Q1: In Fallout 3, the player was pretty much invulnerable in VATS, due to an enormous amount of Damage Resistance that protected them while their queue of attacks played out. While Damage Resistance has been replaced by Damage Threshold, do you think we will still experience a similar invulnerability in VATS?

Q2: Instead of staring off with a high Damage Threshold in VATS, should the player instead start off relatively vulnerable in VATS, and instead implement Damage Threshold into the VATS system through mid to high level perks?

Q3: From what we've been told, action point regeneration has been reduced, making VATS use less frequent. We also know that to hit chances have been altered to make VATS more challenging, and prevent it from being a "head shot button". What do you think of these changes?

A1: I liked that.

A2: No.

A3: Yes. In Fallout 3 it was extremely easy to kill any enemy while using V.A.T.S.

Obsidian is probably putting more emphasis on real time combat because they are trying to attract a bigger croud to the game. I know quite a few people who weren't fond of V.A.T.S. but moaned about it instead of simply not using it.

First of all I do not like VATS. It feels, to me anyways, as a way to allow PC players the difficulty they want while allowing console players to still be able to win their battles. As such I didn't use it very much at all.


That being said there are times where I do use it. Once in a while when I'm at five HP and have three enemies I need the DR boost to survive. Other times I'm just faffing about with the MIRV shooting things in the face from five feet away. So yes I think it should still keep that near invulnerability.

1. Hell no. Not by default at least.
2. Why not. Depends on implementation.
3. So far the changes aren't all that spectacular (not enough details), but the direction is right.

Christ, VATS felt like a cheat or useless every other time I used it. Cheating because it made me 1-shot crit everything while taking 0 damage, or useless because I couldn't cancel it once in progress.

I feel that the near invulnerability in VATS is needed to avoid frustration. Sure, it can be exploited, but a lot times those slow motion VATS scenes held your character hostage for a long time, enough for enemies like Ghoul Reavers or Deathclaws, etc. to close in on your position and get hits that could have been avoided in real-time. Imagine how pissed players will be if they get killed while the camera insists on showing their target's dead body complete all of its somersaults and rag doll physics before letting the player move again.

VATS invulnerability doesn't seem like an intuitive feature to include with the system, so I bet Bethesda implemented VATS without it at first, and discovered how frustrating it was without protection, and added it in later.

With more properly balanced AP points and hit percentages, I think VATS can stay the way it is just fine. Sure it is a "headshot" generator up close, but so what? You had to get close to begin with, or have a high Small Arms skill. Also, VATS is there for tactical decision making and providing combat abilities to those that don't enjoy running and gunning. It may not be realistic, but it beats not having it. I often use it to shoot an enemy's weapon out of their hand, especially those with combat shotguns, or gatling weapons. That would be next to impossible in the middle of real-time combat without getting ground into fresh meat.

Real-time with a VATS option is the best of two worlds. In the turn-based combat of Fallout 1 and 2 you couldn't get hurt while taking your turn either, and that is what VATS is essentially doing - making combat turn-based for moment.

Funny, I thought it was pretty frustrating to have the ridiculous DR.

And I have to say, VATS has nothing to do with TB combat. It is a powerup feature, and as such (imo) it should also be a build-up feature (DR wise the same as accuracywise). I, for one, would find it much more interesting and usable if it posed some risks too in addition to the benefits. The way it is, it's an overbuffer for the player - huge benefits and no drawbacks.

The Damage resistance could be associated with difficulty level, normal and higher could leave it out while easy and very easy could have it =/

VATS is the "I win" button in Fallout 3. I hope they nerfed it.

Didn't like it. Was the first thing I modded out meself. Hope Obsidian does the same for NV as standard, or at least in hardcoe.

To be fair I liked V.A.T.s the way it was in FO3.
As without the high DR most of the times I used it, my character would be dead standing in the same spot.
While all the foes darted around, firing ordinance, bashing in melee, and filling my character with lead.

And as someones bound to mention it, it was not V.A.T.s in of itself, but most people taking the perks intense training AG, and GRS, all the time.

Edit: plus just because you find it over easy in function, don't force it out entirely just because you think no one wants it.

Well it was 90% in FO3.
Now that we have DT I have no idea how it's going to work out.
If DR is still in but only for VATS then I'd say it would be better to have it at 60% with a perk with 3 ranks that give 7% with each rank, adding up to 81% by final rank.
Seeing as we won't get as many perks this time around I think it's a fair trade-off.

I thought it was brutally unbalanced in fallout 3.
It was practically god-mode.
So I consider it a cheating device and refused to use it.
If it is too powerful in Vegas then I won't use it.

(And those that say "It was not godmode!!11!one!!", it's my opinion, and you could point blank shoot a fatman at someone and survive with VATS... You can harm enemies but they can barely harm you.)

another change in VATS is the ability to preform a melee attack sequence when an enemy is close . something like a hit in balls

I use free shooting alot in close range mostly because its faster than using VATS . but VATS is awesome .

