Oh hi there.

I loved Fallout 3.

I'm not too crazy about New Vegas for a bunch of reasons everybody's already mentioned a thousand times over.

I will add two more.

1) I've played the game for 1 hour, and I already have:

*Flamethrower
*Laser pistol
*Laser rifle
*40-50 dynamite sticks

What the hell is this? Every game ever made has had a logical progression in weapons. Who rolls a D&D character with a sword of sharpness on the sheet before you even start? What kind of game gives you these weapons so early on? It's very poor game design.

2) Mob difficulty is based on two parameters: Their damage output & their hitpoints.

This is SERIOUSLY poor game design, and very much lacking in innovation and shows a complete lack of ideas by the game creators.

I just met my first rad scorpion. The fight consists of backing up (you move _exactly_ as quickly as the mob), and shooting it 100 times in the head. How is this intelligent game design? What's entertaining about this?

I met another scorpion.. The exact same method was required, because you cannot drop these creatures with a 9mm pistol or a varmint rifle before they reach you.

You've GOT to come up with something better than this, for a AAA game. It's sloppy as hell.

I don't see what's wrong with any of the weapons you have. They're all pretty weak, you're expected to find those types of weapons early. Laser pistols in particular are one of the very weakest weapons in the entire game.

As for the radscorpion, what difficulty are you playing on? You shouldn't need to pump quite so much ammo into them. They have decent DT compared to other creatures you might run into early, so consider throwing a stick or two of that pile of dynamite, or take a few aimed shots at their stinger (which should do bonus damage, similar to targeting the head of a humanoid).

Fallout 3 gave you those exact same weapons early on as well. In fact, I distinctly remember finding two laser pistols in the supermart, then running into a raider with a flamethrower not fifteen minutes later in the Bethesda Ruins. Oh, and one of them even had a sniper rifle! I ended up with fifty frag grenades pretty quickly too. The laser rifle had to wait until my second hour though, before I was able to buy one.

Also, dynamite is pretty much the entry level explosives option. Consequently, it svcks compared to everything else, so having 50 dynamite sticks isn't too impressive.



Three things, their damage output, their hitpoints, and their armor. This is one more parameter than Fallout 3 had.



I think the problem here is that you're using the wrong ammo for the target. Radscorpions are armored, which means you need bullets that are designed to pierce armor to kill them quickly.



Actually, with the VR, you just need AP ammo to negate the scorpion's armor and you can drop one before they reach you. 9mm probably can too, with +P ammo.



I dunno man, it seemed to work fine for FO3. In fact, something even more simplistic worked fine for FO3.

Wait. So is Oblivion's "run backwards while spamming ranged attack" tactic still a 100% guarantee win?

Only against small radscorpions, pretty much. Geckos, Mojave Murder Bees, Deathclaws, feral ghouls, and melee humans all tend to be faster than you are. Giant radscorpions are also faster than you are. Especially when you have your weapon out.

Deathclaws, Cazadors, and other nastier creatures are too fast for that.

The only defining characteristic of a title being a "AAA" game, is the amount of money spent hyping it. :shrug:
(Really... Its just the amount of PR afforded to it.)

I'm sorry off topic, but I had to say this:

Your best avatar yet and possibly the best one on the forums. It literally made me laugh so hard.

Well, go write a game. Make it exactly the way you want it to be. Simple solution.

You play for one hour and think you know the entire game right? You have not scratched the surface yet and your conclusions on game play are wrong.

Your weapons are low level weapons, exactly what you should have starting out. Small scorpions are weak enemies and slow--your weapons are terrible which is why they seemed like damage sponges. Most enemies cannot simply be kited from without getting hit yourself.

Go South from Good Springs and take on the gang there--or ally with them if you wish. The Powder Gangers will force you to use cover and simple tactics so as to not get gunned down. They too are weak foes and should not be much of a challenge. Go further South and then East and you will find tougher enemies that require a bit more thought given your limited weapon options.

In FO3 I found the nuclear Fatman round about 2 minutes jog from the vault door. :shrug:

In NV, my first PC died to the first two Cazadors that I encountered (and that PC was wearing hacked Enclave armor! ~It was a mod test).
There is no reason (I can see) for restricting higher power weapons, if the novice PC cannot repair them, or afford to have them repaired ~and/ or has no skill in them... and if they do have the skill, then its a great find early on, and turns out to be skill well spent.

This game (IMO) should not adhere to a linear progression of any kind, and especially not the kind you see most often in FPS shooters... In those games there is [usually] no concept of PC, and the weapons are not restricted by lack of PC development. If they are found, or acquired, it is still plausible, and somewhat balanced if looked at in the long run.

