Fallout V (WHat would it be )

[Argonauts]

I was thinking if we could have a good Fallout not like part 3 & 4 & 76. What would it be like and where. The 1st thing I would do was to make part 3&4&76 kids Stories not actually happening just kid stories. Fallout New Vagas would be part of the actually happening. 2nd thing is where would it take place. A couple ideas came to me. 1) It starts around Washington DC and The Pentagon Area to get more info on the war. Another Idea was have it on the sea where a bunch of ships took to the open sea linked up and built cities around them and have them think land is Radioactive so they dont approach it thinking all life was killed on land. But some type of Disaster makes them have to go to land. Here's an idea both Fallout 1 ,2 &, New Vagas take place in America why not it take place in China or Russia. The China Idea my brother told me there would be a problem with Vault Tec since its an American base company China wouldnt allow it. So I thought China not trusting USA base Vault Tec didnt notice a Russia Base company was secretly a Russian base Vault Company doing Experiments on Chinese which China started having a Vault war with Russia. The China idea would lead to the reason why the war was started and who Started . The Russia Idea They learned of the USA base company Vault Tec and Started 1 up maybe have more Info on the war.

My Thoughts on Vault Companies operations

Vault Tec Company USA base Company: Experiments (like 1 man with lots of Women & 1 Woman with lots of men)
Russian Type of Vault base Company: Experiments (same as USA but More Extreme Studies)

not sure how to handle the China Vault company but it would not be like USA or Russia. And Russia has always copied USA so I see them doing the same but more extreme

China Type of Vault base Company: not like USA or Russia maybe more Tech or Science (Any Ideas is welcome to this part)

please tell me your thoughts and try and be nice lol

[Argonauts]

I forgot Fallout Tactics we could have it as Real life story but Modified where the story was changed a bit

[GloatingSwine]

Fallout, sadly, is done for as a representation of what it used to be.

Your options for a Fallout 5 are Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Outer Worlds, or Wasteland 2/3.

[Erloas]

Yeah, Bethesda has pretty much cemented Fallout into a divergent path from the ideas of the first games. Then they doubled down on it, we're not seeing it going back.

Even the whole premise of the purposefully designed to fail vaults was a change from the original. There was hints of it in 1 and 2, but it wasn't everything in those games. The vaults were there, and they were part of the setting, but they didn't have the prominence that Bethesda gave them.

Not that the original games were all that subtle in a lot of the things they did, but it seemed like Bethesda took the setting and turned up everything to 11, which rather than making it better it just made it loose it's character and charm. Which I guess shouldn't be that surprising, so many shows, movies, and games have gone that route. Overdo everything all the time.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Never gonna happen, kid. Fallout 5, if things keep going the way they are, is just going to be yet another CoD clone skinned in a Fallout universe, and with a worse plot.

There's been a change of direction ever since 4 came out. FO3 wasn't bad, for its time. It wasn't the sort of game that Fallout 1 and 2 were, but it at least had plot and story. Fallout: New Vegas had a better writing team (Obsidian), but they got screwed over by Bethesda and didn't want any part of FO4.

Then FO4 came out. It was titularly an open-world RPG, but there wasn't much open about it. You were riding the Plot Railroad pretty much through the whole thing. Your ability to interact with characters was reduced to four options for 95%+ of all NPC interactions that don't involve trading or combat: "Yes", "Scarcastic Yes", "Greedy Yes (with RNG fail option)", and "Not right now". That was it, your sum and total interaction with non-hostile NPC's for the vast majority of the game. There were only two quest lines that broke out of that model (without Fah Habah being included), and that was the Silver Shroud quest line and Pickman. That's it.

F:NV at least had character interactions that could change depending on your skill and/or perk set. Talking to Arcade Ganon? Well, if you have the Confirmed Bachelor perk, you could flirt with him, which bypassed certain requirements to get him to join you as a companion. Any kind of dialogue at all in Old World Blues with the Think Tank? Pretty soon, either Science, Medicine, Guns, or Perception is going to come up as being relevant, with additional dialogue options for passing them. FO4 completely did away with that. Any character build would have the exact same options as any other character build in any social situation. Because, yanno, screw roleplaying in an RPG, amirite?

