Did you all forget..

[DForge]

Hope I won't get accused for trolling for this topic. Let's clarify: I love F1 & F2 and I've spent a lot of time playing them and mastering them. And I don't even own Fallout 3 yet.

But, just by reading the F3 section here, I get amazed.

Did people forget how dumb and abusable the F1/F2 game mechanics could be?

Did you forget:

1. That the main plot took like three hours to finish, even without the navarro shortcut?
2. That you speedrun the game in 9 minutes?
3. That you could become a god that single-handedly slaughters entire enclave? (for those who say F3 combat is too easy/illogical)
4. That you could get advanced power armor a minute after finishing temple of trials? I know it was a stupid shortcut technique, but I still think such abuse shouldn't be possible. A level check needed to get the Navarro quest from Matt, voila.
5. That you missed people standing next to them (!?)
6. That ordinary people could survive several non-critical shots at the eyes (!?!?!?!?)
7. That you were basically super-accurate from the very beginning, assuming you tagged small guns and put a level or two worth of skill points into it? (for those who whine about too high accuracy in VATS of F3)
8. That NPCs kept bursting through each other and blocking your line of sight (when you were holding bozar or minigun)?
9. That in fact the game had little to none combat strategy at all because all you had to do was to keep lots of action points and aim at eyes / get sniper perk? I got through like 95% of fights with barely a scratch just by doing it.
10. That it was a very easy game (I died in it only after unlucky criticals that bypassed armor, and that's without the navarro shortcut ofc.) and the only difficult thing was defeating 6 or 9-person enclave patrols (the latter was a bit extreme) without losing a party member? You could get through all other fights without a scratch by using psycho which made almost every non-energy weapon attack in this game do 0 damage (not called gauss weaponry or deathclaw's claw), assuming you had decent DT. And psycho was everywhere. Also, the lockpick/speech checks were rather easy, even if they were assumed difficult (highest speech check was like 120 or so, which you could get at level three, and highest lockpick.. idk, 90 or so? and you had tools everywhere..) I played hard only, the other modes were a joke.

I also think F3 should have never become a FPS, but come on. The previous Fallouts weren't flawless in game mechanics. Why do you all suddenly forgot about it? It's called bias, you know.

 

[mrblonde2000]

I agree completely, while I have nothing but love for the first two games in the series I do find it laughable how so many are completely ignoring the things you mentioned above and just going balls to the wall with the bashing of F3.

 

[ShatteredJon]

Fallouts 1 & 2 are old. We already knew these flaws. Fallout 3 is
brand spanking new. We are now in the process of points out "its" flaws. Saying we are ignoring the flaws of the old games has absolutely no relevance to the new game. Come on guys.

 

[DForge]

That's of course true, but a lot of people compares F3 not to new games, but to Fallout 1&2. And while that's prefectly ok in terms of atmosphere, music and other things, it's NOT ok in terms of "combat abuse" and "overall mechanics". Old game or not, all of the things I mentioned weren't caused by technological barriers of that time, but by laziness or lack of logic. Because it would really take one script to prevent Navarro abuse, for instance, or a few more days with AI to make party members check for OTHER NPCs in your party too while bursting, not only for the chosen one.

I can understand that a person gets up instantly after getting hit with sledgehammer in the nuts.. it's a game, after all, a script that would check for nut damage after each hit with a melee weapon there would be too much fuss, but the other things? naaaw. The eye shots could have been much more rare (non-linear accuracy growth!), but much more deadly, for instance.

 

[mrblonde2000]

Fallouts 1 & 2 are old. We already knew these flaws. Fallout 3 is
brand spanking new. We are now in the process of points out "its" flaws. Saying we are ignoring the flaws of the old games has absolutely no relevance to the new game. Come on guys.

Uh no it is very relevant, Look around (and not only on this forum) and you will find rampant blind fanboyism who while holding the older games on an untouchable pedestal rip apart issues in Fallout 3 that F1 and F2 suffered from.

It is fine and great to state all the flaws F3 has, but when these "people" do not even own up to the fact that the older games suffered from these problems the bias is annoying at best.

 

[Hoxie]

Blasphemy!

 

[ShatteredJon]

Wow, quick to ignore what I said eh? I totally acknowledge Dforges posts. What he said about the old Fallout's is correct in its entirety. What the problem is though, is that those technical flaws have nothing to do with Fallout 3. IMO, FO3 flaws far outweigh those of FO1 and 2.

