Desired Fallout 3 Improvements?

[Amerestatistic]

Despite the justified pessimism about Bethesda's plans with the series, I'd like to know if anyone would agree that it would be a good idea to maybe get a list together of ideas and suggestions for a new Fallout (provided it follows actual Fallout design goals) to go with the mantra of TB, Iso, SPECIAL.

It's easy to imagine this thread crashing and burning because possibly nobody wants to talk about it right now, but if you can imagine that Bethesda actually does design the game the way they should (or pass it along to Troika, whatever you want) what kind of improvements would you ask be made?

A second advantage to talking about new ideas is that no one can really say that the Fallout hardcore fans are simply rendered reactionary by nostalgia, or whatever. The constant attempts to degrade the fans is bothersome, at any rate, and maybe this kind of discussion would help...

Just two small ideas to get the ball rolling, if it in fact will roll:

There should be no general experience given for combat, but only for quests. This is less likely to cripple non-combat characters. Not a new idea, but would this be good for Fallout?

Secondly, it'd be interesting if in any random encounter with intelligent NPCs one could open dialogue at any time with the speech skill and attempt to talk your way out of being killed, perhaps offering something in return for your life. That way you really could use speech to get out of just about everything if you were a diplomatic character. Is there a problem with this?

 

[voodoo1man]

There should be no general experience given for combat, but only for quests. This is less likely to cripple non-combat characters. Not a new idea, but would this be good for Fallout?

I think this will be very hard to balance, and not very Fallout-y. I liked having a somewhat intelligent gunslinger character, which might be unduly difficult to pull off with the proposed scheme.

Secondly, it'd be interesting if in any random encounter with intelligent NPCs one could open dialogue at any time with the speech skill and attempt to talk your way out of being killed, perhaps offering something in return for your life. That way you really could use speech to get out of just about everything if you were a diplomatic character. Is there a problem with this?

I think the point of random encounters in Fallout was, "you don't find us, we find you." I like this idea for fights in cities and such places. But how will it work? Will you be able to initiate it before the 1st turn in combat? In the middle? When the other character is knocked down? How about the rest of the opponents' party?

My suggested improvements:

- Make better party NPC aiming decision AI. Everyone complains about Ian and his back-stabbing SMG.
- Make party NPC combat leveling work towards the later levels. Should be applied equally as well to melee and ranged NPCs.
- Less guys in power armor, supermutants (assuming FO3 will take place after the events of 1 and 2). Think balance and subtelty.
- More NPC reaction to player's stats (I like stupid-person dialogue!), attire (I want to see people's jaws drop when they see my character in power armor!)
- Tighter integration of player's actions in various regions. Cross-scripting, as opposed to just the alignment meter.
- More, better trading and occupational quests. People have to eat after the apocalypse, too, and I want a piece of the racket!
- Longer game-time span.
- Ways to finish the game without doing the main quest line.
- Cannibalism. Dammit, it's after the god-damn apocalypse, and the only thing they could come up with was Iguana Bob (well, and those West Coast Manson hippies you get in random encounters in FO2). I thought they'd be selling grandma pie on every street corner.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Remove Jinxed, Bloody Mess and Sex Appeal Traits, and bring back the Night Person trait.

 

[Flink]

^ I agree. Also:

- I actually liked Sawyers ideas about making guns and ammo more scares then in previous games of the series. I want to cherish that last shotgun shell and save it for a very special occasion, just like in the Road Warrior.

- Little or no Enclave, please.

- Fallout 1 style Brotherhood of Steel.

- I enjoy the Fallout “dungeons” (The Glow, Sierra Armor Depot.) and I’d love to see more similar places in Fo3.

- Less civilization if that is at all possible.

- No aliens, Space Travel, Humbogists, Shi and preferably no NCR.

- As few references to Vault 0, robot armies as possible and for the love of god no references to POS.

- I’d like to see the old rail network being used for trade and travel between the few major settlements still remaining.

- More of an emphasis on Raiders and their clan disputes.

- One can never have enough Super Mutants and ghouls, at least not I.

- Oh, and yeah! More cannibalism! :D

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

- I actually liked Sawyers ideas about making guns and ammo more scares then in previous games of the series. I want to cherish that last shotgun shell and save it for a very special occasion, just like in the Road Warrior.

I never really liked the idea of ammo being scarce. That would just mean less people with guns in the game, and I can't really picture Fallout without them. Sure, by the time you finish Fallout 2, you have enough weapons and ammo to start a nationwide chain of gun stores, but would the game have been better if all those raiders were just armed with knives and spears?

