What did New Vegas DO WRONG? / Would isometric New Vegas with finished content be GOAT?

[Black Angel]

In this thread, aweigh mentioned that he's 100% combatfag, and few replies earlier he mentioned how he can't stand Arcanum at all. Iirc, few pages before that he actually defended New Vegas, and right now in this thread we can see that aweigh liked New Vegas enough to replay it multiple times. Hell, contrary to his statement that he's 100% combatfag and how, and I quote, "story and characters and false choice and consequence (i.e. choose your own adventure R.L. Stein type of C and C which is what the codex loves but is not real C&C which can only emerge from gameplay); i do not care that much for any of those things. i play RPGs for their gameplay.", really contradicts his defense of New Vegas, because the game actually excels at all those things he didn't care about. Since, I assume from his claim that he's 100% combatfag, that for him combat = gameplay, and New Vegas combat is really, really shitty.

To that, I'm going to quote myself from that old thread once again, which appeared in the next page:

I'm extremely baffled with some here who would argue how they enjoyed New Vegas BUT didn't enjoyed Arcanum. In some ways, New Vegas and Arcanum had this similar situation where they were initially released as a buggy mess of a game, and also had pretty shitty combat gameplay mechanics. The difference is that:

1. New Vegas was severely held back by a shitty engine, shitty design decision from the owner of the engine, and having to please console audience, Arcanum was not.
2. New Vegas's scope of the gameworld was severely scaled down, Arcanum was not.

To me, Arcanum was actually much more fun and feels/plays better, because I had this newfound adoration for Top-Down Isometric Turn-Based games. Sure, the combat mechanic of Arcanum was kind of messed up because Tim Cain and co had to develop and balance it around the use of Turn-Based AND Real-Time combat, but it still plays better for me.

Also, what baffles me even more is how aweigh stated he's a combatfag, BUT he is defending New Vegas as if New Vegas had better combat gameplay than Arcanum (as an RPG, that is).

Now, from what I remembered, you haven't addressed that post of mine, aweigh. Would you kindly do so now? Why is it you can stand New Vegas, yet can't stand Arcanum? To me, real-time shooting/action combat mechanics of New Vegas is way too horrible, even with all the mods. Although, like I said, probably because I have the newfound adoration for top-down isometric turn-based combat mechanic, so I highly prefer Arcanum's combat (and even Fallout 1&2's).

 

[aweigh]

Black Angel

dude no one is 100% anything. first off, I love arcanum, but I think it has huge problems i.e. it's unplayable combat.

note how I used the word "unplayable" there, and yet I just started the sentence by proclaiming that I love Arcanum which means I must have played it? OMG did your brain explode? No, it didn't.

I love C&C when it's tied to game play and FNV excels at doing this more than 95% of Codex-approved "C and C" games. And fuck it, I hate fucking using the term C and C.

I hate whoever came up with it and I hate it because it has become a catch-all term that in the mouths of most codexers who joined recently say joined around 2008-9 and onwards; it has become a meaningless phrase which means both:

c and c = RPG

c and c = role playing

Neither of those states are true. There is a lot of nuance concerning c and c and reducing it to branching game states is not "good C and C".

If you make a choice as the player that closes off access to a faction yet there are still ways for the player to continue interacting with the faction... NOT as their member, as that way was closed (in this hypothetical) but via means of (let's spitball here) disguises, or by the player manipulating the other factions to affect the one he's now not allowed to associate with, or even by the game providing quests, tools, abilities, companions, whatever !, for the player to even continue further that faction's ideals/end goals even though he's closed off from it:

THAT is "true" C and C. If, in the same hypothetical, the player selects DIALOG CHOICE "B" and loses that faction access and then the game cuts off 20% of its content and there is absolutely nothing more to be done about it, and (being generous here...) let's say the only "consequence" then is that the player will then have to fight some of that faction's agents once in a whiile...

THAT IS BAD C AND C. IT IS BAD, BAD, BAD. Why? because it is the laziest fucking possible way of designing RPG game play and not only that, it even manages to actively remove the player's agency AND it immediately closes off game content that could be utilized in other ways than simply as a quest-chain for the player.

Get it? I hope so, because I will not continue debating C and C with you.

SPOILER/HINT/EDIT: And guess what? "Hypothetical" = FNV. FNV allows what I talk about. FNV has "good" C and C. So does Arcanum! Why? It also allows emergent agency like that.

