I love exploring the wasteland it's on one of the best parts of the game (in my opinion), but is it just me or are there way to many pointless map destination? Nothing is worse (besides all the glitches) than discovering a new location (i.e. toxic waste dump) and there being absolutely nothing to do there, no enemies to kill, not even a container to open. What the hell, Did they just get lazy? Towards the end of development did the realize they didn't have enough location to discover? What gives?

Another post that complete contradicts to the biggest complain about NV vs FO3.......

Whatever - it's a bit of a 'blank canvas' for modders.
Heck, I was Level 30 before I ever hit The Strip.
There's so much to do already, before you even get there...
For every abandoned location, you could encounter something that's a surprise and not even marked.
Like...
But they have to stop sometime - or else the game would be on multiple DVDs...
Regards

There are lots of pointless locations, but you don't know they are pointless until you scrounge around. Most will have something, but you can't realistically expect there to be a hidden unique weapon or armor at every spot you visit.

The biggest thing I hate about my current Fallout 3 playthrough is that I can't enter a building without having to kill roaches, molerats, ghouls, or supermutants in every room.

The shooting mechanics aren't that good. I don't need to be constantly killing.

If you just said that one of the POINTS of Fallout is exploring, then didn't a mysterious, upside-down, empty triangle serve its purpose in getting you to, you know, go explore?

food for roleplay...

I don't mind the locations being marked for fast travel but the number of hackable terminals and safes with 75 or 100 that contain nothing but crap is mind boggling. If you've thrown that many points into these skills there should be some reward besides XP.

that's one of the reasons I decided to give myself 100 in every skill, so that I don't miss important things only because I have less than 100 in one particular skill.

If it's important, it's basically guaranteed that there's more than one way to reach it in New Vegas. Unique plasma rifle? 100 hacking, 100 lockpick, or go up two flights of stairs to fight past or luck check robots to get a key.

I'm kinda glad there aren't tons of goodies (still ultimately pointless) at the locations. That way I don't feel obliged to check them all!

I have a laundry list of pending quests and a bunch of free quests to do. I'm lvl 26 and I haven't set foot on the strip yet. If anything, there's too much to do in this game.

I don't expect there to be hidden or unique weapons or armor at every spot but I do expect something there weather its ammo, caps, or a box with an ashtray in it. I'm just irritated that they obviously got really lazy with this game and I decide to spend my money on it instead of black ops

Actually parts needed for crafting is reasonable enough, for me......

True, while certainly, most locations don't really have anything really special in them I generally like to search out new locations anyway in the off chance that I'll find one which will really be rewarding. Because some really nice rewards I've found have been in places that did not seem all that special. But I have noticed the amount of locations that really don't seem to warrant their own map markers does seem to be higher than Fallout 3, though to be fair, that does make them convenient locations to fast travel to, which really seems to be the only purpose some locations serve. I mean, at one point I found a gas station with its own map marker and I couldn't even enter the building, the doors were just boarded up, that just seems kind of pointless to me. So yeah, not every location needs to have something really special in it, but I'd certainly say there are some locations that are just kind of pointless. It's not even like there's not enough to do. It just kind of baffles me that they chose to mark some locations when there's really nothing there worth marking.

Of course, I'd also argue that some of the most interesting locations I've found aren't necessarily ones that really have any exceptional loot in them. Some locations are just interesting because they stand out from others, maybe because there's some notable landmark there, or maybe they're just so random that it feels worth exploring them just for the sake of doing so. One location that caught my attention which I found today was the , just a crashed car out in the wastes, yet it was marked on the map. No quests involved with it, to my knowledge, and I didn't find any really great loot there. But it seemed like an interesting reference to Fallout 2, which I assumed it was meant to be.

