I think you may be disregarding a variable here
The concept of universal DT is perfectly fine if multiple consecutive hits can be guaranteed, which is the case in a traditional CRPG where no manual aiming is required
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Then adjust the numbers until it's fair. There's nothing inherently wrong with the tradeoff of more hits with less damage per hit vs less hits with more damage per hit.
I dunno, I do think there's more than a few things wrong with a universal DT system like this.
Assuming it's well-balanced, then it becomes a boring non-decision as far as weapon choice goes. Use the high DPH weapons on hardened enemies, use the high DPS weapons on softer ones. Thrilling.
And if it isn't well balanced, as in New Vegas, one type of weapons (high DPH) breeze through every encounter without much thought or micromanagement whereas the other struggles on one type of enemy while gaining little advantages against the other type versus what they lose in tactical capability. Basically it looks something like such:
High DPH Weaponry Outlook
Enemies without DT: Eliminated easily, but not necessarily as efficiently as high DPS weapons when using default ammo. But there is always a ton of, otherwise useless, JHP ammo...
Enemies with DT: 360 xXN0SC0P3Xx MLG headshots abound. But seriously, you kill them quite easily.
High DPS Weaponry Outlook
Enemies without DT: Killed marginally more quickly than DPH weapons. Woohoo!
Enemies with DT: Got armor piercing ammo or max charged cells? No? Well enjoy shooting at all of the hardened HP bloats for about a minute straight.
And the other issue with universal DT is that it sucks at dealing with gameworlds where varied weaponry exists. Why should a super mutant in Mad Max armor be as resilient against Pre-War laser weaponry as it is against small arms fire? You get strange inconsistencies like this with a universal DT system that isn't present in a multiple DT system a la Fallout 1.
Meh, no game designer would allow your character to walk around utterly invincible. That's dumb.
When you say it like that, yeah, it does sound dumb. But if the gameworld so dictates, then you should be able to become immune to certain types of attacks. Power Armored Kwanzanians were able to devastate Chinese tank & infantry divisions in the great war; you should be immune to raiders with nothing but pistols and sub-machine guns when you're suited up in some minty T-51b. And it's "balanced" in that there are going to be, or at least should be, enemies with access to similar technology that can combat your player.
There were a lot of relevant "use high DPS poor DPH weapons on me" enemies with no DT like cazadores and nightstalkers that meant you wanted to be able to cover multiple bases and no weapon was the clear cut best for all situations, at least to the point of sperg I took it.
Also using high DAM/low DPS weapons against cazadores (who never ever get DT) is foolish and inefficient and plenty of automatic weapons had armor piercing variants.
Like I said before, it's not about one weapon type being strictly better, just mostly better and a lot more user-friendly. Going the DPH route is basically cruise control. You don't need to every worry because your weapon will be adequate, at worst, for any situation. Sure, picking off cazadores might not be as efficient as machine-gunning them down, but it's nowhere near the brick wall that a DPS player encounters against the majority of the elites which happen to be hardened HP-sponges (Super Mutant Masters, Robots, Deathclaws, Radscorpions, Power-Armored foes, etc).
It's funny but I bet Sawyer considers it a failure because the relevant information is quite "hidden" (e.g. you can't check enemy DT in-game without a perk with fairly high requirements).
Given how much Sawyer and the cru enjoyed making boss fights in IWD2 have completely arbitrary resistances/weaknesses that were unknowable outside of trial & error, I'd say it was a feature, not a bug.
Bethesda-man is not possible with vanilla FNV, with every single DLC, yes.
Nah, it's pretty easy to approach the hallowed rank of ninja cartographer in vanilla New Vegas without doing too much in the way of cheesy exploits. Just maxing INT as quickly as possible while picking up Educated ASAP will give you enough skill points to easily max out 6 or 7 skills, perhaps more. And given that out of the 13 skills, four are mostly combat focused, you're pretty well rounded as is. But if you exploit the buff-outfits and the magazines to scrimp on skill points, you can "effectively" be maxed in probably every single skill worth investing in and pass all relevant skill checks in such a way as to make the Nerevarine blush.
This is what the different ammo types were for, match ammo negated extra DT and added more damage, AP negated lots of DT for a damage decrease, increasing viability of these weapons. Besides that, there was the BAR rifle with damage equal to most non automatic weapons, and the LMG itself was fairly high damage. All weapons that used 5mm rounds(Minigun, assault carbine) had a -5 DT, -10 for match, and -(Really big number) for AP rounds.
To be honest, brother, things like "match ammo" and the "BAR" are coming up blanks in my memory? Are those things added in the DLC, because I didn't buy any of that shit. The awful endgame sequence killed any enthusiasm I had for the vanilla game (tho the ending slides were very nicely done) and I was in no mood to spend money on a game I was out of patience with.
As for the AP ammo, like I said before, high DPS weapons
need specialized ammunition to be effective against hardened foes wheras high DPH weapons just slide and let do all the way through any encounter. And if you really want, you can just use the ammo that multiplies enemies DT in exchange for large damage increases with many of the DPH weapons.
It's also a bit logical don't you think? Why should shooting a bunch of tiny bullets at armour they can't pierce do lots of damage?
Logical with bullets against power armor, not so much logical when you look at lasers on chitin or super mutant trash cans. But that's universal DT for ya.
JSawyer does in fact add DR to certain armors.
Ah. Interesting. Depending on how it's done, it might have made for a more pleasurable experience. But I really don't see myself picking up a "Bethesda-Like" for quite some time...probably until they start aping the Souls Series or Dragon's Dogma and cease being "Besthesda-Likes".