Fallout 4 Speculation, Suggestions and Ideas #212 : Fallout Series Discussion

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:04 am

This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion, rumors and speculation in one place.

This topic is for a friendly discussion of ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4.
We all have opinions about what the next game should have and should not have. Each of us has the right to express that opinion freely. There are points we agree on and points we do not agree on. This means that people are going to disagree with you on some things. Accept that and move on. No need to beat your point so far into the ground that no one wants to look at it any more.

At moderator discretion, threads about specific and distinct topics as they relate to FO4 and the rest of the Fallout series may be acceptable in the Fallout Series forum. General idea/suggestion topics for a future Fallout game will either be closed, or moved to this one.
This thread should be used to discuss items you'd like to see in a future game, gameplay tweaks, quest ideas, things you hope are not in the next game and so on. If you want to discuss major issues, use a separate topic - such as the discussion about adding multi-player or co-op play, which already has a thread. Please search first to see if there is an active/recent thread on a particular topic.

Something to note. Discussions of Child Killing is not allowed on these boards. Don't even bring it up in this thread. It won't happen in any future game from Bethesda, so there is no reason to even discuss it. If you post about this subject, you may be Warned and or Banned from the boards for doing so.

This is also not a thread to discuss current or past Fallout Games, other than to mention an aspect of the game you want to see included, or not included, in a future Fallout game.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1503642-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-211/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1503490-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-210/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1503231-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-209/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1503088-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-208/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1502946-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-207/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1502751-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-206/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1502421-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-205/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1501992-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-204/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1501097-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-203/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1500787-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-202/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1500555-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-201/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1500363-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-bicentennial/

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:43 pm

It would need to be designed so that lockpicking isn't completely overshadowed by those other means (explosives, force, etc); that there are enough situations where lockpicking is the choice and mean. I'm not really a fan of Sawyer's "everything's equal" ideal of balancing out these things (because it often results in a evenly thick and intrigueless experience), but I do agree with him in that a skill should provide a reasonable amount of meaningful content that warrants and rewards the investment in it (and penalizes not investing in it where appropriate, of course).

-------------------

I'll just dump this here again (to be constructive and [censored]).

Spoiler

Some of these things should, imo, be considered and searched for possibilities from while making the game and designing the gameplay:

Short version (just bullet points) :

Spoiler

General gameplay:

- More direct skill and stat uses on items, environment and NPC's (healing, repairing, examining, entering worldmap, etc) -- with a supportive interface in the vein of old school RPG's and adventure games.

- No level scaling; or, at most, an adjusting scaling where easy fights do not disappear when the more challenging ones appear.

- More frugal skillpoint economy and higher gaps between levels to make it slower.

- Upwards scaling skillpoint costs for mid and high level increments.

- Wold map and nodes large enough to support exploration (+classic map travel).

- Grid inventory (with both weight and space limits).

- One page character sheet.

- PDA pipboy.

- No compass markers for quests, no compass markers for locations, no compass markers for enemies.

- More comprehensive quest descriptions and mapmarkers for general quest areas (toggleable if possible), let the player find things out him self but don't leave him in the dark without any hints.

- Minimap with perception based (including distance) detection of close by NPC's or critters (also, perception/perk/trait based color codes for disposition).

- Less aggressive wilderness AI. Combat is generally where you want it (not always, but often).

Timed dynamic quests:

- Quests that have timelimits; but instead of said timelimit causing pure failure, it would open up new possibilities (where appropriate, not always).

Lockpicking, repairing, hacking, manual healing:

- A skillcheck with a timebar (not a "timelimit" but how long the attempt takes for the character based on skill versus task difficulty).

- No pausing the world. Everything happens in realtime, so you can get interrupted.

- No minigames.

Gunplay and VATS:

- Skills for projectile weapons greatly (!!!) affect accuracy (spread, sway), recoil control (each bullet fired throwing the aim off the target, and increasing spread), and general handling (reloads, holstering, unholstering, etc).

- Static bullet damage ranges regardless of skill, and generally higher damage output across the board.

- Melee/HtH skills affect attackspeed and damage.

- Critical failures.

- Close proximity penalties for firearms in.

- Less loot and supplies.

- Action points into combat resource; every action aside from moving eats up AP (shooting, reloading, opening inventory, doing stuff in inventory, quick key use.....).

- Focus on less frequent and less "run'n gun", but more slow paced, tactical, challenging and character driven combat.

- Categorized craftable and modifiable weapons with tangible upsides and downsides.

Healing and drugs:

- Tolerance meter for drugs and medication with severe OD effects.

- Maual healing (made viable and needed through less available provisions) - a skillcheck with a possibility to fail and critically fail to cause more damage.

- Animated stimuse to prevent spamming -- or, heal overtime.

Skillsystems:

- Retaining the premise, greatly upping the effects (skills and stats being more of requirements than recommendations as they are now), but revising the workings to better suit the current style of gameplay.

Long version (with more details) :

General gameplay suggestions (again -- but updated):

Spoiler

Here's some of my ideas on along which lines I would like some aspects of Fallout 4 to be made (I posted this before Fallout: New Vegas was even annouced, and several times again since then, but made some changes so I'm not just reposting the same thing over and over again). Whether or not all the following would actually work in the game, is beyond me as I'm not a game designer, but at least to me it sounds decent on paper for altering the current form of FPS gameplay.
The WALL OF TEXT:

A minimenu:

There would be a minimenusystem that would trigger various functions needed during the gameplay. Pressing (for example) the mousewheel would open a dropdown menu (somewhat similiar to Fallout 1 and Fallout 2) beside the cursor that would present commands like Enter Worldmap, Heal, Heal Other, Repair, Rest/Wait etc. If well implemented, this could potentially offer a greater gameplay diversity through bigger possibilities for direct skilluses in several situations. Available commands would be highlighted and non-available would be greyed out.

General gameplay:

The general gameplay would be quite similiar to F3 and F:NV. You roam around the wastes doing quests and exploring. But combat would be less frequent unless the player decides otherwise - in other words, you could pick some of your random fights. (Though I'd very, very much prefer it, I'm not suggesting ISO/TB gameplay, since I don't believe for a second that Beth would implement it no matter what. [:dry:] )

This could partly be handled through wildlife AI, which would be set less aggressive in general. An aggression stat would be implemented which would vary from species to species - from completely neutral (only defensive combat) to total aggression (hostility almost immediately). The animals would have their own immediate surroundings, or personal spaces, somewhat like in Risen and Gothic series, and partly in F:NV. Get too close and you get a warning sign from the critter giving you time to get out of their space, linger and be chased off (or be attacked, if you don't flee). The radius of the space and the time you are tolerated in it would depend on the critter.

The mainquest would be scaled to a certain degree through chaptering it (not visibly, as in presenting a loadscreen: Chapter 1: In which you slither out from the uaginal cavity and learn the first lessons of life, but through certain major events through the main quest). And after those, the game would replaces some of the lower level enemies with higher level ones in the MQ areas - defeating which (if not gettin past by other means) would require you to level up some more. Or through a nonlinear levelscalingsystem where, for example, when one starts the game at level one, the enemies in the levelscaled zones would range from 1 to 10, and after one hits somewhere between levels 12 to 15 (which ever works the best) some of the lower level creatures scale up to about level 18 to 25 (but not all, to not make the world appearing to spin around the player too much). This would offer both, challenge and sense of progression to the player, as one becomes better than the current enemies before they scale up again.

There wouldn't be any quest- or enemycompasses, but there would be (toggleable, perhaps) minimap in which you could see the living beings in immediate vicinity. Perception would determine the range in which you see things, and with a perk (with appropriate requirements - outdoorsman and perception, for example) you could tell the difference between friendly (green dot), neutral (yellow dot) and hostile (red dot) targets.

The questcompass would be replaced by mere markers on the map which would point towards a general area instead of the exact target. And with that, the quest descriptions would be more accurate.

The wrist pipboy would be scrapped and replaced by a more handheld PDI like contraption, which would offer a more userfriendly inventorysystem (something like mix of what Morrowind or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had, for example) with less scrolling while still holding the tabs to sort items by their nature, a one page charactersheet much akin to the original games -- no more tabs behind tabs behind tabs. All actions during combat but shooting and moving would cost action points (opening inventory, using items inside it, using quick keys, etc) - more on this later.

Skillcap would remain at 100, but the cost to raise them would rise as follows: 1-50 1:1, 51-75 2:1, 76-100 3:1, the point being, the better you get the more difficult it is to get even better - this would make a maxed skill equal to skillcap of 175 - and I think it'd be easier to utilize the full scale of the skill, if it caps at 100 (instead of having skills cap at 200 or 300). Also, the gaps between levels would be raised:

How it is now (first number is the level, the second XP needed to reach the level from previous point, the third is total amount of XP needed to reach that level):

Spoiler

z=n+(y+150)
z=xp for next lvl
n=xp 'til prev lvl
y=previous xp raise

2 - 200 - 200
3 - 350 - 550
4 - 500 - 1,050
5 - 650 - 1,700
6 - 800 - 2,500
7 - 950 - 3,450
8 - 1100 - 4,550
9 - 1250 - 5,800
10 - 1400 - 7,200
11 - 1550 - 8,750
12 - 1700 - 10,450
13 - 1850 - 12,300
14 - 2000 - 14,300
15 - 2150 - 16,450
16 - 2300 - 18,750
17 - 2450 - 21,200
18 - 2600 - 23,800
19 - 2750 - 26,550
20 - 2900 - 29,450
21 - 3050 - 32,500
22 - 3200 - 35,700
23 - 3350 - 39,050
24 - 3500 - 42,550
25 - 3650 - 46,200
26 - 3800 - 50,000
27 - 3950 - 53,950
28 - 4100 - 58,050
29 - 4250 - 62,300
30 - 4400 - 66,700

How it should be (first number is the level, the second XP needed to reach the level from previous point, the third is total amount of XP needed to reach that level) for example:

Spoiler

z=n+(y+200)
z=xp for next lvl
n=xp 'til prev lvl
y=previous xp raise

2 - 200 - 200
3 - 400 - 600
4 - 600 - 1,200
5 - 800 - 2,000
6 - 1000 - 3,000
7 - 1200 - 4,200
8 - 1400 - 5,600
9 - 1600 - 7,200
10 - 1800 - 9,000
11 - 2000 - 11,000
12 - 2200 - 13,200
13 - 2400 - 15,600
14 - 2600 - 18,200
15 - 2800 - 21,000
16 - 3000 - 24,000
17 - 3200 - 27,200
18 - 3400 - 30,600
19 - 3600 - 34,200
20 - 3800 - 38,000
21 - 4000 - 42,000
22 - 4200 - 46,200
23 - 4400 - 50,600
24 - 4600 - 55,200
25 - 4800 - 60,000
26 - 5000 - 65,000
27 - 5200 - 70,200
28 - 5400 - 75,400
29 - 5600 - 81,000
30 - 5800 - 86,800
31 - 6000 - 92,800
...and so on up to, say 50The formula I made may not be correct, but the point remains.

