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My reviews of Fallout and Eschalon Book I

jagged-jimmy

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That's why we have a certain level of standard for "good" things.
 

naossano

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Quite interresting to know people experience with the game. Grinding to kill all the mutants and be killed on first playthrough is the opposite of my experience.

The first time i played the game, i never met the master or the brotherhood Of Steel, and destroyed the two stronghold without fighting many mutants. I just kepts talking, exploring, and avoiding fights as much as possible. I missed a lot, but quite the other side of the spectrum...
 
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My guess is you burned yourself out trying to grind in Fallout. Grinding in Fallout sucks and (as you pointed out) is unnecessary.
I grinded caravan misions and outdoors encounters because I was constantly getting killed by crits and there was no content left to do. I only wanted to gain a few extra levels in the hopes it would reduce the crits.
Random crits suck in Fallout, but you shouldn't be running into them too often. Mostly with mutants. If you want to avoid them around the military base, up your outdoorsman. Inside I wouldn't try taking on every group of super mutants with your SMG. Most can be avoided if you're not prepared to take them out quickly (or prepared to reload because of what you're walking into).
I wasn't using a SMG. I was using the best rifle I could find. I was not using laser weapons, though. If I had to replay it, I'd train energy weapons next time. I'd put more points into speech and throwing weapons (like grenades). I used grenades successfully to kill the mutants.
You get warned about radiation in the glow, and by that point should have encountered anti-rad meds a number of times. You also have enough time to run and get more pills if you really need them (and there are pills there as well, IIRC).
I guess your version of warned is different than mine. Ya, I was already familiar with anti-rad items, but I didn't know how the system worked. That's what led to me dying later on. All the dying I did in Fallout, in addition to the dying I did in Eschalon Book I, is what got me thinking about this whole issue of missing knowledge or lack of rails leading to deaths.
I think you got the thrown out of the brotherhood stuff mixed up. If I recall correctly, the only way you get thrown out is if you break into Rhombus' room, get caught by him, and then break in again and get caught by him again. Asking about war rumors should get you the mission to scout the military base.
Was told not to come back. I don't remember verything. I couldn't speak to the guards outside. Yet somehow I got inside when I was level 14 and got the Power Armor. I'm not sure how that happened, I can't remember. That was AFTER I grinded some levels. It was before I discovered even power armor and 15 levels didn't stop the crits, despite me kiting and doing everything I could to minimize them.
Fallout skills and perks are pretty unbalanced, and it sounds like you had a weaker set up and then died a number of times trying to rambo the game.
I did have a weaker setup. I can't recall which character I selected. I tried not to 'rambo' the game. I talked toe veryone I could. It'd help the discussion if posters like yourself wouldn't cast judgment so easily.

I kept journals for all of my playthroughs in Eshalon Book I and Fallout and Anachronox. My goal was to record everything as a new player to specifically learn what new players go through, not old ones. BUT I installed Ubuntu several weeks ago and because I couldn't figure out the installation window I ended up losing my partition which had all my most recent backups. I did recover most of the files, but the notes were lost. It was really hard to get into Linux at first. I still have trouble.

I'm not here to only talk about Fallout and Eschalon Book I. I really wanted to start a discussion about how not knowing things about hte game or the game not holding your hand can lead to extra deaths or more negative consequences. How many negative outcomes are acceptable? And I also think open worlds present you with so many options they can lead to more negative outcomes.

I know people here just want to blame me for sucking at the game or wanting it to be something it's not, but if you just ignore all of that for a moment, can you ask yourself whether you think new games have more rails than older games? Rails are a pun but they're things that guide you in the game to keep you on track or to prevent you from wasting time on dead ends. And if you agree new games have more rails, do you think this is a good thing? And do you think open worlds can have rails and still beopen worlds?
 
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Have you ever had a moment in a game where you hit a dead end and don't understand something? And you spend hours trying to figure it out and finally you do, yet upon discovering what the answer is you wnat to SCREAM and CLAW at the creators of the game? You wonder what they were smoking (or what they weren't thinking) when they did it? I had that happen several times in the 3 games I reviewed back to back on gog - the only time in my life I've attempted to "review" games or do journals for them. I never really covered these moments because they were isolated. I also didn't because I think the nature of open world or less controlled games and the difficulty in finding a perfect game make it indulgent for me to focus on them.