So kids, this is what I want to replace CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE with:

From now on we must now utilize: EMERGENT PLAYER AGENCY.

 

[aweigh]

Also I would like to point out that I don't think it's possible to even argue that Arcanum and FNV have "equally shitty combat". I'm not saying either one is good OR bad, but it is kind of indisputable that FNV's FPS shooting type combat by default "better" than Arcanum's because it at its most basic level works as intended.

It's because they didn't do anything smart with it (besides the additions to the VATS system via perks/traits and shit) and it is just generic as fuck first person shooting except done worse than in "real" FPS games.

BUUUT even below-average FPS shooting is still a fully developed and coherent combat experience, which sure some will dislike precisely because they dislike FPS mechanics, and that is a good thing. Why? because it means at the very least FNV's "shitty FPS combat" is juuuuuust not-shitty-enough to actually be servicible.

On the Arcanum side that is just a fucking humongous clusterfuck of design ideas and a perfect fucking storm of terri-bad implementation. It's real-time combat is not even worth discussing, it is broken and not in the fun way it is broken in that it is fucking broken and thus unusable except for using it as a way to "glitch" the games systems--

--and Arcanum's TB combat is, unlike FNV's implementation of FPS mechanics, does not reach the level of "slightly shitty" or "somewhat below average" instead it is riddled with all the bad problems that Turn based systems can exhibit if the game isn't designed around TB from the beginning.

Bad itemization and bad progression combined with the unabalnced character advancement system and the character attributes and skills, everything is there but Troike didn't have enough money/time to polish all of those things and when it comes together in-game it results in one of the best fucking examples of why legitimate "Balance" is important.

I know "balance" is now a codex meme that simply means "No fun allowed!" but I'd like to point out the fact that real game balancing is what would've made Arcanum's combat engine(s) at least be coherent for the player instead of awe-inspiring clusterfuck.

"real" Balance has nothing to do whatsoever with Sawyer, or with the concept of fun. It has to do with making a game's systems symbiotic and thus when experienced by the player provide a balance between the different game facets and mechanics.

 

[Talby]

aweigh, true to Caesar

 

[aweigh]

Talby

an honor, sir! Ceasar while perhaps not the "best" NPC in FNV (due to the amount of Legion content cut from the game) is a wonderful character that in 2 or 3 dialogs and already oozes more charm, wit and the draw-you-in type of hook (for the player) than most of the talking heads in FO1 or FO2.

now now, calm down kids, I ain't knocking FO1/FO2 here. I'm saying that I consider Talby's comment a "compliment" because the character in question is a perfect example of the greatest strength(s) found in FNV and big part of those are the factions and the "faction leaders", i.e. FNV's talking heads.

Ceasar is the most or should I say the least "good" one of all the cast of characters, and even so remains an interesting and "good" NPC.

If that doesn't tell you the game has good writing, well don't worry I'll drop anything I might be doing to immediately tag people and and write 10 thousand words on it, and i'll do it out love love!

Just like Mommy Dearest.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Revenge could've been my character's motivation, but my motivation as the player was to solve a mystery, and there's enough information in that intro to invite a good deal of speculation. I found it refreshing to catch up to an antagonist only to find he wants nothing to do with me, kind of like Letho from The Witcher 2.

You didn't have to catch up to him to find out he wanted nothing to do with you, that was obvious from the opening scene: "You made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene(...) Blam". That's all there was to it. You're just collateral damage in someone else's business, a messenger, the delivery boy.

Benny's personality has jack shit to do with the player's interest in the mysterious plat chip at that point. You are interested in the platchip because it's clearly the main plot mcguffin you were shot for. You would be just as interested in the plat chip had Benny been a spiky-haired gangbanger or a reluctant blackmailed mother instead of a guido larper, only your interest in Benny as a character might change for it.

The protagonist should feel very strongly about Benny and gang for what they did to him but the player doesn't because those two plastic CGI gloves tied together are hardly even a character at that stage let alone your character. You haven't said or taken any action in the game, not a single step, you haven't even started chargen. You're a spectator watching a movie at that stage and it's a weaker opening than it should be since you're not given much of a reason to care for the protagonist or particularly hate the antagonist(actually the lead character at the time).

