The Top Six Reasons Fallout 3 Is Better Than Fallout New Vegas

[Perkel]

I always assumed it's pre-war surplus. It wouldn't even make sense for NCR/Gun Runners to manufacture corrosive ammo.

I always assumed it was just garbage ammo that merchants don't want to sell as normal ammo because of various mechanical problems with them, like shape being a bit bad etc.

 

[deuxhero]

Tygrende
That raises the question of why you never find it in pre-war military bases. Why the NCR had it could be explained by the gun runners only recently figured out how to make non-corrosive primers (I'm told WW1 era corrosive primers are a relatively easy bit of chemistry, but I lack the background to know how true that is) at least in bulk quantities like the NCR wants.

 

[mondblut]

When are we gonna get the "Fallout franchise was never good in the first place" opinion ship going?

Fallout was made obsolete by the much superior ToEE.

FTFY.

 

[mondblut]

4. Forced replay value.

He is not wrong. I have a hard time fathoming myself playing through a shit FPS even once, don't even think about hiding content from me and expecting me to play it more than that. Now where are those console commands to get past this crap...

 

[laclongquan]

- We have absolutely no precedents where people aged and couldn't do what they used to do in their younger years, sure.

The developers of King of Dragon Pass, that's one. The developers of Prince of Qin. The developers at Mucky Foot studio (Gary Carr is probabbly exempted from that if his Theme Hospital sequel went out with comparable quality).

 

[Cael]

And that sign fits, but from the initial outset it just didn't feel as free & open as FO3 did on it's first playthrough because of it.

...

Fallout 2.
Wanders south from Aroyo.
Runs into supermutants with rocket launchers and miniguns.
Restart game.

Damn, Fallout 2 is not free an open! The Codex lied!!! Waaaa!!!!

 

[Sigourn]

You can also alter other things not related to accuracy. Reloading speed, for example, or chance of fumbling during a reload (like when reloading a bolt-action rifle bullet by bullet rather than with a stripper clip - oops, low skill character just dropped a bullet instead of putting it in the chamber). Reloading a magazine could take 5 full seconds for a low skill character, and just one second for a high skill character. Massive difference right there!

Same with things like cocking the bolt in a bolt-action rifle or using the pump-action of a shotgun. An amateur will be slow and clumsy, an expert will be quick and efficient, effectively increasing the potential rate of fire as your skill increases.

Ever since playing Gothic, I thought this was exactly how FPS RPGs should handle skill levels when it comes to firearms. Hell, it could even affect things such as how long does it take you to switch guns.

 

[deuxhero]

- If it had to be an FPS game, then look at Far Cry games where gunplay is polished to such a degree that you get endorphins just by firing. I'm not a fan of mixing RPG skills with the inability to aim, despite what VD says about it. If you want to mix RPG in, add something on top, but don't break the first rules of the FPS genre, where my aim is as good as I fucking aim. I had this problem with VTMB too, and many critics at the time, but that was literally the only problem with VTMB. Not so in FNV.

Oh god this endless complaint again. Why is it so hard to understand stat-based aiming? Same thing in Alpha Protocol and Deus Ex, critics and idiots freak the fuck out because they can't handle the concept. Far Cry is an FPS with RPG elements, not an RPG with FPS elements, like New Vegas. That's why they're different. Also it takes barely any leveling at all in New Vegas before you're head-shotting like a master, so it just comes off as whining. At least with Deus Ex it took half the game probably to get good crosshairs.

Oh yeah let's defend shit gameplay elements because it's an RPG and stats should govern your skills lol.

I love Deus Ex and Bloodlines, but the exaggeratedly huge crosshairs weren't strong points of these games, quite the contrary. It was even quite silly in Deus Ex how a supposedly trained special agent couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at low guns skill, with weapons that any jackoff from the street could shoot reasonably well even if he had never held a gun before. Even Morrowind's "if the dice roll fails you miss" combat system was better than the ridiculously exaggerated crosshair expansions in DX and VtM:B.

There are other ways to make stats influence your effectiveness with guns, which would be more interesting and fun gameplay-wise than just making your bullets go anywhere except where you're pointing the gun.

In modern games with ironsight modes especially you can effectively implement a higher degree of weapon sway. Your gun would still shoot as accurately as it does based on its own properties - pistols having more spread than rifles, for example, but it would be solely dependant on the gun's own properties, not on your skill. But when aiming, you'd have to manually correct your aim more than if your skill is high.

