Hi, everyone,

I'm new to this forum, but I'm a big fan of good old Fallout/Fallout 2, and have played Fallout 2 about 6 or 7 times during the last 10 years. I have a couple of ideas which should make Fallout Online more realistic and social-oriented.

The first idea is about making custom buildings. These buildings should not be constructed by any gamer, but rather by guilds (or by any other kind of social groups) and become shared among the rest of the world. Any new guilds can get "building licence" or ground for some in-game "money" or another values, design new building in some simple editor and place it inside game after moderador's approval. This feature will make Fallout's world more customized and dynamic filling Wastelands by new architectures and objects.

The second idea is about making conversations. It would be nice to enable in-game speech using microphones. But not just by enabling friend-speech when you can make conversation with friends only, but making characters' speech audible by any other gamer which is near enough to hear it like it happens in real life. When character A is moving away from character B, B's speech should be more quiet for A until it will be undetectable when A is about 15-20 meters from B. I don't sure if the second feature already used in other MMORPGs, maybe this is already implemented...

What are you thinking about my ideas, guys? BTW, sorry for my English mistakes, this is not my native language.

Welcome to the forums!

Your talk about FO2 makes me want to break out my copy again .

I dont know about custom buildings though. It seems like a lot of work, without too much to show for it, and a lot of time the GMs have to take away to examine someones building. But, i'm not necisarily for player made buildings for the most part. I just think having players building houses/shops/ect all over the place would made the wasteland not-so-wastelandy.

With the in game voip you're suggesting, there's a game that used to be around and might be getting resurected called All Points Bulletin or APB. It was a mixed bad. On one hand, it added a lot to the gameplay because you would hear players organizing thier team and you could use it to your advantage if you were close enough to hear what they were saying. On the other hand though, you always ran into people with thier music blaring, crunching on nachos, and that 'i'm way too overweight and should probably get a really good medical exam' breathing over the mic.

To reduce amount of work needed to examine all new gamers' buildings I suggest to allow build them only by guilds which reputation and purchasing capacity are high enough. So the quality of buildings should be high and wastelandy of Wastelands will not be broken.

On the other hand though, you always ran into people with thier music blaring, crunching on nachos, and that 'i'm way too overweight and should probably get a really good medical exam' breathing over the mic.

This problem could be easily solved by using walkie-talkie principle - gamer should hold a key "radio" during his speech like it's implemented in Counter Strike, for example. So there will be no noise when gamer just keeps silent and doesn't talk to anybody. This "radio" feature could be even integrated in game like special equipment for outfits or something.

I still think it would take a lot of time away from the GMs, but it all depends on how detailed the examination would be. But taking time from the GMs is, to be quite honest, not that big of deal for most players.

However, any system of player controlled buildings in FOOL would have to be implimented very carefully. There really can't be an all out 'build anywhere' system in FOOL. Those that have played SWG know what tends to happen with that, and why it would ruin the FO feel; wandering a metropolis just does not seem too FO to me. On the other hand, if devs limit the space for player housing then new players will eventually start getting 'slim pickings' and/or the devs would be forced to always be narrowly expanding the game world to create new properties for new players. It also begs to question; what happens to my property if i cancel my sub? Or if i don't log on for a few months?

On the other hand, if devs limit the space for player housing then new players will eventually start getting 'slim pickings' and/or the devs would be forced to always be narrowly expanding the game world to create new properties for new players.

It will happen sooner or later if game will gain success. The more people are playing - the more space is required to feel comfortable without loosing touch with post-apocalyptic world which likely to be devastated and ruined. This post-apocalyptic feeling will be lost if player will face with encounters every 10 meters even in Wasteland. Thus expanding is required, but the question is - how it's gonna be.

It also begs to question; what happens to my property if i cancel my sub? Or if i don't log on for a few months?

If properties can belong to guilds only, I don't see the problem. If guild (or other social group of players) breaks up - they just sell it to the "goverment" of the current town or something, and other guilds or even individuals can buy it for the price which should be lesser than price of developing new building from scratch. Individuals or guilds can safely store their equipment in their buildings, etc. If you don't logon during a couple of months - your building can either be destroyed or occupied by other players which can unlock it and get licence to own it if you didn't logon during this time. Simply speaking, the building will be considered as abandoned and will be owned by somebody else.
I think that buildings can be smoothly integrated into the game's economic system, and this is truly natural thing, because we deal with it every day in real life.

just one question about your thought, who will design the houses? the guilds or the individual
player?