Having the intro sequence be a playable ingame segment where you could fail speech checks begging for your life or failing a luck check on a coin toss for your life would have gotten the player more invested in it(and made the whole "game was rigged from the start" bit work even better), but if they had to go with a CGI cutscene in order to keep it snappier and flashier then upping the villainy on Benny or company would also have helped bridge the gap between character and player. Still better than being told to save the town full of generics/tribals/nameless relative/princess just because but it could've been better. The end result being that most players barely even remembered who the executioners were once they reached Boulder/NV and those who did didn't feel pressured to get their revenge.
Some actual brutality in what's supposed to be an execution scene to begin with wouldn't have changed zilch about how those characters work but might have made a stronger impression on the player.

Portraying Benny as a standard sadistic killer wouldn't be in keeping with the original Fallout games.

Dresses like a wiseguy, talks like a wiseguy, kidnaps and robs an innocent man then sardonically says he's sorry before nonchalantly putting a bullet in his head. That's not a standard killer?

Going back to what the game did wrong, obviously all the mafioso, roman, elvis &co cosplayers felt out of place but I doubt most of the audience cared about that in their silly videogame.

What they likely cared about was how empty and drab new vegas city felt. New Vegas should have been the bustling neon-lit contrast to the vast human-devoided expanse of the desert. The constant beacon in the horizon to follow. Yet not only was the desert not much of a desert with its themeparkish distances but the city on the other hand felt far too empty.

Concept

whereas we got

Doubt it can all be blamed on bethesda's engine here either. If you can only do a dozen npcs at a time and you want to create the illusion of a busy street you certainly don't start by making it so wide that one hundred npcs wouldn't be enough to make it look crowded.
And it's not like they were developing the engine alongside the game for unknown hardware specifications and were surprised halfway through.

 

[Great Deceiver]

concerning the stuttering i never experienced it but i don't dismiss it out of hand as i've seen a lot of complain about this. frankly i've never seen any micro stuttering in FNV nor experienced it, but at least regarding this one specific issue you mention the answer is obvious (and not a joke):

vanilla is my preferred FNV experience, with a slight tweak to backwards walking speed and 2 or 3 super minor things that are more to do with personal shit of mine than with the game itself.

in fact i'd go so far as to say that the more mods you install in FNV the worse of an RPG/game it becomes. You simply can't improve on Obsidian's masterpiece (yes, I said it!) with mods, at least not the kind of mods you're allowed to make via the GECK editor.

There is a mod that removes the stutter which works pretty well (https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34832/?)

What do you think of Sawyer's mod?

 

[Sigourn]

Oh, so mods don't remove for example the frame pacing issues/stuttering that render the game basically unplayable for people who are sensitive to it, like me? Bwahahahahaha

I repeat: "GameBryo is not to blame, though. These mods don't do anything that cannot be achieved with GameBryo. What, you think these mods overhaul the engine?"

 

[Black Angel]

Doubt it can all be blamed on bethesda's engine here either. If you can only do a dozen npcs at a time and you want to create the illusion of a busy street you certainly don't start by making it so wide that one hundred npcs wouldn't be enough to make it look crowded.
And it's not like they were developing the engine alongside the game for unknown hardware specifications and were surprised halfway through.

Yet if they make the street less wide, it would be even shittier. It's either the 'big city' like we see in Skyrim with their 2-3 streets and a handful of NPCs or this. Do you want to know why we can't have either? Fucking Bethesda's engine, that's why.

Iirc, it was Obsidian first (and final attempt, from the looks of it now) try at Gamebryo engine, and they only had 18 months to work on it. That, and coupled with the pressure to make the damn thing work on consoles, you have a recipe for buggy mess on Day 1 AND the inability to make the city actually filled with more than dozens of NPCs. These days, with all the mods like 4GB patcher and the Strip/Freeside Open mod, coupled with mods that adds more NPCs, we can finally get the Real New Vegas™. Does that mean if Obsidian had more time, they would be able to make New Vegas bigger and better than what we got in vanilla? I'd say yes.

 

[YES!]

The first thing they did wrong was make a fake fallout with the Bethesda fake fallout game engine. But, seeing as it was probably part of the contract we'll move on to two.

2) The base line difficulty was not there. The game was so lacking in challenge it completely nullified any rpg elements the game could have had other tha CYOA. Why have stats, skills, and perks if it only slightly impacts how fast you kill and not if you will be successful or not? It becomes just a waste of coding. A wasted system that amounts to nothing.

