There were so many ways to heal crippled limbs, even in hardscore mode, that it shouldn't have been an inconvenience.

We're going to get back in the argument about "Fix things" vs "No they can't be". Hopefully not, though. I admit the shortcomings of the system. I've been given them criticism (and also positive feedback for what the did right) ever since the game came out.

About accuracy.... There now seems to be an individual metric for accuracy for every gun. I can't tell what exactly it means, but I can only assume the size of the cone of fire (and how much recoil spreads it further apart). That's already a good basis to start fiddling with how these sorts of systems work.

More radical changes is what is asked for, what is called for. Things the player can feel. That's nothing to do with the game having RNG or not -- even if I would prefer RNG to solve things. This goes for all things in the systems; SPECIAL, perks, skills (oh, well, not skills anymore), derived attributes and so on.

On the grand scheme of things, I know the gameplay is pussified and there's nothing to do about it anymore. I'm just talking about these things to burn off some boredom.

Depends on the difficulty and the player. For me having limbs take +25% dmg was tough in hardcoe. I also liked the extra action points and the extra draw/reload speed. Plenty of other cool traits that I enjoy on my characters. Such as Wild Wasteland which added weird areas and encounters, at the price of some of the more normal areas. More replay value.

I'm all in favor of traits

Hopefully.

Every gun already had an "accuracy" stat in Fo3 and NV, though it was more "weapon spread" then "accuracy", it was just a hidden value. As for Fallout 4, we have seen several weapon mods that effect accuracy outside of VATS, both positive and negative, and perks that effect it even more while using Vats.

I personally don't see anything wrong with the gameplay yet. It looks like it gotten a lot better from Fo3 or NV, and several of the changes seem to be trying to make SPECIAL and perks actually mean a hell of a whole lot more then they did in Fo3 or NV, so that's an improvement. And the crafting blows both Fo3 and NV combine out of the water, so there's that also.

Yes they did have accuracy stats. But now they are visible which is clearly meant to say something to the player (I think the pistol used in the demo was 84 or something, some rifle was 115....) -- the mods and perks you mention, so why not traits aswell.

The gameplay to me looks like it's, as stated by the Todd, better at being an FPS. In an RPG that goes in the completely wrong direction by dismissing the character, and as far as I am concerned - in this given context - it's [censored] given that combat will be a major part of the game (if not even the most prevalent part). It's no doubt going to be a more fluid game than previously, but at a dear cost.

crafting blows? I counter with f3 Dart gun=deathclaws die NV Nuka-grenade=everything dies

/your opinion

I think mainly because that would be largely redundant. Not that redundancy isn't useful in some situations, obviously all weapons KILL people, but that doesn't mean there should be one weapon type(Since I know someone, not you specifically UnDeCaf, is likely going to try to pull that argument). But we already have perks and weapon mods doing that, adding traits on top of that, especially when traits are mechanically just perks with a tacked on negative effect, just seems like too much stacking, and too much stacking just results in everything not being really meaningful or effectual.

IMO, Traits should do something that you can't really get anywhere else. Keeping as they are, where traits like "Trigger Discipline" are basically just the "Commando" perk, but with a negative, isn't really that great of a mechanic.


Well I have to disagree. I have never held the belief that there is some fundamental disconnect between you and the character in an RPG. Many games, regardless of genre, are built around the idea that YOU are the character, not just someone controlling the character, regardless if you resemble the character in any way or not. But we have already had that dance before, so I can't really say anything beyond what I said before, I disagree. I don't really think any of this is anti-RPG.

Well, there is the thing that how it is handled overall. For an example... If you had a weapon whose base accuracy was 100 (let's assume that means 30 degree angle for the cone and recoil afterwards pushes it up to 10 degrees further per shot) and your character has a trait that lowers accuracy by 50% (don't latch on to the numbers, just an example), you then have a cone of 45 degrees (55 with recoil) which at range might do quite an effect. You can modify the gun and you can get perks that increase accuracy, but you will always be firing your gun only at 50% of the potential due to the trait. That makes a difference, even if it might be somewhat offset late game through character progression (though that's a balancing issue and it can be handled).

That's true to a point. But I think this is something the perks should do (ouside of skills). I've always viewed traits as - like I said earlier - inherent characteristic quirks that modify the PC on a core level, affect that which the player then starts to build further.

It's the role that you play that is the disconnect (whether you pose it as yourself of as provided by the game) and that needs defining beyond what you can do. But as you said, you disagree and that's that.

