Absolutely Not - we as players have very limited information about the balance of the game and would in most cases get it Worse than the companies do. That said I do think there is tons of evidence of modders that Do make the game more balanced from a certain point of view. And these mods that do a great job at overhauling balance are Rare compared to the thousands of mods that add stuff without any sense of game play or game balance.

Remember we don't know the exact design goals of the game - they were never published. As such we don't know what "difficulty" level or "hardness" level they were attempting to hit as a baseline, and our own interpretation of what is "balanced" may be completely contrary to the goals they had in mind.

So while I will be the first to agree that the gaming companies don't always get the balance Perfect, I would argue that New Vegas does an excellent job on overall game balance as it is - especially given the awesome complexity of the game. We would get it horribly wrong IMHO.

Miax

I'm playing Fallout 3 at this very moment, and I'm wearing the CSA. It's ridiculous how easy it makes the game. With 50 sneak and the Silent Running perk, I can literally run past every enemy in the game without having to fire a shot.

That's not to say it isn't fun, and I really wouldn't have a problem with the FO3 version of the CSA being in NV, but to pretend like it isn't super powerful is disingenuous, to say the least.

Um no it doesn't not in Fallout New Vegas . You are 100% visible and if you get caught stealing the person you steal from takes your CSA . It is less effective then standard Recon armor .

Yes, the stealth armor was no better than hiding in the dark. Only you can do it while in the middle of an open, brightly lit field, while enemies look straight through you.

I was referring to last page about chameleon spell in Oblivion, and if you did check the FO3 GECK still have spells and Stealth Field is just icing on top of chameleon.

But somehow it screws up the AI in FO3 so they can only *hear* you while you are in stealth field; so without Silent Running it is overpowered but not god like.

While with Silent Running the next thing you have to do is either goto the Pitt for Stealth Assault Rifle or start using melee/unarmed weapons, and you can crouch right in front of mobs and give them a power attack into the groin (literally as well as figuratively).

The only way players could make a balanced product is if they were chopped up and sold as dogfood.

Shepard Armor.

Back to square cube then. The square cube rule states that


An easy summary is to say that weight outpaces stabilizing factors as we look to larger things. Part of the reason why, at some time or another, the T-Rex was percieved as a scavenger. A creature that large couldn't be really expected to chase prey without nearly killing itself if it fell down. Or put its teeth into something without potentially losing them all. Bipedal isn't a good idea for large animals.

So if you start putting armor on a T-Rex, you're just begging him to fall down. Elephants are better for being quadripeds, so I think could support more armor.

More detail on Square-cube Law can be found on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law

Closed for clean up.

Not much left to this thread now that flames, flamebait and responses to such have been removed. Please be civil, don't respond to flames but rather report them and respect one another's opinions even it if makes no sense to you. It's really ok to have different thoughts on stuff, especially stuff that entertains us.

Okay, I must have said something wrong in my last post that got it deleted.

My intention was just to point out that the developers are rebalancing a number of items in the upcoming patch and that they seem to be open to comments about item stats and balance. If you feel you have a legitimate issue, you may want to make a thread explaining your reasons and see if you can get them to agree with you.

The developer has no choice but to make decisions before the game is released, but that doesn't prevent them from adjusting things afterward.

Definitely the designers, hands down. Look around here and see what the players are requesting, or have already made as mods. Mini-nuke miniguns? Gatling Tesla Cannons? Oh, designers all the way for me, thank you very much.



Aside from resisting the urge to laugh at the phrase "the real science of" a game deliberately built on late '40s-early '50s "SCIENCE!" I do believe the developers spent far more time studying the potential consequences of thie changes, and did not just go "willy-nilly nerfing stuff." See above- if anything, the willy-nilly thoughtless changing is coming from the other side in my view.



Answer doesn't matter, since Sony and Microsoft won't allow modding on their precious consoles it'll never happen.

Ah, but the Rule Of Cool? states that an armored T-Rex would be awesome :rock: , so it would work! Especially in a world with Fallout Science?.

