The Forests in Oblivion, The Wastes in Fallout

[thefatness]

Yes, blasting my posts away all right...

You will hate Fallout 3 when it's going to be like this.

Given that Todd is still the producer of the game, I predict the game could be a POS. Just look at what he had done to TES series. Now his screwing his company's own Ip.

Somehow I think this picture belongs here.

 

[SuAside]

thats not even a funny comeback...

sjeez, just give up, mr blubber.

 

[Lumpy]

what made you an authority on giant radscorpion hunting habits?

it's quite common for many beasts to hunt in packs, which often means luring or chasing their prey into an ambush or surrounding the prey before engaging.

All right, so give them smarter AI. Still, you often met packs of radscorpions on plains, where it would be impossible for them to ambush you.

you prefer: "The enemy shoots out your tires. Walk to the nearest town to buy or salvage a new set."?

So you're saying that, when a man is in his car, and some guys with pistols start shooting at him, the natural reaction is getting out of the car, so that they shoot him rather than the tires?

all PnP RPG's have escape rolls (which is from where the entire game is derived). this would've been hard to implement, so they went with an arbitrary 'safe' area or an area where the enemy presumably would give up pursuit.

Which is stupid. If a creature with 9 action points is right next to the player, and the 4 action points player walks off the map, isn't it likely that he would be caught?

that would create some trouble, TES4-style. being unable to travel due to some nitwit mob thats on the other side of the wall but cant find a way to you & such. a real pain in the ass.
not to mention small pests that are always hostile but not necessarily aggro'ed.
a single malfunctioning mob could then wreck your entire game...

Uhm... just run a few metres away? Besides, where the fuck can a creature be trapped in a wasteland?

yet again, would you prefer: "The enemy shoots out your tires. Walk to the nearest town to buy or salvage a new set."?

driving a car is fast travel. it leaves you less time to spot & react to a threat. so once you're surrounded or ambushed by something, what are you gonna do? play Carmageddon? wreck your radiator while running down badguys? possibily getting a bullet through the engineblock, perhaps?

Drive away from the enemies?

you're obviously forgetting about unlucky encounters...

and yes, most special encounters had certain luck requirements, whats your point? if you dont like it, play FO with 05 luck & you probably wont get any. (i'm not talking about easteregg-fest FO2)

You completly missed my point. I meant, the encounters should work like in the previous Fallouts, based on a Luck check (high, low, whatever), only they would actually be placed somewhere on the map.

 

[Lumpy]

You will hate Fallout 3 when it's going to be like this.

No, it's not going to be like that. That picture, if it's supposed to mock Fallout 3, is retarded. Otherwise, as a mere joke, it isn't funny.
This one, for example, is: http://www.nma-fallout.com/fallout3/fakes/bloodlust_fallout3.jpg

 

[SuAside]

All right, so give them smarter AI.

we're talking about bethesda here, i rest my case :p

Still, you often met packs of radscorpions on plains, where it would be impossible for them to ambush you.

scorpions are burrowers...

So you're saying that, when a man is in his car, and some guys with pistols start shooting at him, the natural reaction is getting out of the car, so that they shoot him rather than the tires?

it's a game
you're a badass
it's free loot!

but seriously, when ambushed & stopped, staying in your car means you're a sitting duck (& that your car is soon to be wrecked)

Which is stupid. If a creature with 9 action points is right next to the player, and the 4 action points player walks off the map, isn't it likely that he would be caught?

well, there should be more to escape rolls than AP's, ya know...

for example, an outdoorsman would be able to move down rough terrain faster than a greenass bulky mutant thats likely to make a face-plant if he rushes down too fast...

anyhow, it's just a choice in gameplay, the exitgrids never really bothered me really.

just run a few metres away?

thats assuming you want TES4-esk travel. which is something we usually dont even want to take in consideration.

Besides, where the fuck can a creature be trapped in a wasteland?

we're talking gamedesign & bugs, not 'real life'.

there are plenty of ways for an AI-construct to fail...

