Time for another fallout 3 discussion

[deama]

I don't understand how this argument somehow works in favour of Little Lamplight. Yes, you do have the draw the line somewhere, and Little Lamplight is so far beyond that line it's past the fucking horizon. And you're comparing that to skill points? "Little Lamplight is fine because standard RPG mechanics can be weird sometimes!" Jesus christ.

Little Lamplight falls apart the moment, as it was correctly pointed out Btongue's video, you are stripped of all your combat and intimidation powers when facing the children. I have seen countless of Bethesda apologists claiming that it was because of "censor reasons", but they all conveniently ignore that Bethesda knew, BEFOREHAND, what said censorship consisted of, and they could have avoided it just by not making a town full of children you cannot kill.

Little Lamplight is a glorified Pokémon fence. Something you should easily be able to get past, but you cannot because of the developer's incompetence.

Ok, let's say you can murder children in fallout 3 now; so you murder the gate guard, ok now what? The rest of the kids aren't gonna open the gate for you, so it doesn't do anything other than murder the guard?
I guess you can just say "I'm gonna intimidate the kid with my guns", well ok, you do intimidate him, but he's just a kid, he'll probably think your bluffing, or try to push you until you end up killing him, which brings us back to the "why would they open the gate when you killed their guard" situation.

I do agree that making a village run by children is a bit much though.

I'm gonna be kinda mean here and mention that you can't kill the vault 13's populace at any point, even after they kick you out; so I guess the devs are lazy cunts?

 

[Funposter]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

This fucking quest, goddamit. That you cannot report the Argonian to the authorities is the prime example Bethesda can't into quests.

At least you can destroy the local Dark Brotherhood chapter this time around.

Oh wait, you wanted to get rid of the Thieves Guild who operate completely in the open? Yeah, nice joke, pal.

I guess you can just say "I'm gonna intimidate the kid with my guns", well ok, you do intimidate him, but he's just a kid, he'll probably think your bluffing

Wow, maybe that could be some kind of Skill or SPECIAL check in dialogue. Like a Strength check to intimidate, or a Small Guns check, or an Unarmed check. Just think of the possibilities for intimidating through dialogue in a game where VIOLENCE IS THE SOLUTION TO 99% OF PROBLEMS ANYWAY

 

[Sigourn]

Ok, let's say you can murder children in fallout 3 now; so you murder the gate guard, ok now what? The rest of the kids aren't gonna open the gate for you, so it doesn't do anything other than murder the guard?

You blow the gate up just like you could in Fallout 2's tutorial.

Of course, when you change something in a game, you have to consider what other things should be changed as a consequence. What I propose isn't really that difficult.

I'm gonna be kinda mean here and mention that you can't kill the vault 13's populace at any point, even after they kick you out; so I guess the devs are lazy cunts?

Justified, really: the whole game is built around the idea of the Vault Dweller actually saving his Vault, so why would you want to kill the Vault's population? This is ultimately why Megaton is so stupid: you are expected to be a nice guy (the exchange with your father pretty much reinforces this: you go on a very much noble goal of helping your father bring water to the wasteland), but you are allowed to nuke a town of innocents for nothing more than a pretty bedroom in a hotel.

New Vegas got this right by letting you be whoever you wanted. There was nothing written prior to the game that forced you to think "wait, my character is a nice guy, why would he do this?".

 

[deama]

Ok, let's say you can murder children in fallout 3 now; so you murder the gate guard, ok now what? The rest of the kids aren't gonna open the gate for you, so it doesn't do anything other than murder the guard?

You blow the gate up just like you could in Fallout 2's tutorial.

Of course, when you change something in a game, you have to consider what other things should be changed as a consequence. What I propose isn't really that difficult.

