Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Roguey vs the Grognards Thread

Telengard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
1,621
Location
The end of every place
Nobody has yet put forward a compelling case as to why they believe NV is lacklustre yet (sorry NotAGolfer)...
Sure the Codex has likely had such discussions back on release but I think many people don't give it enough time or don't look hard enough.
I'll take the bait.

GAMEPLAY
1) Doesn't like its own challenge. The game actually recommends against its own survivalism difficulty setting due it being too much of a "challenge".
2) Despite that, you have to mod in actual challenge on top of that setting for there to be any challenge (and needing mods to work is never a good start).
3) Hideously overpowered start. Have to ditch a WHOLE BUNCH of equipment gifted to you at the start (Ultimate Edition) for there to be any challenge.
4) The guns totally lack a sense of balance. Found a sniper rifle early on, and it was a wickedly powerful weapon even in melee combat. I'll stay that again, a sniper rifle was wickedly effective in melee combat. Never needed to change guns again, ever. For any reason. (There is a brief time when the power curve of the enemy exceeds the sniper rifle's damage, but the division is swiftly overcome by your stats/drugs, which soon begin boost criticalling everything.)
5) The guns totally lack a sense of realism. Running backwards and shooting things in the head with a sniper rifle is way too effective.

STORY
1) The courier lacked any motivation for 9/10 of what he did. Motivation is the central pivot around which a story revolves. Or doesn't, in this case.
2) The Legion was never established as a viable threat, especially after your started slaughtering entire villages of them by yourself. -Okay, Legion is poorly equipped but has huge advantage in numbers, against a well-armed opponent spread too thin. Fine. But the division actually on the ground is just plain silly. I mean, they could head down to the local machine gun/assault rifle/laser rifle/sniper rifle emporium and stock up on everything, then place the Courier and four other guys on a mountaintop overlooking the approach to the dam, and have the five of you slaughter the entire army of axe and acid sword wielding Legion army unchallenged. I mean, it's not like you didn't already murder/death/rape half their army while just wandering around the desert looking for revenge against someone not even involved in the Legion.
3) Revenge stories work as tight, linear, death-knell marches of murder and mayhem, not madcap romps across a wasteland meeting tons of zany characters and doing favors for them or mouthing off to them.
4) The world was empty where it should have been filled (settlements) and filled where it should have been empty (wilderness).
5) The entire affair was more of a Lone Ranger Western than an Apocalypse story, but as a Western, it lacked the central themes which drive a Western, since its central themes remained Fallout's core wasteland apocalypse themes. Leading to a mish mash of story that never really says anything about the world or its characters.

The writing was fine, but not really memorable. No one really stood out that you could hang your hat on, and only some of the locations really resonated. So, dull gunplay, mess of a story and theme, and writing that did the job, but no more (which is still so much better than FO3 that it isn't even funny). What NV has as its advantages is a huge CYOA extravaganza and the usual Bethesda inherited exploration. Stack all that together, and it all adds up to an overall lackluster experience. Unless, that is, you're in it for the exploration or CYOA. Then, it's an incredible experience.
 
Unwanted

CyberP

Unwanted
Joined
Aug 2, 2013
Messages
1,711
GAMEPLAY
1) Doesn't like its own challenge. The game actually recommends against its own survivalism difficulty setting due it being too much of a "challenge".

It's pretty much standard design to try and get players to understand and choose the difficulty level right from them.
I've always stressed to players of anything game-related I've made to pick easier difficulty modes unless they really enjoy a challenge.

2) Despite that, you have to mod in actual challenge on top of that setting for there to be any challenge (and needing mods to work is never a good start).

I agree. Very Hard + Hardcore is too easy.

3) Hideously overpowered start. Have to ditch a WHOLE BUNCH of equipment gifted to you at the start (Ultimate Edition) for there to be any challenge.

Yeah...

4) The guns totally lack a sense of balance. Found a sniper rifle early on, and it was a wickedly powerful weapon even in melee combat.

Weapons are distributed with progression in mind and some have strength requirements which effects sway/accuracy. It is very unlikely to find a sniper rifle early on and if you do you're not going to have hoards of ammo unless you sleep/wait farm ammo from vendors. An alternative to ensure a low-level players cannot attain powerful weaponry would be level-scaling loot, which I (and surely you too) am not a fan of. That said, there could have been more stat requirements and the penalties could have been more harsh.

