Hello there fellow forumgoers... Some of you may remember me, but most will not.

Back in 2008 I jumped ship from the TES series and dove straight into Fallout 3, never really looking back. I figured it was the next step in my own evolution as a gamer and it was my purpose to move with the times. This lasted a good long while and I found myself becoming, at one point, a bigger Fallout fan than a TES fan...

After 2 solid years of exclusively playing Fallout 3, I decided to try out New Vegas and while I liked it as a game better than Fallout 3, I found myself leaving the game and community entirely for the better part of a year. I've only just returned for Skyrim, but waiting on the CK has taken it's toll. The novelty has worn off and I was contemplating coming back to Fallout NV for some much needed modded content and a step back to one of my favorite genres, post-apocalyptia...

That being said I am wondering how stable FNV is now, how the modding community is doing and if the major CTD issues caused by using mods in FO3 are still present in FNV. I was also wondering if the GECK NV was any better than the FO3 GECK (all the bugs and kinks worked out/patched).

Is it a good idea to come back, maybe do a couple of mods in preparation for Skyrim's CK, and get back into the Fallout universe or am I better off sticking with Skyrim/other games?

I find the game to be very stable, I do get some freezes, CTD's but, I had maybe two while playing a marathon 12 hour session the other night. I don't run a heavily modded game though, I tent to have only arount 25 to 30 mods installed and, at least a 3rd are mods I'm working on or have made for myself.

As for the GECK! Well It is a bit more buggy than FO3's, here is a list of bugs I know of.

when editing lighting you have to refresh the render window to see changes,
there is a bug with Havok, multibounds and, the "M" key (Show hide markers, lights but, I'm sure you know what it should do) ((these are easily fixed by an .ini change of the multibound setting))
*If you don't find your GECKCustom.ini and change bUseMultibounds=1 to bUseMultibounds=0
*Havok sim will not work,
*you won't be able to show hide lights or markers,
*when entering a cell that uses roombounds, portals and, or, multibounds you will only see a portion of the cells contents. mostly random objects seeming to float in space. (I Guess to clarify, I mean when you look at a cell in the GECK, I made it sound like it was an in Game issue.) :facepalm:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1148040-how-to-fix-lighting-havok-and-rendering-issues/page__hl__havok+fix

No spell check,
The GECK no longer reports errors when writing scripts,
cannot duplicate a vanilla Worldspace,

These bugs are in no particular order and, I've most likely missed some.

On the flip side, Modding FNV has be incredibly fun for me. All the new Assets and, all the ones that made it over from FO3. Also, Navemeshing and, NPC pathfinding seems to have ben improved. I don't want to sound to negative but, the above are just a list of some of the problems many of us have faced ever since the new GECK was released.

Hope this helps and, if you need any more info just let me know.

cev

Well, as one who is fairly new, here is my view:

Fallout New Vegas is about a million times more stable than FO3- I haven't experienced a single CTD due to the installation of mods. I've experienced a couple more mundane errors related to the programming of the mods, my own inexperience, and some weirdness with my computer. But with FO3, I can't go more than 16 minutes without a CTD, so I see a vast improvement.

The modding community has produced a number of masterpieces that rival the greatest of FO3 mods, and IMO exceed them in every fashion, especially stability. There are some bad eggs, but most of them are great mods that just need a little love to catch up to FONV's latest patches. Then there's the mininuke Minigun...But I digress. I imagine you already know your way to the site, and what on earth you're doing, so I'll leave you to that.

I have not used the FNV GECK, so I will not comment on it.

As one who really doesn't like "Sword & sorcery" style games, I have a biased opinion, but I think there is nothing to be gained by leaving FNV for Skyrim.

-Nukeknockout

I'm mainly a texture artist so a lot of the more technical stuff won't affect me. My biggest issue with FO3 was crashing or game being completely broken when using (probably improperly) the big mod packs like FOOK and stuff... I've always been bad with load orders and even with BOSS for FO3 I had issues...

Never played a modded FNV, just vanilla + DLC. Would like to maybe try it out for a while and see how it goes.

Thanks for the feedback guys!