After spending a good deal of time with the game and giving it positive attention on these forums, which it deserves, I feel like bringing some constructive criticism to bear against it.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L
All stats are not made equal. The stats of Endurance, Perception and especially Charisma play a very distant second fiddle to the always useful Agility, Intelligence and Luck. (For the purpose of this I will be neglecting the slight skill boosting effects of each Stat, with the exception of luck as they are relatively minor.)
Endurance offers more hit-points and serves to unlock a few semi-useful build specific perks; that can safely be neglected by the majority of builds. It would be more useful if it contributed to the player (PC’s) natural radiation/poison resistance or allowed for a natural boost to DT at higher levels all of which would at least be moderately desirable but it does not. As such Endurance stands as a dump stat for the majority of builds. Perhaps if sniper range stealth kills were not so prevalent the additional hit-points gained through endurance would be more necessary.
Perception offers to extend the range at which enemies get marked in red on the players compass. I found this to be not only useless but a mechanic that detracted from gameplay. I find it preferable to rely on my eyes and my scope to spot threats as I slowly and cautiously traversed the wastes and I feel that the inclusion of the mechanic resulted in many players blundering around the game-world with a feeling of utter safety only feeling to need to be cautious when the little red markers indicated that they ought to do so. In my opinion it detracts from the games atmosphere considerably and at the very least it doesn’t do add to it in anyway. So then why include it if not to appease more FPS oriented style of play? Perhaps if the markers had been based on additional skills such as Survival they would have felt more congruent with the game and less like a detracting addition. Aside from this Perception only other offering is to unlock a single useful perk, Better Criticals, which is as far as I can tell the only reason preventing anyone from simply dumping it. If Perception had an impact on a players chance to hit or the range at which the player could activate Vats it would be a more valuable stat.
Charisma offers practically nothing to any build including the most obvious speech oriented build as the boost received to speech through Charisma is minor. Players would be better served putting those forlorn Charisma points into Intelligence; which in even the relative short term offers a better avenue for getting a high speech skill. The other benefit to Charisma is in the Damage and Damage Threshold (DT) boost it gives to the players NPC’s. The issues is that most NPC’s are already competent in combat and unless the player is playing on Hardcore the NPC’s are marked as essential and cannot die. Since the boost in combat damage is hardly needed; what then is the point in making an already invincible NPC more difficult to kill? I could almost understand the desire to take points in Charisma for you NPC’s sake when playing on Hardcore but the points can, as I will son show, better spent elsewhere. If Charisma was used to determine the number of NPC’s that the PC was allowed to travel with then it would be a very difficult stat to dump indeed; however, in New Vegas the NPC limit is lock to two with no other considering factors. (The very first mod I downloaded allowed me to bring an unlimited number of NPC’s along with me. A much needed mod in my opinion.)
On the other side of the coin from the stats that I have already covered we have the incredibly useful Agility, Intelligence and Luck.
Agility not only determines a PC’s Action Point (AP) pool (which I will discuss more about later) but their overall movement rate and acts as a requirement for several very useful perks. With the exception of a pure melee build it is always beneficial to have a larger AP and a variety of builds would find the perks offered by Agility (Action Boy, Silent Running, Nerves of Steel) immensely useful; even a melee build would find Slayer a very desirable perk. The only time Agility can be safely dumped no matter the build is if the player opts to play without Vats mode at all because most the Agility perks are AP related and the movement bonus can be almost totally ignored. Which could be oddly enough be a valid approach to the game (Which I will explain in detail when I cover AP) most players would not initially choose to take this route. This would be the case to a lesser degree if Agility still modified the PC armor class as it did in Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics but as such it has been relegated to simply the stat that controls Vats.
Intelligence is the most useful stat in the game because it benefits every build and every skill. Intelligence is the sole governing factor in determining how many skill points a PC will receive upon level-up and no matter what kind of character you choose to play having more skill points is an absolute advantage. While the optimal amount of Intelligence is debated I choose to settle on more always being better and with so many dump stats already available I can see no reason not to always have an Intelligence of 10. Of course, for subsequent play-troughs having a low Intelligence character solely for the low Intelligence (3 or less I believe) dialogue is perfectly understandable but I hardly think it factors into the stats overall usefulness and is, no matter how entertaining, more of a gimmick than anything else.
Luck is by some account the most useful stat in the game as it contributes skill points to every single skill in the game, making it the only skill which gives reason to consider its skill contributing effects. Point for Point Luck gives you more skill points that any other stat in the game and even if that was not appealing enough it is the determining stat for both critical hits and the enemies’ chance for critical failures. Every single build benefits from the additional skill points and critical chance offered from luck. It is also the second required stat for the always useful Better Criticals per. Players who choose to do so are free to break the games economy by investing in Luck and gambling and the casinos. (Though I don’t have fun taking such an approach.)
