I tend to raise the ingame difficulty slider more and more. Less rules to deal with which leaves my imagination to do the rest :frog: Cheers Lost Dragon :foodndrink:


Great read TheTalkieToaster. Thanks. Copied and pasted to read when i need grounding :foodndrink:

i prefer more realism simply cause it makes the game feel more natural and also adds limitations. i find games where you can carry unlimited amounts of gear around to be weird. games like farcry 2 which limit you to 3 weapons, one heavy , one light and one special ie rocket launcher or flamethrower are much more fun to play than a game where you can carry every gun you find and never have to worry about ammo. i simple exercise it to play far cry 2 with a trainer and give yourself unlimited ammo. it is waaaaaaay more fun to play without the trainer than it is with the trainer. you have to make each shot count and sometimes you might have to hunt around for ammo piles or even go back to your crib and restock. to bad they cant do that with fallout but ammo weight and lowering the amount of gear you can carry help to some degree. pretty much anyone who has played FWE or arwens mod will tell you that the game is much richer and far more rewarding.

vanilla fallout 3 was a very enjoyable game and for a long time the only mods i had installed were auto aim disabler and of course darns UI mod. then i tried out more and more mods and kept the ones that made my game more challenging and also more logical. i never played a mage in oblivion cause the magic system was completely stupid and illogical. even in a fantasy setting things have to make sense in a certain way.

can realism go to far..........yes. i have never and will never completely disable fast travel. one of the reasons i never got into playing MMOs besides the lame combat was the enormous amount of time wasted simply running from point A to point B. im willing to suspend reality long enough and pretend that i ran from little lamplight to megaton. also for FWE i use the food portion of primary needs but i disable the drinking and sleeping portions because frankly they become more of a chore and a hassle than fun. even with the food i lowered the rate a bit so i didnt have to worry about it as much.

all things being said if mods were captured by aliens and taken away and i had to play fallout 3 i probably would still play it. as for playing oblivion............HELL NO! i wouldnt think twice about uninstalling it.

of course right now ive been addicted to borderlands.

Super-Mutants are not realistic, because they don't exist in reality.

However, in the conceptual world of Fallout, they do exist. That world claims to be just like our world, except there was several scientific breakthroughs and then everyone shot nukes at each other. Within that framework, things can be said to be more or less realistic - that is "Does this make sense given these premises?".

Levitating Eye-Bots makes perfect sense. Levitating .32 bullets (as in zero weight) makes no sense. And so on.

So its perfectly acceptable to talk about realism in fictional worlds, because it is always assumed that there is a "...given that this world works like this" attached.

Regards,
The Nonsense Factory

I agree, you are the Nonsense Factory.
I kid, I kid.

I don't think you're using the right word there with Levitating bullets. Also, bullet weight is a realism mod that to me, make little sense. I can understand major tweaks to the game as a whole, but seriously, adding weight to bullets? When you can Force actor value to make you hold anything, yeah, seems odd.
Again, just me, people.

Good points all those walls of text earlier in the thread that I had a hard time reading because they all blurred together. I can't stand things not broken up into paragraphs, it's a brain thing of mine. Sorry.

And good point Hellbishop.

However, Lost Dragon, as has been mentioned earlier, there's a difference per se between realism mods, and making the game harder.

Realism by it's addition should logically ramp up the difficulty a notch or two, bringing Fallout 3 in line with most other games that aren't designed to be easy.
However, most of the realism mods I see don't so much ramp it up one or two notches, which would make the most sense, but tweak the dial to about a 15 on a 10 scale. Don't kill me, It's just the way it seems to me.

Let's look at fast travel removal? Really, in real life you can't teleport between Springdale and the Washington Monument? Ah, darn.

However, this is a type of realism that doesn't even belong here in a game where Fast Travel exists period.
It's a Lol, wut moment basically when I first heard of it.

I'll accept any other realism, save bathing, sleeping, eating, and drinking, Really, they don't need to be in any games period. Immersion breaking to the extreme for me. I play games to enjoy myself, and escape the real world. Why in the world would anyone want to go waste their time doing things like eating, drinking, bathing and sleeping in a video game? Seriously? I need a time machine, That's all I'm saying.

But yeah, fast travel removal? Does not compute.

