Hello.

First of all, New Vegas is a masterpiece. Alas, i strongly feel that some minor, yet essential, things could be missing.

About Casinos:

-Except poker not being implemented, i don't feel they are glamorous/crowded/noisy enough to offer the feeling and atmosphere of a real casino. I realise this is a post apocalyptic wasteland but New Vegas should live up to its name. Gamblers cursing, yelling, crying, some going berserk and some even drawing their guns would make a huge difference and upgrade to the immersion. Again, what's up with the empty and quiet casinos? With all the respect, they more like remind me of my grandma's cottage.

-Except poker not being implemented, slot machines being more profitable than roulette? Being able to place the same bets on slot machines and roulette is a no no. Slot machines are for small fries.

-Except poker not being implemented, think what difference would it make to raise the 60 seconds of "cheating prevention" or "shuffling cards" when loading a game to, let's say, 10 minutes. I confess that when i needed money i resorted to the easy slot machine save/load thing and got like 100k caps within minutes. I don't have to tell you that this ruins the economy of the game and the whole scavenging/questing to earn money process that makes fallout what it is.

I could write an essay about casinos but i'am too tired and i will probably tire you too. I guess i can only hope that this post and its points will not have been written totally in vain.

Bumping it, for it had been buried too deeply and i trust the points i made are logical.

Well the creaky Gamebryo engine the game's made with doesn't handle 'crowded' well. As for the slot machines I agree, they're too easy to rake it in with, but as a developer of a mass market game you have to cater to the lowest common denominator sometimes. A lot of game players are too lazy or have attention spans too short to grind money out legitimately, so you have to make it easy.

The lack of poker, well it's a slow burning game and they probably though having caravan as the card game was enough.

Gambling in FNV is too easy period. I started a thread yesterday wondering about a few things like being banned. Apparently the casinos were put in place to provide access to caps for your character. My character's LUCK skill is 8.

Each Casino "remembers" how much you have won over the course of the game. They never forget. At a certain point (varies but 8k-9k seems about average) they shut you down for winning too much. Their are 5-6 casinos in the game so you could potentially walk out of the Vegas area with 40k in caps after an hour or so of gambling. In many hours (100's) of gameplay in FO3 I never amassed a fortune even close to that though I admit acquiring caps in FO3 was never something I tried to do.

I personally think they should have removed the LUCK skill from the gambling portion of the game to make it more realistic. I don't know the traditional odds of winning at Blackjack, Roulette, and slots but typically Blackjack has the best odds of actually winning money, followed by roulette and slots being a way distant 3rd.

Casino's are really just free caps in FNV if you have a good luck score. Someone needs to chime in on the difficulty of gambling with a low luck score, say 5 or below.

Blackjack - the house edge varies due to different rules at different casinos, and because there is some element of skill involved in playing, but it's typically less than 1 percent.
Roulette - the house edge for an American roulette wheel (has zero and double zero slots) is 5.26%.
Slots - can range as high as a 25% house edge. They don't call them one-armed bandits for nothing.

i had 4 luck and lost 6,000 caps in 5 minutes.
but gained at least 45 caps in three hours.
i am dead serious.

I understand the need to satisfy the majority, but there is a difference between that and giving away money. FO3 was much harsher than that. Even if they adjusted gambling to be less "forgiving" with the idea of raising the 60 seconds penalty after loading to 10 - 30 minutes, it would be easier to make money than FO3. Players, at best, would try their real luck, and load if they lost a lot of money. But they will know that if they load they will have to come back another time. This save/load "glitch-like" thing would disappear.

Also many like the luck factor and i dont think it would be the best idea to remove it completely, Maybe lessen its factor. Raising the penalty though should do the trick by itself. It may sound annoying but it will add a lot of immersion and the feeling of gambling, because right now its more like withdrawing money from a bank.

As for the engine... hm it worked fine for me with overcrowding places. Maybe some will have problems. But casinos have like 1 gambler 5 casino staff anology and the gamblers just sit there quietly.

The vomiting and the drunkards were a good immersion attempt but not nearly enough.

PS: Nerf these bloody slot machines

Thanks for the update on that!

Last night I got banned from two casinos just by playing blackjack for 15 minutes in each. Max bet 200. Out of a sample of 25 hands, I think I won 17 of them and actually was dealt blackjack 4 times. I have a basic understanding of strategy but certainly not a pro by any means. It's way to easy.

I don't get the argument about it ruining the economy. If you have 40000 caps or 4 million caps, you can pretty much buy anything you want at that point in the game. The developers could have done so much more with the gambling issue instead of just banning you after a set limit.

Some ideas:

1.) Buy hotel rooms or property on the strip. Property would be super expensive of course but you could start out at a shack in the surrounding Freeside area and move up to the penthouse suite in The Tops... (Though I think the casino gives that too you after you win a certain amount in the current game). These rooms could have all sorts of decoration options, ammo desks, robot butlers, etc... all for a fee.

2.) Return the odds of winning closer to those odds posted above. Make a gambler work for his/her caps instead of just throwing money in our faces.

3.) Add poker, Brahmin racing, a few different slot machine themes...

Two years between games is a lot of time. I know they were working on expansions and such for FO3 but if the latest title of your game has "Vegas" in it and you advertise "gambling" as a feature then I would expect more then what was delivered. I like the game and I didn't buy it just to gamble but it just feels like the development team mailed this portion in.

I think, pretty sure really, that black jack is rigged. I got 5 luck, I play 1 chip till I get a win and a little message that "i'm feeling lucky". Then I max out my bets and roll. As soon as I lose a few I drop the bet back to a chip and wait for the message again...

I find Blackjack way more profitable than the slot machines. With 8 Luck, I could get banned from a casino in less than 30 minutes (maybe the full 30 if the cap is high, like at the Ultra-Luxe) playing Blackjack, but I lost way more than I won at the slots.

I wasn't that succesful with the slots and roulette was just too boring.

I agree the time limit should be raised, and while I have only Luck 5, from what I read here it may be that Luck has too great of an impact. Then again, if you really wanted to put your SPECIAL points into Luck then I think easy access to money is a fair and unique advantage to going that route. Honestly, you don't really need it though, money seems to be easy to come by in FNV.

I also agree that the casinos and the strip area are underwhelming. I would have rather had some of the empty-ish space in the Wasteland swapped for more area on the strip, since Vegas is always about gambling and casinos and 3 somewhat empty casinos feels like not enough.

Lastly, exactly how do you think poker could be implemented? I guess you mean fixed-limit draw games? NLHE, everyones favorite these days, would be impossibly complex.

Well i've seen excellent AI's for texas hold'em, almost like the real thing.

As for the slots compared to blackjack and roulette it's undisputably the fastest way to make money. Even with mediocre luck. It's just not right to be able to bet 200 caps both on slots and blackjack/rulette - it destroys my immersion when it comes to casinos and gambling. For me it should be something like this:
Slots: 50 max bet
Blackjack: 150 max bet
Roulette: 300 max bet

As for the casinos personally i do not ask for more, i just ask one thing : to feel a little more like casinos.
I enter a casino, see a gambler or two just standing there and that's it. The roads are more believable but the interiors are not believable at all. And don't tell me that the fallout scenario can justify that. It can't. It could be 5-10 gamblers instead - making some noise. 3 would be ranting about their luck, 1 would be drunk, 2 would be watching the girls and "cheer" them etc. Also don't tell me that the engine can't handle a few more npcs. Other areas have many more in them. Point is they could be much better with things that simple.