In a game with ironsight mode, you can also remove the crosshair for aiming from the hip, making low skill hipshots very inaccurate. At higher skill levels, you can add a crosshair for hipshots. Boom, MASSIVE difference in accuracy between low and high skill!

You can also alter other things not related to accuracy. Reloading speed, for example, or chance of fumbling during a reload (like when reloading a bolt-action rifle bullet by bullet rather than with a stripper clip - oops, low skill character just dropped a bullet instead of putting it in the chamber). Reloading a magazine could take 5 full seconds for a low skill character, and just one second for a high skill character. Massive difference right there!

Same with things like cocking the bolt in a bolt-action rifle or using the pump-action of a shotgun. An amateur will be slow and clumsy, an expert will be quick and efficient, effectively increasing the potential rate of fire as your skill increases.

With SMGs and other automatic and even semi-automatic weapons you can modify the recoil based on the character's weapon skill (or on the character's strength stat), influencing whether you can hold a gun steady during sustained fire or not.

There are so many ways of having stats and skills influence the handling of firearms in first person RPGs that don't involve making crosshairs so massive, using them at low skill isn't fun at all. "It's an RPG so stats should matter" is not an excuse for shit gameplay elements, but instead should be an inspiration to come up with good ways to make the stats count.

You can also make pump-action outright fail for low skill characters, that's a real thing called short stroking and one of the big reasons in favor of a semi-auto for home defense. Some lever actions are susceptible to a similar issue of not closing the lever all the way, though with a bolt action it's fairly hard to fail to fully shut the thing. You could also include the standard sign of amateur gun handling in fiction and have them randomly forget to disengage the safety after drawing it and only realizing after they pull the trigger. If you really want there to be Fun, have untrained/really low skill add random negligent discharges when wielding a weapon.

If you include jams, low skill characters might not know how to clear some of them (mortaring to clear stuck rounds is relatively esoteric). Kinda hard to not have the PC learn that once an NPC helps them (or explain why an NPC can't) so it could only happen a limited number of times.

 

[Bester]

Not a big fan of jamming. Used to happen in some game and got old pretty fast. Watching the same unjamming animation was too repetitive and annoying. If I'm in a first person shooter, I need to be able to shoot. Unless there's strategic use of ammo and ammo hunger mechanics involved.

 

[Falksi]

And that sign fits, but from the initial outset it just didn't feel as free & open as FO3 did on it's first playthrough because of it.

...

Fallout 2.
Wanders south from Aroyo.
Runs into supermutants with rocket launchers and miniguns.
Restart game.

Damn, Fallout 2 is not free an open! The Codex lied!!! Waaaa!!!!

You've missed the point, it's not about what the game is or isn't, it's just about what I experienced on first playrthrough & why I liked it.

There's a certain element of chance & luck with all games on an initial play. For example some games have character classes which are way more fun to play than others, if you choose a fun one then it can make the whole experience better.

With me FO3 gave me the feeling that I could go anywhere, and where I went I enjoyed. Simple chance really.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

With me FO3 gave me the feeling that I could go anywhere, and where I went I enjoyed.

If only you took that advice to go to hell.

 

[Cael]

You've missed the point, it's not about what the game is or isn't, it's just about what I experienced on first playrthrough & why I liked it.

So, whether you enjoy a game or not is up to blind chance? If you had happened to go any other direction than north, you'd actually have enjoyed the game???

...

Words! Why do you fail me??!! Why???!!!

 

[Falksi]

You've missed the point, it's not about what the game is or isn't, it's just about what I experienced on first playrthrough & why I liked it.

So, whether you enjoy a game or not is up to blind chance? If you had happened to go any other direction than north, you'd actually have enjoyed the game???

...

Words! Why do you fail me??!! Why???!!!

There's elements of luck in most things. Games with an open world setting invite those elements more because less structure & linearity means more variables.

 

[Nutria]

FO:NV gave me the feeling that I should listen to people and go where the fuck I'm told. I'll pick that any day over the Bethesda model, where the story doesn't matter, you just wander around aimlessly, slaughtering everything you meet because it's scaled to your level, and then suddenly you get to the end of the game. And it's totally abrupt and unexpected since you've got no sense of your character becoming more powerful over time.

