As I've said many times - Stop focusing on the brush and canvas, and focus on the picutre. The gameplay is just the tools used to make "the picutre".

At the end of the day, noone gives a damn what brushes and canvas Da Vinci used - They're too busy looking at the Mona Lisa's smile.

In the case of an RPG, the "brush and canvas" happen to be part of the picture, though. The character creation/development metagame is part of the overall game, so it's not that simple, IMHO.

The Picture is the story. The RPG mechanics a brush.

1? Wonky FPS/RPG Hybrid gameplay. Fallout 3's combat is pretty bad. Skills are almost useless, combat is too fidgety and sniping svcks hard. Some guy with a Small Guns (say, 10%) skill can kill a wasteland-savvy raider easily. In the previous Fallouts, charging at a enemy with ridiculous skill level would only lead to a painful demise.

2? SPECIAL atributes need to have more meaning. A 10 PE character's only diference when compared to a 6 PE character is that he can see his enemies on the motion sensor from far away. That's it. Having 10 PE doesn't make a Eagle-Eyed Sniper who can shoot radroaches from half a kilometer with a sniper rifle. Having 1 PE doesn't make me a blind man who can't shoot the broad side of a barn FROM THE INSIDE. Its pretty much the same thing, except for the motion sensor. Same with pretty much any other stat. Having 1 strength doesn't turn me into a pathetic weakling who can barely hold a rock and having 10 strength doesn't turn me into a muscle-bound macho man who kills Super Mutants with his fists for [censored]'n giggles. If my character is a 10 IN genious, he won't reprogram sentient AIs and remake the human genetic code while bored. If my character is a 1 IN idiot, he's not going to babble like a idiot or act like a pathetic monkey moron. There's simply no diference. SPECIAL in FO3, simply put, is HORRIBLE.

3? svcky interface. While inventory interface is slightly (slightly) better than the previous Fallouts, character screen is BAAAAAAD. Why I have to look at a lot of windows just to see my perks, screens, hp and SPECIAL? In the previous Fallouts, games released in the end of the nineties with lower resolution, I can see my entire character sheet in one window. Cosolified interface for teh win.

Metaphors aside, I would agree with you when it comes to...say...a straight FPS or a driving game. In an RPG character creation and development strategies coincide with the game mechanics, so it's a unique situation in which the player is exposed to the game mechanics in ways that don't happen in other types of games. Besides, when huge weapons don't have STR requirements, that's not under the covers...that's slapping my suspension of disbelief in the face. Of course, in an FPS I wouldn't care, but in an RPG it matters.

[quote name='agent_c' post='13619596' date='Jan 13 2009, 04:08 PM']As I've said many times - Stop focusing on the brush and canvas, and focus on the picutre. The gameplay is just the tools used to make "the picutre".

At the end of the day, noone gives a damn what brushes and canvas Da Vinci used - They're too busy looking at the Mona Lisa's smile.[/quote]
I like to paint; and some brushes cost more than two copies of Fallout 3 :shocking:

~But it is funny that you compare da Vinci and his brush strokes to Fallout [src="http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/mona_nav/main_monafrm.html"]*[/url]

Haters: Oh my god! It's crooked!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Well if Fallout 1 was a painting from Da Vinci Bethesda sure made the http://farm1.static.flickr.com/32/64146893_f7f96007db.jpg?v=0, Similar colours. Similar tools even. But ... still not the same.

*Edit

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/megamonalisa_mona-goddess-lucina_2.jpg
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/megamonalisa_no-name_1355.jpg

A lot of RPG players like that character creation and min-max metagames, but a lot don't as well. The older I get, the less inclined I am to min-max, and I tend to play some PvP games where min-maxxing is a major competitive advantage. I thought Fallout 2 had an interesting workaround for that...with their prefab characters. Mess around and create your own character, or choose one of these. As long as there is an easy out for folks who don't want to deal with the complexity of deep systems, I'm all for it.

Just for clarification, just because you like getting into the mechanics of the system doesn't mean you're any more inclined to min/max than any other type of player. I for one like looking under the hood and seeing how things work (don't really need much more than a cursory examination in regards to Fallout 3...) but I'm also not starting out characters with maxed stats, etc.

Unless min/max has taken on a different meaning since my days playing tabletop. Where it meant someone who was primarily concerned with maxing out their relevant stats at the expense of all others. Like our little group had a player who always picked a Fighter-type and then made sure his Strength and Agility - or parallel attributes depending on the game - were at the max so he could totally slaughter everyone from the get-go. Even if that meant an Intelligence or something at the lowest possible score. That's what I think of when I think of min/maxing - making a character with the express purpose of using the stats to make the "strongest" and most efficient character build for a given purpose, rather than envisioning a realistic 3-dimensional character and picking attributes and skills that best describe that character.

I'd agree, though. I thought having pre-made character archetypes so a more "casual" (or whatever the term would be) player can just jump into the game (or even make a couple minor changes before starting) without having to worry about whether or not that particular character would "work" is a good thing. Just because you have a highly detailed system with rules and modifiers to account for everything, and an intricate interconnection and parallel usefulness of all the various stats, doesn't mean that it can't have an intuitive interface. I mean, regardless of how "deep" the RPG system is, you're still just assigning points every time you level up or whatever. You don't necessarily need to know exactly what Small Guns does or how many things it modifies, or how many calculations go into a to-hit roll in order to know that if you're missing enemies a lot that you might want to points into it.

You see this in RP systems which grow stats as the character levels. I'm thinking particularly of the ICE system here, but many systems, including the TES systems work too. To min-max, a player would choose stats in such a way that by the end of the game, the character will be as powerful as possible, regardless of how weak and gimped the character may be early on. I ehar folks argue that only Bnet kiddies play WoW. I just point them to the many threads on the WoW forums breaking down calculations of game mechanics and how best to take advantage of them. In terms of Fallout, folks used to argue which perks were better than others, etc.

