This game lacks reward and incredibly bias towards Guns : Fallout: New Vegas

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 9:37 pm

Instead of playing with the crit. chance they should adjust the rate of fire and time for reload. Snipers should have a weapon that performs a 1 hit kill on almost everything, but they shouldn't be able to miss and tell about it.

Rate of fire and reload time wouldn't matter because the enemies are so stupid in this game and can never figure out where you are. They have to adjust either critical chance, zoom distance/draw distance or both. As he said you get an automatic critical hit on sniper rifles anyway with a sneak attack and giving them x5 close up makes them way too powerful. Add a silencer to that gun and it's just not fair.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:32 pm

A single sneak attack from a .308 sniper rifle should kill very nearly anything alive. A single sneak attack from a .50 AM rifle should turn anything alive into a fine red mist and destroy or seriously incapacitate anything else that has the misfortune of being in it's line of sight. Nothing should stand before the awesome might of a weapon who's sole purpose is to destroy military grade, hardened targets at distances enough to make the target virtually invisible to the naked eye. Seriously... .50 AM rifles can take out scout vehicles in the hands of a trained sniper team.

I understand your point and somewhat agree with...there's nothing I'm more bored/annoyed with then when games have it so it takes 500 hits from its equivalent of a BFG to take down enemies. Silly - like watching films where no one can hit anything with their machine guns unless plot requires it. But unfortunately games aren't about true reality. If you made it that realistic, in terms of your dmg. and the enemies dmg. to you, I'd guess the game would either be too easy (because player is great at sneaking/1-hitting/avoiding being hit) or too hard (because the player isn't that good, or doesn't want to play a certain way/style) for the majority of players.

Hard to balance....

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 5:41 am

Instead of playing with the crit. chance they should adjust the rate of fire and time for reload. Snipers should have a weapon that performs a 1 hit kill on almost everything, but they shouldn't be able to miss and tell about it.

Not necessarily the rate of fire, because a semi auto will fire as fast as you pull the trigger. granted you accuracy will be crap. Snipers should have wicked recoil, especially if standing. It kind of bothers me that if I miss, say a Fiend, I can blow it's head off before it's even moved a few feet, my sight line should be at least slightly off after I fire.

I also agree, it's a 1 shot 1 kill weapon. it just shouldn't be a 5 shot 5 kill in less than 5 second weapon.

I would be over the moon happy if you got a awesome single shot sniper rifle.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 2:18 am

Well, the 1-shot KO spot is suppose to be for AMR; while semi-auto sniper rifle in RL is still battle rifle at their bases.

Personally I would like to see it have the same overall damage at sneak crit, while being a more delicate but precise hunting rifle in closer range.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:17 pm

A single sneak attack from a .308 sniper rifle should kill very nearly anything alive.

Any human maybe, a .308 round is still fairly small to be able to kill something as large and powerful as a deathclaw for example. .308 is a nice round for military snipers but for big game hunting it's a little on the small side.

Plus this is a rpg video game where real life weapon performance is extrapolated to a system of levels and hit points. You can't say the sniper rifle is fine killing things easily in one hit because IRL it would kill in one hit, because many other guns in the game would do the same IRL and don't kill in one hit in-game.

A 12 gauge shotgun slug to a lightly armored man would be far more likely to kill than a .308 round, but in game it doesn't work like that.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 8:52 pm

Any human maybe, a .308 round is still fairly small to be able to kill something as large and powerful as a deathclaw for example. .308 is a nice round for military snipers but for big game hunting it's a little on the small side.

Plus this is a rpg video game where real life weapon performance is extrapolated to a system of levels and hit points. You can't say the sniper rifle is fine killing things easily in one hit because IRL it would kill in one hit, because many other guns in the game would do the same IRL and don't kill in one hit in-game.

A 12 gauge shotgun slug to a lightly armored man would be far more likely to kill than a .308 round, but in game it doesn't work like that.

Not that far actually, since .308 is likely to penetrate further and let to nasty internal bleeding.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 6:17 am

If I may confuse things just abit.

On normal difficulty with a character setup just right. A .308 Hunting Rifle can one-shot kill a full grown deathclaw. Requires 75+ skill in guns, Better Criticals, JSP hand loads, precise shot placement and some smart play in setting up the shot. Same thing with the Trail Carbine as well since it'll have the exact same DAM per shot with SWC hand loads and Cowboy perk.

In contrast the Sniper Rifle, and it's unique, just needs 7 luck along with the Beret. That's 3/5 shots going critical and getting the chance higher, with Finesse, doesn't even involve any sacrifices.

Once again PC users will have it easy. Pretty much a sure thing within hours after the next patch there will be a mod on nexus that reverses the changes to the Sniper Rifle/Golbi. Easy buttons are hard to put down.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 6:25 am

Any human maybe, a .308 round is still fairly small to be able to kill something as large and powerful as a deathclaw for example. .308 is a nice round for military snipers but for big game hunting it's a little on the small side.