How far will we let game creators go? Say you're just casually exploring a dungeon, walking slowly, watching your surroundings, and then BAM, you're killed by a (invisible) trap? Is that ok? Depends. If you expect that the game will do that, maybe it won't surprise you as much. Yet if you expect that, you might not want to play it in the first place? Doesn't matter if you trained trap sense, of course. BUt with al the skills in the game, you may not have trained it high enough, so you'll die sometimes to traps. And even if you do train it, you'll probably neglect o train something else that'l end up killing you the same way.
 
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TripJack

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I'm not here to only talk about Fallout and Eschalon Book I. I really wanted to start a discussion about how not knowing things about hte game or the game not holding your hand can lead to extra deaths or more negative consequences. How many negative outcomes are acceptable? And I also think open worlds present you with so many options they can lead to more negative outcomes.

I know people here just want to blame me for sucking at the game or wanting it to be something it's not, but if you just ignore all of that for a moment, can you ask yourself whether you think new games have more rails than older games? Rails are a pun but they're things that guide you in the game to keep you on track or to prevent you from wasting time on dead ends. And if you agree new games have more rails, do you think this is a good thing? And do you think open worlds can have rails and still beopen worlds?
Negative outcomes are perfectly acceptable so long as the game is interesting to play... indeed they encourage the player to adapt & change tactics the next time around, which means putting some thought into what you are doing. Games today do offer less player freedom yes. They are less about discovering things yourself and more about following the quest compass to the next banal cutscene and cheevo unlock. But of course there are modern open world games (see Bethesda) that are total garbage for other reasons. Open world does not magically mean good game, and limited closed world does not magically mean bad game. And no, how can a game be open world and also have rails??

Say you're just casually exploring a dungeon, walking slowly, watching your surroundings, and then BAM, you're killed by a (invisible) trap? Is that ok? Depends. If you expect that the game will do that, maybe it won't surprise you as much. Yet if you expect that, you might not want to play it in the first place? Doesn't matter if you trained trap sense, of course. BUt with al the skills in the game, you may not have trained it high enough, so you'll die sometimes to traps. And even if you do train it, you'll probably neglect o train something else that'l end up killing you the same way.
Huh? What is not OK here? If a game offers you the choice of investing in a skill or not, there had better be a consequence for not doing so. Otherwise offering the choice to you in the first place was completely pointless...
 
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Instakill invisible traps that can only be avoided by pure luck in a roll are terrible game design, but unless the game is filled with that sort of bullshit (or it forces you to replay a long dungeon) it's not the end of the world.
 

Grimwulf

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Instakill invisible traps that can only be avoided by pure luck in a roll are terrible game design

They are not, actually. Especially when you play a party, and every party member makes a roll. One guy makes it out without a scratch, another is wounded and yet another is killed. Btw, that was yer only magician, so you'd better do smth about it before you dwell deeper into the dungeon. That's how how it was in original pen&paper rpgs.

Different guys have different talents, strong sides and weaknesses. Roll checks are perfectly fine and tested by time.
 
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Disagree, can't see a good side in game randomly deciding you lost X party members because lol fuck you should have rolled a 12 before stepping on this room. If you want me to deal with a difficult situation give me a puzzle or a hard fight so I can actually play the game instead of pulling a lever on the slot machine and hope I don't fail. I don't think "tested by time" is a good argument either because horrible shit like HP bloat has also been around for a while.

call me old fashioned but traps are meant to be hard to see; thats the point in the whole thing isnt it?

instakill traps for the unwary isnt bad game design its OUTSTANDING game design

I'm assuming it's invisible like the guy said.
 

Grimwulf

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Disagree, can't see a good side in game randomly deciding you lost X party members because lol fuck you should have rolled a 12 before stepping on this room.

It's not random at all. It's mostly dependent on your skill levels, and rolls are there for realism. Let's take an abstract setting rule and say your mage guy has agility 1 and perception 1 due to some curse or whatever. If he steps on random spike-den-trap, it's instadeath for him. Coz he's basically crawls blindfolded, according to these stats. NO ROLLS would save him. You wouldn't take a roll if a fucking comet from space is falling right on your char's head.

