What did Bethesda actually do better than Black Isle?

[Sander]

Using your lockpick skill a couple dozen times in a row in the originals got old pretty fast too. At least with the lockpicking mini-game + feedback on a PS3, you can control the amount of feedback you get (as well as the 'success' area for the lockpick) based on character skill and make a lock either 'simple' or 'a lockpick insta-breaker' pretty easily.

I can understand not liking mini-games, but even 'hit lockpick 100 times till you get it right' is a sort of junk mini-game, so I view this one as a serious improvement. Also, any 'if you fail the skill check, reload' type mechanic is a bit flawed. By making a mini game influenced by skill, but not dependent on reflexes, there is a chance of killing two birds with one stone.

You're the on choosing to abuse the system by going 'try and reload'. Which, might I add, is still very much present in Fallout 3, although the amount of fails is much reduced.

Also, locks got jammed in Fallout on a critical failure limiting the amount of times you can retry without reloading.

What you're talking about is a rebalance within the actual game itself. Make lockpicking harder, make guns more inaccurate at lower levels. That I can get behind, even though I haven't noticed a problem (then again I'm not at level 20 yet)
There's no point in having useless skills, ever. Well, unless you feel like intentionally screwing over the player.

Your character choices don't really feel like useful choices, though, simply because you never get the feeling that you're missing out on something because you ignored skill X. Almost everything is possible regardless of skill level, with the exception of getting extra loot/bypassing small parts of the game through speech/science/lockpick.

 

[ferrety]

I can understand not liking mini-games, but even 'hit lockpick 100 times till you get it right' is a sort of junk mini-game, so I view this one as a serious improvement. Also, any 'if you fail the skill check, reload' type mechanic is a bit flawed. By making a mini game influenced by skill, but not dependent on reflexes, there is a chance of killing two birds with one stone.

Well, you couldn't do that in the original FO either, becaue the lock would get jammed.

The FO3 system is OK but could've been better. I'd love a lockpicking system like in Thief.

I've never played Thief or Oblivion or any of those, just Wasteland + FOs.

As for the lock getting jammed, that's why I mentioned the 'reload' option.

But hey, I'm a fan of games like Nethack that villify scum saving - if you die, you start over. This causes an immense amount of immersion and care about the character, even when you're playing as a little @.

But again, the original question posed by this thread is what was improved in FO3, and I love the PS3 lockpick, and I hated the lockpick controls in earlier FOs. I'm not saying there isn't a better solution than either. I was just humbly impressed by their use of rumble with my Dualshock.

 

[Confalone]

Really, you just saw the name of the skill and thought: Hah, this must include throwing too! It's obvious!

[/quote]

Are there even any other throwing weapons that are not grenades? Don't think so.

 

[ferrety]

What you're talking about is a rebalance within the actual game itself. Make lockpicking harder, make guns more inaccurate at lower levels. That I can get behind, even though I haven't noticed a problem (then again I'm not at level 20 yet)
There's no point in having useless skills, ever. Well, unless you feel like intentionally screwing over the player.

Your character choices don't really feel like useful choices, though, simply because you never get the feeling that you're missing out on something because you ignored skill X. Almost everything is possible regardless of skill level, with the exception of getting extra loot/bypassing small parts of the game through speech/science/lockpick.

I didn't say the stuff attributed to me above - that was someone else.

I agree with what you say, though - nothing in the game feels like a useful choice.

I enjoy the exploration, but I hate most of the mechanics.

My current list of gripes, bugs, and overall problems with the game can be found here, hidding in the 'mod' subforum:

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46485

 

[deadsanta]

Are there even any other throwing weapons that are not grenades? Don't think so.

You say that like it's a good thing. I miss the throwing knives and stars: What, we still know how to use a chinese sword, but we forgot how to throw shuriken? Silly.

Stuff I like about FOO (Fallout Oblivion):

-Stuff in-between locations besides lo-rez map. On the other hand, I miss real random encounters, and there's nothing to really see in-between sites except some nice art and a few mobs.

