Balance is completely relevant to difficulty, as balance is a function of it.

The game is unbalanced which is why it does need to be discussed. As ive said before the game loses a lot of its value because its simply way too easy. I really doubt you could put 50 hours into a character with god mode enabled without getting bored quickly.

Thank you for responding.

Is that really what the 'play on after end' campaign is about? Those little barrels of water sprinkled around the wasteland and people saying 'good job' is the extent of the changes that are desired to be seen? Silly slideshows go on to show how one person had such an impact on the future of this region. Allowing the authors to expand upon the consequences, intertwine the factions and explore a wide number of closings. Some areas have 9 different end slides. With all of the areas combined it would be impossible for a 'post play add-on' to accomodate all of these variables.

It's really a choice between: Strong story with meaningful choices & consequences and the promise of seeing the effects of these decisions vs. a railway story where virtually everything else you do has no long term impact so that you can play on seamlessly after finishing the game.

Some people are impressed by simple things like that.

I dont feel the game unbalanced

Yes...yes I can. In fact I loved FO3 SOOOOO much that I eventually developed my own speedrun to "god mode" tactics and I can get to a point of almost omniscience in about 10 hours...without ruining the chances for a 125+ hours gamesave. I have played through FO3 GOTY about 5 times now (that is not including all the plays with just a vanilla disk and no DLC) and as soon as I complete 2 or 3 runs through NV I will be right back at FO3! My NV save is as 89 hours and I still haven't finished even once yet cause I am trying to allow my wife access to the game as well.

If the devs were to ask me to create a list of things that need to change in NV I would list the following.

1. Fix the stability and bugs. Nothing else should happen until they lock down this issue. I get some freezes and I even had one "crash-to-xmb" last night.
2. Make perks acquired every level in all modes but "hardcoe"
3. Make skill point acquisition equal to FO3 (yes this makes "god" characters...that is the point.) in all modes but hardcoe.
4. Return Chinese Stealth Armor to its former (FO3) uberness...yes I know it is a veritable instant win item but that, again, is the point. Again in all modes but hardcoe.
5. Give Karma some noticeable effect. I have yet to see any effect of karma at all. If it is going to stay in the game the use it...otherwise remove it. That would be ok as well.
6. Add a DLC that allows play after the main quest is complete. Who doesn't want this?
7. Patch FO3 GOTY. 'Cause it needs one final hug before bed. Oh and maybe think about more DLC for it as well....just sayin.


8. Oooops...there is one other thing that I would change. The perk Grim Reaper's Sprint. I would have it return half of your total natural AP (before clothing mods or anything else) instead of only 20 AP. Depending on your build this could be a lot or very little.

^ Why not just make the game say "YOU WIN!" when you launch it?

Maybe people who like great well thought of endings?

Nobody disagrees with fixing the bugs but many (like me) don't want the game made so that it's disturbingly easy. Perks every level and the flood of skill points killed Fallout 3 for me... It was just too easy. I also (like many others) don't see the point in making the game playable after the final quest. It puts a huge burden on the developer to account for every contingency in the endgame in order to make it happen and everything you could do after the story ends can easily be done before the story ends.

Put the game on hardcoe and dont use the items that make it to easy for you. Problem solved and the rest of us who aren't competition junkies can have fun our way. It didn't put any undue stress on the poor minimum wage developers in FO3 did it... and that game had an ending where you died. The TES games seem to be rather popular with the ability to play after the main quest.

Good idea. Make hardcoe mode harder. I still don't see the point of the developers making the game even easier though.

Fallout 3 and Oblivion had no important variables that the developers had to worry about to make the game playable after the main quest was finished...

A half xp mode is needed.. They obviously can't raise the cap too high without unlocking the skill tree and allowing the skills to progress further than 100.. Adding more skills.. such as gambling or dividing medicine and first aid.. Putting big guns back and making pistols and rifles their own skill sets could also easily make obtaining a "perfect" 100 in each skill set more difficult. In reality though a person who wants to play as a god like character should be able to. The way someone plays a single person game doesn't affect anybody else in any way. At the same time people who want the game to be more challenging should also have that option and should be able to halve or quarter the XP gained.