Drive away from the enemies?

yeah, i'm sure the badguys are waving big flags & shooting in the air to make their presence wellknown before you reach em...

No, it's not going to be like that. That picture, if it's supposed to mock Fallout 3, is retarded. Otherwise, as a mere joke, it isn't funny.
This one, for example, is: http://www.nma-fallout.com/fallout3/fakes/bloodlust_fallout3.jpg

hush! zioburosky13's picture is pure genious!

it's a parody, a statement, an insult & a warning at the same time ffs

 

[Sander]

SuaSide, your arguments are getting sillier every minute.
Does it make sense to get out of a car to shoot or run over a couple of raiders (or just swerve around them, since you're much faster anyway)? Of course you'd rather stay somewhat protected in your car and try to run them over. After all, no car is better than being dead. But why can't you do this? Quite simply because game mechanics didn't allow for it, and it would be pretty unbalancing. That's pretty much it.
That said, does Fallout need car combat? I really don't think so, it would make things unbalanced, and it would be pretty annoying to have the only car in the wastes break down.

As for the TES4-esque travel, make that Arcanum-like travel, where that kind of thing *does* work.
And the simple reason why you could leave any combat via the exit-grid was a technical reason: they couldn't make maps infinitely big, so the cut-off was made into a real cut-off point.

 

[Lumpy]

"but seriously, when ambushed & stopped, staying in your car means you're a sitting duck (& that your car is soon to be wrecked)"
Stopped? How?

"thats assuming you want TES4-esk travel. which is something we usually dont even want to take in consideration."
You don't? http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19564&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20

"yeah, i'm sure the badguys are waving big flags & shooting in the air to make their presence wellknown before you reach em... "
I didn't mean turning back when you see them, but just keeping on driving.
Besides, in Fallout 2, it was only a matter of getting back into the car.
And do we need cars in Fallout 3 anyway?

 

[Lumpy]

And the simple reason why you could leave any combat via the exit-grid was a technical reason: they couldn't make maps infinitely big, so the cut-off was made into a real cut-off point.

Probably. But it was not a good feature, and if it can be avoided, they shouldn't keep it for nostalgia's sake.

 

[Tagaziel]

Rattus Rattus, I was merely trying to say Source is a better choice. And it can be altered to fit isometric view mode, without klosing anything of it's graphic excellence. Example: Shantytown mod.

Besides, Source looks better overall.

 

[SuAside]

SuaSide, your arguments are getting sillier every minute.

must be the heat frying my peabrain...

or just swerve around them, since you're much faster anyway

euhm, isnt that what happens when you succeed your outdoorsman & perception check? you swerve around the encounter...

you'd rather stay somewhat protected in your car and try to run them over.

somewhat protected? in truth the only protection a car offers is the engineblock & the fact that if you duck, they cant see you and hence makes it harder to aim (but they bloody well can guess where you are).

a car offers very little protection

you're also forgetting that the game offers you several chances of escaping anyway... one before the encounter & several once the encounter has been initiated.

Does it make sense to get out of a car to shoot or run over a couple of raiders

does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the vats?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the master?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy navarro?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the enclave oilrig?

you're pretty much a superhero, sport...

That said, does Fallout need car combat? I really don't think so, it would make things unbalanced, and it would be pretty annoying to have the only car in the wastes break down.

unbalanced? hardly, but you'd have a very expensive heap of scrap metal after a few fights (if that many)

As for the TES4-esque travel, make that Arcanum-like travel, where that kind of thing *does* work.
And the simple reason why you could leave any combat via the exit-grid was a technical reason: they couldn't make maps infinitely big, so the cut-off was made into a real cut-off point.

well, the thing is that arcanum is pretty much a zoned game with exitgrids too.

the bigger part of the maps do not allow autotravel, unless you walk to an area outside (pretty much an invisible exitgrid, no?)

arcanum did offer the possibility to travel by hand, but that seems rather annoying to actually do that. i sure never bothered except when there are obvious gains (the wolves after the zep for xp, the shipwrecks near caladon for loot,...)

