He probably never played the first two and is just defending the changes because it's a bethesda game.

A pretty big part of the game originals was the GRUPS-inspired SPECIAL system, the isometric view and Turn-Based combat (all linked because of the GRUPS tabletop inspiration).
A great deal of this is changed in Fallout 3 the core gameplay has changed.
Regardless of what ones opinion of this is, the fact remains that it made some very drastic changes compared to it's predecessors.


In all honesty, though it may be an attempt of something of a turn-base play, it is a failed attempt. It's basically a bullet-time auto-aim feature.

And to stay On-topic.
Higher and more SPECIAL/skill checks for dialogue and stuff ingame. Currently there is no actual need to actually raise a SPECIAL stat above 7 (in fact only strength with it's carry weight and health increase has any use above 7 points actually).
Actually any change that allows more diverse characters instead of masters of all would be welcome.

First things first - there's nothing turn-based about VATS, at all. It's bullet-time, if anything. It's not a substitute for TB gameplay, or a variation; or anything at all to do with turn-based gaming. It's just a variation on bullet time. It's there because they wanted to let you target specific body parts, like you were able to do in the older games (which was simply an aimed shot - not VATS;) and not because they wanted to carry over some variation on the TB gameplay. VATS has absolutely none of the qualities that one would look for in a turn-based game; and contains none of the considerations you would find in such a system.

Which is fine. Because it's bullet time. For players like me who find the pacing of a real-time game to frantic; it's a god-send. These days, I generally don't play fully real-time games without some sort of "crutch" that allows me to catch me breath, or at least simplify the mechanics a bit (a la the auto-aiming in the latest GTA, for example. Or the pause-and-play mechanic in Mass Effect.) And that's okay. Fallout 3 is a real-time game - plain and simple. It's a half-way decent shooter; and it works well enough. It could be better (and VATS could stand to be improved a bit, as well, probably.) But I'm not going to say it's "bad" because it's not turn-based.

But it's still a very different game than Fallout 1 and 2. Fine, "at it's core," it's still a Fallout game. It's still a Fallout game overall. I'm just saying it's still a very different game than it's predecessors. Mario Galaxy might still be a Mario game when you get right down to it, but I highly doubt you can argue with the fact that it's still a very, very different game than Super Mario Bros 1. Legend of Zelda: Windwaker might still be a Legend of Zelda game, but it's still very different than the first in the series - and I'd argue that more has changed from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 than between any two Zelda games. Yeah, it's still a Fallout game. But it's a very different Fallout game than what has gone before.

Doesn't make Fallout 3 a bad game, for all of those changes. But it also doesn't inherently make it "better," either. Not all change is progress, after all.

I'd agree with that. No reason for them to do a 180 at this point. And it certainly wouldn't sell as well. I still want to see a turn-based Fallout game that takes advantage of current advances in technology. But that doesn't mean it has to be Fallout 4 that gives me what I'm looking for. I'd buy both game, personally. And likely enjoy them both very much.

I want VATS to zoom out to an cinematic overhead view (not necesserily isometric) when activated and allow you to target enemies and their specific body parts aswell (and you should be able to target other items such as explosives and such-like). Then your allies would have a turn, then your enemies until, then, well, you all know how turn based systems work.

Oh yeah, in the options you should be able to turn of VATS completely or make it automatic upon sight of an enemy.

The enclave WILL attempt to fix you and maneuver. Overall, the AI is rather basic, but it's not as horrible as many of you try to make it out to be. This is not am FPS, it's an RPG, and combat, for many roleplayers, is well down the list of favorite features.

I was thinking this one though in the bathroom.

Online would kill the game, but!

I was thinking about all the different factions and what not and was thinking how cool it would be to have your own group of raiders, mercs, lawbringers and whatnot. The game shouldn't be focused on you creating your group but it could be an interesting element. And there are several ways this could be done with a larger community;
1; You could register a group of NPC's, and perhaps compare you're NPC's with similar one's online, for instance, trade caravan with the most caps worth of trade in a week could get a new piece of barter enhancing armour, raiders with the most ears could get a new rifle.
2; You could make it partialy multiplayer, maybe have a co-op mode where a friend can join your party of super mutant slayers.
3. Make it very small scale MMORPG, WITHOUT the first M. Maybe have 8 players on a server, you don't know when the other players are online or offline, unless they're in your group and you may just bump into them in your travels.

