I only want realism in terms of weapon damage/injuries. I'm fine with aliens and two-headed cows...but when someone takes 5+ bullets to the face thats when I get disappointed.

Christ, some people seem to mess up two things - a post-apocalyptic simulator and a game that actually makes sense most of the time.

I'll say it bluntly - nobody wants the first thing, a lot of people want the other. I don't get why there are some many posts here saying "we don't want a realistic games, we want our games to be fun!". You're missing the point, here.

the problem the devs face is 1) there is like 10 000 different variation on what people consider "a game to make sense" 2)it?s one thing to want something to make sense, another to actually do it and keep a balanced, entertaining game.

I for one didn?t find FO3 to lack much sense, sure a bit rough around the edges like no ammo weight and tid bits like that, but for being a RPG and a game it didn?t seam to lacking in sense.

Exactly, couldn't have said it better myself.

Raelism or fantasy that is the question? HAHA. Ok got the cliche line outta the way. But I pretty much fully agree with you. But I think a bit more realism in certian places would do great. Ok like the idea of a little bit more weather...like lightning. Maybe more mutated creatures in the less travelled areas of the wasteland. I mean when I mean realism I mean in your head what would the wasteland look like? And Betheseda has almost fit it perfectly for me. So I don't want my gun to jam for realism or for me to die in one well placed shot..It's nice being able to repair a baseball bat with another baseball bat LOL. Or having random sidequests that don't have to make a whole lot of since. I think having NPC's a bit more realistic is the most important. I mean when the dialogue doesn't work and their mouth keeps moving. Or that Ranger who you sell fingers to???She randomly ran away because of a Rad Scorpion outside and the ran off at random and I could never find her again to sell those darn mutant fingers!!! So yeah it made for a good laugh but I believe it really takes away from immersion.

Ohh and would someone make a topic on V.A.T.S. Did anyone ever experience shooting into a table or wall in slow-mo when you had a supposed high percentage of hitting them? Every bullet hitting the wall. *BOOM*...*BOOM*....*BOOM* "dang i didn't know the wall was in the way!" LOLZ

the unrealistic aspects of fallout 3 were what took some of the fun out for me.....I didn't want to feel like an invincible tank who can carry 50 weapons all the time but I didn't want to be hopelessly outnumbered by bullet sponge enemies all the time either...both extremes seemed to occur in fallout 3..I spent a lot of time in the geck trying to make the game feel better..and in the end I think I succeeded, for myself at least...I just hope they release an updated GECK...and if not I hope the hardcoe mode lives up to my expectations

Which particular realism mechanism do you believe everyone would die by? There's little radiation left because the bombs were dropped so long ago, there's plenty of oxygen, you can buy food and water (and find it if you even attempt to look), you can sleep. About the only thing that could kill you within 5 minutes is a gun fight or a fight with a monster; but most of us here aren't saying we want 100% realism - we're saying that we agree that you should be able to soak up some bullets (not heaps though) and heal yourself. Soaking up a few bullets can be attributed to armor or even just put down as "my character is strong". That is suspension of belief; we agree that some things are really not that possible, but make the game more fun. However, there is a difference between when both my character and other NPCs can soak up some bulllets (which seems fair) and when other NPCs sit outside a city going "I'm so thirsty, please give me water", while you sit there and think "why the hell would I be carrying water when it's OBVIOUSLY not needed to live". That is just dumb; to have other NPCs die of starvation and thirst when you can't. A walking tank I can handle, but someone that lives off nothing makes no sense at all.




You have a different concept of what an RPG is to many people. If I'm role-playing someone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland then I want to experience what it is like for them and feel right there with them; for example, I want to be forced to weigh up whether I should drink some irradiated water to quench my thirst or whether I should risk looking for other water. If I wanted to role-play someone who runs around and kills everything then I'd probably play...almost every single game ever created. As someone has said before; go play Halo. If you think role-playing means playing as someone who is indestructible and requires nothing to live, then why do you care about a wasteland setting? Change of scenery?? Many of us are attracted to Fallout's wasteland setting because we want to experience what it's like there; not just go "oh, cool, it's like Halo but I only see vast expanses of desert!". This is why, for me, Fallout 3 was too similar to Oblivion to be truly enjoyable. In one game I'm a guy he runs around and shoots/beats up strange creatures and bandits without dying, in the other I'm a guy who runs around and shoots/beats up strange creatures and raiders without dying. The gameplay is almost identical and this could be fixed if they made each one have gameplay more fitting to its setting. Why does life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland feel just as easy as life in a fantasy realm where life/vegetation/big cities still exist?

