My friend and I were having an argument about V.A.T.S. and manual shooting. Long story short, he claims that V.A.T.S. add a turn-base feel to combat. I told him that I felt it added more of a Real-Time with Pause feel to the game. So of course the best way to resolve this argument would be to have input from other people. So what do you all think?

The rest of the argument was about the manual shooting aspect to the game. He claims that it makes the game easier and that it is designed for the FPS gamers out there to feel more at home. He actually went as far as to calling it "cheating" and that V.A.T.S. is the real way of playing. Of course I disagreed with this entirely, and told him that both should be used in specific situations. But if you were to label something "cheating", V.A.T.S would be what I would say. What do you all think?

No-one is taking turns in VATS. It has nothing to do with turnbased gameplay. It's just a powerup feature with slowmo playback akin to real-time with pause.

Strictly RTw/P (and with only the ability to shoot at that).

It's realtime with pause, but not the standard realtime with pause (like Infinity Engine games, Dragon Age, KOTOR). Still, you play the game normally out of VATS, in realtime, then pause (go into VATS) occasionally to order some commands.

If anything, VATS is cheating. You get near godmode for as long as you're in it and the enemies get no such thing.

The way I see it, VATS was implemented to give the player a chance to study the situation, have more control over everything, it's supposed to replace turn based combat of the classics, but the only resemblance is the sound effects.

And calling real time combat "cheating" is... Well let's just say that if there's a cheat aspect in FO3 combat, it was VATS itself.

Well I guess I'm a big ol' cheater then cause I abandoned VATS shorty after my first playthrough.
(Returned to it during one playthrough because of my Unarmed character who had to use Paralyzing Palm)

And I think VATS is the real cheating mechanism.
The player get's to place a number of shots and all damage received during that time get a 90% reduction.
Got boring playing as a god.

(But I did occasionally use VATS as a scanning mechanism in PL and in some metro tunnels)

I don't consider it a cheat and I use it liberally. Objections may be directed to my hindquarters.

if you want to make vats turn base you would have to solve the movement problem of vats... for pc users i guarantee there will be a slow mow mod to be a work around to the movement.
also i voted for the pause option

VAT's just needs its damage reduction toned down...

It's not like it is totally god-mode. I mean, VATS does have a limit on the number of shots you can take, right? As I recall, you have to have points or something to be able to fire.

So, they could just put a stricter limit on it to make it less unfair.

It's real time with pause.

If anything, Vats is more like Deadeye in both RDRs. It allows you to precisely target enemies outside of real time. The only reason it was like a cheat in Fallout 3 was because you were temporarily invincible while using it. Now you can actually take damage and it won't be effective at really close quarters. I still used manual shooting a lot it Fallout 3 to get sneak attack criticals or when using scoped weapons, and now that iron sights are in, it's going to be way more fun using free aim then before.

I've always used it to damage a specific limb. Like an arm to have the enemy fire his weapon all weird-like. Or a leg to slow him down. Sometimes I'd even aim for the weapon the enemy had. Then I'd switch to manual fire to finish up. Problem though, early in the game, you can lose a lot of your precious ammo by going manual.

I honestly found weapon condition to be more of a concern than ammo... Meaning VATS was useful for its DR boost rather than for conserving resources.

I meh I wish vats was more akin to RDR's dead eye, there is a immersion shattering effect whenever I pause the game in a hellish fire fight using vats, its just click and semi-easy mode, if things still occured during the usage of vats i would be fine, at the very least until a shot is fired then you can go into the seemingly uneccesary bullet cinimatic. just my two cents.

Don't see how it could be turn based. Its not like your opponent is entering VATS after you.

Same here. I use it to scan, and it occasionally saves my life when a Yao Guai gets the drop on me at lower levels.

It's my panic button.

Today I got ambushed by some raiders in the subway tunnels, they got lucky with a grenade and crippled both my arms -

So, almost dead, I ran back up the tunnel and dived behind some sandbags with 3 of them unloading at me -

Used VATS to return the favor with some grenades of my own, without having to leave cover to aim.
The grenade-placement with VATS is damn-near perfect every time!

I sniped the only survivor in the back of the head as he tried to flee in terror on gimpy legs.

:rock:

That's exactly what I told my buddy. I don't recall what he used as an argument after this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFABEnF7b6I&feature=search

Fallout 3's V.A.T.S is not turn based at all. Both actors are doing their moves at the same time, hence "real-time".

That actually looked somewhat fun.

I felt it as real-time with a pause.. I also found vats much easier than shooting in real time.
I used vats constantly.. Usually in FPS games I tend to panic at times and mess up.... Whenever I felt like that in fallout I could just put it in vats and think out my next moves.

To me the only way to make it feel turn based would be to give the creatures vats as well.. You pause.. shoot at them.. Then they pause you and shoot at you..
I personally love turn base.. and vats is nothing like it.

Real-time with pause, hands down.

Wait he called it cheating and the real way of playing?

Sounds more like a contradiction than anything

As far as V.A.T.S. is concerned it's not turn based it's a short pause in gameplay that uses an automatic aiming system rather than having the player aim

No. He said manual shooting was cheating, and that ONLY using V.A.T.S. was the "real" way of playing. Maybe he's subtly trying to refer to the original Fallout games or something.

I agree with all of this. I also love turn-based games. Fallout 2 is still my favorite game of all time to this day.