3) Console UI that is as bad as all the Bethesda games. They ahd a chance to prove they were real developers with class and taste but stuck with the retarded console UI with zero functionality and 80 clicks to do anything and no sensible rebinds like PC users are savage animal monkeys like console players.

4) Completely open world. I hate this shit. There has never been a completely open world game that has good combat. Completely open world is now synonymous with no challenge and shit gameplay geared to children and stupids looking for easy recordings for other retards and stupids and children to watch them on the internet. There is nothing worse to me than having a journal full of quests all over the fucking place and no direction. Where should I go? Anywhere because the game is as easy here as way down there and it was made to not matter. Fill up your journal with so much shit to do it seems like a huge hassle and a job. I wish every quest had a short time limit so you had direction. Where should I go? I only have 20 minutes to complete the quest I just got to save the prisoner so I that answers that. Direction - sensible direction.

There is the mod I like that makes combat much better while incorporating all the good shit from the big community patch that adds implants and shit, and also makes chardev much more reactive, and completely fixes the economy by keeping you dirt poor, and those added carrots on the stick make it a much better game, but the open world and a quest log filled to the brim with shit all over will always ruin it for me. Fallout 1 and 2 and Darklands or RoA are the types of open worlds I like. Sensible open worlds with direction. Same with WL2 DC and DOS - semi open worlds with gated content or progressive areas.

 

[YES!]

Talby

an honor, sir! Ceasar while perhaps not the "best" NPC in FNV (due to the amount of Legion content cut from the game) is a wonderful character that in 2 or 3 dialogs and already oozes more charm, wit and the draw-you-in type of hook (for the player) than most of the talking heads in FO1 or FO2.

now now, calm down kids, I ain't knocking FO1/FO2 here. I'm saying that I consider Talby's comment a "compliment" because the character in question is a perfect example of the greatest strength(s) found in FNV and big part of those are the factions and the "faction leaders", i.e. FNV's talking heads.

Ceasar is the most or should I say the least "good" one of all the cast of characters, and even so remains an interesting and "good" NPC.

If that doesn't tell you the game has good writing, well don't worry I'll drop anything I might be doing to immediately tag people and and write 10 thousand words on it, and i'll do it out love love!

Just like Mommy Dearest.

When you say good writing I assume you mean the ability to write good characters? What was a good recruitable character in FNV? One that was believable as a person and personality? FNV is the game where people dropping the subject from their talking became the norm and I have paid close attention to it in RL and it books. It is not something real people do. Even on the limited TV I watch I only see it in B sci-fi - and then only rarely. When everyone is Rorschach from Watchmen no one is Rorshach from Watchmen. Keep in mind I come from the ghetto and I'm part black from Massachusetts. All three of those demographics talk incorrectly according to everyone. People dropping the subject is retarded and sticks out like a sore thumb. "Go store." Who the fuck is going to the store? Am I being told to go to the store, or is the person trying to say they are going? The fucking subject is critical to knowing what the fuck is going on.

When I was a kid I remember this clearly - I told my father "I ain't guts none." And he corrected me by telling me it is, "I ain't got none." He had a hard time speaking English but that is how everyone talked rather than anything to do with his English. He was an avid reader and knew a lot of words. But, as a roofer if he tried to talk all fancy and correctly that is just asking to be made fun of or get your ass kicked. My mother has a very strong accent, her mother barely spoke English and they always use subjects. The only time it is clear is when it is redundant in the sentence. "Know what you're ordering?" Versus "Do you know what you're ordering?" But even in the shitty talking ghettos of Mass if there is more than one person with you you'd say, "Youse guys know what you're ordering?"

Due to my lack of formal education growing up I've only begun to pick up how to speak and write correctly as an adult so I never learned any of this shit, so I shouldn't be the one this bothers. No one talks like that. No one real. Unless they are some real backwoods hillbilly but we had tons of them in the army and they used subjects. George H. W. did too I guess with his "Not gonna do it!" But him and Rorschach are the only big examples. I am very open if anyone has more examples from mainstream literature, movies, or shows.

 

[laclongquan]

I will note that I myself is a combatfag and I like FNV combat just fine~ The problem I have with FNV is few. I have no problem whatsoever with VAT once I am familiar with its quirk.

Above all I dont expect FNV to be a shooter game and I dont play it as a shooter game, is all.

 

[vota DC]

Meh would't you prefer that a crappy gunslinger would have a crappy aim rather than a perfect aim? The damage difference is a cheap solution: even with 0 guns you will do same damage from 100 metres rather than 1.