"thats assuming you want TES4-esk travel. which is something we usually dont even want to take in consideration."
You don't? http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19564&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20

TES4 travel is not the same as Arcanum travel, Lumpy...

"but seriously, when ambushed & stopped, staying in your car means you're a sitting duck (& that your car is soon to be wrecked)"
Stopped? How?

*snip*

"yeah, i'm sure the badguys are waving big flags & shooting in the air to make their presence wellknown before you reach em... "
I didn't mean turning back when you see them, but just keeping on driving.

how do the iraqi rebels stop an US military convoi?

it doesnt really take a genius to figure out how to stop a car...

Besides, in Fallout 2, it was only a matter of getting back into the car.

thats a design problem. if you can make an escape by the exitgrid, the car should too.

but please do tell me, how many times did you escape with your car? once you get the car it pretty much means you can handle any threat... so why make it harder to run?

And do we need cars in Fallout 3 anyway?

that car is little more than a packmule anyway. speed is nice, but by the time you get it, you dont actually have a timer to worry about anymore anyway.

i'd say it's not needed.

And the simple reason why you could leave any combat via the exit-grid was a technical reason: they couldn't make maps infinitely big, so the cut-off was made into a real cut-off point.

Probably. But it was not a good feature, and if it can be avoided, they shouldn't keep it for nostalgia's sake.

i agree that dividing a city into sections with exit grids isnt a good thing, but i doubt the game really gains anything tangiable by making worldtravel by hand available.

it's a wasteland... traveling is hard, hot, dusty, LONG. there really isn't much of interest out there. some struggling dried out woods, some cacti, rocks, dried earth & sand. lots of sand.

remember how far the Glow was supposed to be? a SIXTEEN DAY trip from the brotherhood the guard says. why exactly would you want to do that by hand, pray tell...

 

[Lumpy]

And why exactly does it have to take 16 days? How about 16 minutes?

 

[SuAside]

gametime...

sjeez, when you're ingame, time is more or less real time. use a skill, time passes. travel on the map, time gets accelerated.

and why 16 days? because it's a wasteland and it's relevant to the game... things arent a fart away from eachother. not a mini-europe TES4-style, you know?

what are you suggesting? making 1 minute of "by hand" travel the same as a day ingame? so much for immersion...

 

[Lumpy]

So you'd rather see a little dot travel across a map of the wasteland, rather than your character travel across a miniature version of the wasteland.
Especially when everything else is scaled down, as I've said before.

 

[Tagaziel]

SuAside's point is simple.

The wasteland is large.

LARGE.

LARGE.

L-A-R-G-E.

large (comparative larger, superlative largest)

1. Not small; bigger than big; relatively, of greater size.
2. Of a prisoner, with "at": Not incarcerated. See at large.

You propose a scaled down version of the wasteland. What does "scaled down" mean?

Scaled down means "make large things smaller"

small (comparative smaller, superlative smallest)

1. Not large or big; insignificant; few in numbers or size.

A small serving of ice cream.
A small group.

2. Young, as a child.

Wasteland is not SMALL. It's LARGE. A scaled down wasteland is NOT an option, especially because it would be a gameplay-suicide, having to go through "sand-sand-sand-cactus-rock-sand" terrain with the occasional hostle iguana.

You see, Fallout did a spectacular job at showing off just how LARGE wasteland is. Watching you, a small dot, travel a giant map, alone, with time passing by was a beautiful experience. You FELT the wasteland, you WERE there. And Morrowind-esque travel? I was bored after 5 minbutes of watching the Ashlands terrain pass by, with the goddamn cliff runners attakcing every 30 seconds.

Don't be retarded. Drop the issue. Or die by the Talking Deathclaw.

 

[Sander]

must be the heat frying my peabrain...

Hurray for USB powered fans.
How nerdy is that?

euhm, isnt that what happens when you succeed your outdoorsman & perception check? you swerve around the encounter...

