There's got to be something more and I'm looking for a little help here.

Got done with FO3 and that was fantastic! About 2 - 3 weeks ago started FONV and just finished my first play through and felt let down.

Was a little surprised at the changes (perks, aid, etc.) and those bothered me a little, but making remedies and the reloading/workbench getup is interesting. The problem is that it seems exploring is much more limited in FONV (smaller map maybe?), and not as interesting, either. Finished the quests really too fast even before I hit lvl 30 (no dlc's yet), and was sort of frustrated so I figured might as well finish Hover Dam battle and that was it. That was disappointing - the great elite rangers abandoned me and then blew open the gate in the end after the battle was won? I think I was expecting something like FO3 that would last me another 2 or 3 months.

So the questions is this: What's left for my next FONV play through - hardcoe mode, make more stuff in the desert? I've heard mixed reviews on the dlc's.

One word for you mate.

Trophies. Lots and lots of trophies.

Or achievements, if you roll that way.

If your running on a PC, then mods all the way.

... Actually, that was 23 words. My bad. :shrug:

i was disappointed with it for the first month or so but kept playing it and have been playing it since release, now i think its better than fallout 3. my first time i just played it exactly like FO3 and was disappointed like you at the lack of random exploration and invisible walls and stuff that seemed like restrictions, then next playthrough i decided to use hardcoe mode and side with the Legion cuz thats what i normally wouldnt do. then started experimenting with weapons mods and the new guns and the better combat and the crafting and i started getting into the different factions and then it just all came together for me. for your next playthrough, try the opposite of what you'd normally do, and see how it plays out :biggrin:

Reload a save from before the Hoover Dam battle, and finish all side quest, take the other end game paths, find all locations, recruit all companions and finish their personal quests, play the DLC. There is a lot to do in New Vegas, and from the sound of it you just did the main quest. Oh and reminder there is no continuing after the end battle, not even in DLC.

Have to give those suggestions a shot. Thanks

Thanks for telling me a bout the dlc - I assumed it was like FO3.

I think I did at least 2 or 3 dozen quests, changed management in the New Vegas clubs, a bunch for the NCR, the King and his dog, Silver Rush, Crimson Caravan, etc. I had Boone and ED-E as companions through most of the game, and Rex too, but I preferred Boone and ED-E. I could have had Rose and the crazy super mutant at Jacobstown

Not sure I understand what you mean by personal quests?

He means that every companion in FNV has their own quest that you can help them complete.

Give one more play through a try man, I basically felt the same way you do after my first playthrough but after I got used to some of the changes they made, I really do think now that NV is a better game than 3 was, and that's saying a lot too considering how much time I put into 3. It's just got a way different feel to it but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Try roleplaying, tons of quests, tons of characters, tons of dialogue, tons of factions and 7 different ways to end the game if you have Dead Money.
You just need to stop thinking about how Fallout 3 was and think of Fallout New Vegas as it's own game.
Some ideas:

Make a Tribal character who sides with House cause he considers a man on a TV to be black magic and must be a god. (Intelligence 1, Melee weapons only, helps if you have Honest Hearts dlc)

Make an Explosives character who only uses explosives, side with Powder Gangers and set out on a crusade against the NCR.

Make a serial killer character, high sneak, high melee, high guns with silenced weapons, then stalk your victims and kill them when they're out of sight, use the corpse to your pleasure.

Make a corrupt NCsoldieR who don't care about people, who don't care about 'winning the battle', one who is just out for as much money as possible. (The Greed ending from Dead Money would suit this one)

Let your mind go wild and create new characters to roleplay as.
That's what New Vegas is better than Fallout 3 at.

I want to say thanks to everyone for responding.

In the grand scene, I suppose my 30 or so quests is not much, and in this case I don't mind being wrong. But I also get that NV is a different game than FO3.

It sounds like I may be facing a similar problem I had in FO3 and that is being villain or even having bad karma. But that's OK. Based on your advice, I can develop some different types characters for myself with different motives and methods. I'm really curious to see how things play out with House vs NCR vs Caesar, with House coming out on top.

I'm curious about two things:

1) Does the NCR vs Caesar war/standoff occur if my character doesn't participate? I'm guessing the game could last a long time at that rate.

2) What the latest feelings about the dlc? I've read there's a lot of bugs and ppl felt a let down on the play through. Frankly after finishing NV I wasn't going to spend the few bucks for the dlc's, but I beginning feel different now.

1. The battle at the dam will happen in 5 out of 7 endings. (With Independent and House you fight for NCR (kinda), with Caesar and Lanius you fight for Legion, the other two endings are Greed and Elijah which take place in Dead Money, excluding the Dead Money endings the battle is still going to happen.)

2. Dead Money was awesome, it was challenging, had great quest design, great atmosphere, epic characters, awesome new equipment, nice new perks and an amazing story.
Honest Hearts (imo) had boring exploration, a very cliché storyline, very linear quests, very one-dimensional and cliché characters, not very amazing weapons, crap perks, amazing night-sky, beautiful environment and tons of great new recipes.
So I think DM was well worth every single krona I spent on it, but Honest Hearts is not something I'd suggest to get unless you have money to literally burn.