 

[Mojomancer]

The only things I have an issue with in vanilla New Vegas is the lighting in some areas including the character creation screen and the bugs.

Design wise I love the game as it is.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Finally managed to finish the game after so many years. Once I found the stutter removal mod, it was more bearable.

Spoiler

It's a much larger game than I thought initially - there's a lot of off the grid stuff that's pretty interesting. I think it's probably the best implementation of factions that I've seen in a game yet (even though the Legion was very underdeveloped) and it mostly avoids simple binary outcomes.

I still think the game is hugely hampered by its engine, but it's pretty good overall, especially the role-playing aspects. I didn't do the DLC stuff and I used jsawyer's mod throughout, I think I was around level 23 when I finished it. I'll go back for the DLC at some point but I thought the endgame sequence at the dam was pretty garbage, at least my ending (as a free agent).

the Strip itself was a huge disappointment - I had echoes of Thief 3 being crippled by console limitations. I thought the gameplay itself was very weak and I ended up going for a guns/VATS build with high Speech (I ended up doing the 100 speech checks at the end of the game instead of killing everything). It was comical unloading 300 bullets and several rockets into Legate Lanius' skull and having him just charge forward as if nothing had happened, or seeing his troops at the end punch my fully upgraded and armoured Securitrons to death.

I thought the hardcore aspects were very underplayed (again, I played with sawyer's mod which I thought was supposed to make this part of the game more significant). Food that doesn't have too much radiation and purified water are all abundant (plus you get a lot of water fountains conveniently sprinkled all over). After awhile it wasn't even a minor annoyance - disappointing. But then again, I guess New Vegas wasn't going for this particular approach, given the time since the war and the fact that everything seems more developed and civilized compared to other post-apocalyptic settings.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a lot of replayability here as I simply got tired of wandering around doing sidequests. I think I'll be done with the game completely after I've seen the DLC.

 

[ilitarist]

1) Obsidian doesn't seem to be good with 3D worlds. FNV uses engine that gives you a Z ordinate and FNV barely uses it. There are very few combat encounters where enemies aren't roughly in the same plane as you are. There are practically no multi-leveled fights. They did some improvements on that in the last DLC, the Lonesome Road, but before that there are just a few lone enemies on a roller coaster in Primm and some guys in Western New Vegas ruins - but you're probably attacking them from far away so it doesn't matter that much. Compare it to Fallout 3 where landscape was much more diverse, you had lots of bridges, ramps, multi-leveled buildings and multi-leveled dungeons making combat much more interesting. Somewhat related is quest design trying to use physics, like that bullshit with dragging Ranger corpse across half of the world.

2) This game is more traditional RPG than Fallout 3 which was open world experience. In a traditional RPG you go somewhere because you're sent there on a mission, in a Bethesda game you can go wherever and get an adventure. There was no reason FNV had to lose this exploration thing. There are very few reasons to explore in this game as you will find little interesting stuff. It works with a traditional structure of quest hub giving out quests and telling you what to do in an area. But the game still presents itself as a sandbox and first-person perspective and systemic nature of RPG system lends itself to this. Trying to approach this game as a sandbox is what leaves many players unsatisfied.

3) Story-wise - the premise is bad. The game lets you imagine you are whoever you want unlike Fallout 3/4. That's good. However, it requires you to be someone with a very strong motivation. I think giving a character a lifestory was one of the things Fallout 3 had done well, you play as an established person with clear motivation yet it's still your character. Courier is a someone who hunts a powerful mob boss across the desert for 500 caps. And also has a selective amnesia about bringing some stuff to a settlement with that settlement blowing up next week. I find it hard to connect to a character like that. Again, it would be a good premise for an open world game similar to Morrowind - you can go to some Imperial official and work for an Empire if you're so inclined but you can also do whatever you like and get to the main quest when you feel powerful. In FNV the hero is determinator who lives for revenge and later for... power?

4) Gameplay itself is relatively boring and straightforward but much of this can be attributed to the base engine. They managed to improve it somewhat with interesting perks but the game is even less challenging as a result. At least they resisted the temptation of adding bullet sponges.

 

[Paul_cz]

Amazing game. The engine sucks donkey balls, assets look ugly, combat sucks and Legion is underdeveloped, but who the fuck cares when the atmosphere, exploration, dialogue, quest design and writing are so good.

