Loan your franchise out to a different dev team with different ideas about game design, and interesting stuff follows. I think Obsidian had many good game design ideas in New Vegas, and i hope BGS learns from them.

Significant improvements in New Vegas over Fallout 3 or Oblivion IMHO:

• The damage threshold system - a great way to bring more depth into combat while keeping it simple. I'm not sure how applicable it would be in TES.
  
• Less (scavenging) is more: less desks, drawing cupboards and trash bins that you're kind of forced to check through, because 40 - 60% of time there's ammo or caps in there. This results so that easily around 50% of the time spent in dungeons consists of checking containers. The "[EMPTY]" marker helps a little, but New Vegas' way of simply removing most containers is better. FO3 style scavenging is downtime, and FO3 has so insanely lots of game content that what's left after removing that downtime is well enough and more! Actually this problem doesn't exist in Oblivion, because with almost all of the crates and such you know for sure that there is nothing interesting in them. Only certain kinds of containers are worth checking out, and whenever there's something of value to be found, it's kind of presented clearly. While not realistic, IMHO it was nonetheless a very good design choice so hopefully they'll bring that back.
  
• Placement of creatures in the world. NV critters tend to come in groups, and spawn in places where they make sense, while in both FO3 and Oblivion critters would spawn in seemingly random spots and usually just a single critter per spawn. Also, creatures like coyotes and bighormers being basically hostile but passive as long as you keep your distance was very nice, and believable too.
  
• Nice crafting system. Well, the user interface for campfires, workbenches and reloading benches left a lot to be desired, but the system itself was good.
  
• No spoiling game balance with free services. I mean the home upgrades in FO3: infirmary and the chem lab thingy. There were doctor's services and meds to be bought, but since you'd get rad & addiction removal, limb fixing and healing for free at home, this game aspect became redundant. (Link in sig to a mod to fix this... )

Anything else? Thoughts, opinions?

New Vegas was a step up in the RPG and writing aspects, but a major step down in the world department.

I disagree with the part about scavenging. I actually like looking through a bunch of containers, hoping to find some hidden secrets.

Well, call me a bastard but i will always consider FO3 superior to F:NV in almost every way.

I almost forgot how tedious scavenging in FO3 was... it was realism in a sense, but it was boring too.

Lessons to be learned from New Vegas? Storytelling and faction system.

Definitely agree about Damage Threshold, the [empty] marker and the placed creatures - I'm kind of indifferent towards the others, in that it doesn't hugely bother me how/if they're implemented.

One thing that was sort of in NV is body parts actually being removed when looted (I remember one quest required you to get someones head or something? a leader of a gang? idk, it's been a while. But I remember when you looted it, upon exiting the little loot menu the head would be removed). It always bugged me in Oblivion how I'd say; loot a minotaur or unicorn horn and after exiting the menu it was still right their on their noggin...
I'd like this to be properly implemented. RDR did it well in terms of 'looting' pelts and skins so a cross between these would be great.

Plus one, New Vegas had an awesome reputation system, much closer to "shades of grey" than Fo3, and miles ahead of Oblivion.

Faction outfits and weapon variety were two minor features that made the game much more enjoyable for me, too.

Plus one to the suggestion that not all wild animals instantly attack you and chase you ad infinitum.

Both had their ups and downs. NV had much better writing than FO3, but I thought FO3 presented the story a little better and had a more interesting world. I was really excited about my first visit to new vegas when I first got the game, but when I finally saw the strip, I was pretty disappointed.

The container stuff doesnt apply as a comment to Skyrim. FO is post apocalyptic; its obvious theres going to be lots of empty containers going about. And that was cool too, becasue, at least for me, most of the time in FO3 Im looking for supplies.

I disagree. I found the world in New Vegas much more plausible, atmospheric and fun to explore than that of Fallout 3's.


Lessons to be learned from NV: Writing (characters, world, visitable places, multipath/multisolution quests, backgrounds... the whole nine yards), reputation, DT, HC-mode (not necessarily a copying it, but the point of it), post release balancing (where needed) and dev-interaction with the fanbase -- from off the top of my hat.

