Bros, New Vegas is painful

[EvilSatan]

New Vegas is acceptable, only with 3rd party mods. I suggest "Run the Lucky 38" and the Monster Mod.

 

[roll-a-die]

a) Make the legion a monkey-copy of an ancient roman society, slavery, bloodsports, class system, etc, but actually respecting it's people instead of treating them like trash. Presumably greater participation by women would go along with this. Maybe they're still sub-optimal compared to a society without slavery / class-restrictions, maybe they're still behind technologically because too many potential scientists are digging ditches, but the society actually fufills some of its people's needs.

The thing is, the Legion pretty much is a absolute copy of the borderlands of Rome. IE, the Rome, where if you wanted food, well, your son is gonna be conscripted. What, your son is only 4, well better for the indoctrination then. You don't have a son, well your daughter is gonna be a broodmare until she has a son. You don't have any children, lie down, you'll be bearing them soon. But hey, food and trade are soon gonna be coming. You'll just have to deal with the fact that we're kinda douche bags until then. Oh and you don't like the fact that we're gonna make your women have proper roman sons. Well, you gonna be fighting in the arena for our amusement then, or simply dead and your women taken into slavery. Simply because you had the gall to take up action against the empire. But hey, food and trade are in coming. You get access to roads, and wealth beyond what you currently have under your current feudalistic society.

That's how Rome was. It wasn't nice, it wasn't friendly, it wasn't even ambivalent. It was almost always a society functioning on pure utter fucking evil.

Sure in Roman lands themselves you had a modicum of civility, but it was still a place where prostitutes were indentured servants, forced to walk the streets in clothing distinguishing them as their profession. If they didn't they were criminals. They were always on the job. It was a place where the mornings entertainment was sitting in a giant amphitheater and watching 4 score men face 4 score men to the death. Where it wasn't uncommon for there to be riots over a vote in the senate. But hey, free bread and clean water, RIGHT? The poor were confined to slums, that generally had a yearly purge to clean them out of the homeless. Slaves ere bought and traded on the streets like cattle. The only news you would hear was the news approved by Caesar and his propaganda division. Most likely focusing on the war. Where you could legally be killed because you had the gall to walk into a noble on the street. If not sold into slavery for the crime. But hey, free bread and clean water right?

Just wanted to address that point. People have this strange assumption that rome was anything but pure evil. Thinking it was like Athenian Greece with less homosexuality and more land.

 

[Comrade Goby]

a) Make the legion a monkey-copy of an ancient roman society, slavery, bloodsports, class system, etc, but actually respecting it's people instead of treating them like trash. Presumably greater participation by women would go along with this. Maybe they're still sub-optimal compared to a society without slavery / class-restrictions, maybe they're still behind technologically because too many potential scientists are digging ditches, but the society actually fufills some of its people's needs.

The thing is, the Legion pretty much is a absolute copy of the borderlands of Rome. IE, the Rome, where if you wanted food, well, your son is gonna be conscripted. What, your son is only 4, well better for the indoctrination then. You don't have a son, well your daughter is gonna be a broodmare until she has a son. You don't have any children, lie down, you'll be bearing them soon. But hey, food and trade are soon gonna be coming. You'll just have to deal with the fact that we're kinda douche bags until then. Oh and you don't like the fact that we're gonna make your women have proper roman sons. Well, you gonna be fighting in the arena for our amusement then, or simply dead and your women taken into slavery. Simply because you had the gall to take up action against the empire. But hey, food and trade are in coming. You get access to roads, and wealth beyond what you currently have under your current feudalistic society.

That's how Rome was. It wasn't nice, it wasn't friendly, it wasn't even ambivalent. It was almost always a society functioning on pure utter fucking evil.

Sure in Roman lands themselves you had a modicum of civility, but it was still a place where prostitutes were indentured servants, forced to walk the streets in clothing distinguishing them as their profession. If they didn't they were criminals. They were always on the job. It was a place where the mornings entertainment was sitting in a giant amphitheater and watching 4 score men face 4 score men to the death. Where it wasn't uncommon for there to be riots over a vote in the senate. But hey, free bread and clean water, RIGHT? The poor were confined to slums, that generally had a yearly purge to clean them out of the homeless. Slaves ere bought and traded on the streets like cattle. The only news you would hear was the news approved by Caesar and his propaganda division. Most likely focusing on the war. Where you could legally be killed because you had the gall to walk into a noble on the street. If not sold into slavery for the crime. But hey, free bread and clean water right?