Timed, dynamic quests:

Spoiler

For the larger events, and where appropriate otherwise, the game would take time into account. Not to push for failure (except for where it's appropriate), but for altering the conditions of the quest. Like postponing a quest (which is narrated as "urgent") enough, and the conditions to solving it get harder.

Simple example (somewhat paraphrasing the Goodsprings versus Powder Gangers situation):

You get a mission from a village mayor to scout some raiders and find out why they've been appearing so active lately. You obtain info about an upcoming raid on the village you got the mission from "in two or so weeks". You neglect it and go about your business for a while. Then you decide to finish the quest and deliver the info, but upon arrival, you notice that the raiders have seized the village, killed most of the denizens and captured the rest. Two options from there on to solve the quest (1) Take on the raiders and free the captives, or (2) Strike a deal with the raiders and recieve an additional questphase.

Had you delivered the intel in time, the village would've prepared and fought the raiders off with (or without) your further help.

These events would be there to point out that the world doesn't revolve around the player and that neglecting given responsibilities has consequences.

Map and Travelling:

Spoiler

A return to the classic worldmap system (with some tweaks to make it look more... erm, "modern"). The actual FPP/TPP playground area would be roughly about 2x or 3x the size of Fallout New Vegas; and the area is divided into 5-7 (or so) hubs scattered in the worldmap which vary in size and content. General gameplay in those would be about the same as in F3 and F:NV, run around and do local quests and explore.

When you enter the node you could spawn at any "formidable" (as in settlementlike in size) location you've already found. The first time entering a node you would spawn at the side of the map on special spawnpoint for that purpose (which could be used later on too, of course).

Outdoorsmanskill is reintroduced (or merged within the Survival skill) and works similiarly to Fallout 1&2 with the difference that nonhostile encounters are always avoidable should the player so decide (to decrease the amount of loadscreens).

The worldmap itself is zoned in couple of ways:
- The farther away from the starting position, the harder the enemies and vice versa; but there is still a (small) chance to encounter harder enemies on starting grounds and vice versa, based on outdoorsmanskill, luck and placement of the zone (but still keeping the MQ areas within reasonable range of enemies).
- The map is zoned into territories, which each have their set of unique enemies as well as a few commonones that can be found on every zone.

Each zone has about 5-7 small maps for random/special encounters, which are either hostile or nonhostile, and are based on the topography of the location in the worldmap and the contents of the encouters would be based on the zone in which it occurs.

The visitable locations on map would be as follows: A settlement - with explorable wasteland around it to provide smaller sidequest and exploring. Or just a visitable location like a majorsized building, militarybase, factory etc. They could even include two settlements, but in general all towns would be much bigger than those in Fallout 3 or New Vegas.

Each settlement has its own set of architecture (not too different from other settlements, but so that one can tell the difference), general theme and mindsets. These are small things, but they would add a lot of variety to the game.

Entering worldmap from a node would happen through the edges of the map. In Fallout 3, when you bumb to an edge of the map, you get a popup message that says: "you cannot go further that way" - now it would be like this: "e) enter worldmap".

To not have to always run to the edge of a map, you could use the minimenu command "Enter Worldmap", which could not be used indoors, during combat or if there are enemies nearby. However, escaping combat through the edge of the map would be possible.

Fasttravel through world map would offer options for pacing (could be enabled by a perk, or be an ability from the get go). Such as "Cautious", "Casual", and "Rushing". Where "Casual" would be the normal travelspeed with no bonuses or hits, "Cautious" a much slower, but with giving a bonus to outdoorsman in determining avoidance of an encounter, and "Rushing" much faster, but with giving a hit to outdoorsman. There would also be related quests, solving which could be easier by utilizing this system (to make it have a bigger point).

Repairing:

Spoiler

Repairing happens either with repairkits, by gunsmiths in towns/caravans, or by a duplicate.

The kits would repair a fixed and relatively large amount of CND and have limited amount of succesful uses (and would offer a small bonus to the skill and crit. failure) each, but they would be expensive to buy, weight a somewhat hefty amount and would also be weakened and eventually broken by a certain amount of critical failures and general wear. Gunsmiths and repairmen would be very expensive but would get the job done no matter what. A duplicate would repair a small amount of CND (with no bonuses or hits to skill or crit. chance) so that you'd have to weigh the benefit of losing the weapons monetary value against the increase in CND (at least at early stages of the game).

Success in repairing is dependant on repairskill (a diceroll happens, dreadful I know). And the repairing takes a certain amount of time (few seconds) depending on the chance of success.

One would now be able to repair guns and armor beyond his/her skill but the further above the skill they go the harder they would get to repair. The math is irrelevant (as long as it complements the premise), but here's a quick idea on how it could go:

After the guns/armors condition is above the skill, the amount going above is turned into percentages that is taken away from the skill. IE: skill = 30 and rifles condition = 80. Condition - skill = 50. 50% of skill (30) is 15. So trying to repair a weapon in condition of 80 with a repairskill of 30 would give a chance of success of 15%. This is not necesserely realistic, but it is assuming that the more shiny the condition gets, the more difficult (but not impossible) it would be to repair it further.

Guns and armor would also have a chance for a critical failure if an attempt to repair fails. Critical failure, instead of repairing the gun, has a reverse effect. The chance would be from 1% to 10% (depending on the weapon) if a trait or a perk doesn't raise/lower it.

The increased hardship of repairing would be compensated via much slower degredation rate (based on the weapon, of course), though the effects of CND (jamming during firing, reloading disorders, rate of fire, damage, buying/selling values) would also be much bigger and more frequent.

There would also be a possibility to repair broken robots or computers or what ever there is to repair, by pointing the target opening minimenu and selecting repair.

Also, while repairing would work much like explained above (the 1-100 CND scale would remain in the background to provide for it but all effects would be tied to the 20% thresholds - when attempting to repair, you'd see the successrate according to how the 1-100 scale behind the screen), the visible item health would be changed to 1-5 scale, to offer more robust effects.

The weapon health would be changed from being a 1-100 scale to 1-5 scale and give each rank more profound effects on the weapon, additionally I'd hide the item health-o-meter and add a title in front of the item name so that one never knows exactly where their weapon health goes.

Example:

- Well Maintained Assault rifle or Fine Assault Rilfe (CND 5; well maintained bonus: accuracy +5%, no disorders, -5% from critical failure chance))
-> Assault rifle (CND 4; assault rifle at its default condition, no extra bonuses, but 5% chance of jam)
-> Dirty assault rifle (CND 3; -5% to accuracy, -10% to rate of fire, 15% chance of jam, 10% higher chance of "critical failure")
-> Worn Assault rifle (CND 2; -10% to accuracy, -10% to rate of fire, 20% chance of jam, 15% critical failure chance)
-> Crummy Assault rifle (CND 1; -20% to accuracy, -15% to rate of fire, 25% chance of jamming, 20% chance of critical failure)
-> Broken Assault rifle (CND 0; no shooting with this piece of [censored] anymore, no repairing it either, skilled weaponsmith NPC's could repair it at a cost up to CND 2 for the same price they usually take from full repair from 1 to 5, or offer a few caps from the spare parts)

With each rank, while going downwards, requiring varying degrees of usage. And Repairing (success and amount of repair (from half a rank to 1 rank) would happen through skillchance affected by certain factors (Gun cnd, duplicate cnd, repairkit, skill level, etc). CND 5 would be a high skill privilege reachable by no lower than 80 in repair.

I would boost all the negative effects and make them count much higher in combat.

Additionally I would add cleaning kits to add a slight timed bonuses to the weapons (-> Clean worn assault rifle: cleaned bonus +5% accuracy, +5% rate of fire, -10% jamming, for example).

With Melee and armed HtH the effects would consist of damage reduction, and higher critical failure rate (which would break the weapon).
With Armors the effects would consist of lowered DT and DR and lowered "social status" (when going on in really crummy gear, people initially think your a vagran or a bum just loitering around).

Healing & drugs:

Spoiler

Stimpak usage would be animated, so no more smashing a quick key for dozens of stims in few seconds (I like this method more than the concept of heal overtime from HC-mode of F:NV). The speed of the animation would be dependant of the related skill (doctor). More over stims now would always heal the same amount (no skill effect in there), and they would come in two variations: stimpaks and superstimpaks. Both of which would be rare and expensive (so that you cannot live off of them, but also have to rely on other methods of healing) and superstims much more so than ordinary stims.

