In Fallout 3, having a higher weapon skill resulted in higher damage from weapons. This doesn't make sense with guns. Having more experience with guns doesn't mean they do more damage. With melee weapons this makes more sense; you're more skilled, you swing the weapon faster, it hits harder, you do more damage.
Will this be different in New Vegas?

its an RPG whats the point of raising a gun skill if your character doesent do more damage. if this was a First person shooter then yes it would be a problem. but its not

no it will not change with new vegas

One way to look at it with regards to a higher ranged skill letting you do more damage is that the more skilled you are the more likely you are to place your shot somewhere more effective thus causing more 'damage', and conversely with a lower skill you are more likely just to graze them and thus cause a minor flesh wound.

Accuracy comes to mind. Maybe general handling of the weapons too.

But you're right, it'll likely not change. At least not in major ways.

Look at it this way; The more experience you have with the weapon, the more damage you can cause with it because you know how to use it to maximise the damage. Shoot at vital organs and whatnot. It makes sense to me. :shrug:


EDIT: Ninja'd... :cold: damn you people are fast. And here I spent an hour yesterday bragging about finally breaking the 100 WPM limit on my new keyboard.

Being more skilled with gun in theory means your able to hit the areas most lickly to instantly disable and or kill the target instantly, as oposed to simply putting a round into muscle or the armor plate

accuracy was increased in F3.

but it would really reduce the reason to level your gun skill if they took away the damage bonus

Elvis (Josh) explained this once thusly:

More skill = better at hitting critical parts of your target = results in higher damage.

That help?

(ps. I don't buy it. What the hell's critical hits for then? But hey, it's from the mouth of Elvis, and he drives that Fiat, so what the hell.)

I'd rather have weapon skill affect accuracy, not damage, like Morrowind. If your skill is very low, good luck hitting a stationary target.

EDIT: The hitting of critical spots is good, but since you see exactly where your shots go it seems strange if you do more damage shooing the same spot with a skill of 50 instead of 42.

Only a bit, to my recollection. I never noticed any major increases in accuracy between skill levels, other than comparing the nigh lowest to the nigh highest.

That latter part of your post depends on the magnitude of the skills given effect.

I don't mind too much about how things are, though I would prefer the skill to affect more on accuracy than damage. I mean, the aiming is done manually in all the cases anyway (except VATS) so what's point in simulating accuracy through damage?

Scenario:


Two people, two AK47s. We have ballistic gel anologs set up in a crowd formation. Person one is a USMC veteran who knows his way around an assault rifle, and person two is someone who has never even seen a gun up close, let alone fired one. We give each one a turn shooting the crowd. There's 30 rounds and 30 gel dummies. The noob represents a Fallout character with a low SG skill, say 1-25. the Marine represents a character with 75-100 in Small Guns.

The Marine will hit every dummy squarely between the eyes. the noob will be lucky to hit more than one. BUT here's the kicker: The one or two lucky hits the Noob managed to get do the same damage as the Marine's highly accurate hits.


Wanna know why?


The 7.62x39MM bullet is going to fire just the same for the noob as it does the Marine. The kinetic energy will be identical. However, the accuracy will leave much to be desired from the noob. The Marine is well trained and well experienced. He knows how to properly handle, aim and fire an assault rifle. He, therefore, is going to aim down the sights and fire one round per target. The noob has likely only heard the AK exists from movies and video games, thusly they're going to hold it at the hip and spray away. They'll be lucky to hit a single dummy.




My point here is that skill with a gun does not change the damage a gun is capable of producing. It only changes the accuracy of said gun. It will also affect reload times, as the noob isn't going to have any idea how to reload that AK while the Marine can do it a couple of seconds. Why the Fallout designers seem to think an unskilled wielder suddenly makes the gunpowder way less efficient is beyond me. I think the damage should remain the same, but as weapon skill improves accuracy, reload time and the like drastically improves. IF you manage to luck out and get a headshot it should do just as much damage as if you had a perfect weapon skill.



I can easily enough understand skill causing other projectile weapons to lack power. Bows, throwing spears, things like that. Grenades won't fly quite as far or be as accurate, although they should still do the same damage.