Just wanted to address that point. People have this strange assumption that rome was anything but pure evil. Thinking it was like Athenian Greece with less homosexuality and more land.

I'm okwiththis.jpg

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

a) Make the legion a monkey-copy of an ancient roman society, slavery, bloodsports, class system, etc, but actually respecting it's people instead of treating them like trash. Presumably greater participation by women would go along with this. Maybe they're still sub-optimal compared to a society without slavery / class-restrictions, maybe they're still behind technologically because too many potential scientists are digging ditches, but the society actually fufills some of its people's needs.

The thing is, the Legion pretty much is a absolute copy of the borderlands of Rome. IE, the Rome, where if you wanted food, well, your son is gonna be conscripted. What, your son is only 4, well better for the indoctrination then. You don't have a son, well your daughter is gonna be a broodmare until she has a son. You don't have any children, lie down, you'll be bearing them soon. But hey, food and trade are soon gonna be coming. You'll just have to deal with the fact that we're kinda douche bags until then. Oh and you don't like the fact that we're gonna make your women have proper roman sons. Well, you gonna be fighting in the arena for our amusement then, or simply dead and your women taken into slavery. Simply because you had the gall to take up action against the empire. But hey, food and trade are in coming. You get access to roads, and wealth beyond what you currently have under your current feudalistic society.

That's how Rome was. It wasn't nice, it wasn't friendly, it wasn't even ambivalent. It was almost always a society functioning on pure utter fucking evil.

Sure in Roman lands themselves you had a modicum of civility, but it was still a place where prostitutes were indentured servants, forced to walk the streets in clothing distinguishing them as their profession. If they didn't they were criminals. They were always on the job. It was a place where the mornings entertainment was sitting in a giant amphitheater and watching 4 score men face 4 score men to the death. Where it wasn't uncommon for there to be riots over a vote in the senate. But hey, free bread and clean water, RIGHT? The poor were confined to slums, that generally had a yearly purge to clean them out of the homeless. Slaves ere bought and traded on the streets like cattle. The only news you would hear was the news approved by Caesar and his propaganda division. Most likely focusing on the war. Where you could legally be killed because you had the gall to walk into a noble on the street. If not sold into slavery for the crime. But hey, free bread and clean water right?

Just wanted to address that point. People have this strange assumption that rome was anything but pure evil. Thinking it was like Athenian Greece with less homosexuality and more land.

Well, it wasn't entirely horrifying, but it does deserve an Evil Empire tag more than any of its contemporaries, Meso-American human sacrifice sprees excluded.

I think it'd be better to say that Rome was horrifying if you weren't one of the people sitting on the top of the pyramid, which describes most of history to a degree anyway.

Actually, I'd say Caesar's Legion wouldn't have shit on some real world conquering empires, most notably the Aztecs. Man, the Aztecs would make them shit their pants.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS

So bros, It Gets Better™. It's not a huge change, but my chipping away at quests around New Vegas itself as well as some far out places has been a lot more fun, showcasing some pretty decent design, with plenty of opportunity for choice and use of skills. New Faggot (FEEL THE MOTHERFUCKING EDGE!) may actually have the most skillchecks and quests with multiple outcomes I've seen. And with faction reputations as well as gameworld changes, there are even in-game consequences to your actions. I've even heard there are real ending slides, a la F1/F2, unlike the fucking shit Bethesda tried to pass off on everyone in PoS2. It certainly has a lot of RPG meat on its bones, maybe the most I've seen. Hat's off to Obsidian for this. They've done well.