Totally, irrevocably flawed argument. Why have guns when you can just use the "kill" command to kill enemies? Why play quests when you can just complete them with the console? Why collect items when you could just add them to your inventory? Answer: because it's fun.

I agree that certain types of realism, such as the removal of fast travel, are unnecessary and ultimately add nothing... but hey, whatever floats your boat. The beautiful thing about Fallout 3 is that it can essentially be whatever you want it to be. If you don't enjoy the game being challenging, fantastic, great for you But surely you can see why other people would enjoy the suspense, decision making and challenge of realism mods such as FWE?

Thanks triple T.. I'll stand by this and guard it like the second ammendment.. and I'm packing too.

I don't like threads that complain about totally optional aspects of a video game that are made by players for other players who share the same tastes, so convince me to like them, even though no matter what arguements are presented, I will not adjust my point of view and continue to create other reasons why I don't like threads that complain about optional aspects of a video game and why others shouldn't like them either.

Or... I could have just not replied.

Donkey, I appreciate the words, but it's not fundamentally flawed per se. It's not really a big deal, but I do have to say you could have phrased it better. Saying it the way you did sounded mean. I don't think you meant to sound mean, did you?

I agree that yes, it does narrow down to enjoy what you want to enjoy.

This leads me to Soltic...


Funny, I didn't complain at all.
Maybe you need to read every post in this thread again? Or maybe every post I ever made on every forum on the internet?
I said I was confused. Confused does not equal complaining. Unless I'm missing something on a fundamental level.

Also, you totally confused me, because you repeated yourself in the last sentence. Again, my apologies, if I'm messing up your use of words. That's not complaining by the way, that's just me not understanding. Just like I didn't understand the point of realism until I got replies to this thread.

However, I also don't get what you're trying to say. could you clear it up some?


Well, it depends, are you pointing out some complaint against me per se, or someone else in this thread?
Cause if it's me, what have I ever done to you?

It wasn't meant mean-heartedly, I'm very sorry if it came off that way. I can see why you personally wouldn't like realism mods, and I have absolutely no problem with that... but saying that there is no point to adding weight to items because people could just cheat is a pointless statement, since it could be applied to absolutely any aspect of any game.

Okay. I totally redact my claim then. You win this time, Gadget!
Should I go edit it out or something?

And sorry about assuming it was meant to me mean.

well, what to say?

I thought that stock, non moded FO-3, well svcked.
In fact I hated it so bad compared to the older F.O games I played it once through and quit, compared to the 100's of hours spent on FO-1/2 and Tactics ( love Tactics)
Then my Xbox broke, so I sold everything 360 related besides my Lunch box from FO-3, and went on about my way.

Later I got a good PC built, and found FO-3 for $20 used, but it still didn't feel right.
So I started modding it, and as I was new to mods and Pcs in general, nothing was right, and I had a mis-match of mods that conflicted so I gave up.
This was all about 6 months after FO-3 came out.

Went and got GOTY Oblivion, tried modding it, nope not feeling it either. I REALLY WANT to like oblivion, and it was fun the first times around on the 360 (some how all my DLC is gone? maybe cause I changed G:T's and 360's) but it never had the right "feel" to it.

I wanted things to be closer to real life, I wanted magic as gone as I could make it, and combat as real as it could be, but none of the mods seemed to work or fit my tastes, combat became clunkier then it was with the shield bashes and what ever that combat mod was called, people still had no body movement, and there was never that sense of "hurry" about the MQ that should have been.
Archery was never right, and so on. My list of things I do not like about oblivion are too long to list.

Anyway fast froward to a few months ago, I was bored, none of the new games where doing it for me, I didn't like ME2, and DA:O was getting old after 140 hours.

So, I was like Ill give FO-3 another go, and now 80+ hours and two plays later I am still going strong. (one scrapped)

FWE/WMK/MMM just do something that is so "Right" I just can't explain it.

It just feels "right" like thats how it should have been from the start, I am no longer a walking armory carrying 14 guns, and 5,000 Rounds of ammo, and three suits of P.A.
Sure I use a follower who helps me carry things, but there is just something so "right" about the way FWE/WMK/MMM feels with my other small mods like lighting and weather. (and that reminds me, its not been raining any with this guy, been foggy but no rain.)
I can't really tell you whats "right" about it, it just is.

