So one thing I can't help but think, be it Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, or Fallout: New Vegas. I always end up with hoards of caps, hundreds of thousands of caps, especially with Fallout 2. With this kind of money I could be a darned despot. One thing that always nags at me though is if I want to just give that money, say in New Vegas's case, Freeside, to help it clean itself up, I should be able to afford mercenary protection, more shops opening up ,and better standards of living in a place. Now, this shouldnt be the main focus of a game, this should be entirely optional in a game, and maybe if it's got a city with two arch-rival towns, maybe if you turn town A into a marble and onyx crafted city, town B, who hates town A, would be very unwelcoming of you or downright hostile.

I'm not saying with 100k towns should look like The Strip, but we should be able to increase a settlements standard of living if we are so inclined to do so. Does anyone else have this sentiment as well?

Edit: Poll has been added for lurkers, but I'd much rather hear your opinion in detail, if it gets big enough Bethesda might even implement it!

its already got severa gold sinksl. Player housing; Repairs; Operations....

I'd prefer just making it a lot harder to end up rolling in caps.

Housing doesnt reduce cap amount by more than 2-3k, and only one home in New Vegas could really be upgraded.
Repairs can be averted by using same weapons found, or if you have Jury Rig in New Vegas, pretty much anything in the same tier.
Operations are really only needed by down on their luck beginners needing rad-away or healing. By mid-late game, which is what my thread is addressing, there's really nothing worth spending caps on, plus if I do spend them, I'd like them to actually do something useful, if you upgraded someplace, like say Freeside, I'd love to see how those towns fared because you decided to spend alot of money to improve it's standards of living.

Overhaul the economy and balance out the gameplay in other ways and it's fine.
For example, rad-aways, make them rare, and I mean RARE, then make them cost a lot of caps, say 700caps for one?
Then make doctors be able to heal you for 500 caps.
Might not sound like much but the more things that are tweaked with prices the more caps you'll spend.

There should also be shops that only accept caps, no barter, at all, just caps.
And each shop that do accept trading items should have different values on things, a farmer might spend more caps on water than he will on a weapon.

With the right amount of changes to the economy, trading can be brutal.
But I do not want to be able to "upgrade" towns by spending 20K to their mayor.

I'm all for new things that can help improve the game.
But spending money like this feels like... Fable?

It's an RPG, sadly we'll always get too much money, and even if this thing you suggested was implemented we'd still get too much money after we can't spend any more to upgrade them as they're at their limits.

I disagree with your sentiment that it'd be bad, most wasteland towns you see are dumps because they lack money, if you gave them 20,000 caps, they should be able to fortify the towns walls, increase food imports, or caravan exports, better town protection. I don't think we need to turn towns from small bumbleweed nowhere towns like NoVac into eye-paradises like Vault City, I just think cosmetic differences showing you've made a difference in their lives would be very interesting, if you decide not to help them, they remain status quo. I'm for tweaks, but your whole 'brutal economy' is more fitting for Fallout, back when people were isolated enclaves trying to survive, but now, California, Vegas, and D.C. are on the rise, Chicago might be, and Legion lands are up in the air. Over all, times are changing, I think the prices are fair, there's just nothing to DO with all of that money.

I still don't like it.

The idea that a mysterious stranger comes into town to help or mess with people and then leave for her own quest is what I think Fallout should be about.
If the protagonist also goes around tossing money everywhere it just seems way too goodygoodytwoshoes.
I simply don't like that idea, we should be able to help people in quests and through dialogue yes.
But unload 20K into a town to help it upgrade? It feels so unnatural.

No, fix the economy, that's whats needed, not some excuse like dumping 50K in the lap of the mayor.

As I said, aiding a town is entirely optional, and wouldnt be forced on you, it would be 'hidden' in the sense that you'd have to actively look for the town sheriff or whoever and then offer to provide help. It's not like F:NV where it streamlines good behaviour by killing Fiends and Ferals and Legion. Helping solve a towns problem is one thing like Shady Sands' with it's radscorpion problem, but to actively offer financial aid for a town is different in the senses of you'd be improving the towns standars of living, say cleaner streetways, the caps providing a reason to unboard old stores from the War so they can be turned into new shops, etc.

Fortify one town and then anger another... cause a feud between towns and watch the bullets fly! that would be sweet to see towns raid each other. There could be random no-name NPCs that spawn outside of the town and they advance to the outer defenses. If you helped the allied town prepare enough they can easily fend off raids. If you do not aid the ally enough you will have another town hostile to you because of the hell brought down upon them!

Just a random thought triggered by this thread.

Depends how well it is done.

How about hirelings or robotic guards? Expensive, useful, but cost a lot to replace.

I don't mind an ability to give your money away, but that's not really the moneysink the game needs. At present, you can completely live off the land and loot which makes currency (and even traders to some extent) more or less useless, and at the same time acquiring all the need gear much too easy and unrewarding.