The player would have a tolerance meter which would measure how much the player can medicate himself before overdosing. Overdosing would cause an instant loss of health according to how much the limit is surpassed and would also cause some visual distortions and statloss. The effect would last for a while and the time would be depending on endurance and doctor skill (and perks/traits that would modify it). The tolerance meter slowly lowers itself after the medication is done, and the magnitude it is filled is dependant on the drug used (powerful drugs - like Jet and superstims for example - obviously fill it more quickly), related skill and perks/traits modifying it. Using food as a healer would not affect the tolerance meter, but food would have a heal-over-time effect.

Doctorskill would be reintroduced and so would manual healing. Manual healing would be similiar to Fallout 1 & 2 (only a few uses/24hours - they would take few in-game hours to be completed - success is determined by skill), and couldn't be used in combat or when enemies are nearby. Healing cripples wouldn't be possible with stims or sleeping, but would require manual healing and the ability to heal cripples would be dependant of the doctorskill and the skillrequirements of the crippled bodypart (head and torso would be harder to treat than legs and hands), otherwise a doctor is a must see.

Manual healing would be entered by the minimenu, which would also have the "heal other" option to heal a companion or other alive being in need of assistance.

Healing through sleeping would work similiarly to Fallout 1 & 2.

Addiction would need a doctor or a certain amount (pretty long) of time to heal. Radiation poisoning needs a doctor or radaway (which would be rare and expensive).

Gunplay & VATS (should it be implemented):

Spoiler

Gunskills would now have much heavier effect on waivering and general accuracy than what it is in F3 or New Vegas, utilizing the skill and STR requirement system from New Vegas (but more heavyhandedly). In addition, the players stance, movement, weapons type and recoil also would affect it.

The normal (according to skill) situation would be standing still and aiming through iron sights (firing from hip would give a large hit on accuracy). Crouching would give a small bonus to accuracy and going prone would give a slightly bigger bonus (with the bonus from aiming coming on top of that). The tradeoff with going prone and being accurate would be extremely slow moving and turning, and it would take its time for the player to get up and ready the weapon again. Firing from the hip would cause bigger spread. Movement would also give a hit to accuracy -- the faster you move, the bigger the waivering with ironsights and spread with hipfiring. Recoil would work dynamically based on the gun used, and would throw the aim off a bit with each shot (while bursting, the amount of recoil per shot would stack up eventually leading to firing straight up -- with hipfire, the "offaim" would be a bit smaller, but the spread would increase).

Guns would do generally more damage and the damagestats would be ranges. IE: Huntingrifle - dmg 11-20, like in Fallout 1&2, but with growth of related skill raising the minimum amount closer to the maximum (though not as far as up to having a static damage, there would always be some range left).

The combat overall would go through a total overhaul. No more run 'n gun FPS bullsh*t but more slowpaced, focused and tactical. A RTwP/TB (optable) setup with full control over the player character and partymembers would be nice. But of course that ain't gonna happen since nothing but horrid FPS twitching is viable way of gaming anymore.

So instead, actionpoints would count in combat.

A simple example:

Lesser cost rate:
Shooting (very low cost) - shooting with not enough AP's left would give a hefty penalty to accuracy and recoil control
Reload (low cost) - reloading with not enough AP's left would triple the time it takes to reload and increase the chances for reload failure

Moderate cost rate:
Using quick keys (cost rate depending on what's being done, changing a weapon (moderate cost), using stims (higher moderate cost), changing ammunition (high moderate cost due to including reloading)) - with not enough AP's, quick keys won't work, no stimspamming or changing weapons, tough luck.

High cost:
Inventory access - with not enough AP's, inventory access is denied, run for cover and wait for the AP's to refill.
Using items inside inventory - if AP's run out during doing something in the inventory, you can still browse and assign quick keys, but after that only action allowed is to exit inventory.

Additionally, no AP's left would increase running speed for... say.... oh well, for examples sake, 20% to provide chances to get to cover while AP's recharge.

And AP's would recharge much slower while moving and at normal rate while being still.

All that only during combat (and during shooting/whacking thin air when not in combat for the lesser cost actions).

Consider AP's in the lesser cost section as representing exhaustion.
And in the moderate and high cost sections as representing mental strength, situtional loss of focus, a panic of sorts leading to indesicion and inability to operate properly.

NPC's would also have their own AP's which would dictate their performance (a bit differently than the PC, since NPC's don't use quick keys or the sort).

In vats you would now have an option to choose a firing mode. Rapid fire - a hastily aimed rapid shooting towards the target; or aimed shots, which would be the opposite of rapid fire.

Rapid fire would lower the accuracy a bit and you could only target a foe as a whole; but it would spend less actionpoints, while aimed shots would cost more and calculate the accuracy without minuses, and you would be able to target specific body parts. The bonuses and hits of chosen stance would be similiar to those in realtime firing.

Being prone in vats would force you to choose a firing sector (so that the player doesn't spin like a dreidel in all directions while being the most accurate he can). Prone position would also be the most expensive stance to fire from, while standing would be the cheapest, and being crouched in the middle. The player would be able to change his preferred stance in VATS, but at a cost.

About craftable weapons... I once toyed around with an idea where there was to be 3 categories of weapons based on their craftmanship. I can't quite recall all the specifics, but the general idea was to have:

Category 1: Post war selfmade weaponry (craftable, high damage output, cheap and easy to repair, high availability, high modability, fairly cheap -- but, non reliable (prone to jam and reload disorders regardless of CND), low accuracy, fast deterioration rate (constant need of repairing)).
Category 2: Pre war Home defense weaponry (more reliable, more accurate, lesser deterioration rate -- but, less damage output, more expensive, less available, moderately harder to repair, non-craftable and less modable).
Category 3: Pre war military grade weaponry (Very high damage output, very high accuracy, very high reliability -- but, extremely expensive and rare, barely modable, non-craftable, very hard to repair).

Something along those lines, and with each category having 1-3 (max) base weapons for each type of weapon (pistols, SMG's, rifles, assault rifles, machineguns, shotguns etc). You'd that way have an entire category of highly modable weapons to craft from scratch and alternatives which have their ups and downs over that category. Weaponcrafting could be handled through related skillthresholds (what ever the skillsetup for that sort of crafting would be).

Close combat penalties for firearms (especially heavy and long arms).

- In face to face combat where the other side is toting a firearm, a chance (manual triggering for the player, but chance based success) for the NPC to perform defensive move and shove the players gun and facing off and slightly stagger the player (and possibly then deliver a more damaging blow/s). This to remove the horrendous way it is now where... you know how it is, and possibly slightly improve closecombat.

Also, damage bonus for melee/HtH enemies (animals included) that come in numbers (overwhelm the player). One guy with a knife or one gecko might seem harmless to your assault rifle toting combatarmor wearing character, but if there are three or more, you better dispatch them before they reach you or you are in serious trouble no matter what armor you wear (if the DT eats all the damage, turn it into fatigue damage that'll eventually collapse the PC after which the foes start to pummel the "weak spots" in the armor and healt starts to drop).

Generally, turn up the damage done by weapons -- the previous situation might seem that it puts a melee oriented PC in a rougher than needed position, but if you are skilled enough, and if the damage values are higher, you may be able to drop one or two before they get to overwhelm you (if you see a group or powerarmored melee units, though, you might want to reconsider attacking them with melee yourself unless you are absolutely skilled and geared enough).
In addition, projectile weapon skills affecting accuracy, not damage (except for - possibly - higher critical dmg multipliers). And locational armor DT values (head, torso, feet, hands).
Enemies and the PC are generally more easily taken down by weapons (no more people eating 30 bullets or 50 stabs and still coming on strong), but only if you know how to use them.

Alernatively - for VATS - it could remain functionally almost as it is, but it would be made a separate phase based combat mode altogether (at players choice) where you would queu up actions and execute them as you do now, but instead of the game hopping back in realtime, it remains in phasebased mode and the enemies would get their actions through the execution phase based on their own set of action points - kinda like how combat in Wizardry 8 and, to a lesser extent, Wasteland works. This would allow for more precise and accurate control of the possible companions too than what we see in the games now.

Lockpicking:

Spoiler

Success is determined by skill so that you can try to pick any lock from very easy to very hard; and NO minigame involved. It would work somewhat like repairing; lock level - skill (if the skill is under the lock level) = percentual number that is taken from the skill. If the skill surpasses lock level, the chances are purely skillbased with maximum chance of success being 95% (this, the max chance, would go for every chance based system). And the percentual chance would be presented when moving the reticle over the locked object: E) Pick lock [Very hard: 13%], for example.

Lockpicking would be animated so that you either see your characters hands doing the job (FP view) or seeing your character from behind (TP view). You would have the ability to turn your head (or the camera) some ways left and right to see if someone is coming - so the game doesn't pause during the picking. But looking away from what you're doing, would have an effect (see below).

Picking locks would take a certain amount of time depending on your skill and level of the lock (aka the chance of success). When attempting, there would be a timebar similiar to what Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines had. Skill would give bonuses to the time it takes to pick a lock in such manner that you don't get bonuses to picking hard locks before your skill surpasses maximum level of normal locks. More over, the bonuses would stop stacking up after your skill surpasses the next level of difficulty (no bonuses to picking normal locks after skill level of 75, for example, depicting that there is no way to open that kind of lock any better - other than with a fluke).

Each lock would have a certain amount of tries before (if you keep failing) the lock jams for a certain amount of time (preferably at least a couple of weeks, so that your attempts at just waiting at the lock for it to unjam would be a tedious job and prevent exploitation of the system). Moreover locks would have a chance for a critical failure that would immediately jam the lock despite if it was you first attempt, and critical success, which could occur at any point during the time it takes to pick the lock -- both of these chances would be very small.

This system would also be fit for hacking.