Fallout 76 was the icing on the crap sandwich, and has caused me to turn away from Bethesda entirely as a game company.

When Fallout 5 comes out (and it will inevitably do so), it is going to be 'streamlined' with fewer dialogue options and shinier graphics. You get to ride the plot train all the way, and will politely but firmly usher you back onto the plot train should you somehow manage to deviate from the Intended Path That God Todd Howard Gave You. Oh, and you won't be able to play with the player customizer anymore, that's a DLC. And certain skins aren't available through the customizer, you'll need to obtain those through their store. And while you're there, you can also purchase things like stimpacks and weapon repair kits there while you're at it. Oh, and there's a couple of weapons that you can only get through the store as well, which are mechanically superior to anything you can find in the game. But you can't buy them directly, you have to purchase 'supply crates' that have randomized loot, with a 1% chance of having the new uber weapons, but will always contain at least something.

That's my expectation now, based on their habits since FO4 came out. I would love to have them subverted, but I doubt it.

[Lord Raziere]

Fallout V Will Just Work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPN0qhSyWy8)

Take my word. :smallwink:

[Argonauts]

I was only asking if you had a say in the creation of a Fallout 5 what would it be. This is a What IF. If you could Resurrect or correct the franchise

[Kaptin Keen]

China Type of Vault base Company: not like USA or Russia maybe more Tech or Science (Any Ideas is welcome to this part)

I'd say the chinese vault has only the Polit Bureau (that's actually russian, isn't it? but never mind that), and a million clones. It's not about survival, it's about rebooting. Propably the Polit Bureau is the brain-in-a-jar style.

Also, I'd like the ... real background. What's the point of the experiments? Surely VaultTec had a plan, right?

In my headcanon, the VaultTec experiments are still running, and are monitored from the VaultTec orbital HQ.

[factotum]

I would argue with the basic premise that Fallout 3 and 4 were not good games. 4 was entertaining, and while the main campaign really didn't feel like a Fallout game, the DLC Far Harbor showed that they could still have the multiple plotlines with multiple outcomes if they put their mind to it. If they made a Fallout 5 that was basically Fallout 4, but with the guys who wrote the Far Harbor storyline doing the entire plot, I think it would be a pretty darned good Fallout game.

The only other thing I wish Bethesda would do is actually show some signs of civilisation rebuilding itself. It really shouldn't be normal to walk into a bombed out supermarket 200 years after the nukes fell and find it totally unlooted.

[Lord Raziere]

I was only asking if you had a say in the creation of a Fallout 5 what would it be. This is a What IF. If you could Resurrect or correct the franchise

Okay. was just doing a joke anyways.

Keep the nuclear war happening. Keep the concept of Vaults.

Probably keep New Vegas as is.

I don't know Fallout 1 and 2, so I'll trust whoever knows and likes them to keep them canon or not.

probably change almost everything else. Like, for example Fallout could take a page from Bioshock and have some pseudo-scientific excuse to give people psychic powers. like there was experiments to try and give people those at some point and random poorly explained psychic powers seems like it would be a staple of 1950's bad sci-fi stuff to me. I don't know how true that is, but I'd put it in there, and have our protagonists able to use psycho-kinesis, maybe through some radiation induced mtuations or something.

next I wouldn't set in stone how many vaults there are. They are just there, and they're a plot device for the story you want to tell. could still incorporate all the vaults seen so far, but instead of it the numbers being confirmed its more something no one knows how many there are, and there to do this or that.

as for the wasteland itself and the towns rebuilding, yeah probably. I'd probably do the nations outside the US differently, if that matters at all to the usual Fallout set up, which it probably doesn't because people would want a US area. but I'd probably include at least one plot where some small post-apoc faction of russians get across the world, find another equally sized faction of americans still holding on to pre-war beliefs, and they fight or argue with each other and everyone else is just like "what you even on about? that conflict is over. no one won. it doesn't matter anymore." it would be treated with all the seriousness of people fighting over one of the wars that 200 years ago today. though I guess that would be too blunt, but then again I'm not much of a subtle person when it comes to things like that.

though another thing I might do is making character creation more radical. maybe allow you to play a ghoul. or a robot. or even some mutant of some sort!