:tops:

My only real problem with NV's world was how scaled down it was. Having actually been to many of those locations really drove home how tiny it was. HH make it especially painfully obvious.

I don't know, in Fallout 3 I felt like I was part of a post apocalyptic world having awesome shootouts with Space Marines, in New Vegas I felt like I was in some random desert shooting stuff.

This.

I *like* rummaging through all those containers in Oblivion & Fallout 3. (That, the world aspects that lead to it, was my big dislike in FO:NV - Bethesda may not make as great a story & questweb as Obsidian did, but they're miles ahead in just making an interesting "world" - there really wasn't much random stuff to find in FO:NV, it was almost all related to some quest or another. And the buildings were boring. Plus, the linear, barely scaled world..... all in all, I love FO3 a heck of alot more than FO:NV.)





And I didn't.... there really wasn't much "exploring" to do in FO:NV. Yeah, FO3's world may have made less "sense" with all the random interesting locations jammed into the capital wasteland, but it did ensure that there was always something new and interesting around each corner. FO:NV's world was really lacking in that regard.

Pretty much everything. Also I'd like to see their head gameplay designer (is it Todd? I doubt it) to discuss the mechanics with the community, like Josh did.

A lot of things to be learned from FONV except a major flaw about faction system, assassinating a faction member with no one around and instantly losing reputation from that faction. (example, Kill a lone ranger and magically losing NCR reputation)

I don't see the downscaling being more of a problem, than how it was in F3 . And personally, in a way, I agree with you - considering both games.



I felt somewhat opposite. I felt that "shooting spacemarines and other stuff" in a themeparky world was about all there was in Fallout 3, while in New Vegas (while it retained some of the problems F3 had) I felt its events and inhabitants had a history and a future. It felt much more alive and grasping, and less artificial (to me).




There wasn't as much to go through, but it was more rewarding (less is more - in this case) - guess it's the questdrivenness that does this to me (I'm not really fond of random "idle exploring" in the amounts Beth offers at the cost of other aspects). And I didn't really find the dungeons, officebuildings and factorycomplexes "new and interesting" after going through a few. As said, though, I agree that NV had less "idle exploring" - but I consider the quests (and their differing solutions) as part of the exploratio too.

• Well-written story, characters, and dialogue.
  
• Multiple paths through the main quest (and multiple endings).
  
• Sense of interdependence between every city, settlement, and faction.
  
• Faction reputation, to tie in closely with...
  
• ...Faction conflict. That you will inevitably be thrust in the middle of whether you like it or not. And that if you don't choose sides, they'll soon choose you.
  
• Incredibly dangerous areas on the map you're better off avoiding if you can swing it.
  
• Disguises.
  
• No [censored] Little Lamplight.

I never played FO3, so I can't really say how it was in that game. I do think, though, that it won't be as big of a problem in Skyrim. When I compare F:NV to Oblivion, both of which were downscaled, it's a bit less obvious in Oblivion because it's not a place I'm familiar with. So I won't feel it nearly as much. The same will likely apply to Skyrim.

How about no more over the top tint's and bloom.

Cause day 1 modders remove this ridicules color scheme's and over the top bloom..

Fair enough.

For a second while moving down this threads posts, i thought i was in a fallout 3 vs new vegas debate again. Please don't turn a skyrim topic into a flame war (I still don't even know what that means)
Oh well. Anyway, yeah certain parts from fallout should be taken into skyrim and some have insense. Last i checked they said animals are gonna be more they only attack if certain things happen. i wouldn't mind factions, maybe to say faction crime. So people in one city won't arrested me for acts in another city, kinda thought that was weird in OB being chased by a different city because I stole a cup. I think stuff should kinda makes sense to find in containers and chests, i mean who thinks that you should find 10 gold in a bag of rice? In maybe later a npc would go on about his gold stash being found, would make it believeable. So yeah something should are being used but certain things should stay the same. (I don't want to find some corn in my chest)

lessons to take that NV got right:
-DT
-Factions
-more variety in weapons
-better story
-harder enemies

lessons to take that NV got wrong:
-actually test the game before releasing it
-make interesting landscape/locations
-if factions are in make sure each one has companions for all sides (talkin about no pro legion companion)
-and again test the game over and over for bugs