Difficulty settings:

Spoiler

The difficulty setting would affect the following:

Startingpoints of th skills (this would work so that easy players would be able to max out almost everything and the harder you go, the less can max out and the more you need to rely on specializing). The toggle would work dynamically so that if you start with easy and change it to hard half away through, your skill would take an appropriate hit.
The gaps between levels -- the harder the setting, the more XP you need for a levelup.
Base carry weight (before STR modifier).
Base HP (before END modifier).
Number of encountered enemies
Slight (!) changes in NPC/critter HP and damage modifiers

HC mode (one time toggle on/off, no flipflopping) would affect the following:

Number of enemies encountered
Severity of negative effects (stat/skill losses and their effects, crippled limbs, diseases, poison effects, etc)
Add a Nutrition gauge (thirst and hunger combined) -- could do without this though.
Damaging effect of radiation.
Add weight for absolutely everything (meds, ammo, random clutter like pencils, everything).
Slower base speed for stimpakking (before skill modifiers).
Harsher addiction and withdrawal effects.
I'll come up more when I have time...

Thoughts on a skillsystem more (IMO) in line with the current gameplaystyle (This will contradict with some of the ideas in the longer suggestion above as I haven't had time to merge them properly, but that doesn't matter as I endorse both systems.) - now with an incomplete (har har) SPECIAL outline:

Spoiler

Ok, so going by the current gameplaystyle where dicerolls no longer apply (which is a shame)... redesign the characterprogression system to better suit it (to be more responsive and give more immediate feedback to the player as s/he progresses).

At character developement every SPECIAL defaults as 5 as it is now, but there are no bonuses to add, just a possibility to rearrange the points. Increasing SPECIAL during the game, would be a special occurance like finding an implant and then someone who can install it. Traits increasing stats would offer an equal drawback in some other stat (or a general drawback). There'd be an individual perk for every stat offering a one time bonus of plus one -- as it was in the original Fallouts. And rare cases where an equippable item gives a bonus for during the time it is equipped (like how PA gives a bonus to strength). Nothing more. The point is to make the character one builds to hold throughout most of the game. And to help that there'd be hard SPECIAL requirements for certain items and activities.

Perks would be more like additional abilities that the skills do not govern straightforward (like pistolwhipping, enhancing stimpaks, increasing inventory space and/or such) but still offer the requirements for. They'd also have tiers (up to 3) to enhance said abilities when appropriate.

Skills would now have a 1-10 and some others 1-5 point scale. With each point cumulatively increasing the price of buying it. Each of these points would also hold more to it than mere nominal increases with little to no visible effect (like how it is now with the 1-100 scale). The skills would work more like thresholds opening new related abilities than random numerical values. At characterbuilding phase each skill would default to 0, but the player would have 4 free points to put in which ever skills s/he wishes with the maximum initial increase being 2.

A couple of "along the lines of" -examples of the skills and their effects:

Spoiler

Guns:
oooooooooo
Cost : The first two - 5sp, 3rd and 4th - 10sp, 5ft and 6th - 15sp, 7th and 8th - 20, 9th and 10th - 25sp. This would equal a skillcap of 150 with the current method.
Effect: 0 p oints - You are so terrible with guns you suffer 50% damageloss and 75% of accuracy loss with any conventional firearm, plus your unholstering, holstering and reloading take much more time. Points 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 would open "proper" usage of guns in their respective tiers of 1-5. Having lacking skill of one tier would result in 50% penalty to accuracy and 25% penalty to damage, lacking 2 or more tiers would offer similiar penalties of 75% and 50% plus decresed reloadspeed and increased probability of jamming during reload and firing regardless of weapon condition.
Points 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 would offer a 25% bonus to accuracy for the previous tier of weapons (except for 1, which would offer it to the next tier and 10 which would offer an accuracy bonus to all tiers), and similiarly with damage but with an increase of 15%.
This would make increasing the skill a paramount act, if one wishes to master it (unlike with the current system where a skill 50 - for example - is quite adequate to handle all given situations the game offers).

Energy weapons:
oooooooooo
Cost: 5, 5, 10, 10, 15, 15, 20, 20, 25, 25
Effect: Similiar to guns otherwise, but in place of damage increases/decreases would be heating/cooldown effects which would be harsh enough to greatly limit firing large amounts of highly powerful energy ammunition. In effect, energy weapons would be much more powerful than guns, but also much more limited in rate of fire and most of them would also, due to their light effects, hinder stealth.

Melee:
oooooooooo
Cost : 5, 5, 10, 10, 15, 15, 20, 20, 25, 25
Effect: Same as guns and ew with tiers, but in place of accuracy increases/decreses would be attackspeed. Lacking a tier would offer a 50% penalty for overall damage and 25% for attackspeed, lacking 2 tiers similiarly 75% and 50%. Points 3, 6 and 9 would also offer a "special move" which would be slower than normal attack, but more powerful.

Explosives:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: With explosive based weapons, refer to the guns section. 0 points, you can throw grenades and dynamite very inaccurately, that's it; 1 point - opens up the ability to create and tinker with satchelcharges and firebombs and removes penalties from grenades and regular dynamite; 2 points - landmines and their modified and custom variants enter the picture; 3 points - creation and operating with C4, semtex, and other plastic explosives and remote detonatables; 4 points - Energybased explosives (electricity, EMP, plasma, etc) explosives; 5 points - Mix and match your own cocktails with all available ingredients.

Sneak:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: With 0 points you do not sneak, you're so clumsy that going crouched wouldn't make any difference. Each point decreases the chance of detection according to circumstances (LOS distance, lighting, sound) by 15%. Also, point 1 - ability to use light armor without penalties, point 3 - ability to use medium armor with decreased penalties, point 5 - ability to use heavy armor with decreased penalties.

Speech:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: Wit h 0 points, regular default dialog (plus other skill/perk related options); with points 1-5, thesholds for related speech-check lines.

Lockpick:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: Wit h 0 points you do not pick locks, you simply have no idea how to. Each point opens up ability to open locks at respective levels. The skill also modifies the amount of time an attempt takes. Also, if a minigame is involved, which I wouldn't put there, each tier increases the durability of the lockpick when attempting current or previous tiers.

Barter:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: 0 points - 20% selling value, 200% buying value; 1 point - 40% selling value, 175% buying value; 2 points - 60% selling value, 150% buying value; 3 points - 80% selling value, 125% buying value; 4 points - 100% selling value, 100% buying value; 5 points - 120% selling value, 75% buying value.

Science:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: Hacking abilities similiar to lockpicking. Also handling the modding requirements for energy weapons. Thresholds for various skilluses outside of inventoryitems.

Repair:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: 0 points - you do not repair anything by yourself, Point 1 - Repair light armor to top condition, medium armor to 50% CND, and heavy armor to 25%, Point 3 - Repair medium armor to top condition, medium armor to 75% and heavy armor to 50%, Point 5 - Repair all armors to top condition. Handles various crafting requirements and modding reqs for Guns category of weapons. Thresholds for various skilluses outside of inventoryitems.

Medical:
ooooo
Cost: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Effect: 0 points - you can use stimpaks but they only heal 50% of their potential, and after 5 in a row, you suffer double the overdoespenalty. Point 1 - Ability to heal 30 HP manually when no hostiles are around, and with a cooldown time for use. Intoxication meter allows for 5 stimpaks in a row without overdosing. Point 2 - Manual healing cooldown time decreased for 25%. 7 stimpaks without penalties. Point 3 - Can use 1 superstim without a penalty. 30% chance of healing a crippled limb. Point 4 - 10 stims or 2 superstims without penalty. Cooldown time decreased additional 25%. 50% chance of healing a crippled limb. Point 5 - 75% chance at healing a crippled limb. 5 superstims or 15 stims without penalty.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SPECIAL (outline, and not including governed skills and related bonuses):
oooooooooo
S - Carryweight, melee/HtH damage and attackspeed modifiers, lifting and moving heavy objects, weapon STR requirement modifiers, (+ other situational misc tasks)
P - Accuracy, vision distance, identifying consumables and their effects (in conjuction with survival skill), detecting traps, (+ other situational misc tasks)
E - Base HP, HP/level, poison-, radiation-, damage (other) resistances, sprint time, (+ other situational misc tasks)
C - Initial reaction modifiers, companion nerve, soothe (a chance of rendering humanoid enemies nonhostile for a moment -- situational) (+ other situational misc tasks)
I - Skillpoints/level, identifying objects not in the range of perception, (+ other situational misc tasks)
A - Movespeed, actionpoints, weapon handling speed, jump height and distance, (+ other situational misc tasks)
L- Luck is blind [:wink:]

Another alternative method for skills could be to structure them into skilltrees of sorts, to present general knowledge and specialization:

Spoiler

This can work with both of the afore mentioned progressionstyles, generally.

For the 1-100 system, the skillpoint costrates would work the same as explained in General Gameplay up above - 1-50 1:1, 51-75 2:1, 76-100 3:1. But after the point where the skill reaches 50, it would split (with skill appropriate for such splitting) into 2 or 3 specialization paths. This would be to present the general knowledge (1-50) of a given category and the requirement to specialize in order to excell (51-100) in various ways within the said category, a need for higher focus to master something at the cost of other things. This could also, potentially, address the plea for more skills as well as the demand for higher gameplay variety.

Some of the skills and specializations could - for example, it's not a fleshed out list - be like:

Guns (general knowledge about and handling of conventional firearms from pistols to LMG's, etc) - skillpoints 1 to 50 - cost 1:1;

* Pistol grip (specialization path for conventional firearms held with one hand -- like pistols, and lighter SMG's) - skillpoints 51 to 75 at the cost of 2:1 and from 76 to 100 at the cost of 3:1

* Rifle grip (specialization path for conventional firearms held with two hands -- like larger SMG's, rifles, and assault rifles, and gauss/antitank rifles) - skillpoints handled as above

Alternatively, the Guns specializations could be:

* Precise weapons (specialization for single/semiauto firing regardless of weapon used) - illustrates focused fire and accuracy - skillpoints handled as above

* Imprecise weapons (specialization for burst/full auto firing regardless of weapon used) - illustrates recoilcontrol - skillpoints handled as above.

