That's kind of where I'm at. Balancing has it's limits, a tweak in one spot could throw off something enjoyable in another. The guns are great, but I've been incredibly successful with a current melee build. I think the paths to a good character are just that much more focused now. My first character was a sci-fry laser geek and he could kill anything. I stood straight in front of the legate with a Plasma Defender and killed him in VATS. You really don't have the ability to wander in your character path though, the whole time I was gearing him up for an energy weapons trip. They are a little weak but I was getting great crits--- in fact by the end of the game I was hitting the Meltdown so often it was frustrating to try and avoid killing my NCR pals.

I could snip a deathclaw with an upgraded Laser rifle.... so I don't see what the big deal is. I like the feeling of getting a character up their in the 20's and being able to stomp just about anything. You can still get into trouble if you're reckless, but it's fun. By level 30 you're the top of the heap, the reward is then the ability to walk headlong into anything and tear it up.

Nerfing the Fat Man is stupid though, I walked around with it the whole time in FO3 but saved it for some dire special occasions. Maybe I used it to scale the capitol building and kill the super mutant behemoth inside, a couple Enclave vertibirds.... and my only other moment was my favorite. When I opened the doors to the mothership Zeta I fired that svcker up the bridge and instantly killed the captain and several of his underlings. That's what that gun is meant for, you don't just clip everything with it.

There is no bias towards guns. Melee and Unarmed are just as powerful, if not more powerful, than Guns are. Try putting your Melee skill to 100 and run around with Oh Baby! in some Power Armor some time. The problem is Energy Weapons and Explosives are too lacking.

i just wanted to reiterate this. no need to use iron sights or scopes, just load up 20% crit chance and fire from the hip, and you can rambo your way through foes like nothing without needing to aim much. assured double damage always. is that what you snipers are defending? are you forgetting that sweet sneak critical that's always 100% when your target is unaware?

nerf the critical chance of the sniper rifle, gobi rifle, and the possibly rat slayer to x1.5 (maybe x2.5 for rat slayer), keeping it in line with the rest of the uniques, and you got yourself a gun that still fits its intended role, as well as gives signifigance to other weapons that are a bit more critical endowed.

About the energy weapons getting -DT: I think lasers should get the biggest -DT bonus since it's a focused point. And Plasma should get less DT but a Dam boost

I am always amused when I stumble upon an argument about "game balance"

The concept of game balance is like the concept of perfection, and perfection is impossible to achieve.

Anyway. Yes, explosives do kind of svck in the game. I tried using my Missile Launcher at the battle of the dam - firing high explosive missiles at the Legion and it took four just to wipe out a few guys. Throughout the game, I think I took more damage from explosives than any of my enemies did.

Im amused when people post straw man arguments. Complete and utter balance is hard to achieve but theres no excuse for it to be as poor as it is in FNV.

Unless you play on very easy, you can't melee or kung fu your way through a pack of swarming Deathclaws or Casadores. I call BS.

Guns are very diverse and plentiful in this game but I feel the lack of energy weapons will be addressed in upcoming DLC just like in Fallout 3.

Yes you can. I have done so on Normal, hardcoe mode, at least. Cazadores are trickier, honestly, so I still used a gun on them, even with low gun skill. Deathclaws go down with just a couple hits from Pushy, though.

Melee and Unarmed are extremely powerful in this game, especially with perks like Super Slam and Piercing Strike. My close-range fighter was significantly deadlier than my Guns character (though, admittedly, I also loaded up the close-range character with all the damage-resistance perks and powers as opposed to shooting-related perks and powers).

I suspect what will happent to both the gobi and the sniper rifles is a rate of fire decrease a sharp drop in crit chance to .5x and a drop in base damage and a boost in crit damage. This would keep them very deadly in one shot one kill when you have enough sneak to stay hidden or get hidden again buit would keep other rifles and carbines doing better in the non sneaky style combat.

I took on the Legendary Deathclaw and four of his little brothers wearing just http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36615 (16 DT), and a dose each of Med-X, Psycho, Jet, and Rebound. Knocked down a couple with the Mauler attack, blocked a power attack, and then swung like a madman. I painted Dead Wind Cavern red, baby!

Normal difficulty. Wasn't on hardcoe, but I didn't use any healing items until the fight was over, anyway.