I'll stay that again, a sniper rifle was wickedly effective in melee combat.

As someone who loves a good sniping spree...in which game/s do snipers not make good melee weapons?

Never needed to change guns again, ever. For any reason.

I call BS, unless you were sleep/wait farming from vendors.

(There is a brief time when the power curve of the enemy exceeds the sniper rifle's damage, but the division is swiftly overcome by your stats/drugs, which soon begin boost criticalling everything.)

A critical hit build is a bit OP with any half-decent weapon.

5) The guns totally lack a sense of realism. Running backwards and shooting things in the head with a sniper rifle is way too effective.

Gameplay is more important than simulation design, but maybe you have a proposition that would be good for both gameplay and sim design? Minor headbob when back pedalling?

STORY
and writing that did the job, but no more (which is still so much better than FO3 that it isn't even funny).

A lot of your criticism of the story is based on preconceived notions of what a certain theme should consist of. Points 3, 4 & 5 especially. Honestly it's stories and themes are so varied and I really like that.
One minute you're a cowboy popping heads in the desert, next a high-roller up in Vegas, then a military freelancer on contract in some poorly-operated base (service rifle ftw).
Other times things get Fallout-crazy, there's always nice surprises, and the vaults are like mini-survival horrors sometimes if you're playing alone in the dark.
Yes there is a lack of overall motivation for doing all these things, however YOU are meant to be the courier. The intro is the only defining element of the Courier, the rest is all blank slate, it's all you, so ask yourself why you were doing all these things.

What NV has as its advantages is a huge CYOA extravaganza and the usual Bethesda inherited exploration. Stack all that together, and it all adds up to an overall lackluster experience. Unless, that is, you're in it for the exploration or CYOA. Then, it's an incredible experience.

Eh, Obsidian made a Bethesda styled game better than Bethesda ever did, dare I say even more so than Morrowind.
 
Unwanted

CyberP

Unwanted
Joined
Aug 2, 2013
Messages
1,711
Gameplay is more important than simulation design, but maybe you have a proposition that would be good for both gameplay and sim design? Minor headbob when back pedalling?

Chance to fall over obstacles when back pedalling :negative:

That'd be cruel.
 

Curious_Tongue

Larpfest
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2012
Messages
11,728
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014
STORY
1) The courier lacked any motivation for 9/10 of what he did. Motivation is the central pivot around which a story revolves. Or doesn't, in this case.
3) Revenge stories work as tight, linear, death-knell marches of murder and mayhem, not madcap romps across a wasteland meeting tons of zany characters and doing favors for them or mouthing off to them.

I'm a big fan of New Vegas, but I wasn't impressed with these parts of the game.

2) The Legion was never established as a viable threat, especially after your started slaughtering entire villages of them by yourself. -Okay, Legion is poorly equipped but has huge advantage in numbers, against a well-armed opponent spread too thin. Fine. But the division actually on the ground is just plain silly. I mean, they could head down to the local machine gun/assault rifle/laser rifle/sniper rifle emporium and stock up on everything, then place the Courier and four other guys on a mountaintop overlooking the approach to the dam, and have the five of you slaughter the entire army of axe and acid sword wielding Legion army unchallenged. I mean, it's not like you didn't already murder/death/rape half their army while just wandering around the desert looking for revenge against someone not even involved in the Legion.

I heard The Legion was scaled back for deadline reasons. Maybe they would have appeared more menacing if they had the presence originally planned.

4) The world was empty where it should have been filled (settlements)

The city of New Vegas probably had as many NPCs as New Reno did in F2. I don't remember reading any complaints about New Reno.

And the mojave isn't supposed to be filled with people.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What bugs me is how easy the game was even with Sawyer's mod.

And melee still wasn't any more involving.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,875,971
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
4) The guns totally lack a sense of balance. Found a sniper rifle early on, and it was a wickedly powerful weapon even in melee combat. I'll stay that again, a sniper rifle was wickedly effective in melee combat. Never needed to change guns again, ever. For any reason. (There is a brief time when the power curve of the enemy exceeds the sniper rifle's damage, but the division is swiftly overcome by your stats/drugs, which soon begin boost criticalling everything.)

You don't know what you're talking about. Sure it was feasable for a couple of hours. But only til the Legion assassins decided to hunt me down and came running at me in the middle of the desert full speed firing from all barrels. VATS isn't useful for sniper rifles in New Vegas, they didn't bother to adjust the range penalties.

