In order for a game to be playable there must be sacrifices when it comes to realism. But the way that your guy improves in these types of games is not completely unrealistic. In real life, regular people become trained soldiers, medics, salesmen in pretty short amounts of time, either due to actual training or being forced to get better at something for one reason or another. I think that if you were to be put into the wasteland and survive for any amount of time, you would start to pick up on the way things work and eventually get as good at surviving as the Lone Wanderer/Vault Dweller/Nerevarene. What I see that makes it unrealistic is the amount of punishment that your body can take before you die. In these games if you were actually injured the way a sword or gun would injure you then it would be a very short game. The best way to remedy the eventual godhood of your character would be to make weapon/magic damage realistic. Voila, no more god characters.

Well, as a child, you were given a BB gun and because you practice with it, you are able to handle any weapon you come across. It's not rocket science.

Right, so we flip it to the other end of the scale where he can kill a proffesinaly trained soldier in PA MKII with a baseball bat, then go on to kill 50 or so more at their base. Yes if you were weak it would be an unfun game but what else makes things fun, immersion, atmosphere are 2 things and because of the way fallout is presented it loses them. I trip over wastelanders corpses, these people have been around in the wastes a long time, they should now more than me about them, yet obviously a sheltered child is superior.

For all who want a realistic video game , go to the Onion.com and look up the video story about the new realistic game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3". In it, as the player, you spend endless hours waiting around for orders, and performing such skill raising feats such as truck maintenance, hauling equipment, and filling out paperwork. Exciting, eh?

For the love of god, if you want realism, go play ARMA or something. This is an RPG, not a simulation.

The Lone Wanderer is superhuman if you take into account the significant difference in HP between him and the people of the Wasteland.
It might have been more realistic (without taking away from the game's enjoyment) if the LW and every other human had the same basic HP with a few minor modification for things like being well rested (slight increase), sick or addicted (slight decrease).

If both the LW, a raider and an Enclave trooper dies from, say, three shots of a 10mm pistol it would be the skills (and armour) that would matter if he survives or not.
It might even make the game less combat oriented and more RPG oriented since there should be less fighting and a fight is a more risky proposition. Whether that's good or bad, well, your mileage may vary.

I agree that people like the enclave should have been more resiliant and more like the lone wanderer..
however..

less than 100 years ago people were shorter, had a shorter life expectancy and were generally riddled with more health problems-many of which can be attributed to a poor diet..
Given that the LW was not only living in but raised in a vault, i would beg to say he had better nutrition through rad free vitamin fortified foods and better hygene with more regular medical check ups than your average wastelander, which would make him almost superhuman in comparison to your average wastelander..

Yes and no. Don't confuse a healthy body with being able to withstand trauma better. A baseball bat swung by almost any advlt will break the shin of another advlt (assuming a stationary target for the sake of reference), whether the victim is healthy or diseased. Likewise a bullet to the gut is still a bullet to the gut. It doesn't make any more or less damage between a sick and healthy individual as it strikes.
However, if the victim survives, then yes, a healthy person would have a much better chance to recover and would also recover faster.

In terms of game mechanics that would equate to much of a difference in HP in my eyes. If a wastelander has 100 HP, the LW and Enclave people would have 120-130 at most, not more.
However, the vault dwellers and enclave people would recover faster from diseases, addiction and damage, while the damage itself is, say, 40 across the board for everyone.

There would not be a difference of 450 HP vs 120 HP. That I consider superhuman; something for super mutants, deathclaws and such.

:P im only saying that there would be a huge differeence in overall health compared to a wastelander..

playing devils advocate though, i will say that the LW could take a bat better that a wastelander, cause they prolly have more calcium in their diet.. of course bullet is a bullet..

though, its not as if you start off like that, all maxed out on HP..

Nah, but my point was that you shouldn't end up as that either, even maxed at lvl 30.
The HP should still be the same as an Enclave mamber, slightly above that of a normal wastelander even then.

(Unless you take a 'mutant' perk that gives you a large HP boost, but turns you into a hulking freak. )

Hell, I dunno about you people, but the Enclave take a good chunk of my health every time I see them. Raiders too...sometimes. Granted that I don't come up behind them and shoot them in the back of the head.

