lol how does it feel to lick bethesda's balls?

You should no your breath smells of them.

ONLY thing I liked in Vegas was the hardcoe mode. It would have been nice for Bethesda to continue going this route with their future releases post Vegas ala Skyrim but they chose to take the simplistic generic route of difficulty by simply increasing npc damage values and hitpoints.

I 100000% agree.

New Vegas, despite it's buginess, was an absolute masterpiece in my books. I loved it.

While all your points are great, I think you missed out one or two; fun/replayability.

New Vegas lasted me all the way up to Skyrim, and didn't bore me one bit - without the DLCs it would have lasted me to at least February '11(it came out in October 2010).

Skyrim isn't the same. In Skyrim, there are hardly ANY choices whatsoever, and the few it does give you, such as Stormcloak vs. Imperial, are just PANTS! They're the exact same [censored] thing!!!!! Both of them have you do the same tedious quests - Get fort, Get town, get fort, get town, get fort get fort get fort kill leader done.

Fallout New Vegas is an amazing game, whereas Skyrim is just a good game.

I never thought I'd think that, but that's how I feel. Skyrim just isn't fun.

Ahhh, yes, trolls will troll won't they.

Vegas is far more of an RPG than Skyrim. Skyrim is a sandbox with RPG elements. NV is an RPG with sandbox elements. And best RPG to date? Just in the last few years I'd put Dragon Age Origins, FO3, NV and the Witcher 2 above it let alone the classics. RPGs are about story, choice and consequence. Skyrim is more a dungeon delving hack and slash with endless fetch quests and a world that doesn't respond to you at all.

Look down this and the spoilers forum. There's almost zero discussion about the story, choices or characters. It's either all about builds and combat or how pretty the world is.

Fixed 'er up for ya!
With a nice shiney coat to boot!

My favorite thing about NV was the ability to just pick a backstory and roll with it. You could easily RP a Mercenary, Simple Currier, Soldier, Deranged Lunatic, etc. etc.

This is pretty much the most innaccurate statement of the entire thread.

#1. New Vegas was a huge success in both sales and critical/fan acclaim.
#2. New Vegas made many great additions to the Fallout 3 gamestyle, continuing with the changes BGS made to the series and bringing back some of the feeling of the original titles.
#3. New Vegas is as much if not more of an RPG than Skyrim and this point isn't even worth arguing because you obviously are just trying to pick a fight.

I couldn't agree more. And it really makes me sad, because I love TES lore much, much more than FO universe. At least TES modding community is bigger and in my opinion more talented than FO modding community, so I expect a lot of quality mods coming out soon.

I'm on the same page. I love TES lore too, but Skyrim is just a good game, not a great one. New Vegas is amazing and Skyrim could learn a lot from it. I just don't feel the same need to play Skyrim as I did FO3/NV and Morrowind/Oblivion. It's probably because the game's got no depth. It's fun to play and the landscape and dungeon exploring is excellent, but I miss the RP part, I'm finding it hard to "live" in the world, if anything Skyrim feels more like an Action Adventure.
I do think Skyrim will improve a lot with the CK coming out, I can't wait for some great mods!

lol did Bethesda pay you to say that?

This sums up my own feelings quite nicely.

I'd love to see Beth and Obs work together on a title. Would it be perfect? Nope, but it would be pretty damned close

Lemme put it this way...

Try killing a troll with 0 perks in your weapon damage. Pretty friggin hard, isn't it? Now take the perks and try again. Oh, that was easy.
In this sense, the perks are actually LIMITING you. You could have 100 archery, 1-handed, 2-handed and destruction, but since 1-handed is the only one you got the perks for, that's the only skill you can rely on to kill an Elder Dragon without risking your neck. This is how the leveling and perk system is more of a punishment: because the damage/armor perks are practically a requirement, and every time you level up, that's another perk spent that might not make it into archery, allowing you to use bows well aswell.