It would be a massive mistake to detract from the single player core of the series, but perhaps some metal gear portable ops style gameplay might work, whaddya think?

Oh, and as for fitting in with the motif of starting the game in a vault, well that would still work. If you limited the game to 8(eg) PC's perhaps they could be a party sent out to explore the wastelands and end up embarking on their own very different destinys. Or perhaps one vault decided to open the door and see if the world had recovered...I dunno, any thoughts?

My mod ideas....

MORE ITEMS AND BETTER "JUNK"
how about finding barrels for guns and other parts for guns on youre travels, what would happen if youre first ak was fully built by YOU ingame? what would happen if you tried a half or close to almost done built weapon during battle??? how about finding a blowtorch and hammer for PADLOCKED doors etc

INTERACTIVE REPAIRING OF WEAPONS
i want interactive repairing, where you click on a repair kit not during battle or at a workbench,
then you have to take the guin apart and depending on the damage it would depend on what you had to do, example lets just say you threw a few grenades at a 100% quality rifle on the floor, it will then screw up the gun, giving it lop sided aim and shooting until you repaired it with a new barrel and grip as the grip probably would be chipped and broken, possibly the trigger wouldve broken off and you cant use the gun, so the interactive repair menu would look like the stripping or peicing table on the CSI games etc

UPGRADING AND RENAMING YOURE WEAPONS FOR THAT UNIQUE FEEL
give your weapon a name and make it silent with a silencer, or upgrade a gun with more than one firing modes etc

MORE THAN ONE FIRING MODES OR STANCES
How about a better unarmed attacking feature, where you can change from ju jitsu style fighting through to mauy thai or karate??? how about a simple button to toggle firing modes on your gun etc

But it's all meaningless... the Enclave doesn't appear until later levels where most PC's small guns will be at 100 and will be most likely carrying around Lincoln's repeater... one can simply wait til they get in the open, then queue a few headshots and it's done.

better AI for when your sneaking. Like you have to hide the bodies so they aren't seen on patrols when its visible or if its dark they trip on the carcass. And with that we should be able to shoot out lights n maybe someone in the game finds a huge stock of night vision goggles a stealthy guy like me can use.

This might be a bit on the long side...

So on the New Vegas thread, we've been talking about making equipment and ammunition a bit harder to come by, and it gave me some ideas I think would be more realistically realized in a Fallout 4 game. In short, the most compelling moments I've come across in all the Fallout games have been when I've been down to my last stimpak, out of ammo, and really just struggling to survive. (And in all 3 titles, there's a relatively small window where that occurs, whereas by the end of the game you're pretty much invincible with effectively limitless supplies.) Fallout 2, I've always been a fan of, just for how the beginning of that game starts out. With really starting you out at the very bottom of the equipment ladder, and making it a much longer progression towards better stuff than F1 or F3.

So first things, I'd like to see in Fallout 4 an attempt to stretch out the equipment gain as long as possible. To me, it just meant more to me to have had to really work for those accomplishments. I just feel as if I'd earned it more when I'm walking around in Power Armor and a Plasma Rifle when I remember having started out and thinking the sharpened spear was a pretty good find. This doesn't have to mean starting you out as a Tribal, necessarily. And if you start out in a Vault, you're obviously going to start the game with more than a cheap knife. But perhaps when they were supplying your Vault with ammo, they got a good deal on a rare caliber that just isn't easy to find out in the Wastes, at least not around your immediate area.

And just making things more expensive would be a good step in the right direction, as well. Another thing I liked about Fallout 2 in the beginning was how I'd pool all my meager stuff together just to be able to afford one stimpak or a little bit of ammo. That's not going to be permanent, but you could even make it a regional thing. At the start of the game, you're going to be sort of limited in where you can explore, due to tougher enemies. Maybe the early towns the player is likely to visit at the onset would sort of exploit the player - charging them exhorbitant fees and paying them very little for their work. Depending on the PC's origins, it could be because people have a thing against Tribals, or because they expect someone fresh out of a Vault to be too naive to know better, or maybe they just know that there's nothing the PC can do about getting blatantly ripped-off, just yet.

In general, I think the overall path of the plot ought to sort of parallel your PC's accumulation of equipment. In a game like this, it's inevitable that the player is going to get over the hump and eventually end up with more loot than they're ever going to need. I don't think the end goal of the game should be to kill the one bad guy, or whatever. Instead, have the usual "ending" of the game a bit earlier than that. By that point, your character is pretty much the most powerful force in the Wastes, single-handedly able to take on any task they're confronted with. You would have incredible power to exert your will - make the game at that point more about what you want to do with that power. Because really, no one would have been able to stand in your way if you decided that every settlement in the DC area owed you taxes every month - you're powerful enough to enforce that single-handedly. Or you could have beaten off the Supermutant threat by yourself - with or without the help of Lyons' group.

Maybe it could be interesting if the overall story arc was a bit more... "fantasy" in tone. Just the whole rags to riches thing, In an earlier iteration of this thread, we were talking about how a sort of feudal syem might be a good fit in Fallout. You'd start out as a "serf" dreaming of something more, building up power until you find yourself in command of your own little kingdom. You could plop that into any other sort of plotline, with the accumulation of power just being a bit more of a "meta" element - the context within which the rest of the plot plays out. It just seems to me that if infinite supplies is going to be an eventuality, then maybe the game ought to sort of take that into account...
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Related to that, I've got a couple other ideas that could go in-line with this. The first of them would be possibly a different way of dealing with the heightened difficulty you'd be facing early on, if you make it originally very hard and slow to progress on the line towards better and more equipment. I think it could be interesting to mess around with ways of not having player death, or making it more rare. Like if you when you found yourself over your head or in a tight spot, if instead of just dying and reloading when you found yourself out of hitpoints, you went into more of a "hovering at death's door" sort of state.

Off the top of my head, this could materialize by giving you a bit of an adrenaline rush when you fall to 0 HP. You'd be unable to fight when in this state, but you'd also be immune to any more damage for a certain amount of time, with heightened speed. To help you get out of that tight spot and find your way back to a safer area. Death could still be a possibility, where you'd still need to heal yourself within a certain amount of time or you'd find yourself bleeding to death or something. But I think something like that might help to mitigate the penalties for having a tougher start at the onset of the game. Heck, it's not like forcing the player to save and reload all the time really has anything to do with how "challenging" a game is.

Along those lines, your Karma level could tie into this in various ways. As in, perhaps those with higher Karma would be more likely to come across wandering NPCs that could help you when you find yourself in such a state. Even going so far as that occasionally when you do find yourself actually dying, you awaken to find that some nice person had come across your near-lifeless body out in the Wastes and nursed you back to health. Someone with less Karma would be much less likely to come across helpful wanderers, however. And that would obviously be mitigated by the fact that they'd have a leg up from taking those opportunities to get more helpful and better loot.

Because I think that might lead to some less obvious Karmic choices in the first place. When you're totally out of ammo, or in need of a decent weapon - that guy offering you a bunch of neat stuff in exchange for the assassination job is going to be much harder to turn down. Instead of the usual "good" and "evil" choices, where you're either a goody-two-shoes or evil just for the sake of it - you could find yourself facing some really tought choices. You might want to be a good guy, but simply by making supplies harder to come by initially the game is going to naturally test you in seeing just how important it is to you to always be on the side of goodness and justice. That goes all the way back to the Mad Max movies. Max is a "good guy," but he also has to worry about keeping himself alive - meaning he does sometimes have to compromise his ethics and look out for himself.

And speaking of Karma. I think that should be treated as such. Like affecting the chances of finding random help, or begging for water, etc. Make it less of a "I don't like you because you have lots of bad Karma points" thing, but more of a universal modifier. Someone who always takes the "low road" would, by the nature of their actions, be living in a less forgiving world than someone who was working to make it a better place by their own actions. I'd like to see the old reputation perks (or whatever they were called) make a return, to deal with how people respond to you. So that if you blow up Megaton, for example, you earn a rep with negative connotations. People might not know you were behind it's destruction, but you still have a rep for being the one guy who managed to live through that - whatever role that think you played it in; people would know that destruction follows wherever you go sort of thing.

