Broken Hills in Fallout 2

[Wyrmlord]

Turning the air conditioner on in a ghoul's home: 1000 XP
Finding dead missing people, consoling a husband, and confronting a mutant about it: 2000 XP
Uncovering a pop culture reference inside a cave: 1500 XP (wtf?)
Fixing the air purifier after fetching a missing piece from New Reno: 1500 XP
Recruiting Marcus: 1000 XP

You know how much challenge there was in doing all of this? Nothing. You get 7000 XP and then some more for practically doing nothing. Turning the air conditioner on was just a matter of requesting a power supervisor. Uncovering the pop culture reference was a matter of walking inside a place that you spot on the map. Recruiting Marcus was just a matter of asking him.

By comparison, killing the slavers outside the newly modernized Shady Sands (a somewhat dangerous task) gets you 900 XP at most.

What kind of a game gives you three levels worth of experience for shopping list tasks, while giving you pittances for going out of your way to seek and fight dangerous enemies? The kind that was meant to pander to combat-avoiding, task-doers and item-fetchers, that's what!

The original Fallout didn't even reward you as much for finding the 5th level of The Glow. And that involved far more thought than all of the Broken Hills combined.

 

[Daemongar]

Been a while since I played FO2, but don't your efforts in Broken Hills go a long way to averting a big race war between mutants, ghouls, and humans? Also, isn't that town around when the player would be around 10th level? To go to 11th level, you'd need 11k xps, so that's half a level, but the effort may not reflect the fighting side of xps, but the worldly wise side of xps.

 

[>HaLLuCinOgeN<<]

Codex ->

<- Wyrmlord

 

[Wyrmlord]

Hallucinogen, is that from the website which shows images where only one object moves, while others stay still?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Just another case of Fallout 2's disparate and often conflicted design showing through. Hadn't thought about how little they balanced XP rewards in general, but not really surprised.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I suppose they thought the balance would come with most players finding Broken Hills relatively late. when all that xp would only net you a level or two. Arroyo and BH are on opposite sides of the map.

Also, the level cap in FO1 was way lower (21 or something), so they had to be tighter with xp rewards.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Just another case of Fallout 2's disparate and often conflicted design showing through. Hadn't thought about how little they balanced XP rewards in general, but not really surprised.

I am embarassed to excercise my overly eager memory, but I remember that a few years ago, racofer was criticising the Knights of the Old Republic games for lack of interesting things to do. Dark Matter listed some quests from Knights that he felt had some interesting element to them. racofer said they were basically as meaningful as deciding which paint to use for painting your wall. Dark Matter then listed some quests from the Fallout series that were only as pointless as those in KotOR games.

That's when you, Jimbob, chimed in, "Ssshhh, don't let the kids know that the fabled choice and consequences never existed." It was clever, because you somehow caught on quite well to the fact that racofer was a KotOR-my-first-RPG player who only later started to dislike post-2002 RPGs because everyone else here did (I know about racofer from other forums).

Anyway, sorry for this unnecessary anecdote, but you really must be one of the few fair and balanced posters on this forum, for recognizing that even late-1990s games generally did not have quests that were any more complex than post-2002 games.

"Choices and consequences" is an arbitrary criteria, because RPGs never really had them. Save for very rare instances. To promote them as a major feature, some mythology has been created about late 1990s RPGs. Even so, they were never a selling point of RPGs - it was rather combat and exploration. You don't have to be Joe Krow or mondblut to believe this - a quick look at even Fallout-era RPGs alone is sufficient.

The problem is, however, that Fallout 2 had some really broken priorities as to what features were interesting. Broken Hills, as a town with mundane combat but huge reward for ordinary and routine non-combat activities, is an example of that. In a way, Fallout 2 set a bad precedent for today's games.

 

[>HaLLuCinOgeN<<]

Hey guise, I'll just keep my shit image spamming in GD.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I suppose they thought the balance would come with most players finding Broken Hills relatively late. when all that xp would only net you a level or two. Arroyo and BH are on opposite sides of the map.

Also, the level cap in FO1 was way lower (21 or something), so they had to be tighter with xp rewards.

With a car, everything is in short distance in Fallout 2.

Besides, does Ed in Vault City not tell you that he found the Vault 13 water flask on a brahmin drive that starts at Vault City and then goes first to Broken Hills (and later to Reno and Madoc and so on)? That's a hint that your level 4-6 player must first go to Broken Hills. Of course that's three levels for you, right in your pocket.

The town is perhaps a source of free XP for a player who is stuck and without a good build to deal with later challenges? I don't know.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dunno, everyone seemed to speak of New Reno as this awesome place so I figured out it was the "main" town in the game, and I should go there ASAP. I think they also said the inhabitants were ghouls and supermutants so I interpreted that as "stay away for now".

Speaking of the car, the Den is also guilty of that, being fetch quest central.

- Go grab Vic's radio at his house in Klamath
- Go grab the mechanic's lunch at Mom's Diner
- Go grab car parts for the mechanic to fix the car
- Go grab a book for Rebecca
- Go grab the locket for the ghost

 

[Icewater]

With a car, everything is in short distance in Fallout 2.

