FO1 and FO2 did immersion. I just had to imagine a bit the things, rather than getting it spoonfed to me via my eyes. Debris, burnt out buildings, shambling wretches, etc. FO3 has about the same, it's just got a better shine on it. Mind you this whole "immersion" stuff is really claptrap the way it's bandied about (marketing ahoy!).

Fallout 2 is by far the better title, compared to "Fallout-Doom"....I mean Fallout 3.

Nonsense, the "whole idea" is not "What would I do with these abilities" (as you are suggesting), but is "What would they do with their abilities"; There is a sharp difference too. Games like Oblivion defeat the whole point to having a named character with a past, because they foster the idea that its really the player [going anywhere, doing anything] ~and for all intents and purposes it is just that.

I'd say FalloutChris is right, and you are more likely speaking of adventure games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 ~not RPG's like Fallout, Planescape, and Baldur's Gate.

Actors engage in the greatest RolePlay of all, and which ones do you think are the best... the ones like Segal and Statham who play themselves in each and every scenario, or the ones that play the role from the character's perspective. Some can indeed imitate their character's emotions, quirks, and beliefs to a startling degree, but for most simply describing their character's course of action (and motives) is enough for a game.

Perhaps I have it wrong, but your post seemed to imply that you mean the player is to pretend to be the character and to do the character's deeds and exploits ~That's not role playing... that's LARPING. That's an adventure game.

~~~~~~

Old series, new series, and unfortunately not really the same series.

I agree with the last part ~But its tricky to explain.

I would, but Ausir has said it first ~and its true Fallout cannot compare tech with a game using a modern PC, but the artwork did its job better [IMO] than FO3's own art [but then, they used art differently too].

It was. All the sprites (except the bosses) were archetypal of class. The scenery (with some exceptions like the church) were common looking junk. Shacks made of corrugated sheet metal could reasonably look like other shacks in other towns. people in one town had just enough detail to be recognized as such, but not uniquely identifiable.

O_o I'm aware that the player's interaction with the game-world should be metered and filtered by the abilities and role of the Character. Believe me - I've been playing RPGs in one form or another for longer than many current gamers have been breathing (since the late 70's, actually).


I never said that you need a first-person perspective for immersion. I only related that I, personally, found the particular use of first-person POV in FO3 to be very supportive of my own sense of immersion.


Apparently, you also fail at reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say you became the character; I never even came close to that in what you initially objected to. I said that you would feel like you were actually "there". Not necessarily as yourself of course (that's the part where "role" comes into "role-playing"); rather, there as your character.

*sigh*


I suggested nothing of the SORT.


Yes, you most certainly do.

So exploration & FPP are your answers. I argue that the exploration isn't really that "great" for reasons I listed. But that opinion difference aside are there any other things that make F3 great to you?

You came close enough. You think roleplay requires a heightened sense of immersion through FPP, hence why FO1 & 2 don't match up to your perception of immersion. An opinion that is mislead by mainstream. I know what roleplay is evidently, and FO3 detracts from a large aspect of that.

I can read perfectly fine. Your hostility is unsettling. But that is your prerogative.

I'll take you at your word, but regarding you earlier post and quote (of FalloutChris')... Why should a player need to "feel as if really there"(?)~ The PC is there, that's enough. Fallout certainly did not invite the player "in" ~it asked for suggestions. The player pointed to a lock and the PC attempted to open it ~not some manual mini-game to see if you can pick the lock [which BTW, I'd bet really annoys any player who can]. It annoys me that I can't just disable the silly lock pick game for a simple skill check... Hmmm... that sounds like a neat mod.

True enough. I had since reliterated my comment on that due to Ausir's post



Man, if someone makes a mod that breaks the rule of 25, I would be spazatically happy lol. Hate the rule of 25. Hate it hate it hate it. I don't care if a lock is very hard, I want a chance to unlock it, even if my chances are low

Well, I was just meaning that in both games END primarily affects your HP. (END in Fallout 1/2 had an effect on resistances, I think - but it seemed like your choice of armor sort of trumped that anyway.) There's a difference in what effect the Attribute has on your abilities, but without having gone in-depth on the average damage rates and whatnot between both games, I can't really comment on how much the effect of END has changed.

(ie, if guns do a lot more damage in Fallout 3, or you have more of a tendency to get hit more often on average - then higher hit points aren't necessarily going to be all that big of a change.) I'd have to look at the relative differences in damage and average damage-taking your character goes through between both games before I really agreed/ disagreed that Endurance works all that differently.

And it's certainly not as much of a change between the two games as the other stats, regardless.

Come on now, I thought we were actually having a relatively civilized discussion here (a rarity) without engaging in personal attacks. It's been a good while since a Mod's had to lock a thread in the Fallout Series forum, and I'd hate to see that trend broken again.