Generally, it's gaming the system, or Roll-playing as opposed to Roleplaying. A serious roleplayer would create a character based in a roleplay concept without regard for the mechanics of the game. A serious rollplayer would create a character optimized for gameplay success. A casual player might want to create a "useful" character that can do moste things "qwell enough not to be a bother". Most of us are somehwere in between.

Some pet peeves.

1.Lack of original enemies and overly redundant ones.There are too many raiders and raider related places in the game.They must outnumber every other group in the area by 10-1.

2.No starting traits that you can pick( with bonuses and penalties)only those earned through quests.

3.Radiation is not all that much of a danger.It takes alot to even begin suffering side effects and it is easily cured.You could swim in the Potomac for an hour ingame time and get nothing worse than a warm feeling.

4.Too much of everything.Weapons/items/armor.Why even have dirty water and animal meat or irradiated food when you are never forced to use them.There is no struggle even fresh out of the vault.

5.Ranged damage based on skill.It would make sense for maybe unarmed,but if i shoot you with a gun it isn't going to hurt more/less whether i know how to use it or not.

6.As said by others SPECIAL isn't all that special.

7.I griped about the mechanics of ranged combat elsewhere.

8.Too many perks.A perk at every level,in my book,is way overboard.I keep readiing where people say the game is too easy one of the reasons,in my opinion,is that it suffers from an embarrasment of "riches" and perks are one of those.

I don't believe anyone who posts criticism of the game is a hater,unless that is the only reason why someone is posting.I know i don't consider myself one because i enjoy it despite many of the quibbles i have with it.I know i debated getting the game because i was afraid it was going to be Oblivion in a different setting.Thankfully they changed somethings,and regretfully they kept some other things that i didn't like.

Good list of peeves, and this is just a nitpick - Swimming in the Potomac is the lowest level of increased Rad count that you can get, 1 Rad/second. Without Radaway, you'll get Minor Radiation Sickness after a little over three minutes and die in just under 17 minutes - so FO3 radiaiton is a little more dangerous than you make it out to be. But I totally agree with the "easily cured" part. Even without the Infirmary, removing 999 Rads costs 100 caps. That's pretty ridiculous.

There are places...Wheaton Armory comes to mind, that can kill you very quickly, even with RadX. Yes, it's easy to cure, but I think it's fairly balanced.

I'd agree with most of your list, save for this one.

This isn't a terribly new concept, and I've played a couple tabletop rulesets where damage was modified by your degree of success, for example. (Rolling well under the to-hit chance would do more damage than the same shot just barely making the roll.) Essentially a character with a higher skill level would have a better chance of success and be able to do more damage than a novice marksman - works out to basically the same thing in Fallout 3, where skill level is more of "spread" effect than a to-hit roll.

Because not all shots are equal, mind you. Let's say I'm an excellent marksman, I'm going to be much more likely to be "dead on" with my shots than a novice. I will be more on target, and the chance of me landing a glancing blow is much smaller than someone with lower skill levels. I know where all the "sweet spots" are and will be aiming for those, and be much more likely to hit the right places. A novice marksman is going to be more worried about simply hitting the target at all (even if you're going for a head shot, or a limb wound, etc - you're more worried about hitting the target than about placing a bullet between the eyes, right into a nerve cluster, severing an artery, etc.) Which means more grazing shots, near-misses, flesh wounds, etc.

Yes, getting shot by a bullet is going to hurt regardless, but not all shots are created equal. A bullet that hits me right between the eyes is very likely going to kill me right out. But if that same bullet simply grazes my ear or glances off my skull, it's going to have a different effect (losing less hit points.) This is what the system is meant to represent - higher skill levels means you're making that shot between the eyes, while at lower skill levels you're more likely to make that grazing shot.

It doesn't have to mean that somehow the bullet is leaving the barrel of the gun at a different velocity depending on your skill level.

Now, for the sake of realism damage caused should be a range that's modified by your character skill. So that a novice character still has a chance of making that lucky shot. But I think that's what critical hits are supposed to account for anyway.

This is the way I see it. A novice marksman typically aims at the center of mass of the target...for a man target, that would typically be the chest. A chest shot can obviously kill, but in an environment filled with armor, a chest shot might prove to be a weak shot. Shooters with much higher skill may feel they can go for head shots, or limb shots and still have ha high to-hit percentage.

We could also argue that experience can result in greater damage. You may know, for example, that combat armor is weakest right under the arm. If you can wait for that perfect shot, a normally defeated attack to the midsection could be a killing blow.

The system isn't perfect, but weapon skill is modeled.

Fair points.

Anyone care to comment,i forgot this one,on the almost complete uselessness of crippling limbs against armed opponents?

Crippling their head makes them less accurate but if someone is using a heavy weapon crippling their arm doesn't make them unable to use a two handed weapon.

Also what does crippling a torso actually accomplish?

Crippled arms seems to reduce accuracy, and ot ay make them drop weapons. Crippled legs do slow them down, and that's useful for ranged specialists.

Crippled torso is supposed to make the target "flinch" more when they get injured again - I haven't noticed this because by the time their torso's are crippled, their overall HP is low enough that they die really soon afterwards.

I love the voice acting myself, but would like to see more body language. Like when a girl starts sobbing because her family is dead, why doesn't she throw her hands up to her face??

I haven't seen that one, but does she move her head in a unique way when she sobs? If not then perhaps it was just that the animation system makes it impractical, but if so... the I don't get it.