Yes but the one in fallout 2 isn't as reinforced as the one in little lamplight, you'd need some heavy explosives to go through in fallout 3's case, which would probably collapse the cave.
I guess you can make the argument that the door looks reinforced enough (fallout 2)? But you can lockpick the door right? Which means it has mechanisms, which means you can shove a dynamite in there and blow up the mechanisms, at least I assume that's how it should be done? Anyway, little lamplight's gate doesn't have a "keyhole", so you'd need to literally blow up the material it's composed of, which happens to be steel/iron.

I'm gonna be kinda mean here and mention that you can't kill the vault 13's populace at any point, even after they kick you out; so I guess the devs are lazy cunts?

Justified, really: the whole game is built around the idea of the Vault Dweller actually saving his Vault, so why would you want to kill the Vault's population? This is ultimately why Megaton is so stupid: you are expected to be a nice guy (the exchange with your father pretty much reinforces this: you go on a very much noble goal of helping your father bring water to the wasteland), but you are allowed to nuke a town of innocents for nothing more than a pretty bedroom in a hotel.

New Vegas got this right by letting you be whoever you wanted. There was nothing written prior to the game that forced you to think "wait, my character is a nice guy, why would he do this?".

I guess you can say it's justified if you went on an errand and came straight back, but the wasteland is a savage place, wouldn't you say that could have changed your character? And that change could maybe make your character just more evil? Or more aggressive? Hell, maybe even paranoid? Insane? Or do we draw the line at "it's just a game bro, no psychopaths allowed"?

 

[deama]

I guess you can just say "I'm gonna intimidate the kid with my guns", well ok, you do intimidate him, but he's just a kid, he'll probably think your bluffing

Wow, maybe that could be some kind of Skill or SPECIAL check in dialogue. Like a Strength check to intimidate, or a Small Guns check, or an Unarmed check. Just think of the possibilities for intimidating through dialogue in a game where VIOLENCE IS THE SOLUTION TO 99% OF PROBLEMS ANYWAY

Eh, what? What are you trying to say? There's already a speech check for getting into little lamplight?
I guess I'll just latch onto your last point: eh, no, you can solve a reasonable amount of situations without violence; how about this, how about you give me an example where violence is unavoidable in fallout 3?

 

[Sigourn]

Yes but the one in fallout 2 isn't as reinforced as the one in little lamplight, you'd need some heavy explosives to go through in fallout 3's case, which would probably collapse the cave.

I'd rather prefer we didn't go extreme realism into figuring this out, because as it is vanilla game mechanics doesn't stop me from planting an entire cave with C4 and have it not collapse in any way or form. If we were talking realism, my character could easily try to climb over the gate. It's not like it is the size of Hoover Dam.

I guess you can say it's justified if you went on an errand and came straight back, but the wasteland is a savage place, wouldn't you say that could have changed your character??

The end game is still "save the Vault", however. For that end game to make sense, my character shouldn't turn against his fellow Vault Dwellers.

This is completely unlike Fallout 3, where I can be an absolute monster and the main quest still ends (in its original incarnation) with my character sacrificing himself for the good of the wasteland.

 

[M. AQVILA]

That guy's videos are so entertaining, even though the only thing he does is eat MREs.

Best one by the way:

 

[Okagron]

This is completely unlike Fallout 3, where I can be an absolute monster and the main quest still ends (in its original incarnation) with my character sacrificing himself for the good of the wasteland.

It makes the whole "be pure evil" bullshit Bethesda was advertising before the game came out utterly pointless because there's nothing in the end for evil characters. Can't say fuck you to dad and not help him, can't join the Enclave, can't fight BoS, can't fucking do anything that makes it worthwhile for evil characters. Just always be a goody two shoes, just like all Bethesda games since Oblivion.

 

[Sykar]

Fallout 3 is pure decline enabling undiluted horsehit and only insufferable Bethderp skidmark fantards defend this turd. This has been discussed ad nauseum and I fail to see what this thread will add to the discussion seeing as the TC has failed to make any new or original points.

