That's counting all types of releases.


If we go back about 2 1/2 years xcom is the most well received by critics. (though they are having to eschew the console market now)

But after that it's hearthstone. The more you know.

Why not? It seems a very sensible conversation to start

Personally, so long as the rate with which the meter fills is controlled by (or very significantly influenced by) SPECIAL and skills/perks, then I don't see any problem with it. It would replace some dice rolling (chance to crit) with a visibly deterministic reflection of the character build, and would put precise timing and target of the crit in the hands of the player, but the player could only meaningfully exercise that control by delaying the crit, so reducing the overall frequency of crits achieved.

Not necessarily an RPG mechanic that any particular person would like, but still a perfectly reasonable mechanic where success in combat is a combination of player tactical skill and character build. And if the player has invested their character with high luck, then why not reflect that in how often crits can happen (ie, how fast the meter fills)? Sure, arguably luck shouldn't be the only factor, but if critical hits are basically seen as fluke shots that just happen to be spectacularly effective, then that seems a justifiable decision.

Whereas if the meter fills at basically the same rate for all characters, with just a tiny tweak influenced by luck, then while it may be fun and satisfying to use for most players, I can see it would be deeply frustrating for players who want FO4 to be more of a character-build driven RPG.

well despite what cynical old fallout might think its clear the guys at beth actually want to make fallout games and love it there own way.

Heck thats a reason Im looking forward to 4, one of the reason 3 fell short in my book is beth burned to much time and focus on thinking how can they appeal to the fans of old, which just ended up backfiring.

With 4 its clear beth is focusing completely on making a fallout the way they want to, and that drive to make things they way the love too shows.

A universal truth, something made they way you love to make it, turns out to be much better then making it for someone else.

Is that you chestbumping about something? What is it?

It's a pretty close call between those two and a couple of others according to Metacritic, and so what? So what if that was indeed the case?

Tell that to George Lucas with the SW prequels....

No chestbumping.

Just pointing out no company being lead by anyone competent would release a triple A turn based game.

At best (xcom) they do well in 1/3 of the market.

The other 2/3rds of the market buy under 150k units.

Nobody needs it to be triple A, though.

Although, I wouldn't know how a triple A turnbased game would look and work, how much of that budget would be spent on polishing the mehcanics and overall flow, how much for the looks, sounds and voice cast, how much on marketing, what would it's selling points be outside of turnbased combat.

In this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/11723096/Fallout-4-interview-Bethesdas-Todd-Howard-on-building-the-apocalypse.html, Todd says about VATS, "While the playback is happening, the criticals are not random, you assign which shot is the critical one and load up that bar.'"

There is a recorded interview that gave me the impression that any hit in VATS is a critical hit, and that the more we charge up a critical, the more damage we do. Maybe "you assign which shot is the critical one" means that not all hits in VATS are critical hits?

My current opinion of VATS in Fallout 4 is that hitting in VATS is random and that the player dictates whether or not a hit is a critical one.

I agree with games not needing to be Triple A and we are seeing more and more Kickstarter based games and things like isometric RPG's making a comeback. I would consider Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 to be equally good in quality compared to triple A releases like DA:I and The Witcher 3. They spent their budget well and had a vision for the game they wanted to make. Alot of money and a well known publisher does guarantee success for a game or high quality.

That beeing said i never feel like becoming a famous developer have compromised the vision of Bethesda, though i do feel like their new game systems are trying to appeal more to the masses. It is just sound buisness as the budget goes up per production you need to amass more followers and sell more copies. How is a studio like Bethesda supposed to reach that mass and still please their old fans? It is a tricky line to walk. Some old fans are forgiving and enthused about the changes, some are not and i do understand why.

Aren't crits exactly that in Fallout? You shoot someone in the face (no crit), but he survives. This means you shot him in the face, but the bullet ricochet off his skull and leaves him unconscious with a helluva headache. Shoot him in the face (crit) and you put the bullet right in his eye and it tears his brain apart, dead.

At least that's always how I've seen crits, it's a way of indicating that you've hit a weak spot and in RPGs this is tied to your ability/luck rather than your ability to aim with the mouse. As it should be.