Not to mention that if you want the Fallout 1 style BOS, you have to accept the fact there is a lot of ammo because that's what the BOS traded in. The Gun Runners also traded in them, and Vault City made ammo from fungus, IIRC.

- Little or no Enclave, please.

Very little.

- Fallout 1 style Brotherhood of Steel.

Or no Brotherhood at all. If they do have the BOS, it damned well better be more like Fallout's BOS than FOT's or Fallout Enforcer's.

- I enjoy the Fallout ?dungeons? (The Glow, Sierra Armor Depot.) and I?d love to see more similar places in Fo3.

Or the military base and the cathedral.

- Less civilization if that is at all possible.

Less civilization and HOMOGENOUS civilization. No theme park towns like FO2 had.

- No aliens, Space Travel, Humbogists, Shi and preferably no NCR.

No real world religions also. Fallout 3 was going to have Mormons, which is a very lame idea.

- As few references to Vault 0, robot armies as possible and for the love of god no references to POS.

None.

- I?d like to see the old rail network being used for trade and travel between the few major settlements still remaining.

Wouldn't train travel be more civilization?

- More of an emphasis on Raiders and their clan disputes.

Especially with the whole 1950s teenage angst gone wild feel about them.

- One can never have enough Super Mutants and ghouls, at least not I.

There's a few problems with this, so they'd have to localize it where Supermutants could be.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Remove Jinxed, Bloody Mess and Sex Appeal Traits, and bring back the Night Person trait.

GameSpot: Fallout had many unique elements for an RPG, including its extensive (and iconic) perk system and darkly comic tone. Will those be present in the sequel?

Todd Howard: Oh yes. Most definitely. "Bloody Mess" is the best perk ever, where your enemies die in ultra-violent ways.

Link.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

If he doesn't know how to distinguish between a Perk and a Trait, we're all doomed. OH NOES!!

Just kidding.

The reason i don't care much for Bloody Mess is that the game can be gory enough without the need for a Trait. The enemies already die in ultra-violent ways with the 'Maximum Blood' option in the menu.

 

[Flink]

I never really liked the idea of ammo being scarce. That would just mean less people with guns in the game, and I can't really picture Fallout without them. Sure, by the time you finish Fallout 2, you have enough weapons and ammo to start a nationwide chain of gun stores, but would the game have been better if all those raiders were just armed with knives and spears?

Not to mention that if you want the Fallout 1 style BOS, you have to accept the fact there is a lot of ammo because that's what the BOS traded in. The Gun Runners also traded in them, and Vault City made ammo from fungus, IIRC.

True.. I guess. I just liked the idea. Perhaps something to have in another post-apocalyptic setting crpg? We all know how often a good one of those come along...

Less civilization and HOMOGENOUS civilization. No theme park towns like FO2 had.

Indeed, almost every town in FO2 had a freakin theme. Now that I think about it, every town DID have a theme! Klamath = Gecko trappers, The Den = Mini New Reno, Modoc = Farmers, and so on and so forth. This is definatly something which needs to be addressed!

Wouldn't train travel be more civilization?

Well... I'm not talking mile long trains, stations, actuate time tables and comfy chairs in waiting rooms here... What I mean is more make-shift solutions and only in very few places. Example: An old, rusty locomotive with one or two wagons trundling along at slow speed across the wasteland because of the instability of the line, and lack of electric power. Or even hand-powered forms of rail transportation...
I would guess that electric trains would be a rather common sight in the pre-war Fallout world. What with the dwindling oil supply...

There's a few problems with this, so they'd have to localize it where Supermutants could be.

Yeah, most unfortunate. What can I say, I love muties. :D

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Bloody mess removed the reward value of landing a nice critical or using burst and getting the happy giggle dance of death...

 

[protobob]

Personally I like the bloody mess trait. I don't see any reason to leave it out. If you don't like it, don't pick it. Bloody Mess plus unarmed combat gives it a little over-the-top-hong-kong-kung-fu feel to it.

Definetly want to see more things like the glow. So great. And the fear of radiation (take those pills) just added to it.

Want unarmed combat to be viable (like it was in fallout2). Of course if they take out the turn based and action points it just won't be the same. Action and movement perks...sigh. Great times.

Leave out the robot dogs.

 

[Flink]

Quite! The radiation really made the "dungeons" more interesting. Going deeper, slowly finding clues to what the installation was originally used for. The creepy music, only the sound of the crackling Geiger counter echoing across the empty halls... Suddenly a robot powers up and whips out an assault rifle as you manage to repair the generator. Awesome stuff! :D

That's what I want!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Indeed, almost every town in FO2 had a freakin theme. Now that I think about it, every town DID have a theme! Klamath = Gecko trappers, The Den = Mini New Reno, Modoc = Farmers, and so on and so forth. This is definatly something which needs to be addressed!

