This.



Value is determined by the individual person. Most people may find 100$ valuable, but a small portion may not. Same thing with this. A small amount of people probably thought a .32 pistol was very important/valuable to them, so they locked it in a very secure safe. I think the way Bethesda did this was perfectly fine.

Like playing lottery with high level locked containers? Nah... You have logic in your post, but gameplaywise it can get frustrating to max out your skill to open the hardest things and find pocket lint there.

I'd suggest to make the amount of the locked containers depend on their difficultylevel, and give the hardest ones something really special in them since there wouldn't be so much of them and getting them open would (and will) require real effort. Heck, why not even kinda hide the hardest ones in guarded places where the player can't just go after dumping all points in lockpicking straight from the beginning.

Everyone is getting all philosophical. I'm talking gameplay mechanics and player reward. If each tier draws from a pool of "stuff", good, bad and ugly, with increasingly better "stuff" thrown into the pot for each successive tier, you can have your sentimental .32 pistol as a possible outcome, but you could also have something the player finds valuable as well. In Fallout 3, the fact that the "stuff" behind a very easy lock was the same as behind a very hard lock was, well, very frustrating.

Actually, the safes, locked metal doors to single rooms usually poured out the goods. But yes, Very Hard Locks should have big rewards (as they usually do from my experience in Fallout 3...)

Rewards i consider valuable: Guns, 50+ bottle caps, 50+ ammo, Nuka Cola, Intact Garden Gnome, Armor, unique weapons/armor/items.

Stuff doesn't have to be valuable to be locked up. I actually found it kind of refreshing that some of the best stuff could be found just sitting out in the open. There definitely were valuable items in Very-Hard locked containers like the Victory Rifle and the Zhu Rong Chinese Pistol. I don't think anyone should be guaranteed better items. Just being able to open every container should be enough.

this is a simple fix really, just put better stuff in the "very hard lock" containers.

Yeah.. the lockpick difficulty didn't seem to accomplish much. If they didn't want you to get in to something they would put a "needs a key" lock on it. For the most part all it accomplished was making you have to go back for something later.
I don't really care if the loots better... I just think I should be able to get into something if I want to unless it's a plot point that I'm not supposed to get into yet.

In most cases the level designers did try to make chests/lockers/loot of varying quality in the different encounters you come across, as from in the GECK you will see that most Safes and such have auto-generated loot based on lists (Form Lists) of potential loot. Unfortunately however Bethesda did not extend that capability very far to include 5 different types of loot for each unique container type, there are usually 2 or at most 3 form lists that are used. Also the lists were not that extensive in terms of what you got for loot, so in alot of cases it did indeed seem like we were getting similar/same loot for different lock levels. Also in Fallout3 the form-lists chosen for loot was not always consistently applied (i.e. where VHard locks had VHard level loot), and in many cases it was I think intentionally left on the low-end of loot despite the lock type.

Thus the GECK/engine supports this ability to add randomized loot at different power levels/value if the level designers link an appropriate form-list of loot that corresponds to the lock-level used to secure that loot. In fact the engine supports this quite robustly, so the loot distribution per lock type is a design choice and up to the skill/thoroughness of the level designer versus a limitation in the game.

Miax

Yeah, but that was hand placed and very much the exception to the rule.


Interesting, I was not aware of this. I think that makes it even more frustrating, that someone went through the trouble of making a system that was almost completely ignored. If an appropriate system is already in place, here's hoping the Obsidian team has more sense and actually utilizes it!

And your point is what exactly? That's a high level container with high level loot. Just because there's a good lock doesn't mean there has to be good loot. If someone has access to a high quality lock, they're going to use it. They're not going to say "Oh, I should save this for something extremely valuable. I should just put my less valuable crap in this out of place row of lockers."

This thread is arguing that for each tier in difficulty the game should draw from different lists of items, with increasingly useful loot to compensate the player for skill point investment, a system which actually exists within the game's architecture but was grievously ignored. In providing an example to contrast this point, you cited only two of the many locked containers in Fallout 3, both of which are entirely outside of the framework being discussed.