No, simply enough, if that had been the business profile they would simply simply used fallout 3 level scaling in Oblivion, done some other easy and safe fixes and set it in Skyrim.

Much safer and cheaper.

That Bethesda do is to start over in every game even inside one console generation as from Oblivion to Skyrim.

An much more high risk operation.

They try to fix problems, too easy at higher levels was an major complain in Morrowind, they tried to fix it in Oblivion, it did not work as well, it worked pretty well in later games.

leveling showed problems in Oblivion and it works pretty well in Skyrim. Morrowind had the same problem but did not show up as well as game was easy at high levels.

Yes they show an tendency to cut features rater than fix them.

They also mess up, magic in Skyrim worked as well as level scaling in Oblivion.

Unknown how much of the Skyrim feature cuts was because of PS3/ 360 memory limitations, also an good chance they run into problems with memory late in the development process and had to cut stuff.

As for Fallout 4, it has not been a lot of complains about fallout 3 leveling so why change it? Same with critical. This is not something who will bring in new players.

Good graphic and good shooting will, it looks to me that they aimed a bit low with the graphic this has gotten critic in general gaming forums.

In short they have their own vision, yes increased sale is important but its not the main driving force.

Remember, this is the guy who apparently doesn't believe in luck & chance - that everything that happens is/should be controllable.

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...and, seriously? We're holding up a card game as an example of "turn-based" games? (Yes, there are plenty of games that use turns - like, oh, Monopoly and 99% of the boardgames out there..... but that has no bearing on us talking about RPGs with turn-based combat as compared to ones with live-action combat.)

I just rewatched a full play-through of the original Fallout. The dialogue is pretty decent. The gameplay is slow. The AI is not smart. The game mechanics allow things to happen that shouldn't - like throwing a grenade in the middle of 5 (grouped!) people and having the shrapnel miraculously miss every single person. It was easy to accrue caps and equipment. A lot of NPCs have no dialogue at all.

Have you actually played it recently?

What saved that game was the quality of writing and the unique setting. Those things are Fallout. The game mechanics are, well, a ripped off version of GURPS pieced together at the last minute because the original developers lost the GURPS license after Steve Jackson decided that Fallout was too violent.

That's why I don't get too upset when game mechanics are changed. The very first game was a compromise version that had its guts ripped out halfway through.

Civilization 5 sold 7.6 million copies

Xcom sold 2.6 million copies

Granted, these are only two franchises. But they prove that it's possible to sell a game well even if it's turnbased and exclusive to PC. Also, your point would come across better if you didn't act in such an arrogant manner while making your points. Cheers

Source: http://steamspy.com/

This is a great source for measuring sales since VGChartz only accounts for physical copies, which obviously excludes a huge portion of the PC market. What's interesting is that Fallout New Vegas sold about 2 million more copies on Steam than FO3, which puts it ahead in terms over overall sales.

The alternating turns of turn-based combat represent the behavior of live-action combat. VATS gives us a slow-motion view of that same behavior. FPS combat tends to happen in turns. One person shoots at another, and only after his shots have hit or missed does the other person shoot back. This behavior, not the simultaneous exchange of fire, is the norm, and this behavior is the only one accounted for by Fallout's turn-based combat.

By allowing 10% damage from incoming fire, Fallout 3 VATS accounts reasonably well for simultaneous exchanges of fire. Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, allows 75% damage from incoming fire, and thus greatly exaggerates the likelihood of simultaneous attacks.

Primate, I am absolutely appalled that you're seriously trying to make a point that AAA = Inherent quality.

*Shudders thinking about Dragon Age 2*

When i first saw this i was like "Oh, wow, cool" ...so im personally not worried. In New Vegas my late game character scored so many criticals that the game was pretty easy and heads just kept rollin (i liked headshots). In F4 i imagine i will keep hoarding the critical shot in case i really need it and only use it on last or strongest enemy. I may be wrong but i think i would like it...

And, it would make it possible to have movie like scenes where the hero screams and gives an epic blow or shot So i think it would feel amazing to be able to score critical on a enemy who really pissed me off! - like "fuuu**********ck you...bam".

