The Forests in Oblivion, The Wastes in Fallout

[Lumpy]

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).

Fallout was a good experience. I just think making travel as I said would improve the experience. Still, it's a matter of personal preference.
As for scaling, things were already scaled down.

The capitol of NCR is the town of the same name (population: 3000+)

I can't remember 3000 NPCs in NCR. Nor 1000 NPCs in Vault 13, 1000 people in Vault City, etc.
But, if you think scaling would ruin the immersion, I'm not going to argue. It's a valid point, even though I disagree with it.

 

[Sander]

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...).

Generally when I get the car my character can't handle an attack by a huge group of raiders, for instance. Or Vault City Guards. Or enclave soldiers.

and you didnt comment on the third quote.

I see. I thought I did. Basically, what I was going to say there was that there is no downside to having an Arcanum-like system. You still have the large advantage of World Map travel, but it eliminates the exit-grid escape 'exploit'.
Plus, to be true to its roots, it would be impossible to escape from a critter by moving into an 'exit grid'.

Fallout was a good experience. I just think making travel as I said would improve the experience. Still, it's a matter of personal preference.
As for scaling, things were already scaled down.

The towns were scaled down for manageability. Although much less so in Fallout 1 than in Fallout 2. This didn't really detract from the feel, and to make it believable there were still quite a few 'useless' houses. And it also depended on the town. Shady Sands wasn't as scaled down as Reno was, for instance.

But scaling down the world map does detract from the feel, since it removes the sense of a huge, desolated wasteland. This sense isn't needed in towns, because the towns are supposed to be small and struggling to survive.

Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of scaling down, shall we?
+ You can actually walk everywhere without getting bored quickly.

- No sense of a large, desolated wasteland.
- Unrealistic.
- This would only really work if walking is the only possible mode of travel. Otherwise it would be pointless to have a world map at all.

 

[Per]

all PnP RPG's have escape rolls (which is from where the entire game is derived).

Not that it matters a lot for the discussion, but do you have a reference for this? I don't think I've ever played an RPG that had anything like that.

this would've been hard to implement

Why?

Also, didn't you use capital letters before?

 

[Lumpy]

But scaling down the world map does detract from the feel, since it removes the sense of a huge, desolated wasteland.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. However, if we take Morrowind as an example: the first journey on foot you had to make, from Seyda Neen to Balmora, was 10-15 minutes long. Still, it felt long, and you never really noticed that those town were basically next to one another.
Similarily, walking 10-15 minutes from Vault 13 to Shady Sands through the wasteland may sound short, but maybe in practice it would actually feel long.
Another trick that can be employed is shortening the draw distance, so you don't see the town from far away.

 

[Sander]

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. However, if we take Morrowind as an example: the first journey on foot you had to make, from Seyda Neen to Balmora, was 10-15 minutes long. Still, it felt long, and you never really noticed that those town were basically next to one another.

It felt boring, but yes it felt long. Because you're not used to travelling large, senseless distances in a game.
However, I never got the feeling that Morrowind's world was large at all. More that it was just boring, and that walking from town to town was tedious. It was annoying more than anything else, really.

However, doing this in Fallout would mess up game-mechanics. Suppose you're walking through the wasteland from the Brotherhood to the Glow. A supposed 16 day travel. Because it takes so long this may endanger your Vault.
Then we do it like you want it: you're there, and half an hour to an hour of game time has passed. Perhaps if time is compressed a day, compressing time more than that would feel ridiculous to the player. The concern of the player for his vault's future is gone, since it only took him a day.
Now, what's even more crippling to the gameplay is the effects this will have on world map travel, because game time has to progress likewise. So now watching your dot move across the game world, it will go so fast that you might as well have implemented a teleport, or time will progress so slowly that you'll start wondering why there are caravans at all if it just takes a day to move goods.

Similarily, walking 10-15 minutes from Vault 13 to Shady Sands through the wasteland may sound short, but maybe in practice it would actually feel long.
Another trick that can be employed is shortening the draw distance, so you don't see the town from far away.

And have it suddenly pop-up? Fuck no.

 

[SuAside]

You still have the large advantage of World Map travel, but it eliminates the exit-grid escape 'exploit'.

the biggest downside would be wasted development time. i'm sure you can put time in more meaningful stuff than endless SHINY (TM) wastelands

Plus, to be true to its roots, it would be impossible to escape from a critter by moving into an 'exit grid'.

no, but you'd have the ability to make an escape roll, no?

Not that it matters a lot for the discussion, but do you have a reference for this? I don't think I've ever played an RPG that had anything like that.

never played a pnp rpg where outdoors combat has escape rolls?

where are your boots of escaping, man?!?

pfuh, cant really give you an example, i'm horrible with names. but since we always played with the same GM i suppose it could've been one of his personal quirks, but i doubt it. i never questioned it anyway.

*implementation*

well, with an exit grid it's clearcut. you either make it or you dont.

if you're going with rolls you'll need to find a plausible explanation for the player. in pnp it's just 'you failed your roll, you're fucked'. however ingame, you'd have to invent plausible conditions to tell the player why he could escape at an arbitrary point or why he failed to do so.

it's not like you can say "the enemy catches up with you", since you weren't running visually running more than a square. or even your enemy could be on the other side of the map, but you'd could still fail a roll for some odd reason (being bad luck).

