So when I played fallout 1, 2, and 3, i noticed that making tag skilles feels a bit pointless since you can just add more points to any other skills when you level up. So what if adding tag skills did something more like increased the point cap? i just felt it was a little pointless since you could pick any tag skill and not even add a single point throughout the game, making them your worse 3 skills. then again, i doubt anyone would actually not add to their tag skills but still.

Wait, it sounds more like you're talking about Fallout 3 than 1 or 2. In Fallouts 1 & 2 you are actually rewarded for choosing those "tag" skills because you are given two points instead of one for each tag skill. This allows your character to more quickly become customized, reaching the goals of his training and reaping the rewards in the game world because of his/her specialized training (I'm not even going to get into how much more rewarding having a specialized character is in the first two games). Secondly, in Fallouts 1 & 2 you can go over the number 100. So...you must be just talking about Fallout 3 and in a sense saying something many of us frequently say "Bethesda, could you please make Fallout 3 as rewarding to character-building role-players as Fallout 1 & 2 were?"

Amirite?

Not sure I understand. In Fallout 1 and 2, every single point would add 2 points to your tag instead of 1 until it reached 100% when it would be 1 for 1 again.

For all other skills it was a 1 to 1 correspondence, and when it reached 100% it would take 2 points to increase it by 1. In effect, your Tag skills would level up faster than your other skills and you end up being more proficient with them in the long run. They're also a way to maximize skill points per level. If you get 10 skill points per level, investing them in Tag skills would increase your skills by 20. Sure you can add them to your other skills, but you'd be losing out on the +10 points bonus.

In Fallout 3, both Tag skills and normal skills increased at the same rate.

EDIT:
Beaten by Aqualamb, who probably explained it better than I. But yes, your idea seems more suited for Fallout 3.

i believe you are, i never bothered much with leveling in fallout 1 and 2

:huh:

Sounds more like you "never bothered much with Fallout 1 and 2" to me. It's sort of impossible not to notice this. Seriously though, if you want a deeper game where stat mechanics are concerned give those old, dusty games a try.

I have them both, but vista is a bit ridiculous, and i did bother, somewhat...

Frankly, it didn't make much difference with the tag skills on FO1/2. It might have helped powergamers and folks who make highly specialized characters, but I did neither, for as many times as I played those games. By the time you reach end game, you probably have as many of yours skills near at least 100 as you wanted to have, as long as you didn't' hammer those tag skills relentlessly.

Could argue that with the level cap in fO3, one needs to be more careful how they allocate skill points then was ever needed in the open ended FO2.

Well, yes. My exact point was about specialized characters. One of my usual Fallout 1 & 2 characters is a scientific, sneaking, speaker with a penchant for unarmed fighting. Another one is a lying, theiving gunslinger. If I built these characters up via skills and perks to make them specific and specialized, by the end of the game there are at least 5-10 skills that I've not even touched.

In Fallout 3 I actually had to start choosing skills I didn't care about because there was nothing left to choose and at level 10 my character could pretty much do ANYthing "pretty well" at worst. :shrug:

To tell you the truth, I've always preferred the TES system of learning by doing. Powergamerz play the system to death, but for the rest of us, leveling a skill cost time, which is real. One tends to think carefully about the opportunity costs involved.

Are you saying building up specialized characters who excel in one area while knowingly fail in others doesn't require a great deal of thought and preperation as to how you're going to role-play the game? I think what you're describing is just as tedious as the eating and exercising in GTA3. It's a silly little LARP element in a video game if you ask me.

It not any sillier than DING! where do I put my points!, and as a bonus, you automatically end up with a character suitable to your playstyle. It's harder for me to create hybrid characters with the TES system, so it doesn't benefit me as much. But I think there is something more realistic about it. What will I practice today, archery or sword swinging? While I'm walking to Bamora, I should be practicing my magic, but which school?. Call it LARPING (incorrectly), but it's just basic roleplay. At elst it makes more sense in game. I'm better at lock picking because I practice it. In Fallout, I'm better at lockpicking because it just jumped into my head somehow.

To me it IS silly because a game is a game. That's why we're NOT out there LARPING (at least I hope we're not, hehee). I don't want to sit and make a character swing a sword and go "hey wow look I'm now better because I keep swinging this sword!" I'm fine with my imagination and the pNp style of leveling. In fact I completely prefer it. I guess you could say this is just one more notch in the "Why I can't stand Bethesda's usual style of game" category.

See, that's fine, but the condescension for other types of roleplay is not fine. It's been a long and ugly argument for years now and I really don't understand why. Sometimes I think it's a generational issue, but folks who claim experience with PnP role play sometimes make ththat argument as well, and attempting to redefine LARPing in the process, and using it as some sort of hammer.

Personally, I've always been a fan of the Elder Scrolls for their levelling system - it's at least something new and different. And it at least makes sense on paper - you get better at the skills you use while playing the game. The problems you are into are that it is quite easy to exploit (I've done the "tape down the sneak button" trick on some of my characters in that game, for example) and often encourages repetitive use as practice.

I think it's kind of neat that you can decide to go practice a skill in much the same way you would in real life, but I also found it a bit bothering in the extent to which it encouraged me constantly tapping on my spell button anytime I was walking anywhere.

