Community Bethesda developer on the FO fans reaction

[mr. lamat]

volourn is in the throws of some teen-goff angst at the moment and has been since the news came out. only medication and time will bring her back out of it.

 

[Volourn]

"as per Volourn's request I publish my PM to him here so he will be able to respond publically "

LOL I didn't actually request any such thing. All I said was it's better to fling insutls in public so at least others can be entertaibed too.



"volourn is in the throws of some teen-goff angst at the moment and has been since the news came out. only medication and time will bring her back out of it."

Nope. I'm a in a good mood. Dissapointment with the fact that FO3 will now suck aside; my life is great as well as many good games to come. FO3 is simply not gonna be one of 'em.

 

[errorcode]

Would you find it strange if the TES IV was a 3D isometric TB tactical dungeon crawl? Would you be unhappy if you went to buy a cheeseburger, but got squid between two buns? But, hey that's EVOLUTION!, you shouldn't complain that you didn't get a cheeseburger. Xenophobe, just eat your squid and be happy! You're trying to stuff our various reactions into your "progressive" view of gaming. Why should core elements of what made the first two Fallouts be changed on a whim by folks who had nothing to do with making the games in the first place?

I don't know anything about TES IV. I've been a lurker on this board for a while and i've never even been to the Bethesda boards. I didn't like Morrowind and i'm not a fanboy of any type.

All i'm saying is that the technical aspects of fallout met the technology of the time it was release. Holding future fallout games to that technical lock point isn't rational.

SPECIAL was a good system, but it was also a system created with certain limitions that had to be dealt with. With the way technology in gaming has advanced, SPECIAL could evolve to do more.

The 2/3 perspective isometric view was a great way to see the fallout world, but rendering technologies today allow for developers to put the camera anywhere they want. So why limit what the devs can do with the camera simply because the technology at the time of fallout did?

There are alot of things about fallout that could be updated and evolved, but any time a dev mentions doing any of this parts of the fallout community get there hackles up.

 

[errorcode]

it took eight threads, but there are actually some good/decent ideas being discussed on the bethesda boards now... the odd twelve year-old does still pop in with their 'ideas' (which apparently i'm NOT allowed to make fun of... three warnings already) but the discussion has become interesting.

could you post some of the good ideas? i'm lazy and i don't want to paruse through the Bethesda boards to find them.

 

[Ultron]

The 2/3 perspective isometric view was a great way to see the fallout world, but rendering technologies today allow for developers to put the camera anywhere they want. So why limit what the devs can do with the camera simply because the technology at the time of fallout did?

Would X-Com be the same game if it came out as FP? Tactical combat is thrown out the window in a FP view (even 3rd person). Why is everyone so hellbent on selling FP as the de facto next step in game-engine evolution?

 

[mr. lamat]

Would X-Com be the same game if it came out as FP? Tactical combat is thrown out the window in a FP view (even 3rd person). Why is everyone so hellbent on selling FP as the de facto next step in game-engine evolution?

you get a better view of the cg titties, duh.

 

[Ultron]

Almost forgot about the jiggle-tastic bumpmapped hoo-ha's......silly me!

 

[Jed]

I don't know anything about TES IV. I've been a lurker on this board for a while and i've never even been to the Bethesda boards. I didn't like Morrowind and i'm not a fanboy of any type.

Okay, I won't lock you into that. It just seems the majority of the people arguing for a FPS Fallout 3 are Bethesda apologists. Moving right along...

All i'm saying is that the technical aspects of fallout met the technology of the time it was release. Holding future fallout games to that technical lock point isn't rational.

This is a false premise. Neither was FP perspective impossible or even difficult (Daggerfall came out a year before FO, IIRC), nor does isometric equate to 2D or some sort of arcane steam-powered turing machine technology. Have you see Silent Storm? Full 3D free-position camera, wide zoom range, fully destructable terrain and rag-doll physics. Check out the demo if you haven't. This engine would be perfectably suitable for FO3. So, to reiterate for the last time, iso isn't about nostalgia, it's about framing the game and gameplay in a certain way, which most hard-core FO fans seem to agree, is fundamental to the game.

SPECIAL was a good system, but it was also a system created with certain limitions that had to be dealt with. With the way technology in gaming has advanced, SPECIAL could evolve to do more.

Sure, SPECIAL had flaws. No need to scrap it though, just tweak it where it needs. It's been play-tested for well over half a decade now, and the documentation on its balance is vast.

There are alot of things about fallout that could be updated and evolved, but any time a dev mentions doing any of this parts of the fallout community get there hackles up.