New Vegas perks on the other hand? Take melee for example: Super Slam. Gain the ability to knock down enemies with melee attacks. This is a good perk. Why? Well for one, it's a reward, not a punishment, and there's no worries of some leveling system making it so that the lack of me taking a guns perk instead will make me completely incompetent with guns vs tougher enemies; this simply means I've chosen to make my melee capabilities exceptional whereas I'll remain competent with all other types. This undoubtedly improves my performance with melee weapons. More importantly? It redefines my entire play style. Perhaps before, if I turned a corner and saw six guys with hard-hitting guns, I would choose to take cover behind something and try to shoot at them one-by-one. With this perk? Now I'll rely on melee. Now I'm gonna try to juggle them all, knocking them all down and keeping them all down so I don't have to worry about taking damage. Instead of opting to shoot back from cover and hope I don't get hit, now I'm looking for a chance to get close to them before beating the crap out of them, keeping them from attacking me in the process.
My play style, thanks to this perk, has changed forever. Not in a bad way, either: I'm still perfectly capable of playing the game the same exact way I had before, but I've also unlocked a new way to play it and a new way to approach a battle.
Skyrim? What do Skyrim perks do? With Skyrim perks, I unlock the ability to continue playing the way I've already been playing before. Again, those perks are a requirement. If I don't take those two-handed perks, then pretty soon I'm gonna have to rely solely on my bow for damage, since that's the one I've taken perks in. And with additional damage, nothing is changing; the enemies are simply dying quicker, but the combat is all the same. Hell, New Vegas had damage perks too, but you know the difference? Well 1) the damage you gained never exceeded 20% normal damage, which wasn't a significant amount to make the weapon-type overpowered AND thanks to the way the damage formula worked, this 20% was sometimes more like 5% extra damage (Depended on the enemy) 2) the damage was applied to specific SUB-weapon types and not the skill as a whole, making the player want to choose very specific weapon types, such as revolvers or SMGs. This, again, changed the way I played the game because suddenly a formerly svcky weapon was now a VERY viable option for my character to use. However, unlike Skyrim, the damage bonus and leveling system didn't work against me. If I took a perk that made me work BEST with cowboy rifles, that didn't mean I wasn't capable of killing Deathclaws with snipers and SMGs: I was still very capable of falling back on those weapon types if neccesary, but had that 20% extra leg up with the cowboy weaponry. Skyrim on the other hand, there could be a tough opponent I want to avoid at all costs because he hits like a truck, so normally one would think "use a bow." However, without the proper perks for the bow, it just WASN'T a viable option. I'd either end up risking it with my claymore and killing the enemy in 20 seconds at the cost of two health pots, or I'd spend the next 10 minutes using my bow to peck away at his health, using 4 health pots in the process.



In short, perks should enhance your gameplay and your playstyle, not limit it. They should unlock new abilities and possibilities for the player, not take the job of skills, which is quite boring. I personally don't know anyone who gets excited over his Guns skill reaching 38, but I know plenty of people who're excited to get a new perk. Skyrim somehow killed that excitement by practically making perks and skills one and the same.

How is this different from Oblivion or Morrowind? In what TES games has the world responded the way it did in New Vegas?

It's like on the one hand I agree that Skyrim could definitely have benefited from this approach, and I was disappointed that they didn't include ANY of the NV-ish stuff..

At the same time though, I have to ask how people didn't know what they were getting into, it really seems like Beth takes the conservative route with quests, and it seems like that is simply part of their history.

Morrowind, people would react to your actions. The Fighter's Guild would deny Thieves Guild members (and vice versa), the Tellevani Wizards and the Mages guild didn't always see eye-to-eye, the Ordinators would attack the Nerevarine on-sight as well as house Redoran (or perhaps not; depending on player actions, Redoran might look the other way when you claimed to be Nerevarine), etc etc etc. Oblivion, people didn't react DIRECTLY to you usually, but the rumor system did. People at least acknowledged events via gossip, though no, it never happened that someone would recognize you beyond "hello -insert title here-" from a guard or acknowledgement within a guild itself (for example the Dark Brotherhood wouldn't recognize if you were a high ranking thieves' guild member or the like)

However, I have to agree that I think people should've seen this coming. I've been playing Bethesda games since Morrowind, and I used to think "Bethesda is playing chess, 95% of other game companies are playing checkers," then I played New Vegas and felt like my eyes were opened to where I thought "Obsidian is playing chess, Bethesda is playing Checkers." It was just obvious to me that Skyrim was gonna be simpler. Weapon-balancing, consequences, player decisions, good character customization, companion depth along with tiny lines of dialog to give them personality and make them feel alive (examples: Boone will comment on potential sniper posts in the area after you've been given a quest to track one down, Raul will say "When I die, tell them I want a band of mariachis playing at my funeral" if you take him to the Hoover Dam Battle); these were elements that Bethesda games didn't even know existed, or barely even experimented with. These were completely alien to the world of Bethesda, and yeah, I'm not surprised they were missing from Skyrim. Nevertheless, we can voice our love of such things and hope they get more attention in the future.

This. This a million times over. Most perks in Skyrim are not perks, they are actually your skill. So why even have skills? In NV someone with 100 guns is going to be good with guns. The perks in NV exist to craft your play style. Want to be a sniper? You'll want the sniper perk. You a pistol guy or gal? There's perks for you. You like machine guns? There's perks for you. Your skill in NV is your skill. Perks exist to help define your character not limit them to being all the same every playthrough. In Skyrim if your going sword and board you will take the same perks every time. 2H? Same perks. Dual wield? Same perks. Because the perks are necessary to use those weapons. In NV you can have 3-4 builds based around one skill. One single skill. Add in more skills, each with many creative perks and you can truly craft a character. There are so many viable builds in NV it's crazy.

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