of yourself with one hand while the other feeds stale Cheese Puffs past your braces. well i'll tell you dont get mad at me
We've established that turn-based combat and real-time combat are wholly distinct categories and conditions. The experience is incomparable; the mental and physical processes determining aptitude and enjoyment in each are widely divergent and distinct. Any attempt to formulate a hybrid system between them results in an entirely new species, or perhaps an altered breed of an existing hybrid species, for better or worse (and the possibility is not excluded that one could be "better" than anything else, at some point in the future) -- but never can there result the ideal mutant, good half of the father and good half of the other father (because videogames are gay), because each one is so distinct from the other that, between the two extremes, there can be no harmony; concisely, it'll suck a duck. The gulf between the parents is impassable, though the groddy little mutant offspring are free to play in the ravine, and we can hope that one may evolve fun in the future. But I digress. Often.
You cannot serve both real TB and real RT, so sayeth the Book, Boyarski 3:16. But we can play God by genetically splicing them, and Beth is tentacle-tips deep in the burbling vats, knitting a new helix. They are compelled to drop genetic traits of RPG and TB gameplay in order to artificially implant DNA from RT FPSs. The answer to everyone's constantly-yammered question lies in what, precisely, has Beth dropped? And it's my contention that if you put VATS out of your mind just a bit, examine the system, then reintroduce VATS, then you'll gain some insight.
But before I stop repeating myself and begin getting to a point, now's a good time to tell you all about me.
In any RPG I play that allows (and they all do or else they aren't RPGs), I play a high-Agility character. I do this to compensate for my gross obesity in real life, naturally. Anyway, as a result, I tend to depend upon that statistic negating a certain portion of the damage that my character receives, in order to balance out the relatively lesser damage that my character will be capable of inflicting (or absorbing) due to choosing, as a matter of necessity, lesser values in stats such as Strength. Endurance, and whichever other stats may govern magical attacks and defences. This is usually accomplished in turn-based games, or even some RT RPGs, by higher dexterity or agility values giving increasingly larger boosts to one's character's chance to dodge attacks or, to phrase it another way, for the attacker to miss. Another possible solution to addressing the balance between builds is to give high-agi characters bonus methods of attack, such as extra proficiency with ranged weapons, small weapons, or the (increased) possibility of critical strikes.
Basically, in standard RPG games in which you get to pick or craft your own character (and you do so in the original Fallouts and ostensibly so in Oblivion, comment forthcoming) you can count on the game to give you some kind of balance at the foundational stage, upon which you can build (or depend) to eventually conflate this impersonal, heartless mass of flagged features and number-loaded spreadsheets with your ideal conception of the character whose adventure you want to guide and experience (unless you're playing Oblivion, which cheated "balance" by having no seperate or differentiated paths TO balance but only a series of statistics with automated and universally maximizable progress, and likewise cheated the concept of developing a character by giving you no means by which to effect the world, plots, or characters, other than through the paltry number of meagre linear choices that Bethesda created and offered.)
So, at this point in our study of RPG's, we've got the choice of Agility, and it has a clear affect on how often I avoid damage in battle. It's a stat. As a stat, it (along with Dexterity, which is almost always its synonymous replacement) governs in almost all RPGs - in fact, in all that I can think of offhand - your character's chance to dodge or to be missed. It is how you make up for lack of brawn. That's how you get a character that is nimble and spry. It's a hallmark of RPG's, and typically has a more demonstrable effect in TB RPGs than RT ones, though in RT it is by no means treated the same way uniformly -- or, in any case that I know of, as poorly as it is in FO3.
One of the screenshots released by Bethesda actually shows the PipBoy screen displaying the Agility stat's information page. The text is as follows: Agility Effects your Small Guns and Sneak skills, and the number of Action Points available for V.A.T.S. So, it's clear: this isn't speculation, this is actual gameplay mechanics, that in combat agility will do bugger all to protect you from getting hit. Stealth is what happens before and maybe after combat, so the boost to sneak is irrelevant here.
No mention there of dodging. Not a word about speed whilst running. No hint of its chance to cause an enemy to miss an attack against you. The question looms ever larger: well, then how the fuck do you dodge something (once you're under fire from it) now? The only logical answer is: with twitch, my darling. When do you dodge? In combat. How can you dodge? By moving with the keyboard or, if I'm the game's target audience, my XBox 360 controller. What do you do in VATS? Standing still - not dodging, as you cannot move in VATS. (and we're still ignoring VATS anyway, but, just to get that out of the way.) The prosecution rests: In Fallout3, you have not only lost the secondary value of one previously important stat, but you have also lost the ONLY means by which a stat could aid your defense. There is no way to avoid GAME OVER (end of adventure, byebye) without your twitchy dodging skills and bunny hopping. That is a characteristic not of turn-based RPGs, and not even of well-designed RT RPGs -- only of RT FPS. Approximately half of the combat-related gameplay in Fallout 3, therefore, is indistinguishable from the combat gameplay of FPS - even when counting VATS.