 

[Cross]

Oh yeah let's defend shit gameplay elements because it's an RPG and stats should govern your skills lol.

I love Deus Ex and Bloodlines, but the exaggeratedly huge crosshairs weren't strong points of these games, quite the contrary. It was even quite silly in Deus Ex how a supposedly trained special agent couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at low guns skill, with weapons that any jackoff from the street could shoot reasonably well even if he had never held a gun before. Even Morrowind's "if the dice roll fails you miss" combat system was better than the ridiculously exaggerated crosshair expansions in DX and VtM:B.

You can also alter other things not related to accuracy. Reloading speed, for example, or chance of fumbling during a reload (like when reloading a bolt-action rifle bullet by bullet rather than with a stripper clip - oops, low skill character just dropped a bullet instead of putting it in the chamber). Reloading a magazine could take 5 full seconds for a low skill character, and just one second for a high skill character. Massive difference right there!.

Deus Ex's weapon skills affect reloading speed (among other things).

It's quite wrong to conflate Deus Ex and Bloodlines since there's a big difference between how they handle your character's skills affecting your aim. In Bloodlines, shots can land anywhere within your large crosshairs and only with a high enough ranged feat will they more reliably land closer to the center. What's more, unlike other FPS, your damage range is also very wide, making your shots feel even more unpredictable.

In Deus Ex your crosshairs tighten when you stand still, and the higher your weapon skill, the faster it happens. Once they're fully tightened, your aim is as accurate as in any other FPS, and like other FPS, damage is fixed.

Needless to say, Deus Ex handles it much better than Bloodlines, since the crosshairs give you feedback on how accurate your shots will be.

 

[DalekFlay]

Indeed. Right from Liberty Island in Deus Ex you can be a headshot machine if you just wait in the shadows a bit before firing (or dump into the pistol stat). With New Vegas you can also feel just fine with guns right from the start if you bother trying engineering your stats that way. If you focus on things other than guns then you're gunplay is lacking... shocking! I really can't believe this concept is getting rebuffed on Le Codexia, but maybe shit's changed while I was gone...

I don't remember Bloodlines enough to comment on it. I hated combat in that game in general which is a big reason I only played it once. Need to try it again with all 'dem patches.

 

[Black Angel]

Whole point of a stat is to represent skill of someone instead of actually doing it yourself.
If you can display such skill yourself then there is no need for stat in first place.
Which means aiming shouldn't be skill in stats in this case.

But there are ways that could have effect on without being annoying. For example hand sway, how fast you move from hip fire to sight shooting and how much time it takes to remove hand sway, how fast you change mag, what your character do if weapon jammed (if he can do something at all without spending a lot of time), recoil handling, someone shooting first ime AK47 in full auto would not know how to properly handle gun and so on.

Speaking of which FNV had good implementation of some of those. Like firing speed and reload speed was tied to agility.

I know, but the original point here is that Bester complained how New Vegas doesn't act more like an FPS; DalekFlay then pointed out that the gameplay is based on character's stats and skills, and JarlFrank wrongly assumed that he was excusing New Vegas's 'shit gameplay'. I agree with you and JarlFrank that there are ways to improve stat-based gameplay in an RPG-FPS hybrid like New Vegas, and the game DID implemented it and much better than Fallout 3. However, kind of recently an NMAers pointed out how the implementation of stat-based shooting gameplay in New Vegas was actually lacking. For example, the hand sway pretty much affect nothing even for a low Guns skill character, once the said character start crouching and aim from the iron-sight. Obviously, all these can be fixed with mods, but still.... he's right. I remembered in my first playthrough, I pretty much circumvent the hand sway by crouching all the time.

 

[Tygrende]

For example, the hand sway pretty much affect nothing even for a low Guns skill character, once the said character start crouching and aim from the iron-sight. Obviously, all these can be fixed with mods, but still.... he's right. I remembered in my first playthrough, I pretty much circumvent the hand sway by crouching all the time.

You can't really do long range shooting if you don't meet the gun's skill requirement, nor can you can be accurate with high spread weapons beyond short ranges. Especially if you picked something like Fast Shot. I dare to you try snipe cazadores without meeting the skill requirement and savescumming, or to get consecutive headshots on running deathclaws from beyond VATS range.