It's also a hell of a lot more successful as a sandbox game than any Bethesda endeavor, because exploring around rewards you with interesting content, not "Generic As Shit Dungeon Scaled To Your Level And Populated With One Class of Enemy #6712 BUT IT MIGHT HAVE SOME AAAWESOME NAMED LOOT AND A TERMINAL WITH A LITTLE BACKSTORY GOODY GOODY GUMDROPS I'M SO DAMN EXCITED". The best example I've seen so far that showcases how much Obsidian thrashes Bethesda is a comparison between the in-game Vaults and their designs. I've explored two (well, three if you count the Vault Hotel) in New Vegas so far, and they are so much better than the awful excuses for dungeon crawls in PoS2. Vault 22 wasn't certainly wasn't a brilliant piece of work, but it was at least fun and interesting enough. Even the combat in it is less terrible, owing to a pair of good design decisions: making a bunch of vegetation enemies critically weak to fire and then giving the player a Flamer and plenty of fuel, provided the player explores a little bit. It offers plenty of skill checks, like a Repair check that makes the dungeon *much* easier/shorter by repairing an elevator and skill checks centered around what to do with the data you were sent there to retrieve (there is a conflict between two parties over what should be done with it). One objective even requires a little bit of clever thinking too. Nothing mind-bending, but the game does give you a task not solved via a pop-up prompt or going somewhere marked by the quest compass, but completed through using the environment. It's not groundbreaking, but a step above anything Bethesda did with the Vaults. BUT LSD VAULT WAS SO HAWKESOME YOU GOT ATTACKED BY ILLUSIONS AND COMPUTERS SAID WEIRD THINGS AND I LOVE TO HUFF PAINT!

The character system, while not as broken and poorly implemented as the system seen in Fallout 3 (oh hey, no PoS2 use, wanna fight about it?) still seems off. SPECIAL stats feel neutered in importance when compared to the original system, sans Intelligence which gives you skills...precious skills, as well as the most numerous amounts of dialogue stat checks. Still, skill points are too numerous, and there is no scaling in the cost of increasing skills at higher levels. Many skills also retain the annoying issue of only conferring marginal benefit in increments of 25. Obsidian attempts to ameliorate this with some skills, like Science, by making plenty of skill checks in dialogue. Results vary. Science is a big focus, but Lockpick is left in the cold and others are somewhere in between.

Combat remains total ass. Gunplay is terrible, the iron sights are poorly designed, VATS plays like complete shit compared to, say, Red Dead Redemption's Dead Eye, and enemies remain bullet sponges. The migration from percentage damage resistance to damage threshold is a good move in theory, but works terrible in practice owing to either the fact they don't have differing DT for different damages or perhaps that Obsidian has done a terrible job applying different DTs across the many enemies. Either way, you're left with stupid scenarios like emptying 5 clips into a super mutant's head with a fully repaired plasma rifle at 100 Energy Weapons and doing jack shit. I guess being called a "master" gives you ego shield or something. Same thing with plenty of other enemies, though perhaps it's just the plasma rifle is no longer the top-of-the-line weapon it was in Fallout 1/2. Or maybe Energy Weapons just suck in New Vegas. Companions like Boone and Veronica deal out absurd amounts of damage with other weapon types.

Speaking of, companions are done well enough. Sure, their AI makes Ian look brilliant, but they certainly do a good job of killing bad dudes, and they provide a little bit of commentary on places/actions without being overbearing or annoying in the Bioware way, or completely devoid of personality in the Bethesda way. Basically, it's a lot like the old Fallout games.

So I'm having a bit more fun with this than before, though there still are rocky moments. Last place I explored turned out to be nothing more than a cave full of mutant wasps (whatever cazadors are) complete with an oversized, powered-up, "Legendary" one. Kind of stupid, but whatever, this is the exception rather than the norm. I did find a "Remnants Power Helmet", an item that looks like *real* Advanced Power Armor, so that at least made up a bit for getting skunked on a location. Good to see power armor looking decent again, unlike the ugly shit Bethesda made in Fallout 3.