You have obviously never done a Melee or Unarmed character. Why dont you try it before posting your garbage? OHKing Deathclaws with Power Attacks happens at around 40-50 Melee Skill with Oh Baby!

It isn't being 1337 or U53R, the fact that after the reload the cursor would return to the same spot.

And the level-action animation thing, it is just animation while firing from hip; I tap Lucky like the I was the fastest gunslinger in the world and it doesn't go beyond the spread radius.

Yeah I gave up on the missile launcher, even Anabelle. It's got too low damage and too high blast radius, very hard to fire without killing yourself or allies.

However, grenade machine gun + HE grenades are very awesome once you pick up a couple ranks of demolition expert.

By which time the target has moved on or you need to acquire another target. Follow up shots are simply faster and easier when you do not have to operate the bolt or reload after every shot.

I have no idea what you mean by the spread radius, I was talking about RoF.

You were talking about Gauss isn't much better because the reloading throw your aim off right? since you can't shoot while reloading/operate the bolt I don't see how it matters.

Eitherway, Gauss have better RoF than AMR as long as the weapon condition is good (i.e. wouldn't jam).

I dissagree. there are plenty of energy weapons to be found even from the begining, you just have to know where to look. There are several bodies of the bright followers and they carry laser pistols. I wont give a spoiler though. as for the damage threshold system, I had trouble understanding it at first but its actually better. it allows a further variety of damage types, I.E not every weapon is just a more powerful version of the last.

NO.

You can line up the next shot and be ready to go when the AMR finishes cycling, while the Gauss takes a bit longer to reacquire after each shot. I agree that this is much less of an issue if you are an experienced FPS sniper.

I would say the repair system, heavily favours guns imo, which really doe's not need it as most guns are very common.
They benefit from repair and unlike EW's don't need to spread the points out into science, allowing repair kits that would very much come in handy for EW's more than guns.
Jury riger, also favours guns making just about all the guns easily repaired with highly common ones.
EW's the most common is a Laser rifle which is far from common, and the most usefull for jury rig is a plasma rifle? or RCW which is the weapon you're most likely trying to repair in the first place.

Yes guns are more favoured, but lets face it, most topics on this forum spent 60%+ discusing exact guns they wanted, and EW's barely got mentioned.
So the majority rules, and we were given what we asked for ( apart from EW's giving bonuses to DP, which was brought up alot. ).

That's probably because I doubt people imagined Energy Weapons would get such a colossal nerf.
Energy Weapons have been really awesome in every Fallout except New Vegas.
Also, it's difficult to talk about "exact guns you want" for a type of firearm that doesn't actually exist.

Actually I covered this in a post a few days ago. I was never talking about critical hit chance. I was talking about critical hit bonus damage. I don't believe any weapon should get a bonus to critical hit chance unless they are in sneak mode. I think critical hit chance should be determined solely by hit location. A shot to the head would probably be a critical hit...a shot to the leg, probably not. I think that the sniper rifle deserves a critical hit bonus damage multiplier of abut 2x - 2.5x. What is the standard critical hit chance...%1...maybe %2? That seems about right for every weapon. Well maybe scatter type weapons should get a small advantage to critical hit chance over other types. Maybe energy weapons could get a universal mod that added to critical hit chance. But that would be about it.

Lasers were pretty bad against armor in Fallout 1 and 2 until you got the Magneto Laser Pistol. Plasma and pulse weapons had better penetration but still not quite as good as bullets, especially against power armor, and this was without taking AP ammo into account. Only the fact that AP ammo was buggy kept guns from being much more effective against armor. The energy weapons had raw damage in their favor, something they lost in FONV.

Critical Hit Chance multipliers are fine as long as they never get higher than x3.

It's another stat to toy with in order to differentiate weapons.

A ball of hot plasma traveling at god knows what velocity striking any where should kill you, a nuke grenade going off at your feet2 should kill you! Yet there ineffective in comparison to a simple lead projectile, and that fact that gun runners is a beast store, and the main competitor in the game that deals in energy weapons svcks...the bias is annoying...when is patch coming anyway? I can shoot a gun in just about any other game, energy weaponry is one of the many reasons I choose the fallout universe over others, so I want that de nerd patch soon!