or maybe do the craziest most stupidest thing possible and actually make the grey aliens in flying saucers a relevant thing in a plot. actual legit alien invasion by those classic UFOs with their classic weird bulbous heads. and the whole aliens existing thing becomes this big thing where humans now try to find aliens everywhere to get their tech so that they can use to restart civilization, to have opinions on how alien tech should be used to rebuild society, while some ignorant other people are like "aliens are all bad, kill them meh shotgun" and another side is like "we should totally use alien tech for more weapons and destruction for own selfish gain, yeah." and such and so on.

you know, just embrace the crazy. its too down to earth for a 1950's sci-fi style thing, because Fallout is best when its a satire, when humans are still being weird crazy, decent, stupid, normal, misguided humans despite the nuclear war happening. thats what made New Vegas great, because to us the player, whole situation of Fallout looks grim and desolate, but to them its normal so they act as if this world is normal with the weird things they do as a result. Fallout shouldn't take itself too seriously.

[GloatingSwine]

The only other thing I wish Bethesda would do is actually show some signs of civilisation rebuilding itself. It really shouldn't be normal to walk into a bombed out supermarket 200 years after the nukes fell and find it totally unlooted.

That's the ultimate thematic failing of Bethesda's Fallout games.

They are obsessed with the world before the bombs, because it plays into their brand of environmental storytelling, so they present a world undisturbed since then for the player and the player alone to discover.

Whereas Fallout games were always actually about the strange new societies that arose in the aftermath. The way the new world repurposed bits of the old but grew for itself in its own image.

Also, Fallout games need mechanical as well as narrative variability, and Bethesda will never provide that because they're pathologically terrified of some route being inaccessable to the player. The skills the player character has and more importantly does not have should open and close different paths through the same quests.

[Winthur]

Also, Fallout games need mechanical as well as narrative variability, and Bethesda will never provide that because they're pathologically terrified of some route being inaccessable to the player. The skills the player character has and more importantly does not have should open and close different paths through the same quests.
That was something that never really worked that well in the franchise, because with the original SPECIAL being a system where half the stats (Strength, Endurance and Charisma) are a dumpstat for everyone, including brawlers and diplomats, and half the skills as well (while some were really easy to raise), you could make an everyman diplosniper / diplobrawler thief who could do almost everything outside of participating in a fully "stupid" playthrough; some random, out-of-the-way, optional door being stuck and only movable with a Strength check is relatively meaningless when it happens when you can raise any stat from 1 to 10 at a fairly meager price.

Or when the quest resolution involves an obscure skill that has insanely limited application throughout the entire game and is also bugged as an insult to injury:

The way to assassinate Mr Bishop isn't very obvious. First you have to sleep with Mrs Bishop. In bed, ask her about her husband, ask her if they love each other, then about Mr Bishop's "other pursuits". You'll now get the option to ask if she wants you to kill him. With Traps 76% you can suggest an "accident", and Mrs Bishop then tells you about the trap on Mr Bishop's safe. Use Repair (again you need 76%) on the safe to change the combination. Go downstairs and wait 10 minutes with your Pipboy and you'll hear a boom from upstairs, which may kill Mr Bishop - at other times I've seen it do only 1 point of damage to him. You get no xp for this, though. If you already disarmed the trap, the game will tell you to replace it before you can change the combination. Attempting to do so will crash the game, however. The solution to this is to go to the basement (changing maps) and return, whereupon the trap will be re-armed.

Devs of Age of Decadence cite the idea of how original Fallout was an inspiration in terms of mechanical variability in principle, but most of the ways it came into play in Fallout were fairly shallow and I believe they acknowledged that the execution of dev intent missed the mark somewhat.

[Morty]

Devs of Age of Decadence cite the idea of how original Fallout was an inspiration in terms of mechanical variability in principle, but most of the ways it came into play in Fallout were fairly shallow and I believe they acknowledged that the execution of dev intent missed the mark somewhat.

Not that AoD didn't have flaws in its own right here, but I think they're just inherent problems with the whole idea.

That being said, I agree that for all the flaws in the newer FO games, the old ones are put on a bit too high a pedestal. And "one true buildness" was certainly one of the problems.