Plus this is a rpg video game where real life weapon performance is extrapolated to a system of levels and hit points. You can't say the sniper rifle is fine killing things easily in one hit because IRL it would kill in one hit, because many other guns in the game would do the same IRL and don't kill in one hit in-game.

A 12 gauge shotgun slug to a lightly armored man would be far more likely to kill than a .308 round, but in game it doesn't work like that.

No. Not just humans. Nearly ANYTHING alive...in real life. Elephants, Rhinos...those are the toughest land based animals right? Well both are ground chuck when a center shot takes them between the eyes. Video game or not, the idea that a sniper with a decent weapon couldn't single shot anything in the game other than maybe Deathclaws and Supermutant Overlords and higher, is laughable. Power Armor is a valid exception. The shotgun slug is another one I don't like. A giant flying metal flesh hole-punch shouldn't really be resistible by a human outside of some serious plating...again Power Armor. Yes it is true that almost any real world firearm can kill in a single shot. That is their job after all. But Sniper weapons are a special case. Snipers don't normally take second shots in assassinations (as in 250 yard shots against soft targets like living beings). The idea is that a single shot does the job. By including them in the game in the first place they are validating that idea in the game world. To make the weapon ANY less effective is reducing it to a .22 with a scope. What is the point then?

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 7:11 am

A single sneak attack from a .308 sniper rifle should kill very nearly anything alive.

It does, I don't think any creature in the entire game can survive a sneak attack to the head from .308 sniper rifle loaded with hand loaded rounds.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:27 pm

Energy weapons are getting -DT to all ammo types excluding flamer fuel in the next patch.
And Explosives are also going to get tweaked a bit, how has not been explained.

This is true, though if Obsidian had made them a worthy alternative to guns, like they should have been, I'm not saying that they should be equal to guns in every way, they should have both advantages and disadvantages compared to guns, and New Vegas already has the disadvantages covered, they're less common, and ammunition for them is harder to find, which makes sense, too bad New Vegas forgot to give them the advantages. But at least they're trying to fix their mistake in this regard, of that, I'm glad, at least it shows that they realize that they didn't make energy weapons like they should have been. Too bad that until the patch is released, we can only rely on mods to fix the problem.

So yes, I would say that energy weapons in the game are rather underpowered, and so are explosives by default. Energy weapons, as I see it, should be quite powerful, especially against heavily armored targets, but as it stands, they're actually a rather bad choice to use against armored targets. The loading text claims that plasma weapons are supposed to be slow but high damage weapons, and yet when I tried to use the unique plasma rifle against a deathclaw, I still couldn't get through its armor, unless I got a sneak attack. And whereas guns have armor piercing rounds if you encounter enemies with high damage resistence, the only alternate ammunition available for energy weapons are overcharge and max charge rounds, and apparently, the damage bonuses added by ammunition don't allow the weapon to pierce armor better, making these things not very good against armor. I'd say that's a reasonable choice since it ensures that hollow point and armor piercing rounds work as intended, I guess the developers just hadn't taken into account that this design choice means that if your energy weapon isn't strong enough to pierce a target's armor, there's nothing you can do except switch to a stronger weapon, which isn't very helpful if you're already using the strongest weapon you have. As to explosives, they're supposed to be very deadly, but also not very precise, and with the risk of hurting yourself or your companions, in first person shooters, grenades are usually the kind of weapon that you can avoid if you're careful, but can kill you in one hit if you're not. Of course, New Vegas is not an FPS, and as an RPG, how many grenades it takes to kill you should depend on your stats, but I DO expect standing near an exploding grenade to be very harmful, both to the player, and to enemies, and yet while explosives seem to be effective at crippling limbs, I can see targets survive explosions with barely a dent in their health, and this is not how is should be.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 8:28 am

I can't tell you what J.E has planned for how he will go about nerfing the sniper rifle the best method would be to reduce the rate of fire and it's crit rate down to 1.5 or 2x. Those two changes would really make the AMR that more attractive. I can't wait to see what he is going to do with Energy weapons and explosives.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 3:47 am

You can tell the inventors of the game had no real experience with guns . No living creature could stand up to a 50 cal in the kill zone or brain . Energy weapons where why to weak they should have been far more powerful than regular guns but with lots less ammo . The best way to use explosives is to pants enemies one grenade will kill a super mutant . It detracts from the realism of the game when a mini nuke does squat and a glove allows you to pimp slap a deathclaw .