Energy weapons (general knowledge about handling weapons that use energy as their means to cause harm)

* Plasma (specialisation path for plasmaweapons)

* Laser (specialisation path for laserweapons)

Explosives (all manners of things that go boom)

* Traps (spotting, disarming and arming of higher grade traps, whether explosive or not)

* AOE (area of effect) weapons (rocketlauncers, greneadelaunchers, flamethrowers, grenades, etc)

Close Combat

* Melee (extensions of your fists)

* Hand to hand (your fists and feet)

Speech (general logic and reasoning)

* Persuasion (make people act according to your whims)

* Deception (the art of lying)

Medic (first aid bandaging)

* Doctor (manual healing of greater proportions)

* Pharmacist (the medicineman skill to create uppers, downers, laughers, criers, and healers)

Barter (knowing the value of an item and the ability to make others know it your way -- this skill does not need to split)

Repair (basic tinkering with stuff)

* Craftsman (create high class protective wear and Guns)

* Maintenance (repair and maintain higher class [/i]Guns[/i], armor and other appropriate utilities in the game)

Science (basic scientific knowledge)

* Computers (hacking and reprogramming)

* Electronics (repairing energyweapons and other higher grade electrical devices)

Outdoorsman (basic knowledge of the nature)

* Cooking (cooking for the royal)

* Biology (identifying different plants and animals to make the difference between healthy and unhealthy)

Stealth (the ability to do things without other people noticing)

* Sneak

* Steal

Security (opening stuff without a key)

* Conventional locks (opening stuff with lockpicks)

* Electronic locks (opening stuff with electronic lockpicks)

There's only 12 primary skills ( for now, could be added more if appropriate and not overlapping others), but the specialization paths cover - imo - a lot of that.

The 1-10 skillprogression system - explained earlier in this post - could utilize this for those skills that reach for 10 points, while those that do not, remain as they are.

TL;DR?:

Spoiler

Make the game lean less towards the TES style of gameplay - find a better middleground in between - to create a greater diversity between the two franchises.

Even still TL;DR?:

Spoiler

Learn to read pal....

Things I'd appreciate if omitted or otherwise excluded (read: not implemented to begin with):

- Sandbox map -- the game can still be an open world (like how the first games) and support random exploration with large enough "nodes".
- Main focus on exploration -- this shouldn't be the selling point of the game, it's fine for TES, but Fallout should be set apart from that series in all ways possible.
- Too heavy focus on combat more than other styles of gameplay -- there should be more balance on how to fare with the gameworld, well made and settlement centric nodes would support this in that there'd be less empty space that needs to be filled with random combat.
- Straightforward FPS run'n gun combat - there's nothing more boring in these games than RPG combat hampered by FPS mechanics (and while this works both ways, I do not care about improving the FPS elements at the cost the RPG side).
- And stop wasting time in handplacing every sandbead in the desert. There's absolutely no need what so ever to not use procedurally generated landscapes in a wasteland that is mostly sand, rocks and rubble. Use that time to create as unique and differing focus spots as possible.
- And most importantly... less content from the Big Bag of Cool-on-paper +1 -- think before implementing, does it fit the setting, does it make sense, does it have a real purpose.
- Extraterrestials
- All that The Settlers/Sim(s) stuff like: building a house and playing home, building a city and "defending" it, forming a faction, setting up and managing a shop, farming, playerdriven marriage and romances, and all that useless and distracting fluff which is better suited for other games that use them as a the core point of gameplay.
- No multiplayer of any kind - there is a [censored] ton mp games out there for pepole who want that, there's absolutely no reason what-so-ever to have it in here.
- Excessive strive towards "realism" over statistics based gameplaymechanics and RPG feel.
- Combat music -- seriously, it just gets in the [censored] way.

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:24 am

This is the complete compiled list of my suggestions, organized by category.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

Spoiler

- Throughout the entire game give the PC the ability to go nonlethal in the style or manner that the popular game, Dishonored had. In which we could take people down with a sleeper hold, tranquillizer darts, or simply using our mind to find a way to get them out of the picture.

- The bounty system the NCR had was interesting. As well as how we had bounties placed on our head by other factions. Would not you say? There were mods that expanded on that, which is where I did get my inspiration on this from.

- This is mostly to Bethesda and less towards Obsidian. You need to really take advantage of your M rating and tell a story and offer gameplay indicative of this. You are now competing with the likes of The Witcher, The Forest, Dying Light, Mad Max, and Homefront: Revolution. in this category. Moreover, I do not have to tell you that they are not as shy and immature as, Todd Howard claims he is. If you played The Witcher II, you know this, and people loved it. They bring up that scene all the time. YOU KNOW THE ONE! So take off the T for teen gloves and get to it. You lost that rating some time ago. Let us see what you can do. Because a little blood and gore is nothing compared to what your competitors are offering. You might hate it or what have you, but it is Catharsis. You experience something you normally would not and it is a kind of relief. This is the reason why people like Edapusrex to give a bit of a theater class rewind. Year after year these advlt mods are in the millions on downloads. I do not mean the overly sixual ones either. I am talking about ones that are tastefully done like the six scenes on Mass Effect for example.

- Have a unique and dynamic weather system. That is also a mod. Make winter seem like winter really is. For instance, the Skyrim mods made it cover all surfaces like you did with rocks and trees, plus they added the prints. Look at Inquisition how they made it to where you can stumble in mud if you are too heavy. Alternatively, make snow slippery and you can fall on your butt. Do not have any clipping. Clipping is not very professional, we see it a lot in your games, and modders fix it! Just do what you did in skyrim with all the weather effects. How the snow just drops over the landscape. Things like this might seem like small details, but they are highly appreciated. If we get in the water and get out, we should be dripping wet.

- Add maintenance to gear. It should all break down with use over time depending on what it is realistically of course. It should not be like skyrim. Just give the players who do not want this feature the option to turn it off or lump it together with the hardcoe mode. As long as you do not make it like dead island you are okay. In dead island things decayed a little too fast. Didn't make sense.

- A vast, immersive, detailed flora and fauna system. See the mods of skyrim to see what I mean. Essentially they added ecosystems, more of each, increased the detail of both, changed the spawn points, made heards, and much more. They made it believable and realistic. There should be a fishing, hunting, and flora collecting mini games to help out some settlements.

- When we need a flashlight the pip boy will still have a light, but instead of not being able to aim it, if we aim down the sights with it on, it should work like a flashlight. At rest, it should work as if a lantern is tied to our belt and should swing with our arm as a real light source.

- For combat, no longer should a higher difficulty just mean more health. It should mean that the enemies get smarter, use better tactics, adapt to changing situations, and are generally more innovative depending on who and what they are. The hardest possible play though would then logically be hardcoe, hardcoe mode. A bandit on the highway depending on age and how long they have been doing this, would be tougher than one that had just started. If we are sneaking and using a bow, crossbow that fires multiple shots without reloading, etc and hit a target with it. The enemies would react to that naturally. Calling out to their buddies that there is an enemy and what type they are and that they are hiding. They would run search patterns, blindly fire if really frightened, use flashlights or torches to hunt you, use last known location, and if they searched it thoroughly for a normal amount of time they might go down to yellow alert but will adapt so that you can't just snipe them from a corner and run and keep this up and hear them say it must of been nothing. If they find blood they react. If you didn’t grab and hide the body they react. If I am attacking them full frontal assault and my gun jams, I am out of ammo, I am even using a gun, etc they should react accordingly and communicate with each other and change tactics. Rushing me when I am out and taking cover when I am pressing. Add a cover system indicative of someone who had no training depending on what skill you want to govern that. Strangely enough, use Homefront revolution as an example here. Certain covers should be destructible based on what weapon you are using. In fact, make the entire world like this, but make that realistic. A 9mm might punch holes through some thin sheet metal, but it will not take down a building and neither would an RPG for that matter. It would just blow the clutter around. If I am sniping from a distance they should react accordingly. Maybe they even have counter snipers. I remember a quote from someone talking about the Vietnam War saying, "The only way to fight a sniper is with a better one." This is another reason why you need volunteers to tell you things like these. It would make your games better. They might even fortify their position by building better fortifications and setting traps and cover. They work together as a team just as you will with your companions.

- Companion limit should be four total.

- The pip boy should be upgradable.

- I think the lock picking mini game system is long overdue for an overhaul. So right now the way it works is you use a standard lock pick that everyone in the entire game universe is using or bobby pins and optionally a screw driver. Getting a bit old huh? I think this is how it should work. It does not pause the game, it is entirely real time. We either have a lockpicking gun, a leather bound roll out lock picking kit that has a rake, hook, and lubricant of some kind to clean out a really old lock, or both. Lowest level being graphite, next alcohol, and lastly wd40. Additionally some locks that just clip on we should be able to just hold the wd40 upside down and hit it with a hammer. (Which would not be stealthy at all.) This kit should be upgradable based on our skill. You could buy a master lock pick set, but if you didn't have the skill to use it, it would not do much good for you. So you have to have the necessary skill to unlock things now. You can still attempt any lock, but it would be more difficult for you to rake the pins. There should also be more than one type of locking mechanism. Some should be like vaults and have a combination, pass code, etc. Diversify the locks and options to get through them. Like just simply shooting one with a 12 gauge point blank and blowing out the locking mechanism or shooting a hole in a door and then this is animated, he reaches through and unlocks the door himself. Which would not be stealthy. There should be different types of rakes and hooks. Some rakes are not as good as others are because the companies that make them adapted against them. This is where your progression system works. You also would need a different rake for different locks. It would not mean that you could not pick a lock, but if you use the wrong one, it would slow you down in burning through it.

