In F1, F3, scale wasn't an issue b/c everyone was dead.

In F:NV there's supposed to be hundreds of thousands of people around the mojave (NCR army/civilians, CL horde, tribes, inhabitants of NV, everyone else)
Because of this, it just doesn't "feel" right much of the time. Especially coming from F3 where it wasn't a stretch to think that only 9 people lived in a certain area. Now, it feels silly that the NCR/Legion would have an end-game battle with less than a dozen troops.

I like NV but I keep having problems with it... I make these posts so they don't make the same mistakes with F4.

I don't really get what you are saying?

Indeed, the Gambyro enginge is crappy. For some reason it can't handle more than 15 people in the same room/place. Come on, the Source engine can handle 50+.

I hope that they take time getting a new one for the next Fallout game.

The restrictions of the engine

Yeah it's the crappy engine.

There are like twelve people at the President's speech and it still struggles.

Yeah it does feel funky, I think towns should have inaccessible parts where people live.
You can't access them, there isn't anything there really, there just there for the illusion that something is there.
That way it could be said that there "are" hundreds of people living there, you just can't see them all.
Just like how The Den is a huge place but you can only access two parts in it, three with the restoration project.
Since it's all 3D and first person now we can see everywhere and everyone so when it says tons of people live there and you find around 20 then it does feel weird.
Same with the battle at Hoover Dam, but I understand the reasons and I accept them.
Like, I did Arizona Killer, and that place lagged like crazy because of the amount of NPC's there.
But yeah I think parts of towns and camps should be blocked off and give the player hints that there "are" people in those parts, you just can't access them cause of game performance.

Basically I'm explaining that one of the things wrong with this game is that the population scale is really off.

In F3 it was easy to understand why there might only be a few people in an area.

A place like Camp Macaran should have hundreds if not thousands of people walking around. In game theres less than 20 people in that area.


And I don't think the limitations of the engine are a good defense, Obsidian could've chosen to do ANYTHIGN with this sequel. They could've put us on a desert island, where it would make sense that theres only a few people in an area. (that's hyperbole btw)

They tried and were met with little success, but thats better then not trying.

Yea it is true. Ncr having so many probs with legion. And I waltz in and clean the place out in 20. Minutes. Seems way off.

I agree, just another reason to ditch the current engine. I think I heard the next fallout will have a new engine though, so that's good news.
Edit: Just read it's going to use the Creation engine, although I've never heard of it. I did a quick search and couldn't find any games currently using it.

Yeah thats why I don't like the decision to follow NCR (or others) to the "re-civilization" point It leads to a number of in-game problems (too much population, playable character impact in the game universe etc). Perhaps a new engine will make it more workable though.

Don't know about consoles, but the engine seems perfectly capable of increased spawns to me....if you have a good computer.

...not hundreds or thousands on a true scale (I don't know any rpg that does that....unless you count strategy or more sprite-like based games maybe?), but certainly 40-60+ in an area vs. the 5-15 in the vanilla game. So if you ask me, some of the scale has more to do with limitations of trying to program for all potential systems. Not to say the engine isn't old clunky & was very much in need of replacement...but from what I can tell enemy numbers is not entirely because of the engine itself.

There is one quest between the NCR and Kings were like 15+ NCR troopers went inside the Kings building and killed everyone inside so there was like 40 people inside 1 building shooting each other but there was bit of lag while this went down

If there were all those people, then they would have to put in all the buildings to house them. Then flesh out all the interiors because we would want to go into those houses for various reasons. Then we wonder why all these NPCs don't give us quests. And so on and so on.

The Creation Engine is the one being used on Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim. Check out some pics released on xbox magazine UK.

I've got eight companions (Raul, Rex, ED-E, Veronica, Boone, Cass, Lily, Arcade) and I've noticed that if I have all eight in tow the game pretty much stops. I've started leaving several of them at the 38 but I've noticed that if I go on a dungeon crawl my companions show up one by one as I go from world space to world space. I may have to start firing and re-hiring them as I see fit.

Basically the reason why I don't play NV damn this crappy engine it was good for Fallout 3 but NV rushed its release and this is the consequence, imo. Hopefully for FO4.................

I would agree that sometimes it seems strange, but I can ignore it most of the time. I do wish that the engine was good enough to sustain something like this:http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100721003308/fallout/images/thumb/f/fe/All_Roads_full_cover.jpg/830px-All_Roads_full_cover.jpg

Imagine going through Freeside like that.

Woah! That's not the Fallout I know of.... Is that official concept art? I haven't played the first two games but I imagine this image to be more in line with them. Is there an official population count for places like Shady Sands?

Isn't this something they're dealing with for skyrim? I'm not up to date but I think it was said NPC's weren't necessarily going to be chatty fun, many would just talk about local rumours etc.

That won't help with the buildings, originality or loading issues, but it would at least deal with the interactions...

I think CCNA is right though, if they were there, we'd want to interact, find stuff and so on, if they aren't we moan. They can't possibly put hundreds of NPC's in each city, we'd want too much from them and would [censored] if they were all idling without homes...

It's a tough choice, I do feel for gamesas when it comes to this, though hopefully they'll work out a compromise with realistic worlds and the workability of the gameplay

My game nearly froze when i tried to enter man, i had to inch my way in frame-by-frame and then have the kind be friends with NCR because of Hsu and then have NCR kill Pacer, fram-by-frame...

IN game in FO1? something like I don;t know 100 or so NPC's?
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Shady_Sands

During FONV time? hundreds of thousands it says.

I still find it hard to imagine that many people. It makes sense but it feels so anti-Fallout. Must be because I'm so used to the engine limitations and limited environments.

Nothing in the original Fallout is anti-fallout. Everything in Fallout is as Fallout as it should be, because it is Fallout.

Shady Sands was made up mostly of Vault 15 survivors, they brought a GECK with them too. NCR is a giant confederation of cities and towns that cover all of Cali and some surrounding states. You don't think that many people are in that large an area?

Did you read my post? I said that it makes sense but because the games tend to focus on deserted areas and because only so many npcs can appear at any given time, it is hard to imagine a densely populated city like Shady Sands. Thus the "anti-Fallout" remark.