[Rodin]

Not that AoD didn't have flaws in its own right here, but I think they're just inherent problems with the whole idea.


Not the least being the ability to build a diplomatic character who isn't capable of winning even a basic fight and then locking said character into combat if they don't follow the "right" set of dialogue options, or based on an earlier choice that avoids combat at the time but forces you into a combat later in the game.

I gave up on AoD after my repeated attempts to build a non-combat character failed utterly, which rather invalidated the whole point of the game and made it impossible to overlook the poor production values. I'm sure there was some arcane way to do so, but if I can't manage it without save scumming and can't survive combat as a last resort, where's the fun?

[Argonauts]

@ Lord Raziere Didn't have time to watch your video till later it is A funny video the my statement was aimed at others. I knew some people would make jokes and I do like jokes. I like to see a video on how to put out a game (FO 76) with no quest and they thought that was a GOOD IDEA song lol

[Winthur]

"one true buildness" was certainly one of the problems.

I agree to the extent that old Fallout games (especially 2) allow you to have a multitude of interesting playstyles in combat, but it's kinda weird when a burst fire build, melee build, and sniper build can all have the exact same SPECIAL distribution and still be just as competent, while still being expert thieves and diplomats. There's not a whole lot of roleplaying weight to having high Strength either; being big and muscly is entirely in your head, and very rarely actually acknowledged. I sometimes see the retort that the complaint about stats doesn't matter because it's a roleplaying game, not a rollplaying game, but it's not fun to roleplay the ST 10 Kenshiro when the modifier to damage is pitiful and the roleplaying opportunities derived from high Strength miniscule.

In terms of world reactivity and stat weight, Arcanum was superior even if it wasn't in anything else

[Morty]

Not the least being the ability to build a diplomatic character who isn't capable of winning even a basic fight and then locking said character into combat if they don't follow the "right" set of dialogue options, or based on an earlier choice that avoids combat at the time but forces you into a combat later in the game.

I gave up on AoD after my repeated attempts to build a non-combat character failed utterly, which rather invalidated the whole point of the game and made it impossible to overlook the poor production values. I'm sure there was some arcane way to do so, but if I can't manage it without save scumming and can't survive combat as a last resort, where's the fun?

Exactly. We might or might not be thinking of the same event...

Mine was when I was ambushed by two goons sent by a guard (or was it army) captain I'd pissed off before. I had to reload and spend my XP to get the right skills to talk my way out of it. Maybe there was some way to do it without those skills, but I didn't see it.


I agree to the extent that old Fallout games (especially 2) allow you to have a multitude of interesting playstyles in combat, but it's kinda weird when a burst fire build, melee build, and sniper build can all have the exact same SPECIAL distribution and still be just as competent, while still being expert thieves and diplomats. There's not a whole lot of roleplaying weight to having high Strength either; being big and muscly is entirely in your head, and very rarely actually acknowledged.

Yeah, because if you can't steal stuff and talk to people, you miss out on a lot. There's a lot of illusion of choice going on. Physical attributes having little out-of-combat utility is hardly restricted to Fallout, of course.


In terms of world reactivity and stat weight, Arcanum was superior even if it wasn't in anything else

Arcanum is the crowning example of a game with solid or even amazing ideas that desperately needs a better engine, better ruleset and generally to be finished instead of half-baked.

[Beleriphon]

Arcanum is the crowning example of a game with solid or even amazing ideas that desperately needs a better engine, better ruleset and generally to be finished instead of half-baked.

Stupid gnomes and half-ogres. Seriously, that one quest pisses me off so much.

[Man_Over_Game]

There was this one infuriating moment in Fallout 2 where I was given a mission to kill these two brothers but I couldn't figure out how to get them out of town. So I decided to kill them IN town.

Unfortunately, this meant that the town went into "Hostile Mode", where the kids started throwing dynamite at me and my team. Unfortunately, the kid was an idiot, the dynamite bounced off a wall, and blew the kid up. Unfortunately, FO2 was really big on the whole "don't kill kids" thing, and I got shamed as a child-killer for the rest of the game. Balls.

