My opinion regarding VATS is that it's a way for Fallout games to still be somewhat difficult for those of us on PC, while not making it impossibly hard for people playing on console to actually hit anything. Everyone I've ever talked to about it seems to fall into that. The couple times I've spoken to console players they've said VATS was absolutely critical to gameplay, while PC players said they didn't need it.

Now, is it turn based? Hardly. Enemies still move and shoot while it runs it's course.

I enjoy VATS for a few reasons, though I don't use it in normal play. I think the cinematics are fantastic, watching the bullet in flight and the awesome death scenes from every which angle is quite unique in the gaming industry. It can also be useful in long range sniping, and the targetted shots were pretty important to death claw hunting. Its not something that makes or breaks the game for me, but I enjoy having it around just the same.

Miax

I find the cinematic effects very entertaining and it has many tactical uses. Shooting the arm(s)/weapon of an enemy to stop them from firing it, snagging grenades out of the air/their owner's hands, setting up a well-thought out first strike on a group of foes, headshots when you are close but just can't risk missing if your target moves an inch. But I call it real-time pause because it is like bullet time, only better.

fun fact, vats is what made me get fallout 3

:cryvaultboy:
VATS isn't cheating, give me a break, fallout is not a pure FPS, the enemies move extremely quick and very fast , come on, deathclaws , reavers, even supermutants are fast, all those enemies can totally overtake you really fast, a game like MW2 doesn't have extremely quicky fast enemies like fallout, so thats just for starters, secondly the game mechanics aren't FPS mechnics at all, the movement is clunky and not smooth at all so actually to play it like a pure FPS is a big disadvantage compared to games like mass effect or GOW etc. thirdly its an RPG, its not about reflexes and speed, its about your characters skills, not your skills, and finally VATS is a very cool way to assess the situation and orchestrate moves you couldn't ever do in a pure shooter game, VATS is totally cool, so you miss the point of fallout bigtime. its not your skill, its the characters skills. :grad:

Odd he'd say that

If only because of the near invincible state you're in while in V.A.T.S.

I used V.A.T.S. a lot early on but after I maxed out my Small Guns skill I was actually able to hit the broad side of the barn for once! And after playing without it I thoroughly enjoy just running & gunning most of the time. :tops:

judging by the poll I hope your friend isn't a sore loser...

its simple, and if you watched the making of fallout 3 , vats is there to give the player something new and do stuff that he wouldnt be able to do in real time, and its great to watch people head explode in slow motion, they put in the game just a fun thing for the player

Just because the FPS elements svck doesn't mean the don't exist. And VATS is far closer to cheating than playing in real time for the reasons I already said.

VATS isn't cheating. most fps games don't have extremely quick and fast enemies like fallout not only that it take tons of rounds to take some enemies down in fallout, most shooter games one or two shots and the enemy is toast, they don't have enemies like ghoul reavers or deathclaws or overlords that take clips of ammo to take down. they're making it so you take more damage while in VAT's for NV anyway, but the enemies in fallout take far more ammo to kill than in any shooter game, and with the clunky combat mechanics, VATS is part of the gameplay. if you want to frustrate yourself trying to kill every super duper fast enemy without VATS go for it. in an interview when FO3 came out, todd howard said he was afraid some people might not get it regarding the FPS elements of the game, and you're one of em, you don't get it, its not about your quick reflexes and speed, its about your characters skills, not your skills, so VATS isn't cheating or even close to it.

I svck at FPS and I have 0 problem hitting them in free aim.



Yes, it does. I die more times in one mission in COD4(MW2 was so bad I got rid of it) than I do in an entire playthrough of FO3. And again I svck with FPSs.



Hrm...Viewable from the first person prospective, shoot things with guns....yeah I'd say it is an FPS. The mechanics are there. You can use WSAD to move, left click to shoot, right click to aim, crouch to duck, space to jump and you aim by moving a mouse. Pretty bog standard for FPSs.



My truck is clunky and not smooth at all. but it works just fine. Gets me from A to B, and it doesn't care about the terrain.



The combat is way more exciting in first person than in VATS. You actually feel like it's YOU hugging that deathclaw, not some avatar on a computer screen. There's been times where I thought I had actually been in a firefight after a close encounter in first person, whereas with VATS encounters like that are ho-hum. Boring. "Eh, I click this and this, he goes down, wake me up when it's done".

