So you're saying that RPGs should not ever improve upon old ideas. I think people would rater have the ability to go where ever they choose.

They become an issue when you approach a slope that is not as steep as the last one you managed to climb but then suddenly your forward climb stops for no visual reason, I understand the need for them, it's less rendering time for the GPU as oppossed to adding extra objects to block a path, and of course AI pathing issues, but they are badly implimented in a lot of areas.

On a side note, can folk please stop calling lazy on the devs, they have time constraints they have to adhere to, it's nice to be a modder and come back to a project you've not touched in days and tweak the fine detail, devs don't have that luxury.

But that was the BEST thing about Morrowind. The sky was truly the limit.

A lot of the walls I've run into didn't need to be there so that's pretty disappointing. But the thing that I just noticed is that the whole West side of the map is covered by a huge mountain range. I'm guessing that whole 1/4 chunk of the map is off limits to players am I right? That would be really stupid.

So, just making everything open an featureless makes them better? No, it just means they're willing to give up making their terrain more interesting and varied to work around limitations of the engine. I honestly wouldn't call either solution lazy...they're just different solutions to the same problem. Notice that there aren't really important plot-centric locations that are fully outdoors in Oblivion or FO3? That's how Bethesda "funnels" you. They do it too, they just separate the outdoor areas from things that are important to the main quest. Then they prevent you from accessing those areas until you've hit a certain part of the quest.


When you dismiss a companion where do you think they go?


Ok, so if pathing is just an excuse why didn't they just put huge mountains in the way? It's not hard, so the "laziness" argument doesn't work.


Why are some people so interested in mountain climbing? Nobody but me things it's weird that I can walk up a nearly sheer mountain with no climbing equipment?

Anyway, the map in NV isn't perfectly square like the one in FO3. You can't access every part of the map that's visible in the Pipboy. The map occupies more tiles, though, so the fact that some areas aren't accessible doesn't make it smaller, so what you're actually saying is that non-rectangular maps are stupid.


I enjoyed that too, but a lot of people cried about it. Just goes to show that people will always find something to complain about.

Not saying that at all, just saying theres no reason to be surprised any more.

I disable them as soon as I can though, there really is just no reason for them when a steep cliff or actual wall wil do the job.





What about Walter and half the residents of Megaton? At least one character from Rivet City, who twice I've found dead at the bottom of a long drop.

The Orc In Skingrad who regulary commited suicide from the bridge and was needed alive to purchase the Skingrad House from him?

In all cases, the barriers were high enough to prevent them walking over and they still managed to get over them.

While I don't call lazy on the devs, placement of invisible barriers is easier, you don't have to concern yourself with detailed alignment and worry about leaving gaping parts between objects.

This.


And Amen to this thread.

Next thing you will do is compare the OP's complaint to something that is completely irrevelant to this whole conversation.

I don't know if this is a collision barrier or an invisible wall, but there are times where I am clearly aiming at an enemy and my bullets will hit an invisible barrier about a foot from an object I am aiming next to. It's really annoying when it comes to sneak attack criticals.

Yeah, that drives me nuts...I had that problem in FO3 too. It's especially frustrating when using VATS from cover.


But Bethesda didn't have to worry about that in Oblivion or FO3 either. They just didn't put any large obstacles anywhere except the edges of the map. It's harder to do that when you're modeling a real-life place that happens to have large mountains and gorges.

Hate the invisible walls as well. Nothing takes me out of the game faster than when i'm trying to scale a mountain to get to a point of interest and find a way over the mountain only to be met with flat terrain and an invisible wall. Put a giant rock there or something. Anything.

I hate hate hate invisible walls...
with that said, while there are a few that I've run into in New Vegas that have made me scratch my head and ponder....
There is still too much ability to run across a sheer cliff face. Maybe the walls should have just been mounted lower. If people are going to complain about them and how it kills the
"immersion" and "realism" then why weren't those things killed for you when you were scaling the impossible cliff face with a light jog?
Oh...thats right...one works to your benefit and that is ok, the other doesn't help you and gets the complaints.
Your strategy should not rely on across 80 degree rocks.

'Cause it's fun and I can't do it easily in real life. Yes it's weird that I have invisible crampons on my feet but then this is a world of two-headed cows, a world where shooting enough giant scorpions makes me better at opening locks and a world in which every third person has the exact same voice. I can roll with weirdness so long as proceedings remain fun. Invisible walls impede me in my quest to have fun.

(In Oblivion, my favourite-ever character had 100 acrobatics, it was amazing, I could play the game like Crackdown.)

People calling Obsidian lazy are out of order though, they created a game in a tight time-frame using borrowed tools, I dread to think the hours those guys must've worked to get the thing shipped. The invisible walls are disappointing, but they're not the result of laziness.

Unfortunately that's a collision mesh issue, on some objects the collision mesh is not very tight, I was shooting some fiends while crouching near a wall, I had clear line of sight, or so I thought, I took a shot and it hit the collision mesh, even produced decals of shattering concrete, fortunately I avoid the use of VATs in most cases so don't end up losing ammo to a collision mesh.

Fair enough, although I wouldn't use things like 2-headed cows as a justification. Games don't need to be realistic, but they do need to be believable. I've always thought the mountain climbing in Bethesda games was a bit much. There's just so much you can do narrative-wise when you need to find a pass to get through, and that pass happens to be controlled by faction x or y. Contrary to a lot of other people around here (apparently), I find the ability to stroll across any kind of terrain rather bland.