Depends on who you ask, and the attitude you have going in. Dead Money is a survival horror oriented DLC which places emphasis on atmosphere and writing, you also have an exploding collar on your neck that goes off if you remain too close to speakers for too long without disabling them. This mechanic really annoyed some folks, but I enjoyed it because it added some more challenge to the game. The writing is also very good, and the characters that you're forced to work with are very interesting.

Honest Hearts is a bit more like Fallout 3, short on story and more focused on exploration. Graham was a great character, but unfortunately he's the only really interesting character in the DLC. Overall I was satisfied with it, but I was hoping for a more interesting main plot for the Burned Man DLC. If you don't take the time to experience everything this particular DLC has to offer and only focus on the main quest then it will come across as short.

Bugs aren't that bad, to be honest I had more problems with Fallout 3's DLC. In fact I haven't run across any bugs at all in New Vegas' DLC, they seem to be more polished than Fallout 3's was.

The map in NV is said to be roughly the same size as F3. If you were to rotate the NV map, this would hold true. NV doesn't have large areas of empty space like F3 did.

Yea it does, look to the east and west of the map, its all empty.

I have encountered many locations such as that airfield south of Vegas and it takes a huge chunk of the map but there isn't anything interesting there. There is that tower but you can't enter it.

Fallout 3 made a "living sandbox world" to play around in, FalloutNV gave us a "dialogue type world" to play around in.

Combine both for future games = Awesomesauce

Or it's a giant sandwich with the peanut butter spread too thin.

Obsidian told us that it had the same amount of map tiles as FO3 had, justifing why it was the same size, unfortuantly in NV u have less interior areas, smaller "dugeons", they forgot about the metro of FO3, had more boarded up and inaccesabile areas than FO3. Its been proven that yes its the same amount of map tiles, but all in all its smaller cuz the invisible fence is cutting off about a fourth of what ur seeing on ur pipboy.

Back to topic, i was disappointed the first time also, i didnt think it felt "alive" or traveling interesting compared to the 3rd one, heck i still dont. BUT Combat/ammo/survival/dialogue/skills actually being important in dialogue n decisions/etc, hell Obsidian took FO3 and improved on about almost every damn thing EXCEPT the landscape that u travel/random events/lil storys that all the backwood areas that have nothing to do with the game had in FO3. Its just same franchise, but 2 different games like a man and a woman, both human but very different but same. i dunno. FO3 had u replaying the game cuz it was so fun too and different each time, FONV has u replaying cuz of different fractions quests. They just need to combine the awesoemness of FO3 with the major improvements of FONV and bam thats gonna be a game that peps be playing for years.

If you're on pc, there is a mod for everything short of a pilotable verti-bird. The possibilities are endless.

If you're on console, NV offers infinite amount of ways to RP. Honest Hearts is a really cool game extension while Dead Money has really good rewards (you can have an infinite amount of weapon repair kits for example if you pick up the schematic on top of the cabinet near the prison cells in the police station. And every 3 days you'll get more chips at the little safe in the bunker.)

Mods, dozens of hours of more content and countless visual overhauls await.

If they filled all that "wasted space" in, NV's map would be 1.5 to 1.75 times larger then Fallout 3's. I think your confused by the way the map is drawn. As are others that say the map is smaller by looking at it.

Take a shape of a map used by a state that is square in shape (Colorado), then a map of Texas. Texas's map would have more empty space around it because of its shape but is of course bigger than Colorado. The Mojave Wasteland's area is more or less in the shape of a rectangle on its side, of course there is going to be empty space shown on a square map screen in relation to whats shown for the Capital Wasteland's map.

Keep in mind that Fallout is one of the very few RPG's that has nothing to do with elves, dragons and all that ridiculous cliche Harry Potter / Lord of the Rings crap.

Lord of the Rings is AWESOME.

Anyway OP you should try different combat types like melee, unarmed or energy. At first i thought i would hate it but it's pretty fun because you have to do different tactics. like you cant just go rambo against a NCR camp if your a melee type, so you take out an ncr veteran ranger with a poisend throwing knife and sneak-kill two more troopers then attack head-on with the final trooper.

The Hobbit was one of the very first books I read when I was a wee laddie. I still have the original copy. I was going through a bunch of old boxes of books and putting them on some new bookshelves in the new house and I found all my old Fantasy novels. Tolkien, Saberhagen, Rosenberg, Feist, Farland, Jordan, Goodkind, Modesitt, Martin, King, Eddings. I still have almost all of their old stuff. That's all some good stuff right there.

OT: What the goldfish eating dinosaur said. Roleplay. After the first 5 characters I played, I haven't even had a character do the battle at the dam. I've been role-playing characters that don't really care or for some reason can't/don't want to get involved in that battle. The last three have been Dead Is Dead characters (see my sig for the first two) and I'm still coming up with great ideas to keep playing the game different ways. Sandbox games are great because you don't have to do any of the quests/story if you don't want to.

-Gunny out.

Actually... there is a mod for a pilot-able vertibird.