I was just wondering, if Project V13 turns out to be Fallout Online, how would the SPECIAL character system be implemented (assuming it would, but it would be a real shame if it weren't, since it's one of the crucial elements of the series). I'm sure Chris has his own ideas about it already, but I'd like to see other people's ideas as well.

The biggest question for me is - how not to make Charisma a dump stat? Other main statistics and most of the skills can be transferred to a MMORPG without major problems, but Charisma in Fallout games was pretty much all about interacting with NPCs, while MMORPGs naturally focus on interaction between the players, making Charisma's original use less useful.

In single-player Fallout games, Charisma influences two skills - Barter and Speech, both of which would be pretty useless with PCs, and while still having their uses with NPCs, limiting Charisma to that would make it a dump stat. While IMHO it would be good to keep that original use as well, I think merging Barter and Speech into one skill that governs all interaction with NPCs could make it at least less useless.

Another idea is to introduce a Leadership skill, which would allow your character to temorarily boost the skills or stats of his friends. It could also help you gain ranks in a faction more quickly, if a faction system where you can gain ranks within them is implemented.

As for perks, I'd like for Chris to, just like J.E. Sawyer did for Van Buren, dump level requirements completely and make all perk requirements skill and stat-only. It will give you more incentive to specialize in a given skill, as a high skill level would give you access to more powerful perks.

Any other ideas on how to improve SPECIAL or make it more suitable for a MMO? The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

An MMO would have to be RTS or Live Action and couldn't conceivably use any sort of turned based combat or pausing features.

Charisma on the other hand could be very useful when working with NPC's just like in normal Fallout games. Like every current MMO, PvE or (Player vs. Environment) is an important part of a game.

Well, Dofus is an example of a turn-based MMORPG. I still doubt FOOL would be turn-based, anyway, but I'd prefer a real-time system akin to the one in Fallout Tactics than to the one in Fallout 3. The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

Havent played fallout tactics so excuse me here.

Currently I play EVE Online, so alot of what i am going to say comes from my experience in that game.
In EVE you have 5 stats. Intelligence, Memory, Perception, Willpower, Charisma.
Some of those convert into SPECIAL, some dont.
Intelligence is rather obvious to transfer, dont know about memory, perception is obvious, willpower is endurance, and charisma is easy.

Anyways, refering to what has been said about charisma.
In EVE Online its used for 3 'categories' of skills (IF this doesnt make sense, go look into how EVE works).
Those categories are:
Leadership, Social, Trade
Leadership skills give the ability to have more people in your fleet (or gang) and give them bonus's to things.
Social skills affect your interaction with NPC Agents (Questgivers), better bonus's to mission completions, etc.
Trade affects how well you sell things. Cuts down on the taxes and fee's, increases how many things you can sell at once, etc.


Ok NOW that ive given a run down of what Charisma does in EVE, i can move on to my idea (Wanted to make sure yall understood where this was coming from).

Give charisma in a MMO of Fallout guidance over Leadership and Social things.
Leadership: Same thing, bigger group (Maybe only able to invite 1 person to a group at first? and it grows from there or something?)
And some sort of a skill to help affect how npc's relate to us in some way?

That would make sure it wasnt a dump skill unless someone wanted to be the lone ranger never going around anyone else for all of the game...

(Sorry if this doesnt make much sense, just woke up)

~Vac

I can certainly see how charisma could be implemented in an MMO setting.

Bartering, lower prices from NPCs, less fee for whatever in-game selling mechanisim, ability to list say more than 5 items at a time.

Questing, higher charisma affecting information given about quest objectives, rather than "Go talk to Joe" it could be "Go talk to Joe, he works out at the ranch noth of town". Maybe a slight bump in rewards for quests but it shouldn't be too high but be careful with XP bonus thats a double edged sword.

Faction relations, higher charisma affecting ones ability to interact with NPCs and therefore access areas easier than someone with low charisma. Say you have a low charisma but you need access to a warehouse in "junkyardville" and the NPCs there are hostile. You have to get a group and kill your way to the location. Someone with higher charisma may be able to talk to one NPC and be granted a quest gaining faction and allowing him to walk to the location.

I don`t know why charisma wouldn`t work like in the old games, except for dialogue.
The more you charisma points you have, the more people can join your squad or crazy things like limiting the people you can add to your friendslist. Why would someone join a uncharismatic person? Okay, maybe a dog, if he gets some food. So if you want to be in a team you`d have to join charismatic leaders and only they could be able to leave the map/town. So all others need to accept the direction where the leader is going. Just some thoughts. Uncharismatic people should have to barter more than a charasmatic guy if they want a gun or something else from anybody.

I got an idea for low Intelligence. If you play a dumb character your words should loose letters and the outcome should be different than what you wanted to write.

Example, this is what you type: "Hey Vault_Dweller852 come over here, i want to give you something."
This is what the players will read: "OI! Vault_Dveller731 kom ova her, me vant do dive yuo sumding."

Hey, that same could be even done with higher intelligence. But i′ll stop here, my english isn`t good enough to make that joke. The Future Was Yesterday!

You could so a player to player bartering system in which the original fallout trade panel is in place with the value down at the bottom, with char modifying how much each item adds to the total value of the gathered goods. It wouldn't be very high I would think as when you get up higher in values the percentages would translate into much higher raw caps amounts. (i.e. 1% of 10000 caps is still 100 caps, while 100 caps would trans into 1 cap.)

I don't think a bartering system between players with set prices instead of player-negotiated ones would work well in an MMO. The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

As already mentioned before, Charisma modifies how many members can be in one party, of course party leader's charisma is the modifier.

Here is a cool feature - your starting charisma decides how many details/shapes you can have when making appearance. For instance low starting charisma would result your character's face to have many scars etc...

Hm, I dont have that much experience with mmorpg′s, but my two cents on avoiding charisma as a dump stat would be to have a lot of npcs with both personality, dialogue, and faction. Some will like you, some wont(for varying reasons). I feel that might retain the sense of being a loner, or outsider, that was really prevalent in both original games. I′d like that. More power to NPC′s.

Problem is, Charisma is a wonderful way of structuring interaction possibilities between a character and an NPC. It goes along with the notion of playing a role in a virtual world - you are charismatic, people should listen to you. I don't believe that Charisma can ever be modelled properly in computer role-playing games, nor do I think it is a necessary statistic, but if it's going to be used there are certainly things to make it shine.

On the other hand, since in a MMORPG the primary means of social interaction occurs between players - rather than between players and artificial intelligence - it can't be left to a statistic.

"I want to join your party."
"You can't."
"But I want to!"
"I'm uncharismatic."
"Oh, all right, then."

or

"Sell me that Turbo Plasma Rifle for 3500."
"I won't part with it for less than 7000."
"But my Charisma is 16!"
"Sorry about that, here it is."

It just can't faithfully recreate the same level of dynamic because there are outside factors influencing the social - and by association, financial - components.

The suggestion to use it as a mechanism to determine the number of players on a group seems like a better suited one, much like Fallout's own Cult of Personality Perk did. It can also remain as a statistic that determines other social aspects but limit them to NPC usage. Either that, or consider enforcing role-playing rules for online play, where Charisma and other social attributes can grow - but that will likely drag all the emos and "Hail and well met, traveller" types.

Damn man...
Thanks for going deeper into the charisma thing, you made some really good suggestions that i fully agree with.

The idea of extra information from quest givers is excellent.
To expand on it..

Charisma and quest givers..
1)Extra Information (Idea from Wulps) on Location of Quest Target
2)Extra information on possible raiders in the area...(See Note #1 Below)
3)Extra Money from quest (Idea from Wulps). Nothing ridiculous though.
4)Maybe offering rewards NOT available to those of lower charisma? Like If you have Charisma of less than 15, you only get say...100 bottle caps. But if you have it over 15 you can choose between 100 bottle caps and this cool pistol that was the quest givers father's or something. Id love to see that.

Charisma and NPC Sales...
1)Better prices for buying/selling from NPC's (Idea from Wulps).
2)Maybe if your charisma is high enough, the NPC could tell you something like "Hey man I like you. Tell you what, if you go find Bob Smith, he is really looking to buy that Item X you are trying to sell me. If you go talk to him, he might be willing to buy them for more than I am".
3)Another option when dealing with buy/sell NPC's is as follows. 'Hey man, i see you want Item A. Well I really want Item B. If you can get me Item B, Ill give you a 50% discount on Item A.".

Charisma and Factions.
1)Getting into hostile area's by being able to accept quests to boost standing that those of lower charisma cannot (Idea from Wulps)
2)Getting into a neutral but non welcoming town (IE: They aren't gonna attack you, but wont let you come into their town normally) easier.
3)Maybe if you murder a member of a certain faction it wont have as big of an impact the higher the charisma you have?
4)Maybe convincing NPC's from Faction A that the members of Faction B are out to get them so that the members of Faction A attack Faction B (In a limited area). Interesting as a mechanic to get past situations that otherwise you couldn't.

Charisma and NPC's In General.
1)Maybe you'd be able to non-lethally subdue some NPC (IE: Raider), then convince them (Through use of your charisma instead of violence) to give up such things like locations of a cache, their camp, if there are any traps in the area. Things like that.
2)Maybe if you get ambushed you might be able to talk yourself out of it?


These are just some ideas i had after reading Wulp's thoughts on Charisma in a MMO (In terms of a Fallout based MMO) so yeh, thanks for the inspiration.

I'm curious about how the other aspects would transfer into an MMO.
I am talking about the non obvious aspects of those attributes. (Intelligence makes you smarter, but how can it be applied in game...).

~Vac

EDIT: Added Bold and Underlines to make that wall of text I wrote easier to read.

I haven't read everything in thread, so I don't know if this is repeating someone elses idea. Just a thought , on top of the other suggestions for party size, party buffs etc. Since there'll like be no "summon" skill as such , a person with a high CHA stat could be allowed to have NPC companions. Like getting your own dogmeat , or tribal to watch your back in combat. Number of companions limited by level of stat. You could even match it with skills, high CHA + speech allows you to have tribals or mercs. High Cha + outdoorsman allows you to tame wild dogs , maybe even an especially intelligent deathclaw at higher levels.


A side question is how do you balance play, and quest requirements, when stats can be temporarily boosted with drugs. I mean if there is an intelligence check with a certain NPC then down a couple mentats and its no longer a problem. High price on drugs, or eliminate them altogether?

A side question is how do you balance play, and quest requirements, when stats can be temporarily boosted with drugs. I mean if there is an intelligence check with a certain NPC then down a couple mentats and its no longer a problem. High price on drugs, or eliminate them altogether?

High drawbacks and addicition chances? The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

Well, You can't save the progress in a MMO and load the game if something goes wrong so stealing and drugs will work properly at last Ever been addicted for a long period of time in F1/F2? Have you felt the relief when the addiction status was gone?

I did.

Charisma definitely seems more useful in single player games than online ones with a big emphasis on combat.

It needs to be balanced out by non-combat benefits.
Trading - allow you to trade at better prices with NPCs, buying cheaper, selling for more. Maybe requiring a certain level of skill to barter for better prices. Player to player sales could limit the number of items for sale at one time.
Persuasion - talking NPCs into giving you information that leads to new quests, loot, or an alternative way to complete a mission giving more XP than fighting through (if the XP was less most people would just choose to fight through it).

What if charisma would determine the "quality" of items sold by npc? If you're ugly and smell like rotten mushroom, you won't be able to buy anything good from them, because the more they like you, the more chances that they have something special or even worth your money for you...

OR maybe for the purpose of MMO you could find other characteristic that starts with "C"?

OR maybe for the purpose of MMO you could find other characteristic that starts with "C"?

No, Charisma should definitely be there, it's just that its uses will likely have to shift more than for any of the other stats. The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

First off, I will be waiting on pins and needles until this game comes out. I have been hoping for a FO MMO since I first played WoW. This is great news IMO.

MMO's are changing. So don't always expect a new MMO to be like the last one.

With that said, I see many things Charisma can be utilized for in a MMO. For starters, solid storylines have been lacking in most MMO's today, and from what I have read the Stargate Worlds and Fallout MMO are going to try and change that.

Charisma can be used to help drive the storyline for your character. A higher Charisma will give you more dialogue (More storyline), open up quests that can only be completed by high charismatic characters, and bartering with NPC's. Bartering with humans could work too, IMO. What if you and another character agree on a price of 10 caps, but you have a higher Charisma. The game could automatically give you a few extra caps based on a rating difference. So the other player gets his/her deal, and you get a few caps on top of that.

I love the discussion, its all speculation and who knows, maybe gamesas will use some of our ideas. Keep them up!

Charisma tied into group buffs, providing group combos(similar to a burglar in Lotro), faction rep increases, and I like the idea of summoning a tribal or mutant to aid in combat. It could easily be made into a class specific trait and should work well. You could also tie in a high charisma to certain in game items. I think that Charisma is a big part of fallout and doesn't have to be a dump stat by any means.