I'd cut down some loot (like mid to high grade armors, ammo and meds), increase the prices (and the impact of the barter skill) drastically, bring thresholds to repairing (and have repairing lower the max health of an item), and such. What the game needs is the use of currency to be more needed, not so much the usage being optional minor "sidequest".

Building cities up could bring in new NPCs who bring in New quests...All it took was a little generous donation.

A lot of people already hate weapon degradation, making a weapon get permanently weaker will only make more people hate it.

I think everyone hates it because it needs to happen and is like one of the mostly slightly believable things in Fallout..

Realism is a thing people cite around here to look hard. People around here whine they WANT realism, but the moment they realize that realism bites them in the rear, they start boohooing 'It's too hard'. They say they want 'one headshot kills' up to the point when a dev makes it so you suffer the same fate, then they baw about how its 'not realistic to die in one shot'. It's better they dont focus on realism around here. It's like a buzzword around here I swear.

IMO, the game needs muggers. That would be a very plausible gold sink that one would expect to happen more than a few times if they were hauling around a bag with 100,000 jingling bottle-caps in it. (It'd be best if the game were also redesigned to have the occasional non-fatal beating; where the attackers get what they want and lose interest in the PC ~Just leaving, just leave them to die, or not realizing the PC isn't dead as they leave).
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I don't think having a way to spend money in FO is bad; I think almost everyone in the game should be most cooperative in accepting a stranger's money (in exchange for the least they can get away with giving up for it).

But I've never liked the idea of a player house; or them settling down, or even being accepted in a community (for the very same reasons that the PC was not accepted back into Vault 13).

Thing with muggers... well... you will slaugher them :C Like those on Freeside, or normal raiders.

I am thinking something like from STALKER: Clear Sky, when you first enter Garbage, there is this raider band that meets you. Either you give them everything and be on your way, or they kill you. And picking option number two, I actually died on a few tries because they were a bunch and all started firing. If you picked the first option, you can get your stuff back later, stealing it back or get hold of another gun and ambush them. I think. Long time since I played it.
But there could be muggers that confront you, to just hand over your caps or die. For example that raider gang outside of Nipton, they could have ambushed you and demanded you hand over your valuables without killing you. I'm sure most people still will choose that "hell no, I ain't giving you my stuff that I've put many hours into looting from scum like you, stuff I don't use but intend to sell. I will kill you all myself!"

What about pickpocketing children? Straight from the Den! And this time you can't kill them!

People tend to want realism when it's convenient for them. Imagine if when you got shot once in the leg in Fallout, you'd lose your ability to walk and would have to crawl to a doctor and hope you won't bleed to death on the way.


I think weapon degredation as it is, is a nuisance, but I wouldn't want to get rid of it (Repair skill would lose much of its meaning). I'd want it refined, make it count for more, because as it is it makes very little difference but still needs to be taken care of (which is why I think people tend to dislike it -- a mandatory useless chore).

I don't really like it for Fallout. It was a good idea in Fable but that is because Fable takes place over a whole decade when playing as the actual older hero and over multiple decades from kid to advlt life.

Can be fixed by making merchents items cost much much more expensive then what they buy things for. For instance in the originals stuff like combat armor and other advanced gear cost in the 10,000+ range. That way like my experiance in FO2 you'll do alot of stuff on barter trading all the weaponry you get from your travels for more ammo and meds. Having the good stuff expensive and very rare would make saving up the money have a purpose.

It could make bartering a much more useful skill. Like you can convince others through actual dialogue options, instead of just having prices lowered or something without any discussion. Maybe you can alos help control thecaravan merchant in the game and make prices cost more to get more caps when your share comes and in addition, you get some minor bad karma points for corruption, like Fable.

I would love something like this. They really need to expand on the way you can spend money. Or really balance the caps system.

Fallout without weapon degradation just wouldn't work.

The way fallout feels now, where bullets are (at least initially) hard to come by and weapons are always in a state of poor repair (and degrading with each battle) makes the whole scenario so much more immersive; plus is gives melee weapons a reason to exist, as pretty much anyone in the wasteland needs a backup weapon of some description, and if you're worried about running out of ammo then you'd better have something to hit people with when it runs out.

Taking away weapon degradation in Skyrim also took away much of the RPG quality of it. Now it looks better, but there's just no reason to play the game like an RPG anymore. Many things should be optional, but the need for repair of weapons in a post-apocalyptic world should not be one of them.

Fallout always has; Fallout did not have weapon degradation, neither did Fallout 2. It was only implemented in Fallout 3 and NV. the series has always worked fine without it. :shrug:
(I'd be fine without it once again (I found it annoying). Originally the repair skill was a character specialization for repairing pre-war machinery (generators and such) without help; not for personal weapons & equipment; for those you had to find a specialist ~and I'd prefer if it were still like that.)