You seem to think I think the old Fallouts are infallible and that is the wrong assumption. The flaws in the old games didn't stop me from enjoying them. The flaws in the new game are so pronounced that it actually does destroy some of that enjoyment. So learn what the term "fanboy" really means before tossing it around so fruitlessly.

 

[DForge]

I have to agree with that - the flaws didn't discourage me from playing this game for many hours, too. I still hope for killap or other good modders to include the navaro abuse protection script someday, though

 

[Viliny]

The point is here that such flaws should be rectified and not reproduced

 

[mrblonde2000]

Wow, quick to ignore what I said eh? I totally acknowledge Dforges posts. What he said about the old Fallout's is correct in its entirety. What the problem is though, is that those technical flaws have nothing to do with Fallout 3. IMO, FO3 flaws far outweigh those of FO1 and 2.

You seem to think I think the old Fallouts are infallible and that is the wrong assumption. The flaws in the old games didn't stop me from enjoying them. The flaws in the new game are so pronounced that it actually does destroy some of that enjoyment. So learn what the term "fanboy" really means before tossing it around so fruitlessly.

Nothing against you personally, my post was aimed at many of the rabid foaming fan boys and they will know who they are when they read the post.

That or they are already outside my house getting ready to egg my windows.

The point is here that such flaws should be rectified and not reproduced

I agree completely, my only issue is when people join in a giant circle jerk of F3 hate and they fail to acknowledge F1 and 2 did not suffer from same said issues.

Again not EVERYONE does it but a very large majority does. Once more not naming any names

 

[ShatteredJon]

I would have to agree with you Villiny. Though I do not think the new game reproduced most of Fallout 1 & 2's flaws, but instead introduced a whole new echelon of its own flaws, based mostly off of BS's mishandling of cannon and the gamebyro engine.

EDIT: I understand Mr.Blonde. Over the years of lurking this site, I have seen many who would hold FO 1 & 2 infallible. But hey, you find those kind of people with every game.

 

[sentorio]

I totally agree with you as in I remember taht in F1 there was no pushing people so you might stuck in a stupid house wait an NPC to open the way to go out, that was ridiculous.

About difficulty level if you play as a casual gamer (I remember my first time although I was quite young as well) I died several times, and had restart to couple of times because of wrong leveling. Not even mentioning that I died after 150 days later

Maybe I was a muppet, or maybe I was just a casual RPG gamer who doesn't search internet for effective strategy or someone who just goes with the flow, and having fun with RPG aspect of the game.

But even there were those flaws, it was so beautiful in a way where we can forgive those flaws but this game is pretty bad and I feel even worse because I did pre-order it!

Most disappointing for me is graphics, I was expecting something like Mass Effect graphics which would be awesome because it looks great and you feel like you are in that world, however Fallout 3 is 3D and artistically it's shittier than F1 (beside of couple of loading screens).

When it comes to F3 difficulty level, I don't think it's easy although I didn't like that i can find a crazy minigun in lvl 3 on my way and kill a super mutant to get it without doing anything strategically smart beside of killing everyone in megatone.

 

[Tygernoot]

I'm usually more of a reader than that I reply in topics, but for once I thought I'd give my opinion . I'm not going to defend any of the shortcomings from Fallout, but for me there are some differences in how these shortcomings present themselves in the game.

Indeed, Fallout 1/2 has lots of flaws and not just because it's an old game and they probably had a much more limited budget (although that plays for some of the things).

You can abuse Fallout's system by taking shortcuts and going to the critical places, talk to the right people and finish the game in a very short time span. However, I doubt most people were able to do these things in their first few runs through the game. It's only once you replay it multiple times that you discover them and start looking for the fastest way to finish the game. That's a whole different aspect of gaming and you voluntarily abuse the system. If you look at speed runs (http://speeddemosarchive.com/) it's only done to find the fastest way through the game, and not to enjoy all the aspects of the game. So even if you CAN speedrun a game, as long as the 'normal' way to finish the game takes a long time, I'm happy with it .

The first Fallouts leave a lot to your imagination. The graphics are pretty limited and often don't fully display what is happening. When you shoot someone in the head without him dying, you see (and read about) him getting hit but visually it doesn't display it. To me, I can imagine those situations like giving someone a grazing wound. In Fallout 3 you see people getting shot multiple times in the head, while their face remains completely intact although there's blood going everywhere. For sure, this is a problem with many shooters where you cannot see any shot wounds but it does take out some of the credibility and ambiance.

