Yes, but isnt knowing about those tings and actively avoiding those things to make the game balanced exactly the same thing you were talking about doing in new vegas with only wearing clothes and using sub-par guns? Isnt both instances kinda of meta gaming to make the game "more balanced," which in turn makes the game even more unbalanced since you are consciously avoiding things that you feel break game balance? why is one game inherently balanced when you don't pick up the uber stuff and the other one not?

I'd say vanilla New Vegas is only slightly less balanced than the original fallout, when you put everything in scope, It's just balanced as a first person shooter rather than a complete statistics game. You can argue that one or the other system is better, but I'm not because because that arguement is stupid and has argued to death with neither side really having any merit against the other side.

EDIT: To be clear i do agree with you about New vegas' level 50 cap and balance issues which is why i outlined a few tweaks i would consider to make level 50 balanced. I'll edit this post with that since it seems to have gone by the wayside

EDIT 2: Here is my balance tweaking option for a level 50 cap

the first thing i would do is drastically decrease the amount of earned XP after level 20 and drastically increase the amount of needed XP after level 30. I'm talking something along the lines of 80% in both directions. This would hopefully bring it somewhat back to that original fallout level system where getting to level 9 or 10 felt like an accomplishment but grinding out to level 14 felt like a huge chore.

the second thing I would do is after level 30 all enemies will scale, not quite entirely with the player but in relation to their own strengths at their original levels. this way things like death claws and super mutant Masters with Big guns will still feel threatening.

the third thing I would do is cut down skill point gains on level up by 1/2 or 2/3 after level 20 and skill books will only give full benefit before you get 50 in a skill. Over 50 you would only get 2/3 points from a book and over 75 points you would only get 1/2 points per book.

the last thing i would do is make perks available only every 5th level after 20, so they stay somewhat of a choice.

I think doing something along those lines could really help to balance a level cap of 50. I for one like Leveling up. It's fun to progress your character and feel like they still have time to progress even at the end, but I also want the game to be even more of a challenge at level 50 as it was at level 15

Balance is for scales, immersion for bathing.
I have fun in FO:NV, had fun in FO3, had fun in FO2, and had fun in FO1, in every one I became a god.. some sooner then others.
I found FO1 well balanced but very easy to unbalance within the first 5 minutes if you got lucky and had the right stats.
I found FO2 to be highly unbalanced especialy against the player early on, but bloody good in its story, choices and consequences.
I found FO3 to be blooming odd in its balancing with the DLC add ons, but fun and interesting to play around with.
I found NV odd as well, but again this time fun, and full of consequences.
Levels, balance, difficulty don't mean much to me in rpg's, as you can always find loopholes or uber builds, you just don't have to use them.

I think the best option would be cap at level 20 like fo3 but it takes you like 5 hours to level up lvl 10 and above.

Eh, there's just not enough to do in NV for it to be doubled. I agree with slowing it down some, and maybe taking a couple points away from each level up, but doubling the level requirement would be too much. NV just isn't deep enough. Good post otherwise.

Start your game hardcoe mode & very hard, than pick traits Kamikaze & Small Frame, than take bull [censored] perks
like Here and Now, Explorer, Computer Whiz, Nuka Chemist, Infiltrator, and so on.

I don't actively avoid them.
When I go to the Hub I don't think "I shouldn't visit the book shop".
I just enter it and when I go to that district I simply don't even notice it let alone get the notion of entering the building.
My reason for not using PA in Fallout 1 is not because I avoid it for being gamebreaking.
I simply think it looks ugly and don't want to see my character run around in it.
The reason for not using Faster Sequence and Slayer and Sniper and Rapid Fire is because I either don't reach that level or I see a perk I'm more interested in taking.

