Game News Massive Fallout: New Vegas Info Package

[flushfire]

It's not like you couldn't be a jack-of-all-trades in Fallouts 1 and 2...

not unless you really tried and knew everything about the games beforehand. heck, even having faqs on hand & with a powergaming build youd still fail checks every now and then. bethesda games are different because you'd end up jack-of-all unless you try not to be.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Seriously though, go play Oblivion. It's a wacky alternate dimension where axes are blunt weapons

based on the principle that hafted weapons work similarly enough, because the guy that knows how to use axes probably wouldn't mutilate himself with a mace

and short knives are two handed swords.

The skill is bladed weapons, and like above it's unlikely that someone trained in swordfighting would swing a dagger like a retard anyway.

Not realistic, but hey, who gives a fuck, right? It's JUST A GAME.

Indeed, that's why these skills are all abstraction anyway (I'm 72% good with swords!). If realism is an issue, we should probably adress that "a few days after getting out of the starting area you go from a retard that can't kill a stray dog to behemoth that can flatten entire squads in ten seconds" thing

good so far, considering the state of gaming today, but this kind of shit is just making me skeptical.

The unified skill was going to be in Van Buren, based on the principle that someone skilled in rifles probably wouldn't turn into a gibbering retard and shoot his foot if he touched a pistol, and vice versa.

It's one less combat skill, but then again Fallout isn't about combat, eh?

-----------------

Damn, this soup I made sucks. Hard

 

[Winter Ale]

It's video game (and hollywood) bullshit. A minigun is essentially a heavy machine gun with multiple rotating barrels and is designed to be a mounted weapon. You don't see people carrying around a .50 cal and it's the same with the minigun.

Unless, say, the people you're talking about are Super Mutants, or certain folks wandering around wearing power armor.

I see people like that carrying around miniguns all the time!

 

[Drakron]

Only if you're a dumfuck consoletard who thinks choice is TEH HARD :shrugz:

... Yes, sure because CLEARLY a unbalanced ruleset is a great thing to have ...

Seriously though, go play Oblivion. It's a wacky alternate dimension where axes are blunt weapons and short knives are two handed swords. So convenient. Not realistic, but hey, who gives a fuck, right? It's JUST A GAME. In Oblivion character builds can be so general as to allow every character to specialize in everything. No need to play it twice! REVOLUTIONARY.

Oh nice strawman.

Were did I mention Oblivion had good design? I could defend having axes and other hafted in the same category that is what Sacred 2 did, the only real fault of Oblivion was someone being stupid enough to call it blunt weapons ... we had that discussion when Oblivion come out.

I would not as I would prefer grouping then under different classes, as in slashing, piercing and trusting weapons.

Also, keep in mind that we're talking about a 5 pound pistol as compared to a 500 pound weapon mounted on humvees and helicopters. You're telling me these should be conglomerated into the same skill? Get the fuck out of here, pleb.

And keep in mind (if you have one) that its STILL a ballistic weapon, also your argument points that ANYONE that can wield a Minigun will have the same skill with a Flamer and a Rocket Launcher

The only thing you are saying is a Minigun is heavier, also in Fallout 2 the Gatling Laser was under Energy weapons so what are you saying now? that Fallout 2 was wrong? Also the M60 is classified as a Big Gun and it can be fired from a standing position (in reality).

Lets see, the CZ53 Minigun have listed a weight of 28 pounds, the L30 Gatling Laser a weight of 24 pounds and the M60 of 23 pounds ... so ... why is not the Gatling a "big gun"? its heavier that the M60?

Does that mean WEIGHT is not what is the consideration?

As I said or if not, what I am saying ... Big Guns were created for the odd weapon that could not be categorized as a ballistic weapon, a energy weapon, a melee weapon or a thrown weapon to fall under because they put the Flamer and the Rocket Launcher and having ONE skill with just TWO weapons would be problematic.

And yes, there should be separate skills for handguns and rifles and machine guns and SMGs--just like you have separate skills for axes, blunt weapons, short blades,and long blades in D&D; this is supposed to be a fucking RPG-- abundance of skills and diversity of possible character builds is a good thing.