What can be easily demonstrated easily to show how bad Fallout 3 is:

-nonsensical story (no one even fucking needs dads McGuffin)
-retarded dialogue (Have you seen my dad? Middle aged guy /facepalm)
-no cohesive world building, just a couple of set pieces cobbled together because Fallout was just about memes and cultural references in the mind of the average Bethderp developer.
-immersion breaking world building where people survive in a wasteland where there supposedly hasn't been clean drinking water for what 200 years? There are also no farms or any signs of people trying to rebuild society. Fallout 1 and 2 both went to great length to make a relatively believable world and having a mostly cohesive style. FO 2 went overboard with the cultural references and even fans like me who prefer FO 2 over FO 1 will admit as such.
-Supermutants degenerated into Tolkienesque retarded trolls and orks who know nothing outside of slaughter and eating humans. Hurr Durr
-Gun play is shit and completely undercut by the cheat... errr bullet ti... pardon "Vats mode". Who needs skills when you can murderize almost anything with ease thanks "Vats mode".
-Being evil is batshit retarded like blowing up Megaton for what, the lulz and a pointless room? Topkek
-character building becomes meaningless because you can maximize almost every attribute and most skills by the end of the game turning you into a super all-rounder thanks to all the freebies.

This list is just from the top of my head I can come up with quite a bit more.

 

[deama]

Yes but the one in fallout 2 isn't as reinforced as the one in little lamplight, you'd need some heavy explosives to go through in fallout 3's case, which would probably collapse the cave.

I'd rather prefer we didn't go extreme realism into figuring this out, because as it is vanilla game mechanics doesn't stop me from planting an entire cave with C4 and have it not collapse in any way or form. If we were talking realism, my character could easily try to climb over the gate. It's not like it is the size of Hoover Dam.

Ok, I guess we can draw parallels, e.g. like in fallout 1 at the brotherhood of steel outpost, if you kill the two guards you can't get in right, so can you blow that one up?
I guess it's too bad the devs didn't also implement realistic physics so you can just dig a hole underneath the gate and get in like that, what a shame the devs didn't implement all the permuations possible?

I guess you can say it's justified if you went on an errand and came straight back, but the wasteland is a savage place, wouldn't you say that could have changed your character??

The end game is still "save the Vault", however. For that end game to make sense, my character shouldn't turn against his fellow Vault Dwellers.

This is completely unlike Fallout 3, where I can be an absolute monster and the main quest still ends (in its original incarnation) with my character sacrificing himself for the good of the wasteland.

For fallout 3 to make sense you have to be somewhat good, so what's your point? That stops roleplaying? Well then, in fallout 1 I can't "roleplay" and get my revenge on those damn vault 13 guys.

 

[Sigourn]

Ok, I guess we can draw parallels, e.g. like in fallout 1 at the brotherhood of steel outpost, if you kill the two guards you can't get in right, so can you blow that one up?
I guess it's too bad the devs didn't also implement realistic physics so you can just dig a hole underneath the gate and get in like that, what a shame the devs didn't implement all the permuations possible?

I got banned in Reddit for saying the author of "Fallout 3 is better than you think" was autistic, seeing the lengths he went to justify Little Lamplight.

No such thing would happen here, so here it goes: you are ridiculously autistic to go to these lengths to justify the dumbest settlement ever in the Fallout series. This isn't even about "all the permutations possible", it's about realizing that if you place enemies on front of you preventing you from getting past a barrier, violence would be one of the most valid outcomes. The only reason it isn't in Little Lamplight is because it is children and censorship, the strongest of beefgates.

This has nothing to do with "all the permutations possible". It's not even such a stretch of the imagination that players would be inclined to blow these kids to bits.

For fallout 3 to make sense you have to be somewhat good, so what's your point? That stops roleplaying? Well then, in fallout 1 I can't "roleplay" and get my revenge on those damn vault 13 guys.

For Fallout 3 to make sense, you have to be good, but the game lets you be an asshole and still achieve your goal. You cannot do this in Fallout 1.