 

[Mastermind]

It's also a hell of a lot more successful as a sandbox game than any Bethesda endeavor, because exploring around rewards you with interesting content

Bullshit. NV is worse than any beth game as a sandbox except maybe Daggerfall. Exploring around doesn't reward you with interesting content, because there's actually very little content and exploring to do. Most "dungeons" are ridiculously small, and their number is drastically reduced compared to 3 or oblivion. And on top of it all most of them have no interesting items or backstory or anything particularly appealing other than yet another empty shack/cave for you to get 10 bullets and a few caps from.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Bullshit. NV is worse than any beth game as a sandbox except maybe Daggerfall. Exploring around doesn't reward you with interesting content, because there's actually very little content and exploring to do. Most "dungeons" are ridiculously small, and their number is drastically reduced compared to 3 or oblivion. And on top of it all most of them have no interesting items or backstory or anything particularly appealing other than yet another empty shack/cave for you to get 10 bullets and a few caps from.

I guess I have a different perception of content in New Vegas than you do. I explore and find cool stuff like Jacobstown, Westside, North Vegas, Camp Searchlight, Vault 19, Khan's Armory, as well as numerous camps and stations of the big two factions, which often have plenty of quests and characters.

New Vegas is mostly right in the way it handles open world, especially given its RPG nature. Content consists mostly of quests at settlements, with plenty of choice and skill checks thrown in (i.e. good RPG stuff). It also does a good job at giving you "hooks" to go find good content if you so please, making it more convenient for the player to get to the good stuff, and adding a sense of interconnectedness throughout the world. There are few locations that are just "Here be monsters, loot, and a holotape", as areas are often quest related or filled with quests themselves. In other words, less shit, more fun.

Contrast this with the Bethesda design of hiding their "good" content in piles of shit. You have to scan every dungeon to find the "good" ones, which still are not very fun to explore, and only held up by snippets of backstory and loot to goad the player on through their shitty, generic dungeon slogs.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Same thing with plenty of other enemies, though perhaps it's just the plasma rifle is no longer the top-of-the-line weapon it was in Fallout 1/2. Or maybe Energy Weapons just suck in New Vegas.

Actually, the REAL plasma rifle is in as well. The Bethesda shitstain excuse is low-end weaponry comparable to a service rifle, the good old plasma rifle of death and destruction returns in New Vegas complete with the old look and is called Plasma Caster now.

 

[1eyedking]

WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS

So bros, It Gets Better™. It's not a huge change, but my chipping away at quests around New Vegas itself as well as some far out places has been a lot more fun, showcasing some pretty decent design, with plenty of opportunity for choice and use of skills. New Faggot (FEEL THE MOTHERFUCKING EDGE!) may actually have the most skillchecks and quests with multiple outcomes I've seen. And with faction reputations as well as gameworld changes, there are even in-game consequences to your actions. I've even heard there are real ending slides, a la F1/F2, unlike the fucking shit Bethesda tried to pass off on everyone in PoS2. It certainly has a lot of RPG meat on its bones, maybe the most I've seen. Hat's off to Obsidian for this. They've done well.

LOL. Skillchecks don't necessarily make an RPG good, my boy.

It's like that thing I was talking about in that thread that got deleted.

 

[aron searle]

AP rounds with good guns seem to rape compared to any energy weapon, however the laser rifle seems quite good with sneak attacks due to it's range/accuracy.

I don't think energy weapons have any AP capability (so it seems), and that is the reason they come of so weak when facing stronger opponents. I only ever find energy weapons useful because ammo is more plentiful.


If you have trouble with iron sights I would recommend......


Use iron sights, then press F twice (to go in and out of 3rd person), you will now have iron sights as well as the cross-hair, on some weapons the cross-hair (which is where the bullets actually go) is not lined up with the iron sight. This is why some guns seem to never hit anything in iron sights.

The project Nevada mods, dynamic cross-hair feature is also very useful in helping determine where you bullets actually go in iron sights with the above.

 

[Roguey]

the iron sights are poorly designed

How so?

Either way, you're left with stupid scenarios like emptying 5 clips into a super mutant's head with a fully repaired plasma rifle at 100 Energy Weapons and doing jack shit.

Super Mutant Masters have 15 DT, you can craft max charge microfusion cells to negate 10 points of that (in addition to doing 1.5x as much damage). You can buy armor piercing bullets that negate the entire 15, but energy weapons are balanced so that the greater damage they do on average makes up for it. And FFS man the regular plasma rifle has an energy weapons requirement of 25, anyone can see that makes it a 2nd tier weapon (tiers starting at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100). You can't complain about the tediousness of combat if you're not even going to pay attention.

