I'm really struggling with enjoying the game due to all of the invisible walls. If I have a point telling me to go to South East, I should be able to go South East. Not South and then East so as to avoid the hill and ridge that has an invisible wall on top. I know that you did this because followers and other NPCs couldn't get up there. The problem is that wasn't a huge issue in Fallout 3. I know a lot of people would rather have the invisible walls removed and allow us free scope in moving through the waste, rather than being force to take a long detour for no good reason what so ever. Right now, I can't recommend this game to my friends because of this. I've had my character die because an invisible wall pushed him over a cliff. PLEASE PATCH THIS FOR ALL VERSIONS OF THE GAME!

Agreed. Personally I think if an area isn't intended for the player to access then it simply should not be accessible (steep mountainside, deadly fall, whatever). Just plopping up an invisible barrier is lame and quite frankly just damn lazy.

Invisible barriers always equal fail.

Posted already, answered by obsidian, confirmed they're easy to mod away.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1124190-invisable-wall-meshes-seperate/page__p__16523638&#entry16523638

Good info! Thanks!

Yeah, I really don't see this being included in a patch. Invisible walls have been complained about in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and now in New Vegas, but they do serve a function and are ultimately there to prevent certain problems from arising, as someone from Obsidian was kind enough to point out. *shrug* If you're playing on PC, it is an easy thing to remove them all via the GECK.


Personally, I am used to them and they don't bother me. I am not a Parkour practitioner, and neither are any of my characters.

Yeah, it's odd.... I guess I'm just used to it, because I haven't noticed any. I mean, in FO3, there was the border around the whole map (not a problem) and then the impassable places that made sense - like the worst piles of spiky rubble, steep rockfaces, the (again) really spiky piles of rubble that blocked off "interior" city cells. No problems, there, they were all reasonable. And I don't know if I've run into any "bad" ones in NV, because nothing I've run into yet has stood out. :shrug:

I can understand adding an invisible wall to close off the map , but inside it to stop you from falling or hiking over small mountains is just silly to me

Problem is, I have the 360 version. I know that they can be modded, but it would require Obsidian to fix it for the 360 or PS3. That is why I'm hoping to hear from then on this. If I had known that there would be invisible walls like this, I would have purchased the PC version and tried to make it work that way (my PC is average so I didn't want to get it for the PC).

I don't really remember much in the way of invisible walls in either Oblivion or Fallout 3. The excuse I've heard from Oblivion is that the invisible walls are only there due to Companion/NPC path finding. They are placed in areas that require jumping/sidestepping to get to. If that is the ONLY reason for invisible walls, it isn't worth it for invisible walls to cover so much of the eastern side of the map. BTW I haven't even checked the west side.

I guess you people forget all about the 360 and PS3 players. Not everyone plays on a PC and most of us gamers got our start on consoles, rather than PCs. (Soopa old-school gamers started on board/table-top games, ha ha ha ha ha!)

I hate it when PC users have egos and make quite a bit of assumptions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but... Isn't the G.E.C.K. for PC users only?

But aye, I wouldn't mind them doing away with invisible walls and releasing a patch to remove half of them or some of them. I hate not being able to jump on top of something that looks easily jumpable, yet when I land on it, it pushes me off. (Sometimes to my death.) But I can live with it and deal with it. It's not game-breaking. Just a little less fun and explorable, not much.

I've found several places where the devs should have placed a rock face or something (even on old broken fence would work) but instead just plopped an invisible wall. I mean come on, they had to put a blockage there right? Would it really have been that much harder to put something that blocks the path AND makes sense? Nothing breaks immersion faster than not being able to take a step forward onto totally unobstructed ground. I'm not talking about the map boundaries. Those are totally fine and even give you a message saying to turn back. It's the ones that block you for no apparent reason that are unacceptable. Shame on you New Vegas devs! :thumbsdown:

On a side note I've also noticed several places that the character cannot access while encumbered. I never had that problem in Fallout 3 and was actually quite impressed that those devs had taken the time to make 99% of the world accessible even while encumbered. Not in New Vegas though. I'm constantly having to throw crap in a nearby oven or mailbox or whatever just to climb over a table or something to get at a shiny then climb back over and grab the stuff back out. Yeah yeah, I'm that guy that can't just leave it behind. :wavey:

Also, some of the houses seem cramped and out of proportion too. There is one house in the starter town that has a kitchen that seemed like the appliances are WAY too big for it and the table placement wouldn't allow someone to open the oven or refrigerator. Seemed kinda silly and extremely obvious to me.

w0rd, the map boundaries are fine and I have no problem with that.

But yeah, I agree with a few of your points.

Ummm...there were tons of invisible walls in Fallout 3. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. That 'easily climbable' rock is just as accessible looking as most of the 'rubble' in the Capitol Wasteland. It's a tool to maintain your exploration. The world is open enough that you can still enjoy it and ignore the walls.

Huh. Guess I don't notice that sort of stuff.

(But, then, I'm also the type who doesn't notice the "change reels" dot at the movies, or minor continuity/editing stuff like bad reflections in mirrors or character's hair not being the same. Again, movies.)

Ah, well.

