well the title says it all, i have one thing to say "what in the heck was obsidian thinking!" ...this seemingly intentional decision to NOT put in any random encounters or events is beyond astonishing.

Since we don't know why they aren't there we have to pick either Bethesda or Obsidian to blame.
And since Bethesda could have delayed the game for half a year so Obsidian could've had more time to fix things I'm gonna blame them.

By the way, this could have been in General Discussion, just saying.

I've seen some ncr patrols 1 killed the legion camp for the quest booted on level 3. one ambushed some legion attacking a caravan

I don't think the patrols are really random encounters though, I saw a Legion patrol take Searchlight on (and kill a few NCR) but I think it was just a patrol that got sidetracked.


As for why? Likely time constraints, random encounters are fun but probably quite difficult to do, they have to be clever, balanced and imaginative/funny. Obsidian really did not have much time to push this game through.

Or, they may have decided not to do them for other reasons, their focus on making it more serious may have something to do with it since random encounters are often quite silly. We don't know, unfortunately. I would like them though, they're good fun.

I'm pretty sure the Legion ambush of the caravan is a scripted event of sorts. It always happens at the same place, the Legion recruits wait under that billboard, two caravans usually come together, etc. It's where I usually earn myself bad enough rep with the Legion for the assassins to be dispatched after me. Then I come to Novac with my first sniper rifle (Which is too broken to be used or sold, but oh well).

Agreed. I saw a couple legions waiting near a billboard a little south of the NCR comm outpost thing. I got attacked and ran back to a nearby NCR patrol that was walking down the road.

Or to think it another way...

Obsidian knew the deadline, they knew the budget, and they overestimated what they could accomplish with them. So a project management failure on Obsidian's part.

Of course no one of us can know what happened, so it's pointless to point fingers to anyone :shrug:

I think it was pretty clearly Obisidian, as Bethesda games (including their last iteration of Fallout) have random encounters. No random encounters was a conscious design choice here, and seeing how many NPCs they placed by hand (and how quickly a mod to liven up the wasteland has been made) I can't imagine it would have taken an unreasonable time to implement if Obsidian had wanted to do it.

Fortunately, this is easily fixed with a great mod-http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38623




Not random, all preplaced. Go into the NV Geck and take a look at the NPCs; they're all preplaced, down to the last BoS paladin and NCR trooper.

No saying this is wrong or that mine is wrong.
Just saying that the game could have been far better if Bethesda had just given Obsidian 6 months to 1 year more to work on it instead of putting such an incredibly short deadline for them.
So for most of the mistakes in NV I blame on Bethesda for short deadline, horrible QA and pushing the game out the door despite it's amount of bugs, glitches and crashes.