So no, it's not the same thing.
In Fallout 1 I don't ever think "I shouldn't use this... It will make me too powerful..."
Hell, due to enemies being so hard I with glee drool over the good stuff.
And even then I can still die from enemies being stronger than me or getting lucky strikes in.
In New Vegas on the other hand I always fear my character becoming too strong and constantly gimp it back down.
And even when nerfed down like crazy I can still kick ass. (Not to sound smug but I guess I have to blame my own player skill at that point as FONV is more player skill than character skill.)

It still seems like the same thing to me. you blatantly ignore the unbalanced parts of one game while complain about almost the exact same thing in the other game.

you just seem like a grumpy old man who can't let go of his archaic lawnmower for the shiny new riding one.

dont get me wrong, those 4 play throughs of fallout 1 i played were back to back play throughs, I ate it up like it was meatloaf and mashed potatoes. But I am content with where the series is going and how it has evolved. every single one still feels like fallout to me.

do i think the new ones could be tweaked a bit to make them more of a challenge? Of course i do, but i don't believe the system is inherently bad and dragging the series down.

popquiz: ninja gaiden 1 & 2 overbalanced? like them alot

Well I can't say you're wrong in your opinion on my opinion.
Anyway, excluding the outside influences like books, power armor and upgraded weapons, which one of FO1 and FONV would you say is more balanced if we think about character specialization?
Not combat.
Just character specialization.

I agree with you, I just don't vehemently hate one game because of the direction it's going. go look at a few post back of mine, the last two, and you'll see where i stand.

That's where grinding comes in. In every true RPG, if you want to be "god-level", you grind....

My "doubling", was just a rough guesstimate. Having thought about it, it's probably something like +60% in order to do all story quests, side quests, plus a reasonable amount of monster hunting, in order to have it so you just hit 30 coming in to Hoover Dam.



gabe, by deliberately avoiding overpowered items in FO1, you are gimping yourself. It's the very definition of it, despite your rationalisations.

1. I acknowledged them and said that they are minimal and far easier to avoid than they are in New Vegas. There are a couple of things to break Fallout 1, I acknowledged that and I replied with what I thought of them and how I react to the idea of using them. But I also stated that Fallout New Vegas has by far more things one needs to avoid to break the game and unbalance it. So I do not ignore anything.
Hell, you forgot to suggest Sniper and Slayer and I mentioned them. If I wanted to ignore the bad spots of Fallout 1 I wouldn't even have mentioned them.
I fully realize there are unbalancing stuff in Fallout 1 but I can with ease avoid using them, hell, I don't even "avoid" using them, I just don't think about them at all.
But in New Vegas? I have to avoid maybe 20 to 30% of all the weapons, I cannot use anything above the lowest tier [Light] armor, I cannot have more than 10 stimpacks on me. It's by far worse for me in New Vegas.
So Fallout one has what? 12 gamebreaking things? Well New Vegas has like 80 for me. (At the very least)

2. I'm old?

3. Well I'm just a dinosaur.

4. And there's the difference between us.


I don't avoid using them because they're overpowered, I avoid certain things for completely different reasons. And even if I do gimp myself I still only lock myself out of like less than a dozen things whereas in New Vegas I lock myself out of maybe a hundred things cause I have to gimp myself so severely.
If you do want to consider my avoidance of the gamebreaking items in FO1 as gimping then fine, do so, but it doesn't change the fact that I have to avoid ten times more things in New Vegas for balance.

Can't we all just love :fallout:

Unless it is a RPG about the hero(ine) eventually become a god, otherwise I don't see why player should have god stats......

I didn't forget to suggest anything. I only gave examples of exactly what I had at the end of the game. and all of those things were easy to obtain in fallout 1. I got the PA by accident when these thugs decided i was easy prey while walking through old town to talk to Harold about the missing caravans.

Faster sequencing and rapid fire were the only things that felt pertinent in my perks choices. with enough skill in any direction you could pass any check. 200% was overkill for almost any skill in Fallout 1, and being more effective against those giant monsters i couldn't sneak by at the end of the game felt way more important than any skill i had.