Back to the topic at hand, I'd just as soon see the skill cap raised to 200 or 300 and Tag skills brought up to 2 per point. I thought that worked pretty well, and it effectively did cap your un-tagged skills at 100, since the cost per point went up after that. I thought it was a pretty elegant way of encouraging specialization (of which I'm a fan i roleplaying games - if your Fighter can cast Fireball, then why bother having a Mage tag along?) while also leaving the door open for more of a generalist character if that was what you were going for.

Fallout 2 worked well, I thought, in the pleasing both camps category. If you really wanted to master every skill, you could continue running around levelling until you had done so. It took a lot of work, but I think that's a good thing, hard work = sense of accomplishment, after all. And a specialist character had the upshot of getting to high skill levels earlier on in the game, with the trade-off of having some areas they weren't as competent in. (So if you lacked in Science skills, you might not kill Marvin outright for being a worthless booger...)

Fallout 3 I didn't have that choice (as much as I'd have liked.) Your ending character and preferred level of specialization and individuality has more to do with your INT than anything else. Suddenly, if I'm playing an intelligent character, it also ends up making me a min/maxing powergamer (which while I think there's nothing wrong with that - it's also something I don't find terribly compelling.)

I'm really hoping that they bring this method back now that they've gotten their feet wet with the basics of SPECIAL. Mods have proven that this can still work on the new engine. Having all your characters end up as generalists may sound like a good idea, but I've found that it takes all the fun out of building characters, and just kills replayability.

I'm interested to see what they'll do with the increased Level Cap in Broken Steel. If they maintain the skill caps at 100, that would svck big time. Obviously Tag skills will be at 100, so there's no choice but to spend the extra points on your other skills, thereby upgrading your character from Superman to GOD!

This basically sums up the 10 pages of the SPECIAL discussion (not really, but hehe anyway). I wish I could get excited about Broken Steel (it sounds idiotic to me) but I may just play it out of curiousity for leveling purposes.

I know what you mean. "Join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all." What for? They're no longer organized. They're plagued by in-fighting. Their weak plan failed. Plus, the BOS literally have deus ex machina in Liberty Prime. The Enclave seem to be the underdogs in this scenario, while the Brotherhood -- the aggressors. I wish they'd give this poor faction a rest.

My country doesn't carry GFWL, so I'm just biding my time until they release all new content on disc (or not). Thing is, after I found out that they made O:A a pure shooter, I've become less than enthusiastic. I jumped through hoops to get Fallout 3 (wasn't released at the same time in my country), but with the way things are now, I think I can live without the expansions.

EDIT:
Hmm. Thought about it some more. If they offered substantial quests and a mind blowing story that would overshadow FO3's. I'll jump right through hoops again.

Well, you know the only reason Bethesda have made this DLC are for all the "LOL Power armor is ttly kewl can I join Brotherhoods?" kids out there. I mean, Bethesda have basically taken an insular xenophobic group who were very grave and dark and turned them into quasi-heroic goofballs who shout out juvenile idiotic army-bravado speak. Again "Pwer Armir is totalllye awesum!!"

LOL. We'll just wait and see I guess if they throw their other audience a bone.

I'm guessing (and hoping) that's what The Pitt is all about. :shrug:

Another slam of a playstyle different than yours?

Besides, I like building generalist characters, because they provide me more options in game. However, proper game mechanics allow generalization at the cost of not being great ant anything. It doesn't ruin replayability, because you still ahve to decide how to approach problems and decide how to complete quests. The game is more difficult, also, because a generalist character won't be a s powerful in any given area, while a specialist character will be very powerful in it's specialized areas.

Both SPECIAL (FO1/2) and the TES system allowed for this sort of specialization, and I like both systems because they are CLASSLESS systems. TES, and the FO2 SPECIAL systems are capable of creating too powerful characters. The FO3 Special, being level capped, is better at contriolling character power, but I think we will lose that with the rise of the cap.

I posted something about "playstyle" in that quote? You feeling alright? :huh:



Ok, fine. So what though? The point remains that the option for both styles of gaming should be there since that's what Fallout was originally based off.



It's better at homoginizing your character and little else. Too powerful? My last character was walking up to feral ghouls and destroying them with one unarmed punch. I never got this effect in Fallouts 1 & 2 unless I was cheating with FALCHE.

Yup, combat in FO1 and 2 was never as easy as it is in FO3. Super mutants and Enclave soldiers are ridiculously weak now.

Really? I don't think I was ever killed in a random encounter in FO2 after, say Vault City.

Combat was always formula and simplistic in the early Fallouts, but it's the same way in fO3, in a different sort of way. It wouldn't hurt to improve mob AI (all fallouts need this) and add cover modifiers in future FP fallouts.

Hmm, I remember being level 21 or something, with Enclave Power Armor and created a very good 'physical' character, able to kill things very quickly, but getting totally shredded by a Deatclaw family or an Enclave Patrol occasionally. And that wasn't because I didn't bring the right weapons or having low HP to start with, they just made some serious critical hits (which happened often, depending on my Luck) and locked me in. Those Enclave patrols carried Gauss Pistols and such, those went right through my armor and if I had some bad luck and started running right at the start of the encounter, they'd off me before I even got close to the exit grid.

I do agree with the second part of your post. Combat was simplistic, and it still is, but I feel in Fallout 1 and 2 combat was just a little part of the gameplay experience and it's a much bigger part in Fallout 3. Shouldn't they have improved it then? Yes there are improvements, but that combat AI isn't by far the best I've seen in the last couple of years.