Super mutants are tough, but a little spray from my names mini gun and there head pops like anything else, same goes for me. I am no longer a walking bullet sponge, and can pop a stim anytime I need to because it takes time for the stim to heal me.

My limbs get broken, I get blowed up. Traps are now dangerous. grenades and explosions are now dangrous.
Power armor is useful, big guns are useful.

I have to eat, and sleep or I starve and die, or get tired.

its not like I have to eat all the time, and sleep every day, I go a little longer than a day with out hampering my self too bad before sleeping.

But how odd is it that for weeks, or months at a time my guy/girl never once sleeps because they are tired and its affecting them combat and stat wise.
Or I never eat or drink, like I am a robot or android?

As I've said earlier. If you like realism, that's totally fine.
What you enjoy though, is far different than what I enjoy. That's fine.

But attempting to remove magic fro Oblivion doesn't make a bit of sense in my opinion.

You give me an interesting post, and I like it. However, I don't see what you see.

So, the additional realism you add to your game, would make me go insane.

Also, I still don't see the point of adding the basics of life to a game world. Sorry. Sleeping, eating, resting, and drinking should stay out of all games but the Sims series. Again, my opinion.

This is probably one reason why I hated Oblivion's and Fallout 3's night time closing of shops. Made no sense to add at all.

well thats, ok, because you see everyone is not the same!

In real life I wear chain mail and fight with a foam padded sword when its nice out, its obvious that I aspect that for my personal safety using a real sword would be a bad idea.

But in my game, I can use a "real" sword and magic does not exist, so I want it to be real. That said, I REALLY WANT to play oblivion again, but I just cant bring my self to do so, I am having so much fun with FO-3, and besides I personally think Mount and Blade does it better compared to oblivion.

See the added "challenge" as I like to call it (what can we call realistic about a world 200 years after a massive global war? in a time line that never happened?) that would make you go insane keeps many like me playing the game.

I think you would enjoy FWE/WMK/MMM because FWE 5.0 IS VERY customizable, turn eating and sleeping off if you want, make the carry weight the same as vanilla Fo-3 and so on.

I too do not like the closing shops, but it adds that edge, what else is there to do besides sleep? its too dangerous to go out at night because you can't see very far (in my game its pitch black) and besides, the nights make it a challenge, I need to get things done and get back to safety before night falls and the night ghouls come out.

@ OP:

Depends two factors in my opinion
What you look for in a game in terms of depth and how you define "fun".
Your using the term "Fun" very loosely and relative to where you stand,
when its quite different person to person. Thats ties in to what we call personal taste,
which is applicable to all forms of media, not just games. Not everybody looks for the same experience.

Fun to me involves a bit of realism because i enjoy immersion and technicality, which means
feeling like the game world in itself is somewhat real when i play it.

Removing magic from oblivion, to me, goes AGAINST realism. The gameworld only makes sense given magic (Which, itself, has "realistic" rules in-universe), which, to me, is the crux of this discussion:

We're debating something that we don't even have a coherent definition for. Realism, to me, isn't "1 hit kill, eating, drinking, if you get shot you have to take a week to recover", it's "This rule that defines the situation I am currently in is coherent and fits with the universe".
Ammo weight, as such, I wouldn't find "realistic", as none of the NPCs are encumbered by their ammo. Thus, I have this in my game because it reminds me that I need to leave some behind, at home, to start stockpiling it so I can have more late-game. Eating and drinking I do find realistic, because all the NPCs do it - but I don't run around in half-life 2 thinking "I must be really, REALLY hungry right now". Getting shot in the arm and being unable to use a gun? Not 'realistic', but this is me forcing the rules of our own world into fallout because I can't see it any other way. Resting isn't a big deal to me, it's too dark to go out at night anyway (and there are night ghouls out there. Scary!)

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I'm sick of playing the hero, or the antihero, or the small-fry who rises up and turns the tide of the battle. Why can't I start, and end, as the little guy? Something like that requires the attention to small details like NPC schedules, and "realistic" damage. But yeah, I think what I'm getting at is I like my universe to have rules that don't change depending on who they're acting on, rules I can immediately comprehend ("Oh hey, a rocket launcher. That'll kill me if it hits me, I'd better run" vs "Oh hey, a rocket launcher. Well, I'd better slip into vats and shoot it out of the air, I wonder how many HP that assault rifle will take off while I'm doing it?) and act on. The eating and drinking and sleeping comes from the "small fry" thing - heroes don't have to scavenge for food, so I guess I'm no hero!