I think it would be better if the indivdual player can construct &design houses to some level
but with larger/more complex buildings like.. a farm or a three storey house, I can see the need of a team of constructors (but set the limit of how much time it would take to build or skill it would require to).

If not the player design it, I can se that it will be conflicts otherwise between the guildmember and the player :/ King of Swamp Castle: Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who.

I think i need to clarify a bit of what i meant.

I know expansion is necisary in any MMO. But what i meant is that you would essentially be forcing the devs to direct thier future development in an effort to support the system. For the devs, it takes away from the time they could be developing playable content. Also, of much more importance, is that it forces devs to constantly be working on lower level areas in order to provide housing to newer players at the same pace older players (or guilds) were able to obtain a house. Even if, initially, all the housing was in the high level areas, as expansions, patches, ect. come out increasing the level cap and adding new content for those higher levels the area where the housing was initially wouldn't be high level anymore.



Making properties available to guilds actually complicates the issue. Instead of just considering "player A hasn't logged on in a month" so the account is flagged as inactive, you would have to consider the account activities of Player A, Player B, Player C, ect.

Also, how would you determine the requirements for building a house, for example? And the requirements for maintaining ownership? What measures would you put into place to keep a player from recruiting random people to meet the requirements for the house and then just booting them all so he could effectively have his own house? What measures could you put into place to discourage that, without making it very difficult for a small group of friends to build and maintain a house amongst themselves?

Why not make it a mission based system? That is, there could be specific areas in the game which a player can essentially control. To gain control of an area, a player would have to complete a task, such as clearing out some radscorpions from a cave. After the player completes the task, they could have a window pop up saying 'would you like to bid on this property?' or some such. You could have every player that completes the mission within a specific time frame, lets say 24 hours, place competing bids on the property (this could be done with cash, but IMO it would probably be best to have some form of currency just for this, PP or property points(?) i guess). Once you win a bid, you then own the property.

However, an old radscorp cave isn't exactly a luxery suite at the ritz. So, once you own the property you could upgrade it various ways depending on your skills. Perhaps with some science skill you can place some solar panels and electric lights in your cave. Or, maybe with some survival skill you can put together a rack to tan animal skins, and have a campfire. A high speech and/or barter skill? Maybe you can convince traders to use the watering hole nearby for thier brahman, changing thier course and making it possible for you to have easy access to new supplies. But i'll get back to that.

In order to maintain ownership of a property, you would have to complete various 'randomly' generated missions within certain guidelines native to that property. This would cause most of the properties in the low level areas to become abandonned as players progress to areas where it's just not worth the time and effort to travel back to arroyo from the NCR. For example, the radscorp cave could randomly generate missions to clear out a nearby nest of critters to keep them from reinfesting the cave. The critters could even be leveled; radscorps/giant ants/rats to start, then as you level up it could become geckos, then giant mantises, then fire geckos... until you're finally clearing out deathclaws at level 400.

Also, there would have to be non-combat based quests as well. Maybe the radscorp cave had some toxic waste dumped into it before the war and every so often someone with a high science skill has to decontaminate it (i know, most people wouldn't live in a cave like that, but we have to remember in FO, people wade through toxic waste with the same non-chalantness most of us have when we make the morning stumble to the rest room when we first wake up).

But back to property upgrades; it could be done so that upgrades tier up, and even make it beneficial for players to work together in upgrading pieces of property. With the solar panel, for example, maybe over time you can upgrade it and place more so that eventually you can generate enough power to not only support your own property, but also trade electricity to the guy who owns the property next door so he can power the turrets he built using his very high repair and big guns skill. In return for the electricity, perhaps he provides you with a few turrets to protect your property when you're away. Maybe there's a third piece of property with an owner that has a very high speech skill and in exchange for electricity and turrets from the other two players he can convince the NPCs which guard his shack to start doing roving patrols to cover the other two's property as well. I think you see how this could eventually develop.

The quests to aquire and maintain a piece of property could even be tweaked so that adjoining properties require skills which compliment each other. In the above example, perhaps one player needs to complete a science quest to bid on the property, another needs to complete a repair/big guns quest, and the third needs to complete a speech/barter type quest.