Well, I think Fallouts "soul gameplay" does involve weird quests,strange animals, and funny surreal happenigs that make no sense(Which I imagine there would be in a post apocalyptic world, heck we already have some of those things now), but you should still have all this with the option of "Ultra Realism" when it comes to things such as being damaged by enemy fire or vice-versa(one vital shot and you die,shot to spine cripples you, etc.) as for aliens, they are not anymore stupid and unrealistic than a nuclear apocalypse, which at sometime (somepoint far, far in the future hopefully) will not seem very unrealistic at all.

I'm not going to get into politics or anything but a nuclear war is still a threat. If a terrorist group gets a hold of some then we are all nuclearly screwed.
So I ask you this what funny/weird quest were there that didn't make sense? What strange animals were there? Almost all the animals were realistic within the game realm. They gave us a good explanation for most of them. Ghouls = rad infested humans Supermutants = FEV infected humans, and so on and so forth.

Well first of all, I didn't say that at all, the guy who made this topic did, I was only qouting him, but you seem to miss the subject of my post completly. What I was trying to empathise was that the funny weird quests, and mutated beasts, and so forth, can simultaneously exist with a good ammount of realism, because what I'm looking for in realism doesn't go against all of those things, as you said yourself "They are realistic within the game realm with good explanation".
My idea of realism, would be a choice with the player at the begining of the game, that would allow damage to be inflicted at a more realistic level (Headshot instant kill, and things like that) while still keeping the aliens, mutilated creatures/beasts, and all instances of comic relief, intact.

There's also the aspect of what in Fallout setting makes sense according to the eatlier games. And that, imo, should br the driving fotce. If people don't find that particular aspect sensical or can't get pass it, they're playing the wrong game.

Ahh I see. My bad, ignore my ignorant post. (seriously.)

My own two cents about "realism" in a videogame like Fallout:

I think it's one thing to just add a bunch of clunky mechanics on top of a game to make it more "realistic," and quite another to elegantly integrate all of these things into a fluid game system that's both intuitive and simple in execution (even if complicated in articulation.) Just tacking on a bunch of Sims-style meters isn't going to make the game feel any more "real" to me. If anything, it's going to give me another bar to keep track of. I've played games that take that route to realism, and my experience has usually been that I realize my food bar is low because I'll look to see why my stats are low and notice that I've been starving to death for a few days now.

It's kind of the same thing with the Radiation Bar in Fallout 3 - a lot of times I'd miss the prompt telling me I was suffering from radiation sickness and wouldn't notice until much later on. I never felt like I was suffering from radiation in a Fallout game - because it was only ever some abstract concept - a sliding meter on a bar.

On the other hand, I remember early on in Fallout 3; when I didn't yet have my unlimited stockpile of Stimpaks, rooting through every fridge I came across, in search of food. Because food and water already served a useful game mechanic. If there weren't so many Stimpaks in the game, then you'd be spending a lot more time hoarding food and making sure that you were always well-supplied (and you'd also be eating frequently enough that starvation or thirst wasn't ever going to be a realistic outcome...)

I think when people are asking for more realism in a game like this, I have to imagine that what they're realing asking for is a compelling game scenario that would derive from those added mechanics. I don't honestly think anyone is just that obsessed with keeping an eye on a bunch of sliding bars that they'd eschew any attempt to achieve the same result through more elegant means.

So I still think, that if you want compelling gameplay stemming from the post-apocalyptic notion of hoarding food and water for survival - then all you really need to do is make Stimpaks a whole lot more rare. It's the same end result, without adding more things to keep an eye on.

First of all, Fallout is about humanity's lust for war (Try and guess why there's "War never changes" in the intro. It's not just a cool one-liner, it actually HAS a purpose), how society may function in a harsh, post-war environment and with a bit of gruesome, dark humor thrown here and there. This is what the original creators said when asked about describing the game, I am not making this up. I am trying to find the interview where this is stated, but it's kinda hard ATM.

What most of you may not realise, it's not about retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic America. This was chosen only because fantasy setting was over-used at the time and devs wanted to be original. The game is about:

1) freedom of play - you can go anywhere and do anything you like, providing you survive it, there are multiple solutions to each task, diffrent character builds yield diffrent gameplay experience

2) mature, grim world with a lot of morality issues

3) simulation of Pen and Paper type of game

The rest are only additions. Sillyness was added by the people who later took over the franchise and should be limited to a minimum in the upcoming games.