The only thing the devs have mentioned thus far is "we're not going to do a top-down isometric game ala BG...we're gonna stick with what we do best(FPS world sims)...current technologies (TESIV)." Specifically these sorts of drastic changes to the game is what has our hackles up.

 

[Seven]

I wonder if FO3 will have cg titties that jiggle?

EDIT: I think errorcode (among others) doesn't know exactly what he wants/he isn't sure how to convey his ideas because a lot of the stuff that you've just posted is self-evident and yet we have this huge ass thread and we're still no closer to end than when we started. So to those who advocate giving Bethesda a chance could you try to come up with more clear ideas that don't rely on an optimistic POV?

 

[Ultron]

how about seeing Dogmeat's CG balls with particle-effect gnats flying around them?

:shock:

 

[mr. lamat]

furries and dogfuckers aren't a target demographic, but twelve year-old boys are... sorry, no dawg balls.

 

[errorcode]

The 2/3 perspective isometric view was a great way to see the fallout world, but rendering technologies today allow for developers to put the camera anywhere they want. So why limit what the devs can do with the camera simply because the technology at the time of fallout did?

Would X-Com be the same game if it came out as FP? Tactical combat is thrown out the window in a FP view (even 3rd person). Why is everyone so hellbent on selling FP as the de facto next step in game-engine evolution?

can you point to a single point in fallout where having a tactical view actually made the combat a tactical battle? You had no control of the NPC aside from some rather weak scripts and other than that you just controlled your own character while blasting away at the baddies.

I'm not selling FP as the de facto anything, what i am saying is that engines today are amazingly versatile in what they can do. I've been playing a UT2K4 mod called alien swarm, which takes the FPS view and moves it to a top down "Smash TV" type alien shooter. It was done by a fan group in about a month. Troika took the FPS view of the Source engine and moved it to a Third person over the should view. What makes you think that the Bethesda technology won't be this versatile?

As to tactical combat going out the window in a first or third person view, have you read the reviews of games like Full spectrum warrior or Ghost recon? Both use the third person view and Ghost Recon can be played in a FPS perspective. And, i hate to sound combative with this, but both do tactical combat much more, well, tactically. Sure, they're both Real-time tactical games, but they do make for pretty good examples. Now, I'm not arguing anything about Real time or TB, thats a totally different ball of wax

 

[Ausir]

furries and dogfuckers aren't a target demographic, but twelve year-old boys are... sorry, no dawg balls.

Furries are not a target? Why do you think the FOT deathclaws were hairy?

 

[mr. lamat]

full spectrum warrior is a great game and probably my favourite to come out this year... but it's not exactly tactical either. it's more of a squad-based puzzle game, if that makes sense. you have to learn how to flank, make suppression fire count and the proper use of combined unit movement, true... but it's basically spinning one of your two pieces into proper positioning. in that respect, it's more like tetris. one helluva game though.

ghost recon on the other hand, was definately more tactical than most tb tactical sims i've played. with the ai cranked up anything short of west point grade precision was going to get your teams killed. it all relied on stealth, combining fields of fire and proper use of terrain. combining that with an rpg is going to be difficult. the engine was pretty intense.

 

[protobob]

can you point to a single point in fallout where having a tactical view actually made the combat a tactical battle? You had no control of the NPC aside from some rather weak scripts and other than that you just controlled your own character while blasting away at the baddies.

Wether or not Fallout turn-based combat was tactical is really irellevant. Wether turn-based combat in Fallout 3 would be more tactical than FP Real-time combat is the question. Also,turn-based combat in Fallout 3 could be made to be more tactical than turn-based in the original Fallout and Fallout 2.

It's the potential.

That said, being 'tactical' isn't the greatest advantage turn-based has, rather, the control turn-based gives me vs. real time is the advantage.

In fallout I can specifiy precisely when I want to attack, reload, move, use a stim pack, throw a grenade, do nothing, etc. In real-time I can't do that--time moves on constantly, and the occurence of every action depends on my reflexes (yes, even pausing). The purity of turn-based combat in Fallout is that everything depends on the character's stats (except strategic thinking, but then it wouldn't be a game if you removed that).

Finally, even if you can argue away all of the above to your satisfaction, from my perspective turn-based is just more fun to play, period...but that's subjective.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Speaking of which, does combat in Fallout need to be that tactical? One of the reasons i always considered that combat in Fallout was not as intricate as that of X-Com or Jagged Alliance 2 was that Fallout - at least the first - is that combat is but one path, out of multiple, to the endgame. Since it wasn't the primary path, and it wasn't what the game focused on, its simplicity actually worked by making combat an entertaining thing, while not making it overly intricate and time consuming. It wasn't a strategy game, so its understandable that its combat model was actually simple. Simple in this case isn't bad, as it provides for a good compromise between tactics and brevity.