Thing is, the Lone Wanderer is effectively the hero of the story, just like the Vault Dweller and Chosen One, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and the guy/gal you play in VtM: Bloodlines are all respectively the heroes of theirs.

exactly.. no one second guesses Snake Pliskins ability to kick ass even with the lack of depth perception that comes with having only one eye..

you have to relize that if you look at all the perks he gets he is a cyborg with an admantium skeleton, skin as tough as tree bark, has cybernetic reflexes, can regnearte limbs when in radiation, and becomes a many nucelar bomb when close to death. so basically hes a supermutant-cyborg that looks human. im surprised president eden said hed be immune to the modified f.e.v virus

He's good cause of VATS, implanted in his DNA from his first pip boy. Also how much fun would this game be if it was realistic, anyway? OH BOY, I leveled up! I better add 1 to one of the 13 skills of my choice!

A lvl 30 LW has 490~590 HP, wich is pretty much what the talon company leader have.

Remove the fully repaired and unique gear, stimpacks, the perks, and play on 3rd person to have crappy aim like the FO3 characters.



Is the Lone Wanderer really THAT diferent from the other NPCs now?

Maybe he was chosen by God to be the saviour of mankind, and granted superhuman abilities and divine protection?

...that was a joke

I think its quite obvious why the LW is a superhuman. When he was a wee tyke and watched a commercial that said, " GOT MILK?" he answered "Hell ya, it's fortified with the [censored] that Mark McGwire used."

But on a serious note, theres been studies on human survival mindsets and those that have the survivor mindset generally live and those with the I've been victimized mindset die. Proof is that some teenage girl was in a plane crash in the middle of the rain forest in brazil or something and the surviving victims decided to wait for help while she decided to get the hell out. They all died except her. She was probably some average city dweller with little to no knowledge about surviving in a rain forest or navigating to say the least but she made it out alive some how. Its somewhat the same with the wasteland except that its a bit more depressing and not as vivid in color. Disease, poisonous creatures, chances of breaking bones, angry creatures most too small to see easily, and dirty water. Radiation would be the equivalent to diseased water or malaria or something. Ghouls would be sketchy forest people who have a thing for white girls and prefer their exotic females dead after using. Dealing with the animals can be done with traps and defenses just the same as a laying mines everywhere except that few people play that way because its not always fun. There was some attempts to explain the knowledge in weapons and such with the skill books and the LW's visit to the Brotherhood base. Sure you dont get their immediately and may wander upon advanced weaponry before hand but using a 10mm pistol is not rocket science, any kid who watched power rangers would know how to use a gun. The attempts to make things more plausible were there its just that it isnt always stream lined because that would take away the freedom allotted in the game.

We know the kid spent years honing his skills with a rifle. We know that most human weapons are designed to be used by idiots. We know that killing someone is easy, especially with a gun.

On top of that, we know the LW isn't a retard. Hes the son of a brilliant scientist, raised in a controlled environment that grants him the ease and safety to study DEEPLY anything available in the vault archives and databases. Anatomy...combat techniques...tactics....potentially it's all there, it's just a matter of whether you believe the vault creators would have made it available or not.

And then there is human flexibility of thinking.

And let us not discount sheer human imagination either.

It isn't rocket science to be able to make the leap from crushing the head of a giant roach with a baseball bat, to doing the same to a human being. Furthermore, the encounters in the wasteland show absolutely no evidence of any overt 'skill' on the part of the combatants. Perhaps, more than anything, THIS is the problem people have with these games...everybody fights the same way...like an idiot.

Even if the game DID have various fighting styles and combatants ranging in 'apparent' skill in those styles (both melee and ranged), the LW, being the bright boy he is, would take his lickings and LEARN from them.

It doesn't take three hundred fights to figure out that shooting a dude in the privates is more effective than letting him swing a baseball bat at your head.

However, if the game DID take skill and training and experience into account, the LW, instead of just automatically dying, would learn to RUN AWAY from hard fights, and practice his skills on lesser opponents until he 'learned' what does and does not work 'leveling up, so to speak'.

In such a game environment the 'hero', rather than simply being a joke the entire game, would end up taking a modicum of time and effort to pick up the needed survival skills.

Unfortunately, games are not designed to require days or weeks of effort to become 'proficient' at varied and dangerous types of combat. They are designed to let even the simple minded jump in and kick butt.

Thats why they call them 'GAMES'...not 'SIMULATIONS'.

Maybe he learnt how to use the weapons on his Pip-Boy or at school?

I agree with this guy...