Skills

[Awesome]

I think skills should have more uses. Because at the moment, only combat skills need to be really high. The others, dont really need to go above 100%. Apart from a few, but very rare, situations.

Maybe some skills should have a cap of 100% (Ones like, repair, traps, lockpick). And all skills should be capped off at 200%. You never need 300%. MAybe you do in combat ones? But that could be changed.

How bout, if all skills were just as usefull as combat ones (obviously this isnt possible, but a bit more then they are now).
e.g. Some quests NEED a high skill of some sort. Obviously not main ones, although main quests could also have a resolution by using one of the skills that are high. But there's got to be other way too! This would improve replayibility value a LOT

Like -
First Aid
Most people would rest instead of using first aid. IF they cant rest, stimpacks are used because they take no time to use and heal a lot of hit points, even though they arent free, most players have them in big amounts. Maybe a quest could be put in where you need a heal someoene but need high first aid. First aid should also heal a lot more points when used.

Doctor
How many times have you really needed this? Only a few quests(like in VC) need this. Maybe doctor could also be used for a few more quests. People need a doctor as they are dieing. Maybe high doctor skills could take away radiation and poising levels.

Sneak
Sneak could be very useful at high levels to avoid combat. Someone wants to kill you? Turn on sneak and walk away. Maybe this could also only work if they're back is turned? Also killing from behind with sneak should act as a silencer. A perk shouldnt be needed for this. Also quests could use this, like infiltrating an enemy base. I think this could become very usefull.

Lockpick
Obviously it would be as it is now. Perhaps a few more quests could be added with lockpicking being necessary. More locked doors around. Also maybe some safe's in banks? Or something.

Steal
This should be made so without a certain steal skill you just will never succeed. This takes away the load/save thing for some situations. For example - just people walking around should be able to be stolen from quite easily. Merchants 60+, People that are armed/ on alert (e.g. police in NCR) would be 75+ and then main characters would be 85+ or people with a vauable item. Also steal would change depending on the weight of the item. Wouldnt you notice someone taking a 30 pound gun from you? I think you would, so things like
1-2 pounds = +0 steal (Added onto the thing i said before)
3-5 pounds = +5 steal
6-9 pounds = +8
10-15pounds = +12
16-19 pounds = +15
20-25 pounds = +20
26-30 pounds = +25
30+ pounds = +30
So from the guard in NCR with the Bozar it would be (it weighs 20 something pounds, dosent it?) 75+20 = 95 steal skill. And that only gives you a 50/50 chance of being caught. For ever 1 point over what you need to steal it, your chance of stealing the item is increased by 1%. So to get it to the max (95%) you would need 45 points. MAking you need 140 steal skill just to steal a bozar without being caught from the guards in NCR. Much higher then the 40% needed now. And say with a steal skill of 200% and some of the right perks you would NEVER get caught. (Apart from main character/very important items).

Traps
Much more traps should be introduced. Perhaps a quest, where someone has asked you to get through their 'course' where you need traps a lot. Perhaps something like a pyramid of egypt
Traps would not only disable traps, it would also make you more aware of them too.

Science
More computers that can be hacked. Perhaps with too low a skill you would get caught hacking. Maybe now you can even hack into a bank or something and take people's money. This could have a lot more uses with used well. Also this dosent have to always do with computers. You could also tell some electronic device better with a high science skill, and perhaps some more advanced things can only be used with a high sceince things. Maybe you can even invent things?

Repair
Many more things that need repairing! More NPC's like Skynet that you can repaire in combat. Perhaps people would ask you to repair things? You mgiht even start your own profitable buisness, hehe.
Obviously this couldnt have as many uses as it can only be used on a few things, so maybe a cap of 100%. But I could think of a lot of minor things that could be broken and need to be fixed. Also in some quests you need to find a part to make something work. With a high repair skill, you could just fix it there and then.

Speech
This is an important one at the moment. But intelligence and charisma play a much bigger role then speech, from what ive seen. I think a high speech should really introduce more things to say. This could be one of the most used skills (heck, it already is!) mainly because you can speak to almost ANYTHING.

Barter
In fallout 2, even with insanly high barter skill and being idolized in the area I still got ripped off. I know that having your things be worth more then the merchants is stupid. But equal priced should be there. Also if you just want to barter with a non-merchant who isnt good with prices, you should be able to rip them off easily with the high barter skill. And if you sell a weopon at different parts of the map. E.g. Turbo Plasma Rifle in Klamath you should get HUGE cash, because they've never seen anything like this before.
Also this could be usefull in quests where you need to buy special items.