But at least the massive stacks of rubble were there as a visible deterrent. In this game, a gentle rolling hill, knee high step up to flat plains, etc, are all blocked off by invisible walls. Besides, the use of invisible walls for the rubble is, at least from a programming and decision making point, different from the invisible walls in NV. In Fallout 3, those invisible walls were done because there is nothing on the other side of that rubble. Here, they are done because your Follower can't make it up that one little step. Everything has been loaded for what is beyond and on the other side of these invisible walls. The walls are being used in a completely different manner, and keep you from making basic walking trips from one location to the next.

Case in Point, try walking from Novac to Cottonwood Cove in a straight South Eastern line. It can't be done because of invisible walls. Cottonwood Cove is there without having to go through loading (unlike the DC Metro in FO3), but you still have to take an annoying South then East or East then South path instead of going straight over the mountains.l BTW the mountains aren't even that bad, they are similar to the ones you would find on the south western side of Fallout 3. But here we have huge chunks of real map (not talking about the Strip sections where it needs to be loaded, but normal map terrain) that we can't walk on because of invisible walls. It hampers my ability to get from point A to point B in an efficient manner.

Yes but those were artfully placed in areas that made sense (like the large piles of rubble in the city). Some of the ones I've hit in Vegas are virtually in the wide open with nothing to say to the player "there is nothing over there and you can't reach it". In fact there is an invisible wall near the Legion camp (dunno the name) in the southeast area of the map that I actually went around and came back up to from the other side. It was in the wilderness near a rocky outcrop in view of the tents and I think it was to make you go around the outcrop (which looks like you can easily climb over) but it "hung" off of them way too far. Terrible! I'll get some video of it if I can find it again.

I think that was the Cottonwood Cove place that I was talking about earlier. It is the same thing if you are going from Boulder City to The Fort. Plenty of passable flat land between Boulder City and The Fort, but none of it is accessible because of invisible walls.

I think if the devs really cared about us they would notice that none of us want invisible walls in this game. I understand they are only human but this is a problem they can go back and change instead of saying "whats done is done". Its quite obvious it was a mistake in adding these invisible walls, hopefully they will have the courage of admitting it was a failure and changing it.

That's what I'm hoping for as well. For me, I just don't want to play the game any more. If I'm going to run into Invisible walls where ever I go, then this just isn't a game I want to play, it feigns openness while trying to force you down a linear path. I think Evergreen Mills is a great example of how openness worked in Fallout 3. Please give us this opportunity in New Vegas.

i agree, devs please remove this invisible walls crap as soon as possible for pc!

until now i like the game very much but this issue is REALLY annoying, i tought it would be a free game like fallout 3, please devs change this!

Sorry to drag this one back up, but it is better than making a new thread.

I agree with most of what has been already said. Personally I rarely had any issues with invisible walls in FO3 and if there were some you could clearly see why they were there. And even when companions got stuck in the hills they would always catch up with you in FO3, it was no biggy for me.

Up until now I have been enjoying New Vegas, but as I have roamed off the roads, (careful now!) these pesky invisible walls keep popping up spoiling my game. It just seems madness to stop you from 'Free Roaming' in a game that it designed for you to free roam?! Surely?

The areas that are covered are quite random, small slopes, a ledge, a rock, open areas! It makes the game feel less free roam and more 'You must travel from A to B this way only!!!' This has really spoilt NV for me at the moment and feels like the dev's have cuts huge corners and spoilt the gameplay and feel of Fallout.

We know its not going to happen, but I too would like these taken out where they are not needed.

360 User btw and even if I was a PC user it would svck to have to edit a game to make it playable? Surely that is the dev's job?

You know, I personally think the walls are only there because the game is that much smaller than FO3 (something I did not expect) that the dev's did not want you to explore the entire terrain in a matter of a few hours. So they make us walk huge distances and funnel us into traps to make it harder? Mmm..I think we are onto something there..

Just my 2 cents anyhow.

Please remove the invisible walls on the moutain tops

Or maybe just make them shimmery to the eye so that we can just avoid them knowing that "Here be naughtiness".

If I could just see that I'm not going to be able to go somewhere, I won't, repeatedly, keep wasting time trying to get over/through there.

[quote name='urb' date='21 October 2010 - 11:07 PM' timestamp='1287720422' post='16532959']
Posted already, answered by obsidian, confirmed they're easy to mod away.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1124190-invisable-wall-meshes-seperate/page__p__16523638&#entry16523638
[/quote]This can be done, but those walls are there for a purpose (removing them can have side effects).

As I understand it those walls are often used to simplify the geometry of the landscape for the AI (to make easier / believable navigation for NPC's). Removing the walls may cause them to behave differently in the areas where the walls no longer effect how they navigate.

As others have mentioned, the invisible walls is F3 were mainly there to keep you from accessing an area that needed to load separately from the open world. This isn't the case here, which makes the walls a clumsy hack to cover up insufficient pathfinding from the companion's AI. If they just teleported to your location after being stuck x distance away, then there would be no need for the walls. If I recall, this was how it worked in F3.

Poor pathfinding abounds in this game, by the way. I've had a companion go completely around a building in the total opposite direction I was traveling because they forgot to lay pathfinding tracks for a simple slope upwards. Of course they get killed from encountering hostiles on the other side by themselves...