New Vegas has some very nice ideas, but its weaknesses actually build on each other. For instance, it has a more "sandbox" approach than the original fallouts, with huge maps you can explore, with several opportunities for scavenging and exploring. But that side of the game is completely cut off from the way the main faction quests are structured. The faction quests form a nice branching path, with several optional stuff feeding back into it, but you never get to do things your way. You always need to follow how the quests are structured. Even if you decide to side with no one but yourself, it still amounts to doing the quests given to you by the Yes Man. I mean, having to follow these quests paths is annoying normally, and the tight way you are bound to doing what someone tells you already exacerbates the problem. But when you add that to what is supposed to be a free roaming game, it makes the issue even more visible.
The exploration, element is nice, but it never goes anywhere. I mean, maybe it is silly for a supermarket to still have food and pills hundreds of years after the war, but it is far more silly that those things are completely unnecessary and pretty much useless. The awful inventory interface makes using items a chore, but even worse is the fact that crafting and using items is hardly really important. The faction system in the game tries to connect back to the exploration system, and I remember it mentioned how nice it was that two enemy faction members might spawn hunting down the NPC but end fighting each other instead. That is a nice feature, that is something I would like to see more, but these random encounters are simply the most basic stuff someone could come up with. Fallout 1's encounters may have been completely scripted, they may have never done anything as unexpected, for its programmers, as that, but at least they were interesting!
Anyway, I am just commenting cause I think F:NV does try some really interesting stuff, but it unfortunately falls way short of making that stuff really work.
Ok, I give you a 5/10 troll. Almost got me.
New Vegas has some very nice ideas, but its weaknesses actually build on each other. For instance, it has a more "sandbox" approach than the original fallouts, with huge maps you can explore, with several opportunities for scavenging and exploring. But that side of the game is completely cut off from the way the main faction quests are structured. The faction quests form a nice branching path, with several optional stuff feeding back into it, but you never get to do things your way. You always need to follow how the quests are structured. Even if you decide to side with no one but yourself, it still amounts to doing the quests given to you by the Yes Man. I mean, having to follow these quests paths is annoying normally, and the tight way you are bound to doing what someone tells you already exacerbates the problem. But when you add that to what is supposed to be a free roaming game, it makes the issue even more visible.
The exploration, element is nice, but it never goes anywhere. I mean, maybe it is silly for a supermarket to still have food and pills hundreds of years after the war, but it is far more silly that those things are completely unnecessary and pretty much useless. The awful inventory interface makes using items a chore, but even worse is the fact that crafting and using items is hardly really important. The faction system in the game tries to connect back to the exploration system, and I remember it mentioned how nice it was that two enemy faction members might spawn hunting down the NPC but end fighting each other instead. That is a nice feature, that is something I would like to see more, but these random encounters are simply the most basic stuff someone could come up with. Fallout 1's encounters may have been completely scripted, they may have never done anything as unexpected, for its programmers, as that, but at least they were interesting!
Anyway, I am just commenting cause I think F:NV does try some really interesting stuff, but it unfortunately falls way short of making that stuff really work.
Ok, I give you a 5/10 troll. Almost got me.
Following the Yes Man's plans is not the same thing as coming up with a plan yourself. Whenever you do something in the game that isn't shooting someone or crafting an item or usin an item, it needs o be enabled through quest design. I am not saying I expected New Vegas to do that to any great amounts, but having a whole sandbox layer side to side with this just makes the problem worse. Also, SCO is spot on about different ways of beginning quests.
My point is that the whole crafting aspect is useless because you never really need them. You can bypass it by buying powerful weapons or just avoiding being hit. I mean, I guess you do need to use healing items all the time, buthaving very good, custom equipment and use-ables don't really seem to make a big difference anywhere in the game.
Well, maybe you played with the right mods?
Planescape could suffer from similar problems
Well, maybe you played with the right mods? I recently replayed New Vegas - and I would constantly go to a crafting bench saying to myself, "Oh boy what can I make?" And then I would retreat with a sigh because even after hoarding an impossible amount of junk everywhere I would still never have the right parts... and even if I ever did acquire all the bits a silly creation might require, it would just be junk - more clutter for my inventory anyway. The only things I was happy to craft were those skill books in OWB.
