Wat.

Fiends have lasers.
Great Khans have end game gear.
Brotherhood of Steel have end game gear.
There's a Marksman carbine free for the taking by the Boomers.
Orris, a guy that can be encountered in a quest at about level 9, has a hunting revolver.


It's not about them purposefully keeping weapons away from you, it's about no idiot in his right mind charging into Red Rock Canyon or Hidden Valley with guns blazing. People either avoid those areas or befriend the factions living there. If you can GET a kill on them with the Varmint Rifle you got from Sunny flippin' Smiles, then you're free to take their guns. You probably won't though, so you need to work your way up the power-ladder.
The only faction that uses cheap crap is the Legion. Everybody else and their mother will drop all sorts of weapons.

The reasons they are not carrying around uber gear are.

1, Most forum users here before NV's release wanted to be able to play with all styles competently.
Just like FO1 +.
So they made melee a viable skill path just as the fans cried out for.
Removing the shear amount of infinite ammo slinging heavy weapon users, that would make this silly.
Replacing them with stronger H2H'ers backed by ranged NPC's to create a challange.

2. Oblivion had massive leveling, every NPC was armed to the teeth, it unbalanced gameplay quickly.
Either you died in seconds due to the hinky leveling system or you ended up beating everyone and walking off with so much loot it was silly.
Every gamer has hated that style, and changed it via mods or found a work around to solve.

3. Realism, fiends have EW's cause they can trade with the Van Graths, and they own a vault, one that most likely held an arsenal.
Plus they are late game foes.
Everyone else is equiped as they should be, again for realism to add flavour to the game world.
To make unique factions not all act the same.
Raiders like Vypers and Jackals are fugitives and desperate way laiders, they're not going to be equiped with .50 cals in a month of blue moons.

4. Leveling, a powder ganger in the same area at the begining with a 9mm.
Suddenly respawns with a missile launcher, despite you wiping out every ganger previously on the map?
All this does is make it feel less like you've leveled and more like you're in a FPS.

you think the enemies have good weapons ? ROFL i don't think so, first of all its hard to find any human enemies on the map other than the static locations like primm or hoover dam, mojave outpost etc, you never find any patrols or groups of human enemies on the vast majority of the map, so thats the first problem, the second problem is its way too easy to kill the factions, none of em are well armed except for the fiends and the few rangers, most of the ncr uses service rifles, they do almost no damage at all, only the rangers are a threat really, ceasers legion has crap weapons, macheties? spears?pistols? fistos? its way too easy to kill them before they get close. its hard to even find them, once you kill em all at cottonwood cove and nelson, the only other place they can be found is at the fort, and its not really fun to fight em at the fort, i like stalking enemies, setting traps, sniping them etc, just face it, combat in new vegas is lacking really bad. so bad its not fun to play after level 20 or so, way too easy.

its easy to just arbitrarily make up a backstory for each faction but the bottom line is fighting human enemies armed with pool ques and 9mm's is not "quality" combat, and i for one won't be buying any more obsidian made games or dlc's, i can wait for ESV, bethesda does do a much better job in the combat department, oblivion had way mnore combat than new vegas, if i want to fight enemies with melee weapons i'll wait for ESV, at least it will be more balanced out, i agree in oblivion the leveling system wasn't that great but to arm 90% of the enemies in the game with either very weak weapons or pool ques isn't gonna work, not many people are gonna be playing new vegas for 2 years, it was easy to play FO3 for 2 years, it stayed pretty fun even though there were way too many skill points and perks, but i'm already bored with new vegas so obsidian did something wrong.

