I may be wrong, but I think he means a visual presentation. That the hotkeyd weapons show on your character to some degree. At least that's how I understood it.

Thats what I got out of it too. While cool I would want a better method than gamesas floating weapons method before seeing a bunch of guns on one character model. Holsters, and shoulder straps would be nice.

Yeah, I agree. Though it would look rather amusing to see the character having, say, seven guns kinda glued to his body in various places.

ahhhh *brushes up on reading comprehension*

in that case, i agree with Andiaus, the floating weapons arent bueno.

Playing as an stupid character was one of the funniest things in both F1 and F2.

I agree totally, but that doesn't mean there can't be a workaround. And again - complexity doesn't mean punishing the player for not spending 30 hours just thinking about what stats they're going to pick.

Back in my tabletop days, there was a very important step in the character creation process that I don't think I've ever seen in a videogame yet. It was simply the point where the GM and player would go over the character's stats, describe in plain words what all those numbers meant, and what that character would look like in context with the rules. (ie, "You've got a STR 3, AGI 8, and INT 10 - so you're pretty quick on your feet and more likely to think your way out of a situation than attempt to blast through it. I also see you put a lot of points into Small Arms, which will work well with your higher than average PER - but I should warn you now that with such a low STR you're going to have trouble shooting anything more than a pistol...") That'd be really hard to do in a videogame, but that's just one idea off the top of my head.

I also think that you should be able to make the character you want, on the very first playthrough, without regretting any of your decisions later on. The only absolute way to do that would be to just completely take out any ruleset at all, though. Even Fallout 3 gives you some consequences of those early choices. There's a solution out there, and it's something every single RPG out there has to deal with on some level. If there's going to be any point to any of your Stats, then there's going to be the potential for regretting those decisions. Not being able to get all the Speech options because you had a INT of 8 instead of 10 is (to me) the same as not being able to be as good with that sniper rifle because you're lacking a point of STR.

But it's a challenge that could be overcome - not some mythically impassible wall.

I'd like a weapon customization system that, in additition to the benefits, offers also drawbacks.

A couple of crude examples: Attach a silencer and you're much more likely to remain undetected while firing in a sneak mode, but you would lose some damge and rate of fire. Attach a scope and you have a sniperrifle which, in VATS (should it be implemented) is more accurate in longer ranges than closer ranges -- and as it is now a sniper weapon, you would lose your personal crosshair while wielding the weapon. An expanded magazine -- more bullets to fire before reloading, but reloading takes more time and the weapon is more prone to jam (even during firing, not just while reloading). A custom heat reducer to energyweapons (this would, of course, require a heating system to be implemented -- say, firing enough heats up the barrel causing it to jam and wear out faster when it is heated -- could work with normal weapons too) that reduces the amount of heating, but consumes the energy the weapon uses which would cause the ammunition (which is the energy) to drain faster, say, every third round eats two rounds for example. And stuff like that.

Customizing would happen via gunsmiths (at a cost), or by the character - skill activated by a perk (with appropriate requirements) and controlled by repairskill specific to each custom component.

ya I like that idea, (its already in a mod, but I'd rather it be done in a game studio then someone basemant, no offense modders)

Yep. Personally I would rather that and less uniques. I really liked the system they had in Wolfenstein. Just have schematics scattered throughout the game and as quest rewards (similar to the improvements in THOSE! so you don't get them all on one playthrough).

If theyre GOING to have unique weapons, the should be truly unique, not the same weapon with more damage (lincoln repeater, alien blaster, the only 2 truly uniques)

I would like to explore more in the Vault-Tec history. It was interesting learning the background on the vaults and what experiments where run there. Maybe Vault-Tec Execs have set up shop somewhere and are causing problems? If Doctor Braun and his vault dwellers could survive for 200 years why not others?

Oh, one more thing: when wearing a flamer, the backpack needs to be targetable, and explode.

Also, as mentioned in the Lone Wandered Super-Human thread (and possibly here) using certain skills or items should pass time. For example I would have liked to have seen a system where the higher your repair skill, the less time that should pass when repairing an item. Keep it simple, like the default is an hour. However, unlike the lockpicking/hacking system I think that the 25/50/75/100 increments need to go and it should really be more spread out over the course of raising the skill instead of just trying to get to the next hard cap.

