What is it with people and the immortal dog?

Why would I care about casual players who want their hand held? Should I also want then an immortal Player character that can't ever be killed because some people don't like even putting the most minor effort in any game?
 
The casuals have taken over! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Noooo. Don't do it. Anything but that! ARRGGHH!!!! :vatted:


Todd Howard is our lord and savior. Kneel before Todd!
 
Heh @Walpknut, like that Call of Duty game which name I forgot, maybe one of the spec ops games? No clue. But what I do remember is the guy who made a playtrough on youtube mentioned that you can get trough the most part of the game winning it, without dieing even once and without shooting anyone, because your team mates make sure of everything and the enemies are not doing enough damage to kill you really.

*Edit heh yeah it was Spec Ops 1. Apparantly you can play and win it without shooting anyone.

 
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Crni Vuk said:
What do you mean inconsequential?
Click to expand...

Not significant, on the question of immortal-dog. People were upset about the "Modders will fix it" line, and whining about "Ohhh WHY Bethesda doesn't make games that I like?!" instead of being happy that they are offered tools to adapt it to their taste.
 
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The point you seem to miss is that those tools should not be needed in the first place. Making NPCs and companions immortal is a lazy workaround to something that I call a design choice. There are many ways to fix such issue. The problem? It takes effort. Your companions die to much in combat because of stupid AI? Improve the AI. NPCs die because they are walking into the mouth of a dragon to often? Fix their routines and/or AI. You are worried that people cant solve quests because they kill the quest givers to often? Give people different ways to solve the quest trough narrative and storytelling and/or gameplay. They make them all (companions included) immortal because they have zero faith in their target audience. It is called handholding. Dumbing down. Removing debth in favour of toddlers. Making sure that a player with the brain power of a 5 year old brain dead zombie-toddler can finish the game.

Inconsequential? More like realistic feelings.



Like I said and I will say this here again.

Defending immortal NPCs as design choice in RPGs is like defending bad shooter mechanics in FPS games.
 
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Nobody is arguing that it is a wise marketing decision. That's where criticism to this is inconsequential, because that's where how many gamers prefer it this way really counts. When it is to evaluate the quality, it is a whole different story. Is it dumbing down and hand holding? I believe it undeniably is. Can modders fix it? Yes, but it is irrelevant. Modders can fix bugs too, but this doesn't make it any less irresponsible to release the game plagued with bugs. If the game crashes too often, then devs didn't do their job right. If they choose to make immortal NPCs because their AI and narrative and writing is low quality, call it by its name, it's a kludge, and it lowers the product's quality, and shows a lack of effort.
Think of it as a client: when I install a mod, I'm trusting a group of individuals who may or may not be well intentioned. They may or may not be professionals, and I have no guarantee, nor should I expect it, because I'm not paying for the mod. If the game *requires* mods for me to be able to play it properly, then I've been conned, since I paid for an unfinished product and then have no guarantee on the finished one, because I technically did not pay for the pieces meant to complete it.
EDIT: I'd also add that it is not fair to put the expectations of completing the bad quality product of a company who charges for it in the modding community, when they aren't legally allowed to charge for their work. So, it's also ethically wrong, IMO.
 
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I made an account on here a while back to download some fixes for the original Fallouts. This is my first post here, and let me start by saying that I in no way prefer Fallout 3 to the other games. New Vegas is my favorite of the three games I have completed (FO1, FO3, FNV. Haven't finished FO2, as of this post).

That said, why is there such hatred for Bethesda to the point of using complaints that ALSO apply to the original games? I understand the lore and whatnot that made you so upset, but why are you at the point now where you are complaining about them being too lazy to make proper companion AI? Your beloved FO1/FO2 had some of the worst companion AI I have ever seen in a game. FO3 and FNV are no better or worse. Yes, in this day and age, that's unacceptable. But it's just like you remember, right? Ian shooting you in the back, or Dogmeat charging into a battle that clearly cannot be won. I mean, it's considered an achievement to complete the game with all four companions alive!

So why are you using that to complain about how bad Bethesda is? Don't get me wrong, I loved the hell out of FO1. I moderately enjoyed FO3. To act like the AI in the Bethesda games is so bad, when the originals had it just as bad, is baffling to me. Again, yes, it's not acceptable in this day and age. Can we stop acting like the originals were not also plagued by this, though?

To contribute to this thread properly, I'll say that I welcome the idea of essential companions, as long as I can turn that off if I want a more challenging experience. I don't necessarily want to have to babysit my companions who should be more than capable of defending themselves, but sometimes I want a challenge, and being able to turn that off would be great. I agree that the AI should be smarter, though.
 
