All,

After months of work on http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/890534-wip-new-vegas-bounties-update/, I've finally started laying the groundwork for respawning posters that would supply unnamed bounties ad infinitum, not unlike the radiant system in Skyrim. While the addition of endless quest content is enticing, I do hesitate out of the worry it will sap some of the mojo from the bounty system. A considerable part of the mod's appeal has always been the individualized, named targets that tend to make the player more invested in conducting a pursuit. Anyway, that's where it stands - I leave it to you.

Thanks for taking the time to review my post and answer the poll!

I never even knew they had forums and stuff here. If I only ever post here once, I'm glad it's on your thread.

Good to see you here, brother!

LOL

What a boss.

At any rate, personally? Well, look at Skyrim. A mile wide, an inch deep.

I think you gotta realize that while there ARE some people who would appreciate a way to continue roleplaying a bounty hunter, there's also many more of us who would immediately get bored of the system simply because it was severely lacking in story or purpose compared to other content. You also gotta realize that, for example, even Skyrim's "radiant" system had it's limits. Can you name all the potential radiant locations a Whiterun bounty quest might send you to? I can, there's about 7 bandit ones and ~3 giant ones. So I mean for all their efforts, I still saw through it and saw the limits of the system.

If I were you? I'd simply make it low-priority and truly ask yourself how much it will detract from your other works. If it's a significant amount of work required that gets in the way of other projects? Don't bother. If it's fairly simple and easy to implement? Alright fine, but I'd still keep it low priority.

Alternatively, maybe offer a zone or two that's heavily infested with enemies of varying difficulty. I mean AlChestBreach often ends up visiting vault 3, and I imagine one of the reasons he likes the place is because it's one of the few areas that offers lots of enemies that respawn. New Vegas is sorta lacking in areas with respawning enemies, and I'm sure that some people would appreciate another area or two with tough, respawning foes. But if that's really something YOU should tackle or that ties into YOUR projects? That's another question, cause yeah, I can see how the story could quickly become kinda corny if you just added some super-mutant infested military base with no backstory whatsoever that the NCR Rangers kept paying you to raid.

Overall though, I'd just take a lesson from Skyrim. I think a lot of us are disappointed with it's radiant system for a reason; tends to sound good on paper, pretty lackluster in practice.

Very true, though killing vampires never gets old to me for some reason. However, I hated the radiant quests in the Thieves guild (though I liked the scripted arrival of a rival guild).

However, you can counter on a much, much greater range of targets and spawn points if this sees the light of day (just testing it now). From the Nexus:

- Currently, there are 26 archetypes that will serve as targets:

That list is subject to change - some of the archetypes are a bit zany.

As for the number of spawn points, it varies. Outlaws will have 90+ possible spawn points (no [censored]), with randomized and unique elements depending on the location, e.g., some npc's will run ambush packages near roads). Fiends have ~38, Powder Gangers and supermutants have 14 (they do not share spawn points), while the poor Scorpions have one spawn point. Some spawn points are versatile, while others are unique to certain factions. Most of the targets will have 30+ spawn points.

I'm thinking along those lines. If I can't make it work this weekend, then it's gone. However, it does seem to be functioning quite well so far.

I did that with the lower-grade, generic bounties that will become available following the main quest. My added worldspace, Valle del Hierro, is not too far from what you've described, though it's presence is explained in the central questline (and subsequent bounties).

There it is, chief. Even my zeal for slaying bloodsvckers tends to wane after the first dozen or so. If I do this, I'm hoping that the sheer range and diversity of encounters (even the spawn count and npc types will be randomized within individual spawns) will mitigate the inevitable tedium associated with radiant quests, assuming I go with it. If nothing else, I'm glad I've messed with it, as the potential for similar applications in other mods is very, very exciting (randomized attacks and troop composition in Firebase Zulu, for example). Hell, depending on when F04 ships, I might even have enough time and expertise to make a random/scripted encounters mod (not likely, but I can dream).