 

[Okagron]

For fallout 3 to make sense you have to be somewhat good, so what's your point? That stops roleplaying? Well then, in fallout 1 I can't "roleplay" and get my revenge on those damn vault 13 guys.

You can actually join the Super Mutant army and destroy Vault 13. Can't do any of this in Fallout 3, i have to be a goody two shoes in the end, no matter what i do.

And yes, it stops roleplaying when i can literally only be one thing and nothing else. What is the point of doing evil shit, if in the end i have to be Jesus of the wasteland anyway?

 

[Funposter]

I guess you can just say "I'm gonna intimidate the kid with my guns", well ok, you do intimidate him, but he's just a kid, he'll probably think your bluffing

Wow, maybe that could be some kind of Skill or SPECIAL check in dialogue. Like a Strength check to intimidate, or a Small Guns check, or an Unarmed check. Just think of the possibilities for intimidating through dialogue in a game where VIOLENCE IS THE SOLUTION TO 99% OF PROBLEMS ANYWAY

Eh, what? What are you trying to say? There's already a speech check for getting into little lamplight?
I guess I'll just latch onto your last point: eh, no, you can solve a reasonable amount of situations without violence; how about this, how about you give me an example where violence is unavoidable in fallout 3?

I am saying that dialogue should be solvable via. solutions that aren't just the 'Speech' skill, partly because it encourages stupid play (just pick the Speech options to skip content and get to the good stuff), but also because it severely limits roleplaying. There is no reason NOT to choose Speech, because it is the only skill which allows the player to solve situations non-violently in the entire game. New Vegas is also guilty of this for the most part, although it includes more checks for other skills, with the 'Ghost Town Gunfight' side quest providing the proof of concept. To convince characters in town to help you in some way, there are checks for Speech, Barter, Medicine, Explosives, Sneak, and then there are auxiliary checks for Lockpicking (getting a Stealth Boy from a locked vault to boost your Sneak) and Science (you can talk to Victor after the battle and this comes up). These are all very low checks around the 25 range, and a player can conceivably do them all with a level up or two and some planning, but for the casual player it means that they will only be able to receive help from certain people. It encourages replayability, because the player character is able to achieve certain things depending on their skillset.

Like I said, this quest was very much designed as an early-game proof of concept, and I'd argue that these kinds of checks don't show up in the game nearly often enough, or are always tied to skills that the player will WANT to use anyway (Medicine, Science, etc.) because the benefits of investing in them far outweight the negatives. The final encounter with Legate Lanius also proves that Speech is designed to encourage DUMB play, since you can pick literally any of the options without reading, and as long as you meet the skill requirement, you can convince the Legate to stop his assault on Hoover Dam and he will run away. Still, at least there was some thought put towards the player being able to convince or persaude characters using their knowledge and particular skillset, instead of all situations being solved by silver-tongued rogues. Saying, "well there's a Speech check" isn't an argument. Why shouldn't my 9 STR, 3 INT character be able to scream at the literal child until he opens the door in sheer terror? Why shouldn't my character with 100 Unarmed be able to show the kid his calloused knuckles, or throw him to the ground before ordering him to open the door? Why can't I blast my way through using the Explosives or Big Gun skills? Why can't I sneak past? I understand the developer can't fit in every expectation of the player, but in such a ridiculous situation, they should ask, "What will the player realistically expect to be able to do in order to get around this roadblock? How many of these options can we implement?"

I don't think that a Speech check, one usually pointless perk, or a boring fetch quest suffice in this case. Especially in the main quest.

 

[Beastro]

A while back I watched a video which raised some good points:

Spoiler

A while back I watched a video which raised some good points:

Likes:85K Dislike:55K

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Myriad reasons have been given why its bad, im just going to say its a shit game, made by mediocre developers with great marketing and a legion of retarded fans that will happily play whatever new installment of shit they release because they like to push buttons fast and shoot/stab things with constant action! and not think at all about how any of it makes sense, or doesnt.