-Faster combat resolution. Like it or hate it, the pacing is better. I farking hated waiting for 20 ants to take their turn before me. Now, that doesn't mean it's better combat, but it does move along at a fair clip.

-The promise of FO4, and another chance to get it right... I know, I know, I should know better at this point, but hey, it could happen.

 

[TheFlyingBuddha]

You say that like it's a good thing. I miss the throwing knives and stars: What, we still know how to use a chinese sword, but we forgot how to throw shuriken? Silly.

This is a wild guess, but I'm betting if you hand me a sword and a shruiken and tell me to hit a log with them, I can at least hit the damn thing with the sword, with no prior training. I would probably have to throw about 10 shruiken before I even began to do it with any amount of accuracy.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

This is a wild guess, but I'm betting if you hand me a sword and a shruiken and tell me to hit a log with them, I can at least hit the damn thing with the sword, with no prior training. I would probably have to throw about 10 shruiken before I even began to do it with any amount of accuracy.

This is exactly why there should be a throwing weapon skill.

 

[TheFlyingBuddha]

Well obviously, but only if there were thrown weapons. Even in the original games, other than grenades, throwing weapons just weren't really a viable alternative. If there were to be throwing weapons, it wouldn't be crazy to have the melee skill cover them as they do at least require similar types of training.

My point was more related to the idea that it doesn't matter that they have swords in the game, it doesn't simply follow naturally that there should be throwing stars or other thrown weapons; swords are far more viable in a fight to the vast majority of people than freaking throwing blades, or any other thrown weapon for that matter.

If throwing weapons were in the game, they definitely would lose value as you approached the end game unless you made a crazy nuclear powered boomarang, and in either case there'd still be plenty of unhappy people.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Well, I have not seen many RPGs that favour throwing weapons. But dang, that's an option. Pretty perfect for a thief character, I say. A game that consciously restricts the option out of laziness loses flavor.

As for endgame weakness, you could always give thrown weapons critical chance, or make poisoned weapons an option.

 

[bhlaab]

I suppose this is subjective, but unlike Fo1+2 I actually use grenades in Fallout 3

I mean who would honestly put skill points into Throwing besides people specifically trying to make the game more difficult for themselves?

I suppose that's another thing Bethesda's got over the originals (arguably). In the originals I tend to find the one gun I like and spam with it until I find the gun that's exactly like the other gun but better.

That might be the overarching design choice that is splitting people over this game. The originals were all about locking you out of areas and situations depending on your choices, whereas fallout 3 pressures you to experiment with a bit of everything and, in certain situations rewards certain choices with a little bit extra (shortcuts, items, etc)

 

[Firgof]

Given that they're working on a system that was based on a system which is far more complex than either of the combined systems, a system I happen to be familiar with,
they folded skills even in the original Fallout comparatively.

Coming from 3rd Ed. Revised GURPS, First Aid is "the ability to patch up an injury in the field. A successful roll will halt bleeding, neutralize or partially neutralize poison, give artificial respiration for a drowning victim, et cetera. If a problem is unusual, it must first be identified through Diagnosis."

And that Physician is "the general professional ability to aid the sick, prescribe drugs and care, et cetera. This is the skill to use if a single roll is needed to test general medical competence or knowledge. Physician also includes the ability to finding(sic) healing herbs in the wild, the ability to identify most drugs easily, et cetera."

And then there's Surgery, which is a separate skill from those two, which covers what one assumes it would.

So, really, Doctor is Physician and Surgery rolled into one. And that's a tradition of Fallout 1. Now, in 3, it's what GURPS calls 'Medicine!' which is 'I know this much about everything in every field related to the practice of Medicine.'

For me, folded skills have always been a part of the Fallout equation so that doesn't irk me at all. (I am well aware Vault 13/Fallout never hit shelves with the GURPS system included, but its influence was everywhere :p)

But! I'm glad they set it up that way because then First Aid would do very little in the way of saving your arse after a gun fight; and would likely only go off once.

My biggest skillbeef is Explosives, which even if they called it Demolitions, doesn't make the Throwing skill included into it make any sense at all. I guess it could, if they see Explosives as 'Explosives!' (Which, I guess, I could see as treating Throwing as related if you were a Soldier and went through basic training...)