I'd say fallout 1 is more broken than New Vegas, in that major plot points of the game can be completely skipped over and have almost no bearing on the games outcome whatsoever. the only locations that you have to go to in the game are mariposa and the cathedral. everything else is utterly secondary as long as 1) Mariposa is destroyed 2) the master is stopped. You can entirely skip the whole reason you were sent to the wastes in the first place. That mechanic is more broken than any other in a fallout game.

Locking yourself out of about a dozen things in FO 1 is like locking yourself out of 1/10 of the game. the game is so small and there is so little to pick up the Power Armor and Turbo Plasma rifle are a few of the only interesting things to pick up and play with.

I'd say the biggest challenge in FO you could give yourself was to recruit every companion and give them all burst fire weapons when you are an unarmed or melee character.

I believe the fun in fallout never ever came from the challenge or the isometric view and turn based gameplay. The core of fallout and the reason i have played back to back sessions of every game ( except the other off-shoot titles and all of 2) has not ever been the challenge the game presented. To me the only thing you need to understand and enjoy any fallout game is that sweet sweet narrative by Ron Pearlman and the thirst for adventure through the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic society. the stat checks and shooting things down is completely secondary to the experience.

The most balanced part of FO 1 was that the more time you spent screwing around trying to do quests and help people the bigger the chance there was of the super mutant army destroying the most civilized parts of the wasteland.

No matter what way you try to slice it, there are parts of FO 1 that are just as broken as anything in FO 3 or NV. The main thing being the ability to crit something for 4 times its health. Crit strike was completely broken and utterly shattered immersion and broke the game the few times it popped up in FO 1. "haha super mutant! i just crit you for 250 damage with my plasma rifle!," "oh no, i was just crit by your partners 400 damage critical strike, oops."

I also do not believe that arbitrary statistics make an RPG. Random number generators and skill checks are about as much of an RPG as being in first person and shooting people. Both are just a means to an end. The actual RPG element comes in being able to dictate how your character reacts to the world around them on a complete 1:1 ratio, and in my opinion, no computer game has ever done that ever. Every game has fixed choices and is essentially just a simulator. No matter what route you take they were all planned and accounted for. The only true RPG games are the table top games where you actually become the character you are playing and LARP where you are everything about your character without a silly stat sheet telling you what you can do.

Who cares? Wow, you guys are whining like there is no tomorrow... I don't care, I WANT level 50... make me have to kill hundreds of thousands of things to get there... YES HAVE LEVEL 50. Why? Am I crazy? Probably.

Here's why I think it's a good idea... When I get a level up, I feel sort of accomplished. It adds variety into the monotony of shoot kill shoot kill shoot kill quest shoot kill shoot kill shoot kill quest... It gives that middle way road marker that helps keep you focused.

All you whiners need to put your whining to good use, for example, suggesting possible solutions.

Here's what they should do:

1. Keep their idea going, it's a great one, level 50 is a good idea for everyone
2. Make the exp past level 30 GRUESOME to get a level up... I mean, like 2K exp not even going past a tick mark... maybe one tick mark on the level up tracker
3. After level 30, make each new perk come at every THREE levels or every FOUR levels if you are on hardcoe or something like that...
4. make the Skill points you get after level 30 DECREASE by HALF so if you can get like say, 18 with all the perks/ INT maxed, etc... it goes down to 9 per level up
5. Have some perks be ONE TIME ONLY perks, like, if you hit level 20 and take a level 16 perk instead, too bad so sad, no grim reaps sprint for you... That way you can't have all the super powerful perks

THIS WAY IT KEEPS ALL PEOPLE HAPPY... people who WANT more level ups, get them, and all the benefits to them.

ALL THE "hardcoe" PEOPLE get what they want too, since you won't be able to make your character into God or w/e EVEN WHEN at level 10 I was able to 1 shot things... it DOESN'T MATTER because level ups do NOT give you ANYTHING except more skill points and a little more HP. And unless you cheat like a mofo and give yourself all 10 stats, there's no way you'd even be close to hitting 1K hp or w/e.