Pool cues? the only enemy I've seen often using pool cues is fiends, and they're all off their heads on something or other.
9mm pistols and varmint rifles makes me think of the powder gangers, where would escaped prisoners acquire high grade weaponry? all they have is what they took off the guards.
Factions are about quantity over quality. Lot's of troops with cheap, mass produced weaponry, rather than elite forces doing all the fighting, so of course they're not all going to be well armed and near unkillable.

there's no challenging enemies in new vegas except for maybe cazedores and thats rarely actually, the marksman rifles makes them pretty easy to deal with, even the deathclaws are easy to deal with, just climb up on a rock with a sniper rifle or scoped hunting rifle, you're not gonna convince me how hard the game is, its not that hard, no enemies really use any tactics against you, none of em are patrolling and therefore the suprise element is not there, ceasers leagion uses mostly all melee type weapons, you can convice yourself how difficult the combat system is in new vegas, none of the raider type factions put up a good fight except for the fiends, NCR is super easy to deal with, and talk about bullet sponges, that would be ceasers legion and ncr rangers, they would be fun to fight if they were actually patrolling in various areas to maybe catch you by suprise but as it is, they are easy to deal with, they never leave their outposts. the combat in new vegas is pretty easy once you about level 20 or so, its way too easy actually.

Maybe.
You've a right to feel that way, as anyone does.
Just not everyone feels combat is the only challange or point to a game.
So far having played 6 full runs using a range of skills an weapons, and countless trial runsI personally don't see the combat as easy.
If you take guns and sneak yes, a varmit rifle will kill everything then without too much fuss.
You can kill a deathclaw at level one with skill ammo and a good safe position.
Try it another way and you'll die quick.

I can auto kill anything, most levels with the right build.
Then I almost die to convicts at level 6 one game, just due to how I made the characters role and choices.
Greater weapons just means more chance to kill things easier, even if you make mistakes.

Agreed but if those weapons are in the hands of the Enemy you'll have a harder time killing them.

I am not saying that every NPC should be armed with powerful weapons but in a world with Gun Runners and Van Grafts there are not that may people out there with Light Machine Guns, Bushmasters, Combat Shotguns, Rocket Launchers. One reason I like Tactics enemies like Super Mutants are armed with heavy weapons, .50cal Machine guns, Light Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers. Normal Humans have everything from Zip Guns (home made one shot guns) to AK-47s. Seems odd we can find great fire power yet few if any NPC have them.

Yeah that's true no arguing against that.

The merchants like the gun runners I can't see selling to fiends or raiders.
A trickle down effect maybe, but the whole company prides itself on being an unofficial branch of the NCR.
Plus they rig their shipments up to blow if taken.

Van Grafts yes I see this is how Motor Runner stays stocked tbh.

Most traveling merchants don't stock anything heavy, around NV I've found maybe 2 - 3 weapons greater than tier 2 on them.

All of this though is just knit picking over that the best weapons and armour are based on level and MQ developement.
That and due the war and NV engine the Dev's kept groups quite small.

Tactics did some nice combat areas, and aptly named made them tactical.
Maybe in a later game the engine could hold more things introduced by Tactics.

You guys were complaining about all of those weak weapons but personally i feel pretty bad ass when i hit someone's head off with nothing but a humble pool cue or other such weapon.

i know the game isn't all about combat, but it is a combat oriented game, i use to play a game called delta force, and the AI was pretty bad for sure but there were times where you would be pinned down by a sniper up on hill or hidden somewhere, the enemies had some pretty good firepower, now that was an old game and the AI did svck but the enemies at least had firepower, so you could die quite easily if you weren't paying attention or being carefull, deathclaws do mass damage, so do cazedores, so its not that the developers are adverse to making enemies that do a lot of damage, they just don't want us getting any good weapons from enemies so they arm most of em with melee weapons or pistols, or varmit rifles, why don't ncr or ceasers legion have good weapons early in the game, how about some light machince guns. or missle launchers, or bush rifles, or sniper rifles, marksman rifles, etc, its like all the human enemies are low level enemies and they stay low level enemies, i don't want to have to use a 9mm pistol the entire game just for it to be fun, i like using rifles, i want enemies to have the same equipment i have. raiders would have good equipment sometimes, theoretically they would occasianolly kill ncr or ceasers legion units and get their weapons, but ncr and ceasers legion really don't have good weapons untill the last 15 minutes of the game.