Fallout was to use the GURPS system, then the license fallen and they had to make alterations.

GURPS uses the system you say, there are separate skills and in fact Fallout in its implementation of GURPS had also in separate skills, we have a screenshoot available in the Fallout wiki that shows just that with a character with Guns (Pistol) 16 and Guns (Rifle) 15.

SPECIAL likely grouped them because its already VERY close to GRUPS and had to make changes as the license had fall, we ended up with the "Small Arms" Skill.

Unless you want for then to just use GURPS but it cannot be, its Fallout and it uses SPECIAL and they have reasons to why.

New Vegas sounds p. good so far, considering the state of gaming today, but this kind of shit is just making me skeptical.

Why? You realize the minigun come from NO Strength requirement in Fallout 3 (it did not had a requirement) to now having a soft Strength requirements, meaning a character with 2 STR can use it but it will sway ... A LOT in FO:NV as he could fire it like Super Mutant in FO3.

If you want to complain about the requirement being soft, remember that its penalizes the farther and father you are from the requirement so its not that bad if you are just 1 point away and very bad if you are over 10 points away.

Also you are not complaining about the Gatling Gun that returned to its original Skill or the lack of Throwing weapons ... the Minigun being in "Guns" is the least of my concerns.

 

[CrimHead]

Ah shit. I didn't get the memo. I'm guessing it had something to do with it being cool to streamline now?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Also you are not complaining about [...] the lack of Throwing weapons

Throwing spears are in, using Melee skill. I imagine there will be other throwing weapons too.

 

[Pablosdog]

Also you are not complaining about [...] the lack of Throwing weapons

Throwing spears are in, using Melee skill. I imagine there will be other throwing weapons too.

I'm good at swinging a sword, but I suck at throwing knives. How does that skill make sense?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Because it's an abstraction of a general knowledge of close combat tactics with weapons, not "I'm a manicure addict so I wanna get a bonus when using clippers during combat" specifics sperg fest. It's also a nice little ranged alternative for melee specialists.

Nobody ever selecting Throwing, ever may also be a factor

 

[ZbojLamignat]

Big Guns was always the bitch in the weapon comparisons, so it's only fair I guess.

and it makes sense as Big Guns is a shitty skill anyway.

Most powerful build you can make in F2 is for Big Guns.

Though of course you can finish the game with melee, big, small, energy weapons or unarmed (less so in F1) or no weapons at all and have great fun which makes Fallout 1/2 awesome. Only throwing sucks a bit and grenades (apart from the pulse ones, but there's not many robots) suck.

 

[Tycn]

WUT

old news.

really old news - one skill to rule them all...

OMG, Black Isle invented streamlining!

 

[CraigCWB]

... in FO3 small guns can only carry you so far.

My mileage varies quite substantially! In fact the only big gun in FO3 I ever had any use for was the Rock-It-Launcher but it was so cheezily overpowered it almost felt like a cheat so I avoided using it much.

And you can get the Rock-it_launcher, the Minigun, the Flamer and missile launchers virtually on day one in the wasteland.

Anyway this change makes sense to me. I'd have preferred that they has a "Guns" and "Heavy Weapons" skill (Heavy Weapons for all the weapons which are not guns, like the flame thrower and rocket launcher). It never made sense to me that machine guns should be in a different category than assault rifles, since the real-world skill set required to use them well is pretty much the same.

And all this time I thought they wanted to move away from the jack-of-all-trades gameplay all bethesda games have. shit

Really? You thought that?

Anyway, this is not the kind of info I wanted about NV. I want to hear about how they re-worked the companions so that they don't get up my nose all the time, how they made encounters and locations more interesting than they were in FO3, how they gave factions and towns a less superficial and meaningless feel to them, and so on. In other words, I want to hear how NV is a better game (and not just a different game) than FO3 was. I made the mistake of replaying FO3 this week in order to get psyched up for NV and it's having quite the opposite effect. I need some good news to bolster my enthusiasm.

