» Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:29 pm 
So basically playing through Fallout 3 for my nth time I took note of various ways I thought the game could be vastly improved in major and minor ways. Let me know what you all think:
Massive increase in global damage multiplier- F3's concept of increasing difficulty was giving enemies more health and you less health. While this technically made the game more difficult, it also made it much worse. Playing on very hard difficulty forced players into more cheap tactics, or simply using a few specific weapons for the entire game (the terrible shotgun and A3-21's rifle come to mind). The damage from guns varies far too greatly and for me at least, greatly ruins the immersion. I feel like different guns should be situational but none should be useless, and vary at the level of say a realistic shooter rather than the traditional RPG style (all guns have strengths and weaknesses, but all can kill in a reasonable number of bullets). Take the scene from Point Lookout where you're defending from Tribals and it takes a large handful of double barrel shotgun rounds to the head to kill them. Would this not be more fun if they went down relatively easy, but a mistake costs your life? On the topic of point lookout, while I wanted to sort of role play the setting and use the new weapons like axes, repeater rifles, and double barrel shotguns, even the Backwater Rifle was simply not viable in any way. I know I'll take flak for this, but consider COD4. The submachine-gun would be more like the Uzi, and the best guns would be akin to the M16 and AK-47u (this is a rough example, but basically the spectrum of good and bad weapons is much smaller).
Another large issue I had was with the massive abundance of supplies. On my current character on very hard difficulty at level 29 I have over 200 stimpacks and thousands of each type of ammo. While they are adding ammo weights with hardcoe mode, I'm sure they won't take it to the extreme that I desire. Finding seven pistol bullets should be a damn godsend, and with my idea for increasing global damage they would be extremely useful. After a short time playing the thrill of scrounging for whatever weapons and supplies I could find was lost in a sea of bullets and meds.
Changes to skills I propose are DO NOT MAKE WEAPON SKILLS INCREASE DAMAGE. This just creates massive balance issues. I believe it would be much better if they increased accuracy, reload speed, decrease chance of jamming, less waggle on your guns, whatever. Also remove the sneak attack bonus, getting the jump on the enemy should be enough reward for stealth.
Here's a hypothetical scenario and the various ways it could be solved in Fallout 3, along with what I think would be better than any of the others:
You stumble across a small town, a few houses, gas station, etc. You're aware that around the corner of a small ranch house there are three raiders sitting around a table dikeing off. These are high level raiders.
FALLOUT 3 Options:
-Chinese stealth armor and vaporize each with the shock sword while never passing the [CAUTION] stage.
-Hit them with multiple frag grenades. A straggler runs back and forth with his tire iron and you finish him off with a plasma rifle.
-Sneak attack one of them then proceed to mow em down while gobbling stimpacks.
-They notice you first. VATS one to death with whatever gun, backpedal and frag mine for a while, then kill the remaining raider with 5 shotgun shells to the head.
MY Option:
-You have 3 shots left in your revolver. You rush around the corner miss first then nail the raider facing you in the head with your second shot. As the other two raiders stand up you rush them and shoot the one drawing his gun. Take out your combat knife and slash the third raider to death as he swings at you. The second raider is down and wounded but goes for his knife and you cave his head in with the dropped tire iron.
I'm basically aiming for realism with all of this. I know realism doesn't make a good game by any means, but I think it's perfect for Fallout. The series should be about survival and harsh situations which require tactics and cunning to overcome, not backpedaling and using stimpacks in groups of 5. At the beginning of my most recent playthrough I was so immersed in the game. I stumbled on vault 106. I cowered behind a barrel as the door creaked open, fearing that whatever was inside might be alerted. I crept carefully along the corridors with my limited weapons, finding small stashes of ammo with ecstasy. Had I entered the same place hours of gameplay later this aura would have been absent completely. Past a point in the game there's simply no danger.
On a slight tangent, I think the repair system could be improved by gathering repair components rather than needing the exact same weapon. Things like duct tape, firing pins, tubing, welding torches, etc., could be used instead.