If your damage didn't go up you'd seriously be screwed against a large majority of the enemies in FO3, Can you imagine fighting a Deathclaw with an Assault Rifle that does 25 damage let alone a Super Mutant Behemoth or Overlord?

Damage progression is good it shows your advancement in a certain skill and it helps out in a pinch. :tops:

Well, the point is to make it so that raising your skill makes you better with that weapon, that doesn't always have to mean doing more damange, increasing your accuracy, which Fallout 3 already does as well, works too. Still, increasing weapon damage never really bothered me, sure, maybe it's not completely realistic, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it shows that if I get better at a certain weapon, I'll be better off while using that weapon, is fine with me. If Obsidian removed it, though, as long as the game was balanced to take into account the fact that aside from getting a better gun or improving your guns condition you would not be able to do more damage, and made sure that the other benefits of a high weapon skill made it still worth investing in weapon skills even if they don't make you do more damage, I'd be fine with that too. But seeing as I don't think we've heard anything about Obsidian changing how skills effect whatever they effect, I'm guessing this won't change.

Still doesn't make sense. Let's say your 20% in Guns, you shoot an enemy in the foot with a fully repaired 9mm pistol, thus dealing 13 damage (example, not true damage). You come back with 70% in Guns, you shoot the same enemy in the foot with with a fully repaired 9mm pistol, and you deal 24 damage (example, not true damage). Higher weapon skill should make the gun more accurate and less recoil or something.

IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REALISTIC.

but i do see where your coming from.

honestly i see it as a way for your weapons to stay useful for you longer.

do you love a hunting rifle but afraid to use it cause it would be to weak.
just raise your skill and it can become more effective and your favorite weapon can stay of use

I agree completely a lot of weapons would be obsolete if there wasn't any damage progression from skill raising. :tops:

....Well...
Imagine all the people who wouldn't buy the game
when they heard in all the reviews that increasing a skill no longer affects damage
Its EXTREMELY unlikely that something like this would change

yeah it's hard to make sense but its fun

I always think that of it this way: Mt character starts off as just a regular guy and each time I level up I get closer to my ultimate goal which is to become Chuck Norris. And it is a scientific fact that a gun does more damage in the hands of Chuck Norris.

Then again, a lot of weapons could become much, much more useful through skillraising if accuracy was more prevalent factor in the progression. Not necesserely the only, some damage increases are fine and good, but the leading factor.

I think the weapon skill should have an effect on accuracy. And it should have an effect on the speed in which a weapon degrades, and on repairs. Even though there is probably a separate repair skill, the weapon skill should encompass part of that. As far as damage goes, an increase wouldn't make sense. Maybe someone very skilled with a weapon class can also reload it faster.

Accuracy is great and all but I'd much rather be able to kill the guy then shoot a bead of sweat off his forehead to be honest, Also didn't raising your skill increase accuracy as well? I seem to remember a pretty drastic increase in accuracy from 30 Small Guns to 100. :tops:

Would you rather spend 50 rounds or 10 rounds to kill a "thing"? I know I would feel it much more rewarding if, from the rounds I shoott, the few ones that hit would produce a desirable effect (even at low level) than putting out multiple times the same amount of rounds that hit with similiar outcome.

Sure, when comparing low (30) and high (100) skill level, the effect in accuracy was noticeable. It wasn't drastic though (and the progression wasn't even noticeable) since the focus was more on damage and there wasn't all that much of accuracy issues to begin with.

Anyways, since the weapons are tiered in New Vegas, I guess we'll see some bits of both styles. Hopefully for the better of both too.

Depended on the gun. You noticed it less on guns with high spread than on a low spread gun like the sniper or hunting rifle.

Weapon skill WILL affect weapon damage.

I really think it should instead affect accuracy, handling, and stuff like that instead. The thing is, people want to be able to hit whether they have 5 weapons skill or 100, and that's just the way it goes. I can always pretend that something is happening which isn't to satisfy my mind, but I don't like having to do it in such scope.

As previously mentioned, the more experienced you are with a firearm, the more likely you are to deal more damage than someone who is inexperienced.