And in that way, you could have great Karma, and find yourself getting help from people all the time; but still have lots of bad reputation statuses. You might have decided to do a 180 and make the world a better place, but people still wouldn't trust you because of your past. In short, NPCs would respond to your specific reputations you've earned, as opposed to your actual Karma level.

Anyway, just some ideas off the top of my head...

Undiscovered places should not show up on your compass. One of the items that could be found would be maps of different areas within the game giving the location of places. So the game map would grow as you found maps of the area. You should not know there's a river, bridge, town, or anything until it's been discovered or find a map of the area. Oh and one other thing? Binoculars.

I think in the context of this game, it makes sense for your Pip-Boy to come pre-loaded with a map of the surrounding area. Surely, that's information that would be readily available to you in a Vault. An outdated map, surely, but if you look closely, that's exactly the case of your personal map loaded onto your Pip-Boy. It does show roads and such that had been devestated during the War. Frankly, I think it makes more sense, that being the case. Surely a Vault that was ostensibly built to allow their occupants to rebuild after the war would have come equipped with some maps of the area in which they're going to have to reclaim society.

Of course you'd know where a river or a road is located within the gameworld. It would make less sense if you didn't, I'd think.

As far as markers showing up on the compass - I'm actually a fan of that mechanic. I like exploring just as much as the next guy, but I would have missed out on literally tons of stuff if i had to visually spot it. I would have walked right past any number of things in Fallout 3 without ever knowing they were there. But then again, I don't go for all this "immersion" stuff - I'll take fun over "realism" any day. And I frankly don't have time to go over the entire map, physically, with a fine-toothed comb just to try and discover even a percentage of what the game has to offer.

Another note is that this method does free up the voice acting for other areas. Without compass directions, and having to rely solely on verbal cues to find important areas - that is time spent that could otherwise go towards deeper conversations. Not to mention resources that could be spent building other areas - since with the compass markers and waypoints you just have to place the location onto the map. Without having to worry about figuring out how to give the player comprehensive directions to the get there for a quest.

I'd be much happier if the world map could somehow highlight where I'd been and where was still completely in the fog. The local map in Fallout 3 was too close for outside exploring and damn near useless for navigating in interiors, so I hope something can be done to fix those issues I had.

Morrowind didn't have map markers, but people often fail to mention that that game came with a map of Vvardenfell that showed where all Daedric ruins, Velothi towers, Dwemer ruins, and even bandit caves were located. *snickers*

I'm fine with no map markers, but then a map should come with the game which would be impractical, considering the very large density of locations in FO3.

One of the major peeves I have with Beth games is the inability of adding markers and notes to maps. This was especially annoying with Oblivion, given the many locations.

Agreed. I find that especially annoying when I'm playing on a PC. You only get that one marker you can place yourself, and still you can't add any notes to it. With both Oblivion and Fallout 3 I found myself keeping a pad of paper next to me so that I could write down locations I intended on visiting at a later date. Like in F3 I'd always run into place where I didn't quite have the lockpicking or computer skills needed to get further into an area - though I'd intended on raising those eventually.

It would have been especially helpful to me to be able to add some notes to my map, so that I'd easily be able to see what places I'd wanted to go back to later on.

Plus, something to help with exploring the interior areas. I really liked the level design in Fallout 3. I didn't get lost all that often, but many times there were all sorts of nooks and crannies and other areas; and I couldn't always tell if I'd fully explored a level before I left it. (That's what happened to me my first time through Dunwich - I completely passed by the very last door, and left wondering what all the hype over that place was all about...) Being able to place some notes on the local map would have really helped with that.

Or what I've often wished I had with me in that game was even just a can of spraypaint, so that I could keep track of places I'd already explored by marking on the walls without worrying about getting turned around or having to be really OCD about my exploring. It wouldn't have to be something that remained for very long in the system memory - just long enough for me to search an area thoroughly. Arguably the majority of the game is about exploring places - the more tools the player is given to encourage and support that playstyle, the better.