 

[Volrath]

WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS

So bros, It Gets Better™. It's not a huge change, but my chipping away at quests around New Vegas itself as well as some far out places has been a lot more fun, showcasing some pretty decent design, with plenty of opportunity for choice and use of skills. New Faggot (FEEL THE MOTHERFUCKING EDGE!) may actually have the most skillchecks and quests with multiple outcomes I've seen. And with faction reputations as well as gameworld changes, there are even in-game consequences to your actions. I've even heard there are real ending slides, a la F1/F2, unlike the fucking shit Bethesda tried to pass off on everyone in PoS2. It certainly has a lot of RPG meat on its bones, maybe the most I've seen. Hat's off to Obsidian for this. They've done well.

LOL. Skillchecks don't necessarily make an RPG good, my boy.

It's like that thing I was talking about in that thread that got deleted.

Says the artfag.

http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=62094

 

[anus_pounder]

The new (and old) weapons may or may not be any good, but I've noticed they tend to be, at worst, a little better than their FO3 Bethesda counterpart. Intentional?

 

[Mastermind]

I probably said this before, but the different ammo types are one of those things that intrigue me, but are somewhat poorly implemented in the game (and I don't mean in the sense that they're broken or anything). I'm semi-ashamed to admit that I virtually never changed ammo during any of my five or six playthroughs because A: I had no real incentive and B: I totally forgot I was even carrying them. I think the fact that you inexplicably never find different ammo types as loot - only in stores (haha, who uses them for anything but selling shit?) and as craftables - doesn't help. Every time I start a new game I think "okay, this time I'm actually going to make use of special rounds and weapon mods" but never bother.

The ammo types aren't the issue. The game is too easy to really need them. Also, stores are very useful, I buy a great deal of my weapons from stores.

 

[Mastermind]

I guess I have a different perception of content in New Vegas than you do. I explore and find cool stuff like Jacobstown, Westside, North Vegas, Camp Searchlight, Vault 19, Khan's Armory, as well as numerous camps and stations of the big two factions, which often have plenty of quests and characters.

I don't think it's the perception that's different. Rather, you value different things (and I noted this when NV came out), namely social interaction (which was awful in FO3 but pretty solid in NV). Fallout 3 was a world in which humanity was pretty much dead. There were people and factions but they were scarce and barely surviving, whereas NV gives us a word that's recovered and will continue to recover. As such Fallout 3 is all about exploring a dead world whereas Fallout 3 is more of a traditional RPG where interacting with people and factions is paramount to the enjoyment. That said, I don't think social interaction is vital to an open world RPG and thus there is little to draw from NV for the genre, let alone set it as the pinnacle of sandbox RPGs.

Contrast this with the Bethesda design of hiding their "good" content in piles of shit. You have to scan every dungeon to find the "good" ones, which still are not very fun to explore, and only held up by snippets of backstory and loot to goad the player on through their shitty, generic dungeon slogs.

The repetitiveness in Fallout 3 doesn't bother me one bit since the game takes part in and around a major city. I expect repetitiveness. If my current city got nuked and I came back 200 years later to explore its ruins I'd expect a lot of repetitive dungeon crawling. NV also takes place around a major city, but it doesn't feel like a major city at all, and the lack of explorable landmass in NV proper sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[Surf Solar]

and the lack of explorable landmass in NV proper sticks out like a sore thumb.

New Vegas's Landmass is bigger than the one in FO3.

 

[Surf Solar]

I assume this is for RP'ing purposes, because there's no reason to buy weapons from stores in NV.

There are stores who hold ammo you only can buy, the same for weapons or weapon mods.

 

[Mastermind]

I assume this is for RP'ing purposes, because there's no reason to buy weapons from stores in NV.

No, it's not for RP purposes. Some stores (gun runners, silver rush and bos come to mind) restock with very good stuff at higher levels. It's a fast way to get guaranteed high level gear.

 

[roll-a-die]

The repetitiveness in Fallout 3 doesn't bother me one bit since the game takes part in and around a major city. I expect repetitiveness. If my current city got nuked and I came back 200 years later to explore its ruins I'd expect a lot of repetitive dungeon crawling.