Remember those old days in Oblivion?, abusing of the lack of AI in the enemies XD

thats what elder scrolls is for, melee fighting, with the truckloads of awesome weapons available to the player in the game its just stupid almost none of the npc's have these good weapons, i like the kings and never fight em, but lets take them for example, they are right down the street from the silver rush but they never have any energy weapons, i'll be doing plenty of melee fighting when ESV comes out, but for fallout, i need guns, pool ques aren't cutting the mustard, at least in ES i'll end up with some cool melee weapons, and armor to go along with, with tons of dungeon diving and exploring. another thing thats lacking in new vegas, new vegas is a good game, but obsidians strong areas i think are story, quests, dialogue, bethesdas strong points are combat, exploring, enemies to fight.

Yeh your right. Because it does get a bit annoying when someone does come at you with nothing but led pipes and or 9mm pistols. And there are only tiny amounts of enemies that do have decent guns. And also what happened to the fat man? Ammo is harder than finding the actual collectables e.g snow globes. Also I'm looking forward to tesV let's hope the new engine is good.

Obsidians "philosophy" is that someone who dumped every single skillpoint into Barter Speech and Repair should still be able to complete the game.

Which leads me to;
You decide yourself how difficult the game is. Set the difficulty to Very Hard and those 9mm pistols and pool ques will actually hurt you at the start of the game. Make that character who focuses on Barter Speech and Repair and refuse to pick up any scoped weapons.

There's your challenge.

:foodndrink:

I agree about the Van Grafts supplying people like the Fiends, they will sell to anyone with the caps (the most caps).

Gun Runners seeing themselves as the unofficial branch of the NCR is true, just svcks that NCR is on a budget and only buys their troops the NCR rifles.

With weapons degradation, strength requirements and ammo being rare and costly (also hardcoe mode) I don't see how have weapons normally seen at the end of the game show up early. Just have the weapons you loot off the dead be in poor shape and costly to fix. Power Armour still has training needed and I like that its rare.

it doesn't just svck for ncr, it svcks for obsidian because i won't buy any more of their games since their game philosophy seems to be to arm the vast majority of enemies with melee weapons and varmit rifles etc because they don't want us to get good weapons from downed enemies, so given such weak combat and exploration in the game i won't be buying any more dlcs or any future obsidian games. thank god ESV is gonna be out this year and also that fallout 4 is gonna be made by bethesda.

Try Black Mountain?

I don't know about you, but I found on hard & very hard difficulty, Supermutant Overfiends with tri-beam laser rifle to be quite an adversary even at maxed out level, not to mention any other weaker opponents armed with missile launchers. I was always glad to have power armor even the T-45d versions with -2 agility penalty. & also Reaver Ghouls were nothing compared to some of those country bumpkin lackeys you had to fight in Point Lookout. All Obisidian did in NV to make the game more challenging really was to use DT on armor instead of DR to make you die faster. But I'm stiil generating hundreds of stimpaks just like I did on Fallout 3 even on Very Hard diffculty. So I can't see how it's more challenging than FO3. I think what the OP is trying to say is that there is a lack of variety of heavily armed human opponents. I really can't see how the NCR beat B.O.S in the battle for Helios One with just Rifles & Pistols, when history of power armor clearly states that only thing that will dispatch an army of Power Armored Unit effectively is the FAT MAN.

DT was a huge improvement, with DR I can kill a Enclave soldier with just a sub-machine gun

And About the Battle at Helios One, The BOS got outnumbered against the NCR, also, they have better tactics. Power Armor doesnt means Nothing if you dont know how to use it

You dont need a Fatman to wipe out an entire army of BOS, you need tactics, also, The Power Armor existed much before than the Fatman....