Except you usually don't even get the car unt-

Oh, fuck it. You've obviously got your heart set on whining about irrelevant shit.

 

[Suchy]

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

 

[Wyrmlord]

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

Is there much exploration? I mean, yeah, these quests would be challenging if their solutions were hard to find. But were they? Not for me.

Clockwork, yes, that is true. Klamath and Den are both full of such quests, although I enjoyed killing the slavers in the Den.

Icewater, perhaps you are right. Fallout 2 doesn't quite do it for me, and I find it a rather boring game. Perhaps I am reaching a little too much to find something to criticise. However, I got a car early, since my heart was set on getting it, after I found a wrench in Vault City's vault. So the point remains that there was no early or late location, and with a car, any place is relatively nearby.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Turning the air conditioner on in a ghoul's home: 1000 XP
Finding dead missing people, consoling a husband, and confronting a mutant about it: 2000 XP
Uncovering a pop culture reference inside a cave: 1500 XP (wtf?)
Fixing the air purifier after fetching a missing piece from New Reno: 1500 XP
Recruiting Marcus: 1000 XP

You know how much challenge there was in doing all of this? Nothing. You get 7000 XP and then some more for practically doing nothing. Turning the air conditioner on was just a matter of requesting a power supervisor. Uncovering the pop culture reference was a matter of walking inside a place that you spot on the map. Recruiting Marcus was just a matter of asking him.

By comparison, killing the slavers outside the newly modernized Shady Sands (a somewhat dangerous task) gets you 900 XP at most.

What kind of a game gives you three levels worth of experience for shopping list tasks, while giving you pittances for going out of your way to seek and fight dangerous enemies? The kind that was meant to pander to combat-avoiding, task-doers and item-fetchers, that's what!

The original Fallout didn't even reward you as much for finding the 5th level of The Glow. And that involved far more thought than all of the Broken Hills combined.

Yeah. I hate that shit. Stupid XP inflation. I think the same was in BG2.

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

Exploration should be rewarded with finding cool stuff and interesting places, not with XP.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

I pretty sure you needed speach skills to talk the supervisor into powering the ghouls house a bit moar, also you could hack the computer yourself. Everything else needed some kind of exploration/investigation. Also you could do whatever you wanted basically. Kill every mutant, investigate first, investigate terrorists people (wanted to kill mutants?) and so on.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

Exploration should be rewarded with finding cool stuff and interesting places, not with XP.

Exploration also should mean, you know, exploring, not just walking through a town and talking to NPCs.

 

[felipepepe]

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

Exploration should be rewarded with finding cool stuff and interesting places, not with XP.

One of the best things I read here in a while.

 

[Malakal]

So now rewarding exploration over combat is a bad thing?

Exploration should be rewarded with finding cool stuff and interesting places, not with XP.

One of the best things I read here in a while.

I see, you must be one of those people that forgot what exp stands for. Hint: it means experience. And exploration is one of those things that easily make most sense for experience sources. One can easily imagine all kinds of training happening during exploration for example.

Of course the issue here is the quality of the exploration not mechanics...

 

[commie]

Man, what a discovery. Took you just what, 13 years?

I see why Wyrmlord is so highly regarded as some kind of guru round these parts.

Can't wait for the revelation that dungeons in early Ultimas suck.

 

[Jaesun]

Man, what a discovery. Took you just what, 13 years?

I see why Wyrmlord is so highly regarded as some kind of guru round these parts.

Can't wait for the revelation that dungeons in early Ultimas suck.

 

[felipepepe]

I see, you must be one of those people that forgot what exp stands for. Hint: it means experience. And exploration is one of those things that easily make most sense for experience sources. One can easily imagine all kinds of training happening during exploration for example.

Training happening during exploration? Dude, you are playing a fucking game, not watching a Rocky montage. You want a nice cut-scene too?

Simply looking at ancient ruins should NOT give me experience, that should be obtained by learning where the ruins are, arriving there, going through all the perils and obstacles! And since I'm playing a game, I want to play that part! Otherwise it would be the same as playing Fallout only throught the Wolrd Map.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dunno, yesterday I went to the supermarket to buy milk and veggies, and found out I got better at unarmed combat when I came back home.

I'm giving a go at Oblivion with Oscuro's Overhaul and Oblivion XP, and it gives me experience for discovering locations. It's as if the game feels like I have to be constantly rewarded for merely walking around. This is like that Achievements thing whatshisname was talking about.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Who cares. The game becomes a joke once you get power armor anyway. don't think I've ever gone past level 10 in Fallout 1, and it's very doubtful I've gotten anywhere much higher in Fallout 2 unless I really wanted to do some side quests.

 

[Black_Willow]

Simply looking at ancient ruins should NOT give me experience, that should be obtained by learning where the ruins are, arriving there, going through all the perils and obstacles!

And then you should spend your ability points on gambling. Beacause exploring ruins makes you better at poker.

 

[felipepepe]

Simply looking at ancient ruins should NOT give me experience, that should be obtained by learning where the ruins are, arriving there, going through all the perils and obstacles!

And then you should spend your ability points on gambling. Beacause exploring ruins makes you better at poker.

Well, exploring the Codex didn't make you better at reading...or arguing.