I have to agree as well with this. The premise of the argument is that the risk vs. reward formula applies equally well here as it does in real life. In fact many would argue that getting the risk vs reward formula right is of paramount importance to making the player feel like they are accomplishing something, that they are moving forward with their character development. You can look at chest loot from many angles; one being that if I the player put in X amount of time solving a mini-game, the reward should be equivalent to that effort In General. The other argument is that all rewards should be surprises and what you get for an effort doesn't apply to the loot your rewarded with. I am strongly in the former camp, as are I think most video game developers, in that the risk vs. reward has to be there and it has to be right or the player feels over- or under- rewarded for their efforts. When done badly, it can quickly lead to frustration.

The problem I have with random loot drops Overall is that they can result in great frustration for the player, especially if the loot comes out low for something the player invested a bunch of time in. In these cases the game ceases being Fun, the burden factor goes up, frustration goes up and this leads to bad things. However when the loot is at least Somewhat predictable versus the effort you have to apply, then the player gets more choice in how they spend their time and on what they spend their time on. If I'm up for a big adventure and want big loot, I like knowing that (for example) Evergreen Mills is loaded with loot and waiting for me. If however I just want some light action and don't care about big loot, I'll scavange the wasteland. In that predictability, I can better plan my gaming time and know that I will be amply rewarded for it.

One can argue this both ways, but the gaming companies tend to stick to the more predictable path, as that leads to happier players and more popularity for the game overall, which ultimately means more money. We puny human beings like predctability in our lives, and that trends right into our video games that we spend a million hours playing. So it's little wonder why most of us want to know that if we spend tons of time on a very hard lock, that we're reasonably sure that something good is inside. It's expected that randomness is involved, but in general the risk has to balance with the reward. Todd Howard has spoken of this difficulty in more than one podcast now, so while we GECKulate over it here you can rest assured that Bethesda and Obsidian contemplated the same question themselves. How successful Obsidian will be? Oct 19th.

I lurk a lot around here, but I wanted to chime in on this issue. First, I simply never cared that much for the lockpick mini game in FO3. So with that in mind, after my first few playthrough's I learned which locks were important and which ones were not. I actually got to where I rarely (if ever) messed with picking locks. This was mostly due to feeling it was just a dang waste of time to spend 30 to 60 seconds (or more sometimes) just to unlock a lock and find 6 - 5mm rounds, a pack of cigarettes and a butter knife in it, lol. That's just not worth it to me.

Secondly, for the most part, there were very few places that you had to be able to pick a leveled lock that were really of any importance. Most of the time they gave you another way around that you maybe had to fight your way through a section to get a key or another entry point or whatever. But it wasn't always entirely necessary to pick a lock to continue with a quest.

So, I can relate to and agree with the folks saying the loot would be more enticing if it were levelled. Perhaps then I might actually put some points in lockpick before I get to the point where you're just spending points just to be spending them.

Also, I actually liked the lock picking system in Oblivion much better that FO3. But I realize the devs probably wanted something new and different for Fallout so they came up with the other mini game. Another thing I think was missing were the "boss" level chests that Oblivion had. It would have been nice if there were a few of those around, but I guess you could compare some of the little armory's you can unlock and loot as a sort of boss level reward.

Agreed, why would someone use such a strong lock to guard some glue?

Or a cup and a clipboard.

The "Finder" Perks for ammo and caps definitely are worthwhile (ammo more so) in FO3. But yes, if it's "Very Hard", it should be a big reward, like 100 caps, 100 ammo, etc.

Is there an argument to be made? I find that Hell Yes! Is the most logical answer...

I agree, but I do feel that if it's a stronger lock it should, rationally, have better stuff in it. It would just be kind of nice if this was reflected in Fallout...

Oh sweet, I don't have to perform necromancy on this thread after-all, someone has already gone through the incantations on my behalf!

I would like if locks contained leveled loot MOST OF THE TIME, although it got really annoying when i spent 10 minutes trying to open a safe with a very hard lock on it and find some beer and a stimpack it added realism to the game.