I was thinking more along the lines of:

1.) San Fran = ANCIENT CHINA WORLD
2.) Redding = WEST WORLD
3.) New Reno = GANGSTER WORLD
4.) Vault City = FUTURE WORLD(with dark secrets)

In Fallout, the towns felt like towns. They had their own flavor, sure, but they didn't feel like they were based on an artificially constructed theme. Hell, New Reno kind of felt like that old Star Trek episode where Kirk and company beamed down to the world of highly impressionable people where an earlier starfleet ship had accidentally left a book about 1940s gangsters.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Personally I like the bloody mess trait. I don't see any reason to leave it out. If you don't like it, don't pick it. Bloody Mess plus unarmed combat gives it a little over-the-top-hong-kong-kung-fu feel to it.

Why maintain Bloody Mess? The Fallouts already have an in-built option to toggle violence levels. With the 'Maximum Blood' option turned on, you already get a satisfying type of assorted gruesome deaths. Furthermore, you can already program these gruesome deaths straight into the game and make them dependant of a gore toggle, instead of wasting this on a Trait.

 

[Transcendent One]

Yeah Bloody Mess may have been fun, but it was a really stupid thing to include it as a trait.

 

[suibhne]

Leaving aside the stupid theme-park towns in FO2, it's difficult for me to believe that human society would have been so fragmented and yet so homogenous following an apocalypse. Vault City was a step in the right direction, showing a distinct social architecture. I'd like to see more variety in the communities that developed in the Wasteland (but not the superficial theme-park variety of New Reno).

I'd also be interested in seeing some fairly normal, non-crazy people organizing to create a larger society. Why is it just the nutty Master and the equally nutty Horrigan fighting for broader social order? I wanna see some well-intentioned and fairly rational folks doing the same, and then be able to help or undermine their efforts to overcome the decentralization of the wastes.

Really, though, I just want SPECIAL, turn-based combat, a story on par with FO1, and a reactive gameworld with multiple paths. Is that too much to ask?

 

[Human Shield]

JSawyer talked about hand to hand combat before. He said guns use ammo to do ammo, melee weapons do damage without ammo, hth will allow multi-combo attacks! The idea was kind of stupid and would only help while fighting several melee fighters at the same time. He also talked of fixing doctor and outdoors skills. Doctor was useless because most reloaded if they got broken bones. Outdoors didn't have much use. Speech being split. And fixing gifted. These were good ideas.

Have unarmed be default unholstered mode. It was annoying to leave both slots empty to kick and punch. And it was annoying to open inventory to put a weapon away to enter towns. Keep an option to holster both weapons and give full hth options. This allows hand to hand to be useful for enemies that charge you without needing to keep a melee weapon out. Melee weapons would do more damage but hth would be always an option.

One of the issues with Fallout's combat was that people would hardly ever save action points to boost AC. Moving was usually always better and the AC boost wasn't that noticable.

This and the above really hurt the hth perk that allowed more AP -> AC bonus if both slots were empty, even though using the last two AP to throw a punch was a better option most of the game.

 

[Spazmo]

Splitting speech was dumb, actually. Sawyer said he didn't want people just using a single skill to get through the whole game, but then he went ahead and merged all the gun skills into one, effectively allowing combat boys to... use a single skill to get through the whole game. And merging the gun skills was also silly. Some of his other skills changes were good, though.

 

[Worm]

I'd like to see death's similar in quality to SoF2 though still keeping the comical overdone gore thing.

Elimination of useless perks/traits would be nice. Also perks that heavily outweight the rest Slayer, and Tag to think of only two (it's been awhile )

More reactions from things aside from simply in certain towns. Reno was pretty cool but more people should react to a guy tromping around in a giant suit of Armor, maybe people fleeing.

More uses for explosives.

Less FedEx quests. Maybe even an investigation quest or something. Oh and more use of preception, smells, sounds, all that should be mentioned to you.

 

[Amerestatistic]

I like this idea for fights in cities and such places. But how will it work? Will you be able to initiate it before the 1st turn in combat? In the middle? When the other character is knocked down? How about the rest of the opponents' party?

I first imagined that all random encounters with bandits, raiders etc. would simply open a dialogue before combat began and you could attempt to negotiate your way out of combat, if you wanted to. This could be annoying for combat characters, however. So maybe how it could work is you simply use speech on a hostile NPC and if you haven't done anything that completely and totally rules out negotiation you could open up dialogue and see where that could get you. Anything from simply begging for your life, offering money or goods, or simply persuading hostile NPCs to leave you alone...