- Hacking. The way it works is you just attempt to gain access to the computer and even the most advanced ones are only protected by a single password with varying degrees of length. Hacking should be multi-faceted and we should use our pip boy to do so. Eliminating the need to use the keyboard altogether. It would work by remotely sinking up your pip boy with the target and then instead of looking through the code and trying to guess which one is the password we simply have an A.I. we programmed or the default one on the pip boy if your skill is below 25. The better your skill, the better your programming knowledge and the more useful it becomes. So our pipboy automatically begins finding exploits in the software or hardware and depending on your skill level is how long it will take you to get through a target if at all possible, but you can attempt any hack. You would just be more likely to be detected if your skill was low because it would take longer. If they are highly advanced than they might have someone or security system monitoring the network and you could be found out that way. So this means we could stealthy and remotely hack. It would be governed by intelligence, science, stealth, and agility. If we are intelligent and are advanced in science, we should be able to get through any firewall, passwords, or security system. Anything electronic with a CPU is our domain if we are good at hacking. We could hack anything with a computer chip or wireless network. For wired networks or if it needs power, we should have to plug our pip boy in unless we have a wireless power upgrade on our pip boy. There could be people we pay in game to program our pip boy's a.I. for us. You could also make it a side quest where someone tries to kill you this way. Much more modern and much more likely for their universe. It is somewhat like eddie on your wrist. So we could have an A.I. companion on our wrist that could help with a multitude of task and would be similar in nature to the suit from big mountain.

- I would also like to see some more puzzle gameplay mechanics kind of like the games where you have to put it all together to move forward.

- Traps: The dead money ones were amazing because they played off player traits of greed. Instead, you could hook this in with procedural generation and depending on player habits adapts the traps to us. Thereby keeping them interesting and not allowing us to cheat by looking them up. We would probably still be able to look some of them up in some situations, because though you might have the correct traps you would not be able to procedurally generate a hand drawn level. I don't think anyway.

- This could come into play with cannibals that have been tracking and watching us for a while or some faction that hates us that has been doing the same and each one depending on how tough or good they are at what they do. NCR/Legion/BOS/House would have been the pinnacle and the low end would be the [censored] nords of skyrim who think the wind shot them in the head with an arrow and say lines like, How am I supposed to know what college he/she meant.

- Allow us to play as an A.I. (i.e.) an android. They are in the universe now. I don't see why not. Just make sure you fully incorporate it. Really, explore the topic of life with this character and slavery, etc.

-Add a grappling hook and mountain climbing axe that are fully animated and upgradable.

PRODUCTIVITY/MISC:

Spoiler

- Take on more volunteers for things like consults, graphics work, coding, bug squashing, real life DJ’s, writers, consultants, etc. Keep it semi closed, in that the volunteers do not go and spoil everything, but you get the benefit of what happens in the modding community. Or the benefit of crowd development. They do incredible things there that everyone should get to experience, like fixing every single bug in all your games. They are that good. They also upgrade the graphics of a game like Skyrim. That is simply incredible. In addition, many games are bringing this concept to life. Like Infamous Second Son's Camera mode, GTA's mapmaker, Halo's forge, and Minecraft. There are many examples. I would even buy some for like 99 cents if you uploaded a few select ones on the Store as DLC. Find a way to make this happen. It has been a little too long. The point is that you are not limited on, "Oh this is a great feature, but we don't have the money." Are you kidding? Go look at the nexus and look at all that talent there. They would kill to work with you. You get free talent and potentially new employees for the ones that really stand out. In addition, if you have someone do some voice acting for say a dragon shout like, Fus rho dah, you release it on the trailer, everyone loves it, please do not change it in the game! It was crazy. That person did a wonderful job and I hear he is the one who wrote that language in a weekend? You really messed up there you have to admit.

- I think this might be a bit of a personal preference here, but I think when you are hiring voice actors you should mostly hire the ones who are also stage actors. Like Pat Stew. To me they are the best there is at what they do. It is all live and they really pour themselves into their work. In addition, I would LOVE to see Gary Oldman do a Bethesda game. That man is incredible and he played Dracula and Zorg! He is right up your alley. How has this not happened yet? I also would not mind seeing Sean Bean do another game as he was phenomenal as Martin. Did not get the credit he deserved there. I totally agree with Todd there. Liam Neeson was great as well, but you did already use him for fallout.

- Gather big data so you can improve the game. A good example, though it is not the same genre per say, is Destiny. They released an alpha first look (not the suggestion) and you could sign up, but they keep track of what everyone is doing, where they are, where they are dying, what they are using, what strategies they are using, ect. They also allow players to in game send feedback directly to them for say proof of a bug or what not. They are not the only one that does this, but it is the best example right now in terms of non-procedurally generated games. Also, keep track of what mods people are using and how they are using them. You would be surprised what all you can learn from this. After all, what is more important? What people say they like? Or what they do.

- Make the game so that it is like what the Division is going to do with their DLC and new updates. You do not have to stop playing; you just download the new update, as you are playing the world changes. It is an incredible concept. The game would stay alive for a long time if you could do this. If I am not explaining this as well as I should, I am sorry. I tried to find where I read this at, but I think it was a YouTube video near last e3.

- Give the player character a choice for what voice we have, not unlike what Inquisition is going to do. In their game, we will have two choices for each gender. You might think you do not choose a voice actor for the PC, but you do. He just does grunts and stuff like that. I hated the one in FNV. He sounded so weird. For the classic loving players who want their voice to be the PC, give the option to have no voice. Everyone wins.

- Make a smartphone companion app for the game. You people are missing out here. Things we could do would be like what the PlayStation companion app does sort of. Allow us to pair up with our Ps4, Xbox, or pc and use it as a touch screen to control some things in the game like the keyboard. Allow us to go through our inventory , customize our gear by adding dyes, paint, add-ons, mods, etc., crafting with built in tools that help us. Level up, read our journals, notes, audio logs, radio, and quest. Have it as a direct way to send feedback to you for the app or game. Add mini games. As you can see, there are many possibilities.

- Project Morpheus, Oculus rift support, Google Cardboard thingy, PlayStation eye, and Kinect support.

- Something I am worried might carry over from skyrim is the blocky faces that modders removed. Please do not do this.

- Make sure that your textures and meshes are as perfect as could be. In skyrim, a mod fixes distant landscapes with one single texture mod. This huge oversight should never been allowed to have happened, but did.

- Make the sounds as realistic or more so than what companies like Dice and 343 did with Halo. In dice, you have the option to turn on a sound mode called war tapes. They have this because they actually did extensive recordings to capture all the sounds in the game. It is incredible.

- Utilize procedural and generative generation techniques to cut down on the time it takes to do menial task, free up time for more important things, allows more animations, scripted events, and overall increase the world size. The best examples of today would be No Man’s Sky and Left for Dead I & II. In No Man’s Sky the entire universe is infinite and everything will be procedurally generated making the universe infinitely explorable. In LFD they use big data to help them shape the world by removing certain enemies, adding loot, and even new pathways. Generative generation or automatic programming is used to do automatic tedious coding. In some instances, the program can write its own code. In the world of Fallout 4 I am suggesting that it be a hybrid between these three concepts, procedural/generative generation and the work done by the artist. So the game would be less like a constant action thriller theme park and more like what would imagine in reality. So between towns might be big swathes of forest or wasteland that we have to trek across to get to a bandit hideout or mission.

- In first person, we should have two arms and legs. Should be able to interact with the world with our limbs.

- I would like in sneak mode for it to be similar to the game Dishonored, in that we have smart edge detection, and can hide in places you otherwise would not expect.

- The inventory system should be comparable to what The Last of us did, but fallout style and better. All items take up space and have a realistic weight comparable to the real world. There are certain types of inventory holders like backpacks, bandoleers, belts, pouches, etc. If you have them equip, the type of size and weighted items that they can carry are placed there by the player with his hands. Say you have two bandoleers across your chest, a belt, pouches, and a military backpack. Than we can hold ammo in those bandoleers, small items below a certain size in the smaller compartments, and big items go into our backpack, and weapons go in our holsters if we have them. If you do not have a holster, he has to carry it in his hands and store it in his pack unless it is a pistol and then he can tuck it into his belt line. Having more holsters means being able to carry more weapons. We should be able to carry up to four large weapons max and the weight and size limitations mean we would really have to manage our ammo right. If you have a mount, we should be able to place holsters on that too for weapons and some other compartments. If you only have a pack you cannot carry too much with you. When you open your inventory he pulls his pack off his back and sets it on the floor and the menu comes up of every compartment you have on you and if you are nearby your mount that shows up too. It is all simplified like skyrim. It does not pause the game if you are in hardcoe mode and in both it sends your followers into idle unless sharing inventory with them in which case they are standing in front of the PC and we simply hand it to them and behind the menu and they place it where it needs to go. If you use stimpacks or something like this than it queues up but does not show it in hardcoe and when you close the inventory he injects it and its animated. Thereby removing the ability to cheat and adding strategy and skill to it. Moving things around in the inventory is totally animated. You can see the PC and NPC’s move their gear around from compartment to compartment.

- Have Obsidian entertainment work cooperatively with you on fallout 4.

- Allow us to make camp if we have the equipment to do so.

- If you no longer want to work on the game and still have volunteers or staff that do want to allow them to.

- Use kickstarter or indigogo if you need to for funding.

- Make fast travel like a hybrid between morrowind's transports and such and the regular fast travel. If we are playing on hardcoe mode have them auto eat and drink when they need to. So we don't have to check that constantly. We should be able to fill up canteens and jugs. When we click fast travel I think it should show our progress on the map and simulate what it would be like and have the potential to be interpreted by encountering something in the world.

