New Vegas Nexus launched & New Vegas opinions

[Korin]

I'm not sure I could even begin to give a thumbs up or thumbs down yet. I can certainly say this is a huge game. I'm about 25 hours in and still pretty overwhelmed by the breadth of stuff to do. It's very Fallout 3.

Wait, what?

FO3 had stuff to do? The only things FO3 had to do where tons of fetch quests. I easily beat all the side quests and over half the main story in 25 hours.

How people got 100+ hours out of this game is a mystery.

Exploration, replays, looking for unique weapons, bobblehead hunting, etc. It adds up.

 

[willooi]

How people got 100+ hours out of this game is a mystery.

I spent about 200 hours on it all up over several playthroughs and loved every minute of it - the closest I've come to living inside a game world.

Plus, I didn't begin playing FO3 with any expectations or the 'what could have been' disappointment of losing Van Buren. FO3 introduced me to the series and in hindsight I see where you guys are coming from - FO2 is by far the best RPG I've ever played - so in that respect my experience is bound to differ from the hardcore contingent on here.

Sure sure, people on here can call me whatever names and bring up the 'it wasn't a real Fallout' argument, but regardless I just loved exploring every nook and cranny of the world. Sure the writing was very weak and the main quest and logical errors were a concern, as was the fact that my second character had 10 SPECIAL and 100 skillpoints in everything, but that initial moment as soon as I left the Vault and saw all those undiscovered locations on the radar, I just had to keep on going and going and going.

Therefore New Vegas can't help but be amazing for me; the world of FO3 but with Sawyer/Avellone writing it as a spiritual successor to FO2...which is just crazy.

 

[Gaddes]

ever hear of a little game called Second Life?

lol of course. I can see people playing FO3 as a some sorta LARP simulator.

Exploration, replays, looking for unique weapons, bobblehead hunting, etc. It adds up.

Hmmm. Perhaps I worded my previous comment wrong (this isn't a surprise lol). I can see some people getting enjoyment out of exploration, but I didn't find enjoyment running threw Metro Crawl #200 or Abandoned Power Station #20 just to find a slightly more powerful weapon or just random loot. I'll admit I did find all the Boddleheads and did 3 playthroughs, but honestly my Neutral and Evil playthroughs where a pain solely because the writing and actual choices where so god awful.

 

[Korin]

Exploration, replays, looking for unique weapons, bobblehead hunting, etc. It adds up.

Hmmm. Perhaps I worded my previous comment wrong (this isn't a surprise lol). I can see some people getting enjoyment out of exploration, but I didn't find enjoyment running threw Metro Crawl #200 or Abandoned Power Station #20 just to find a slightly more powerful weapon or just random loot. I'll admit I did find all the Boddleheads and did 3 playthroughs, but honestly my Neutral and Evil playthroughs where a pain solely because the writing and actual choices where so god awful.

Yeah, decision/alignment wise there wasn't a lot of replay value (well, enough to do a couple runs as good/evil).

My last playthrough finished at max special/stats with 72/72 achievements and almost all of the unique weapons. I sucked that game dry. I shudder to think how much time I'm going to lose on New Vegas if you can't actually max everything out and there's no way to "have it both ways" with quests and factions. This game is going to ruin my life.

 

[VRaptor117]

And even if they didn't, there was always food to buy at the store. I ALWAYS had food and it was NEVER, EVER an issue, EVER.

All it did was make me press F3 every now and then. That's it. Pointless.

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Pretty much what you said. If "Hardcore" mode doesn't force me to rely on Survival to find food or Barter to buy it, I'm going to be disappointed. I'd actually prefer a system where most of the food items (and especially ones you find in the wild) merely delay the decrease of the food timer, not restore it. Chewing nuts and twigs in the wasteland is not a meal and shouldn't be treated as such.

The same goes for water: a handful of toilet water shouldn't quench your thirst, it should merely take the edge off and serve only to delay the inevitable.

That said, the economy is one of the most difficult things to balance in a game, much less an open world RPG. What needs to be done is to understand how players try to subvert the system to gain an advantage and try to stop them.

For example, if a player kills a ton of townspeople, grabs all of their equipment and heads to another town to cash in, the shopkeeper shouldn't say "I'll give you $50,000", they should say "Holy crap! How did you get all this stuff, you must have had to murder like 30 people! Get the hell out of here, lunatic!"

Finally, going along with the theme earlier - Todd Howard killed my dog.

 

[100LBSofDogmeat]

Pretty much what you said. If "Hardcore" mode doesn't force me to rely on Survival to find food or Barter to buy it, I'm going to be disappointed. I'd actually prefer a system where most of the food items (and especially ones you find in the wild) merely delay the decrease of the food timer, not restore it. Chewing nuts and twigs in the wasteland is not a meal and shouldn't be treated as such.

The same goes for water: a handful of toilet water shouldn't quench your thirst, it should merely take the edge off and serve only to delay the inevitable.

That said, the economy is one of the most difficult things to balance in a game, much less an open world RPG. What needs to be done is to understand how players try to subvert the system to gain an advantage and try to stop them.

