is the "you are here marker" you speak of not your dude in the game? and doesn't said marker even walk over the map? i could be remembering wrong, but i have played the games... for like the first hour of each.

and how does that system work in FP? how am i still in FP view when in the world map... i'm not, right? i'm in what would be the pip-boy world map for the new games, i get that.... so how does eating, sleeping, drinking work? how does a random battle work? i go from the world map to an random "wasteland" FP map with some baddies? that doesn't sound very immersive to me, or in keeping with the rest of the gameplay... it sounds kind of like a not-so-much-fun way to travel that breaks immersion simply to satisfy your intellect... i don't see the purpose... you get to "say" that its a larger area, but not to EXPERIENCE that area. why?

http://noscope.com/photostream/albums/various/map.jpg

Thats the map you see for overland travel, there is no "giant guy" walking around....XD You position is marked by the triangle, settlements are marked by circles of various sizes. Special random encounters are marked by tiny circles. You even get different travel speeds over different terrain.

The system will work in FP just the same way, you pull up you pipboy to see your map/the overland travel map (like above) you set a destination and you see your marker move and time pass. Your then thrown back into FP when you hit random encounters (each having either random dynamically generated minimap by terrain, or picked from several premade ones based on where you are and who your fighting.) when you get to your destination, you can jump back into FP view and get a whole sandbox map the size of lets say Point look out, or The Pitt that contains the town and surrounding land and only the town and surrounding lands.

I really don't see how it so hard to rap your head around it. I don't see how that breaks the "immersiveness". It's basically the same thing that happens now. The game doesn't load cells until you get so close to them. So in reality the game does do what you just described.

How does eating sleeping and drinking work in Fallout 3? you never once have to do them. Why can my character go for months and years without taking one nap, or eating and drinking anything? Sounds like a massive immersion breaker to me! As usually done with such details, they can be considered to be handled in the back ground without your input.

ok when it comes to SKYRIM theres a few points I think bearin mind

1) making the stats non important, at this point who bloody cares? you could assrig Oblivion game to stay first level and still beat it, or you could force the leveing to work exactly how you wanted it to work by minmaxing(heck you could have assriged Morrowind to more or less stay first level and beat it but thats another story)

I wold love to see stats be important but lets face it, it no longer matters to most people. some people want to play god characters who can do everything and anything in one playthough, others want to play focused characters. othes want to play a diferent specialists on each of 1000 playthroughs who can kick ass

2)the reality is that for PC players, within a week or three at most of them releasing whatever they decide to call the modding kit for it you will see mods that let players change the base game to the way "they" feel it should be played, they will mod spells/potions to provide more or less healing or more or less damage or more or fewer effects and on and on and on and on.

3) the point is to have fun playing the game, Granted for some people the point is haveing fun complaining. but to each there own. have a blast everyone!

On the topic of the car, it would be cool to introduce a new skill/perk series of Wasteland Mechanic to find spare parts in wrecks so that your car can keep rolling. That was the least believable part of Fallout 2 for me. That, and Wanamingos.

In doing such you can also repair the the car by hand (requires intel, strength, perception), have a companion that does it, or dice roll. Though I'm not a fan of invisible dice rolls, I feel especially for older players the option to skip mini-games should be included. I, however, think it would be a fun mini-game. Mind you I'm not talking "Pimp My Corvega" or anything, just enough to get you by, and maybe increase speed and fuel economy a bit.

http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/554/original/facepalm.jpg?1248715065

is that from fallout 1 or 2? anyway it doesn't matter... as i said, i played each for about an hour and ran out of patience, must be remembering things wrong.

and i'm assuming fallout 4 keeps hardcoe mode. i hope so, as it ruled. and if that were the case, it would be difficult to do with node map travel.

anyway point is not so much that it's a bad idea - i get the idea and yall are right, it would work. i don't personally like the thought of being dropped into a generated minimap for randoms, or even really the idea that i don't get to experience the wasteland (or at least much of it) in FPP. and i also think that the largest portion of the modern fallout fanbase would likely agree. but the real point is - either way (sandbox OR node) you are faking the distance. in my idea, that distance (not nearly as big as a node map, but still much larger than the F3 or NV map) can at least be experienced as a part of the rest of the game. in a node map, you are basically just "telling" the gamer that they are traversing great distances... its just as unrealistic as a sandbox map, only in a different way. its just something that was in the old games, and i think a lot of people on the forum just cling to this idea and lose a lot of objectivity when considering these issues - WHY is this important to the game?

if you ask me, whats important to keep from the old games is the lore, the complex system of interaction with the world (not black and white morality... F3 wasnt terrible at that, but could have certainly been better) and the idea of choice - the ability to affect the story in various ways, to varying results; as well as of course I would personally like to see stats and character builds play a more important role in gameplay (i get the feeling that we will likely wind up with another "godmode" game, and that's disappointing, but not game-breaking to me (as long as i can still make a specific build, i'm good)).