Gambling
Higher gambling should you make you win more(well yes, it already does...). This could also be usefull in quests, where for example you need to gamble with some big 'boss' and beat him to be in his gang or something.

and last but not least Outdoorsman
I think its ok as it is now. Some people like random encounters though, so how about having more random encounters pop up, but having the option to not encounter them (or you can if you want to). Also you'd find more things that give you experiance in the desert. And you know how you cant find places like Navarro unless you get the quest from Matt, well with a high outdoorsman skill you could spot it easily. I mean, who wouldnt see a big place like that?

So what do you guys think?

 

[Guest]

Stealing is more like pickpocketing isn't it? I like the pound deal, but pickpocketing is a target of opportunity right? First you pick your target, then you reach into their coat hoping that's where they keep their wallet. Maybe they have it there maybe they don't. So right there you have four possibilities;
1 it's there and you get it without them noticing.
2 it's there and you get caught
3 it's not there and you get nothing and get away with it
4 it's not there and you get nothing and get caught.
Let me slip in a little disclaimer here, this is a game and it isn't real. But if more realism is what you want I'd take your stealing idea a bit further and say that if you are sucessful in stealing something, they shouldn't lay out every little thing in the guy's inventory for you to pick and paw through. You get something out of the inventory at random. And if I was going to pick somebody's pocket I don't think I'd go after their 30 pound gun slung over their shoulder either...

As to the traps thing, I think noticing a trap should be under outdoorsman. Just because I can bury a land mine with a high chance of sucess does not mean that I can see one before I step on it. Now maybe an outdoorsman could see that the ground had been disturbed...

Sneak shouldn't make you invisible if you are already engaged in combat, esp. in close combat, maybe if you are sniping from behind cover from a reasonable distance, in reasonable light conditions. They would still have a general idea of your direction I would think but a high sneak should give you a better chance to reposition, if they don't stumble into you or notice you while they are moving towards your old position...

Repair, yes, I would imagine in a post-nuc world there would be some items laying around that need a little creative engineering to get back to some semblance of function again. but not to brand new level, unless you are really good at repair, maybe with a mid level repair skill you could fix a broken gun, but that gun should be prone to misfires, or mechanical failures since you probably had to improvise to effect the repair...

First aid, if stimpaks were altered in some way first aid might be more useful/used more. I never noticed any downside to using stimpacks, at least with the super stim you lost current hit points after a bit... Perhaps stimpacks should be the same way, they temporarily raise your hit points back up, say for the duration of a battle, but after the battle you depend on your first aid/doctor skills to keep yourself alive. First aid stops the bleeding (maybe heals up to 25% of your hit points)

Doctor skills heal 50% of your hit points, of course if you are too low on hit points I'd reckon you'd be too weak to even save yourself... Maybe doctor skills on yourself only heal so much, but used on someone else you could heal them all the way? And of course doctor skill use should take a very long time, especially the more severe the injuries, to account for the recovery time...

Barter I think is one of the toughest ones. For a real-world example, I can walk into a car dealership and talk them down quite a bit, the more I know about what I am doing the lower they will go for me, but only so far, I'm not going to sly talk them into giving me something for less than it's worth, probably not even going to get it at their cost, after all they are trying to make a profit, albeit an obscene profit if you look at their sticker price, but they are still at least going to get their commission over and above what it cost the manufacturer. But as far as the game world goes, who is to say they want what you have as bad as you want what they have? The merchants can afford to not make a sale if they don't want to lower their price, they don't have things to do and places to go. If you think inflation is bad in our semi-controlled economy imagine it in a completely uncontrolled economy, "Consumer protection? Never heard of that." Some items should have a prohibitive cost in a merchant environment, there might only be three or four working items like it out there. Maybe you could get a damaged repairable item cheaper, but don't count on finding the parts you need in that town, if you can find them anywhere. People with a low barter skill also shouldn't be "forced" into trading away their last bits of vital equipment to you just because you have a high barter. What use is a Plasma super cannon if you don't have ammo, (not to mention food water, first-aid supplies, etc) and you are in the middle of the desert, or even in your relatively peaceful home town (where presumably you have been living out you entire life without the need of heavy firepower)? Farmer won't want it, his .22 rifle is better suited to his needs, plus the ammo is easier to find (or shells eaiser to reload), they don't have a Micro-Fusion Cell factory out there do they?