And on that topic, instead of having to hit a certain skill level to pick locks or hack, you should be able to access any lock or terminal at any level, it will just be considerably harder (if not near impossible) to pick/hack until your skill is higher. At lower levels your bobby pins break easier and you have a harder time finding the sweet spot, or you have more junk words and less chances to guess the right one (like maybe one or two).

Actually I think I might have mentioned that earlier in this thread. Sorry if I did repeat.

The problem with this is that stimulates saving spamming, which is a bad game design. Plus, it puts the result dependent on the skills of the player, not the character, which is not congruent with RPGs.

I would be fine if the minigames were ditched and hacking and lockingpicking would happen via skillchecks - character skill vs lock level with X amount of tries / Y amount of time (say, a month for example) per lock/terminal.

On the other hand, I think the minigamesystem, as it is an easy method, could be controlled via difficultymenu. At easy difficulty you would have a minigame with every lock (in the system you suggested) and terminal and at hard it would be a skill check; locklevel-skill=% that is taken from the skill at the check unless the skill surpasses the lock level - in which case it is a mere successroll with no drawbacks added.

I would also suggest a 2 part difficultymenu - Gamedifficulty & Combatdifficulty (as it was in the previous games) - and the harder you put the sliders the more skill and stat driven the game would become. It wouldn't of course become fully statdriven at any point, but much more that what it would be at easy (which would be something like what Fallout 3 is now at normal).

Very easy game difficulty - noncombatskills start higher, supplies are more plenty and cheaper, minigames etc.
Very easy combat difficulty - combatskills start higher, less enemies/group, lesser chance of encountering higher level enemies early on in areas that are set to be at generally lower level, weapons are easier to repair etc.

...

Very hard gamediff. - noncombatkills start much lower, supplies are scarce and expensive, no minigames at all (purely skillbased lockpicking and hacking as explained above), etc.
Very hard combatdiff - combatskills start much lower and have a bigger effect on accuracy (both realtime and vats), more enemies/group and higher possibility to encountering higher level enemies, guns would be more difficult to repair, guns'n ammo would be more scarce and costly etc.

For a crude example.

That doesn't make sense because you are conflating two unrelated dimensions. There's nothing easier than passing a noninteractive skill check as long as your character has the required skill level. Making the game more character-skill driven doesn't necessarily make it harder.

If they add another slider, it should affect the leveling system primarily. There are a ton of very simple ways to make this work, but the end result would be that leveling would occur more slowly at higher difficulty levels and skills would be more difficult to max out, to the point that it would be impossible to max more than 2-3 skills at the highest difficulty level. Personally, I'd like to see adjustments to the point-buy system so that the cost increases as you move up the scale. And the cost increase could impact tagged skills less, which would make the initial character creation much more important. Basically, careful management of the character sheet and equipment would become a necessity at the highest difficulty level.

And they need to tie the damage nerfing in VATS to the combat difficulty slider, which would go a long way toward increasing the combat difficulty.

I don't see why everyone hates minigames so much, It adds to the immersion imho and it adds a little spice to the regular dungeon crawl

I do agree that instead of having a 25-50-75-100 system, it should be different, in example, if you have 50 lockpicking and you go to an average lock, your going to have more junk words and symbols then if you were at 60 lockpicking

I think they should have more minigames that are skillbased, rather then just hacking and lockpicking

Huh... That's how it is currently you know.

The primary argument over the minigames as I understand it are:

1:Generally, they're repetitive and boring.
2:They break the Player vs. Character skill system. IE if you the play svck at the game it doesn't matter how good your character is ta it.


whats more "immersion" breaking than doing things your character has no ability in or failing said skill because you the played has no ability.

IMO that's how the current system is.

If I only had one chance to hack a terminal before it locked, I'd be more inclined to work on getting my skill up, or taking a perk like computer whiz if it was available.

As of now I can at least have four chances to try, which gives me more than enough time to figure out the pattern if I hit a close enough word, but one chance... I wouldn't want to have to reload that many times just to blindly guess.

You in effect can have unlimited chances. IF you just quit and retry until you get a good first, or second selection or and easy word.

Which is another thing. Instead of putting the long words on VH, they should be random, and the amount of junk characters are also dependent on skill level.

Higher skill = more attempts, less junk.

are you sure?

Yes.The thresholds determine if you're going to be able to play the minigame, and having points above the threshold makes the minigame easier. You get less words and more closed brackets the more points you have.

it doesnt really matter other than being able to access the terminal, cause you have unlimited attempts in 3's

Technically even more since around 95% of the time there's at least one closed bracket in every hack screen.