- For music, you should include things from all eras and not just the 1950's. It should be the focal point of it all, but there was time before that and after it in the world. Also in stealth mode if we are listening to music he should put in wireless earbuds that charge over time if we find, buy, or earn them. If not if we are playing music it should give away our position. If we are not in stealth, it should have an effect on the enemy like frightening them. Similar to what the tank crews during World War II did.

- Add in an advanced option menu that is initially collapsed with various fine tuning options for the player to take advantage of, to make the game the way they want it.

- When they game first comes out include a day one DLC that is free and allows us to improve the graphics of the game, thereby eliminating the need to have several disks.

- Our player and NPC’s should have a quantifiable emotional state in which will make us and other NPC's behave differently depending on what state they are in. It is not really difficult to predict what state someone would be in, because there are six-eight basic emotions and a total of 72. A writer, artist, programmer working in synchronous could do this job. You could make it optional or only for hardcoe mode. This is a rather brilliant concept I got from an indie game called Dungeon Crawlers. So if you are going through a den of cannibals and it is pitch black with low visibility and you are running into bodies on meat hooks your heart is racing like a madman (controller vibrating to the beat of your heart) and you're maybe not as good at sneaking or is harder to control to sneak or aim. You run into an enemy and you're a melee character and he just keeps hitting him even though he is down. (Pissed and scared) It reminds me of sometimes in skyrim when playing on the harder difficulties you kill a tough opponent and just really rub it in with your sword when he is dead. This would be much more satisfying adding to an otherwise flat emotional experience. I remember Todd Howard showing a picture of him winning a dynasty of NCAA. This would be like that in a bit, because they actually incorporate emotion into that game. Like if it's fourth quarter or OT and you're the kicker. You might also use procedural generation here to amp up the emotions depending on difficulty. The highest possible setting hardcoe, hardcoe mode would be the most realistic. You might even use Kinect/PlayStation eye/ oculus/ project Morpheus to track our emotion.

- I also remember another innovative game concept where you start out as a prisoner in the game that is about to be executed and the warden comes in and ask you how you want to go. This is not so much important as the conversation system is. When he ask you this you can highlight the option and listen to the characters inner monologue behind the decision. The reason why I did not previously suggest this was because I somewhat felt that the inner monologue of the character is us, because that is us in the game in a way. We are role-playing a bit there. But I think we could do a bit of both IF they go along with the suggestion to add optional player voices for male and female characters (at least two maybe four. Meaning two male and two female voices.)

hardcoe MODE:

Spoiler

- If it is cold, it should affect us and we should have the chance to have the deleterious effects that come with that. We should slowly dry off as we walk, mud too, and sandstorms should slowly damage our gear.

- Everything in the game is real time. If we are walking and a NPC is talking to us we can respond while walking using the touchpad on the ps4 or directional pad that is on both ps4/x1 and on pc something similar. If we bring our pipboy up it does not pause time. Etc. No way to pause time in hardcoe.

- The way the save game works is that when we start a new game we get to select hardcoe, hardcoe mode and once started we can never switch out of it on that save. There are only AutoSaves. You get up to ten. Most of the same rules apply to them, but add areas and situations where it does not save to prevent exploits. The obvious intention is to increase the challenge and skill level required. Also make it to where each autosave has one back up behind it that’s clean so that if we delete the first corrupt one , we have a backup.

- If you choose to add the advanced options menu only allow us to tweak select options here.

- The PC and all NPC’s have realistic carry weight. Unless we have a mount with extra compartments and we are nearby it we should not be able to carry over 350lbs with all the best inventory gear equip.

- All food, water, and medicine has a toxicity effect if you take too much, drink too much, or eat too much it has deleterious effects. Super Stim packs blur your vision while it is in effect and you have to really plan when to use them. Medicine bags can only be used while you make camp.

- When we die in hardcoe mode and vanilla, it incorporates the multiverse theory into the narrative and informs us that though our wanderer died, there is another alternate reality where we did not die and it reloads the latest save file automatically, but does not say it is loading. Instead, the screen progressively gets darker and darker and as the save loads up the world is slowly appearing around us and boom, were playing again.

- Vats does not pause the game in hardcoe for you so you can have all the time in the world to slowly select where you want to hit. Instead, it would work by holographically projecting a lead circle that you can aim at based on what body part you initially are trying to hit, so that you can strike it, and if you are wearing power armor it comes with aim assist for vats. In vanilla, I suggest that vats work like deadeye in most games. In that the game slows down, but does not stop time. This does not mean you cannot use vats to help you detect enemies. Instead, vats will constantly do this for you by highlighting them for you in the dark and distance. You might consider adding smart rifles as well. Which also means that you should make the night and day with photorealistic lighting. Consider just making this standard vats.

- If we have companions, it changes the difficulty of the game accordingly, not unlike Diablo.

- When we mod a weapon it should not pause the game, should not have an arbitrary limit like only three, and it should all be animated. An example again is Homefront revolution from their trailer. He uses his own hands in real time to mod the weapon and it’s fast, but you could make agility and intelligence govern that. We should be able to tape on lights (use of clutter), put in a heavy barrel, flash suppressor/sound suppressor/compensator/etc., underslung rail for grenade launcher, shotgun, stun gun, stunning lasers, tranquilizer dart, poison dart, HE grenade, etc, foldable grip, angled grip, potato grip, etc, taped magazines, ammo drum, laser, taclight. Maybe even add in smart rifles. Something the military is developing and buying right now. I think you are seeing how much you are missing out on. Also these guns should have different firing modes, ammunition types, etc. It should all have it’s own textures, meshes, and animations that all change the gun’s appearance.

- The power armor should be more like an exoskeleton suit with armor built over it and advanced a.i and oxygen recycler, meaning you can go underwater with them, but you would sink and not swim and they might of even used it as a pressure suit for space EV's. The military would use them for anything from construction and moving heavy equipment to advanced warfare. Meaning there should be many types of the stuff around.

- You need to update the universe a bit more and add in drones as they have become indispensable as of late. They could be something simple like rc cars/planes with mods to enclave/old world tech. They would be used to deliver mail, scout, map, prospect, farming, news (keep track of players achievements), and much, much more. We are still actually discovering their potential.

- One other thing to add would be three dimensional printing. You can just say that is what was in dead money. Those vending machines. Today we are using these to print off food, clothing, houses, aircraft parts, tools and parts (slated for ISS actually), organs, and much much more. We are still discovering what we can do with these.

- For medical treatment I think it should be a combination of things on how we treat ourselves and our injuries. If we get a disease or get sick in the game we should have to drink more water, take antibiotics of some sort, need more sleep, etc. Fractures should be classified by, if it is a complete fracture is when the bone has broken into two pieces. A greenstick fracture is when the bone cracks on one side only, not all the way through. A single fracture is when the bone is broken in one place. A comminuted (say: kah-muh-NOOT-ed) fracture is when the bone is broken into more than two pieces or crushed. A bowing fracture, which only happens in kids, is when the bone bends but doesn't break. An open fracture, or when the bone is sticking through the skin. If it simple we just set it and inject some sort of nanites or stem cell treatment they would have developed. If we do not treat it we should risk dying. Which is possible. Thanks house for teaching me medicine. Continuing on. . . If we are irradiated we should start to see the initial symptoms like loss of appetite, hair loss, etc and progressively get worse with a very small chance of ghoulification. Add a bit of depth to your system is what I am getting at. It is really cool from what you already have, I was trying to add to it. If it is something complex the player can handle it should be handled at the camp we make. We should not be able to set a broken bone instantly during combat.

USER INTERFACE:

Spoiler

- Take a lesson from what we have seen the modders do with the UI. Make one from the ground up for each System. There were many glitches with this for PC guys who were getting angry with miss clicking dialogue options, because the highlighted dialogue option was not the center one. There are more but I will keep it brief. Make the UI, “Show it when you need it and hide it when you do not.” Yes, that is a mod.

- For the big map that we will have on our pipboy or if you go with my holographic The Division style map suggestion, make sure that it is as good as it was in the last ones. In skyrim, you neglected to add things like roads. It was not very detailed and so we had to rather guess what would be ahead through the FOW or no FOW.

- Add more killcam cinematics with various customizable parts to it. For example in FNV we could make it to where the last kill that we are about to get slows down time but does not zoom in, it just uses the players FOV. In Skyrim there were several mods that added to the kill cams.

- More cinematic cut scenes for the game. I think that making them with the game engine is best.

- Everything in the game needs to be properly animated.

- Disguise, hide, or prevent having to load anything. If you need to load something do it in the background. Preload the cells ahead of us and only show things like animated grass if we are looking in that direction. So instead of teleporting into cells it loads up when we are nearby and can reach out with our hand, twist the doorknob/or however the door is closed and push it open and walk into the cell. Once inside shrink what is shown outside the door to what we can see through windows. So we never have to pause the game.

- If we have a power helmet on it should have its own HUD.

COMPAIONS/A.I. & CRAFTING:

Spoiler

- Companions need a lot more options, dialogue, and realism to them. Like if we go to sleep in a bed, they should have something to say to us and should do something. Like wait and interact with the environment or stand guard. The point is that there needs to be more thought put into this. There are some mods you could consult for inspiration. You would be surprised what people are doing.