An overwhelming majority of items in New Vegas that are craftable are either A) grossly inferior to anything you can easily buy or steal B) unusable for your character's build. The most useful thing you can do is craft ammo, but you can't even do that all that much, because it requires an asinine amount of gunpowder and metal and casings and whatever.
Following the Yes Man's plans is not the same thing as coming up with a plan yourself. Whenever you do something in the game that isn't shooting someone or crafting an item or usin an item, it needs o be enabled through quest design. I am not saying I expected New Vegas to do that to any great amounts, but having a whole sandbox layer side to side with this just makes the problem worse. Also, SCO is spot on about different ways of beginning quests.
Not being able to come up with any plan the player thinks of is just a limitation of cRPGs in general. Not sure why you expect New Vegas to be different.
My point is that the whole crafting aspect is useless because you never really need them. You can bypass it by buying powerful weapons or just avoiding being hit. I mean, I guess you do need to use healing items all the time, buthaving very good, custom equipment and use-ables don't really seem to make a big difference anywhere in the game.
The custom equipment makes a huge difference depending on the weapon. Also, various craft-able items are quite powerful (turbo) or improve the power of your weapons. I think what your gripe is with the difficulty of the game, which I agree is too easy even on Very Hard / Hardcore.
I don't. But having a very limited number of possible actions side by side with sandbox exploration makes the limitation stick out like a sore thumb. Further having all quests be more or less based on following plans by some NPC or other makes the PC feel even more like a... well... a courier.
Yeah, maybe. What I mean is that custom equipment hardly opens up any option you wouldn't be able to pursue otherwise.
Obsidian put a heavily scripted narrative into a sandbox environment with the only real sandbox mechanics being the faction reputations which while being solid were pretty shallow. Not surprisingly the result is a disjointed experience.
Planescape could suffer from similar problems
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but sometimes if felt like everybody and their dog knew you or about you. Guess it made a bit more sense, though, since the main story was about TNO so they focused more on that, but it felt odd at times.
Gothic 3, man.Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.
Don't Fallout 1, 2, Arcanum, and Morrowind all meet this requirement?Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.
I rarely see her resort to petty ad hominem.
For starters, there's only one universal reputation per faction. This meant you were generally either friends with a faction or a foe. Uninteresting to say the least. What would be better is if there were location reputations and npc reputations. Such a system can make the player interaction with factions mechanically complex.Obsidian put a heavily scripted narrative into a sandbox environment with the only real sandbox mechanics being the faction reputations which while being solid were pretty shallow. Not surprisingly the result is a disjointed experience.
What part about the factions did you find shallow?
Skyrim factions are shallow. New Vegas faction system is easily one of the most dynamic faction system I've seen ever. Hell, they're more dynamic and interesting than Morrowind factions.
In practice, too.Gothic 3, man.Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.
In theory, at least.
It's the kickstarter hype, most of the new members don't give a shit about you, your forum, or your outdated games, they're just here to get news and hype about W2, PoE and the other kickstarters. In reality they probably only even tolerate this decaying corpse and the maggots that dwell in it because their casual friends yawn when they tell them about the latest Wasteland 2 update. On the bright side, if the kickstarters fail hard then I imagine a lot of them will leave, if they do well however, expect them to come back in greater numbers than before.Enough with the gay shit. I love Roguey too but come on.
Agree, 2013 has been the worst year EVER when it comes to newfags to the KKKodex. Standards have been dropped, it seems.Key word being "white".
Anyway, can you 2013ers stop sucking so fucking much? Jesus goddamn christ, man. Enough. Go home already. Sit on a puddle of AIDS or something.
I completely agree with bro Alex.
Wasteland 1, Fallout 1-2(You can kill everyone including the overseer but you'll have to wait for the ending), Way of Samurai series and probably many more games that was not designed for modern popamolers kids that doesn't want to feel like they lose the game for their mistakes.Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.