Played it yesterday and solved most stuff in early cities, New Reno including, sadly some quests glitched out for me (like using poison beer in casino).
Did you 'Use' the poison beer on casino patrons, or did you 'Steal' on the casino patrons and plant the poison beer on them?
Just like main char with amnesia, I also feel like I had amnesia after playing this, but I begin remembering now what I meant by Nevada being "grindy". It is that adventure game design with single row inventory where you need to carry quite a lot of shit to solve a boi healing quest which usually in Fallouts takes an index skill > doctor, but here requires items and dozen checks here. And it would be fine but problem is it's random, and by a single re-load I changed outcome from 1000 xp to 5000 xp (with a Doctor skill of around 25 or something).
That's.... strange. I'd say from that single reload, you changed one or more of the answers when you are being questioned by the healer, and that resulted in having average outcome changed to an optimal one. I don't know how it checks stats and skills under the hood, but I had a character with really high INT, Speech, and Doctor, and from there I was able to just smoothly pass the quest to heal the boy, even though I don't really have what I perceive as ideal items (I remembered a first aid kit or even a doctor bag being more ideal than just having stimpaks), and I definitely got more than 1000 xp.
Anyway, in this situation the healer won't let you get anywhere near the boy because he's in a critical condition, so you can't do the usual index skill > use skill like normally. Not sure if you can sneak around there and get close to the boy without being noticed, though.
However, it kinda sorta only works about 90% of 50% of the time. What I mean by this is that stat and skill checks are awesome, books are nerfed, but say Steal still works fine even at 25%, and Sneak still breaks the game - at some places there seems like there are scripts preventing it, but at others (Wright house) you can sneak-waltz in tb mode and steal everything no problem. Also, while some skills demand unusually high checks (Lockpicking) others seem to be kinda on low end (I think I repaired something with Repair 20, and crafting doesn't take much skill either).
Well, that's Fallout for you, even modders were unable to make Sneak and Steal works properly.
Anyway, I think the high checks in early game are meant as something to visit again later, once you have sufficient skills. Meanwhile, the low checks are... obviously there because it's early game, but iirc you can bypass checks with lower skill if you have relevant items, like having junks as spare parts to repair stuff with low skills, while repairing without junks requires higher skills, but I could be wrong.
There is a lot of content which feels overwhelming and also makes me wonder why should I do it instead of focusing on main quest.
You answered yourself with the statement right below:
Some interactions are amazing though. No designer would have designed mormon movie quest with a choice of stealing the weapon from dude but person who understands how Fallout should have worked. Brilliant stuff.
The mod managed to keep up this design sensibilities all the way to the very last city, it's amazing. The main quest is kinda eh though, you'll find out.
So aside from Fallout itself being broken and that brahmin fence clicking, as well as main quest feeling like it's just there to exist, mod seems quite brilliant. Feels like improved Fallout 2 but not dumb. The question is how many stat and skill and item checks it would throw at me later and wouldn't it become a chore to run around with this sort of design premise.
Why are these some kind of bad things? And why stats, skills, and item checks becomes 'a chore'? We complained that Fallout 1&2 had 'useless' skills, i.e they don't see much use throughout the game and thus rendered obsolete or not Tag worthy. Nevada with its design sensibilities showed us what the world could've achieved if they actually use Fallout engine to its fullest, that if I didn't know better literally every skills are Tag worthy. My first playthrough I even got Repair, Doctor, and Speech tagged, and my God it was an amazing first playthrough like no other.
Anyway, I'm digressing, so all I could give as an advice here is to not see them as a chore; think of them as challenges not meant to be passed very early. You can always come back later if you can't pass them now. Think of it like in Gothic games, where certain areas are naturally 'gated' by high-difficulty encounters, where if you go there early you'll get killed, but if you go back, do other stuff, and come back once you're more capable then you can finally bypass those high-difficulty encounters.
Some dude with skullz on jacket, waltz into vault grabs something and shoots his way out and rides away on a bike - that's what writing told me anyway.
Ah, I just vaguely remembered but there's a plot reason to this.
It's fine for Fallout 2. But we are in the world where healing some boi takes 12 checks, ammo is hard to find and you need to make it, and Vault City itself (guarded by troops in combat armor walking around it btw) is thought by everyone south as nothing but a mystery. So
easy way to fix this would be to just restructure dialogue in a bit more vague/inside job way that is it.
Uh, what's wrong with troops in combat armor walking around Vault City? Is it not plausible that they stock up some before closing the vault door when the Great War is imminent? Especially considering Vault 8's role is to open upon getting an all-clear signal and resettle civilization with a GECK, and they'll need some sort of protection in case of raiders attacking them when in process of resettling?