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 5:58 am

It's an RPG. Damage is based on your and your enemy's stats, not realism.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 11:55 pm

No. Not just humans. Nearly ANYTHING alive...in real life. Elephants, Rhinos...those are the toughest land based animals right? Well both are ground chuck when a center shot takes them between the eyes. Video game or not, the idea that a sniper with a decent weapon couldn't single shot anything in the game other than maybe Deathclaws and Supermutant Overlords and higher, is laughable. Power Armor is a valid exception. The shotgun slug is another one I don't like. A giant flying metal flesh hole-punch shouldn't really be resistible by a human outside of some serious plating...again Power Armor. Yes it is true that almost any real world firearm can kill in a single shot. That is their job after all. But Sniper weapons are a special case. Snipers don't normally take second shots in assassinations (as in 250 yard shots against soft targets like living beings). The idea is that a single shot does the job. By including them in the game in the first place they are validating that idea in the game world. To make the weapon ANY less effective is reducing it to a .22 with a scope. What is the point then?

I wouldn't want to shoot an elephant or rhino at close range with a .308, whether I could hit it in the head or not. A .308 round is vastly insufficient to hunt elephants.

I don't think you understood my point about this being a game. It's not Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, it's an RPG. The damage is not supposed to be realistic.

To make a .308 sniper rifle kill anything in one shot, you would also have to make every gun that uses the same or larger rounds kill anything in one shot, including the brush gun, hunting rifle, this machine, and Ranger sequoia.

Please explain why a sniper rifle deserves a 5x critical chance when other weapons mostly have 1x. You say snipers don't have to take second shots, but when a sniper shoots someone the target is not aware he's being shot at, so in game that's represented by the sneak attack critical (which would be the same whether they had a 1x or 5x modifier).

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 7:32 pm

It's an RPG. Damage is based on your and your enemy's stats, not realism.

Yeah, but with sci fi/futuristic weapons aside, since the weapons in game are largely modeled after guns in the real world, the closer the damage stats are to real life, the easier it is to "suspend disbelief" and the better the quality of the game will be.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:22 pm

:shrug: As long as Anti-Materiel Rifle does more damage than a 9mm Pistol, i don't really care about that. This is not supposed to be a realistic game.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 6:19 am

:shrug: As long as Anti-Materiel Rifle does more damage than a 9mm Pistol, i don't really care about that. This is not supposed to be a realistic game.

That explains why they added hardcoe mode.

Yep.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 11:37 pm

Sniper Rifle with ball .308 cannot down a Deathclaw or Super Mutant with one head crit; it is sneak crit that kills them. As someone had point out few weeks back, an unexpected shot would far more likely to kill instead it being fully work up and high on adrenaline.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 12:50 am

That explains why they added hardcoe mode.

Yep.

So you only need to sleep for two hours every two days?

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:51 pm

Energy weapons are getting -DT to all ammo types excluding flamer fuel in the next patch.
And Explosives are also going to get tweaked a bit, how has not been explained.

This.

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 8:14 am

So you only need to sleep for two hours every two days?

I only sleep for about five hours every day.
And I've stayed up for about five days straight working (Not the working part.).

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 9:13 am

You have to have realism as some sort of factor in this game even though its an rpg. There has to be a good balance between the two. I wouldn't say that I'd be happy just to have an amr be stronger than a 9mm. Stats should play a major part, but to dismiss any suggestion for more realism by saying "its an rpg" is ridiculous. A fatman should do tons of damage, but obviously have very rare ammo. Even with a lower explosive skill you should be able to take down a couple deathclaws close together if you can manage to score a direct shot with weapon sway. With a high explosive skill you should be able to be more off target but still kill said deathclaws with just splash damage. A better rpgish route would to make the more damaging heavier weapons way too hard to handle without appropriate skills, but once u have that skill you should be able to kill most anything with a precise hit or even a not so precise hit, being that you're better trained

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 7:41 am

In my first play through of this game, I had no idea how the damage threshold system worked, but I can tell you that it is either broken or seriously unbalanced. I can say this because I made an explosives/Energy Weapons character on my first play through.

My perks were all explosives related having 3x demo expert and energy weapon related perks such as laser commander and pyromaniac minus the meltdown perk, because I used explosives for the AOE. I can tell you that playing on very hard/hardcoe mode with this kind of build was extremely frustrating and infuriating. I would haul 100 pounds of explosives with me everywhere I went only to have them be ineffective.

I remember if I found a mini nuke the feeling was great. I just found an extremely rare and powerful weapon. So I saved them until it was time to go into the quarry to take out some deathclaws. I take out the fat man and launch a 5 pound 500 cap mini nuke right in the face of a death claw. So there is this massive explosion and when the dust settled, the disappointment set in as the abomination ran toward me with only roughly 10% of its HP gone and killed me in 2 swipes. So tell me where was the reward in finding those extremely rare mini nukes with 3x demo expert and 100 in explosives? I basically wasted all those points and perk slots!

When I hit someone with a missile, or a grenade goes off right next to my enemy, I want to see their limbs blow off and there body go flying through the air. That’s what anyone would expect to see and it would have been rewarding to see that. If the grenade goes off right next to me, my character is either dead or seriously injured. So why isn’t my enemy? The game is like this with all explosives. It doesn’t matter if I’m lugging around mini nukes, missiles, plasma grenades.

Energy weapons are just as poor as explosives, with the exception of them not weighing as much. Even with laser commander, Pyromaniac etc... You simply don’t have the damage output needed to be effective with these weapons.

So my second play through I went all guns with the hand loader perk on very hard/hardcoe mode and now the game is like a cakewalk. I can snipe a deathclaw with hand loaded 0.308 rounds from a mile away and my character is only level 18. Now some may find this rewarding, put it just added to my disappointment. Why? because my first play through with energy weapons/explosives was so awful I feel like I wasted so many hours playing my first play through.

I know I could download some mods to make the game to my liking such as the deadlier explosives mod, but I guess the main point of this thread is to show how poorly thought out and play tested this game was with all the bugs/glitches and how imbalanced this game is. But that would be an entirely different topic.

It depends on your SPECIAL stats. Mini Nukes are explosives and I forget which stat influences that but the game tells you. I made the mistake on my first playhrough of putting almost all points into strength and intelligence like FO3. This made melee weapons unstoppable as many have noted, but it isn't a glitch.. just your SPECIAL

» Thu Dec 02, 2010 5:13 am

Explosives is a Perception skill.

I have 100 explosives, 9 perception, 3x demo expert, some other explosives perks. And I can say that they are underpowered, they seem to lack any DT penetration at all and I would have to agree with the assessment that all of their damage is being calculated as splash damage.

» Wed Dec 01, 2010 7:02 pm

In my first play through of this game, I had no idea how the damage threshold system worked, but I can tell you that it is either broken or seriously unbalanced. I can say this because I made an explosives/Energy Weapons character on my first play through.

My perks were all explosives related having 3x demo expert and energy weapon related perks such as laser commander and pyromaniac minus the meltdown perk, because I used explosives for the AOE. I can tell you that playing on very hard/hardcoe mode with this kind of build was extremely frustrating and infuriating. I would haul 100 pounds of explosives with me everywhere I went only to have them be ineffective.

I remember if I found a mini nuke the feeling was great. I just found an extremely rare and powerful weapon. So I saved them until it was time to go into the quarry to take out some deathclaws. I take out the fat man and launch a 5 pound 500 cap mini nuke right in the face of a death claw. So there is this massive explosion and when the dust settled, the disappointment set in as the abomination ran toward me with only roughly 10% of its HP gone and killed me in 2 swipes. So tell me where was the reward in finding those extremely rare mini nukes with 3x demo expert and 100 in explosives? I basically wasted all those points and perk slots!

When I hit someone with a missile, or a grenade goes off right next to my enemy, I want to see their limbs blow off and there body go flying through the air. That’s what anyone would expect to see and it would have been rewarding to see that. If the grenade goes off right next to me, my character is either dead or seriously injured. So why isn’t my enemy? The game is like this with all explosives. It doesn’t matter if I’m lugging around mini nukes, missiles, plasma grenades.

Energy weapons are just as poor as explosives, with the exception of them not weighing as much. Even with laser commander, Pyromaniac etc... You simply don’t have the damage output needed to be effective with these weapons.

So my second play through I went all guns with the hand loader perk on very hard/hardcoe mode and now the game is like a cakewalk. I can snipe a deathclaw with hand loaded 0.308 rounds from a mile away and my character is only level 18. Now some may find this rewarding, put it just added to my disappointment. Why? because my first play through with energy weapons/explosives was so awful I feel like I wasted so many hours playing my first play through.

I know I could download some mods to make the game to my liking such as the deadlier explosives mod, but I guess the main point of this thread is to show how poorly thought out and play tested this game was with all the bugs/glitches and how imbalanced this game is. But that would be an entirely different topic.

Correct me if im wrong here, but isn't the Fat Man supposed to be considered a gun? With that said, you probably need to have high skill points in guns and atleast a 10 str unless you have weapon handling if you want to use a Fat Man effectively. I noticed one of the key differences in NV is that strength is important if you want to maximize the effectiveness of certain guns now where as in Fallout 3 strength could basically be used as a dump stat if you didn't plan on going melee.

Secondly, the main reason sniper rifles seem very powerful in NV is because of its setting. When your in the desert you have limited cover and a very large amount of visibility, so it makes sense that sniper rifles would be the king weapons in this type of scenario. FO3 I found that sniper rifles were every bit as powerful as they are now, NPC's still had the same limitations in that they could never detect you well enough from long range to present a challenge. The main difference is that in FO3 there was alot of scenarios where close range urban warfare was required and sniper rifles werent as ideal in those situations.