[Winthur]

Unfortunately, this meant that the town went into "Hostile Mode", where the kids started throwing dynamite at me and my team. Unfortunately, the kid was an idiot, the dynamite bounced off a wall, and blew the kid up. Unfortunately, FO2 was really big on the whole "don't kill kids" thing, and I got shamed as a child-killer for the rest of the game. Balls.

I want your game version because in mine no kids in the game (let alone Klamath, the only place I can think of with jackass brothers in it) have grenades (they do throw rocks), and NPC suicides and kills delivered by your followers do not impact your karma and therefore do not count towards the Childkiller status. :smallconfused:

[Morty]

Stupid gnomes and half-ogres. Seriously, that one quest pisses me off so much.

Yeah, that was a moment when the game took a sudden turn for super-grimdark.

[Man_Over_Game]

I want your game version because in mine no kids in the game (let alone Klamath, the only place I can think of with jackass brothers in it) have grenades (they do throw rocks), and NPC suicides and kills delivered by your followers do not impact your karma and therefore do not count towards the Childkiller status. :smallconfused:

It was a REALLY long time ago, but I can't rule out having a weird version. See, I just thought the kids had dynamite as an extra level to teach childkillers a lesson. I certainly thought it was hella weird, but kinda par for the course for FO.

[Erloas]

I would argue with the basic premise that Fallout 3 and 4 were not good games.
I think the statement was that they weren't good *Fallout* games, rather than that they aren't good games. Which is how I see them. The newer games weren't my style of game, but they weren't bad, they just never felt like Fallout beyond a very superficial gilded quality..


That was something that never really worked that well in the franchise, because with the original SPECIAL being a system where half the stats (Strength, Endurance and Charisma) are a dumpstat for everyone, including brawlers and diplomats, and half the skills as well (while some were really easy to raise), you could make an everyman diplosniper / diplobrawler thief who could do almost everything outside of participating in a fully "stupid" playthrough; some random, out-of-the-way, optional door being stuck and only movable with a Strength check is relatively meaningless when it happens when you can raise any stat from 1 to 10 at a fairly meager price.
Maybe it is just because it has been a while since I've played, but I don't agree with this at all. Agility was about the only stat that couldn't be dumped, because it set AP. There were a lot of things you couldn't do without a high strength, granted you could get strength from Power Armor, but unless you know the game well enough to pick it up really early and are really pushing min-max. I'm pretty sure there are quite a few options that are gated behind Charisma too. Someone that knows the game really well being able to get away without certain things isn't really a failure of the system. Especially for a single player game, the "average player" experience is what is important.




Or when the quest resolution involves an obscure skill that has insanely limited application throughout the entire game and is also bugged as an insult to injury:

The way to assassinate Mr Bishop isn't very obvious. First you have to sleep with Mrs Bishop. In bed, ask her about her husband, ask her if they love each other, then about Mr Bishop's "other pursuits". You'll now get the option to ask if she wants you to kill him. With Traps 76% you can suggest an "accident", and Mrs Bishop then tells you about the trap on Mr Bishop's safe. Use Repair (again you need 76%) on the safe to change the combination. Go downstairs and wait 10 minutes with your Pipboy and you'll hear a boom from upstairs, which may kill Mr Bishop - at other times I've seen it do only 1 point of damage to him. You get no xp for this, though. If you already disarmed the trap, the game will tell you to replace it before you can change the combination. Attempting to do so will crash the game, however. The solution to this is to go to the basement (changing maps) and return, whereupon the trap will be re-armed.

Devs of Age of Decadence cite the idea of how original Fallout was an inspiration in terms of mechanical variability in principle, but most of the ways it came into play in Fallout were fairly shallow and I believe they acknowledged that the execution of dev intent missed the mark somewhat.
There were many ways to deal with him, that was just one of them. To claim that that one way is the "true" way is just willfully ignoring the many different options you have of doing some things. I think the first playthrough he was taken care of with planted explosives in his inventory.
Also claiming that traps is obscure and of limited use is ignoring other potential playstyles, my best friend when the game came out, used traps all the time.
Granted bugs are always a problem, but while some were bad, overall they didn't make the game feel horrible or broken. No one claims that it was flawlessly executed. But the simple fact is that it is 20 years later and there still aren't many games that offer even half as many options to do many things in-game.