Yes, this is one of the points where the car is unbalancing. Even if you see them at the last moment, it's not that hard to swerve around some raiders in a car.

somewhat protected? in truth the only protection a car offers is the engineblock & the fact that if you duck, they cant see you and hence makes it harder to aim (but they bloody well can guess where you are).

a car offers very little protection

you're also forgetting that the game offers you several chances of escaping anyway... one before the encounter & several once the encounter has been initiated.

I'm not forgetting any of that. The fact of the matter is still: you're safer inside a car than outside, because simply put, there's more metal around you. Plus the car can be used as a weapon as well. No, the car perhaps wouldn't survive very long if you got bullets in the engine, but what would you prefer, a broken car or a broken you?
Not to mention the fact that getting out of a car takes time in which the people can shoot you.

does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the vats?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the master?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy navarro?
does it make sense to singlehandedly try to destroy the enclave oilrig?

you're pretty much a superhero, sport...

Ah, give me a break. Those courses of action were the best courses of action, because otherwise the world would pretty much be doomed. If you face a bunch of raiders the best course of action would to not put yourself in unnecessary danger.

Look, face it, the reason why you can't do any of those things has *nothing* to do with your ad-hoc reasoning but everything to do with engine limitations and development time. Otherwise they could at least have built in the *option* of staying inside the car, instead of forcing someone out of it. Because, as you should know, Fallout is about freedom of choice and its consequences.

unbalanced? hardly, but you'd have a very expensive heap of scrap metal after a few fights (if that many)

Having a car would make it unbalanced in that you're a factor 10 faster than everyone else, and much heavier as well.

well, the thing is that arcanum is pretty much a zoned game with exitgrids too.

the bigger part of the maps do not allow autotravel, unless you walk to an area outside (pretty much an invisible exitgrid, no?)

arcanum did offer the possibility to travel by hand, but that seems rather annoying to actually do that. i sure never bothered except when there are obvious gains (the wolves after the zep for xp, the shipwrecks near caladon for loot,...)

Wrong. Arcanum was very much different because it *didn't* allow for the cheap World Map escape until you were removed far enough. Another indication that your ad-hoc reasoning is exactly that, since the creators of Fallout apparently liked the idea of not being able to run away from a critter a few feet away a lot better.

how do the iraqi rebels stop an US military convoi?

it doesnt really take a genius to figure out how to stop a car...

The difference being that a US military convoi is supposed to fight back, and they could just turn around as well. Unless they were being shot at with rockets, which barely ever happens in Fallout 2 (and would turn your car into scrap anyway).
Stopping a car isn't that hard. Preventing it from backing up over your mean is, especially if you don't have any cars yourself.

thats a design problem. if you can make an escape by the exitgrid, the car should too.

but please do tell me, how many times did you escape with your car? once you get the car it pretty much means you can handle any threat... so why make it harder to run?

...
What? You first start arguing that cars aren't useful in combat and you can't just get away and now you make a 180 degree turn and tell us that you can immediately escape in the car since you can handle any threat from there.

i agree that dividing a city into sections with exit grids isnt a good thing, but i doubt the game really gains anything tangiable by making worldtravel by hand available.

it's a wasteland... traveling is hard, hot, dusty, LONG. there really isn't much of interest out there. some struggling dried out woods, some cacti, rocks, dried earth & sand. lots of sand.

remember how far the Glow was supposed to be? a SIXTEEN DAY trip from the brotherhood the guard says. why exactly would you want to do that by hand, pray tell...

Except that it does add something: it removes some of the unnecessarily simplistic escape possibilities. As long as the option for a World Map is still there, and it is implemented in the way Arcanum did it, I really don't see a problem.

It seems that you're defending every bit of game mechanic of Fallout and Fallout 2 as if they were all exactly how things should be. Which is plain silly, because there were several technological limitations.

As for scaling down the wasteland, yes, that's pretty weird. It'd be like scaling down a giant so you can see it better on the screen.

EDIT: Also, Lumpy, don't double post. The edit button exists for a reason.