Also, didn't you use capital letters before?

in normal posts? rarely. usually just for abbreviations or stuff like SHINY (TM).

call it bad netiquette but i dont really bother unless it's formal or if i initiate the thread.

(look on the bright side though: at least i try to use some punctuation!)

i think my dislike for capitals in forum posts has grown from my dislike of having to write I with a capital letter.

 

[Lumpy]

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. However, if we take Morrowind as an example: the first journey on foot you had to make, from Seyda Neen to Balmora, was 10-15 minutes long. Still, it felt long, and you never really noticed that those town were basically next to one another.

It felt boring, but yes it felt long. Because you're not used to travelling large, senseless distances in a game.
However, I never got the feeling that Morrowind's world was large at all. More that it was just boring, and that walking from town to town was tedious. It was annoying more than anything else, really.

It didn't really feel boring at the beggining, and by the time it did, you could easily use fast travel methods. But again, it's a subjective matter.

 

[Sander]

the biggest downside would be wasted development time. i'm sure you can put time in more meaningful stuff than endless SHINY (TM) wastelands

With a World Map they'll need several maps for random encounters anyway, and writing a procedure to paste these things together randomly isn't all that hard.

no, but you'd have the ability to make an escape roll, no?

Perhaps, that's another possibility. But then why not just allow an escape roll at any time anywhere?

It didn't really feel boring at the beggining, and by the time it did, you could easily use fast travel methods. But again, it's a subjective matter.

Yes it did. It never felt anything but boring to me.

 

[Bradylama]

Nevermind either that traversing terrain in Morrowind and Oblivion had certain design tricksies to keep the eye occupied. Morrowind had smooth curvy mountains as big as a communist housing project, and Oblivion had more of the same, only Imperial City was visible from half of the province.

There is nothing to look at in the wasteland.

A walk from the Vault to Shady Sands would take a minute before you could see Shady Sands on the horizon if this was indeed a scaled-down wasteland (laffo) since there are no objects to create an illusion of distance.

I enjoyed Oblivion's travel because it felt like an adventure, but the same kind of mechanic just won't work in a wasteland. It would be tedious. Which is precisely what Oblivion became after one sees the same old same old.

A lauded 15 square miles of gameworld doesn't work in the post apocalypse unless the gameworld is a bombed out metropolis and its outerlying suburbs. I think we can all agree, though, that such a limited geographical scope wouldn't be very Fallout.

Hell, Oblivion was even more scaled down than Morrowind. Morrowind had 10 square miles of an isolated island about 1/4 the size of the province in Oblivion. It had a much more convincing illusion of distance when taking that into account. Sure it was mostly empty, but the effect was still there.

Don't even get me started on Oblivion's fast travel, which had no inherent consequences whatsoever beyond a small passage of time.

 

[Marines]

I've been a lurker here for a quite awhile (3 years).

FYI, I've been playin the Fallout series since its first release in 97. I suppose I was 17 when it was first released.

This whole Oblivion aspect has me up in arms. I mean shit, lets go ahead and kill the entire Fallout universe altogether while we're at it. Beth has made it their mission to provide flair over substance in past games.

 

[Per]

Yes, I think we have 43 threads here where people say as much. What about travelling in the wasteland?

 

[ascaroth]

Rattus Rattus[/i]]

Well, on the bright side Bethesda might learn from their mistakes in Oblivion

Like they learned from mistakes of Morrowind, you mean?

You have to admit, Oblivion is a lot better game than Morrowind was(except story maybe).

Well if u start counting excepts from other forums .....u might get the picture

 

[Bradylama]

I dunno. Oblivion had better quest design, but as a flashy immersive experience, it lost all of the original artistry that made Morrowind compelling as a game world. Would you rather fight Kellhounds, or plain old wolves?

I missed the Silt Striders.

 

[PhredBean]

I dunno. Oblivion had better quest design,

There we go comparing shits to turds again. Neither had quests worth even speaking of, with the possible exception of a few brotherhood quests were somewhat neat, but even then for the most part it was a matter of "go there, whack someone or something a few times, come back". Both games had the generic three forms of quests, with usually only one way to complete them and practically no thought put into them at all.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

There we go comparing shits to turds again.

You're quite correct, old bean, the old addage of turds and polishing thereof springs swiftly to mind.

Thing is, it's nigh imposible to make meaningful and/or interesting quests when the only two options for interaction are either Bravil or attacking.

 

[zioburosky13]

Oblivion's Quest has only 1, 1 me tell you solution: sword fight. Forget about diplomatic, backstab, steal to complete the quest.

 

[Shiozaki]

My two cents on radiant AI, it sucked case in point.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060327

 

[Lumpy]

My two cents on radiant AI, it sucked case in point.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060327

No, it didn't. It was just a good, but not special in any way, NPC schedule scripting tool.
And it had nothing to do with combat, thus nothing to do with that comic.

 

[Sander]

No, it didn't. It was just a good, but not special in any way, NPC schedule scripting tool.
And it had nothing to do with combat, thus nothing to do with that comic.

It's also rather off-topic.
In any case, no, the Radiant AI as it was implemented there was crap.

I mean, every time you went into a store or bar *everyone* stood up, walked towards you and said hi. What the hell is that all about?
Besides that, the conversations were nonsensical and the way hostility was handled was rather stupid as well.

 

[Endless Void]

Well, Radiant AI's NPC scheduling system was a good idea... If they could make it right that is.