Oblivion's level up system allowed for the player (if not an incompetent moron) to get up to level 50 quite easily, and you could STILL be killed easy if you weren't careful, had max difficulty, and didn't use uber weapons/cheap spells and if you didn't get max reflect dam/spell and NO ONE IS WHINING about that


Seriously, offer solutions or don't bother complaining.

I'M NOT trying to be rude to anyone but some peopple just have a big STICK up their BUTT constantly thinking they should be CATERED TO by the devs... if they think five level increase is good for THEIR GAME then let them do it. I understand you PAYED for this, I did too, and so did MILLIONS of other people (relative figure obviously). So if the MAJORITY of people who will PAY MONEY for more DLC Content wants "this" or "that", then it is SMART money wise to do what the MAJORITY WANTS since it will bring them MORE money then one very biased fan base that needs to learn how to evolve and that things CHANGE and don't always stay the same since that is nonsense.


THIS IS NOT FALLOUT 1 or 2... get over it already my god. Let the poor devs make content for you, and if you don't like it, don't just complain and rage over "this" or "that" without trying to fix the situation. Everyone knows there are hundreds of difficulty increasing mods out there and if you didn't buy the PC version, wel, sorry, TOO BAD these games, Bethesda's games are known to be big mod friendly games so next time get the PC version and mods that make things the way you want


Sorry, again, not trying to be an a-hole but some people need to learn to be productive with their frustrations and not just rage and whine. NOT ALL POSTING HERE DO THAT to make it CLEAR but some people are just "THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT" type of people... guess what ... NOT ALWAYS...

There's my two cents, for whatever it is worth, Fallout NV devs, KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK and please get the BUGS out of the game, please and thank you, EXCELENT ideas/content work on the execution and it'll be top notch gaming.


For the RECORD. I was pretty ticked when I learned energy weapons were crap, and I voiced my opinion then. I'ver since learned that whining does nothing... I was a whiner and I was miserable... so I said, fine, I'll get the PC version and get mods that will get rid of what makes me angry and I HAVE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice, evolve , and change in order to get what you want. Take it from a former angry guy, use the anger/frustration/confusion to your advantage and you will be like me, wondering why you ever were angry/annoyed/frustrated in the first place. There... I admitted i'm not perfect either, but i'm willing to work and live with what I can do to make it more of what I want...

No one ever read my balancing tips for a level 50 cap. Im a sad panda =(

I actually don't get how level 50 makes such a huge difference, according to people.

Level 50 is just 100 extra HP points and 10 extra perks. I like it that way. Why? Because I see perks as what makes my character unique; it's his personality. The more room I have for them, the less I have to worry about not being able to fit in all my character's traits.
If you think it'll make your character too OP, pick crappy perks. Pick Here and Now, pick the one that reduces the radiation you absorb from drinking water. That extra 100 HP isn't gonna do squat if you're playing on very hard. Maybe you'll be able to tank 2 hits from a deathclaw instead of one; that's useful, but I hardly see how that's god-like.

Actually, when we get more levels, and take more perks than we need, and use more skill points than we need, because we can't NOT choose perks and distribute skill points, we actually become less unique, because there is a finite amount of perks and places to put skill points, so when you get a perk like you say, you are drifting into a gray area and becoming more like everyone else's character at that point, and the more you spend skill points on skills you don't use, your character suddenly moves out of the role you were playing, specialization, uniqueness, graying out, fading into a more amalgamous character that is more like everyone else's at that point in the game.

Could care less about a 50lvl cap when there will be an option to cap at 30. Don't see the point in any complaints at all, unless the added trait to cap the PC at 30 isn't in addition to the 2 given at creation.

Exactly, you cease to specialise and start to generalise. I want my characters to have specific strengths and weakneses, not become the doomguy :hehe: