Fallout 3: get your skills out of my FPS

[Vault Dweller]

I liked Bloodlines ranged combat system. Its brilliant design was proven by all those retarded reviewers who claimed that the firearms are useless. They are, if your skill is low.

How did it work? I had only played melee char.

Ranged skill affects accuracy and damage. Accuracy was the key there. You start with a big, slowly reducing aiming circle. If your skill is low, you'd take forever to aim and unless you have all the time in the world, you'd miss. If we are talking about, say, fighting zombies in that warehouse when you have no time to aim or trying to hit fast moving targets, forget about it. If your skill is high, you aim very fast and can pwn things in a fast and efficient manner.

From a gamespot review: "However, while Bloodlines is built on a first-person shooter engine, the gunplay is nowhere near as smooth and natural as it should be. Your firearm abilities depend heavily on your characters stats; it's not as simple as placing the cursor over a target. Unless you invest heavily in improving your firearm skills, your aim will veer wildly."

 

[DiverNB]

Skill affects damage and I think knockdown rate in Bloodlines - shooting is otherwise straight FPS.

Sounds like oblivion.

I watched a combat video on YouTube to refresh my memory, and there is some tightening reticle action in VtMB, meaning that there's a skill-based cone of fire just like in Deus Ex or M&B. I think all the guns have perfect accuracy standing still, but the reticle expands as you move and it takes the reticle longer to retighten after a shot or movement with low skill. The main effect is that novices have to aim more carefully and some of the secondary firing modes are for experts only.

Early on, no matter how still you stand, you'll always have a big cone of fire. As you progress, that cone becomes tighter and tighter. Unless you're using a .38. Piece of shit.

 

[DiverNB]

I liked Bloodlines ranged combat system. Its brilliant design was proven by all those retarded reviewers who claimed that the firearms are useless. They are, if your skill is low.

How did it work? I had only played melee char.

Ranged skill affects accuracy and damage. Accuracy was the key there. You start with a big, slowly reducing aiming circle. If your skill is low, you'd take forever to aim and unless you have all the time in the world, you'd miss. If we are talking about, say, fighting zombies in that warehouse when you have no time to aim or trying to hit fast moving targets, forget about it. If your skill is high, you aim very fast and can pwn things in a fast and efficient manner.

From a gamespot review: "However, while Bloodlines is built on a first-person shooter engine, the gunplay is nowhere near as smooth and natural as it should be. Your firearm abilities depend heavily on your characters stats; it's not as simple as placing the cursor over a target. Unless you invest heavily in improving your firearm skills, your aim will veer wildly."

For me it's not that it required stats, it's just that is was so imbalanced early in the game with the .38 there was no reason to shoot people. Blood buff and knife until you get the shotgun

 

[Gerrard]

I don't like accuracy to be affected by stats allot in my FPS games, it just not work gameplay wise.

Deus Ex?

As much as I like DX I don't think that was a very good implementation, there should have been a limit to how much standing still improves your aim (actually there was, but I think it was the same for the first three ranks).

If you suck with guns, aiming for 10 seconds won't change that.

 

[DraQ]

Skill affects damage and I think knockdown rate in Bloodlines - shooting is otherwise straight FPS.

Sounds like oblivion.

I watched a combat video on YouTube to refresh my memory, and there is some tightening reticle action in VtMB, meaning that there's a skill-based cone of fire just like in Deus Ex or M&B. I think all the guns have perfect accuracy standing still, but the reticle expands as you move and it takes the reticle longer to retighten after a shot or movement with low skill. The main effect is that novices have to aim more carefully and some of the secondary firing modes are for experts only.

Ah, it sounds ok, then.

 

[Solohk]

Anyway, they should have done it like in Night's Edge mod for UT:

1.You aim using your weapon's sights.
2. Depending on fatigue (add skills and attributes in FO3) your weapon sways
3. Your weapon fires in the direction it's pointing, rather than the middle of the screen.
...
4. Profit!

Any shooter that skips the lame 'fire in a cone' way of handling recoil/aiming is a winner in my book. I hate putting my crosshair directly on an enemy and hope that the cone gods will smile favorably on me this time. I'd much prefer weapon sway + recoil moving where you aim as it rewards control as opposed to leaving it all to chance.

 

[crufty]

weapon sway and recoil is pretty cool. but given the chances of that happening...

how about a a tweakable setting to allow the player to actually tweak the value

that's what I don't get about recent bethesda games. They have this expansive open parameterized game play, and then don't offer it up in the form of difficulty levels or even custom switches. If there was an xbox 360 patch for getting rid of the level up issues i would have played oblivion....

 

[Zomg]

Eh, cone of fire does a really good job of preventing gameplay from turning into Quakeish circle strafing and bunny hopping goofiness, at least. If you don't do cone of fire you should probably have separate hip-firing (allows movement but severely reduces accuracy) and shoulder-firing (stationary) mechanics.

 

[Thydron]

Anyway, they should have done it like in Night's Edge mod for UT:

1.You aim using your weapon's sights.
2. Depending on fatigue (add skills and attributes in FO3) your weapon sways
3. Your weapon fires in the direction it's pointing, rather than the middle of the screen.
...
4. Profit!

Any shooter that skips the lame 'fire in a cone' way of handling recoil/aiming is a winner in my book. I hate putting my crosshair directly on an enemy and hope that the cone gods will smile favorably on me this time. I'd much prefer weapon sway + recoil moving where you aim as it rewards control as opposed to leaving it all to chance.

Surely this takes away a lot from the effect of skills / stats - the player's control compensating for the characters lack thereof?
(ie - go play a shooter, not an RPG!! )

 

[DraQ]

Surely this takes away a lot from the effect of skills / stats - the player's control compensating for the characters lack thereof?
(ie - go play a shooter, not an RPG!! )

I guess it could be easily modified to:

1. Mess lining up when swaying (I don't remembar but this may already be in).
2. Add tiny delay and random, skill dependent weapon movement between input and firing (sort of like happens with real gun where squeezing the trigger can mess up your aim just before you fire).