It’s fair to say that at least to some degree I have overstated the usefulness of these last three stats but if it were not for the fact that there exist three perfectly useless stats most PC wouldn’t focus the majority of their points into Agility, Intelligence and Luck. What is clear is that a better balance for the usefulness of stats is needed. Players should always have an equally good reason to invest in one stat over another (depending on build) and players who invest in any stat should find themselves benefiting from that investment over the course of the game. The current situation leads to a feeling that certain stats are far more valuable than others and will only discourage players who invested in the more useless stats.
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AP or Action Points (not Alpha Protocol)
I’ll get right out of the gate with it and level some brief criticisms at the AP system in New Vegas as well. Simply put it is needless cumbersome. The PC’s agility determines the amount of AP available and each weapon takes a certain number of AP to fire. This all sounds simple enough and is in fact exactly how thing worked in Fallout 1 (herby to be written simply as Fallout) and is exactly how things work in New Vegas so let me expound upon the difference.
In Fallout the mechanics behind the system were both simple and transparent. Having an Agility of 10 meant having 10 AP and firing a pistol which took 4 AP meant that I could fire two shoots each turn. In New Vegas having an Agility of 10 means having 95 AP and firing a pistol takes an unknown number of AP meaning I have to use trial and error to determine who many shoots I can make with each weapon in Vats. To find out exactly how many AP a weapon takes to fire I have to either manually check the amount used after a shot by going into my Pip-boy menu or go on-line and look up the AP stats for the weapon I’m using. This is compounded by the fact that weapons take an incredibly variable amount of AP with a Varmint Rifle taking 22 AP, an Assault Carbine taking 20 AP and a Hunting Rifle taking 60 AP. I understand why it takes more time to fire a Hunting Rifle than a Varmint Rifle what I don’t understand is why there is so much unnecessary variety in the majority of arms. In Fallout a rifle took 5 AP meaning I could fire twice per turn and a larger weapon such as a Sniper Rifle took 6 AP meaning I could only fire once per turn. The fact that a Sniper Rifle took longer to aim and fire was figured in to its AP cost within a simple and transparent 1-10 system and I cannot for the life of me understand what benefit the more (unnecessarily) complex system in New Vegas brings to the table.
It is impossible to talk about the AP system without also talking about Vats so here it is…
The Vault.Automated.Targeting.System or Vats.
While the name remained the same nothing else did and while that’s not automatically a bad thing I do want to point out some of the shortcomings of the new system. Firstly, Vats does not pause time it slows time down which creates a particular problem in that it stops character movement but does not stop enemy movement. In Fallout 3 entering Vats was basically choosing to take and aimed “iron sights” shot and I understood that my character would be unable to move during that action (it is much the same in Fallout) but in New Vegas I can make perfectly accurate “iron sights” shots whenever I want and I can make the while moving backwards keeping the enemy at a constant distance. This raises the question that is I can already make shots with perfect accuracy and I don’t need to completely sacrifice my ability to move then why would I ever use Vats? I can say that when I’m standing behind some cover and firing and moving targets Vats can be useful but more often than not (even with a high guns skill) my chance to hit is Vats is incredibly low. The odds of my hitting someone with a shotgun from 15-20ft away with a skill of 30 is somewhere between 25-45 percent but I can hit that same target with the same skill every single time using the iron sights. Granted I might not always hit them in the head and Vats does give the player an automatic bonus to critical chance but a hit to the chest is better than no hit at all. The entire system for determining the chance to hit in Vats needs to be reworked, if it is an absolute guarantee that I will hit the enemy using iron sights it should at least be a strong possibility that I will hit the same enemy in Vats mode and right now that doesn’t seem to be the case. With the prevalence of sniper builds and the overwhelming usefulness of “sneak attack criticals” that can be fired with perfect accuracy using the iron sights from a distance beyond the allowed range of Vats (without any investment in to the sneak skill at all) has left the feature in the lurch and hurts the Agility stat as well due to its heavy association.
Taking guns out of the equation and focusing on a pure melee build results in an even greater aversion for Vats. I will hit %100 percent of the time with a melee attack in real-time (RT) and only %95 of the time in Vats, a negligible difference when compared to the other upcoming issues. In RT I can actively block enemy attack to negate the attacks damage, something that I cannot do in Vats. In RT I can move backwards while swinging to not only keep the enemy at a perfect distance but also to keep them for making any melee attack of their own, as they are chasing after me not swinging their weapon, while in Vats I am forced to stand still and take unblockable attacks from my enemies. How is it in any way shape of form an improvement to my chances in melee combat when I can win a fight without a scratch in RT yet can come out of that same fight with but half health using Vats? It does help that I can select special hand-to-hand moves in vats with sufficient skill (I have not tested an unarmed build to see if these moves are available outside Vats) but it leaves me in a situation where I’m trying to alternate between vats for a single attack and the returning to RT in order to blocking. The entire thing feels poorly implemented.
I have decide to post only the first few segments of my little criticism as it is understandably TL:DR. In the future I will probably go into depth on some of the games systems. Note that this was all just recently written and is something as a work in progress and as such I haven't yet gone over it with a fine-tooth comb so I'm sure that certain aspect will be subject to some measure of change in the future.
