The abundance of food in Fallout 3 wasn't too big a deal, because we didn't really HAVE to eat it. I agree, that the amount of PRE-WAR food in FO:NV shouldn't be as abundant, but newly produced food (grown, animals, etc) should be more abundant, and presumably more expensive.

If it's an aspect of the game that you have to eat/drink/sleep to survive, it shouldn't be way too easy. You should either have to steal it, kill it, grow it, buy it, or actually make an effort to scav it to get it.

Playing with the eat/sleep/drink mods in FO3 has led me to feel that with those requirements there is a bit too much food available laying around and cheaply purchased.

I'm not too worried about it, if it's the same amount I won't care, but if I was designing it I would reduce the pre-war food a little.

I think less prewar food, more food that was produced around the time tbh, the problem i think with the capital wasteland there where no running farms and the few that i saw where already kinda killed by raiders by the time you found them, however in the new vegas area we already know communities had set up farms

Ok ill explain. Fallout is NOT post nuke simulation. Its what people in the 50s thought it would be like mixed with popular movie versions of what it would be like. Thus food managing to stay edible after 200 years sitting in a moldy cafateria and so on and so forth.

Its not about reality its about falloutity.

There should be less prewar food, but more than enough contemporary food to make for an overall increase in food.

naturally that depends at the rate the food meter drops, if I can go 1-2 hours of gameplay (while not using wait or sleep) before my hunger lowers my attributes then yeah the amount of food could be lower, but if you ya need to eat every hour or less then no thanks, keep the amount about the same as Fallout 3

Since Mojave area is nuke-free zone, I think that there are even some areas around it where fresh apples or some other kind of juicy stuff can grow.

Considering the Courier isn't the only one trying to survive in the wasteland, then yes, there should be less abundant food, because anyone who finds even a small box of meat would die fighting for it if their life depended on it.

I think it would be dumb to add in food requirements and then take out most of the food so players starve to death.

Food will take up carry weight and traveling will not avoid the need to eat so how much food you can carry is limited by how much other stuff you are willing to pass on such as ammo, guns, etc.

We need food in the world, what form that takes isn't as important as being able to find enough of it to sustain you so no not less food I don't want to be stuck somewhere starving to death and have no food and no way to do anything about it because they took too much food out of the world.

consider New Vegas was only indirectly harmed by the nuclear attacks I doubt resources would be on a cut-throat low level, not abundant but still not hat bad.

food should not be less abundant, because in Fallout 3, I never used food to heal except very rarely when I was desperate. So for New Vegas, the amount of food should stay the same, however, not prewar food.

I think the Pre-War food was more of an in game joke than anything else.

In the 50's, if there were more chemicals than food in the container, that was a good thing. So, creating something that would not spoil after a couple hundred years would be an accomplishment. What would it taste like? Well, SPAM will give you an idea, if that does not do it, then Potted Meat would close. MRE's for those familiar would be another one.

So, why was there so much food left around? Because what was left was all the over preserved over processed food like substances that no one wanted to eat in the first place, so it was left around. People started eating real food as soon as it was availible from farms.

Now, in the new game, I did not see food as an issue, since I never ate in this game. Really, I never eat in any game I play, which is why I never played the Sims. I see the food packages as just so much flotsam and jetsum of the wasteland. Not sure if I am going to play in hardcoe Mode, as I play that way on some of my builds anyway, and I think my hardcoe is harder than what Obsidian has come up with. However, it remains to be seen after I try that mode out.

Wasn't the game (Fallout 3) advertised at early point as something where you have to balance between stimuse and eating to keep your health up, and thus a need to take good care of the radcount which was supposed to be something of a concern? Why did they chicken out and drop all that, is beyond me, but I'd wager all the food was there to actually provide means for healing at a point of developement, when they were actually usefull in that purpose and just left there after toning down the need for them.

Resources in general shouldn't be found so easily in the Wasteland, not just food.

None of the towns in Fallout 3 have renewable food sources. Megaton had the single Brahmin, and that was a dairy brahmin judging from the bucket next to it.

So I guess everyone lives off 200 year old canned food in Fallout 3, which is just scattered all over the world and only the player is smart enough to loot it all.

So hopefully there's not resources just scattered around everywhere and the world makes more sense in New Vegas.

Do complex games do well in a mainstream market?

Absolutely not. What does well in a mainstream market is games such as Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War, Brink and even Fallout 3 and such.

Those games are made to be very quick to learn and be very simple to play overall.

And let's not get offended. That doesn't mean they can't be fun. That's just... the way things are.

You're thinking in the terms of FO3. FO1 and FO2 have farms for both animals and plants. The world would make sense to have farms in the settlements we encounter in New Vegas. If people are just living off pre-war food then the game would make no sense. Again NCR had a popluation of 700,000 by the time of FO2. We need to see farming in New Vegas to show people are growing food and can sustain population just like we need to see kids to show settlements are reproducing. FO3 bugged me because we saw no farming. No farmers.

We don't know because there really isn't any made anymore. Not ones aiming for mainstrem at least.

The food would have been more of a factor if it offered more healing. But, it would have to be over time so it would not be used in a battle like a Stim Pack. It should have offered not quite as much healing as a stim pack, maybe half, but it should have taken an in game hour or two to get the full effects, including radiation effects. Anyway, the math could be worked out to offer balance, but it needs to be different than in FO3

That would have made food more an issue. As it was with the low amount of Health Regen, I never saw a need to eat food, as the Stim Packs would heal me more without radiation effects.

Well, then it's pretty obvious why they left it out then no?
Dumbing down games == Easy to learn == Easy to play == Mainstream success.
I just hope they have the "Casual Mode" in every game and have "hardcoe Mode" be the game designed for us who want more complexity.
With hardcoe Mode getting more complex with each game.
That way the mainstream casual gamers can get an easy enjoyable experience and us masochists can get out asses kicked by the game so hard that we can taste the foot.

Oh and no offense to casual gamers, I like casual games where I just kick back and have a blast as well.
But I also want the game to offer me a challenge if I choose to.

I don't know if it's nearly about "dumbing down" a game that makes it successful, but rather how Good the interface is to a particular game. I think the learning-curve for the interface on any new game is one of the more frustrating parts of new games, and if a game maker can simplify the interface and/or make it much more user friendly, it will be much more popular. I've heard that some of the modern football games can get Enormously complex with the recruiting and growing players season to season - but its the interface to the game in the end that determines how successful we the people are at learning it.

In the real world Canned food over 100 years old have been recovered and found to be more or less safe to eat

http://www.enotalone.com/article/7794.html



I think the real problem is that there was anything left at all given that it was 200 years later.

Why, based on what I said, is it obvious? I know easy access is the sacred cow these days and complexity is a swearword, but I don't get what would've been so complex and why was it used as a buff.

I'm not too sure about different modes in general. You can only go so far with them. I'd rather see a game that is specifically designed for a certain purpose than something that you can roughly patch via a checkbox.

food would have been more of a factor if there had been fewer stimpacks.

honestly who did not have at least 200 of the things left over by the end of the game? Im almost hopeing that thoes have weight as well!

You have to remember that before the bombs food was being produced for thousands of people (D.C.'s pop now is around 600,000 and it could have been more in the FO universe) when you go from that to what is maybe 1,000 at best , there will be a whole lot of surplus food.

But wasnt there a food shortage going on in the US just before the war?