This is my biggest issue. We can disagree all you want about how something should have been handled (and by you I mean the hypothetical "you," not you...), but when people act like spoiled brats and suddenly presume they understand what goes into planning, designing, and managing a games development project, insulting the people that busted their humps every day for months to create a cool product I get a little irritated.

Yes, I'm sure that the solutions to these big-picture problems are all very clear to you when you're sitting there on your couch with a game controller in one hand and a Snickers bar in the other. :rolleyes:

Yes, this^. I couldn't believe they did that. It's like, oh here is a complete open world sandbox game..........buttttttt you have to enter this place at this exact spot. This huge hill in the middle (black mountain) you can't climb up on and look out over the wasteland. My sniper build play through absolutley drove me nuts. I had to put down the controller a few times. I totally see on the edge of the map, like in FO3, but on a hill in the middle!? C'mon!

Eh, the walls are the only real complaint I have with this game. One of the things about fallout was that you could just run right to rivet city if you wanted to, freedom in choice is a great mechanic used by Bathesda, so the minor restrictions do take a little away from the gameplay. It isnt gamebreaking though, it's just a little thing a few updates could fix.

I have hit a few invisible walls again today. Man I hate them. I hated them when they were in the edges of the map, but thought, ok, it's the end of the border and map, so you can't go any further, but to have them in the middle of the map? To have them where there is already a fence, and you should be able to jump over the fence, why couldn't they just make the fence higher?

Very frustrating indeed.

Less often than in this game!!

Just as an example of annoying invisible walls: to the side of the 188 trading post there is a smallish set of hills that you can't climb because of invisible walls. I wanted to get up there to take a sniper shot at Alexander, the very annoying GunRunner salesman under the bridge, but couldn't get a shot from far enough away to be safe from detection

Let me start, as one or two others have, by voicing my appreciation of the immensity of the tasks involved in creating something like FONV. Huge. Billions of lines of code and stuff, and it's great. Just a few little niggles.

People obviously rail at not being able to go where it seems like they should, in any game. However, I think it would be fair to say that FONV and other good games usually use clipping planes as a backup barrier for a primary, visible obstacle. The benefit of the visible barrier of course being that it can be seen to be blocked from a distance - veteran gamers can usually tell which paths are meant to be blocked off; but if it is not obviously so, particularly in a game riddled with hidden paths and locations, they will still have to go up and check it.

It's a big ol wasteland, so if posters wish to be helpful, perhaps they could describe precisely which walls they are coming up against that they feel break suspension. As has been previously (and repeatedly) stated, there are several points on the perimeter of Quarry Junction that seem traversable but are not; also I reckon the crater that blocks the highway heading north-west out of the map could use a few more carefully placed car wrecks.

Ranger Station Charlie, to the north-east is a... Hill? Mountain? I dunno, a large rocky output.
Anyway, it doesn't have anything specific around it like the invisible walls meant to prevent people from going north the instant the game begins.
All there is around it is some legionaries, a railroad and... sand.
Anyway, It it possible to jump up on that... Rocky thing... And for some reason there is invisible walls around there.
Why?
The one's at quarry are meant to prevent the player from killing the Deathclaws too easily and to prevent players from heading north.
But what is this one preventing me to go to?
There's nothing around of importance anyway.
There's no real reason for me to go on top of it either, it's not like it's a shortcut either.
But that's beside the point.
I see that... Rocky thing... And I want to climb it.
I know I can get up on it.
Maybe I want to view the landscape from a higher point.
But the invisible wall is there for no reason.

Next thing, Primm.
To the east of Primm is a long invisible wall stretching from the mountain from north to south.
Why?
I can take the rail-road to skip going to Primm anyway.
So it's not like the game wants me to go to Primm.
It's not like there's something dangerous around there between the railroad and Primm that has the invisible wall designed like it is for Quarry Junction.
It has no reason being there.
There is nothing of interest around there.
Nothing dangerous.
No "MUST-SEE SCRIPTED EVENT" or quest.
There's nothing there.
But I can't shortcut over it anyway.

And I can't understand the one to the east of the railroad either, I can take Primm Pass to get from the west side of the map to the east side very quickly.
So since the game isn't designed so it's needed for us to go through Nipton I wonder why we can't just skip over the mountain instantly.

I'm sick of trying to half-way hide behind a rock attempting to stealth snipe and shoot blanks.

I really don't see what the big deal is. They use montains and cliffs as barriers (to prevent you going somewhere too early for example) and instead of taking hours and hours and hours of testing to make sure there isn't that one spot somewhere that you can climb over, they've just used the invisible walls. What's the big deal? If you don't mind the mountain there blocking your way, why do you care about the invisible wall? Is it just an immersion breaking thing? That I could understand I guess. But when I think about how great the game is, I find it a pretty small thing to complain about.

Still, I'm bugged by some things that other people would probably not even notice so...

If the invisible wall makes sense for the balance of the game then it's fine but why should a location in the middle of nowhere have an invisible wall?
Maybe I want to use that high location as a sniper spot, maybe I just want to enjoy the scenery from a higher ground or maybe I just want to take a shortcut.
If it blocks my path for a reason, then it's fine.
If it blocks my path just for the sake of blocking my path then it's annoying and frustrating.