Strangely, most of the equiped items are of good health, the super mutant master I killed at level 5 south of Primm had a very good condition minigun.
Those found in lockers, especially early on tend to be in shocking condition.
Thinking about it though, it does make a more pseudo game / realistic point.
A gun equiped and used even day to day by a raider is going to be better looked after than one left at the bottom of damp closet.

The traders however are the bone that I gnaw on.
I can understand leveling items to raise the challange up.
Making traders on heavy traffic routes keep the same X amount of Y tier weapons and no armour, for the entire game makes no sense.
They should have stocked a smalll chance to buy much better equipment early on.
This would also have made the sheer ammount of caps decrease, as it would have provided more options to save or buy early and hope you find ammo.

Certain quests and areas in NV did remind me of Tactics.
Quarry Junctions sniper playground / assault course, and Nelson / Forlorn Hope.
Hopefully on a newer engine some new ways to explore tactical situations open up.

I partially agree. For a lot of the game enemies have underwhelming equipment. On my first playthrough, when I started the last mission, I was pretty surprised at all the good weaponry that everyone had and the fact that it's fairly inaccessible otherwise.

Part of it, I think, is that they tried to make caps useful. In FO3, after getting like 2K caps you were pretty much set. In NV, the high-end guns are far more expensive. It'd defeat the purpose of that if every enemy you killed was armed to the teeth with expensive weaponry, because pretty quickly you'd have all the good stuff, and you'd sell what you couldn't use so you'd be rich too. Weapon vendors would be useless, implants would be easy to obtain, etc.

I think smarter enemies would solve the problem better. Make them more of a threat without increasing the value of their loadout too much. Stuff like ambushes or actual snipers would be great. Realistically you might run into a small group, most of which would have low to mid level weapons, maybe with the leader having something decent. But if the encounters themselves were tailored to be actually difficult, that'd work out well.

Definitely agree that human foes were generally lacking. Brotherhood was pretty good with power armor and generally decent weaponry, although they're all holed up in a single bunker so you don't encounter them often. They can also be made way easier by turning the turrets against them or just blowing them all up. =/

This is a game where you choose your enemies. You just so happen to be choosing to be enemies with the faction that uses sticks and stones to fight. If you want to fight and kill enemies that have good weapons and loot those for yourself, then stop fighting Powder Gangers and the Legion; they only carry cheap crap. If Fiends and Vipers were crawling all over the place, constantly starting fights with the player and all carrying Anti-Material Rifles, then we'd have an issue of realism.

There is absolutely nothing stopping you from being enemies with the Great Khans, killing them, and looting their Hunting Revolvers and Trail carbines.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from being enemies with the BoS, killing them, and looting their Gatling Lasers.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from being enemies with the Boomers, killing them, and looting their Rocket Launchers.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from assaulting the NCR at Forlorn hope, killing them, and looting their Precision rifles.

There is a character in Freeside you can confront via a quest and end up with a Hunter Revolver.
There is a character in the Gomorrah you can confront and get a Assault carbine.

If you consider those weapons weak then Idunno what to tell you.


And combat? Cottonwood Cove and Nelson are nothing compared to Caesar's tent or the NCR at Forlorn Hope. If you think the Brotherhood of Steel (very difficult when fought with guns blazing) and the Great Khans (decent fight with good payoff, the difficulty largely depending on their locations) are cake, then I'd love to know what difficulty setting you're playing on. Or stop bringing Boone/Veronica everywhere you go.

@Eduard:

Never underestimate the power of words. They got Caesar from prisoner to dictator in-game history wise. Out of game the history of humanity is full to the brim of people who beat impossible odds or set the world on fire by words alone. There would be no point in outright killing the inconspicuours single traveller. You might waste ammo, and you might do better to just sneak up on him with a knife when he sleeps. People loaded with power armor and high powered rifles however.... You wouldn't take a chance on those. You'd either stay well clear or wait for the person to remove his helmet. But you would percieve him as much more of a threat than the guy in a ragged outfit with no or few apparent weapons.