At least they didn't do 'Guns!' which would just be utterly silly and ridiculously unbalanced in the world of Fallout.

But back to the topic at hand. What did they do better than Black Isle? For me ... I enjoyed actually having scenery go by between locations, for one, during transit. I enjoy the game not being beatable in under thirty minutes. I enjoy having the ability to erase a location from your map and get a huge shift in your alignment and a nice, secure, stronghold for your compliance.

I enjoy the traps being a lot more useful than in the previous games and Power Armor requiring training to use. I also like the radio and the immersion being more complete than in previous titles in the series.

I am thankful for there being a great deal more variety to what NPCs dress and look like than in the original games. I enjoyed the trip to [spoiler:13fed8ca84]Pleasantville (though I disliked that I couldn't, after failsafing, go into the Overseers office and force him out of his pod and beat the crap out of him for his abuse of the people in the vault)[/spoiler:13fed8ca84].

And yeah, I enjoyed the fresh locations even if I disliked the mercenaries being so obviously randomly generated and there being no true bounty hunters roaming around with similar orders. And I liked the little things here and there, like a small text adventure game tucked away in the city and numerous other little interesting tidbits.

 

[Tycn]

Oh, and I've thought of another thing Bethesda has done better: Armor system. Now THAT is beyond question, because oldschool Fallout had a terrible armor system.

Fallout had three variables which mitigated damage as well as resistances. Fallout 3 has one, a simple percentage reduction. Not to mention, power armour is nerfed to hell.

 

[Lucifer Sam]

Yes, obviously applying broken technology and then calling it innovative is a very good idea.
What?
Bethesda's Radiant AI was very far from innovative or new, by the way, and it's poorly made at that. Many games have done it much better, most notably Gothic.

gothics(2) npcs were all scripted. and as soon as you take the script away, the I in AI crumbles to dust. for all its faults, radiant ai is a step forward. beth, for some reason, just doesn't want it to do more than walk around awhile and then sit on a chair for a few hours. in my game, the ai only went roque _once_(two imperial archers pumping each other full of arrows in the woods).


so, the good things in ... oblivion with guns.
(yes. i won't call it fallout. and i'm not even a 'fan' of the series)

the world and its design
computer logs and some npc monologues. so adventuring and exploring is sometimes real _fun_. of course the mileage may vary. espacially if you know more about the fallout universe and spot all the inconsistencies here and there. but i was pretty impressed by it. beth didn't rape it nearly as hard as it did the elder scrolls series in that regard

(and before anyone eyefucks me for saying that: oblivion added NOTHING worthwhile to the elder scrolls background all the while rubbing its dick all over the place. lotr movie rip-off design for enviroment and items, a mainquest that only made sense after a dev retconned it in the forums, a purely black and white world filled with idiots leading factions that were as simplified and screwed over as the rest of the game. so yeah, the brotherhood started helping people and acted out of character, but at least you got an explanation for it in the game. even if it was only 1 or 2 sentences and overly simplistic. you got one. while our brotherhood overnight went from greedy killers that seperated itself from another group of killers(religious fanatics that kill in the their deity of deceit and murder) because they hated to worship and wanted more money, to a lunatic cult that worships nothing(literally worships. with laws, saints and everything!) no explanation given. it just happened. and...this is already long enough. so i stop.)

combat. i don't think fallouts combat was bad... not on paper. but ingame it's tedious. i don't really like fighting to begin with, so waiting 10 minutes for my turn in a city is just horrible. then again, slowmotion...
Spoiler:

GIANT ANTI COMMUNISM ROBOT WITH EYELASERS, PEW PEW!
ok, there may have been a reason black isle never included a giant anti communism bot with eyelasers, but as good as the reason may be, it could not possibly be good enough.
by the way: has anyone a full list of the stuff it says?

i don't have many gripes with it. big ones, but none a person who played morrowind for hundreds of hours could not handle. the biggest being the dialogue(your choices especially) and ALL the children in the game being greater dicks than the adults, but you can do nothing against it because they are shielded by stupid response choices and feminazis.

overall i think the game is pretty decent. a six or seven out of ten.

edit(without a stamp, because i'm just awesome like that[Edit: damnit]): and all i wanted is to tell sander that gothics ai was just a pile of shooting arrows at you while standing still or charging you.