Looks like no playthroughs are the same for two people.:troll:

(Do you remember your character builds?)
 

Jaesun

Fabulous Ex-Moderator
Patron
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
37,241
Location
Seattle, WA USA
MCA
We need to come up with a term that describes people like Roguey.

cklr3.gif

Fixed that for you.
 

St. Toxic

Arcane
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
9,098
Location
Yemen / India
Nobody has yet put forward a compelling case as to why they believe NV is lacklustre yet (sorry NotAGolfer)...

It's not lacklustre, it's garbage. The only "good" qualities come out in comparison to an even worse game, FO3, but as a standalone product or compared to FO1/2 there's little to redeem it. Instead of me giving it crap and you acting as an apologist, how about you mention some good qualities that make it stand out as a game and I'll tell you why they're shit.
 
Joined
Aug 6, 2008
Messages
7,269
I love the backwards logic that goes on here sometimes, where the presumption is the game is per se good, and it is up to someone who doesn't like it to provide reasons for it not being good, instead of the way it should be. We should assume a neutral/negative(this is the Codex, after all) stance on a game, and if you want to call it "good", you need to provide reasons to overcome that presumption. That's what's been lost here over the past few years. People treat feelings of them liking a game as some objective standard, and any critiques that fall short of this false objectivity are insufficient, when it used to be, if you liked a game, you provided objective reasons to classify it as good, and if it didn't meet that threshold, you'd just call it a guilty pleasure and move on.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
STORY
1) The courier lacked any motivation for 9/10 of what he did. Motivation is the central pivot around which a story revolves. Or doesn't, in this case.
3) Revenge stories work as tight, linear, death-knell marches of murder and mayhem, not madcap romps across a wasteland meeting tons of zany characters and doing favors for them or mouthing off to them.

I'm a big fan of New Vegas, but I wasn't impressed with these parts of the game.

Point 1 is retarded, sorry. The same complaint could be leveled against any open-worldy game including F1. Freedom to choose your personality and motivation is a big draw to me.

Thats one thing that was utterly terrible about F3 which established your entire fucking childhood in the beginning and then kept a tight lid on you.

Edit: Not that I wouldn't have wanted an option to just say fuck it and go back to the NCR.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
My first courier's motivation was to fulfill the terms of the agreement as promised by the contract because it was the right thing to do; then he decided to work for a better, safer Mojave Wasteland since that is also right.

My second courier's motivation was to kill Benny and get rich (and not die trying); then she helped out House to experience the full benefits of his libertopia since she had no interest in running anything herself. He was terrified of her by the end. She wasn't "evil", but anything she did with a "good" result was motivated entirely by self-interest (like most meta-gamers).
 
Last edited:

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
We should assume a neutral/negative(this is the Codex, after all)

I think it's deeper then that even. In the long history of games.. many of them are lackluster shills at best or utter shit as worse. In the day and age of popamoile rpg's and EA early releases.. The onus is on publishers and people to tell us why their game is good.. The market is saturated with "ok" games.

This isn't the 1980's anymore.. where getting a fucking yellow circle on the screen moving around was the practice of magic through the use of spells and the invocation of spirits. If you drop a game on my lap.. I want to know why it costs 59.99 before I put Kotick's Son through college.. I'm not gonna pay 59.99 first.. find out the reasons it sucks then write an angry email to EA's Spam filter.

I basically agree with everything you said Spaghetti Monster

I will admit that I did like New Vegas.. but not as much as Josh told me I should.. and at this point it's almost unplayable for me unless I have at least 15 gigs of mods running that overhaul difficulty, mechanics, add new content and fix bugs.
 
Last edited:

NotAGolfer

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2013
Messages
2,527
Location
Land of Bier and Bratwurst
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Point 1 is retarded, sorry. The same complaint could be leveled against any open-worldy game including F1. Freedom to choose your personality and motivation is a big draw to me.

Save home, family, community by finding water chip.

It's a very good motivation.

Not for every type of charachter. By far not.
Most people don't stay in character while playing single player CRPGs though. So just like with every form of media there has to be a reasonable incentive for the player too (at least if the overall game mechanics are that mediocre), there gotta be some drama, baby!