Realism, like anything, should only be used in moderation when applied to video games. Too much realism will poison or spoil a game Very fast, where the main point is Entertainment. The rub comes from the fact that what we find Entertaining is not very often Realistic in the gaming world - and thankfully the big companies realized this long ago and (for the most part) don't let realism get in the way of making a Fun video game.

The the FPP rpg genre needs a healthy dose of realism. Too many action/adventure or shooter devs are fancying themselves rpg makers these days and although it makes todays hybrid rpgs more enjoyable for an entire generation of side scrolling consolers it somewhat defeats the purpose of creating realistic visuals when you throw unrealistic gameplay into the mix.

No one really wants the level of realism that has been extremist-ly represented by those opposed nor does that realism desire have anything to do with setting or story. The cold hard truth as expressed by many here is a pure want for real world physics and human biology to play a larger role in providing the realism many of us need for suspension of disbelief.

At the risk of sounding asinine, I believe that it all comes down to a learning curve. We are divided into those that are easily suspended because of a lack of understanding of how physics and biology in the real world actually works and those that have an average to exceptional understanding of how biology and physics work. The former are happy with gameplay that is fun and not necessarily realistic. The latter know quite well how organisms and matter should behave in our universe (fictitious tangent or not) and require just a little bit more adhesion to certain immutable laws to obtain a blissful suspension.

How true it is that "Ignorance is bliss".

Prime example: The movie The 13th Warrior; Largely historically inaccurate (mostly costumes and weapons) but no defiance of the immutable laws that govern our universe and therefor believable and enjoyable.

On the other side of the coin, I (being in the latter aforementioned group) I also know why I am able to shoot someone in the face point blank 5 times and not kill them. Don't be fooled by the FPS dressing here people, this is still an rpg and as such most actions in game are governed by stats. When the day comes that you at level one can one shot kill a level 10 npc it will cease to be an rpg with fps elements and will be just another FPS with rpg elements.

I don't want that but i still want whatever realism that can be offered without negating the game as an rpg.

I don't care about realism. I want immersion. And humor improves the game, unless it's just randomly crammed in somewhere, and i trust Obsidian enough to avoid that.

I think Fallout 3 had the right amount of realism and humour, but I wouldn't mind difficulty modifiers placed in the game, to change certain elements, like the skulls in Halo 2 and 3.

Realism != simulation of real life. Realism is more about keeping it consistent within it's world. Laws should work within the game, a minigun should outpower a pistol, a knife shouldn't scratch power armour. The fact there's still, after 200 years, working machines, a lack of trees and radiation still hanging around is fine because it's kept within the game, the world of fallout allows for these things. The aliens? shouldn't really feature anymore, they were a fun easter egg and a humurous nod to 50's ideas of alien life and how they'd act to us, but no more of it, not to MZ's extent.

I think if MZ had been better, aliens would be more acceptable in FNV. Considering the game is set in Las Vegas, Nevada, some alien content will probably exist.

"Realism" should mean: believable story and conversations, ingame choices with consequences, great immersion and varied gameplay.

It depends on how deep into the lore people want to go. I've seen some ridiculous lore arguments around here. I'm more interested in internal game consistency as opposed to trans-game lore cloning. We need to pay attention to lore, but each game in the series needs to add to that lore.

Sure, and there's a difference between someone not liking an element that's being added and someone pointing out a contradiction as well. A game designer should be very careful about contradicting established lore...IMO it lessens the integrity of the setting. Whether or not something is a worthy addition to the setting's lore is too subjective to argue with authority. If people want to argue about whether or not something belongs in the setting there's nothing wrong with that, but when people start presenting their opinions on the subject as facts the debate can't go anywhere but down from there...

Well there need not be any debate. My opinion is correct and yours is not, if you just accept that we can get along just dandy.

:foodndrink:

Definitions of opinion on the Web:

a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty; "my opinion differs from yours"; "I am not of your persuasion"; "what are ...
a message expressing a belief about something; the expression of a belief that is held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof; "his opinions appeared frequently on the editorial page"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
An opinion is a belief that cannot be proved with evidence. It is a subjective statement and may be the result of an emotion or an interpretation

:)