But i still want my turn-based, damnit!

 

[protobob]

You've got a point there. Fallout wasn't just about combat. Another reason alot of us fear the proverbial 'fallowind' is strong focus on combat. Fallout, unlike alot of CRPG (I'm thinking Divine Divinity, Baldur's Gate) doesn't thrust you into battle after battle with hordes of combatants. You can avoid the combat if you want to.

Personally I got tired of the constant killing in DivDiv, quiting half-way through, and never finished BG1, and barely finished BG2, just because I was sick and tired of the combat overload.

 

[errorcode]

thats why i stated that i wasn't arguing turn-based versus real-time. My whole arguement is about the tactical value of the fallout combat system.

Personally, i'm a fan of Turnbased gameplay. I'm married and i usually have alot of things being juggled at once, so i like that i can make a decision, end the turn, get up and go take care of something else, and come back to start my next round of kicking someones ass.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Personally, i'm a fan of Turnbased gameplay. I'm married and i usually have alot of things being juggled at once, so i like that i can make a decision, end the turn, get up and go take care of something else, and come back to start my next round of kicking someones ass.

... was that relating to turnbased or to your marriage? :D

 

[errorcode]

But i still want my turn-based, damnit!

Just out of curiousity, why would you want TB? The only thing i can think of is the tactical combat aspect. If combat doesn't need to be tactical and it isn't a main thrust of what the game is, then wouldn't TB be a minor point?

I mean, if i play though as a Talker, i'm pretty much only gonna have to deal with TB very lightly. Same thing if i play as a Thief-like stealth character. Changing to real-time wouldn't really effect either of those character types.

Now, i'm just playing devil's advocate using a change to real-time as an example. I'm not arguing that we ought to, i'm just trying to feel out what else it is that ya feel TB is needed for

 

[errorcode]

Personally, i'm a fan of Turnbased gameplay. I'm married and i usually have alot of things being juggled at once, so i like that i can make a decision, end the turn, get up and go take care of something else, and come back to start my next round of kicking someones ass.

... was that relating to turnbased or to your marriage? :D

umm...Yes. :wink:

 

[Greenskin13]

I mean, if i play though as a Talker, i'm pretty much only gonna have to deal with TB very lightly. Same thing if i play as a Thief-like stealth character. Changing to real-time wouldn't really effect either of those character types.

Now, i'm just playing devil's advocate using a change to real-time as an example. I'm not arguing that we ought to, i'm just trying to feel out what else it is that ya feel TB is needed for

True, but I like multiple solutions to the same problem. I won't always play the same way, so I may want to play as a smooth talker on my first run and a gunslinger the next. Or I may like to mix it up a bit. In FO2, I always bailed Vic out using as much diplomacy as possible. But after a few more days of searching for enough ammo and guns, I always come back to Metzger and clean house.

 

[mr. lamat]

some might refer to that as meta-gaming... but i shot metzger in the nuts on general principle after springing Vic with diplomacy too.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

But i still want my turn-based, damnit!

Just out of curiousity, why would you want TB? The only thing i can think of is the tactical combat aspect. If combat doesn't need to be tactical and it isn't a main thrust of what the game is, then wouldn't TB be a minor point?

Now, i'm just playing devil's advocate using a change to real-time as an example. I'm not arguing that we ought to, i'm just trying to feel out what else it is that ya feel TB is needed for

Note that i suggested i didn't felt combat should be overly tactical; not that it shouldn't be tactical at all. I like tactical combat. I like combat, period. The more well developed it is, the better. Since Fallout puts a large focus in character options for roleplaying, why not do this for combat as well? Combat is a part of roleplaying, as far as i'm concerned, simply because it's another (valid) way of character expression in the gameworld. It would be a waste (and bad design) that my character strictly developed for social roleplaying would have more options than a combat-centric character.

Again, Fallout is all about options, and a tactical combat model to me is important. Again, it doesn't need to be overly tactical because it's but one path, not the path, so it should be as developed as the other paths and provide an equal amount of options and opportunities.

 

[Crichton]

Again, Fallout is all about options, and a tactical combat model to me is important.

But how can one have tactics with only one unit under one's command? The number of choices that leaves is very limited and by a strict definition none of those choices even come under the heading of tactics.