 

[Endless Void]

Well Arcanum-style-world-travel won't bother me either as long as storyline, dialogue and freedom of choices are implemented better into the game. I'd say they better focus on those aspects rather than spending weeks/months on drawing a humongous-sized barren wasteland map...

 

[Sorrow]

I prefer Arcanum-style-world-travel.
I always travelled by using a world map, so I treat it as a solution to the exit grid problem.

 

[SuAside]

...
What? You first start arguing that cars aren't useful in combat and you can't just get away and now you make a 180 degree turn and tell us that you can immediately escape in the car since you can handle any threat from there.

euhm, no.

my point is that in practise a car isnt very useful when ambushed (as in boxed in (how do you back out of being surrounded?)) in the wasteland (as in WASTE LAND, no pavement, no sweet highways. if there are streets they're worn, full of hazardous potholes & broken.).

what i said after that, is that if the game design allows for easy escape by exitgrid abuse (on foot), then it should allow it by car too. this is by no means a 180 degree turn, as it is an entirely different subject...

It seems that you're defending every bit of game mechanic of Fallout and Fallout 2 as if they were all exactly how things should be. Which is plain silly, because there were several technological limitations.

again, no...

FO is not a perfect holy grail. however i fail to see why you need to scale down everything & render everything (with SHINY (TM) graphics) for it to be a good experience. this also means you spend more time on developing stuff that has virtually no impact anyway (other than effectively breaking immersion).

tbh, to be true to it's roots (both location based & pnp) i'd like to see it like this:
locations without loading (so cities as one big zone), with exit grids around it where you can maptravel. if you're in combat when you hit an exit grid, you make an escape roll & if you fail it, you cant leave until combat is over. easy as that.

it's simple both in concept & implementation.

the potential gains of travel by hand are so slim to me that it's an entire waste of time as far as i'm concerned. sure walking around in the wasteland a bit could be a nice gimmick for 5 minutes, but after that, what do you really gain? you could gain those same 5 minutes in a made location where there are some ruins & not much of interest for the sake of immersion.

 

[Sander]

euhm, no.

my point is that in practise a car isnt very useful when ambushed (as in boxed in (how do you back out of being surrounded?)) in the wasteland (as in WASTE LAND, no pavement, no sweet highways. if there are streets they're worn, full of hazardous potholes & broken.).

what i said after that, is that if the game design allows for easy escape by exitgrid abuse (on foot), then it should allow it by car too. this is by no means a 180 degree turn, as it is an entirely different subject...

Here's what you said:
"once you get the car it pretty much means you can handle any threat... so why make it harder to run?"
So don't twist around, because that says literally that you can handle any threat with the car.
Unless you mean 'at the point in the game where you get the car', which still isn't true.

again, no...

FO is not a perfect holy grail. however i fail to see why you need to scale down everything & render everything (with SHINY (TM) graphics) for it to be a good experience. this also means you spend more time on developing stuff that has virtually no impact anyway (other than effectively breaking immersion).

...
Did you forget that I oppose scaling down things as well? Sheesh.

tbh, to be true to it's roots (both location based & pnp) i'd like to see it like this:
locations without loading (so cities as one big zone), with exit grids around it where you can maptravel. if you're in combat when you hit an exit grid, you make an escape roll & if you fail it, you cant leave until combat is over. easy as that.

it's simple both in concept & implementation.

the potential gains of travel by hand are so slim to me that it's an entire waste of time as far as i'm concerned. sure walking around in the wasteland a bit could be a nice gimmick for 5 minutes, but after that, what do you really gain? you could gain those same 5 minutes in a made location where there are some ruins & not much of interest for the sake of immersion.

 

[SuAside]

Unless you mean 'at the point in the game where you get the car', which still isn't true.

that is what i meant, yes.

and please tell me when thats not true in a game where you respect the normal chronology of things (i cant think of any unless you want to roleplay a kamikaze HtH-only guy sporting nothing but a bathrobe...).

Did you forget that I oppose scaling down things as well? Sheesh.

i know

and you didnt comment on the third quote.