And no, for me it would not be a better game if isometric. Even with this clunky-ass engine I liked exploring it in first person. Mods and smooth 60fps helped.

 

[Haplo]

Exploration actually sucks in the main game. Atmosphere... is not great either. Combat simply sucks balls.

Yeah, I think it would have been much better isometric. Isometric & Turn based. And with actually meaningful SPECIAL. SPECIAL in FNV is significantly improved from F3, but still a far cry from F1 & F2.

 

[Great Deceiver]

There were definitely some outrageous bullet sponges in the game - the most egregious for me was Legate Lanius, who took a box of rockets and 10 fulll .556 clips to the face before dying. If that's not ridiculous and bullet sponge-y, I don't know what is. Again, this was with Sawyer's mod and on hard/hardcore mode, don't know about the other difficulties.

Re:exploration, I liked it quite a bit, as I said before there's a lot of interesting stuff that's not even marked as a quest in the world and a lot of references to the classic games, and I'm sure I missed a ton. The game mostly respected my intelligence as a player and I had to do a fair bit of connecting the dots to understand some of the storylines (BoS/Helios for example). Character systems were interesting enough, which is more than you can say about most games these days. I didn't feel grossly overpowered at the end of the game, which is a good thing, but then again I didn't do the DLC and used sawyer's mod.

I've started Dead Money and am liking it quite a bit so far - not least because they took my inventory away and having to manage scarce resources is interesting to me, inventory bloat is a real problem in this game (made better by the stricter weight limits of the mod, but still).

I think combat was the weakest part of the game by far, and there's too much of it. I can't think of a single interesting combat scenario in the entire game off the top of my head. Hoover dam was a joke and very anticlimactic.

 

[ilitarist]

There were definitely some outrageous bullet sponges in the game - the most egregious for me was Legate Lanius, who took a box of rockets and 10 fulll .556 clips to the face before dying. If that's not ridiculous and bullet sponge-y, I don't know what is. Again, this was with Sawyer's mod and on hard/hardcore mode, don't know about the other difficulties.

Come on, it was a final boss. The main problem of Fallout 3 gameplay (if you don't count "it's not an RPG" as a problem, I mean the problem of the game if you accept their vision) were bullet sponge enemies *everywhere*. This is problematic cause in late game you have to be prepared to deal with those guys so lots of playstyles are useless - what's the point in stealth and critical hits if it lowers the number of required hits from 30 to 20? You still need a character who can sustain damage and deal damage reliably, so you can't use traps, explosives, light armor and so on. In Vegas you have this problem with very few enemies and with those you can reasonably expect such problems. In FNV it only happens with bosses and that's OK.

 

[Sigourn]

2) The base line difficulty was not there. The game was so lacking in challenge it completely nullified any rpg elements the game could have had other tha CYOA. Why have stats, skills, and perks if it only slightly impacts how fast you kill and not if you will be successful or not? It becomes just a waste of coding. A wasted system that amounts to nothing.

I agree.

3) Console UI that is as bad as all the Bethesda games. They ahd a chance to prove they were real developers with class and taste but stuck with the retarded console UI with zero functionality and 80 clicks to do anything and no sensible rebinds like PC users are savage animal monkeys like console players.

Sawyer said in one of his pages or a YouTube video that they didn't want to mess with the game's UI just to avoid trouble (plus people were familiarized with it already).

4) Completely open world. I hate this shit. There has never been a completely open world game that has good combat. Completely open world is now synonymous with no challenge and shit gameplay geared to children and stupids looking for easy recordings for other retards and stupids and children to watch them on the internet. There is nothing worse to me than having a journal full of quests all over the fucking place and no direction. Where should I go? Anywhere because the game is as easy here as way down there and it was made to not matter. Fill up your journal with so much shit to do it seems like a huge hassle and a job. I wish every quest had a short time limit so you had direction. Where should I go? I only have 20 minutes to complete the quest I just got to save the prisoner so I that answers that. Direction - sensible direction.

This is false. I find it strange you talk about New Vegas as if it had no "direction", when it works pretty much like Fallout and Fallout 2 do: if you north, you get your ass kicked by Cazadores or Deathclaws. Same with Fallout going west (Super Mutants) or Fallout 2 going south (lots of nasty things).