but the gameplay is what has stopped me from playing through the old games, despite genuine efforts to do so, just to check them out. in terms of a fun, engaging and immersive game, Fallout 3 crushes the originals IMO

Thats pic is from FO2, Fallout 1's was the same set up. I liked everything that was in the originals, it was all the parts coming together that made fallout fallout. Not just a select few parts. It's important because it's part of how it was done. You ask why? Then why should we drop it in favor of the as you just said equally limiting open world sandbox? Why is your perfered method better for Fallout? Your just going out of your way to change something, for personal preferance not as you put it "looking at it objectively" as to what makes a good fallout game feature.

so you're saying that NOTHING about the original games can be changed?

i'm saying that the gameplay is better in F3 - more engaging, more immersive, and perhaps most importantly sell able to a much wider audience. the series is great as a sandbox FPS RPG... i would never argue F3 is a perfect game, or a perfect "Fallout" game. but i would definitely argue that the modern games do feature much better gameplay... i simply couldn't get into the old games, couldn't even make it past the first hour or so, because of the boring and slow gameplay, and i seriously tried. like on multiple occasions. i bought and paid for both games - and i'm a cheap dude. if i buy something, you better believe i'm gonna get some use out of it.

so that's why you change gameplay elements - to make it more fun. that is what games are supposed to be about, at least for most people.

We aren't saying that the gameplay shouldn't be change. Change is always necessary, but it should be evolutionary, not gutting the whole system and replacing it with another game's system.

1. Nobody has said that, most suggestions are compromised to bring old mechanics into the new system.
2. Fun is subjective, mindless fun has it's place but the core of the series shouldn't be hollowed out to accommodate those who want "fun for the sake of fun", when there is already an established fanbase.

this, is what I'm talking about. Fallout 3 didn't do this.

Why would you care about that? Do you think a game is good because other people seem to like it too, and/or are able to perceive it more easily? :shrug:

bleh. guys this argument is really tired and isn't really bringing any new developments.

i just saw a post by nu-clear-day (mod) in the "do people really want TB..." thread where he nicely breaks down the pros of TBC without being judgmental, or resorting to having to trash other peoples ideas on the subject, and i understand the ideas behind why you all want the old gameplay mechanics back.

there is nothing wrong with TBC or node-based maps inherently. and i agree that they could be updated and put into use in a very fun game, and it could all be really cool.

im a big RPG fan. my favorite games ever are Final Fantasy 3 (6 in Japan) and FF7 which are both TB games (other than of course TES IV (playing III right now, we'll see if it gets added... really enjoying so far) and Fallout 3, NV, and GTA: San Andreas). but the actual gameplay is at about the bottom of the list of my reasons why i like those games (the Final Fantasy's). I prefer VISCERAL action. When I have to control my characters movements in real-time, combat becomes much more exciting to me - it evokes in me many of the same responses physically that would be happening were I actually there. I am also though a HUGE fan of RPG's, of great storylines, characters, dialogue, etc. And personally, I feel like the best gaming experience possible is when you take the two of those things and put them together. And this is a thing that Bethesda does better than pretty much anyone else. They are certainly not perfect at it - I am hoping that its a recipe they continue to work on, that they will eventually really get right.

I am not arguing that changing the original gameplay mechanics of the Fallout franchise was done "for fun" or for the sake of fun. I am arguing that it was done to make better games, and that's something i think they achieved. I'm not saying that the new games are better than the old ones in every capacity - certainly not. But as overall video games, I think so. I cannot argue this effectively, as I haven't played the originals through - but that is solely because after an hour or so of gameplay in either one (multiple times over) I was bored, and lacking interest in continuing. that is an argument towards that point in and of itself though.

The argument for TBC is that it is a better RPG mechanic because it doesn't rely as much on player skill, and is more reflective of stats.

The argument against TBC is that it is less fluid and engaging than RTC.

To me, the solution is to find a way to keep the "fun" of RT while finding ways to more accurately reflect stats in gameplay - my suggestion is to make the game work against the player (which they already do to an extent) at lower skill levels, and begin to actively help the player at higher skill levels. This can be achieved by creating a COD or Red Dead Redemption auto-targeting system (through the iron sighting) for ranged attacks - one that gets increasingly effective the higher your skill level is (i'm thinking the 50 skill level is a nice breaking point - below 50 the game fights you, over 50 it helps you). In melee it would be something along the lines of slower weapon swings, active blocking by enemies, and reduced damage below 50, and faster weapon swings, negating enemy blocks, and increased damage above 50. There could even be an Assassins Creed style context-sensitive attack system that generates what type of weapon swing your character does based on your enemies positioning, what weapon he/she is holding, and what type of attack they are executing - once again being less intelligent below the 50 skill level (having less possible attacks that can be generated) and getting more and more intelligent the higher above 50 you get.
ie. the result is that the game makes you feel and behave as if you were a master swordsman once you have reached a high skill level, even if you are not that great at FPS, all in real-time.