Thanks. :foodndrink:

This is a ridiculous argument which I won't dignify with an answer. Also, I HAVE actually worked with computer game design.

------------------

"My guns are too good!

But enemies are too hard to kill!"

The thing is, they aren't too good. I walk backwards and shoot every shot minus 1 in the laser pistol clip, then move on to the other guns and rinse/repeat.

--------------------

Thanks for the bullet type pointer, I'll definitely try that out!

QFT

Edit: ninja'd. Seriously though I understand how you feel about the radscorpion, i was pumping dozens of rounds of my caravan shotgun into them until i looked up what DT stood for.

This has always been a problem in TES and FO3/NV... But there is and interesting mod that drops your speed when walking backwards, and even factors in the PC's agility.

(I don't recall what the name of it was, but there are surely some here that do.)

It's not all bleak, guys. I'm not giving the game a 0/10 review. I'm just saying, it's not progressed in a meaningful way. In fact, it's carried with it the flaws from FO3, and not brought a whole lot to the table. I remember the annoying eh.. Mutant overlords? The big ones. Not the biggest giants, but the big ones. It was nonsense. You just unloaded endlessly at them... What is this, the mid 90s? Has the industry completely run out of gameplay ideas?

Its carried with it some flaws that pre-date FO3.

Actually, depending on the game, I'd say that the mid 90's at times surpassed what we have today in terms of gameplay as opposed to graphical 'eye-candy'.

You should check out Arwen's mod, it made combat a lot faster and more intense for me.

You, sir, are a genius. You have made my day, and I am now happy.

If I remember Fallout 3 correctly, I got the Minigun with a ton of bullets in very hard mode about 5 hours into the game, along with a couple of laser pistols, plentiful amount of grenades, a flamer, a hunting rifle and a Chinese assault rifle, all complete with plentiful amounts of bullets. They also did a ton of damage. In this game Damage Threshold exists instead of Damage Resistance, so if the target is heavily armored the damage you do will be subtracted from their DT. If its less, you won't do crap for damage, and unfortunately energy weapons seem to have taken a bit of a nerf in this game, so the Laser Pistol is super weak. Use armor piercing bullets next time, and yes, in this game you can run into creatures who are much stronger than you. Personally I love that, increases the difficulty a bit, makes the game a lot more about avoidance and hiding for a bit of survival.

I must disagree. The DT/armor system is a huge change (and improvement) from FO3, IMO.

I think the Same. :thumbsup:

Guess I'll keep plowing on until I find my groove. I was just really pissed about that radscorpion encounter. I'm sure it'll pick up.

Me too,

I'm actually afraid of deathclaw territory now and fear to cross the canyon near the goodsprings graveyard.(so many readscorpions )

And the dreaded sentry bot.

I remember only had 3 AP rounds for my hunting rifle when I went to HELIOS, I barely made it out of their and felt like I accomplished something. I made sure to always headshot those sentries with the precious oh so precious AP rounds. I was able to turn it on and dare not venture further. All in all I love the new DT system.

At the start it's just camourflaged linearity. "No, no no, the story is that way! Away from the murder bees and deathclaws!" Of course a living obstacle can be sneaked by or killed. And the first time i turned a deathclaw pup into a pile of green goo with one shot was quite pleasing ^_^

Hell that's good enough for me. Simplistic gameplay is fine, [censored] gameplay is not.

It's already been mentioned in the thread, but I'll repeat that the Laser Rifle, Laser Pistol, and Flamer are the "starter" weapons for Energy Weapon users. The Laser RCW, Plasma Pistol, Incinerator, and Plasma Rifle are the mid-game weapons, with the Multiplas, Rail Gun, and Plasma Caster being the high end power weapons. So, none of those weapons are really that impressive. Same deal with Dynamite, which isn't very effective outside of the early areas.

Mob difficulty is based on a variety of factors. Damage Output, Speed, Hitpoints, Behavior, and Damage Threshold. Radscorptions have a high Damage Threshold, which makes them quite challenging in the early game. 9mm Pistol is a close range weapon, so you don't really want to open up with that. With the Varmint Rifle, you can take down a regular Radscorpion before it can reach you. The key is to either use a stealth critical, or to focus your fire on the legs. Shooting Radscorpions in the torso is just a bad idea all around, the tail is a better choice. Additionally, because of their high DT, you'll want to use AP ammo, which negates 15 DT.

Really, there are quite a few ways to skin a Radscorpion. Of course, you can dump 100 bullets into its torso while backpedaling, but as you noted that isn't very effective or efficient. Its all about trying different things when presented with a challenge.