There are now more weapons in Fallout than ever before. I don't get what the problem is...

Why don't you go do to yourself with a power fist what the Enclave does to the American people?

It fits. Take a look at the icon for the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fast_Shot. You're right that dual wielding is not realistic, but there are a lot of gimmicky, cliche themes in FO games (which I think adds to the charm). If I had to guess, the only reason it wasn't added was due to a lack of time and other priorities.

For Fo3 I seperated all my weapons into catagories along weapon sizes instead of ammo types so:

Small Guns -> Became -> Pistols
Energy Weapons -> Became -> Rifles (Assault and Long Range)
Big Guns -> Left Alone but this also included the Bows I added into FO3, so it would have a starter weapon.

I Merged Unarmed and Melee -> Into -> Martial Skills

and rearranged all of the perks for those skills and re-balanced all of the weapons stats and placement within leveled lists so all classes had a full representation within the entire games level range and teh game as a whole felt a hell of alot more balanced and entertaining to play.

I though for a bit that I should seperate the Assult and Long Range Rifles into seperate skills as well since I did have Melee Weapons that I could salvage and Long Range Rifles are so overpowered that taking points into a skill that had limited weapons available made some sense but decided it would get a little boring to be limited so greatly.

I will do the same for FONV but I doubt I will release anything as I never did for FO3 because its to great of an incompatibility nightmare.

probably because i dont want to, nor do i have a power fist.

I like the way they did it. Although guns skills affects all guns big and small, weight is a big factor in their useability.

I'd rather they improve unarmed. In FO1 & 2 my PC were almost all unarmed specialists (tagged and in the 140 to 160 range).

Aye, Unarmed was quite good in FO 1 & 2 especially at those levels and with some of the perks you got for it as well.

I was very disappointed when I learned that the Big Guns skill was going to be removed in F:NV, since I have been a huge fan of them since FO1 and always had characters specializing in their use.

I have never liked that there has only ever been a small amount of different Big Guns in a given game, but it made sense since there's not much need for multiple varieties of any given type thereof. That said there were multiple Minigun variants in FO1&2, however in practice you never used all of them anyway.

It's true that in FO1 it was difficult (at best) to run a BG character from the start, however in FO2 one could acquire a regular Minigun early on and a decent starting ammo supply. Of course, it tended to be wise to start out using Small Guns anyway, but at least BG were practical for most of the game.

Then FO3 came out, and not only was it relatively difficult to run Big Guns from the start unless you know exactly where to go for early supplies, but the BG themselves were nerfed to hell compared to their ancestors from FO1&2. The Minigun was a total joke and the Missile Launcher (formerly Rocket Launcher) greatly reduced in power. Combined with the ridiculous level of efficacy of sneak criticals the class was a mere shadow of its former self. Fast-forward to F:NV, and the remnants of a once-powerful weapon class have been dismembered and spread all over the weapon skill landscape. At least in trade some of the former power of the weapons themselves has been restored, but they are still inferior compared to sneak-sniping with more conventional weapons.

While I am sad to see the Big Guns skill removed, I am even more saddened by the massive reduction in power so many of the weapons themselves have undergone; the whole point of Big Guns is to be incredibly powerful yet cumbersome to use, and in their current state they only retain the latter aspect.

I agree with the whole specialisation idea in this thread, but there should be better way to implement it than a billion different weapon skills.

Why not just add specialisation points on "Level Up" or whenever you hit a milestone (25/50/75/100) in a particular skill, you then allocate Spec points to specific catergorised (Laser, plasma, pistol, rifle, shoulder) etc and you gain some additional bonus to the Spec you pick?

Because that creates the Jack Of All Guns character, who can make reasonable use of all weapons. Assuming you are talking about having just one guns skill and have specializations give benefits to weapons. If not than perk paths for specific weapon types would be a better and easily implemented way to do it.

Personally I wasn't much of a Big Guns guy. I see that people want more specialization, but in effect we already have 5 combat skills. I'd rather they did something to make the less useful non-combat skills more useful and give non-combat skills beside lockpick, speech and (to lesser extent) science, more options in the gameworld.

Having just guns skill is much better in my opinion.

And your idea of selectign a skill adn teh specialising is terrible in my opinion.

In the end, it's just about loot...sadly

Agree with everything! I love Big Guns, but they are so weak - especially in FNV. And they are pathetic when compared to the overpowered sneak attack headshots. But they are a really fun class to play, walk into a room and start mowing down everything that moves (at least that is the way it is supposed to work, if FNV was real life then all the tanks and attack choppers would have a single action rifle on it instead of missile launchers and miniguns). If they are going to get rid of Big Guns I would rather see them combined with explosives for a heavy weapons skill. That would be a fun skill - lots of explosions and carnage.

Yeah that could be cool, but I think the strength requirements already serve this function to some degree. But being able to specialize in either handguns or long guns would be neat. This reminded me of a thought I had regarding the Cowboy perk: why do I have to have 45 points in Guns AND Melee? I never use melee weapons, so why can't I have the option of only being able to use the perk for my guns? I understand that this would probably be too powerful at early levels, but they could bump up the level and/or skill requirement(s) to compensate.

who in their right mind would put 100 into survival?
anyways, as much as i love it, i should not be carrying a sniper, minigun and riot shotgun with only my guns skill. It doesn't seem fair