- Since there will undoubtedly be children in the next game, we should be able to have a last of us style child companion that could either be our daughter/son, adopted/biological, temporary companion, or something or the other. They should have all the functions that are in Skyrim HeartFire and then some. Such as automatically helping us find ammo, food, water. They should have the ability to hide during combat (they should be always no combative unless they are eighteen or older, the legal age to join most military’s. Though, you can still hint in the narrative of the game that there are some child soldiers, as we saw in FNV), VAST amount of dialogue that we can never run through in one or maybe even two save games (if you can find a way to make the dialogue different for each play though as GTA often does that would also be a plus.), their own collectibles (Like the vaultec bobble heads or the magazines that Ellie liked to pick up, mini games (Add more onto what you had in Skyrim.), their own crafting skills (Like making food, filtering water, toys, etc. This is a child who watches everything you are doing and they are going to grow up and probably be just like you one day if they are a permanent companion or at the very least and this should be for everyone they take inspiration from your actions and some do as you do. If you are a hero, the children might role-play in towns as you. Do you be out for number one, the moral gray area, or just as pure as the driven snow. We would see and feel the weight of our actions as if it were a mirror following us. The first time we have to kill, they hide, and it is over you think. They would come up to us and have many questions for us. Why did the man need to die? "It was either him or us and I would rather him it be him, wouldn't you, (Name)?" Alternatively, you do not kill him, but maybe just knock him out or some other non-lethal takedown, but you rob him and leave him there with nothing to survive on. "Couldn't we have just left him some water?" In addition, if you take him down and take only what you need they would still have questions. "Why couldn't we have taken more? He tried to kill us!" This mirror literary tool could be used for all companions and not simply just child ones. Depending the NPC’s personality, ideology, faction, or what have you they are going to have a response to your actions. That to me alone would make the game worth playing and would deliver an experience that we see very rarely and it makes everything not quite as detached and puts a much larger spotlight on your play through. Something I believe Obsidian realized with Lonesome road. We needed a mirror of our actions and it really pulled at you what we had to do there and what we did. Our actions had weight and the characters were palpable. We could just as easily of been him. If the player led faction idea is implemented than we can put radio tags on equipment for it to be picked up later.

- I do not think there will be really marriage in the fallout world. At least not outside places like the NCR and I do not know how housing will work. (Just thinking of hearthfire.) But please do not abandon this concept, but improve upon it. It only needed realistic progression and perhaps a skill of its own. Also see Player led faction suggestion.

- I have already talked about how crafting should be real time with the option for it not to be. I have talked about how we should be able to craft from a companion app. I would also like to add what we should be able to craft. Homes, weapons, mods, armor, clothes, clutter items, food, drinks of all kinds. The clutter items are deceptively simple. That is the biggest part. From heating up sand to make glass and doing glass blowing to making nets for fishing or fletching. Etc. Old school oil drilling. Etc.. It should be a HUGE part of the game that we have the choice to take part in and everyone should be doing these things. It brings the world to life. Like how you started making lore wise how people live. Adding farming and the like.

- This all being said, the world should have its own economy based on this. Meaning NPC's go where there work is. They are not randomly in some place they should not be. We would run into prospectors, people fishing, salesmen, guards, etc. They would have a schedule that is far bigger than a few cells. It would be big. Like if we are in Georgia you could get hired on as a guard or deck hand on a steamboat that trades crops up and down the coast or with Europe. In addition, all this economy has a kind of levolution effect on the world. Remember that word. Levolution. Meaning the world changes in real time/and while were away based on player action and npc action. So if a town is poor they would not have much supplies, people, talent, and some towns might even be completely abandoned because of it like the gold rush. Same for if an epidemic is going around or a murder is on the loose and you have not caught him or npc's have not. Say you get a quest to fix some pipes and say you will and do not and then all these pipes bust and the town goes ghost because they have no water or you take too long and they manage to fix it anyway. Which was a fallout 3 quest.

- We have the option to run a player led faction that is like what we see in the game Dragon Age Inquisition. We can implement automatic policy that our faction will carry out. We can have faction bases and NPC’s if given permission will move there and in realtime/or when the PC is away will build or renovate to make their home or business or both.

STORY:

Spoiler

- The one thing I did not like about the beginning of fallout NV was that they abandoned the precept that we are born into the world. This was innovative when Bethesda did this and I really grew attached to my character and connected more with this as if I was just being born into the world and had quite a bit of say so on what I look like and who I will be. Then when we went back later and saw what our actions wrought it resonated even more so. We didn't really have that kind of accountability and depth with NV's beginning. Good springs became a town to forget unless you wanted to see the doc or something. Therefore, I suggest that whatever beginning we have that this be the initial start of the game, no matter how short or long that start may be. Thus giving the player the ultimate blank slate and ability to choose ones own back story if allowed.

- I want to see an exploration of this idea I postulated a long time ago. An enclave/big mountain (just say the research was destroyed and easy connection.)/ commonwealth or institute/ or similarly advanced faction in the sphere of the game universe realizes the potential behind ghoulification and use their intelligence and expertise to transform themselves into biologically (yet sterile until they solve that) immortals. (Which just means their cells cannot die, but they still can from trauma.) I am thinking an almost bioshock eque quality where we try to create a perfect utopia and discover that the fault is not in our stars, but within ourselves kind of moment. You could use the concept in storytelling where (this is an actual prediction of what could happen to the world's governments), the rich and powerful live nearly forever and cling on to power and hold on to their ideas. So They would be like the prewar individuals before the apoc incident. Scientifically it is possible for a species to become biologically immortal, (this might get confusing so bear with me.) the species would only need to find a way to stop cellular degeneration or aging. Where during mitosis the telomere on the ends of the cells that allows them to rejuvenate become shorter and shorter and eventually becoming damaged and since they just keep undergoing mitosis, this forms microscopic tumors that feed off blood and can eventually kill you from that or some other factor of old age. The "Ghouls" I postulate only go mad because some of them had their aging stopped because their cells were too badly damaged and caused severe physiological changes. Alzheimer’s to which we now believe in the elderly is just diabetes for instance. So they would realize this and only allow certain individuals around the correct age. 21-28 or early thirties. (After twenty-five is when these microscopic tumors begin to form. So too far up the age line (everyone has them) and that's when these issues come to life.) ( potential corruption plot where some pay for it and go partially mad.) It could be a vault experiment. All this science should not be written out meticulously, but you should visualize it much in the way that Bioshock did. It would be best to have a consultant to help you be able to choose what could actually work in the game and not work.

- Make the story take place over several years instead of it is usual of around 1.2. We should really be able to feel the passage of time in the world.

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:45 am

Well, for infiltration, stealth and assassination the ability to pick the lock over making a lot of noise will come well in handy. NPC's should also notice if a lock has been tampered with and react to it. A shopkeeper might get a dog that stands watch. A resident might guard their house a lot more. their perception checks for stealth will raise for the next couple of days as they want to catch the [censored] that rooted around (and took some of) their stuff. Faction guards, soldiers and members will be on the lookout for anyone 'not' part of the faction and question them about it even if you return a month later the NPC's there will question you since they saw you around their base/camp/place and suspect you were responsible.

The ability to pick a lock and lock it behind you? It can allow you to get in and around areas others cannot without being confronted or even attacked. Then there is of course items being damaged and stuff but there could also be heavy steel doors and gates that can 'only' be opened by explosives or lockpicking. Explosives is guaranteed to put everyone in the nearby area on alert and draw attention to your location even if they are in a different cell whereas lockpicking is the better choice.

Lockpicking isn't necessary for any lock with this system, however if you use other options then there will be consequences for it. And what matters more, that you can get into that locked closet or that you might piss off a faction and lose reputation with them or even become enemies with them if they know you were responsible and not just suspecting you? Lockpicking isn't overshadowed by the other choices, it is the best option that offers the least amount of consequences. Just cause it isn't a necessity to get into a locked room/container does not mean it is worthless, far from it.

Though I think that for sneaky characters there should be options to infiltrate places beyond hiding in plain sight (Deception (disguises)) and picking locks, ventilation shafts and things you can climb should be introduced so that there are options, however, said options won't always be available of course. But lockpicking is guaranteed to allow you access pretty much anywhere you want to that isn't electronically locked of course.

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:27 pm

What about some original plotline ?

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 11:02 am

Psyker Centaur with the ability to plant concepts in people's brains uses those easily influenced, be it human or mutant of any kind, and brings together a makeshift army that proceeds to wage war upon whatever factions are in the area in order to gain control over them. It believes that with a united front all sharing the same goal and are incorruptable will be the most useful to bring order into the wasteland. In a raid on a caravan you were traveling with you were knocked unconscious, when you wake up you wake up in a camp belonging to this mind-controlled army. Your mind has already been influenced when you were out and you are forced down a linear tutorial sequence (which can be skipped but you will miss out on story bits if it is your first time playing) until you level up to 3, at which point your mind snaps away from the concept that this Psyker's implanted in you and you are free to begin your story in the wasteland. Will you side with other factions? Will you give this Psyker another chance? Will you perhaps allow the Psyker to take your body as its own by the end? Will you follow up on the reason you were on the caravan in the first place? The choice is yours.

And who knows, perhaps the Psyker Centaur is the lesser of two evils.

I mean, a raider king that keeps 'all' raiders in the area under his control and keeps them from attacking those that supply them with food, water and supplies? A ghoul city that is the wealthiest in the region and basically treats the humans like [censored] as payback for all the bigotry they faced? A collection of tribes that believes that believes that the nuclear war marked humanities true purpose and seeks to fight and die with honor to appease their god Armageddon? A caravan company boss who wants to manipulate the other factions to kill one another off no matter how detrimental that could be when there is no one around to hold the others in check?

Oh and Enclave, BOS and NCR are the factions of the area because Fallout ain't Fallout without them. :bonk:

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 1:26 pm

Aren't the Enclave remnant only ~anywhere near the NCR?

**I would like to see the Centaurs ~closer to the ones from Fallout, not like the ones in FO3. A large two headed man and bovine FEV beast with intestinal-tentacle-like protrusions dragging the ground.

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:26 pm

Enclave had tons of other bases all around the US which are still operable to this day, c'mon man, everyone knows this.

» Wed Jul 09, 2014 12:47 pm

Everyone knows that FO3 was the first game too; and NV was the second.