It seems to me that removing the invulnerability, or near invulnerability as the case may be, from VATS would be counter productive. After all, the thing about VATS is that you have absolutely no control over your character when carrying out the attacks you chose, therefore, the damage resistence was introduced so you would not be in danger of being killed while doing it, which would really make no sense, after all, if you could still move during this time, you would probably survive, therefore, making the player character vulnerable when using VATS would tend to discourage its use, if Obsidian wanted to take out the damage resistence, they'd have to change the way VATS works as well so that you're not an easy target when using it, either make it so you could make your character take cover or move while doing it, or basically turn it into something like bullet time or something, and really, I'm fine with VATS as it is. Besides, if we consider VATS a means of bringing an element of the classic Fallout game's turn-based gameplay into the real time gameplay of Fallout 3, it would have made no sense for enemies to be able to kill you in VATS, after all, in actual turn-based combat, your enemies can't move when it's your turn, they have to wait until it's their turn, of course, going by this logic, if it was really trying to be like turn-based gameplay, it could have been closer if it actually froze enemies in place, but Bethesda obviously decided that slow motion and near invulnerability worked better.

Reducing accuracy in VATS or making action points regenerate slower though would be fine with me, after all, VATS could be a little overpowered in Fallout 3, it's just that taking out the damage resistence would end up instead making it worthless, and if they wanted to do that, they may as well just remove it entirely, since I wouldn't use a feature that would effectively be painting a huge target on my head and standing out in the open, even if it meant I didn't need to aim manually.



That's because your enemies can move but you can't, so it was a necessary design choice with the way things were set up, and it's not like having the game automatically target enemies for you is a good enough benefit to be worth being completely defenseless.

Well they wouldn't need to take out the entire DR but 90% is too much, even if you cannot move and they can.
As it is it's like a free card to harm people while they cannot harm you.
That is not balanced IMO.

I actually liked the way VATS was done in Fallout 3, the only thing I'd change is reducing some of thoser god mode perks like GRS.

I just hope that Grim Reaper's Sprint is in there somewhere. Ohhhh... GRS... is this. I liked it, but it was only for a higher up level.

You think i cant handle battles without vats? huh do ya?

My main problem with VATS is, as you say, you get a "turn" while your VATS queue executes and then the enemy essentially gets a "turn" after. The problem with this sorta-kinda turn based is the player can also attack during the enemy's "turn". So in essence, the player gets 2 for 1, turn wise, one of which they are invulnerable during. I'm hoping in Fallout 4, there will be a less broken, more strategic implementation of VATS that does a better job of approximating the strategic elements of turn based combat.

Personally I didn′t find VATS to broken, you couldn′t squeeze of that many shots until end game thanks to perks, and it took a bit to recharge.

The changes mentioned sounds about right, if it ain′t broke don′t fix it, just tweak it.

In FO3, the V.A.T.S is a lifesaver...
Although it's a bit cheating, it's lifesaver, because you turn into a INVULNERABLE HEADSHOT MACHINE!!! :gun: (I don't like it.... )
At last, some challenges! V.A.T.S will be more balanced..... Thank you, Obsidian!

Ahyeah, also, in VATS, don't we get like more critical %?

With the near invulnerability VATS is too strong but without it entirely it would be a useless feature that would get you killed a lot. I like the idea of having a minor reduction that can be increased through perks.

What about if the near-god mode is optional. :laugh:

I'll second the "VATS isn't turn-based" thinking.

For myself, I didn't have much of a problem with VATS as it was in Fallout 3. For a guy like me, something that allows my character to react in a manner appropriate to their skill level is kind of necessary for my enjoyment. Left to my own devices, my own real-life skill at aligning the cross-hairs with, and tracking an enemy accurately enough to connect with a shot, is never going to be much above... say, 30%. Even if my character has 100 in their skill, they're going to be missing most of the time - because while my character ostensibly has enough battle experience to stay cool, calm, and collected, and to be making crack shots; I, as a player, am going to spaz out, get fuddled, and start wildly spraying bullets in the general area of what's coming at me. :gun:

So I need something like VATS for me to enjoy Fallout as a roleplaying game. :shrug: All I want out of VATS is a system where my chance to hit is equal to what it would be in real-time if my own real-life skills were appropriate to my character.

And I can see a need for damage reduction while the playback is going. You're not in control of your character. I believe I remember hearing during Fallout 3's development that during testing, players would get frustrated when they died during the slo-mo playbacks. And I think that's understandable. Also, we're talking about a time frame of "invincibility" that really only last for a second or two - if that. Maybe some elite players have worked out ways to use that invincibility to great advantage, but I wouldn't even know how to begin to implement a strategy where VATS factored into anything more than "I need to hit this enemy, and take a second to figure out what I'm doing - because I can't do either of those adequately in real-time."