These horrible invisible walls are everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. This makes getting across the huge landscape quite annoying in places, and for the most part they seem entirely pointless. I can see why invisible walls are needed in a more linear game like Bioware games (Which Obsidian have had more dealings with), but in a Beth game, they simply make the word frustrating.

Please bring out a patch that removes the majority of them from the countryside, they are really quite immersion breaking and annoying.

I agree, it's especially annoying in a game that has a focus on exploration.

Apparently - I haven't tried this yet - a really large portion of the East is blocked off. It's speculated it will be filled in with DLC.

I also agree the invisible barriers are annoying I managed to clamber on some rock ledges only to discover I cannot move further onto the ledge, basically left hanging at the edge of the ledge, also found similar going up steep gradients, now I know some gradients are too steep so for realism you cannot possibly get up them, but other gradients I've found use invisible barriers, it really is time they stopped using invisible barriers, if they want to prevent a player going in a particular direct then use rock faces or high fence to block the players path, bumping into something you can see is less annoying than bumping into invisble barriers.

Try this mod: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35011

While I am not going to forthrightly claim you are incorrect there is a solid reason for that. After the chip and it's company got moved to Fort Hill following the MQ I had to make way there, however after an hour of running adjacent to these invisible walls all along the eastern bloc of the map I eventually came to the conclusion that like the internal DC ruins - with the Metro system - there had to be an indirect way, there was: Cottonwood Cove.

This is exactly the same as FO3, they do not want you to wander too easily across the landscape because in doing so - take FO3 for example - you completely ignore all the effort that went into the Metro system. Anyway, it'd be a rubbish DC ruins if you could walk from the Western edge of DC ruins right up to Reilly's Rangers Station.

Other than the whole eastern wall having a barrier, I don't know the purpose of this thread. FO3 had these barriers, albeit they used large scale rubble to induce the thought that you are not meant to just walk over it but rather under it via the Metro. If you could simply walk amicably from the Eastern edge of The Strip directly to Fort Hill it'd be pretty daft. And if you pay attention to the close details the game reveals, people know Caesar owns the entire Eastern bloc of NV. An example, look at the blockade the NCR have on the Dam shutting out the East side.

The balance between MQ and exploration is difficult because in FO3 you could skip about 3/4 MQ ahead by exploring which effectively creates a large hole in the plot. While at first I was frustrated at jumping, with some awful animations, to the top of boulders only to be barricaded off I felt relieved in going to the Cove as per the MQ. The one qualm I have is that if you make a marker anywhere in the Eastern bloc it does not detour you to Cottonwood Cove to access that area. Just like when you marked an Internal DC zone it showed the various Metro detours you had to take to get there.

Reno

Just want to say I agree.

Excessive/Inappropriate use of unexplained invisible barriers is a really noticeably issue in this game. FO3 handled this a lot better – giving proper visible cues for inaccessible areas.

Use of invisible barriers to block apparently accessible areas is a severe immersion breaker and is really annoying.

If you want to get past some of the barriers, you can type 'tcl' in the console. Hope that helps... But the guys above are right - this may ruin your experience.

Somehow I don't think turning on noclip to get past invisible walls helps with game immersion. Maybe that's just me.

But yeah, very frustrating. I can't even jump off the hoover dam!

the walls are needed. The engine they use doesnt allow the game to stream through loading the map textures... to balance this they put those walls in the game for 1) you can access things that you shouldnt at a lower level, and 2) forces you to go through areas in which they can load the rest of the following map. The game wouldnt work without them. You would be jumping over a divider and then drop into 3 or 4 death claws at level 4 then die and have to walk back... just to die by 7 ants the next time, meanwhile you system is freezing because you cant process their giant map as fast as your requesting.

I disagree, Paulten.

You can look through these walls at enemies and perfectly loaded textures. If you couldn't that would be even more immersion breaking because three feet away from you would be low-rez and empty. I think it's just laziness on the part of the devs. They don't want people to go into places that they didn't go out of their way to make accessible. Maybe it's because they don't want people getting stuck and whatnot. (This would be a legitimate reason.)

EDIT: That said, some walls are definitely used for loading the map. But not all. The one by the house on the ridge by Coyote Cavern, for example. Small, but totally unneeded.

the part that really breaks the system is how fallout uses items... if you watch when you walk into a place and knock every can over in the building then leave then 2 weeks later in game you go back, all the cans will still be knocked over the the exact same spot. Its not the AI pats that are the issue, its all the [censored] [censored] around them that doesnt load till you get closer.

However, I do agree that for some parts the walls are not needed (eg. when there is a mound that you can easily get to and for some reason you can reach the very top of that mound... thats something different. Thats like a height cap or something and thats probably not needed, and that just falls into bad coding and poor boundary limitations.)

Oh, I see what you mean now. You're saying that if these walls weren't here, you'd drop into an area as all the "items" load, and not so much the textures, resulting in lag and popping. I couldn't agree more. But they should have tried to position the walls less intrusively, and not somewhere that you would go if the walls weren't there.

I completely agree, I remember I was walking around the waists one day when I first started playing and there was this little mound that I wanted to cross over. The top of it couldnt have been more then 14 feet above me and was easily accessible and only had about 8 feet in diameter but there was a wall divider on top of it... it was just a small mound. The moment I saw that I was like "why is this wall even here?" because thats not needed at all.

Because my character is both an explorer and sniper. I'm often finding invisible walls blocking my way. This is frustrating and shows just how poorly some parts of this game were designed.

The only ones I've run into are in places that you shouldn't be able to access normally anyway and most people would just avoid them. But you and I aren't most people, I guess. [censored] going AROUND mountains; I want to pull a Minecraft and go THROUGH them!

It would give dynamite a worthwhile use. :disguise:

As for sniping; I agree. It's lame that you can't get up on most ridges to snipe stuff down below. :sadvaultboy:

I dont see thise walls as problem becuse they usualy they just block the player from walking up too sharp hill.

There are quite a few though that are not on steep hills. That's the problem. The ones stopping you from nudging up a nearly vertical cliff are understandable. Being blocked from a ridge with a 2 degree gradient is just stupid though; at least those ones are pretty rare.

I believe they should have made better use of terrain to block off areas, rather than an invisible wall half way up a hill, or along a ledge, or even worse, blocking the player jumping a knee high fence. In all those cases, use a rock face, don't make a ledge, or use a high fence. I spent a lot of time wandering up hills and around ledges or fences only to find I was blocked by an invisible force. To me that is immersion breaking.

Agreed. This happened to me a numerous occasions. It was definitely immersion breaking and after fallout 3 it's something I wouldn't have expected to see in new vegas.

Yeah before there was a slight slope, I had walked up steeper, this was 2 feet till flat ground too, but nope invisible walls. It wasnt this bad in 3.

Those lazy devs! Try making real blocks instead of cheap invisible walls as above poster stated; it is immersion breaking! If you are a sniper and always trying to go to a nice vantage point, it is just annoying to be stopped by an invisible structure! Reminds me of people walking into an office building and not seeing the (nice job cleaners!) glass doors in front of them and then BLAM! Lol.

Played 30 hours so far, have yet to encounter a single invisible wall. Are you guys just playing around the edges of the map all the time?

I'm sure if I went looking for them I could find them but then.....why would I deliberately go looking for something to get annoyed about?

Well a lot of the time it was purely trying to keep away from nasty critters or NPCs, but other times it was trying to take what seemed like the most sensible route over a hill. I focused on Rifles, so keeping distance was important most of the time. If you follow valleys and roads or fast travel everywhere then it's probably not an issue.

Yup.