 

[Silellak]

It is impossible to totally avoid streamlining in New Vegas.

 

[StrangeCase]

(/wankistry): I thought that a minigun was, technically, a 'small' machine-gun - a big automatic weapon, but a small machine-gun, wherein machine-guns are typically mounted weapons and a minigun is a machinegun that is light enough for a individual soldier to carry in the field (though from I gather it's just video-game bullshit - that's somehow become entrenched as 'fact' - that you'd shoot it while standing upright and holding the weight in your arms). Happy to be corrected by anyone here whose done military service - I'm actually kind of curious, if anyone knows for sure.

Kind of. One of the notable things about a minigun is that it's externally powered, usually electrically, whereas most automatic weapons use some of the gas produced by exploding gunpowder to prepare and fire the next round. Man-portable machine guns, such as the M-249, are usually designated "light machine guns", or LMGs.

There are currently no standard-issue, man-portable miniguns. Besides the weapon and ammunition, you'd also need a power source to generate that electricity, which means more size, weight, and bulk. As you might imagine, this is less of an issue on vehicles.

 

[KreideBein]

Melee made sense in FO 1 and 2 though. Advanced guns were rare and combat usually occurred in close quarters (often because you pissed off the guy you were just talking to). The problem is that in FO3 you can pick up an assault rifle 10 mins after you leave the vault and the wasteland is teaming with raiders armed with heavy weaponry that you have trouble avoiding.

Yeah, the more powerful weapons were pretty rare in FO1, but FO2 pretty much showers you with an overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo. By mid-game you're tossing aside rocket launchers, miniguns and other expensive weapons like they're nothing. Near the end enemies drop fucking gauss weaponry like it's nothing. The ridiculous loot was one of my major problems with the game.

Also, though I don't really have much experience with melee characters in FO 1 or 2, I don't remember finding a lot of situations in which melee would have been more useful than guns. There were a few cases of very close-quarters fighting, but by my experience, they never really justified putting points into melee.

On topic, though, I honestly don't really mind rolling all the firearms into one skills, assuming that the skill system is balanced so that the jack-of-all-trades syndrome doesn't pop up. Reducing the number of weapons skills, if not accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the amount of skill points available to allocate, has the potential to cause Oblivion-like situations where everyone's build ends up more or less the same. If they can make it work (and work well), I'll definitely give NV a shot, but the potential for disaster is big enough that I'll be even more cautious about the game than I already was.

Also, reintroducing strength requirements for weapons is a major plus, especially if it's still possible to equip a weapon if you don't meet the requirement (but with penalties corresponding to the difference between the requirement and the character's strength). It's kinda silly for a game to say that you can wield some weapon perfectly capably if your strength is equal to the requirement, but if you're just barely below the requirement, you can't even hope to pick it up.

 

[Drakron]

Yep StrangeCase, there was a attempt back in the '70 with the XM214 Microgun (a scaled down version of the M134) that was supposed to be man-portable but never gone anywhere ... G.E. keep it listed into the '90.

In fact it seems Fallout Minigun was based in the XM214 as it uses 5mm ammo as the M134 uses 7.62 x 51 mm NATO (that Fallout also uses but not in miniguns, except Tactics that made the Vindicator use it).

 

[lordfrikk]

Are you sperging about logic/realism in a game where you're a guy in a armor that is powered by miniature nuclear fusion reactor on your back that can last hundreds of years and you kill giant talking trees and robots that think they're old dead American politicians?

 

[DreadMessiah]

Are you sperging about logic/realism in a game where you're a guy in a armor that is powered by miniature nuclear fusion reactor on your back that can last hundreds of years and you kill giant talking trees and robots that think they're old dead American politicians?

Most indubidly sirah Sperging is important

 

[CrimHead]

giant talking trees

 

[denizsi]

JA/JA2 only had a marksmanship skill with other conditions like weaponry traits (sniper, auto weapons, heavy weapons) or attribute factors. Best tactical game ever.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

giant talking trees

Don't worry, he's dead now. You'll never see Harold again.

In any form.