That being said, I agree that for all the flaws in the newer FO games, the old ones are put on a bit too high a pedestal. And "one true buildness" was certainly one of the problems.
One true build I think only applies if you're looking at speed-runs, because there are a lot of builds that can easily beat the game. The game can be quite a bit different depending on the character. There can only be "one true build" if you're defining "best" with a very narrow gameplay style in mind. There is also no build that can do everything the game has to offer because early on there are a lot of tasks that need more skill points than you could have at that point.
Even then, I'm actually really glad they didn't try to make everything exactly even all the time. Certain weapon types were only available later (big and energy) but they were stronger as well and I thought it fit well in the setting.
The energy weapons in NV sucked, to the point where they didn't feel like anything special, there was nothing interesting to them. Energy Weapons lost everything that made them interesting when you can pick them up at first level and they take 3 shots to kill a rat just like every other gun.

Not that the game was perfect, but it also can't be judged by today's standards and retroactively claim that it was less good 20 years ago because of what we have now. Not to mention that everyone enjoys different aspects of games. Many "improvements" in games make them significantly less appealing to me than their older generation counterparts. For instance MMOs have been "improved" so much that I have no interest at all in the genre, which says a lot considering how much time I put into them 15 years ago. The style of FPS now also doesn't really interest me for the most part, even though I still play a few, the genre has moved away from the style that I enjoyed the most, so much so that even the franchise I used to play the most has essentially picked up all the things I didn't like before and was the reason I enjoyed those games the most.

[Winthur]

There were a lot of things you couldn't do without a high strength
There are around 3-4 Strength checks in the entire classic series, none of them necessary to beat the games, and the stat impact on melee combat is almost non-existent, and that becomes evident the moment you create the character and look at the stat screen. ST 1 is equal to ST 6 in Fallout 1 when it comes to melee damage. Having ST 10 is almost irrelevant to actually punching hard.


granted you could get strength from Power Armor, but unless you know the game well enough to pick it up really early and are really pushing min-max.
I am not referring to the Navarro Run either. Strength's best application is Carry Weight... in a series that gives you followers and a car.

I'm pretty sure there are quite a few options that are gated behind Charisma too.
A tad more, but still firmly in the "teens" and mostly in Fallout 2, and mostly related to (mostly female) characters using their charms to have sex. Again, it's not a good system when a high IN character reaps virtually all the benefits of high Charisma by just pumping Speech.

This gets even weirder when the default diplomat character in Fallout 1, Albert, doesn't have the Intelligence to actually use the "diplomatic" option to beat the game without finding a way to increase their Intelligence and is locked out of multiple dialogue nodes throughout the game, especially the early game where Mentats and +IN implants don't rain from the sky! The diplomat character!!! He's as impotent at actually diplomancing as Max Stone is at fighting.


Someone that knows the game really well being able to get away without certain things isn't really a failure of the system. Especially for a single player game, the "average player" experience is what is important.
It doesn't take encyclopedic knowledge of the game to realize that certain things are really useful and certain things are horrible. This is a game that at the start poses a choice between Gifted or Small Frame and Bruiser or Heavy Handed. This is a game that doesn't bother answering the question of "what the hell is the point of First Aid when Doctor exists" and reinforces it further in Fallout 2, where First Aid doesn't apply to ANY quest resolutions whereas Doctor has a hefty questline and some good perks attached to it.



There were many ways to deal with him, that was just one of them. To claim that that one way is the "true" way is just willfully ignoring the many different options you have of doing some things.
To clarify: Every boss in New Reno has a "true" assassination way that is specific to them and to them only, and aims at exploiting one of their weaknesses:

Mordino has a bad heart and dies to any drugs, Wright can be killed by his own child in a gun accident, Bishop has to have his coveted safe trapped in a conspiracy crafted with his wife and Salvatore's oxygen tank can be replaced with a poisoned one
This is the only thing that was meant, nothing more.



Also claiming that traps is obscure and of limited use is ignoring other potential playstyles, my best friend when the game came out, used traps all the time.
Cool. Except there are very few traps in the whole series, most of them aren't particularly deadly, and the reliability of the skill when using explosive planting tactics has almost no player feedback to it. I can make a build around Throwing or First Aid, but it doesn't mean I'm ignoring potential playstyles when I point out that the skills are horrible or niche. I can apply First Aid to my wounds every day to get 75 XP back for my trouble.