While I agree with the theory behind that, in reality, you cant really BUILD off of traits, since they are so utterly disconnected from the rest of the character building system. Its not like SPECIAL/Skills/Perks where they all interact, and things like perks need X SPECIAL or Y skill level or w/e to be unlocked. Traits are just this other, that sits out in the stands while everyone else in actually in the field playing ball.

Which is part of the reason I think they were removed from Fallout 3, and why birthsigns were removed from Skyrim. They were just this other thing, sitting way far out there, standing stones ended up doing similar things, but also interacted with the rest of the game more. Which is part of the reason I suggested trait-plants, bring them out from OVER THERE, to IN HERE, and put them in a situation where they can be more part of "the rest" of the game.

I think for the RPG of Fallout, decisions have to be made about what's important. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bethesda-built-really-good-fps-for-fallout-4/1100-6428329/; so what's more important for the combat in Fallout 4? I don't care much about my character svcking despite my player skill, or my character wiping the floor despite my lack of player skill, or succeeding when they shouldn't on account of my skills; but I do want my character to be good at certain things, and to get better at certain things, and for those decisions to provide a different experience in gameplay. The FPS mechanics are very promising in that last regard, and have no effect on the non-combat portions of the RPG, like dialog (to be determined), quest branches (we don't know anything about that yet), or settlement building (hello!).

As for traits, they've always been really underwhelming to me. Too many of them are either imbalanced or just inconsequential. I won't miss them and I don't believe they really ever offered any meaningful "choice & consequence" with the exception of maybe Logan's Loophole. I can brainstorm traits that I would find useful or "balanced", sure, but I don't care if that's not high on Bethesda's list of priorities.

You can if they are made to deliver, but it's not their part to be the thing to build off of, they're just part of the plinth that help give the PC a nudge towards certain direction and uniqueness (and an optional part, you're never required to pick any). They may seem like "sitting out there away from others" because they are a constant unlike the rest, but they are part of the base of your PC.

I'd rather implants were implants. Things you pick along the way if you want to.

What I very much dislike about the direction RPG's have been going the recent 10-15 years is the insistence on simplifying and cutting down all these systems inherited from the PnP games that were never perfect (there can not be a "perfect system") but which nonetheless provided huge amount of extra material and intrigue to build a character according to the players intents. It is more complex to have more metrics to consider, but it has far greater potential than with stripped and simplified systems (which in my opinion only build up to homogenize the whole market).

Them being a constant is sort of the main problem I have. That they are constant, and don't adapt or evolve in any real way, is part of the reason why they become so pointless after awhile. It also really doesn't make sense, since many traits from Fo1/2/NV have ways that a person could logically lessen/overcome the negative effects of, and/or find ways to use it to enhance the positives. That the game doesn't offer those to the player is honestly kind of dumb.

How about a system where you can pick traits at the beginning of the game like in past games, but the player can find various implants/surgeries and the like to modify them over the course of the game like I suggested prevously?

More metrics are fine, so long as they actually offer something beyond being "just another metric on the stat screen". However, there's really only so many metrics you can have before everything starts eating up each others specialties, making each increasingly worthless, and you can't just keep tacking on more and more powers/effects to try to make each one stand out more in an attempt to overcome this. Doing that just means you will eventually reach a point where you have so many powers that none of them are really useable in the general gameplay, and thus all balance and meaning in those metric is lost.

There's also problems like the bundling effects of traditional attribute systems. For example, in Morrowind, axe, blunt, and long blade, damage was controlled by the STR attribute. For those 3 melee weapon skills, there was really only ONE stat that mattered, and that was STR. Anyone who got 100 STR was a master of all those weapons, regardless of if they wanted to use them or not. This destroyed any sort of character diversity by forcing everyone who went into STR to be a melee god. What made it worse is that, since STR also controlled carry weight, encumbrance, and health, on top of those melee weapon skills damage, everyone who took STR was forced to become very similar to each other, because there was no way to avoid getting bonuses to ALL these effects at once. One couldn't play a master swordsman who had great base damage, but lacked the stamina to constantly use power attacks. Or some guy with high HP, but that lacked the ability to use a sword. You HAD to be great in all of them.

Skyrim on the other hand removed the STR metric, but in doing so separated melee weapon damage, hp, and stamina, from each other, allowing the player to build far more diverse builds then they could in past TES games which had STR bundleding them all together. Skyrim had less metrics then Morrowind, because it doesn't have the STR attribute, but it has more ways of fine tuning your character to make actually different builds.