Fallout's combat was also flawed in some ways and the AI wasn't great, but still they kept on shooting you or ran away from the combat. Its system never really bothered me and sometimes actually gave some comical situations. Yes, Sulik could drive you insane when he had a SMG by bursting it in your back or on a rat while taking out a sledgehammer on an Enclave soldier. But those things I can actually laugh at afterwards.

To me they added something to the overall experience of the game. Another good example of this is Mafia. That game also had some bugs and flaws. But they were really delicate in a way and I cannot tell you how much I laughed playing the game with a friend and each time messing things up. E.g. for those who played Mafia: Once we had to walk a long way together with another NPC (Paulie I think) to take the metro. We had to redo it so many times because we just did stupid things. But when we finally arrived at the metro station trying to do it seriously, that stupid NPC walked into another person on the platform, tried to get around him but fell on the tracks instead. He desperately tried to get back onto the platform but was unable to do so. 30 seconds later he was hit by the oncoming metro that we were supposed to take and he was killed on the spot. Just thinking about it still makes me laugh.

It's those things that make the game all the more fun. There's a thread on this forum about the stupid things you did in Fallout (http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38900) and it made me laugh reading it. Of course half of these things maybe weren't the intent of the game's creators, but in the end they add a lot to the overall enjoyability.

We're not even talking about the game's content now, but just the game mechanics (and its flaws). Only on that I don't really like Fallout 3 (based on what I've seen in Morrowind and Oblivion, the gameplay movies on youtube and about the half an hour that I played it so far). In previous Bethesda games I just never found that same touch that made the other Fallout games great.

I played Fallout 1/2 a lot in the past and I still enjoy playing through the games about once a year. It never seems to grow old despite its flaws. I just don't see Fallout 3 as a true successor of 1/2, mostly because it fits in the line of Morrowind - Oblivion - Fallout 3, and not Fallout 1 - 2 - 3.

Anyway, I'll leave it at this before I start rambling on about the game's content and what (in my opinion) is wrong with it. There's enough discussion about that already. I just wanted to point out that every game has its flaws and that in some cases they can even become part of the game. It's just when the flaws start slapping you in the face making the game a lot less enjoyable or even annoying, then it really becomes a problem.

 

[DForge]

Just because one doesn't abuse the game doesn't mean it's ok that the game allows abuse in the first place.

It's like reasoning "In this car wheels fall off when you take sharp turns, but I don't take sharp turns so this car is fine"

No, it's not - objectively it's a big flaw and you not doing it doesn't make it any better

 

[Tygernoot]

Of course, I agree on that. It shouldn't be there in the first place, but even though it's present I choose not to exploit it. That doesn't make it right, but if you play the game seriously without abusing previously gathered knowledge you don't know about the shortcut e.g.

It's a flaw that is present in many games. You could abuse Fallout 1/2 to finish it within 10/17 minutes. There's also a speedrun of Morrowind doing it in 7. Fallout 3 can probably be finished within a short period as well.

You might just as well use cheat codes to abuse the game. It all depends on whether you choose to use them or not. So I don't really consider those shortcuts a major shortcoming of a game. If the storyline would only be 10 minutes long however, that would be a true shortcoming

 

[Objulen]

Tygernoot, while you are certainly entitled to your opinions, you must admit the rampantly subjective nature of your stance. While any attempt to apply objectivity to matters of taste should be met with a degree of incredulity, loving a game more for its flaws, which were rather glaring at times (I remember playing through Fallout 2 and having two different sets of quests bug out in random ways, generating some interesting dilemmas) makes it quite difficult to maintain claim to a balanced perspective.

 

[Tyler]

applause to the creator of this thread. good job, sir

those following posts are plain silly and subjective but funny all the way.

 

[Tygernoot]

LOL. I'm probably expressing myself poorly.

I was just trying to generalise the points made by the original topic. I'll answer them one by one with my opinion. And yes, I may be biased in my opinion but not by ignorance or prejudice. E.g. I enjoyed Morrowind quite a lot at the time (Oblivion somewhat less) and I don't think that Bethesda make horrible games. Mostly there aren't really my style and I don't think that style really fits Fallout 3.

1. That the main plot took like three hours to finish, even without the navarro shortcut?

Can't answer this one, as I never played the game by doing only the main plot.

2. That you speedrun the game in 9 minutes?

Indeed, that's a flaw present in many games. But then again, it's only possible with prior knowledge. Personally I never did a speedrun in my life as I always prefer playing the games fully.