As I reached level 30 half way through my playthrough I can easily say that it shouldn't be that way. Leveling, for me, is half the fun.. building my character. I don't want to play this game as a shooter. But I like to explore. Exploring earns xp whether I want to or not. And gobs of xp at that. There is no way a lesser creature should have the same XP reward as a greater creature. 50xp for a baby deathclaw is completely absurd if the Alpha deathclaw also gives you 50xp. If Alpha gives you 50 then baby should give you 10. For me a half xp mode would be ideal. Sure if I had the game on PC I could mod it.. but I don't.. And in reality I shouldn't have to. After playing their own game they should have noticed that they hit the level 30 mark before the game end and then made adjustments. I'm pretty sure any game testing was done with godly cheated up characters though.. so they wouldn't have noticed.

So if I'm reading what you're saying correctly. Basically if they do it your way, anyone who wants not to be a J.O.N.T. M.O.A. (Jack of No Trades, Master of All) godling will be forced to play the game on hardcoe mode, even if they do not want to play 'hardcoe'.
Why not instead add an Easycore option for those who want to play as a J.O.N.T. M.O.A. godling and grind their foes beneath their sandled feet.

I'm saying it this way in an attempt to highlight that at least in my opinion, the way New Vegas is as it is just now (currently disregarding hardcoe Mode) is that it is the way it should be as it's default style of play, which allows you to use the 'hardcoe Mode' as a smidgeon more RP/Realism ? over the standard game, and they could have possibly added in an 'Easycore Mode' for those who want to play it with the ability to master every skill and suchlike.
I'm not trying to have a go at anyone with this post, just trying to put my reasoning in words which are hopefully clear to everyone instead of being clear as crystal to myself and as clear as mud to others.

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Continue playing after end?

Also if you really want a difficult experience I can design you a hardcoe mode that would be more to your liking I think. Keep everything as it is but add in...

1. An invisible "heat" monitor on all automatic and energy weapons. Gets to high and the weapon either jams or explodes.
2. Caps have weight.
3. Broken items are gone forever.
4. Addictions are permanent and withdrawals can kill depending on the chem.
5. Explosive ammo has a chance to detonate in your inventory with every critical hit you take in the body or any critical hit at all from incendiary damage.
6. Damage heals at roughly real life tempo.
7. No fast travel at all.
8. No one is fooled by changing "costumes" or at least they get a perception/intelligence test to see through your little ruse.
9. Crippled limbs have a chance to be gone forever (hope your head is down).
10. Once per day (forever) and at random there is a chance that your implants are rejected causing you to pass out. Even in the middle of combat. The chance of rejection gets higher with every implant.
11. Your head takes damage 3 times as fast as your other limbs due to previous trauma.
12. Once hardcoe is chosen there is no going back.
13. All percentage chances for hardcoe mode are variable by difficulty (veryeasy/hardcoe has a different set of percentage chances than veryhard/hardcoe).

I could go on but I think you get the idea. Not everyone wants to play a game for the challenge of it. Only drooling competition junkies would want to eliminate everyone elses fun to promote their own. A great deal of people actually like having the option of stomping through 10 Deathclaw Alpha's and then drinking a Nuka-Cola. Not that everyone will actually do it but there is no reason to take the option away. As I said...make it so that hardcoe mode is just that...and make it so that the game is more like FO3 when hardcoe mode isn't on.

Slightly altered (and without the sarcasm of the words "easycore") this is a viable option. Have there be a option for a FO3 mode and take away the "wild west" trait as they could include it in FO3 mode. We might be delving into the realm of "way to much programing" but it would be a great way to compromise.

No in fact I am not saying that those who don't want to be overpowered would be forced to play hardcoe (but why not when you get right down to it). The difference in skill points without books between FO3 and NV at level 30 is less than 150 points on my build. I get 20 points per level in FO3 and 15 per level in NV. Other than that my suggestions were things that weren't forced upon the player except the ability to play after the main quest and perks every level. I do like the removal of the skill perks. Gun Nut, Daddy's boy/girl, and those things were what really made the characters over powered and I only use 2 ranks (at level 2 and 3) in Gun Nut because there is nothing else I am interested in early in the game.

oops I just remembered...I do use things like Silent Running (which increases your sneak by a bit) but I am usually at or near 100 sneak by then anyways. I also collect all of the bobbleheads because...why the heck not, but I am not complaining that they aren't in NV. Those do give a nice one time boost. Plus I do use the perk Almost Perfect at 30. Just mentioning these things because I don't want to seem like a hypocrite.

I have to admit that knowing the game ends upon finishing the main quest has largely killed my incentives to finish it, at least before all the DLCs have been released and played.

Actually, I was referring more to simply not ignoring the main quest until your ready. As I said, it's a total immersion breaker to tell the NCR to wait for their war a few more days so you can go round up the last of your Star caps. To go with that, The majority of people want more than small landscape changes like water barrels and such, but conversations to change to reflect what decisions you've made, settlements to change, seeing what's left of the NCR/Legion or whatever. It's more than the small things. To me and others, that adds more to the RPG element of the storyline, not subtracts from it.