There is also stuff like the changes of the speed attribute effecting base character speed in Morrowind, into sprinting in Skyrim. Speed in past TES games was hilariously broken, getting to 100 speed made the character run so fast he would make Usain Bolt jealous, which just destroyed the game since you could run past everything without care. Skyrim removed the speed attribute, thus losing a metric, but changed the whole way gaining more speed worked. Skyrim introduced sprinting, and made it so Increasing your stamina allows one to sprint for increasingly longer times, allowing you to cover a greater distance faster then if you had lower stamina. However, since it wasn't just a base modifier, you weren't this stupidly fast running guy at all times, that could just run past everything with no care like in past TES games. It achieves the same effect, but in a far more balanced way, but in a way that isn't really a metric like we normally think of it.

And much of the "metrics removal" we have seen in the last decade is stuff like that. This removal of redundancy that didn't actually increase the number of ways you could play, but rather decreased it, and finding ways to do things metrics did poorly in past games, in ways that far more balanced, but also not really maetrics at all.

OFC there are just things that were removed because the devs couldn't be assed, everything suffers from that, especially RPGs, which were notorious for feature creep back in the day when making them was cheaper. Nowadays you just can't do all that because its so much more expensive to make games then it was 10-15 years ago.

And there are things that are removed, and not really replaced, but are done so to make other things better. Like, we don't have the same number of weapon types as Morrowind, but, on the other hand, not having to make all those weapons has allowed Bethesda to make the differences between one handed and two handed combat a lot more pronounced then Morrowind, and allowed them to add dual wielding, which gave one handed combat a new spin not in Morrowind. We lhave a net loss in total metrics, but the remaining metrics work far better then before.

Ultimately, I can't really agree with the "death of RPGs due to loss of stats" philosophy. People cried about the death of TES with Skyrim, since it had no classes and attributes. But even without them, theres FAR more ways to actually diversify your character in meaningfull ways then in Morrowind which did have them.

Stats are fine, but they mean nothing if they do nothing, and that is, IMO, what ultimatly matters in an RPG..... what you can DO, and what DOING that actually means. And I have typically found that modern RPGs typically offer far more to DO, and have what you DO actually DO something.

OFC there are just bad games like Dragon Age 2, and Mass Effect 3, which make everything pointless, but that was a problem even back in the past also.

My thing is, I go back to older RPGs that have way more metrics, and I get disappointed by how little those metrics do, or how little the game's actual design supports some of those metrics compared to others.

The only issue is that the GECK is not being released for F4 until "early" 2016. So modding may not even begin until then.

Now with Avellone gone, Obsidian might actually be able to make a good Fallout game.

Could hold off buyin' the game til' then as well.

Avellone is what made NV as good as it was.

I dread to think of an unchecked Sawyer would do after Honest Heart and Daniel.

Indeed....

.... I am happy as well for this. I am more wondering how this system will work now that they have only working with perks, besides the obvious. (because of skyrim leveling system) It will look and feel more a life in a way to actually being able to play with perks and the things you want to use more and synchronizing them with perks instead of perks and skills.

Not as bad as an unchecked Emil Pagliarulo (that is sadly the current standard)

OT:

If skills have been removed/mutated that's a bad omen for traits.

>Hating Emil who wrote the best questline in Oblivion.

I know Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns but I'm failing to see how this is cognate to his writing in Fallout 3?

Edit:

Also I generally found Oblivion's writing to be insipid rather than just incompetent like Fallout 3.

>Implying it was really that bad when basically every one of the supposed plotholes has been utterly debunked, stupid questions like "what do they eat" have been explained with in-game sources more times then people have [censored]posted on 4-chan, and complaints about dialog options have been decimated by the fact that they are not 100% accurate representations of what your character says, as has been true of every RPG since forever.

Do I really need to get into all the world building problems NV had? Fallout 3 wasn't great by any measure, but NV had literally just as many problems.

I'm being completely candid, is there anything you won't defend and try to justify when it comes to Fallout 3?

If you can't see the patent flaws in Fallout 3's writing then this debate is sisyphean, as is debating fundamentalists on any issue.

Talking to him is pointless.

Besides the [censored] gunplay? The general uselessness of SPECIAL and perks? The ungodly limited weapon and armor selection? The equally limited crafting system? The terrible DLC enemies like the sawmp people, super mutant overlords, albino radscorpions, and feral ghoul reavers? The terrible modeling and animations? The weirdly small number of side quests?

Ohh yeah, and Karma blows ass. Whoever thought that was a good idea shot be shot alongside whoever thought faction reputation was a good idea.

That's pretty much what I was thinking, and why I didn't reply. There are parts of Fallout 3 that were better than New Vegas, but suggesting that the writing/story/dialog were better? That just silly.