OXM responds to the Fallout community

patriot_41 said:
Then again, maybe the inventory of Dungeon Siege was best - you could gather all items automatically and they auto arranged themselves. If you couldn't pick an item up, then there was no place for it. Also - having a spell to transmute items into gold was the best thing ever.
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So, instead you have to go back to town every 5 minutes to sell crap. Fabulous. I mean, you're gonna sell the stuff either way, but the inventory system just adds on to the trouble. An endless inventory is surely bullshit, but some sort of mechanic to make it more bearable would certainly be more appreciated. Like the DS transmuting system, or adding a few extra inventory "pages", or bags of storage to the game like in NWN.

Then again, maybe we're arguing the wrong thing here, and the problem likes not inventory design but game design in general. After all, when the game gets too fixated on loot collection (like Diablo), there's no perfect way to accommodate that. Although, I've played a few Diablo-clones where loot in itself wasn't quite so abundant and there was no bullshit item improvement system, so the inventory felt just about the right size.

Yeah. I don't see a problem in that.
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The problem is that those things are rare (esp. runes), and you need to grind a lot to get them, and usually want to keep them for quite a while. At a certain point, though, you pretty much run out of space to keep them.

As for the FO3 vault: it's bullshit design. Not to mention that it's longer and more useless than FO2's temple, you can't readily skip it in any way. "Leaving the vault" save does little good, because you're forced to play the character with the same exact appearance if you use that.
 
"Leaving the vault" save does little good, because you're forced to play the character with the same exact appearance if you use that.
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If I remember correct, this savegame is made exactly before the "do you really want to..?" dialogue window pops up. So you can change your character again and even transform him to female or male, etc.
 
Problem with that is that all of your Vault choices are set in stone.

Killing the Overseer, saving Butch's mom, etc.

Kind of makes playing over with the character you want to make harder.
 
generalissimofurioso said:
Problem with that is that all of your Vault choices are set in stone.

Killing the Overseer, saving Butch's mom, etc.

Kind of makes playing over with the character you want to make harder.
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Yep. With that said, every time I begin a new game I always try to go the path of most resistance. Sometimes it's just easier to just be the bad guy and not care so much 8-)
 
Lexx said:
There is a D2 mod, called "plugy". It gives you a endless big chest and as far as I could see, it totally destroys the balance of the game. You simply place every shit into the chest and after some time, it's so full, but you don't want to delete or sell something... Still, it makes no sense, because most of the items are "outdated" fast anyway.
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I've used an expanded chest mod and it did nothing to the balance. It's not like it changes what I use, it just allows me to store stuff that's a pain to get (uniques and set items) and useful (gems, jewels, etc.). I still would have preferred at least a larger inventory (probably about 5 times as big) so that I didn't have to make so many trips to town (and I pick up nothing worse than blues [magical]). I only want to go to town when I want to (look at new equipment or whatever) or when it's quest pertinent, not to unload my inventory. Another solution would be to have a larger chest and allow the player to store and sell items from anywhere, but only buy or (depending on whether it's a problem or not) take items out of storage in town. You still have to take more breaks than you should but at least it would speed up the game a little. What might work best is having infinite (or effectively so) storage and just send picked up items to it when your inventory is full, thus still limiting the player's inventory but not creating more needless work for the player. Another solution would be not allowing players to sell items but you've have to make sure to balance item costs in the store to fit that.

Durability would also be good to remove as it really serves the same purpose (trips to town, slowing down the game), with the money sink aspect of it being simple to handle by giving the player less gold. I'm not against durability all together, just durability that can be repaired endlessly with the only penalty being gold. I'll also note that Torchlight has a shared storage box, which is there to save players some grinding and allow the player to actually use those super rare weapons for other classes without hacking or doing the join server, drop item, rejoin server with other character trick.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
As for the FO3 vault: it's bullshit design. Not to mention that it's longer and more useless than FO2's temple, you can't readily skip it in any way. "Leaving the vault" save does little good, because you're forced to play the character with the same exact appearance if you use that.
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IIRC if you save right before you open the vault you can still change the way your character looks. I think it's your character's sex you can't change.