Offense is the best defense!, comes the clarion call from the clickity keys of some forum member who is still recovering from the shock of Rudy Giuliani's dropping from the US Presidential race. He continues, "If Agility gives you AP, and AP can murder things up real good without twitchy play cuzza VATS, then how is it difrunt in the final balance sheet of damage?"
That brings us to VATS, because VATS works solely on the basis of exchanging AP for fired shots. And damnit, I didn't want to get into that yet, because if we do it now, we gotta finish this thing in pieces. But, I'll admit that you have a good point, Buford, so I'll do this for you.
For starters, VATS operates during combat. Your agility does nothing to preserve your character while outside of VATS, unless you're sneaking and not being detected. Assuming that VATS is a feature that you "pull up" manually during combat, it's reasonable to assume that, perhaps not every time, but certainly a lot of the time, you will already be under fire when you have the opportunity to go into VATS. You may already have lost health, or found yourself in a poor tactical position, by the time you get the interface up. Because VATS is completely optional, and because it has "points" and takes time to recharge, and because it does not at all operate on the basis of "turns" (which is the ONLY way it could be called turn-based), what VATS really comes down to is - it's just a way for Beth to give the non-1337 a chance to, occassionally, when they have points, be able to get a few more shots off with probably a slightly better chance of hitting, and ergo be able to - eventually, and after playing through battles at a snails pace - get to some kind of end of the game. It holds the world in stasis so that you can pick and choose which bodypart (except for THAT one, naughty Black Isle!) you want to destroy. Immediately before, and immediately after, and at certain points during, it's twitch %100 - because no stats govern your defense or movement, and the stats that do govern your accuracy are all weighted to the placement of your reticule. So even if you've 10 Perception and 150 in Small Guns, if your mousing is off, you're fucked, and actually the less spread that you've got, likewise it follows the more accurate you HAVE to be, thereby making things even harder on the non-1337 who'd prefer to think their way through a game than buttonmash it - unless you have APs, which will then be promptly used, and you're back to where you started - twitch town - for at least half of the time.
And so, the damage doesn't even out in the end, because you are not constantly in VATS during the whole of combat for every single instance of combat. Not to mention the fact that if you maxed Agility in order to play in VATS as much as possible, thereby minimizing your time in twitchplay, you'd certainly be nerfing other stats that you'd want higher; some of these might be related to combat, and that would be further imbalancing. But the real point is that, when the game is about how fast you move your mouse and how fooled by a computer your senses allow themselves to be, it's not smart anymore - and for the trads, smart is where the fun's at. That simple fact negates any and all arguments about the particulars of game mechanics.
In any case, you're still twitch-playing to move yourself about at every point during a firefight. Unless maxed Agility lets you stay in VATS indefinitely, then it isn't even, because then the position of the player using VATS to play and the player who is 1337 is as follows: the RPG player twitchgames his way into position, uses his AP to unload at once, then must go and hide - using twitchplay to take cover - until he has enough AP to attack again. Meanwhile, the 1337 player can use up his AP for bonus attacks, then finish off the beasties in realtime. Therefore, the RPG player gets half the opportunities that the console kiddie gets. VATS is exposed as nothing more than an attack booster - one that makes the game barely playable for the traditional RPG player, and that makes the game all the more easy for console kiddies.
FO3 has FPS-style running and dodging. No stats. All twitch.
FO3 has twitch-based attacking, because the statistics are only expressed THROUGH the twitch-paced, FPS-standard gameplay. It is far more FPS than it is RPG, and it negates entirely the possibility of being a badass sniper if you yourself are not capable of manipulating a mouse and a keyboard in a way that comes off like a badass sniper.
All twitch. Nothing resembling a turn. And VATS adds nothing but a few more "DPS" to your weapon. Sure, there's something "new" there - but nothing that isn't FPS, and nothing that's remotely RPG. The combat system has experienced a sea change and there's logic in the head of anyone who would argue against that.
I don't see how FO3's combat is anything other than twitch with a flavor of stat-based penalties, plus an attack boost in the form of VATS that does as little good ultimately for trads as for console kiddies, being completely auxiliary to the main combat system, which is Oblivion/FPS style and the game's default mode.
The popular definition of RPG has changed. Now it seems to mean stats of any kind, having even the smallest impact - and everything else is inconsequential, subject to complete neglect or contradiction. The Godfather: The Game is every bit the RPG that Oblivion is, and only slightly less the RPG than it seems like Fallout3 will be.
why do i type this CRAP >