No, you'd expect trees and clean water. Buildings to have collapsed, the entire river to have flooded multiple times taking out masses of stuff. About the only things that would be left is the stuff away from the rivers traditional flood plain, meaning houses, not the fucking industrial center of the city.

If you don't believe me, check out a documentary series called Life After People. Where they actually do a study on what would happen to DC if we all ascended to another dimension or some other occurrence forced us to abandon it entirely.

More over, it's the nations capital, if it was hit with a nuclear strike by a nuclear power, and not some bullshit terrorist organization who got a hold of a dirty bomb, it wouldn't look like a traditional bombing took place. There would be nothing but sand and fallout remaining.

EDIT, ALSO QUIT FUCKING TROLLING AND PRAISING FALLOUT 3. It's transparent and easily discerned, and not only that, trolling makes you look like an idiot.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I probably said this before, but the different ammo types are one of those things that intrigue me, but are somewhat poorly implemented in the game (and I don't mean in the sense that they're broken or anything). I'm semi-ashamed to admit that I virtually never changed ammo during any of my five or six playthroughs because A: I had no real incentive and B: I totally forgot I was even carrying them. I think the fact that you inexplicably never find different ammo types as loot - only in stores (haha, who uses them for anything but selling shit?) and as craftables - doesn't help. Every time I start a new game I think "okay, this time I'm actually going to make use of special rounds and weapon mods" but never bother.

The ammo types aren't the issue. The game is too easy to really need them.

Being too easy is part of it, albeit in the sense of the game mechanics I mentioned (carry weight, backup explosives/heavy weapons being superior alternatives etc.) rather than the base difficulty level itself - otherwise simply setting the game to very hard would solve the issue.

Actually it's good to remember that in Fallouts 1 & 2 you only carried one or two weapons because those weapons were vastly superior to everything else. And you could carry way more shit in general. In FO1, you really didn't need anything else after you got the Turbo Plasma Rifle, while in FO2 the Pulse Rifle and Bozar played that part.

And they weren't really that challenging in combat outside of the very beginning either (with the exception of Enclave troopers in FO2, since they had numbers and powerful guns).


Also, the different ammo types aren't unnoticiable in NV... It's rather that the Hollow-Points suck ass while Armor-Piercing is god-tier when used with a weapon like CZ Avenger. Also, energy weapons have different ammo types as well (progressively more damage and more DT ignored, but also degrades the weapon faster), but you have to make them yourself for the most part (easy).



@Mastermind: 'sup Drog.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Same thing with plenty of other enemies, though perhaps it's just the plasma rifle is no longer the top-of-the-line weapon it was in Fallout 1/2. Or maybe Energy Weapons just suck in New Vegas.

Actually, the REAL plasma rifle is in as well. The Bethesda shitstain excuse is low-end weaponry comparable to a service rifle, the good old plasma rifle of death and destruction returns in New Vegas complete with the old look and is called Plasma Caster now.

Still, there are too many with energy weapons floating around in general. In Fallout, only the Brotherhood, the Gun Runners and Super Mutants packed them. In Fallout 2, it was only Salvatores, Remants of the Master's Army, NCR and San Francisco random encounters and shops.

Compare with how every other fiend packs a Laser Rifle. And its a pretty harmless weapon, not like the old rifle, which was pretty much instadeath if you didn't wear Metal, Combat or Power Armor. Still, if the Plasma Rifle wans't useful, pre-war USA would't go making them, and instead would fall back on the good ol' 7,62mm rounds. Plasma Rifles were even more lethal in the previous games, and pretty much anything but Enclave soldiers, Brotherhood Paladins, Super Mutants and Deathclaws were instakilled by them.

I hate how even in NV, energy weapons are peashooters. In the first 2 Fallouts, getting a Plasma Rifle was something to look forward to, you could now instatoast most enemies like a badass. Since NV is a lot later than the first 2 games, you would assume that there would be less energy weapons (some having broken etc), not more, since no-one is making them. Actually, 200 years after the end of the world, you'd expect a lot more having been rebuilt but nevermind.

About the special ammo though, you do find it in stashes but only in the DLC, in Big MT. Some of the cyberdogs have special energy cells (overcharge I think) in them.