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback - I always enjoy getting your perspective on my mods.

I think it's just important to, with each idea, ask yourself if YOU would continue to find it enjoyable. I have to admit that when I read your details, it sounds promising and diverse, but again, when I actually picture myself playing it, I think it could still potentially get old simply because the player would see a pattern to it, even if the pattern is as simple as no storyline.

The most fun I ever had with Skyrim's radiant quests? Enchanting. Enchanting gave the radiant quests purpose, because since I needed a certain enchanted item before I could experiment with the enchant myself, it actually DID give meaning to dungeon-diving and opening that end-dungeon chest. Every time, my otherwise dull and drab radiant quest concluded with the potential of my character becoming stronger, and that's what kept it fresh. Obviously this eventually died out when I learned all the enchants, but STILL it provided several hours of meaning, and I think that's acceptable.

I think if you were to do this, you would need some sort of factor to keep things fresh; we need motivation, because a LOT of people can't roleplay just for roleplaying's sake. The player needs to stand to gain or see something unique by doing them. This could be literally anything, from a random chance that the enemies wield fairly nice unique weaponry, to doing ~10 of them giving you a "bonus reward" in the form of a unique item, or perhaps a choice of reward that ranges from things players typically get use out of but have no way to obtain (a couple doses of Turbo, weapon repair kits, ~200 rounds of a certain type of ammo, a random weapon mod, etc etc).

A couple suggestions I can think of off the top of my head:

1) Make the reward something other than caps. The players don't need more caps, and the player would much rather loot guns from Legion hit squads and sell those rather than doing repetitive radiant quest. If however the radiant quests offer Turbo doses, weapon repair kits, auto-inject stimpacks, or something else that isn't exactly easy to farm, then yes, the player would prefer the radiant quests to, for example, running around hunting down turpentine, cazadors and broc flowers (turbo). A minor EXP bonus could also be nice, though tbh I think the base game offers plenty of EXP, so don't go overboard with the amount received. Keep in mind though that this would liken the radiant quests to, say...farming organic items to give to the seed processor in the sink or killing NCR troopers for their dog tags to give to the Legion in exchange for supplies. It's not actually boring if you've ever tried it, cause it's a rewarding way to give meaning to some of the more random ingredients like those pumpkin seeds (grab them, turn them to salient green, turn that into broc flowers for Turbo or pinyon nuts for wasteland salad), but I'm just trying to give you an idea of what kind of fun factor this would have.

2) Sit down and think up a couple of unique weapons and armor types that would give the player incentive to do the quests. Make them appear randomly; not sure-fire on every quest, but with minor odds of being in the hands of the target. That way, if the weapons or armor are well-balanced and interesting (and balance can be anything from a Hunting Shotgun with more damage per pellet to a unique Plasma Caster that has more than 80 [censored] item HP that actually deals 5 less damage than the constantly-breaking vanilla versions), then even if it takes a player ~8-10 radiant quests to actually find one, one is enough to give them motivation to keep doing more.

3) Perhaps combine points one and two with weapon mods. Make it so that alongside potentially finding weapons on enemies, the weapons themselves have mods that again, can randomly be found on targets. Perhaps make them more frequent than the weapons themselves simply because finding a mod shows the player that the weapon counterpart exists, then gets the player curious and entices them to keep going. Tying into my above example, if you made a unique plasma caster that had the main attraction of not [censored] breaking every five seconds, mods as simple as reducing it's weight, reducing it's spread or increasing it's DPS would STILL provide purpose to the radiant quests. The mods could either be rewards from the NCR itself or randomly found

4) Alternatively, scrap the idea entirely and go for a more random encounter approach. Random encounters indeed help the game feel more alive, even if they're very simple. For example, I really liked the courier that brings a message to you a couple days after you complete NVB II. Random Encounters don't need to be nearly as fantastic because they feed of off basic player curiousity and a desire to feel immersed. Having a random hit squad employed by one of your former (or current) targets come after you does both, because the player thinks "who the hell are these guys!?" and then feels completely immersed when the game acknowledges through the random encounter that the player did indeed kill a certain target in the past or the like. (perhaps the leader of the Shadow company, for example?)