Looks like no playthroughs are the same for two people.:troll:

(Do you remember your character builds?)
No, sorry.
But I doubt it had to do with builds. I'm sure Telengard did play with a mouse which makes aiming 1000% easier and he already admitted that he had to run backwards to make his sniper rifle OP in melee. I couldn't do that because VATS sucks for sniper rifles at close range and I couldn't headshot them while they were running towards me full speed. I just wished the game would have made weapon types more distinctive and that the story wouldn't have been that boring and disconnected from the PC.
I would even go so far to agree with him. The damage of sniper rifles was very OP even without having to invest any points in perks and even with mid-range stats. Just sneak and let them drop like flies to your 100% criticals. Didn't feel like my character was getting stronger at all while I used that sniper rifle. Great roleplaying mechancis there, Josh.
Anyway, Telengard is spot on with his criticism story-wise and I guess he did a better job than me to explain it.
 
Last edited:

Telengard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
1,621
Location
The end of every place
No, sorry.
But I doubt it had to do with builds. I'm sure Telengard did play with a mouse which makes aiming 1000% easier and he already admitted that he had to run backwards to make his sniper rifle OP in melee. I couldn't do that because VATS sucks for sniper rifles at close range and I couldn't headshot them while they were running towards me full speed. I just wished the game would have made weapon types more distinctive and that the story wouldn't have been that boring and disconnected from the PC.

I would even go so far to agree with him. The damage of sniper rifles was very OP even without having to invest any points in perks and even with mid-range stats. Just sneak and let them drop like flies to your 100% criticals. Didn't feel like my character was getting stronger at all while I used that sniper rifle. Great roleplaying mechancis there, Josh.
Mouse, all the way. Controller and sniper would have to suck doggy in that game, since you'd either be scrolling too slow to hit the enemy who are running around sideways at full speed, or too jerky to actually navigate your aim to a specific area unless the enemy happen to be in a place your ratchet scrolling ratchets into.

Plus, those Legion hit squads were the exact moment I was talking about when I mentioned the power curve of the enemies exceeding the damage of the sniper rifle. It's a very problematic moment for a lone sniper character. Unless you don't mind doing drugs, that is. In NV, drugs are the answer to all of life's little difficulties.
 

Shannow

Waster of Time
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
6,386
Location
Finnegan's Wake
NV:
Horrendous UI.
Awful as a 3rd person melee game.
Bad as a shooter.
Boring story wise.
Boring quest wise.
Mediocre NPC wise.
Horrendous UI.
Competently written.
Mediocre to bad exploration wise. (With some positive exceptions)
Bad graphically.
Horrendous UI.
Horrible character system.
Horrible character system - environment interaction. (Though some improvements from FO3)
Incredible dumbing down of the character/item system compared to FO2.
Awful itemisation.
Rather good atmosphere. Can actually be described as a Fallout game (in contrast to FO3), though not a good one.
Horrendous UI.
Some nice survival mechanics ideas badly implemented.
Ghouls in Space.
Horrendous UI.

Overall it was ok for an OE game, though I fail to understand how anybody could plod through the whole game. I quit out of boredom after ~40h. Though 40h is not bad for a modern game. *shrug*
 

Curious_Tongue

Larpfest
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2012
Messages
11,728
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014
NV:
Horrendous UI.
Awful as a 3rd person melee game.
Bad as a shooter.
Boring story wise.
Boring quest wise.
Mediocre NPC wise.
Horrendous UI.
Competently written.
Mediocre to bad exploration wise. (With some positive exceptions)
Bad graphically.
Horrendous UI.
Horrible character system.
Horrible character system - environment interaction. (Though some improvements from FO3)
Incredible dumbing down of the character/item system compared to FO2.
Awful itemisation.
Rather good atmosphere. Can actually be described as a Fallout game (in contrast to FO3), though not a good one.
Horrendous UI.
Some nice survival mechanics ideas badly implemented.
Ghouls in Space.
Horrendous UI.

Overall it was ok for an OE game, though I fail to understand how anybody could plod through the whole game. I quit out of boredom after ~40h. Though 40h is not bad for a modern game. *shrug*

I don't give a shit about 3rd person
I don't play enough shooters to judge whether one is good or bad. Killing things was satisfying and fun, and that's all that matters to me.
I didn't like the motivation for finding benny, but I really enjoyed nearly everything else.
I liked the quests.
I thought the dialogue was great. There's a skill in getting as much information across a possible in the fewest lines of writing, and I think Obsidian excelled in doing this.
Exploration wasn't the best, but I still wanted to explore it.
You can live with the UI.
I say well written.
I like the gamebryo look.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom