In a game, balance is a very important aspect - it keeps one thing from being far too powerful than another. Usually, a flavour of the month comes along to dominate the balance, but then usually gets nerfed, and for a brief period, another flavour comes up. This is commonplace im MMOs, but there seems to be a problem here in Fallout Online.

As you all know, we have melee weapons and guns in Fallout. They probably will appear in Fallout Online (if they don't, that'd be boring!) but the balance issue is where the guns will, probably, have more survivability for the user than the melee weapons. Guns are ranged, do high damage (depends on the gun) and are commonplace in the Wasteland. Melee weapons are not ranged, you have to be right up and close to the enemy to do anything. The damage, again, depends on the weapon - using a switchblade on most things is quite useless, unless they are just a spore plant or something very weak. And, the rarity of the weapon depends on the weapon itself - super sledges might be very rare, for all we know.

Hopefully, gamesas will find a way to balance melee weapons and make them as useful as guns - the guns might jam or break easily, whereas melee weapons cannot jam (but probably break easily). Can someone give some suggestions for how gamesas might be able to balance the weapons? This'd help the people who prefer melee combat over ranged, and keep the game balanced. You are being served by Nymus powered by black boyshorts with black lace, a pink bow, and pink ribbon and a hot pink and black lace, totally frilly.

There is a very simple solution: a chance to dodge(parry) ranged attack in a melee distance, based on a melee skill. It may be a perk, passive skill or active skill with short cooldown. The main point is making firearms vulnerable in melee.


It is just a fair partitioning: unless a fighter has reached a shooter - that one has an odds. But since he did it - put out the light, the show is over. And the shooter have to break out of the distance (using knockbacks, knockdowns, etc, maybe jetpack ) or die. Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

If I understand your meaning in game terms,

If one individual has a fire arm in a hand to hand fight, they should not receive any bonuses for the fight.
Or they should not get their full Hand to Hand fighting skill points.


Or possibly the individual who is melee with another who has a fire arm in their hands, would get bonuses to their skill while fighting that individual with the fire arm.

Dave Chase

Looks like I've over-estimated my language skill.
I mean, if first person is armed with firearms and the second person is armed with melee weapon, the first one can shoot precisely only when the second one is far away. When the second person comes into h2h distance, he gains an ability to dodge shots with a very high chance (based on his melee skill).
Of course, there may be a difference between various weapons. For example, pistol shots are harder to dodge or parry.
So we have a balance: smaller guns have shorter range, but they are quite suitable in melee, bigger guns have longer range, but they are much more easily to dodge or parry in melee (see a picture above). Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

Here's some ideas: Melee weapons should be far more silent than guns.
Blunt weapons should cripple limbs more easily (bullet hole in thigh vs broken femur).
Stabbing weapons should have a far higher crit chance than most guns.
Make ammo expensive and/or hard to find in-game. Bullets don't grow on trees, especially after a nuclear holocaust. Also, add a ammo-crafting skill of some sort.
Add plenty of fun, interesting, and powerful melee weapons.
Make the selection of melee weapons as diverse as real life (anything that can be picked up and swung can be a weapon). I'm thinking broken Nuka-Cola bottles...
The bombs fell upon the land like holy water, correcting God's failed experiment. Humanity will never be so stupid again. At least I fvcking hope so...

The spears in NV you can throw are annoying but not a worry. If online they and throwing knives say were given a critical bonus of something like, Stagger or Slow down it might help even things up. No more Raider cannon fodder for XP.

melee is good for closed spaces combat, having stronger melee weapons would help a little and having a higher armor penetration to lower the player or npc's damage resistance to the weapon

Ya know what else is good for close range combat? Buckshot.

Shotgun>Fists

And that's predominately the problem here, innit? I put the 'Skill' in 'Kill.'
Wait, what?

Amen!

Amen!



rock salts a b**** but any way, its still nice to have a blade when you run out of ammo

If you think about it, they could balance it by making melee weapons do more damage.

I mean it'd be great. For example,

Knife(lvl 1) = 10 Dmg.
Pistol(lvl 1) = 5 Dmg.

Atleast, that's what I would do, atleast test it to see how it'd work.

plus blades and other melee wepons by pass armors, posted some thing like that befor

plus blades and other melee wepons by pass armors, posted some thing like that befor
it depends on the type of armor.

anti matter armor, it states some were that a death claw can ripe throw power armor, super mutants can ripe a man in power armor in half, so im pretty sure that di dosent realy matter as long as the blade you got is sharp anoff or your strong anoff

another idea ist to give every char the chance to use both weapons.
in a longer distance both chars shoot them and if they get closer they have to end it up in a knife battle for example....
balance is always hard to manage.
just my 2 cents

IMO, melee and ranged should be realistic but with an unrealistic graphical... display(? not sure of the right word) revolved around it to provide balance. Let me explain:

Unlike what we see in most games, there's a lot more to accurately firing a rifle (or pistol, or whatevs) than point and click. Trigger squeeze, breathing, stance, sight picture, ect, all play a part. It's unrealistic for most of these factors to be represented in a video game, but i'll focus on trigger squeeze for the sack of argument (and because it's the easiest way to explain what i'm thinking here).

So, the first thing to do is make weapons fire when the mouse button (or whatever button you bind) is released. Essentially, when you press the button, this would be when your character pauses his breathing and begins to slowly squeeze the trigger for the most accurate shot. This would be characterized by a wide, and gradually (over a couple seconds) reducing crosshair (and weapon spread) the longer you wait to actually fire.

Now for the graphical display: When a character starts to aim (as opposed to hip firing) there could be a 'laser' visible to his/her target highlighting where the shooter is aiming. The laser could be color coded, green for 'just pointing at you' yellow for 'trigger is being squeezed' and a red flash for 'bullet's in the air'. This would allow melee characters to effectively dodge, or even deflect incoming rounds. It also makes every shot fired a tactical choice; do you quickly fire off a round so your enemy wont be able to react, or take your time to aim for a more accurate shot?

Additionally, various skills could be applied in different ways to influence this. For instance, a high stealth skill could delay the time before the laser becomes visible, making it easier for snipers to line up for an accurate shot. At the same time, perks like Bonus Move would be very useful for a melee character by making it easier for them to dodge fire.

Of course, most players might not enjoy such combat. It's much more skill based, less gear/xp/whatevs based than most MMOs, but at the same time it wouldn't be as twitchy (in regards to firearms) as most shooters, but would be more twitchy in regard to avoiding incoming fire.

In Tactics the Super Mutants who were Melee could stealth right up to you. Maybe Melee weapons could give a bonus to damage and Sneak while actually sneaking. This could allow the Melee characters the opportunity to get close and personal. And maybe make Melee more than a starter skill to drop when we get a gun.

Isn't that the whole point of sneak itself? To come close to someone and stab him in the back? Or to shoot someone at point-blank range or even make a contact shot. Gaaaaaaary!

I meant that with the bonuses using Melee it might make that skill the preferred Sneak weapon of choice and balance the melee verse guns problem.

If you want a generic, non-Fallouty, hack and slash, everything revolves around combat, game, sure.

Personally, i'd like to see sneak as primarily a way of avoiding conflict, not primarily a way to deal extra damage.

A while back a posted a scenario that shows what i mean, it involved a sniper sneaking through an old church full of deathclaws to get to the sniper nest in the bell tower. If he kills all the deathclaws, sure he might get some XP. But if he sneaks through the deathclaws, they can provide a 'first line' against people who want to get to the sniper (maybe because he's sniping thier teammates?).