Why do people rate awareness so high?

P

Perkyguy

First time out of the vault
Honestly, i cannot fathom why so many guides list Awarness as the absolute best perk at 3-rd level and good to have anyway. I've finished fallout 2 some 25-30 times and the only time i picked the perk, it was of no help at all. Just how does knowing the enemy's weapon and hit points aid you exactly? You can tell with ease what weapon it is precisely, by seeing your enemy (i,e robber/highwayman), the looks of the weapon and the sound it makes when shot. The hit point thing is also quite useless, since you can easily calculate the total amount of hitpoints your enemy has by their type and when it takes 1 shot to get them from Unhurt to Severly wounded, its a safe bet that they will either die or be 1 shot away from death on your next attack.

I have always considered more of a convinience perk and in an even weaker form than quick pockets - it does nothing to improve your performance in battle and it has no other uses outside that. On 3-rd level i always pick thief. Other perks suck, apart from maybe toughness, and stat point perks are quite useless in general, but thief adds a total of 40 stat points, so from all the doctor, mr. fixit type of perks i consider this the best one. I steal alot, lockpick more often than not, occasionally use sneak, and rarely need to disarm traps, but this comes a quite a giant of a bonus to me in comparison with awareness.
 
OK, then... what you call stat points are actually skill points. Just to straighten that out. Stat points are in ST, PE, EN, CH and so on.

First of all, you actually feel safer when you have it. Sometimes a tough guy who is "nearly dead" can actually have 30 or so HP, so it's good to decide whether you or an NPC should shoot him. And Frank Horrigan with his 999 HP, I would've died out of curiosity how many he's got left without Awareness ;)

Second of all, killing with Superstimpaks. Awareness is a must here, unless you don't care and you're going to use too many or you're going for a trial and error method with saving and loading. They both are kind of bad.

Thirdly, like you said, it's a major convienience to know what type of weapon your enemy is using without having to guess from the sound. And keep in mind that in case of Power Fists and knuckles you can't actually see them, they don't make any sounds, too - the sound and animation is just like for unarmed attacks. Same goes to some extent for the Ripper, and how would you tell a Cattle Prod apart from a Wrench? It's good to see if you're not killing the knuckles guy while another one with a Mega Power Fist is charging right ahead on you.

You said you steal a lot; well, I like relieving people of everything they have as well, including the Bozars in NCR (you gotta be removing them inconspiciously out of their pockets, I suppose). I have played FO2 with Steal 20-30% a lot of times and well, if you save before attempts, you'll not need to invest skill points to Steal. Though Thief does give you a lot of them, I admit it. Still, Awareness rocks it out of its socks.

Finally, you asked: why do people rate Awareness so high? Well, if most of them do, you can figure there is some obscure reason ;)
 
About the stat/skill points, yeah i was typing one while thinking of the other, my bad.

For an experienced player its absolutely no trouble at all to determine what weapon is the enemy using even without havingto listen to it fire. If you know what kind of enemies are expected to wield power fists, you will know that they are not fighting barefisted - only mutants and those thugs fighting hubolgists ever use power fists. The super stimpack issue is also a highly convinience and no improvement thing. If you have played the game before, you can pretty accurately ballpark their hitpoints and miss killing them by a highest maximum of 2 super stimpacks the first time.

It only fools you into a slight sense of security, gained by the exact knowledge of an enemy's hitpoints, but even if you know his hit points, what does this help you? Its easy to guess an enemy's total hits, based on how quickly you reduce their health status with shots
 
well lets put it this way. you want to wage war with 5 neutral opponents and want to see if you can take them. with awareness you can easily do a weapon check and HP check. and see if you have the actual gear and HP to take them out. its all precaution. :roll:
 
I kinda agree with Perkguy, actually. The Awareness perk becomes quite redundant if you've played the games a gazillion times before. I stopped taking it as well. Toughness is a better choice for veteran players, IMO.
 
And I still like it. Maybe I haven't played through either Fallout enough times yet ;)
 
Awareness allows you to know who has the most dangerous gun before they shot you.
 
I agree with Perkyguy. I much prefer toughness, or thief and a few others i can't remember. Awareness is great for a newcomer to the game, but i think most veteran players know the (admittedly very useful) info Awareness gives them without the perk.
 
Awareness is probably one of the most useful perks in the game, for reasons specified above.

I honestly cant go into further detail.
 
Even for veteran players, there are times when it can be useful. The tougher deathclaws/floaters/centaurs can be called "almost dead" with 50+ HP remaining. For determining whom to attack first, it is good to know who has a 10mm pistol and who has a .44 magnum. Similarly, big guns range from harmless (laser rifle, flamer [at a distance]) to deadly (bozar, turbo plasma rifle). Sometimes cave robbers won't draw their weapons, running up to you but not attacking. Except for the ones with power fists, who can do a lot of damage. Still, toughness and quick pockets are good alternatives.
 
Perkyguy said:
Honestly, i cannot fathom why so many guides list Awarness as the absolute best perk at 3-rd level
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Because guides, by definiton, are aimed at new players, who do not have the knowhow necessary to gauge an enemy's health total, weapon and armor?
 
Madbringer said:
Because guides, by definiton, are aimed at new players, who do not have the knowhow necessary to gauge an enemy's health total, weapon and armor?
Click to expand...

Good point.
 
I would argue that Awareness is, still, an interesting and useful perk to have, even if you're a veteran player, especially if you're using burst/aoe weapons, it's easier to estimate your chance of killing opponents and you can prioritize them by current health level and weapon in hand.

That said, i agree it does lose a lot over time, when you get more and more familiar with the game. I myself take it only every other character, when i go heavy weapons.
 
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