There is also no build that can do everything the game has to offer because early on there are a lot of tasks that need more skill points than you could have at that point.
With high Intelligence I can assure you will always have enough skill points to do anything and everything in Fallout and that's the entire point; the system is riddled with trap options and the remaining options are so good and all-encompassing that you can do everything with them. You can become a silver-tongued diplomat with a Charisma 1 character the moment you hit level 2 by simply pumping points into Speech.




Not that the game was perfect, but it also can't be judged by today's standards and retroactively claim that it was less good 20 years ago because of what we have now.
No one said that either; I merely put the idea that the original Fallouts were imperfect in making every playthrough unique. Fallout games have the right idea in terms of stats impacting world interactivity, but where they fail is that an "everyman" build that can do anything is fairly easy to figure out on your 2nd playthrough, tops, and doesn't require intricate amounts of micromanagement to do so; you can do anything and everything you'd ever want by simply clicking the button next to this one guy:
https://i.imgur.com/dtqYM3O.png
and tagging Speech.

[GloatingSwine]

A lot of those are examples of the old games having too many skills though. Which was an overall design problem of almost all RPGs of the time because nobody had realised that complexity and depth weren't the same thing and weren't even linked.

Having mechanically different approaches to quests doesn't mean there needs to be loads of different ones, just that the ones there are need to feel signficantly different to each other, like the Team, Wits, and Fists paths in Fate of Atlantis.

All it needs is a talky path, sneaky path, and fighty path through each quest. (Where the talky path is a bit more interesting than just "win the fight in conversation engine", stuff like encounters where the player has to keep someone talking long enough for their companions to do a thing using something like DXHR's conversation engine).

[Morty]

A lot of those are examples of the old games having too many skills though. Which was an overall design problem of almost all RPGs of the time because nobody had realised that complexity and depth weren't the same thing and weren't even linked.


That and single-character games using mechanics reminiscent of tabletop games, which assume having a full party. Old-school Fallout games do have companions, but they're kind of... not helpful.

[Triaxx]

If your game had no children, you were probably playing the Europe version.

[Rodin]

A lot of those are examples of the old games having too many skills though. Which was an overall design problem of almost all RPGs of the time because nobody had realised that complexity and depth weren't the same thing and weren't even linked.

Having mechanically different approaches to quests doesn't mean there needs to be loads of different ones, just that the ones there are need to feel signficantly different to each other, like the Team, Wits, and Fists paths in Fate of Atlantis.

All it needs is a talky path, sneaky path, and fighty path through each quest. (Where the talky path is a bit more interesting than just "win the fight in conversation engine", stuff like encounters where the player has to keep someone talking long enough for their companions to do a thing using something like DXHR's conversation engine).

While I think that works as a "holy trinity", I do like to see additional options pop up where possible. Like in the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 2, where an Engineer Shepard can actually remember that they know something about technology and reap the rewards of both the Paragon and Renegade interrupts simultaneously by using their engineering skills for the only time in the series.

If I can build my character as a scientist, there should be a few points in the game where that becomes relevant. Not enough that you can go through the whole game on the back of it, but some acknowledgement is always nice.

[GloatingSwine]

If your game had no children, you were probably playing the Europe version.

The Europe version had children.

They were just invisible.

They could still pickpocket you.


While I think that works as a "holy trinity", I do like to see additional options pop up where possible. Like in the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 2, where an Engineer Shepard can actually remember that they know something about technology and reap the rewards of both the Paragon and Renegade interrupts simultaneously by using their engineering skills for the only time in the series.

If I can build my character as a scientist, there should be a few points in the game where that becomes relevant. Not enough that you can go through the whole game on the back of it, but some acknowledgement is always nice.

True. Though if you're imaginative a lot of that stuff can be done in fluff. Like a quest that needs you to do a Science Thing will either have the quest giving NPC patiently explain the Science Thing or your character understand the subject and bring up the Science Thing themself if they're a scientist.