Same situation, but lets say AGI 3 and PER 3. Now he can throw a d20 and 19 and 20 would mean critical success. Meaning, the char is still fufking doomed, exploring dungeons with these stats, but if he gets INCREDIBLY lucky, he might get away with it.

If he's got AGI 10 and PER 10, it's automatic success. ANY diceroll-based system/seting is based on these principles. There are no "randoms".

I don't think "tested by time" is a good argument either because horrible shit like HP bloat has also been around for a while.

In that case time did only good things to most of existing rulebooks. I may personally dislike some things from late d&d editions, but the evolution of the system is undebatable.

Creating a balanced party and aknowledging your weaknesses is part of role playing. If you have 2 fingers on left hand and 3 on right one, but still wanna disarm that bomb in front of you (coz you know what you're doing ant whatnot) - you are free to try. And unless you are expecting the game to model every fucking wire, handshaking, eyesores, sweat dropping, bird shitting, wind blowing, karma busting, ex-wife mobile calling, bad star position... You know what, I'd better stick to my dice rolls. Be it critical failure or critical success, my fucking imaginaton can larp the rest.
 

CKarpaas

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I found fallout 1 a rather easy game to win/finish, and ive only ever bothered to play it once. All i ever needed is decent speech skill, high perception and agility and then pumping most of my skill points to small arms. At some point fairly early i recall you find a sniper rifle. With that and dogmeat it was pretty smooth sailing.
I dont remember ever getting powerarmor either so i dare say its not really needed to finish the game.

Also using premade characters is a pretty rookie mistake in any rpg. Its a given they are always completely suboptimal.
 
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It doesn't matter if it gives you a "fair" chance by rolling dice on the background, instant failure through no fault of your own is a terrible idea no matter what genre you're playing.

by the same token... why have traps at all according to your reasoning?

Traps as a whole are not a problem, I just don't like cheap stuff.
 

naossano

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Instakill invisible traps that can only be avoided by pure luck in a roll are terrible game design

They are not, actually. Especially when you play a party, and every party member makes a roll. One guy makes it out without a scratch, another is wounded and yet another is killed. Btw, that was yer only magician, so you'd better do smth about it before you dwell deeper into the dungeon. That's how how it was in original pen&paper rpgs.

Different guys have different talents, strong sides and weaknesses. Roll checks are perfectly fine and tested by time.

This remind me of this game that i hope i will play someday...
http://www.darkestdungeon.com/about-the-game/
 

Grimwulf

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It doesn't matter if it gives you a "fair" chance by rolling dice on the background, instant failure through no fault of your own is a terrible idea no matter what genre you're playing.

If one of your guys died on some trap during d&d game session, it IS your fault. Either you developed him wrong, or you took him in particulary difficult area for that particular build. Or you've put him ahead of the party, while a rogue-type guy should have taken the lead.

Well, it could also be one of those jackass DM with "ceiling falls, everyone dies" attitude (speaking of NWN2 OC ending...), but the system itself is nearly perfect.

This remind me of this game that i hope i will play someday...
http://www.darkestdungeon.com/about-the-game/

Damn, I donated for what feels like a year ago. I really hope it won't be a casul flash side-scroller for iPhone. The concept is golden.
 

almondblight

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I grinded caravan misions and outdoors encounters because I was constantly getting killed by crits and there was no content left to do. I only wanted to gain a few extra levels in the hopes it would reduce the crits.

Why did you think it'd reduce crits? As far as I know, the game doesn't have any anti-crit stats. If you decided to grind because you were hoping something magical would happen, it's not really the games fault.

I wasn't using a SMG. I was using the best rifle I could find.

The one the farmer gave you?

I guess your version of warned is different than mine. Ya, I was already familiar with anti-rad items, but I didn't know how the system worked. That's what led to me dying later on. All the dying I did in Fallout, in addition to the dying I did in Eschalon Book I, is what got me thinking about this whole issue of missing knowledge or lack of rails leading to deaths.

The system is pretty simple though. The pills tell you that one increases resistance to radiation and the other gets rid of radiation. People tell you that there's radiation there. Even if you ignore that, by the time you get there, see you need a rope, and leave again the radiation damage should be enough to let you know that you need pills.

Was told not to come back. I don't remember verything. I couldn't speak to the guards outside. Yet somehow I got inside when I was level 14 and got the Power Armor. I'm not sure how that happened, I can't remember. That was AFTER I grinded some levels. It was before I discovered even power armor and 15 levels didn't stop the crits, despite me kiting and doing everything I could to minimize them.