Still, it's lazy design because they could just provide with an option to start there, instead.
 
I really liked the character creation from Morrowind. In character, to the point.

Fallout 3's was a bit worse, but still, I treated the Vault 101 episode merely as part of the storytelling that doubles as a tutorial. It was no worse than the ToT, and it wasn't as boring (though beating armed security guards with bare fists was moronic at best). Skipping it would do little good IMO.
 
Could've been a bit shorter and more to the point. Although, frankly, I guess nobody expects games like this to be played more than once, I mean why would you want to? Your one character should be able to do and be absolutely everything in the game.
 
Silencer said:
I really liked the character creation from Morrowind. In character, to the point.
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Unfortunately right after you create your character if you jump the rail instead of talking to the sheriff you get stuck between the rail and the invisible wall. Talk about harsh punishment for not following directions.

Half-Life did a good job by making the tutorial seperate and optional, unfortunately it's up there for slow, boring beginnings on replays for games. The tram ride is the worst of it (cool the first time though) but it's amusing to jump out of it.
 
I prefer minimalistic tutorials, or optional ones.
I despise tutorials that you can't skip even if you have played through the game already once. ToT was bad, so was the Vault 101. Unnecessary and boring sections of wasting my time.
Hopefully, F:NV will be better in this regard.

Seriously though, what the hell happened to the game manuals ?
These days in most cases manuals are absolutely pointless, there is no usefull information printed on them anymore.
The damn things are about 10 pages long, and contain key bindings, and thats almost it.
You might as well stop making them at that point. The manual should contain some useful information or atleast some concept art. Thats the entire point of including a manual.
 
Remember the old manuals that sometimes were more than just instructions on how to play the game?

For example the Wing Commander manuals were made to resemble publications from that universe, full of articles that included stuff you would actually encounter or use in the game.

Man, I miss those manuals, so much interesting things to read about.
 
Yeah, I miss manuals like that. Well, I wasn't old enough to play the games when they came out, but still, I have seen those manuals.
Like the Joan's spacefighting part, which was in essence a in universe break down of enemy crafts, from perspective of a military writer. III had one of the more intresting manuals I have seen.
You actually want to read that damn thing, it's genuinely instresting. If I remember correctly that is.
 
Several of Origins games had such manuals.

Wing Commander 1 and 3, Strike Commander (sort of like Wing Commander but with mercenary pilots in the 21st century).
The manual of Wing Commander Privateer was also somewhat like that, a shame they dropped the pictures made for the story/interview with the main character.

My copies of Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams also came with supposedly ingame published books such as the guides by Dr Spector (yes, I know what the reference is)

I also really liked the official guide to Bioforge which was written from the perspective of an AI living in the universe.
 
Good manuals not as old, as you think. Three (or five, maybe) years ago a game named Perimeter was released by some Ukrainian (or Russian, i can't remember right now) devs. Its manual... well i found some pretty stories here, which were worth independent publishing - excellent introducing into universe and digging into it from several vision points...

And, surely, Fallout 2 manual wasn't that bad =) I pretty much liked it. Real dissapointment about new games - what a problem in writing good manual? They must feel NOTHING about universe of game they making to not be able make manual for it...

P.S. Beth have got nice manual in Morrowind (UncannyGarlic, don't remind me of all these bugs, as prisoner shouldn't jump into water filled with slaughterfishes :twisted: ). Still don't know why they didn't continued such good tradition in these days...
 
-The local super mutants are pretty tough and will keep you from wandering aimlessly in the early portions of the game - they tend to be tougher even than deathclaws
-With high local reputation at Goodsprings, you'll get a free bed to sleep in and a discount at the store
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I like these parts.
 
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