 

[Zomg]

He's saying he'd prefer giving an unskilled character worse sway or recoil penalties rather than widening their cone of fire, not that any intrusion of character skill is bad.

Honestly, I'd prefer the cone to some inscrutable recoil flinch mechanic or something. At least the player has a full understanding of the implications of the cone.

 

[crufty]

rpg's tend to be closed deterministic systems eg single player. Why not have sway and movement. Also, why not have enemy moving as well? So you have gun sway following enemy break dancing. Player presses down and holds fire. Skill determines further sway and movement. fails skill check, wham, miss. recoil applied, reload applied (maybe), player still holds down fire button, another to hit check. It's a hit! magically enemy and gun position line up, shot is fired. etc. If the player is strafing, then the gun doesn't settle on target as accurately.

to wit: bad guy hiding behind cover. You aim and you press down the fire button. First two shots miss, they simply hit the cover. Third shot is a hit--maybe a critical--enemy pops his head up and weapon auto aims for the head.


i dunno, maybe it has its issues.

 

[DraQ]

I'd simply make it player's skill limited by character's skill - you have to aim well, but without good character skills it won't help.


BTW: How was hitting with missile weapons calculated in Wizardry 8? The game gave impression of forfeiting traditional dice roll mechanics in favour of firing projectiles randomly within a stat-dependent cone and then seeing if they hit.

 

[Claw]

Try using the Fatman indoors and you’re more likely to kill yourself than anyone else.

I would think that this would make it <i>just as</i> likely to kill yourself than <i>everyone</i> else.

Well, indoors there's all sorts of cover for your enemies. Walls, couches, corners, doors...

Anyway, they should have done it like in Night's Edge mod for UT

Aww, you know Night's Edge? I thought I was the only one who ever played it.

I actually tried implementing a similar system in UT2004, but the sway was too smooth and predictable and I found it ridiculously easy to hit precisely.

 

[DraQ]

Anyway, they should have done it like in Night's Edge mod for UT

Aww, you know Night's Edge? I thought I was the only one who ever played it.

Well, the weapons and mechanics were cool, levels were crap, overall pretty nice, though I haven't played it much.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I think the system was OK. I had a firearm skill of 4 or 5 in the first city and hitting stuff with that POS .38 was such a pain and didn't have any reward for all the aiming you have to do with it.
...
For me it's not that it required stats, it's just that is was so imbalanced early in the game with the .38 there was no reason to shoot people. Blood buff and knife until you get the shotgun

If you want to be good at killing people with guns, you can easily start with 5 points in Ranged (3 in Perception and 2 in Firearms). Doing a few early quests can easily increase the skill to 6-7. If you got Auspex, it increases your Perception and thus raises the skill too.

I played Bloodlines a few times and I don't recall having problems with .38. I cleared that beach house with nothing but that gun. If you had 4-5 in the first city, that's the problem.

 

[RK47]

that beach house shouldn't even be done with a gun imo. It's too slow. Hit blood buff and start hitting stuff away with a tire iron or whatever you've got. If you're facing one at a time just blood drain him, they're using .38s and knives. No threat.

 

[Claw]

Well, the weapons and mechanics were cool, levels were crap, overall pretty nice, though I haven't played it much.

It never became what it was meant to be, I believe. They got the core mechanics right and had a pretty good interface, iirc.
A really great mod could've been built on top of that, I suppose.

 

[AzraelCC]

They could have taken Deus Ex's system, but no... They had to go deeper into FPS territory. What a bunch of morons. Play testers my ass.

 

[MasPingon]

When VD is online, you can be sure the bad news are coming. I'm sure another news about FO3 will be almost as hiliarious as this one

 

[Solohk]

Surely this takes away a lot from the effect of skills / stats - the player's control compensating for the characters lack thereof?
(ie - go play a shooter, not an RPG!! )

You know, every Shooter/RPG hybrid I've played always has disappointing combat. Or at least disappointing compared to if it was a shooter. Instead of getting more powerful as you gain exp, it just seems like you're slowly un-gimping yourself. To be honest I don't really know how to remove that feeling other than turning the game into a straight FPS or RPG.

 

[sportforredneck]

Get your FPS out of my skills.

 

[DiverNB]

I think the system was OK. I had a firearm skill of 4 or 5 in the first city and hitting stuff with that POS .38 was such a pain and didn't have any reward for all the aiming you have to do with it.
...
For me it's not that it required stats, it's just that is was so imbalanced early in the game with the .38 there was no reason to shoot people. Blood buff and knife until you get the shotgun

If you want to be good at killing people with guns, you can easily start with 5 points in Ranged (3 in Perception and 2 in Firearms). Doing a few early quests can easily increase the skill to 6-7. If you got Auspex, it increases your Perception and thus raises the skill too.

I played Bloodlines a few times and I don't recall having problems with .38. I cleared that beach house with nothing but that gun. If you had 4-5 in the first city, that's the problem.

Hm, I thought at the time that 4-5 would be pretty decent. Maybe next go I'll pump it super high and see how that turns out. Though it still seems like the .38 in general has aiming problems. At 9 Firearms right now that thing still aims like shit. Oh well, beginner item I 'spose.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

A minor correction about Bloodlines combat system: high skill doesn't increase your damage directly, it gives a bonus to the weapon's Lethality. This makes your attacks harder to resist. If your Ranged feat is low you'll have lots of trouble fighting supernaturals and characters with high Defense.

 

[The_Pope]

Fallout 3: Kind of like rage, but worse.