 

[Beastro]

That reminds me, where is @mthrfkngdggrfll?

Finland, if going by his name.

 

[Beastro]

Whatever. Setting that aside for a moment, your fundamental lack of understanding of the food chain is excruciating to witness.

You've argued that no one would be able to grow crops because of irradiation, which isn't true, since plants are actually extremely resistant to radiation compared to animals and many can still grow in irradiated environments.

However, even if that weren't the case, you went on to argue that because of this, people (in Fallout 3/4) relied on wildlife for sustenance. VIRTUALLY ALL FOOD CHAINS ON EARTH BEGIN WITH PLANTS OR SOME EQUIVALENT, LIKE PLANKTON OR ALGAE. Animals can't survive just by eating other animals if some of them aren't eating abundant food sources at the bottom of the food chain, like leaves, grass, bark, insects (which also require plants for their own insect food chains), fruits, nuts and so on.

Saying that animals survive by eating each other in the absence of plants (or an equivalent) is extremely, fantastically, colossally dumb. The dumbness is squared when one considers that plants are far more resistant to radiation than animals.

The only possible exception to this is life such as extremophile organisms that live off of the heat and minerals emitted by deep-sea vents, but even then, they have their own little food chains; instead of sun and soil, they have heat and minerals from the vent.

I bet he thinks the world in The Road would be sustainable too.

 

[Black Angel]

Petition to tag deama with

 

[Yosharian]

What some posters in this thread have been saying about the Speech skill really rings true for me. I run my own Pathfinder games and I've recently started telling my players to stop saying things like 'I make a perception check' or 'I use diplomacy to change his mind'. The checks are for me to call, not you - you need to tell me what you're doing or saying, and I'll decide whether or not to call a check.

This feels similar to the problem that games like FO3 have. Speech checks should be buried inside complex dialogue trees that involve actual thought and reflection. You should have to make a series of difficult choices about what to say, using intuition and your knowledge of the person you're speaking to, before having a Speech check finally at the END of the tree, once you've successfully navigated the tree and avoided bad dialogues.

Instead, most games use the Speech check at the start of the dialogue tree, so all the player has to do is pick the one labeled SPEECH 75 and they know they're going to succeed no matter what it actually says. Just like PnP players that say 'I roll for diplomacy' and expect the NPC to automatically do whatever they want because they rolled a 20.

 

[DraQ]

What some posters in this thread have been saying about the Speech skill really rings true for me. I run my own Pathfinder games and I've recently started telling my players to stop saying things like 'I make a perception check' or 'I use diplomacy to change his mind'. The checks are for me to call, not you - you need to tell me what you're doing or saying, and I'll decide whether or not to call a check.

This feels similar to the problem that games like FO3 have. Speech checks should be buried inside complex dialogue trees that involve actual thought and reflection. You should have to make a series of difficult choices about what to say, using intuition and your knowledge of the person you're speaking to, before having a Speech check finally at the END of the tree, once you've successfully navigated the tree and avoided bad dialogues.

Instead, most games use the Speech check at the start of the dialogue tree, so all the player has to do is pick the one labeled SPEECH 75 and they know they're going to succeed no matter what it actually says. Just like PnP players that say 'I roll for diplomacy' and expect the NPC to automatically do whatever they want because they rolled a 20.

Also, other skills and stats should be used instead or combined with speech whenever it would make sense.

 

[Funposter]

What some posters in this thread have been saying about the Speech skill really rings true for me. I run my own Pathfinder games and I've recently started telling my players to stop saying things like 'I make a perception check' or 'I use diplomacy to change his mind'. The checks are for me to call, not you - you need to tell me what you're doing or saying, and I'll decide whether or not to call a check.

This feels similar to the problem that games like FO3 have. Speech checks should be buried inside complex dialogue trees that involve actual thought and reflection. You should have to make a series of difficult choices about what to say, using intuition and your knowledge of the person you're speaking to, before having a Speech check finally at the END of the tree, once you've successfully navigated the tree and avoided bad dialogues.