Maybe you got the mission to scout the base and couldn't come back until you had? I'll have to check that the next time I play it. But it sounds like you weren't paying too much attention to the game, and had some difficulty. I don't think I'd enjoy Fallout if it was a game where you could ignore everything and do everything at the same time.

I know people here just want to blame me for sucking at the game or wanting it to be something it's not, but if you just ignore all of that for a moment, can you ask yourself whether you think new games have more rails than older games? Rails are a pun but they're things that guide you in the game to keep you on track or to prevent you from wasting time on dead ends. And if you agree new games have more rails, do you think this is a good thing? And do you think open worlds can have rails and still beopen worlds?

Yes, you're right. New games hold your hand more, and you're less likely to die. Personally, I don't like a game I can beat without paying attention or replaying certain scenes. If a game doesn't kill me at least several times, it's not doing it's job. If I'm only hitting "next" until I get to the end screen then I'm not playing a game, I'm watching a really bad movie.
 

Akratus

Self-loathing fascist drunken misogynist asshole
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I think Eschalon: Book I, being Eschalon: Book I, is a great Eschalon: Book I, as far as Eschalon: Book I's go.
 

Cadmus

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This reminds me of my friend who showed my Dark Souls the other day. He kept getting killed every few minutes and raving about how awesome and hardcore that game is...when this is pretty normal imo. You fuck up and you die. It didn't seem any harder than any other older game. Getting killed 16 times in Fallout is nothing at all and if it bothers you, the game really isn't for you. The inventory is horrible, I agree with you.
 
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Why did you think it'd reduce crits? As far as I know, the game doesn't have any anti-crit stats. If you decided to grind because you were hoping something magical would happen, it's not really the games fault.
I worded it bad. I thought by having extra levels (and perks) it'd give me more HP and survivability and possibly anti-crit bonuses. I also didn't know the game doesn't have anti-crit code tied to levels. I don't read walkthroughs or detailed guides when I plunge into a game like this. I DO read the manual.
I wasn't using a SMG. I was using the best rifle I could find.

The one the farmer gave you?
No, the one I bought off the special weapon merchant in one of the cities. I can't recall the name of the rifle.
I guess your version of warned is different than mine. Ya, I was already familiar with anti-rad items, but I didn't know how the system worked. That's what led to me dying later on. All the dying I did in Fallout, in addition to the dying I did in Eschalon Book I, is what got me thinking about this whole issue of missing knowledge or lack of rails leading to deaths.

The system is pretty simple though. The pills tell you that one increases resistance to radiation and the other gets rid of radiation. People tell you that there's radiation there. Even if you ignore that, by the time you get there, see you need a rope, and leave again the radiation damage should be enough to let you know that you need pills.
Sigh. It may seem simple to you, but at the time, it wasn't for me. But whatever. If it's ok for you then there must be others who're ok with it. There're some things I accept in games which others won't. It goes without saying, we're all diferent.
Yes, you're right. New games hold your hand more, and you're less likely to die. Personally, I don't like a game I can beat without paying attention or replaying certain scenes. If a game doesn't kill me at least several times, it's not doing it's job. If I'm only hitting "next" until I get to the end screen then I'm not playing a game, I'm watching a really bad movie.
How is getting killed by a random crit MY fault? I did everything I could. Everything, except start over with a new character.

Thanks to posters who discuss the (invisible) trap thing. I wonder about it. Another thing I wonder about when playing games are loose ends in quests or plot. You know how you hit a dead end or wall in trying to figure out something? I've gone for hours or days without figuring some things out. And then when I finally do, my response can range from jubilance to disgust.

This is I think tied to the rails and open world thing. Open world means lots of options (some say too many), but how do you know which ones are good ones? Should there be negative outcomes or bad choices? And rails, they can be positive or negative I think. A positive rail forces you into a positive outcome. A negative rail forces you into a negative outcome.

So another question I might put out there is Can open worlds sabotage themselves by not building more positive rails or at least (invisible) hands which guide the player to making good choices?

I'm trying not to arrive at a conclusion or to me pretentious. I really do not know the right balance between freedom to do as you want and to make bad choices, and to be put on a rail with predetermined positive outcomes.
 
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