Why do some oldschoolers feel fallout 3 was bad? : Fallout 3

» Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:38 am

[quote name='Sitruc' date='03 August 2010 - 09:32 AM' timestamp='1280845920' post='16234318']The "tension" for me, was in avoiding stumbling into an unwinnable combat situation[/quote]
The tension for me was winning the 'unwinnable' match, or managing to escape it alive. :intergalactic:
[quote]Still, it was very satisfying to see the step-by-step calculations play out to a win, a win that was more by calculation than chance.[/quote] :foodndrink:

[quote] VATS being still present with the ability to set a sequence of actions according to your action points, makes a similarity that only differs really by the absence of mathematics.
[/quote]VATS was never really present in the previous Fallouts though... VATS seems derived from just FO1's choice to aim (being one possible action during your turn). Another significant difference is that VATS' "percent chance to hit" is radically different, in that Fallout used fixed values based on difficulty and potential effects (including one hit kills); but FO3 seems to just use proximity to the target ~and the head can (at times) be easier to hit than an arm or a leg. This can be seen as more realistic, but breaks the original point of aimed shots. (Aimed shots were a deliberate gamble, and the odds were the PC's skill; these gambles cost you to take the risk ~with VATS risks nothing; and actually gain exploitable damage resistance.)

[quote name='Snabbik' date='04 August 2010 - 09:52 AM' timestamp='1280933570' post='16237982']
The big issue with 3D vs 2D is that it's a heck of a lot more expensive to create rooms / buildings / complexes. [/quote]Once the tile sets are complete, its largely like building with legos to get just the basic layout. Assets are equally reused all over the gameworld ~same as with previous Fallouts.

Its funny, but building a level in Fallout 2 takes a long time. For a skilled 3d modeler, it may be that you could build/get the exact same level with new/original art into FO3 in less time. :lol:

[quote]
Players also notice a lot quicker if you do any large-scale copy/paste in 3D environments, where they might give you the benefit of the doubt in a 2D environment. In a 2D, sprite-based environment, making every house on a street unique can be done with Microsoft Paint. In the 3D environment, you have to deal with clipping issues, 3D geometry, pathing, etc. All because you can't control how close the player gets to your game world. If they want, they can get right up close to an object and look at it from multiple angles. So something that would be 5 minutes in a paint program for 2D work with a fixed camera angle and fixed camera distance becomes a 5 hour or 5 day project once it gets turned into a 3D object.
[/quote]This is the Dev's fault. :shrug: Not every 3d game behaves like this (notice the early Resident Evil(s), and Nocturne by Terminal Reality). Nocturne is 3d (including 3d cloth simulation). However, it does not allow for indiscriminate close inspection (and keeps its art quality because of it.)

[quote]
From my limited understanding, the reason that the downtown DC ruins are not reachable except via subways probably has to do with performance. An area of the map, with that density of polygons, that many enemies, that many actors, would lag out the rest of the wasteland if it was actually part of the overland map. By segmenting the DC ruins into smaller chunks, they could crowd more detail and actors in, without worrying about impacting performance when the player is elsewhere. The "grid" system in the game engine helps a lot with this, but I'd imagine that it's still an issue.
[/quote]Additionally, nearly all buildings (in DC or elsewhere) are facades with no interiors... which makes sense given the engine restriction.

» Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:12 am

The main difference that I see is dialogue. The dialogue in Fallout 3 felt flat and left the characters feeling 2D while the characters in Fallout 2 feel like they have a lot more personality despite not even having voices.

The "Badly written debate" was done to death some way back and was never shown that Fallout3 was guilty of that. Not forgetting the impacts of Charisma, Speech and Karma on dialogue.

VATS was never really present in the previous Fallouts though... VATS seems derived from just FO1's choice to aim (being one possible action during your turn). Another significant difference is that VATS' "percent chance to hit" is radically different, in that Fallout used fixed values based on difficulty and potential effects (including one hit kills); but FO3 seems to just use proximity to the target ~and the head can (at times) be easier to hit than an arm or a leg. This can be seen as more realistic, but breaks the original point of aimed shots. (Aimed shots were a deliberate gamble, and the odds were the PC's skill; these gambles cost you to take the risk ~with VATS risks nothing; and actually gain exploitable damage resistance.)

I no longer use VATS. Without it, game-play is much improved with more realism, aiming and hitting an arm or leg is quite possible outside of VATS, crippling or slowing them down. Most will just use VATS without question, but I stopped using it when I found it opened up a much better kind of play. Not the fast trigger-finger kind of play but a more realistic play, still needing forethought of what following movements to make as the action unfolds.

Fallout3 does have a lot of places that I would have liked to have entered, as did Fallout2, but at least Fallout3 had numerous destroyed shells of buildings scattered about the map that could be searched, for whatever could be found in the rubble. Fallout3 was much better in that respect. Though Fallout2 was very good at the desolation and nothingness of a wasteland, but it often gave me boredom just looking for something, anything. Fallout3 also had more random encounters it seemed to me.

The choice of “Traits" is no longer in Fallout3 but Trait was just another layer of character build and had little effect, not as much as the SPECIALs, Tags, and Perks which could build in impact over time, they were much more important. So no real loss without Traits, it doesn’t make the game "bad".

Ammunition no longer has weight in Fallout3 and no longer is a resource management factor, but that's no loss. It was probably done that way for better game-play in deeply embedded places. Weight is a resource management factor in the game but ammunition doesn't factor in it, and as said, it's probably done like that for better game-play. There is so much more of interest to do in Fallout3. Armour Piercing ammunition is not in Fallout3 either. It's absence is no real loss to game-play though, not to make the game “bad“.

In Hostile Waters, ammunition type or weight was not a factor in the game at all, it was 'instantly' generated by Nanotechnology's millions of particles. It was a superb game where you could also instantly jump-in and take over any active vehicle, aircraft or ground unit, it's one of those games that had that "something" different that you want to play it again and again. It was the game-play that was important.

Leaving aside all the other improvements in Fallout3, the graphics, the perspective choices, the speech, and masses more content, the slow-motion kill view (if you into that), I still see nothing that makes Fallout3 'a bad game'. But I accept that if somebody sees Fallout3 as being 'a bad game' then nothing I say will convince them otherwise. It's a matter of taste I guess, similar to someone liking Vanilla ice-cream but not a choc-bar Vanilla ice-cream, whatever.

Fallout New Vegas that is coming out will replace the Traits, ammunition types and weight that is not in Fallout3, and will apparently have more speech , also a "hardcoe" mode that has a retro "must drink water eat food" requirement that the very early RPGs were mostly all about (was that hardcoe). The game will be a lot more about resource management it seems, and the normal mode will be just, normal. But the new game is not going back to the turn-base-play of Fallout2....seems Fallout3 got it right after all ... which is no bad thing.

» Thu Mar 25, 2010 5:51 am

I dunno. But I played Fallout 2 and tactics, but I could never beat them. I am terrible at video games, and if Fallout 3 and Super Mario World are the only games that I am good at, then so be it.

» Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:37 am

I have been gaming since video games started to not svck (the 90s) and I still think the original fallouts svck. But then again I hate almost every turn-based game I've ever played. Fallout 3 has way better combat and of course extremely superior graphics. And as for the children while I definitely would like to punch some of the little lamplight kids sometimes, I don't really have a desire to kill any.