Instead, most games use the Speech check at the start of the dialogue tree, so all the player has to do is pick the one labeled SPEECH 75 and they know they're going to succeed no matter what it actually says. Just like PnP players that say 'I roll for diplomacy' and expect the NPC to automatically do whatever they want because they rolled a 20.

I'm perfectly fine with things being tagged SPEECH 75 or DIPLOMACY 26, so long as there are several options to choose from. After all, it IS a video game, and without explicit tagging I think it would be difficult to know whether or not your skills are actually doing anything. However, referring back to the example of Legate Lanius in FO:NV, I think for every stage of that conversation, you are offered several dialogue options (three or four) and then a Speech check dialogue option, moving from 55->65->75->85->100->100->100. There's a couple of Barter options too, and even a [Bluff] option if the player is explicitly siding with the NCR, which requires lower Speech checks (60->75->90->90) but...they all succeed. As you said, the player automatically wins even if they pay no attention to what is happening, since it's just powergaming and playing with numbers. In an ideal world, I think there would be multiple options to choose from (as stated), all tagged [Speech] in this case, but some of them could still lead down the wrong track. Even the most persuasive person can't convince somebody if their premise is flawed. The player character should not be able to proclaim, "The sky is green!" and have anybody on the planet believe him because his Speech skill is 100. Deus Ex; Human Revolution actually did this in its dialogue showdown sections, where you still had to choose the correct options (even with the Social Enhancer), but that was handled quite clumsily since many of the differences between the options and their intoination were vague at best.

re: your PnP experience with players rolling for Diplomacy checks without any thought, have this

 

[Sykar]

What some posters in this thread have been saying about the Speech skill really rings true for me. I run my own Pathfinder games and I've recently started telling my players to stop saying things like 'I make a perception check' or 'I use diplomacy to change his mind'. The checks are for me to call, not you - you need to tell me what you're doing or saying, and I'll decide whether or not to call a check.

This feels similar to the problem that games like FO3 have. Speech checks should be buried inside complex dialogue trees that involve actual thought and reflection. You should have to make a series of difficult choices about what to say, using intuition and your knowledge of the person you're speaking to, before having a Speech check finally at the END of the tree, once you've successfully navigated the tree and avoided bad dialogues.

Instead, most games use the Speech check at the start of the dialogue tree, so all the player has to do is pick the one labeled SPEECH 75 and they know they're going to succeed no matter what it actually says. Just like PnP players that say 'I roll for diplomacy' and expect the NPC to automatically do whatever they want because they rolled a 20.

First bitch citizen Lynette is a good example for that. If you just go through the dialogue mindlessly you can basically kiss Vault City good bye since she will make sure that your sorry ass gets thrown out.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Wow, feels like 2008 again. This kind of stupidity is rarely encountered outside of Bethesda's forums.

Worms and fish are not really animals, guise. They're just food for real animals that spawn into existence out of nothing.

I guess you can just say "I'm gonna intimidate the kid with my guns", well ok, you do intimidate him, but he's just a kid, he'll probably think your bluffing, or try to push you until you end up killing him, which brings us back to the "why would they open the gate when you killed their guard" situation.

That's because you're a dumbfuck moron used to play Bethesdian garbage and can only think in whatever retarded situations they set up.

Since you're so awesome at asking the hard questions, here's some for you: if it would be impossible to go in once killing the guard, why have the guard in the first place?
Or here's another one, what if they were not kids, but everything else was the same? Guess, what's the point in having anyone killable or having different options to solve a problem, right?

 

[thesheeep]

Do we have to do this every few years?...

 

[Cael]

Any of you guys arguing about whether plants can grow in an irradiated environment recently seen recent pictures of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl?

A land without human intervention for 200 years is going to look like Arborea on acid.