 

[MkH^]

I think combining skills was a good idea, especially as the level cap is 20. Another thing is that in Fallout 3 you actually have to invest skillpoints in skills such as sneaking/stealing, explosives and lockpick. I already have hard time enhancing my combat skills. In the original Fallouts you never actually had to spend any points in any of these skills. Sure a higher lockpick skill spared you some time and trouble, but that was it. Also, how many times did you actually use throwing? Be serious. What about doctor, aside from healing that crippled cow in Modoc?

 

[merlin]

overall i still have a positive feeling about f3.

the first person view enhances immersion.

the fatalities are very well done imho (even so i dont like decapitation when sooting someone in the head) and are very true to the originals.

I fully support some of the skill fusioins like doctor and first aid. As stated they were not distict enough to justify two separate skills.

@ thrown weapons: they were sub par in f1+2. never used them. And I personally prefer not to use grenades but well that's me. You can either make them more useful, and I like the suggestion of a thief/ninja char or drop them as happened in f3. it's a design choice and I am ok with that.

But I have the feeling that f3 has been dumbed down. While the repair skill as implemented is nice, it could still be better. What about disassembling weapons to build new ones from the parts salvaged?
What about modding weapons like in previous fallouts with a scope or something?
+ ghuls. I love them- the speed and the movements are actually well done.
+ vats. While being a bit too primitive to support consoles I like the fast combat.
+ radio. Nice idea. Increases immersion a lot. Especially when you hear about your dees on the radio
+ pib boy and inventory. I always thought that the interface from fallout was sub par. That has nothing to do with realism. Scrolling through numerous items to find something without the chance to structure things (no, bags are not satisfactory) is tedious.

What I miss is a bit more info about weapon ranges and specialiers, customizable weapons, different fire modes such as single shot, auto, full auto, burst and so on.
I miss the numerous diplomatic solutions to problems. i don't like that the whole world seems to be built upon the devise: shoot first, ask later. Even though it is a post apocalyptic world not everybody is a raider or thief. Especially with that few people around. Super mutants seem to be grown in vast numbers.
High tech weapons everywhere, ammo too. Not very much post apocalyptic. You need a pretty advanced society to produce that amounts of goods. Such a society should be easily capable to deal with a few raiders or super mutants.

 

[zioburosky13]

Good topic (and please dont kill it with flame) Hard to think of many not related to technology advances...
Nice intro/tutorial level - vault 101. Good start for noobs and not tedious/long (like many game tutorials are)

Where's the fun of discovery something when everything is spoon-fed to you?

Repair skill on items - good implementation - however, not used much for quests and other stuff. Still a good system.

Among all the skills, repair is perhaps my favorite and the most improve one. Oh wait, I can't use it to fix broken lock and machinery...

Inventory is a bit easier to manage, with classes and item titles.

I wouldn't bitch if they stick to how Micropose did to Fallout Tacticss inventory system. I find it can be quite cumbersome to look for something among the pile of stuff there.
Ironically, Interplay's fallout series let you look at a picture while hiding the description of an item. Yet Bethesda's Fallout forced you to read the description to find something.

Hack and lockpick minigames - I actually like those. even if they are not RPG-ish by nature ok. Would it be better if it was just skill/PE/LC dependant and all you had to do is reaload if the roll fails?

Why can't I try to lockpick a lock even the skill requirement is way beyond my skill?

Combining med and first aid was a nobrainer really, just removing the redundancy of already no-so necessary skills.

It pissed me off when I found out I can use stimpack to heal crippled body parts and I can still fast travel with a crippled leg...

Combining throwing + traps into one 'explosives' skill is ok I guess...

You know I kind of miss the idea of sneaking and putting a dynamite on a kid.

-Stuff in-between locations besides lo-rez map. On the other hand, I miss real random encounters, and there's nothing to really see in-between sites except some nice art and a few mobs.