The argument for Node-maps is that they can cover a larger area with more diverse terrain, and are more realistic in scale.

The argument against them is that they break immersion by breaking up the "world-map" and the "nodes" (or points of interest)

Here, I'm not sure that either side really has a decided advantage. Either way you look at it, you are faking the distance - in a node map you wind up just "telling" the player they are traversing great distances. To me this seems a little cheesy, and just isn't as cool as being able to actually experience the world as it exists within the context of the rest of the game. However, as has been accurately pointed out, in a sandbox map, settlements are too close together and don't truly feel isolated. For me, the compromise is to take the sandbox map and just increase the overall land area by about 75-100%, without adding vast amounts of detail - basically just drop in vast areas of wasteland in order to disperse settlements better. It still wouldn't be quite "realistic" in scale, but it would definitely make them feel more isolated in-game, and still allow the player to experience the entire map in first person. At the same time a node-based map works just as well, and you can do more realistically diverse settlements within it - though the reasons i still don't like it are A - you don't get to experience the wasteland much. i think that could be really cool if dealt with properly (really stressing the survival aspects of the game). B - getting dropped in to generated "random attack" mini-maps. it just seems so out of place in a FPS.

my point is, just because these things were in the original games doesn't mean that they can't change, and it especially doesn't mean that keeping them in future games is an exclusively good thing. without actually considering the pros and cons of either side of the argument, there is no effective debate at all.

Agreed on all accounts.

More populated towns and more stuff going on. Rivet City marketplace could have been teeming with action.

Perhaps some crazy desert bazaar with skilled merchants and tradespeople? A town square with some kind of firebrand preacher/politician speaking to the assembled masses? More people all the way. Always liked the of traveling alone or with a small band of followers, but in town there should be plenty of life.

You know, somewhere out there is a FO 1/2 message board with people complaining that they should go back to the original text based dice rolling game play of the Tunnels and Trolls series. I've never played the first two FOs because I hate isometric view games so I thought I'd search out a video and find out what I was missing, it's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSfwDgFeIHU.

I can see some virtues in it but I doubt if they'll return to a node system in the base game unless there's massive demand, which there isn't. They'll used nodes in the same way as they have in 3 and NV, to access add-ons like Point Lookout and The Pit.

On topic: The new game engine looks great but as others have said, it's down to the writing and how the engine is used. I'd be happy if they just got rid of the hollow rocks and floating objects, afterall Crysis makes most games look crude, doesn't make it better to play though.

Actually, most of the 'dinosaurs' aren't all that bothered by the current 3-d (I think the occasional cries for iso are more nostalgia than anything). The biggest complaint, and I agree to an extent, is that the SPECIAL/Skills/Perks rules have become fairly meaningless because of the FPS system that accompanies the 3D. A character fresh out of the Vault can head shot a critter 100 yards away with a 20 in Guns, because the player can do it. Using VATS (the current version of TB, I guess) is a little bit closer but still extremely forgiving; if something is close you can't miss.
I hope the next game is more challenging. I'm not an advocate of eliminating player ability but it would be nice if the character stats were more meaningful.



I like the idea of one big map (but I'm used to mentally multiplying distances in Beth games by now), but I wouldn't be at all upset if they return to nodes. I sincerely doubt it will hurt my enjoyment of the game. Am I the only person who feels like the NV map is a node map without the nodes?



Yeah, the weird landscape glitches are irritating. Let's hope the Creation Engine results in less of it, though I don't think it's really Gamebyro's fault. Devs in a hurry, I'd say.

Do you mean the way it's split up into to distinct areas with either long barriers or open spaces inbetween them?

Might I ask why?

That would be it.

Why I don't like isometric view games? I'm not sure, I just don't.



I thought about posting something similar but not having played the previous games didn't feel I could.

Buy a board game and some dice.

Is it just me that finds it odd, people talking about gameplay mechanics and writing in a graphics thread?

because too many people use graphics as a reason to cover fro bad mechanics and writing.



oh great, one of these arguments, totally dismissing core RPG aspects because "super 1337 graphics" are all that is important, if that is how you feel, go buy an FPS like CoD or Halo.

Yeah! Fallout 4 is going to look sick with the new engine. Oh, and I hope they DO NOT EVER go to a map node system. Not only is it an immersion breaker it's ancient technology that even the Brotherhood would laugh at. Bethesda always seems to set new standards with their games and I'm glad they are making FO4 in the FPSRPG style.