This whole "immersion" concept is highly subjective to begin with. Back in my tabletop days, I noticed three distinct trends between players in my group throughout any of the games we played.

We had one guy who was drawn more to games like White Wolf's WoD, Amber, etc. He got very into character, and when he was GMing a game made extensive use of props and other physical examples. This is the type of player who tried to see the world through their character's eyes and essentially inhabit that character in that world. His concept of "true" roleplaying was somewhat similar to the process of a method actor. His definition of "immersion" was being able to imagine he was someone else. He got upset if we made too many out-of-character comments, and never broke character himself. He also never took short-cuts (ie, there was never "My character asks the shopkeeper what he has for sale" or "I see if I can intimidate this guy" - but "'Hello, good sir, might I inquire what wares you have on sale today,'" or "I shoot him a piercing look," etc.) He generally only cared about the rules and his character's stats as a tool for his roleplaying and as we got older focused more on RPGs that did away with dice entirely. I haven't been in touch with him for a while, but I imagine he would like videogames like Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc - for being able to pretend he was another character and view his avatar as an extension of himself.

Another player was more attracted to D&D or Palladium's various Megaversal games. He would play pretty much the same character every time, regardless of the game, and his primary goal in every game was making his character as "awesome" as possible. He wasn't terribly concerned with "immersion" of any definition, so long as he was able to find cool loot and advance his character. He'd really get into the guts of every game we played and designed character to take full advantage of every edge he could get. (Always had a D&D character with 18+ STR, would auction all his character points in Amber to make sure he had the highest-rated STR, etc.) Basically the quintessential Min/Maxer. He almost never referred to his actions in the game in first-person, and didn't generally describe his actions in any "traditional" roleplaying terms (ie, "I attack the Dragon" as opposed to "I hack at the Dragon's neck, trying to find a weak spot," or whatever.") He didn't have any real preference of ruleset so long as he could design the character he wanted and make sure he was as efficient as possible. Also had little patience for sessions that weren't at least somewhat heavy on the combat side of things, and usually found an excuse to do some fighting regardless. His favorite videogames were Diablo and Quake, and last I heard he was heavy into World of Warcraft.

Myself, I think GDW (not to be confused with GW) made some of the greatest games ever. I played a lot of Traveller, Twilight:2000, GURPS: Car Wars (switching to the Car Wars ruleset as appropriate,) and Mechwarrior (again, switching to BattleTech as appropriate.) I came from the Wargaming end of tabletop games, so I liked to make sure we had plenty of miniatures, maps, and lots of styrofoam packaging (which make for great improvised buildings.) When we'd get together for a roleplaying session, I viewed my character in sort of the same way I would watch a movie or read a book. I wasn't terribly interested in being "immersed" so much as focusing on things being "cinematic." I'd refer to my character's actions in third-person, and I'd alternate between out-of-character short-cuts to describe the actions of my character and describing them in full detail, as the pacing demanded. I like lots of rules, and developing strategies that best utilize each character's strengths and weaknesses - but I don't try to make the most "awesome" character. I like to picks stats which describe the character I am playing, and then getting very involved with the strategies to be as successful in the game as possible. (ie, I don't generally max out any of my stats, and generally would play a different character each time - in D&D, I never re-rolled my stats but worked with what the dice gave me and then used that to build up a character concept and decide which class best fit those stats.) When GMing, I would encourage my players to describe their attacks in cinematic ways (as opposed to just saying "I shoot this guy" and rolling the dice turn after turn,) and reward them for being inventive while playing. My favorite videogames, as far as RPGs go, are KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Fallout 1/2 - the former two for the cinematic experience I have with them, and the latter for being the sort of videogame that just seemed like it was made specifically for me.

All three examples are sort of exagerrations of a 3 broad categories of players, but I think they provide adequate examples. Neither of those three types of players are any less "roleplayers" than another - and part of why our group was so succesful over the span of well over a decade, was because we were comprised of a wide variety of influences and preferences. Each had something vital to bring to the table, and we all had fun. This concept of "immersion" is highly subjective - what immerses me in a game might not do so for another player. I don't personally find first-person any more "immersive" to me than an overhead view (and vice versa,) yet it's perfectly fine if others feel differently. Because it's only a matter of opinion, after all - there is no right answer. Just as there is no "right" way to roleplay.

[quote name='nu_clear_day' post='14078190' date='Apr 3 2009, 12:08 AM'][...][/quote]good post :tops:
I have a terrible answer to this one though... :chaos:
I don't mind First person at all. I don't mind it in any game I've played that had it ~but any games that did not, but then did in a later sequel or follow up ~I couldn't stand it. Luckily I played Duke3d before Duke Nukem 2.