Eh, that game wasn't as terrible as people said. Yes, it was flawed. But it was still interesting. (of course, I never worshipped at the altar of DA:O, so my expectations likely weren't the same as some peoples' )

...not that this has anything to do with "AAA = good or not". To me, it mostly means bigger budget. There are good AAA games, there are bad ones. There are good "indie" games, there are bad ones.

(honestly, I'm more surprised by the claim of "McDonalds = good food". Cheap food, accessible food, edible food, sure. Good? Meh.)

Of course, one needs to not fall into the opposite trap, assuming that "AAA = bad".

Yeah, money can only take you so far. A stale concept and poor execution can really destroy a game. Not to mention that hype and advertising can have the opposite of the intended effect. Bungie had a golden reputation and 500 million dollars to work with for Destiny...... look at where that got them.

I gave up reading this thread around page 5 as it has little to do with the OP. In an attempt to discuss the OP I will offer a thought. It looks to me like you charge up the meter with consecutive hits on the target, which makes sense as a good marksman would adjust succeeding shots by where the previous shots land. I would also be inclined to believe that any critical chance you built up on the meter would be gone when and if you change primary targets, like aiming at a different enemy.

I say give the damn thing a try before bemoaning how terrible it is.

Yeah, I really hope that guy didn't injure himself too badly moving those goalposts over such a huge distance. And I guess while we're at it, someone needs to tell the millions of people who still play chess that turn-based games are dead, and they should just stop playing.

Civilization Beyond Earth was pretty well regarded as a big disappointment. Firaxis stripped features from Civ 5, made some ill-conceived tweaks to some of the remaining mechanics, reskinned the whole mess and released it as the next chapter of the Civilization series. The Civ fanbase for the most part said, "No thanks." But just because Firaxis missed an opportunity with their latest release (and they have admitted as much), does that mean turn-based strategy games as a whole are dead? Of course not.

Reasonable and moderate as always, Kiralyn.

Wow i didnt think of that, that makes sense.

I'm confused as to how you translate Crits requiring a recharge to them becoming 100% available? There were quite a few ways in FO3 to gain almost 100% crit chance, so I see this method as actually giving you more options. Now if you are complaining that the player should never have a way to guarantee a Crit (100% chance), then that may be a valid concern, but I certainly don't see how this can be considered OP if there is a reasonable recharge between available uses of the feature. Techncially, if this is the ONLY way to land a Crit, it's kind of a reduction in power as I've landed MANY back to back Crits in FO3 and NV.

I also fail to see how this feature in anyway makes the game closer to a shooter and farther away from an RPG....certainly it's a combat feature but while pen & paper RPGs have always made Crits a random event, I don't recall any shooters allowing for a choice to "crit" (sans aiming for a headshot).

Because it's a charged attack. It's essentially a make-better button, that assigns fortuitous gains on demand. I cannot even imagine how that applies in the abstract. It's like if there was a Baseball game where the batter had a meter that let them choose which pitch to hit out of the park.

This is more often the reverse these days. Fallout already existed how it was supposed to, and it doesn't anymore. The VATS dial-a-critical mechanic that seems confirmed by Todd himself, goes entirely against the integrity of the series, just on its own; and that's just one singled out example among many.

Of course I've played it. And that grenade is supposed to have the possibility of missing; don't get mad at it when it does.

How can anything be ripped off from GURPS when it was intended as a GURPS title? (To Simulate GURPS on the PC.)

It looks like that to me too, but it makes no sense. With the wildest stretch one can interpret it as a building bloodlust ~the way Rune does it, but Rune is not an RPG, and Fallout is supposed to be. There simply should never be a charged critical attack in a Fallout game.

Even perks [built in intentional cheats] never allowed selected critical hits.

No no, of course not; I never once expected that... But I can be very disapointed in them all the same for not fessing up, and fixing it.

I'm ok with it from the little we know about it and as long as crits are still possible outside of VATS. The less combat relies on RNG, the better to me. Note, that the combat system can be separated from the game experience - I think RNG works (or at least can work) great for delivering re-playable, unique playthroughs. Functionally, it shouldn't matter: if your crit chance is 70%, over a large enough sample size, the amount of crits should be about 70%. If the charged attack means that crits are available 70% of the time, what's the difference?