Because he's dead.

Harold

is

dead

Or still rooted in the Oasis, which amounts to the same thing. r00fles!

 

[flushfire]

... in FO3 small guns can only carry you so far.

My mileage varies quite substantially! In fact the only big gun in FO3 I ever had any use for was the Rock-It-Launcher but it was so cheezily overpowered it almost felt like a cheat so I avoided using it much.

yeah, it's not really a challenge to finish the game using only small guns, but by your own admittance you had to avoid using a big gun bec. it was OP. it's much easier to do it using big guns and/or energy weapons. if that's not an indication that big guns didn't need to be put in other categories then i don't really know what is. my only point is that they didn't need to use the reason that big guns was underpowered or available too late into the game bec. that's only true in prior FOs, not in FO3.

 

[Drakron]

if that's not an indication that big guns didn't need to be put in other categories then i don't really know what is.

You want for me to start going over stats?

Someone said that Big Guns were the more powerful build in FO2 that I found a bit odd as in Small Arms side we have the Gauss weapons and on the Energy we have the Pulse weapons.

In Fallout 3 we have what? the Minigun, the Rocket Launcher and the Flamer... the Flamer is good to clear out groups of low level enemies but that is about it, the Rocket Launcher is a liability in close quarters combats were you are as likely to blow yourself up as the enemy.

That leave us with the Minigun that EATS ammo (240 rounds in 12 seconds) and for what? a DPS of 100 (I have to use DPS because its damage per attack is just 5 damage, its the rate of fire that really makes it a viable weapon in the first place) with no critical?

The Chinese Assault Rifle have a dmg of 11 and a critical multiplier of x0.125, the Minigun have NO critical multiplier, the GREAT weapons are great not because you look at its base damage alone ... we look at other things and the great weapons in Fallout 3 were the uniques, like Lincoln's Repeater.

Oh and the best weapon in Fallout 3 is the Alien Blaster, only offset but its ammo and inability to repair it ... until Mothership Zeta come out were that no longer became a issue.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Oh and the best weapon in Fallout 3 is the Alien Blaster, only offset but its ammo and inability to repair it ... until Mothership Zeta come out were that no longer became a issue.

I thought NPC repairmen could repair unique weapons.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oh and the best weapon in Fallout 3 is the Alien Blaster, only offset but its ammo and inability to repair it ... until Mothership Zeta come out were that no longer became a issue.

I thought NPC repairmen could repair unique weapons.

They can, but only up to their repair level. The only way to 100% an item is to repair yourself or use the stupid bullshit from the stupid mothership zeta DLC which I removed from my game and will never install again.

 

[Azrael the cat]

JA/JA2 only had a marksmanship skill with other conditions like weaponry traits (sniper, auto weapons, heavy weapons) or attribute factors. Best tactical game ever.

Yeah, a generalised 'gunmanship' or 'melee combat' skill, which affects other more specific weapon skills, would be awesome. It would create some great strategic tradeoffs. If you're going a combat build, you'd pump the general skill (which reflects the idea that if you're a soldier by training, or familiar with melee, there are going to be skills that carry across regardless of weapon. E.g. footwork and ability to read the direction of incoming blows will help all melee weapons, whilst gunmanship can be a combination of aiming, familiarity with ballistics and estimating bullet drop/trajectory on the fly.) But once you've got a good generalist basis, you might want to think about whether you want to specialise by pumping up a specific weapon skill (goes up quicker if you put points directly into it, as opposed to the generalist skill that affects is), at the cost of the other weapons. Or focus on the generalist skills so you can be equally familiar with whatever weapons you come across (advantage if your gear gets stolen, etc).

Similarly, it would be a great innovation for low-combat builds. If you're building a merchant or a thief, you might give the guy skill in a solitary weapon. So your merchant doesn't know a lot about fighting in general, but is really good with his one weapon of choice. He'll be able to defend himself, but can't take advantage of any weapons outside of that specialty. Again, a nice tradeoff versus putting the same amount into the generalist skill, allowing him to have a bit of amateur practice with whatever weapon is available.