I'm not going to run and check, but you may have just quoted someone who flamed and I did not take time to edit that out but rather deleted anyone who quoted such. It's always nice to not quote and respond to flames but rather report such so the moderators don't have such a massive clean up job.

Oh and please remember everyone (not you specifically) that responding to flames or flamebait with flames or flamebait will get you a warning as quick as the one who starts it gets one. Just report such stuff please.

Toss a saddle on that thing and I'll believe you if you tell me it can fly.

If players want to feel like gods playing games, can they not just set the game difficulty to Very Easy and be done with it? Now they can walk around and be the Beast of the Mojave seeing their favourite weapon punch holes into all who oppose them. It is a common enough complaint in threads from people who want to see the return of level scaling. Why is this monster tougher than me? Is it ego? Is there no satisfaction found defeating a game on Very Easy? The difficulty slider has to say 'Very Hard' but play at a level challenging to a 6 year-old in order to scratch that 'God' itch?

People wishing to fly around on stealth armoured pterodactyls, firing Colt .45 handguns that level buildings in a single shot in a game themed around struggle, survival and rebuilding always felt very strange to me. I know I'm grossly exaggerating, but the notion of 'challenging & balanced' gameplay seems lost on some.

If I was designing a Fallout game, I would be balancing it for 'Very Hard' first to the point where you are literally scraping by with each step and reaching the end requires a combination of skill, planning, cleverness & luck. Then design backwards from there adding a little more ammo & stims, better conditioned wepaons, a few more skill points per level, slightly less difficult enemies etc. with each drop in difficulty.

I've actually wondered if you could exploit the "tutorial" for game balancing.

Have a set and very specific succession of enemies during the tutorial, examine the players success against the first enemy to make a guess at the players skill. Then adjust the difficulty of the second to make it a more fair fight. Script a "deus ex machina" into things so that if you scale too far up the player gets a lucky break and gets saved by some circumstance, this will allow you to scale back down without the player getting killed during the tutorial.

Then the "Very Easy" to "Very Hard" setting could by more dynamic to the player rather than pre-specified settings.

Then again, I've always wanted a game that learned from the player's behaviour, and tried to adapt the player's strategies into the NPCs strategies.

Okay I give up. What's a trex commit?

"T-Rex comment"

I started a post about it when I thought this one was closed .

Interesting idea, but it might run the risk of having the player forced to play through the tutorial with each new character. Didn't really ruin FO3 for me since I played through the start only twice, but it was a big enough complaint to have to be 'reborn' for 45 minutes each time you wanted to restart. Still - would be a fun idea for a first playthrough.

I'm not positive, but I think New Vegas has some kind of D.e.Machina in place as on my Hard playthrough, I didn't do too badly against the Geckos so nothing happened. However, when I started my new game with a Very Hard melee character, I was getting scratched up pretty badly and suddenly Victor is behind me yelling & shooting at the Geckos that were harrassing me. I was surprised when I went to talk to him and the Companion wheel popped up.

heh i actually had to google "T-REX size vs. African elephant"


the TREX could be much taller than tn elephant if it stood upright, but most paleontologists now agree the t-rex never really stood upright, it was more of a constant "leaning forward" and it's tail was always directly behind it off the ground to counterbalance it's heavy head..


i learned something today!


:)

Yeah, Victor is scripted to protect you during the tutorial. That's the kind of DEM I was thinking of.

For the other issue, I wonder if a new game with existing saves could simply ask if you want to import difficulty settings from a previous save?

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time....yeah......don't do it! :wink_smile:

Elegant solution. Nice.

Exactly!

I would imagine it would be easier to tone down the game from the hardest set point than upwards from easiest as I believe the ease is more easily measured - I mean the hardest is the ultimate border from where the games challenge is going to be measured. The change in challenge would be easier to review - for the lack of a better wording - when starting from hard.

And to somewhat mimic the quote above... If I were to design a Fallout game, the first thing I'd do would be determining the ruleset used and how it would perform at the hardest of difficulty - to make the hardest part passpable, while putting the easier gradually easier to pass.