I think that if you had done something brutal to this NPC to make them hostile, however, you probably shouldn't be able to do this.

 

[Jed]

How to improve Fallout 3? Hmm. Dare I say it? Remove Bethesda from the equasion.

 

[mr. lamat]

one gigantic freeflowing city. bombed and smashed art-deco architecture. divided enclaves of people, city blocks belonging to gangs, the remnants of corporate security and staff in hardened underground bunkers and half-functioning arcologies. what once were skyscrapers now resemble anasazi-like cliff dwellings. parks (maybe central park) have become overgrown and now envelop parts of the city in dense forrests, roots cracking through pavement.

the first two focused on the wasteland and only gave an inkling of the devestation brought down on civilization. it'd be nice to see it a bit more first hand... and let's face it, no one wants to see that much brown in an fps.

i'd like to see some meaningful factions to join. unique and with a purpose, something the players could identify with, not simple as a means to loot and prestige. possibly one group that focused on rebuilding, but gave crap loot and rewards for quests that involved dialogue and diplomacy. another? maybe a nihilistic cult who believe sacrificing people to some god no longer listening will restore civilization... hey, if you're gonna have a faction dedicated to combat and violence, might as well go all out.

the theme addressed in van buren, with genetic research run amok would be neat to see rear it's ugly head again.

possibly all the supermutants and ghouls have died out?

ooh... and a chocobo, just for the hell of it*

 

[Chaos_One]

GRENADES ARE NOT MELEE WEAPONS!

 

[Voss]

Oh, lords of the dark.

Visc, *go away*. It was so nice when you were gone.
Weren't you supposed to have stopped playing computer games (again)?


You'll be surprised to find, by the way, the sawyer's plans for FO3 aren't exactly relevant anymore.

 

[Chaos_One]

Hey Voss, glad to see you!

Its a funny thing. I was at the Obsidian Boards when I heard about Bethesda getting Fallout sonaturally I went over to Bethesda to warn them about you guys. A friendly warning you know. Anyway I found the Morrowind Chatroom and met a guy named Mech there. Now we verbally sparred over at the Morrowind forums but when I heard he made a few posts I was naturally curious.

With Fallout being my fav games I just had to read up on your guys' response to him and of the whole situation. So far I enjoyed the goings on so far. This whole Bethesda getting Fallout has brought me back into gaming. Not for a diversion of humdrum life, but actually for fun.

Blame Bethesda, BUT I AM BACK! BWAAAHAAAAHAAAAAAAAA!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Elimination of useless perks/traits would be nice. Also perks that heavily outweight the rest Slayer, and Tag to think of only two (it's been awhile )

Snakeeater has to be the most useless perk there is. However, rather than eliminating them, how about making them useful. For example, what if Snakeeater not only made you resistant to poison, but also hindered the negative effects of drugs?

More reactions from things aside from simply in certain towns. Reno was pretty cool but more people should react to a guy tromping around in a giant suit of Armor, maybe people fleeing.

Well, there were reactions to your power armor. Many people make floating text comments about it. However, I would like to see the impact of Power Armor on people who are challenging you in combat. A small band of raiders should have floating text speech based on what their motivation is. They should either attack with an explanation of their motivation for attacking or simply flee in terror, live to fight another day. If they're really stupid or really desperate enough to attack someone in power armor, then there should be some floating text about that.

More uses for explosives.

More interaction with the game environment period. Picking up objects and tossing them or using them as melee weapons shouldn't be a difficult feat for a 3D engine. It would also be nice if you could blow up rooms and have most everything in those rooms be destroyed.

Less FedEx quests. Maybe even an investigation quest or something. Oh and more use of preception, smells, sounds, all that should be mentioned to you.

Depends on how the FedEx quest is handled. If it's plausible, then sure. If it makes sense, then I'm all for it. However, running to a town to fetch someone's Christmas present for their wife when you're in the middle of saving the world is just silly.

the theme addressed in van buren, with genetic research run amok would be neat to see rear it's ugly head again.

I agree. Perhaps this time they can use radiation experiments if the location is far removed from FEV Central. Radiation made the ghouls and the giant critters, so why not?

On the subject of robots, though, I think that working robots should be very rare if it takes place beyond Fallout 2. I think it would make more of an impact to have the player walking through an abandoned facility surrounded by numerous dead robots, expecting them to not work, then have a few wake up than to have it like the Sierra Army Depot were they were all working.