I don't think there should be too many skill specific quests, maybe a few, but there's always more than one way to skin a cat you know...



What about pairing skills?
For the traps/outdoors pairing maybe a high stat in both increases you chance of noticing a trap?

Science/outdoors give you a better chance of figuring out you are moving into a radiated area?

Steal/speech helps you talk your way out of a failed pickpocket? Sorry I bumped into you. Or helps you distract a shopkeeper while you thieve things from his counter?

Science/repair?

science/guns? You don't have to understand trajectories to fire a gun but if you do, that long range shot might have a better chance of hitting.

 

[Guest]

About the traps: Someone with a lot of experience would know how traps were set up and what to look for to give them away. Both Outdoorsman or Traps could conceivably increase your awareness of them.

 

[Awesome]

Also, maybe you could even plant traps yourself?

Say your about to go into a battle... e.g. the enclave, you take out a plastic explosive and plant it on the ground. Now whenever on of the enclave step on this hex the trap goes off and damaged them.

Of course this wouldnt do HUGE damage (bigger damage if the traps skill is higher?) but it would give you an advantage.

And just skills in general need to be used more. I mean, in Fallout 2, most people only tag - Speech and some weopons skills.
Maybe lockpick, science (for skynet), doctor (for the combat implants), but thats about it.
So skill specific quests could be put in, sure there could be other ways of solving it, but using the one skill is the easiest.

E.g. you have to get a specific part to help power a generator.
You can straight run for it, but theres a mine-field in front of you. With high traps skill, you can get it easily. Without you must go around the long-way.

Something like that. I like your ideas though. Like on stealing, although that might just make a lot more load/saving, where as in my idea no matter how much you load/save you wont succeed without the proper skill.

 

[Guest]

I wasn't trying to shoot down your minimum failure/sucess idea, I like that. I don't think that it's all that realistic (not that "realism" makes for a really great game in and of itself) that you get to pick through their inventory for a specific target.

Just a hypothetical on stealing;

You have a high steal and a high sneak skill, I mean maxed out high, is it reasonable that you should be able to sneak around a potential combat area and steal on all the antagonists and steal all their weapons? Then initiate a combat against unarmed opponents? Seems fishy to me...

of course if stealing stopped you from sneaking that would be a different story, but I have an issue with that too. If you are a thief you have to be sneaky when you steal... The two kind of seem to go hand in hand don't they?


Now I haven't really focused on the stealing skill so I don't know really how it works. Can you use the steal skill on a table or shelf? If you could do that then I am totally for having an inventory list to pick through, but if you are stealing from a person/sentient I don't think you should have that much accuracy in what you come up with. Maybe you would have a choice between money or items? But it would still be somewhat random what (or how much money) you end up with. How do you know what they have on them? Maybe that could be linked to your perception somehow, but you still shouldn't be able to see EXACTLY what they have in their backpack or pockets... Man, they would hate me if I was on a design team for a game.



As for the part about the traps, you can't set traps!?!???? That definitely needs to be changed. (Once again, I never used traps that much so I didn't know, or don't know to the contrary that you can't set a trap... but duh! That seems implicit... wow is that really true....)


As long as the quests in general aren't totally skill specific, I don't have any problem with there being a specific skill that comes in really handy on any particular quest, that's fine as long as MOST of them have other ways of solving. The occasional, and I stress occasional (non-critical to game) skill specific quest isn't out of the question either. I mean if you HAVE to steal something from someone to complete a quest, bartering skill shouldn't make a bit of difference, and neither should brute force. That would be neat, especially if there was a quest like that for each skill sort of a reward quest for specialization...

--pate

 

[Guest]

I think that the science skill should have an effect on the guns, maybe determining trajectory or something, because if you know how a plasma pistol works and lets say it handles like a normal ballistic pistol then why can't you hit anything with it?Thats the worst part about RPGs, like in System Shock 2, I couldn't even use a pistol until I got some skill in it, honestly how hard is it to use a pistol, even a futuristic one? If they start making handguns complex and difficult to use then that defeats the purpose of a handgun, somethings attacking you with a large sword, you need to shoot him fast and not stand there and program the gun to shoot it for you. And when you sneak and hit someone in the back with a HtH attack without them knowing you are there, then you should knock them out when you hit them in the back of the head without having to kill them, sometimes, you just can't see the point in killing anothing thing just for an item they have on them EG: tanker vagrants in FO2 and the gauss rifles on them, black haired lady and guy in bar