But yeah, I think suggestions 2-4 are more a question of time more than anything. Kinda hard to gauge how many unique weapons one person can think up, how many can be implemented or the like. The overall point though remains: Skyrim's radiant quests svcked because they lacked purpose. They completely lacked storylines, and the coin rewards were just rubbing salt in the wound, cause wtf coin grew on trees in Skyrim. No one will do the radiant quests if they only offer coin while offering significantly less story than the other targets. Radiant quests need purpose to work.

Another thing I'd mention is you probably want to somehow make it clear to the player which quests ARE radiant and which ones are not. No matter how nice you can manage to make the system, some people simply will not like it at all, and I'm sure those people would appreciate some sort of signifier that tells them which quests are NOT unique. The computer terminal that lists the bounty names off sorta does this, but perhaps if there were another way? Hell, perhaps stick another NCR Ranger in the office building who "handles the smaller bounties" so that the player has a different NPC entirely that they need to go see for the radiant ones. The different names on the posters ("Speak to Captain Larry Skull" OR "Speak to Ranger Dingledong" on the poster for the radiant ones) or simply picking up the quest itself from a seperate NPC would get the point across.

Sounds good. Only suggestion I would make is maybe raise that 48-hours to 72? 48 seems like it could provide unwanted pressure on the player whereas 72 is enough time that you don't have to go out of your way to do that quest first. For example if I wanted to swing by the Forlorn Hope area and do all the NCR quests there (Nelson, that mine, etc) and I decide to snag a quest on the way, 48 hours might be too short for me to pull off if the target is in fiend territory, or even if it is, it makes it uncomfortably close for the player. 72 though gives me ample time to do what I'd originally planned and still swing by, so there's no conflict with my plans and whatever the radiant quest tosses at me.

And as far as weapons go, I'd just like to mention I think there's a LOT of potential in unique energy weapons. I know you once said you worry about making weapons too overpowered. With energy weapons? Hell, no real risk involved. Whereas with the Medicine Stick, it's a reasonably OP Brush gun simply because it's better than a basic one (but only slightly better), a Plasma Caster or a LAER or a Multiplas rifle is already perfectly fine stat-wise....it's their durability that kills them. I promise you, you could make a unique LAER that's basically identical to the basic version, except set it up with ~500 durability instead of it's pathetic 75 item HP that the basic one has. Hell, you could even give it a backstory that way: Big MT's (presumably) far away and it's not exactly a place a lot of people have been to, so for a LAER to make it to the Mojave, let alone in the hands of a criminal? Obviously the thing might've traveled a long way, seen a lot of battles and been held by a lot of people, so it's special ability would be it's unique durability, and you could give it a far less shiny texture and design to strengthen that point.

I just think there's PLENTY of potential for making good weapons without even remotely risking the weaponry being too OP. An unarmed weapon that has miserable damage but VERY low AP cost (lower than any base game item) would be another good option, as that would be a loved weapon by people who wanna exploit Paralyzing palm, but practically worthless for those who actually rely on Unarmed for damage. Or maybe a Single Shotgun that shoots 20 pellets and does respectable damage (on par with other shotguns), but wtf it's a single shotgun. It would be useful for people with high agility and And Stay Back!, but again, nearly worthless for people with low agility. All you gotta do is look for "jobs" that haven't exactly been taken yet and fill them in, while avoiding creating weaponry that's universally powerful for every possible player character.

No, please, don't ! This would mostly turn out like the Dark Brotherhood quests in Skyrim after the main ones, with nameless and uncharacteristic bounties that were not in any way rewarding, gave up on the questline because of it. It was much more interesting to have the family of dead bounties come after you than have more random bounties.

I'm probably just going to release it in an optional plug-in. I'd prefer to leave the choice up to individual players.