Maybe up the price of ammo.
Take away EVERY ammo-box/crate.
Make ammo rare.
More weapons which all require it's own kind of ammo. (Plasma Rifle, Laser Rifle, Tri-Beam, Metal Blaster all have MFC, change it somehow.)
New Weapons, it's been 200 years, they can't just use the same old weapons from before The Great War. In Mad Max 3 it took what? 20, 30 years for them to come up with some new kickass crossbow and other rifle-bow weapons.
Vendors should not be loaded with ammo.
Stimpacks should be more rare and expensive.
Don't give us access to every settlement directly, let us work for the access in.
Include some separate maps in the vanilla game. (the pitt, Pl, AAFB)
Have some form of better barter system with the vendors, example: a medical clinic woulden't want 200 Microfusion Cells... What the hell are they gonna use that for?
For the love of freakin' Norman Frempt don't give us +10hp PER LEVEL! And don't give us 20hpx1END!

Uh what about console users? hows that fair for them?

Console users are stuck with the vanilla version either way so it wouldn't make any difference.

Implying Beth won?t make console ports and everyone has a kickass computer :stare:

One thing that annoys me with FO3 is the following.

You hit lvl 30, you have ammassed a great fortune, you have enough power armor and plasma weapons to arm a company sized unit (and enough other kit to pretty much arm two more company sized militias at least), you are the messiah of the wasteland, you have a radio show pretty much dedicated to your greatness, you have the scientific insight of very few, access to some of the most tech rich places in the game and... its pretty much time to retire this toon.

When you have this status you are a political powerhouse, a financial tycoon, and a military force to be counted upon. And yet you end up sitting at home having some ninny dressed like one of Stockburns deputies (Pale Rider) run your town or a senile old bigot whom you could arrange any number of accidents for, run your building.

You should be able to do alot more after you hit the maximized level. Some of the stuff has been mentioned here before. You should be able to start caravans, recruit people for a militia and scientific work, send of patrolls of units to scrounge for stuff, maybe even build your own settlement. You should have to deal with requests or threats from BoS, the outcasts, slavers, Oasis, the pitt, ect. Establishing contact with places like the Commonwealth and other communities.

And it could be done pretty much in "note form" or by expanding the story on a Terminal screen in your home. You would assign for instance Charon to head up a group of 10 or 15 troopers and then decide on Kit and time desired to make a trip. Taking their time, being armed to the teeth and with plenty of food and water would make the trip longer but safer. Or you could have a sneaky-pete patroll which would be fielded silenced weapons, were ordered to travel at night only and have a standing "break contact-continue mission order". Two months later Charon/Sneaky pete toon comes back with "Go away local" message, "Gief' tech" message (and a commonwealth techie who won't stop commenting on how primitive you are) or a "we got owned by an army of Albino radscorpions" message. You'd then load him up and send him on his way again, and await his return with more interesting stories and other tech he had traded for. It doesnt have to be any great new areas or amazing new tech you bring back. Just something.

Also... BoS takes over "project purity" and the hallways are filled to the brim with all sorts of redundant crap. Whats that about ? In any mans army, cleaning and maintaining some sort of order and cleanlyness is a must. You send the rookies to do hard pysical labour and clear out the crap. You might not have access to paint, or plaster, but you would do something to keep it clean and well organized.

Its a common thing with most if not all CRPGS that this aspect is rarely if ever implemented. But for people like myself it would add alot of playabilty and enjoyment to the game. To go from just muscle to real might. From brawn to brains.

What you are asking for is basically a whole second game of an entirely different scope and even a different genre.

One of the few games that even approaches something like this I can remember recently is NWN2 with the castle, which promptly gets destroyed as you progress the story.

It's just lazy design. Look at the interior of the Citadel, Rivet City or Fort Independence. Looks exactly as any raider base minus the corpses.

This was my problem with the Citadel itself... It seemed to me that all of the initiates would have gotten compulsory mop duty for the first month of occupation. (It should have been spic & span clean and with beds you can bounce a cap off of. )

A fallout sequel should have aimed for that kind of scope from the beginning. ~Even on a P90 with 16MB ram, they reached for the stars (as it were ~pushing the level of interactivity and extrapolation of consequence). I'd consider it expectedly "in the spirit of the series" to do the same with a 2008 game that has 32 times the available RAM (or in some cases 128 times the ram), and a 2400MHz P4 CPU [or much better] with effectively unlimited hard drive space.

Oh please. People need to come back to earth with their expectations. Expecting a huge open world RPG to also be a full fledged RTS is a little delusional.