If New Vegas lacks "direction" it is because it doesn't have such a huge threat in its world. There's no huge army of Super Mutants on one side of the map, there's no huge amount of Enclave patrols or random encounters you are simply unable to avoid. In New Vegas you can see the threat ahead of you so you can decide whether to tackle it or not. Fallout and Fallout 2 treat the player character as a dumbfuck that is completely unable to see the 10 Radscorpions ahead of him and always runs into them (unless your Outdoorsman skill is high enough, because apparently knowing to stay away from trouble relies on your "Outdoorsmanship" as opposed to your Intelligence).

That said, I agree with the other complaints you mentioned, as well as with the Great Deceiver's conclusions. Especially with Hoover Dam being a massive disappointment. The game is a great RPG, potentially, but it seriously suffers from constraints of all kind:

- Those placed by GameBryo.
- Those placed by Bethesda, when it comes to the people the game had to appeal to.
- Those placed by Bethesda, when it comes to how much time Obsidian had to make the game.

In an ideal world, Obsidian would have made New Vegas with a different engine, much better suited to the type of game THEY wanted to make (because I doubt picking a spoon off a table, something I always mention, was one of Obsidian's priorities), aimed at whoever they wanted to aim their game to, and with a decent amount of time to make something really good (at least three years).

Mods do a great job at making the game more challenging, but playing it like so I can't avoid but thinking "this isn't how this game is meant to be played", because the game simply wasn't designed around the player taking so much punishment from the elements and creatures/hostile NPCs.

 

[taxalot]

-PS3 version was terrible

-It wasn't ported to PS4.

-Still not released as freeware.

 

[YES!]

This is false. I find it strange you talk about New Vegas as if it had no "direction", when it works pretty much like Fallout and Fallout 2 do: if you north, you get your ass kicked by Cazadores or Deathclaws. Same with Fallout going west (Super Mutants) or Fallout 2 going south (lots of nasty things).

If New Vegas lacks "direction" it is because it doesn't have such a huge threat in its world. There's no huge army of Super Mutants on one side of the map, there's no huge amount of Enclave patrols or random encounters you are simply unable to avoid. In New Vegas you can see the threat ahead of you so you can decide whether to tackle it or not. Fallout and Fallout 2 treat the player character as a dumbfuck that is completely unable to see the 10 Radscorpions ahead of him and always runs into them (unless your Outdoorsman skill is high enough, because apparently knowing to stay away from trouble relies on your "Outdoorsmanship" as opposed to your Intelligence).

I disagree, of course, but understand what you are trying to say. I think it is less abstract and more object fact than you see it. In FO 1 and 2 you didn't go to a new area with a questbook full of quests. Even though you could in 1 and 2 go south or west from the start, ignoring the contained content, you couldn't and expect to be successful.

Also, finding something or a special encounter on the map between traveling between areas was special, and not bloated. In full open world games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, FONV, FO3, the next "hub" is right over the hill and finding something "special" is so common it stops being special and becomes a hassle almost immediately.

Now, I think I play games differently than most people maybe. I literally can't skip content. I can't just ignore a quest that seems like shit and a hassle. I can't just ignore that little fogged part of the map I missed and move on. In FO 1 and 2 I never had content bloat and an overfull quest journal with shit pulling me in a million directions. But I also have never beaten FO 1 and 2 because of the time limits on both. If there is a way to beat the games without ignoring content or without cheating I haven't figured it out. I hate the time limit and the anxiety it causes, forcing you to want to skip that quest bringing you backwards on the map, but I'll take that any day over having way too much content and finding way too much between where I was and am going and just feeling like I have to rush trhough everything just to clear it and trying to avoid areas on the map just so I can get to the next area in peace without finding a ton of shit I'll have to do pulling me all over the place.

DA 1 was a pretty good mix of mixed open and gated content. I disliked the setting, gameplay, and systems so didn't like the game personally, but it didn't do a bad job of introducing the character to the content in a way where you felt there was bloat in my opinion. Same with the Kotors or JAde Empire or most Bioware games. Until DAI and MEA I would say Bioware was great at the introduction to and flow of content in their games. Now they went the open world maps with job like clearing of the maps that is far less natural and much more of a chore to me. Approaching and being introduced to content that has no natural flow and is just a big map to clear full of bloat and hassle "special" exploration finds is bad to me.

It is like in DOS 2 where the chardev is low impact enough and lite enough, coupled with the giant leaps in item powers between levels, which (to me) makes leveling a hassle instead of something fun. Open world maps makes content and exploration a hassle instead of something fun. I don't want the fogged area to have any more "surprise" finds. There is too much and it is low impact enough to make it a hassle instead of good.