EDIT: And one more thing, and this is simply something I personally like to do, but with Fallout 3 I didn't like doing any of the DLC until after the main questline. It was almost like a "The Adventures of the Lone Wanderer continue!" kinda thing. DLC, in my own personal opinion, is just kind of empty for it to join the main questline, rather than add to it.

The whole 'meaningful consequences' thing sort of falls flat when they are presented as a narrative and a group of slides after play is over. What's meaningful is the play itself, not the rolling credits. I don't think I'd use the term 'meaninful' to describe 'consequences' you don't actually have to experience and deal with. Rather than actually experiencing meaningful consequences, we simply have a narrative that tells us "It was meaningful! Really, you can trust us!"

Yeah, that's a lot better than getting to keep playing.

And how are the consequences really meaningful? When the next Fallout title comes out, what will be official canon? Which ending? In the 'official' canon, who wins in the Mojave Wasteland? If Ceasar wins in your game, and the NCR wins in mine, how is our individual results meaningful where the official Fallout canon in future installments are concerned?

It is, imo. With a narrative you can go much, much deeper into the conclusions of the stories than with creating post endgame content. And it also allows for much more varied endings.

If that the way you feel why not sinple put the game one easy for yourself? It would have the same effect on the gameplay. *shrug*

Also for the "ignoring the MQ line" people sorta like what you do in Oblivion right? Some people played 500 hours without ever turning in the amulet.

I seriously agree. Somewhere in the mid-20s, it becomes obvious that unless you are playing hardcoe, you will never have to dither about "Can I afford to buy this item?" Unless you choose to not carry all of your weightless Stimpacks, you will _never_ die for lack of Stimpacks. (Or Rad-X or RadAway.) If you took the Long Haul Perk you don't even have to fret about bringing back ALL of your loot to sell to merchants. You NEVER have to worry about permanently losing a Companion, even if a pack of Deathclaws just got done turning him into Monster Chow. All of these things diminish the challenge that is supposed to be part of an Adventure.

Conversely, choosing to play at the hardcoe level of Difficulty seems like it would be an exercise in maschism. (Doable, but only by doing a LOT of "Load Saved game".) I believe that one of the things the game needs are some Difficulty levels that fit in between Normal and hardcoe.

Just read through the many posts that slipped in between me starting to write my last post and actually posting it. Following the discussion back through to the earlier locked threads as well, I can see that the solution to nearly everyone's complaints is to 1) expand the number of Difficulty levels, 2) dispense with character level cap entirely, 3) add a LOT of new Perks, and 4) expand the number of Skills (mainly by splitting several existing Skills into two or more Skills).

In most games, "Hard" Difficulty is simply a matter of giving enemies more hit points, more and stronger attacks, faster speed, etc. But with FNV (and any FO game after FO2), Difficulty can be scaled by the amount of XP the character gains for completing tasks, performing Skill acts, and (the most common source) killing things. The Difficulty levels can also be gradiated by adjusting how many XP are required to graduate to the next level. Then further adjust Difficulty by how often the character receives Perks [gain a new Perk at every level when playing Very Easy while it takes a five level gain to get an additional Perk at Masochist.] If the developers want to encourage players to try higher Difficulty levels, then make more quests available only at higher Difficulty settings. [Add a Game Setting of "Unlock all quests regardless of Difficulty" just so the god players don't feel "cheated".]

Since the ultimate goal of God Mode is to make the character so powerful nothing can actually overpower him or her -- making pretty much everything a cakewalk -- then Very Easy will provide that level of challenge. For those that enjoy a challenge without actually being mauled at every turn, Challenging -- located between Normal and hardcoe -- should provide what they want. And for those that actually want a real challenge, Masochist allows the player only ONE Save slot -- and that one only available after selecting "Save and exit game."

First of all, if you're going to quote me, don't alter the quote.

Second, I'm proposing that things stay the way they are. I don't like it that much and I support making hardcoe mode more difficult but I'll support leaving the game roughly as it is in Casual mode. However, you (like a few other people) are proposing that the game should be even easier than it already is across the board.

I get what you're saying. You want to be able to be the all-powerful deity of the wasteland and people like me, don't. The thing is though, changing the game to satisfy the 'I wanna be able to kill everything without effort' crowd would affect folks like me who don't want that.

But obviously you're right...