Phoshi, excellent points.

Although, again, I question realism at such extremes as being killed by a missile in one hit unless your character has less than 200 health.
People have been hit in real life by rockets, and well, if interested, I can post at least one example.
So, as long as you have enough health...

Uh, Razor, I understand the definition of fun is different for each person. I'm not saying my definition of fun is universal, and my word is law here.

Fun means enjoyment.

Titan, one weird issue with what you said, chain mail was designed to prevent you from being killed.
Also, Whether magic exists in the real world, and therefor is realistic is for another topic entirely.

I subscribe to the PHoshi school of thought.

Also, Wut? That's not even the tiniest bit of realistic for the real world at all.
Did the moon explode in Fallout 3?
Because, uh, unless the world is covered in darkness 24/7 and there's no moon, there should not be any pitch blackness.

I believe I can survive one or two rockets when in PA, but even if I survive a rocket it tends to break one of my limbs - not the best position to be in

This is a great discussion and I thought I'd chime in with my .02 caps. For me, it's ALL about options. I (like most here) have been playing this silly game for over a year now. So to keep things somewhat fresh, exciting and FUN, I have tried literally dozens and dozens of mods. Some were not so great while others were absolutely WONDERFUL!

There are times when I create a new PC that I just want to leave the vault and storm the wasteland as an uber combat demigod and not have to be bothered with the whole scavenging to build an arsenal thing. I just want to fight! Those PC's use any number of bunkers/player homes I have to gear up as soon as I leave the vault. When I play in this manner, I'm not really concerned with "realism" or how much ammo I can carry or how much sleep I need to heal or whatever. It's more about just the combat than the RPG aspect.

However, there are other times when I thoroughly enjoy a severely gimped PC that has to struggle for everything he (or she) gets. These type playthrough's I NEVER cheat and ammo, stimpaks, armor, weapons ect, and I only use what I can acquire by killing, looting & scavenging. (Unfortunately, I know EXACTLY where to go and get what I want as soon as I leave the vault though...)

Anyway, while others may disagree, I believe BOTH types of playthroughs are equally viable and equally fun! Sometimes I WANT to have to struggle, scraqe and kill to barely just survive (RPG style), while other times I just want to play as Balok The Destroyer and annihilate everything that tries to stop me!

umm, I am not sure where some of you live., but where I live, its dark enough at night so that you will not be seeing much, maybe 1-2 foot at most, at times I have seen it so bad that even with my lights on bright, I can just barely see past the hood of my truck.

here is a example screen.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/titanmike357/Fallout%203/ScreenShot75.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/titanmike357/Fallout%203/ScreenShot76.jpg

with the way the lighting in Fallout -3 works, its either to bright, or too dark, I choose too dark and use Night vision.

Don't get me wrong though, even on a clear night with a full moon, I have been in places where you can just barely see 1-2 feet in front of you, at least around here.


a lot of time its not just light from the moon that people see, but light from other things, and its never as dark as it would be other wise. out here, late at night in the country (more so where my uncle lives) there is no artificial light at all, and the moon doesn't help much.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/titanmike357/Fallout%203/ScreenShot71.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/titanmike357/Fallout%203/ScreenShot62.jpg

Yes you can even if timed right hit a speeding car with a baseball bat and totally wreck it while not taking any or minimal damage due to the physical change of the car at a molecular level traveling at high speeds

When it comes to pitch black nights even when its cloudy at night it can be very bright especially during a snow storm. Walking in the woods in some rural area during a blizzard is truly a magical experiance.

On things like carrying tons of ammo the way i do it now is i just dont carry it. Even before mods started coming out for FALLOUT 3 i never carried missiles unless my character was super strong because my mind couldnt fathom carrying something so bulky. I do the same thing when am near a wasteland merchant and come across a unoccupied truck full of goods. Even though i could take what i want without suffering a karma penalty i dont because my mind tells me this might belong to that merchant i just bargained with fifty or so feet away. So i ended up with the same satisfying feeling i would have gotten with mods without the drain on cpu resources.