I want content to have a natural flow that feels organic and not formulaic. I want it to be rare and exciting to find a hidden cave or temple, and not just same old low impact, content bloat. Most linear games are formulaic, and the open world maps of games like FO3 (and I'm guessing 4), Oblivion, Skyrim, DAI, MEA is just formulaic and bad and filled with bloat.

I don't like short games, but I think pure linear and open MMO map games are shit. I prefer much less but far more natural content progression. And quality content. I think FO 1 and 2 as well as Arcanum did it very well. The old Goldbox games and Buck Rogers also did it in a preferable way to me than the MMO map. I think I see Open World maps the same as I see one dungeon games. Going deeper and deeper into the same dungeon with the same repetitive formula gives me the same feeling as playing an open world map and having to clear content in a job-like way. It just isn't appealing and I know I'm the exact appropriate level of the overly easy endless hordes of enemies I am fighting in a formulaic way to clear the map in a formulaic way to get to a new area and do it all over again. It just completely removes the various carrots most games have when it comes to content delivery and exploring.

I know this is long but I am not explaining it well. I apologize. This is more word spewing than coherent and connected thoughts.

 

[Sigourn]

I disagree, of course, but understand what you are trying to say. I think it is less abstract and more object fact than you see it. In FO 1 and 2 you didn't go to a new area with a questbook full of quests. Even though you could in 1 and 2 go south or west from the start, ignoring the contained content, you couldn't and expect to be successful.

I understand what you mean. Then again, isn't this "artifical" in a way? It's weird that Fallout gets progressively difficult as you explore, unnatural. New Vegas didn't treat its world like a "game" world where, as you move on, everything grows in size and power. All areas have their quests that don't require considerable combat skill. Of course, there are areas where you need good skill to survive, but the game rarely sends you there.

Also, finding something or a special encounter on the map between traveling between areas was special, and not bloated.

It's true. Then again, I don't think it is fair to compare a random encounter with a fixed encounter (which in the case of FNV it's usually locations and hitmen out to get you). I like FO1's and FO2's system, but I wish it relied less on combat & pop culture references, and it gave the player new locations to explore. Fighting a fucking huge pack of wild dogs gets tiring after the second time.

Now, I think I play games differently than most people maybe. I literally can't skip content. I can't just ignore a quest that seems like shit and a hassle. I can't just ignore that little fogged part of the map I missed and move on.

I have the same issue, though I have beaten Fallout. Personally, and maybe this is the case for you as well, it isn't a matter of "too much content that distracts me". It's a matter of "too much content and a good amount of it being shit". Everyone likes good quests, but when the journal clutters up with meaningless ones, it becomes annoying.

Of course this doesn't only apply to quests, but the game map as well. And in this regard, I think New Vegas offered a good example of what I want in a Fallout game, and what I hate in a Fallout game: Dead Money and Honest Hearts, respectively. Dead Money encourages exploration for all the good reasons: if you find something, you will likely give it a good use. Honest Hearts is the opposite: I got tired of exploring around and finding crap after crap. The map is considerably big but it is packed with content, meaningless content. The same thing would have happened if New Vegas followed the FO3 approach of "fill the map with shit no one cares about". I love Fallout and Fallout 2's exploration, because you never know where you will find something cool. Everything has true value.

Personally I would love to see a mix of classic Fallout and New Vegas in the future. Add some Dark Souls combat into the mix, as I feel it is a logical transition from isometric's "character skill matters a lot but if you are a good player you can sort of get away with lower stats". That is, of course, assuming we keep the FPS system. I personally like the change, even if it could have been done much better.

 

[YES!]

Personally I would love to see a mix of classic Fallout and New Vegas in the future. Add some Dark Souls combat into the mix, as I feel it is a logical transition from isometric's "character skill matters a lot but if you are a good player you can sort of get away with lower stats". That is, of course, assuming we keep the FPS system. I personally like the change, even if it could have been done much better.

Would you prefer if it had 3d areas but overland travel map with special encounters like the FOs and WL2? Like how Shroud of the Avatar does it map travel but 3d areas? I would prefer that to a full open map. But I would also prefer a BG/PoE type travel system as well. I guess I prefer segmented content, but not segmented like DAI and MEA with the big open world type maps you have to clear with content bloat.