No more surprise for player when everything is just throw at you in first person view...

-Faster combat resolution. Like it or hate it, the pacing is better. I farking hated waiting for 20 ants to take their turn before me. Now, that doesn't mean it's better combat, but it does move along at a fair clip.

In TOEE, they have enemies finish they turn simultaneously instead one by one.

The only good thing Bethesda did is the wasteland atmosphere done in first person view.
But then, STALKER has better atmosphere feel and scenery. Not to mention seeing everything in fucking brown color is GETTING really annoying.

 

[aenemic]

inventory in itself is easier to manage. instead of scrolling through ALL your inventory to find a specific item, you only need to scroll through one type of item at a time.

I beg to differ. In Fallout I used to have my stuff (normaly 5-6 items) at bottom of the list, and above that everything was loot to sell. Plus my NPCs which allowed me to store different kinds of stuff. I could access them really quickly. Oh and the old Inventory System used to have text and explaination. The new and "better" version has "Chinese Pistole: Dmg: 2 Dr: 15"

text and explanation is one thing, doesn't really have anything to do with inventory management. I miss the text as well.

but how do you consider having to talk to an npc and trade with him better inventory management than just pulling up a menu and clicking the tab you need? sorry, but I think you're just used to old ways. the new inventory IS easier to manage, there's no arguing that. if you like how the new system works, well that's another thing.

inventory in itself is easier to manage. instead of scrolling through ALL your inventory to find a specific item, you only need to scroll through one type of item at a time.

Sadly, this doesn't actually carry over to store interfaces for some reason.

yes it does. when you barter with someone you first get a list of all your items (and all the stores items) but if you click on the ITEM tab on top you can sort by item type.

 

[frosty_theaussie]

Fallout 3's inventory management may be an improvement on the original games, but it still looks like arse. Being a bare improvement over ten years isn't anything to write home about.

 

[madmaligor]

While its certainly not the best AI ever invented I actually have seen a few things I like.

NPC's who had seen me lay a mine and went around it, pick up weapons off dead NPCs when out of ammo or are armed with an inferior melee weapon, and use cover when sniping.

I had a Mutant switch to his nailboard and charge after firing a few times with his missile launcher and hitting only the rocks I was using as cover (his body was not out of missile ammo by any means and in other encounters most used up all their missiles in open field combat if I didn't kill them fast enough....or get killed).

I had one switch from firing a minigun to tossing a grenade when I was doing the same thing, using a tree as cover (bit the big one on that encounter and laughed my ass off).

Some of the scripted stuff is pretty good as well. The guy in the Minefields uses terrain and the cars/mines to his advantage.

You can also do some pretty cool stuff with grenades because of the physics involved (bouncing them off walls into rooms, or rolling them down a rock outcropping into a pack of raiders), and it makes using them a challenge at times if your not careful behind cover.

I like the fact that ammo shortages give you a reason to use almost every type of weapon.

For me, Chems were always more of a currency than a gameplay factor in FO1 and 2 (aside from the NPC interactive exception). In FO3 I am using every chem for one purpose or another (Psycho - I save for Melee pack a punch power, Jet - for V.A.T.S. and more shots to my enemies face, Med-X for multiple enemy defense, Mentats for the "get me over the hump" skill points when needed, Buffout for an occasional melee and any pack mule scenario when I need to carry more than my allowance.

Most importantly, radiation is an actual factor in gameplay and I need a lot more than a couple of pairs of rubber boots to solve the problem. I use the crap out of Rad-X and Radaway. The Radiation suits are useful and Radiation management for health/food reasons is important. Radiation is also prominent in many areas of the game and pops up all the time unexpectedly.....When I start hearing that scratching meter sound and see the flashing red Pipboy pop up, I instantly react with an "Oh crap!"(or other four letter explicative) and get the hell away as quickly as possible. In fact, now that I really think about it, this is an area where FO3 dramatically improved upon the other two games, especially considering that we are talking about a post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout world.

 

[Ausir]

While the inventory might be somewhat an improvement, the character sheet is horrible.