Personally I love my realism mods. I've barely had the game a fortnight; the post-apocalytic setting didn't really appeal to me (I'm more of a fantasy-setting type, and until recently had had Morrowind installed on my PC since I bought the game back in '02 - damn, time flies when you're having fun!) but I had heard good things so bought GOTY. First thing I did after a couple of days getting used to the game? I got realism mods.

I've never been fond of "?ber-characters" going back all the way to those early Morrowind days (and beyond into my pen'n'paper RPG days), so no reason to change the habits of a lifetime. I also enjoy the Sims series of games (except for the latest one, thanks to extreme bugginess), so the need to drink, eat and sleep aren't things that put me off. Hell, if someone came out with a bladder'n'bowels mod, I'd probably add that one in too!

I love to see games such as FO3 as more of a simulation than some kind of FPS. Therefore the more realism, the better. For me, ammo should have weight, simply because it adds something to the realism. A lucky shot from cover should have a chance of a one-hit kill, regardless of your or your foe's arbitrary "level" or "hit points" ("levels" are another bugbear of mine, but hey - gives the powergamers something to boast about).

At the end of the day individuals are going to play their own game however they want. I'm just thankful that there are modders out there who spend their spare time making mods that appeal to my own personal style of gaming.

Titan? Do you live in the extremely northern sections on the planet? Because, unless you're on the north pole, or close to it, or the south, it shouldn't be that dark ever.

Near here, in North Carolina, at night the moon is sometimes so bright, that I could go outside and read by it.

Granted, my eyes would start hurting after a while, but still...

Anyhow, those screenshots you gave me are nice and all, but they are hardly what the conditions in Washington DC would be now, 200 years in the future after a Nuclear war, or even 4.4 billion years ago (or whenever the moon was formed) in the same spot, even if there weren't many solid rocks at that point to stand on.

So, where do you live again?

Hellbishop, and Phoshi, and Balok. Excellent points.

In the end, I think we can all agree, it boils down to a matter of choice...

Some people choose to have uber-realism, some can stand minor amounts, and those and others understand more than anything else, no one single person's point of view should be the standard view.

That said, I have so many complaints with FWE, that if I listed them all, ever, I'd get yelled at.
So, I'll stick with FOOK 2.

Even if it suffers from cranky developers syndrome. I'm not trying to be rude here, it's just something I've observed with almost every major mod in history, sadly enough.


Sadly, MadPauly, powergaming and levels do not go hand in hand. THere's a reason for levels in games, and it stems ironically from D&D.

And now, now, no lucky shot from cover should ever have a chance to bypass all armor, and health and kill you in one hit. Sorry, but that's not even realistic. Otherwise I should be able to have a very small chance to shoot a tank with a pistol, and have it explode. Or better yet, sink a battleship by shooting it with a shotgun. :rofl:

If you want a one hit kill game, go play Contra or I wanna be the Guy. Games with Hitpoints by their very definitions never are designed for one hit kills. All things do set damage.
I know I said it should be up to the user to enjoy the mods and the game the way he wants, and I fully stand by it, but there are just certain things that bug me about the quest for realism....it's like you go to far...Please, I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I'll accept that bullets need weigh, I'm hardly retarded, , but sleeping, eating, using the facilities, etc, it's not really needed for a game that's not the Sims.

Again, Fallout 3 is an RPG/FPS hybrid, not a Sim City based game. Sim City: Fallout edition maybe?

And if you really want the full set of realism for a game, I can't help you find one, I'm afraid. But like Superman (in the comics, he doesn't exist in the real world), you don't need to use the restroom in games.

like I said, either too bright, or too dark, I choose too dark, there is to my knowing no mods that emulate the correct amount of light that would fit good for me, so I choose pitch black, with night vision.

the reason its so dark around here is the trees, heck its shady when the suns out.
walk outside and into the woods and its hard to see anything.
My uncle lives so far out, there are no services, no T.V, no water, no sewer, NOTHING but hills and trees, and its very dark there in that little valley full of trees.

I live in hicks ville USA, Ky.

There are some nights here in Michigan, where you can't really see. More so because the cloud cover prevents starlight getting through. At the other end though, there are nights where it's almost daylight with the moon up.



Sorry, that one is realistic on humans anyway. Shoot 'em in the head.

Sure you don't live in Darknessville instead of Hicksville, Titan?

Didn't even know there was a place that bad in the USA.
David Fails badly at geography.