To me, the bigger problem is that all the DLCs and their increased level cap completly fucked up the carefully designed balance vanilla had and you can easily end up maxing all of your skills, just like in Fallout 3. I seriously can't imagine playing NV without mods that either reduce skill points per level or set the level cap to 30. Preferably both.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

For example, the hand sway pretty much affect nothing even for a low Guns skill character, once the said character start crouching and aim from the iron-sight. Obviously, all these can be fixed with mods, but still.... he's right. I remembered in my first playthrough, I pretty much circumvent the hand sway by crouching all the time.

You can't really do long range shooting if you don't meet the gun's skill requirement, nor can you can be accurate with high spread weapons beyond short ranges. Especially if you picked something like Fast Shot. I dare to you try snipe cazadores without meeting the skill requirement and savescumming, or to get consecutive headshots on running deathclaws from beyond VATS range.

To me, the bigger problem is that all the DLCs and their increased level cap completly fucked up the carefully designed balance vanilla had and you can easily end up maxing all of your skills, just like in Fallout 3. I seriously can't imagine playing NV without mods that either reduce skill points per level or set the level cap to 30. Preferably both.

You can take the Logan's Loophole trait to lock the cap at 30, I think. Also, the Sawyer mod locks the cap at 30 (?) as well IIRC (I'm not sure because I've not used it yet)

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Sawyer caps it at 35. Pretty good mod for some of those fixes, but in the end you still krump opposition as easily.

 

[Black Angel]

You can't really do long range shooting if you don't meet the gun's skill requirement, nor can you can be accurate with high spread weapons beyond short ranges. Especially if you picked something like Fast Shot. I dare to you try snipe cazadores without meeting the skill requirement and savescumming, or to get consecutive headshots on running deathclaws from beyond VATS range.

Obviously, these are all the extremities. Of course a low skill character wouldn't be able to achieve these, and it's even more true in New Vegas. My point, however, is that you can still pretty much circumvent the effect of hand sway, simply, by crouching during normal combat encounters, even with low Guns skill. How low? Well, I didn't mean you can go on shooting with guns where your character is 20-30 skillpoints short of the weapon's skill requirement, but once you get close to it, say, 15 skillpoints away from the requirement, you can still circumvent the hand sway so much, you might as well not even try to put any more SPs into the skill, and just crouch all the time from there on.

Especially since..

To me, the bigger problem is that all the DLCs and their increased level cap completly fucked up the carefully designed balance vanilla had and you can easily end up maxing all of your skills, just like in Fallout 3. I seriously can't imagine playing NV without mods that either reduce skill points per level or set the level cap to 30. Preferably both.

my first playthrough was in New Vegas vanilla, with no DLCs. I was a dumbass, since I didn't pay attention that the New Vegas I bought was the vanilla version, while just seconds before that I bought Fallout 3 GOTY edition.

Of course, the whole system of New Vegas by itself isn't at fault here. It's just that piece of shit of an engine that New Vegas inherited from Fallout 3 is the real problem. Obsidian did pretty much more excellent job tweaking, adjusting, and tailoring the engine to a more RPG-oriented experience, but still nowhere near as good as Fallout 1 or even 2.

 

[DalekFlay]

For the record all my playthroughs of these games have been as sneaky snipers, so I'd be crouching and iron/scope sighting all the time. That might color my comments on their shooting systems.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Shouldn’t crouching help stabilize your gun, though? I don’t see why this is a problem.

It’s been a long time since I’ve fired a rifle, but IIRC firing while standing up is the worst way to hit something. I never fired from a crouch, but prone and kneeling were a lot easier for me than standing.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Were any of the FO4 DLCs any good? I played the base game through once shortly after release and was pretty underwhelmed. Wondering if I should grab any DLC during the Steam summer sale

 

[DalekFlay]

Were any of the FO4 DLCs any good? I played the base game through once shortly after release and was pretty underwhelmed. Wondering if I should grab any DLC during the Steam summer sale

I've been playing them the last couple weeks. Far Harbor is pretty much more Fallout 4, though the factions and end choice might be a bit better done. A slight upgrade over base game maybe but nothing that would totally change someone's mind. Nuka World's story seems dumb as shit so far but Bethesda did some really nice world design with it, not just in the park itself but in a lot of outskirts stuff. It's much larger than reviews and ads let on; in fact it feels more substantial than Far Harbor to me.