IMO FPP is a poor choice for story telling; It loses something that TPP does not. IMO it actually breaks "immersion" for lack of a better term. Imagine you were watching an episode of "Monk" and it suddenly went FPP and you saw the world through Adrien's eye (and lost the spectacle of seeing him through your own).

IMO...There should be no FPP RPG's ~FPP Adventure games yes [of course], but playing through somebody else
[as in all RPG's] seems broken if you can't see them enacting your suggestions, see them barely escape the trap. The whole VATS cinematic is TPP for a reason.

I agree with you on this, I think. I prefer a third-person RPG, and usually play in that mode when given the choice. (First-person is nice in Fallout 3 if I'm looking through the contents of a shelf or trying to get a good look at something, but otherwise I play it entirely in third-person.) I lose something of my own "immersion" when I can't see my character emote and respond to events. That's why I really enjoyed Mass Effect's dialogue system over all others so far - it fits my concept of "immersion." My character in Mass Effect felt more real, and I connected more in that game, because I could see him on-screen. With Fallout 3, I lose some of that as I don't actually get to see myself talking. Even Bioware's older games, like KOTOR, I liked just having my character on-screen as I was selecting my dialogue choice.

That said, it's just my own preference for RPGs. Others have different preferences, and that's just as valid as well. (Those who prefer to project themselves into the character they're playing seem to prefer first-person, for what I think are fairly obvious reasons.)

I never got KotOR, but I did get KotOR2 by Obsidian. I liked the game despite its rushed completion... I liked the true FPP option (and its restrictions), but found nothing to use it on.
That reminds me of http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/nocturne by Terminal Velocity (Awesome horror game sort of set in the Bloodrayne gameworld). It was TPP exclusively, but allowed FPP (as in KotOR2) when using the nightvision goggles; It was neat, but sadly it was equally not very useful.

Actually, no. I didn't say that at all.

I said immersion and number of places to go.


Different strokes for different folks. *shrug*

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I never used the word "require" at all, Chris, and I certainly never said that a first-person POV was required.

I did say that FO1 and FO2 didn't really give me a sense of immersion, yet, FO3 had; I also said that the first-person POV had increased that immersion.



I suspect that maybe some of you should stop presuming the person whose post you're reading has some sort of agenda that you have to oppose at all costs. And stop trying (as it seems to me people here are) to find the meaning "behind" my words. Because I assure you, if I had ever meant any of hte things people had ASSUMED I meant - just in this thread alone - I would have come right out and said them, in plain language.



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Why should a player need to "feel as if really there"(?)~ The PC is there, that's enough.

Immersion is simply one of the hallmarks of good writing and storytelling.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Come on now, I thought we were actually having a relatively civilized discussion here (a rarity) without engaging in personal attacks. It's been a good while since a Mod's had to lock a thread in the Fallout Series forum, and I'd hate to see that trend broken again.

I thought so, too - until the man who's already twice called me a liar, pops up and says that the part of cRPGs from which I draw great pleasure, was somehow wrong, that it "contradict[ed] one of Fallout's main and greatest aspects" ...?

Yeah. That's a /FAIL where RPGs are concerned: telling someone else that the thing they had fun with is wrong, or hasn't a proper place in RPGs ... instead of just saying "Well, I don't care one whit for THAT, what I like is ____".

First rule of at least trying to get along with other role-players: never tell someone that THEIR way of playing is wrong or bad.

We had one guy who was drawn more to games like White Wolf's WoD, Amber, etc. He got very into character, and when he was GMing a game made extensive use of props and other physical examples. This is the type of player who tried to see the world through their character's eyes and essentially inhabit that character in that world. [...]

[...]

[...] I like lots of rules, and developing strategies that best utilize each character's strengths and weaknesses - but I don't try to make the most "awesome" character. I like to picks stats which describe the character I am playing, and then getting very involved with the strategies to be as successful in the game as possible. (ie, I don't generally max out any of my stats, and generally would play a different character each time - in D&D, I never re-rolled my stats but worked with what the dice gave me and then used that to build up a character concept and decide which class best fit those stats.)

I am a mix of those two. In terms of during play, closer to you - but I really did try to "See the world through my characters eyes"; my favorite characters are those who I felt I had successfully gotten inside their heads, yet, they were not at all me.

All three examples are sort of exagerrations of a 3 broad categories of players, [...]

Very similar to GNS theory. Are you familiar with any of the incarnations of that?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Man, if someone makes a mod that breaks the rule of 25, I would be spazatically happy lol. Hate the rule of 25. Hate it hate it hate it. I don't care if a lock is very hard, I want a chance to unlock it, even if my chances are low

To be honest, so would I. I'd go out and buy the PC version, JUST to be able to load up that one mod.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

IMO FPP is a poor choice for story telling; It loses something that TPP does not. IMO it actually breaks "immersion" for lack of a better term. Imagine you were watching an episode of "Monk" and it suddenly went FPP and you saw the world through Adrien's eye (and lost the spectacle of seeing him through your own).