3. That you could become a god that single-handedly slaughters entire enclave? (for those who say F3 combat is too easy/illogical)

Indeed, there are game balancing issues. In the end, if you have enough stimpaks you can always heal yourself during combat so as long as you don't get shot to pieces before it's your turn, you can each time fully heal yourself.

4. That you could get advanced power armor a minute after finishing temple of trials? I know it was a stupid shortcut technique, but I still think such abuse shouldn't be possible. A level check needed to get the Navarro quest from Matt, voila.

Like point 2.

5. That you missed people standing next to them (!?)

This was possible in Fallout 1/2. Normally you didn't miss a lot when standing up close, so you might attribute that to the heat of the moment (of the battle/struggle you're having). That's what I meant when the game leaves some things to your imagination, mostly due to the limited visual display. Not combat related, but e.g. Planescape Torment left a whole lot more to the imagination. It was a bit like reading a book at times as it didn't display it on the screen. It might be that in Fallout 3 it's a bit contradictory if you can first person shoot someone in the face from close by and then miss completely with VATS. Or the other way around if it's difficult to hit people from a distance in first person, but really easy with VATS. That can be a problem mixing the two together, but I haven't really tried the game yet in full combat (this is just based on what I read). I think Fallout 3 wants to make it more realistically (as I understand it, that's the 'immersion' everyone talks about here). Then it wouldn't make that much sense.

6. That ordinary people could survive several non-critical shots at the eyes (!?!?!?!?)

Like in my previous post, this might be left to the imagination since you don't actually see bullets going into a person's head (while not causing visual damage but still having blood coming out of the person's head). In both games it's not realistic of course, which it doesn't necessarily has to be as it's part of an RPG. It wouldn't be fun either if every shot in the head or eyes causes immediate death. Perhaps for some reason the lack of visual details makes it easier to accept, not sure. To me, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEqcRtVVpk) looks so much worse than a non-lethal eye shot in the first Fallouts .

7. That you were basically super-accurate from the very beginning, assuming you tagged small guns and put a level or two worth of skill points into it? (for those who whine about too high accuracy in VATS of F3)

I haven't used VATS except for once hitting Butch in the Vault, so haven't seen the high accuracy yet. Indeed it was hard to miss in Fallout even with a regular gun unless you were 10 hexes or so from the target or it was night time.

8. That NPCs kept bursting through each other and blocking your line of sight (when you were holding bozar or minigun)?

Yep, this was really bad. Still, in the end I can actually laugh about it. I admit that it's a huge AI flaw. But when comparing a 10-year-old game to what should be a state-of-the-art game these days, there haven't been huge breakthroughs. The AI in the youtube movie I posted here seems to do weird stuff as well. Maybe I can laugh about this later as well, but I think that 10 years ago I accepted these flaws more easily than these days. Or perhaps it's just youth memories (I was 14 or 15 at the time) .

9. That in fact the game had little to none combat strategy at all because all you had to do was to keep lots of action points and aim at eyes / get sniper perk? I got through like 95% of fights with barely a scratch just by doing it.

Indeed, it lacks strategy. But there was still a small aspect of saving action points to heal yourself or waiting to choose a new perk so you could shoot twice in one turn with that one extra point. I have only seen the Fallout 3 combat on youtube movies, but it didn't seem as 'delicate'.

10. That it was a very easy game

Well, not for me. Fallout was my first RPG and I had quite some difficulties with it in the beginning . Don't know how difficult Fallout 3 is yet.


Anyway, getting back to the point I was originally trying to make...
And quoting Objulen: "loving a game more for its flaws"

I'm not saying (or perhaps I said, but didn't mean) that all the flaws in Fallout were generally positive. Some bugs in the non-patched Fallouts were plain terrible (like the disappearing car) and the game engine was sometimes limited. But either because I like the game a lot these flaws seem less annoying, or because the flaws aren't that obvious all the time it doesn't drag the game down. But in certain cases they just seem to give a fun experience out of it. I had that with Fallout and Mafia for example. Some of the flaws didn't drag it down, but gave it a richer experience in the end. When I read some of the stupid things in fallout thread, I realised that although it wasn't really part or the intention of the game mechanics, it could create interesting and fun situations.

It doesn't make it alright, but as long as the flaws aren't frustrating or making the game annoying, I can live with them. All games have flaws and some things are just a matter of opinion. Sorry if I can't express myself any better than this. I'm not hoping for Fallout 3 to have 'fun flaws' or justifying some bad flaws in the first Fallouts.