For example, if a player kills a ton of townspeople, grabs all of their equipment and heads to another town to cash in, the shopkeeper shouldn't say "I'll give you $50,000", they should say "Holy crap! How did you get all this stuff, you must have had to murder like 30 people! Get the hell out of here, lunatic!"

Finally, going along with the theme earlier - Todd Howard killed my dog.

I do agree, all that makes good sense. Will it be implemented like that, no way in hell. Not to hard to control in table-top RPG's. Which leads into a comment I had about the "stuff to do" in "Fallout" 3.. there were didn't really seem to be a whole hell of a lot. I guess collecting arbitrary things can be considered something to do; when the story took a dive, which it did often, I would default back to the Morrowind/Oblivion steal-everything-not-nailed-down behavior. Houses full of shit I'd never use or sell for money I couldn't do anything with. Some people find that fun, but it's pretty fucking boring.

I think these open RPG's, unlike their table-top parents, suffer from a lack of direction by giving a, possibly, false sense of open-ended choice. Though this could just be the player's fault.

Todd Howard killed your dog!? I knew it!! Did he try to convince it he was a world-class game designer first?

 

[Briosafreak]

Pretty much what you said. If "Hardcore" mode doesn't force me to rely on Survival to find food or Barter to buy it, I'm going to be disappointed.

It does. And it's tough, particularly if you tend to leave the roads and wander a bit.

 

[Texas Renegade]

the biggest issues with FO3's economy--

1. The shopkeepers upgraded their inventory way too much. Moira should have had basic stuff only. The good stuff should have been reserved to BoS and Rivet city. Also, when you sell something it shouldn't sit in their inventory forever.

 

[WorstUsernameEver]

Pretty much what you said. If "Hardcore" mode doesn't force me to rely on Survival to find food or Barter to buy it, I'm going to be disappointed.

It does. And it's tough, particularly if you tend to leave the roads and wander a bit.

So, now that the embargo's been lifted, can you expand on what you were saying about early reviews?

 

[Innawerkz]

Pretty much what you said. If "Hardcore" mode doesn't force me to rely on Survival to find food or Barter to buy it, I'm going to be disappointed. I'd actually prefer a system where most of the food items (and especially ones you find in the wild) merely delay the decrease of the food timer, not restore it. Chewing nuts and twigs in the wasteland is not a meal and shouldn't be treated as such.

The same goes for water: a handful of toilet water shouldn't quench your thirst, it should merely take the edge off and serve only to delay the inevitable.

That said, the economy is one of the most difficult things to balance in a game, much less an open world RPG. What needs to be done is to understand how players try to subvert the system to gain an advantage and try to stop them.

For example, if a player kills a ton of townspeople, grabs all of their equipment and heads to another town to cash in, the shopkeeper shouldn't say "I'll give you $50,000", they should say "Holy crap! How did you get all this stuff, you must have had to murder like 30 people! Get the hell out of here, lunatic!"

I like it. Even if you had a reputation hit (like 'Child-Killer') that followed you around if you mowed down an entire town or continually shot 'innocent people' on sight. This rep would follow you throughout the game and have different consequences.

- Bounty Hunters - similar to Fallout 3. Wanted posters put up around the Mojave.
- Stores refuse to trade with you - except for the odd Raider outpost. Of course, Raiders would gouge you on the prices anyway so all of your 'lunatic loot' would be worth a 1/4 of what it was.
- Banned from the Strip. Robot patrolmen would have access to your photo instantly. You'd have to find a covert way in or disguise yourself to get by them without being attacked.

This rep (call it 'psychopath') could be temporary or require you to pay off the bounty (a la Red Dead Redemption) in order to lift these penalties. In other words, try to break the game and act like an asshole, the game WILL break and you will be treated like an asshole.

 

[Aphyosis]

I'm curious as to if i can turn certain aspects of Hardcore mode off. Initially i was excited over it, but if it's simply bars i need to watch i think that's more of a chore, as opposed to a feature.

With that said, i want Crippling, Heal over time Stimpaks and ammo weight.

Might have to poke around with the console/GECK.

 

[Anarchosyn]

Chewing nuts and twigs in the wasteland is not a meal and shouldn't be treated as such.

I know many vegans who would disagree.

For example, if a player kills a ton of townspeople, grabs all of their equipment and heads to another town to cash in, the shopkeeper shouldn't say "I'll give you $50,000", they should say "Holy crap! How did you get all this stuff, you must have had to murder like 30 people! Get the hell out of here, lunatic!"

It's an irradiated wasteland filled with autonomous collectives -- why would the dude in the next town care at all? It's his gain; it's not like shop keepers can file an invoice to have X, Y and Z shipped to them from somewhere.

I fail to see where the implicit moral system would come from.

 

[Crni Vuk]

It's an irradiated wasteland filled with autonomous collectives -- why would the dude in the next town care at all? It's his gain; it's not like shop keepers can file an invoice to have X, Y and Z shipped to them from somewhere.

I fail to see where the implicit moral system would come from.

I would say it has less to do with morale but carefull buisness. You never know if the people might come down to claim their goods back ~ regarding surviovrs and such. That morale would somehow drop is obvious. But I doubt people would start to play with their lifes eventually. Talking about an exagerated case of course. Every merchant with half abrain will be suspicious about a consumer that throws the equipment of a whole town around.