That's another sort of Apples-and-Cupcakes comparison, though. Television is an inherently passive medium, unlike gaming, and I think that's why the scenario you describe would be so bad.

I think generally most people are something of a mix of all three. (I happened to have some very archetypal friends from which to draw these comparisons - the rest of our group was composed of people that were less stereotypical in playstyle than these.)

Hadn't heard of that before you pointed it out. Just did a quick Wiki search, and it was an interesting read. If I'd known someone else had already done the legwork, I would have just linked to that instead of my own lengthy exposition.

I mean, yeah - these sort of categories only serve as illustrative purposes for aiding discussion, especially if we take the stance of videogames as art (as art continually defies absolute classification.) ie, it provides useful terms for comparison and discussion - the trouble generally comes when you try to shoehorn something into one category or another. I can say that a particular RPG caters to one or the other, but unless it's designed with a particular philosophy in mind, few games are going to totally fit into one or the other. (And I agree, where we continually run into problems on these forums is when someone tries to say that a "real" RPG consists of such and such.)

As far as what the onscreen (or on-paper, even) avatar represents to a player - I think it's one of those things that's hard for someone with a different mindset to really adequately understand. I admit, that while I understand not everyone views their character in the same way I do - I probably don't fully understand just what their experience is while they're roleplaying. (As I see that a lot, when I try to describe the "first-person view" type of players, or whatever term we could apply - that I find I'm not being terribly accurate.) I don't really "get it," but that doesn't mean there's a problem there, or anything.

An RPG is just a game, and the whole point of playing a game is to have fun. Whatever you do in any game - so long as you're having fun doing it, then playing it the "right" way.

I had fun looking through the character's eye in the original [non directX] DungeonKeeper. The reason was that the developers at Bullfrog had different vision styles for different monsters (Flies had multi-cellular vision, while the vampire saw Infra-red, and the Beetles had an extreme Field of View).

DungeonKeeper is an RTS. Its only semblance of a tale is your own exploits ~in it I could have fun with my own story... But that doesn't work in an RPG, as there is only room for one storyline [the player's, or the characters].

John Carmack has an interesting quote about stories in games.
It goes, "Story in a game is like a story in a porm movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.

I think this applies to all games, but least so to RPG's. In an RPG the mechanics are paramount, but the story is expected to be a real draw; the feeling of "being there" is rather optional I think, (unless its the crutch that keeps the game on its feet.)

I don't play RPGs for the storytelling. I want to create my own story within the world the RPG presents me. If I wanted storytelling, I'd watch TV.

What's fine for you may svcks for me, and vice versa. Nothing wrong with that, but what is wrong is to deny that other players and their ways of playing games is somehow inferior to your ways of playing games.

Oh, and I'm sure it hasn't escaped you that we all see life FPP, and deal everyday with the liabilities and benefits of that point of view.

The reason we like Fallout 3 is because it's very immersive. You can lose yourself in it for hours. However, I don't think you can compare it to the originals because the gameplay is so different. It's like comparing GTA to Tetris: They're two completely different genres. Turn-based is nothing at all like FPS. However, I agree that the main story of Fallout 3 was incredibly weak compared to the originals.

In all those years of being a "forum junky" no one told you how to not write posts with vertical filler ? Hm.



So you'd play a game that's just you wandering around in a giant city with no motivation or reason to do anything ? Problem with all this imagined in-game story thing I see people crowing on about (immersion again, heh) is that it's divorced from the game somewhat. So it feels relatively pointless to imagine all these things about your already imaginary PC that the game just ignores (or you have to enact by handicapping yourself).

You'd play an RPG with no story?

Nothing wrong at all, and I don't ~except... I had what I wanted in the Fallout series (among few others), but now its been tainted with FPS and over simplified beyond my liking (this means the entire focus of play has been altered because its the fashion of the day ~for some). I'd say there's a lot wrong with that. I see it as a destructive re-invention for mass appeal (kind of like the "authentic" Cajun cuisine found in a mall food court, where all the spices have been muted to trace elements.)

Indeed, and their used to be games that one could play to get a break from it. Playing an ISO-style game (3d or otherwise), gives one a view of the world that is rarely attainable by most people. FPP has unfortunately become as pervasive in games as it is in life (and imo, its highly overrated).

I'm not sure how this "VS" thread has lasted so long since we don't normally allow vs threads but in the end folks aren't treating one another with respect and the flames are creeping in like always in these "vs" threads so I'm closing this now.