This topic started by saying "Don't complain about Fallout 3's flaws as Fallout also had (other) flaws", which doesn't really make a lot of sense. From what I've seen Fallout 3 is flawed in other areas, and it seems to me these flaws are much worse than in the originals and causing the game to be much less enjoyable.

Anyway, I'll leave it at this, but if anyone wants to continue this some more I'm always open for discussion .

 

[Sander]

Hope I won't get accused for trolling for this topic. Let's clarify: I love F1 & F2 and I've spent a lot of time playing them and mastering them. And I don't even own Fallout 3 yet.

But, just by reading the F3 section here, I get amazed.

Did people forget how dumb and abusable the F1/F2 game mechanics could be?

Did you forget:

1. That the main plot took like three hours to finish, even without the navarro shortcut?

Er, no it didn't, unless you liked to get killed a lot.

2. That you speedrun the game in 9 minutes?
3. That you could become a god that single-handedly slaughters entire enclave? (for those who say F3 combat is too easy/illogical)

You need to be very high-level for that. Not level 10, as is the case in Fallout 3.

4. That you could get advanced power armor a minute after finishing temple of trials? I know it was a stupid shortcut technique, but I still think such abuse shouldn't be possible. A level check needed to get the Navarro quest from Matt, voila.

The fact that you think such abuse shouldn't be possible shows that you miss the point of the Fallout games.
\

5. That you missed people standing next to them (!?)
6. That ordinary people could survive several non-critical shots at the eyes (!?!?!?!?)

Abstraction.
Turn-based combat is an abstraction. In other words, people standing right next to you are thought to be in movement, hitting includes getting through armor (hence big, bulky armor = higher AC), non-critical hits are generally grazes or flesh wounds.

The point is that first-person shooters pretend to be a simulation instead of an abstraction, yet feature the same problems.

7. That you were basically super-accurate from the very beginning, assuming you tagged small guns and put a level or two worth of skill points into it? (for those who whine about too high accuracy in VATS of F3)
8. That NPCs kept bursting through each other and blocking your line of sight (when you were holding bozar or minigun)?
9. That in fact the game had little to none combat strategy at all because all you had to do was to keep lots of action points and aim at eyes / get sniper perk? I got through like 95% of fights with barely a scratch just by doing it.

The game had significantly more strategy than Fallout 3.

10. That it was a very easy game (I died in it only after unlucky criticals that bypassed armor, and that's without the navarro shortcut ofc.) and the only difficult thing was defeating 6 or 9-person enclave patrols (the latter was a bit extreme) without losing a party member? You could get through all other fights without a scratch by using psycho which made almost every non-energy weapon attack in this game do 0 damage (not called gauss weaponry or deathclaw's claw), assuming you had decent DT. And psycho was everywhere. Also, the lockpick/speech checks were rather easy, even if they were assumed difficult (highest speech check was like 120 or so, which you could get at level three, and highest lockpick.. idk, 90 or so? and you had tools everywhere..) I played hard only, the other modes were a joke.

I also think F3 should have never become a FPS, but come on. The previous Fallouts weren't flawless in game mechanics. Why do you all suddenly forgot about it? It's called bias, you know.

No one claims the previous Fallouts were flawless.

Also, why are you naming problems with only Fallout 2 and pretending that you're speaking about both Fallouts.

 

[DForge]

You're very biased, Sander. And you're fighting an impossible battle. To understand the flaws of the game and still love it is one thing, to blindly defend it against constructive criticism is another thing.

And accusing me of "not knowing what Fallout is about".. if it wasn't stupid it would be funny I consider leaving hi-tech stuff available for level 1 character cheap and abusive, what does it have to do with me "not understanding fallout", don't be ridiculous. Just a bad decision of the creators to leave Navarro unscripted and unprotected imho. In every game the best stuff lying in the next room to your starting one is cheap to me, and the argument "you don't have to take it" just doesn't convince me it's ok.

Just as the argument "most people don't know about it in the first run". Ignorance is not an argument.. Just because I don't know that (hypothetic) 10 mm pistol is bugged and instantly kills everything allows me to say that the game is perfectly balanced? no.

Yeah, those 10 points refer to fallout 2 in majority (except eye shots and missing at point-blank range). Fallout 1 had different stuff (speed run in like 7 mins), however advanced power armor at least wasn't lying in a unprotected locker. (or power armor for that matter since APA was absent in F1.) I consider Fallout 1 a better game than Fallout 2 in terms of atmosphere, even if it had less lucre and stuff. It was less abusive, too.