So, because it's an RPG, the combat must svck horribly?

There's such a thing as an FPS RPG. It combines the dice rolls and character development from traditional RPGs with the player skill and general fast-paced action of contemporary first person shooters. Fallout 3, and New Vegas by extension since it's the same engine, are brilliant examples of this melding together wonderfully.



VATS is useful if you need to point blank that Behemoth with a MIRV and live to tell the tale, or if you get ambushed by six deathclaw at once. It is NOT the proper way, by any means, to experience the game.



This part you have right. It is quite amusing to watch eight mini-nukes slowly fly towards what is about to be a glowing pile of goo. OR, well, it would be IRL anyways. You get the picture.



I could have sworn the point of Fallout was to wander the wasteland and pretend it's you, fighting your way through all sorts of mutated critters and deciding which way is best to proceed. You know, that whole RPG part I alluded to earlier.

Playing the game entirely using VATS is like never leaving your suburb. You miss 99.99% of the world. I maintain that VATS is the solution to the problem of joysticks being slow to move while not 'dumbing down' the combat for PC players. I doubt VATS would have even been included had the game been a PC exclusive.

Real time shooting makes the game easier? I fail to see what your friend is trying to say, I usually find the game easier when I take advantage of VATS as much as possible. If anything is cheating (And calling a normal feature of proper gameplay "cheating" is absurd anyway. VATS or real time shooting are both simply parts of the normal gameplay, if either makes the game too easy, then the game is just poorly balanced, cheating would be using the console to add all the best items in the game or just using it to kill your enemies outright or something.)

Now what VATS IS, I would say, is an attempt to bring an element of the original combat system from the older combat games into Fallout 3's real time gameplay, it's not turn-based since no one is actually taking turns, and you can move freely even without AP if this were a turn-based game, you would not be able to do that, but it does introduce an aiming system similar to that in the older Fallout games, and brings in one aspect of a turn-based game that is often lost in real time, in that you can pause for a moment, and plan out your next move, without needing to worry about needing to make quick decisions, in short, I guess it's pretty much an enhanced version of real time with pause.



I think the proper way is not something you can decide for everyone else, Bethesda would not have included it in the game at all if it were not the "proper" way to experience the game, if a feature is in the game and supposed to be there, then it's certainly a valid method of playing the game, and if you disagree, you don't have to use it, since this is a single player game, no one is getting an unfair advantage over you if other people use VATS while you do not.

The proper way to experience the game is simply just that: To experience the game. Focusing solely on one form of combat, in this case VATS, is not the way to experience the game. It's only experiencing a tiny chunk of it.

FPS means more than just the game's vantage; it reflects the design of the gameplay itself and the game's pacing.



Arx Fatalis is a brilliant example. (made by the recently acquired Arkane studios. :banghead:)



I don't see how you miss anything... Will you / would you please give an example of what you mean?

double post.

Maybe missing out on the game actually being a challenge (as if...)?

Eh, VATS has always been in Fallout, but I seldom use it, Actually, I take it back, call me immature, but I giggle at ' ____ falls to the ground and collapses' style messages from groin shots in the old Fallouts.

But eh, I wouldnt call it cheating, it just gives you an advantage in my opinion.

It's real-time with pause, but I really like it as a game mechanic. I wish it were configurable though. I mean, everything is configurable for PCs, but I wish there were extensive options for it so consoles could configure their game much better. Right now I use VATS and it's not slowed down, and I can take damage normally. It gives a good way to make combat more stat-based (and not to mention quicker), and it isn't just care-free anymore. Similar options would be great in New Vegas.

Real time + pause + slowmotion kill = Vats

Hehehe. I can't wait to show him this later. We always have lame arguments that usually end without any definitive winner. Not this time!

Ask him to post and make his case here. Would spice things up in this thread of general backpatting.

I would love that. But he hates forums and anything else that involves "registering". But I know that it would most definitely spice things up.. Oh boy.

Show him this and let him post what he thinks using your account.

I used VATS all the time in Fallout 3. I didn't really appreciate the invulnerability, but otherwise, it made the game pretty fun. Honestly, real time combat kind of svcked when the enemy was actually engaging you. Some enemies would always run around in quick strange patterns and it made real time shooting not worth it. It looks a lot better this time around though.