Because the complaint is about immortal companions and neither 1 or 2 had immortal companions? Like one of the more infamous things about Ian was his penchant for killng yo uand your other companions when using burst weapons... Maybe you should actually try to read the arguments properly before you make one of the generic "Nostalgia" people who rage register here always do?
 
Maybe you should back to page two or so where all that was being said was "LOL BETHESDA IS SO BAD AT GAME DESIGN THEY JUST MAKE THEM IMMORTAL INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY PROGRAMING THE AI". The same can be said for the original games, except there was nothing done to cover up the bad AI. Yes, one of the more famous things of the original Fallout is Ian's terrible AI. Why is that something to be proud of? Because he can run into gunfire and practically kill himself? There's a difference between challenging and just purely stupid.

Challenging: Your NPC companions have taken cover and will die if you can't heal them with a Stimpack, which requires you to run out into the open as well. Or something to that effect.

Stupid: Your NPC companions run right into a Super Mutant's mini-gun, blindly, and get turned into Swiss Cheese, and the only way to fix it is to reload or move on without them.

And stop putting labels on people. I am right with you guys on how much FO3 sucked as a Fallout game, despite it being my introduction to the series. I'm not defending Bethesda, nor am I hating on the originals. I'm merely questioning you complaining about something wrong with both eras of Fallout, which is the terrible companion AI.
 
The originals didn't make them immortal, the Ai wasn't stellar, but you could actually give directions to your companions before combat in FO2 so they would avoid using certain weapons, control the rate for them using chems to heal themselves, limit the type of weapons they would use you could even tell them to haul ass if things where too grim. So they did improve on companion control (Which would be aparent if you had actually played the games, or even if you had paid attention to the text).....
You see that's an actual solution within the engine, New Vegas did a similar thing but it suffered from just the terrible AI Bethesda had programmed into FO3 to begin with....
Now yo uare tyring to defend this retarded decision by showing how ignorant you are about the actual mechanics of the games, please do continue.
 
Dude, I'm not defending the decision to have immortal NPCs. Yes, I WANT the NPCs to be able to die. I WANT challenge. I WANT smarter AI. If the choice is between stupid AI that kills itself or stupid AI that is immortal, I want immortality. It's the lesser of two evils. I'd prefer it if Bethesda worked on that and fixed it. Which, by the way, Obsidian could have done themselves, if they wanted to spend time on it. I know, they were put on a time limit. Regardless, I'm not saying this immortal NPC thing is good.

And what the hell is with your elitist attitude? I played FO1 from beginning to end, and the AI in the game was not a difficulty feature. It was bad AI, plain and simple. Yes, I have not played FO2 all the way through. I took a break after marathoning FO1. Pardon me, sir or madam. I didn't realize that having not finished FO2 made my complaints with FO1 moot.
 
Yet your entire argument was about how they didn't improve it from 1 to 2 so it made immortal companions ok. Which I just showed you it's a bad argument because you don't even have the information in order, and also you aparently registered just to tell people here that they were being nostalgic while you didn't even have a solid argument, sorry if my attitude is derisive by default in response to that kind of action, we have enough people doing the same almost weekly and it gets tiring.
 
No, immortal NPCs are a bad thing. I was not defending that. I never said "it's okay". I asked why you were using that argument for FO4, when FO1 (apparently NOT FO2) had just as bad AI, which made it hard, yes. But not in a way that was fair, rather, in a "poor game design" kind of way.

Also, I didn't just register to tell people anything. I registered a while back to download stuff from here. I was lurking and just happened to find something that rubbed me the wrong way. This forum is full of elitist attitudes from people who played the original. In some respects, though, they have a point. I agree that immortal NPCs should be done away with, and we should have smarter AI. I just don't like that you are so blinded by your hate for Bethesda that you use arguments against them that ALSO apply to the originals. FO1 is not perfect. It's way better that FO3, but it's certainly not perfect. One of the most memorable things from that game should not be that the player's companion accidentally shoots the player in the back all the time. And complaining about that is not just "haha modern gamerz suck". It's a legitimate issue within the game's design, and it should have been fixed at some point. I think I read somewhere that it was hard coded into the game, so it was practically impossible to edit through patches, or something like that.

Anyway, I'm just saying, the lazy game design argument doesn't work only against Bethesda. FO1 had the same issue. As a matter of fact, FO3 didn't have immortal companions. My Dogmeat once charged straight into a Super Mutant and got completely obliterated, similar to Dogmeat from FO1.
 
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