I always hear people talking about how they want more vaults and people to fight in them rather than having these interesting ones with backstory. Then you have other topics such as weapons how there are more in NV but not as unique as the craftable ones in Fallout 3. On that topic the crafting was much more direct and interesting on Fallout 3 while on NV it seems there are way too many crafting and survival options that are unneccesary. This Quality vs Quantity topic affects quests and other things too.

Now what I want to know from you:

Which do you prefer and which parts of the game require which one.

Now when you discuss this topic don't think I am saying very little quality and mass amounts or just one or two with amazing quality. I am talking about the balance between them. Think of it this way in regards to vaults. Would you like 10 vaults which have monsters in them and just a simple (a gas pipe broke and everyone died)...or would you like about 3 or 4 vaults with a story like so think of it as balanced yet slightly tipped rather then the extreme of one or the other.

Why does it have to be an option, the originals had quality and quantity in most everything.

Quality for Vaults, certainly. But I much prefer having NV's variety of weapons. It's nice to have a choice that extends beyond 3 or 4 good end-game guns, it feels more real, and I don't think Fallout 3's weapons really were any more interesting.

Story vaults, hands down. Investigating Vault 11 was one of the highlights of my entire Fallout adventure.

I'm really happy about NV's weapons aswell. Plenty of viable choices that fit into the setting and hand loading ammo make my rifleman heart warm. I don't mind not being able to McGyver together some whacky scrap launcher.

Because at some point they need to break apart. You can't have 100 amazing quality parts of a game. At one point you have to sacrifice one to get the other.

Why not? Why can't there be a game with amazing story and alot of weapons? Fallout Games for the most part are pretty good at having both. Weapons in New Vegas can be modded and you can make ammo. The weapons crafting in Fallout 3 I enjoyed but I rarely used them. I don't count them as unique for you can make alot of them. Unique to me is one of a kind.

If I have to pick it would be Quality.

Quality over quantity all the way

laws of physics. finite resources. The most critical usually being time. Take away the deadline time constraints and then you only have to deal with fanbase loyalty waning and technology surpassing your body of work as the only restrictions on how long you have to properly make a game.

-Gunny.

I mean there can be, but it's hard to name a game that has both. Fallout is more about guality than quantity but people don't like the fact that it does that. The main reason is that quantity extends playtime while quality just makes it more interesting...finding the balance is always different for any game you are making. And even different aspects of the game have certain balances.

there needs to be both, the new vegas map was big so to leave it empty takes the quality of the over all map down quite a bit, there was some quality in the game, weapons, skill/perk system, reputation system, there were some good locations, but the spawns were all static and there were no random events or encounters in the game, the environment wasn't that great, lots of invisible walls, even in spots where you should of been able to go, you were out in the open wherever you were on most of the map, no good hiding spots for the most part, not very many towns with factions in them, over all there wasn't enough ghost towns, they could of made great battlezones or just places to sneak around and hide, there needed to be random events and encounters in the game in order to make it fun to actually walk around and for replayability.

What he said.

Quality obviously. Nobody wants a million useless vaults with a couple of ghoul guards

That is kind of what I am getting at. They could have made the world smaller as much of the outskirts of the Mojave is unused and a lot has probably not even been walked on. Having made it smaller they could have easily taken out many glitches and probably given that altered environment which they were not able to give at the end because there was such a vast difference.