On the other hand, though, there's also locations that I thought really deserved to have their own markers, yet, for some reason, do not. Like say, the Lucky 38, really, I'd say every section of the strip should have had its own marker. Because it's kind of annoying that to get to my presidential suite there, I need to fast travel to the north gate of the strip (Which actually puts me in Freeside outside the gate.) walk through the gate to the Strip, thus waiting through another loading screen after I just sat through the one for fast traveling, and then I still need to enter the Lucky 38 and take the elevator up to the suite. Of course, that isn't a problem anymore since I downloaded a mod which adds a map marker for it as well as some other Strip locations, but that's a luxury console players don't have. And while needing to go through one extra loading door wouldn't be that bad if it's a one time thing, since the Lucky 38 serves as my main player home, I'm going to be visiting a lot, so I want it to be as convenient as possible, anything that adds unnecessary inconvenience to getting there is rather annoying. And it's even worse if I want to visit some of the other locations in the Strip, as after entering the Strip, I'd need to walk from the north gate, through one or two more gates before I could reach then.



Well, that depends on what your definition of "important" is. If you're like me and feel the need to pick up anything of value you find in an RPG, even just missing out on a normal plasma rifle because of not having enough skill would be a problem. And whenever I see containers or doors I can't open due to lack of skill, it just serves to taunt me, but that's fine, as that sort of thing makes me feel motivated to put points into the appropriate skills.

IMO, it's the wasteland. It's been a wasteland for 200+ years. Many places have been scavenged already.

I don't hold any location as pointless. I see a playground (as I pass through it), and it (rather jarringly) tells me it's name; there should be quests there? Unneeded IMO, but I would not be against finding an aged NPC in Vegas that remembered it from many years back as a kid, and asks you to find and return his time capsule under the merry-go-round. These places exist because they existed; they lend credence to the notion of a shattered world existing centuries before. They don't have to have activities there, or things for anyone to do. :shrug:

I'm fairly certain there's no definition of "important" that means everything. Except in the philosophical sense that I saw in an anime once. But I really don't think we're speaking in a context where my drill will pierce the heavens. Even if we are, I'll gladly beat up the bad guy for the sake of that important common plasma rifle. I'm still not sure you need to pick it up.

I like to think there's a distinction between things having importance and just being obsessed.

Yes, and the boxes people give you for Christmas don't have to contain anything, but it's kind of nice when they do. No point in pretending to give someone something of use when you're not.

I do wish there was more clutter though, some of the farms were jarring without any weeds sticking out inside.

They are not pretending anything. These are locations in the world. Do people explore caves to find anything but more cave? No one goes in there looking for pirate gold, or expecting a damaged robot asking for help, or to loot the previous spelunkers. (but if you find something its cool ~sure, but if you always find something IMO its not cool, and gets stale pretty quick.)

**Also FO1&2 actually had all sorts of places with nothing in there ~in addition to the actual places that there were things for the player find and do.

Personally an open world loses credibility with me if it comes off like a Disney park with hidden gifts and activities stuffed in every square inch of it. That is my idea of an "immursion" breaker. When I come across a house that has nothing in it, I move on... I don't ever leave dejected for not finding supplies or weapons.

In Fallout... any locker, box, or crate that was not under guard, or in a very isolated and out of the way place ~was almost certainly empty (but then some weren't). In FO3 you'd even find houses and commercial buildings with stocked first aid kits ~nuts I know...

The design was definately lazy and cost cutting. Fallout 3 had much better exploration as NV felt cheap and unfinished since most locations were nothing but bland and unexplorable.

Rule of thumb: If a place looks abandoned, it tends to have a Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Cap lying around somewhere.

I have to agree, a lot of these locations didn't knock my socks off. They seemed like generic craters, shacks, and mines to me with a few interesting buildings and faction locations thrown in. The D.C. Wasteland had a lot of time-consuming sewers and subway tunnels to extend the exploration aspect of FO3. The Mojave Wasteland looks pretty, but it just doesn't have a whole lot going on for it.

how abouts putting locks on first aid kits and ammo boxes as immersion breaking?

seriously? i mean i can sorta understand a lock on an ammo box in a small home (prevent kids from blowing themselves up or whatever) but a first aid kit?

"this man is dying! what are you guys waiting for get the stimpack out of the aid kit!"

"sorry dude we ran out of bobby pins trying to pick the lock"

*man dies*


"aww hell not again".

They were possibly added post-war to prevent anyone from taking their supplies or were there before to prevent anyone from stealing the drugs.