Also those kind of things can come in at a different level to the direct player experienced implementation. You can solve a quest with science somehow but implementing the solution is still going to require you to interact on the level of talk, sneak, or fight. (Although a lot of games like to have hacking type things and pretend they're a mechanical approach, it usually ends up just being Other Lockpicking)

(It is, of course, important to build the system such that you can't just have everything)

[Morty]

How do you picture such talky resolutions going? Do you have an example of a game where it works this way? In my experience, diplomatic solutions in games tend to boil down to having the right stats/skills and choosing the correct options.

[GloatingSwine]

How do you picture such talky resolutions going? Do you have an example of a game where it works this way? In my experience, diplomatic solutions in games tend to boil down to having the right stats/skills and choosing the correct options.

Quite a lot like the modern Deus Ex games, but with an Alpha Protocol style timer to input a response with no response being taken as "your character stayed silent".

With the aim in a lot of cases being to distract the person you're talking to, to keep them talking whilst something else happens you don't want them to notice. Which could be your party setting up for a decisive ambush, or stealing something, or freeing a prisoner, or any other thing a party face might distract people to accomplish.

(That's something that is very rare as an outcome in games, part of the problem of conversations as implemented in CRPGs is the unimaginative nature of success, it's usually just "win without a fight", but there could be lots of other ways that can be realised).

[Rodin]

How do you picture such talky resolutions going? Do you have an example of a game where it works this way? In my experience, diplomatic solutions in games tend to boil down to having the right stats/skills and choosing the correct options.

Actually having to make a cogent argument would be a nice change. Most games with a speech check will just have you select the highlighted option that says "Speech skill 7 required" and if you roll high enough then the NPC believes you and that's it. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was mentioned, and that game had what I call "conversation bosses" where you go into a full cinematic and debate an antagonist. Not only do you have to pick the correct conversation option several times, but the way the conversation goes is semi-randomized and follows on from your opening statement. You can give the same answer to the same response and get a different result based on how the earlier conversation goes. The only way to actually win the battles is to learn what argument style works best on the person you're talking to and then craft a compelling argument where you don't contradict yourself.

It's the coolest speech feature I've ever seen in a video game, and it's never been replicated. The Council came closest, but it still felt much more stilted.

Sure, make it so that the speech ability gives me a greater chance of success. Just don't label it with "Press here to win the debate!" An example of this done wrong is Tali's trial in Mass Effect 2, where having sufficient Paragon or Renegade reputation gives you the appropriate Blue or Red choice. You just mash that choice repeatedly, and the game rewards you. The game should be hiding what the Paragon/Renegade path is, and force you to actually put an argument before the court that follows your actions and your character's personality.

Speech checks are an area where I feel the game needs to be hiding the dice, and few games bother to do that.

Edit for ninja:

By the way, the Deus Ex games did have the "remain silent" timer. It was hidden, but if you took too long the NPC would take your silence as being rendered speechless and would triumphantly press on with their argument.

[Erloas]

@Withur Strength is also required to use a number of different weapons, at least if you want to use them well. And even with the car carrying weight has a pretty big impact on how the game plays. Event requires X still/state to pass is not the only measure of how useful something is. You can't say trap sucks because there is only a couple skill checks that use it when you could also use it in a huge number of fights by setting up explosives before a fight, which was my friends preferred method of dealing with many encounters in the game, it was a very viable and fun way to play. And for healing, I don't remember the exact amounts, but I remember first aid being better at HPs while doctor could do limbs, as well as first aid kits being much more common than doctors bags and first aid being easier to get to higher levels. They were similar but they were also different and both were viable. It just seems like you've defined the game based only on your own very specific idea of what is best and how things should be done.




I think in general the yes/no versions of speech "skill" checks isn't good, but some options shouldn't be available if you're way too low so you can't just save/reload a 5% chance until it happens. I'm actually fine with a percent chance of success being part of the dialog though, because having "black box" interactions with a game world is never fun and short of searching online for someone that has broken that box you don't know if you failed because it was never going to work or because you had a 10% chance and was bound to fail or had a 90% chance and just unfortunately failed change the feelings on a game and interaction quite a bit. Of course that is why they're hard pass/fails now, because many (most?) players that want to go in a specific direction are going to reload until that happens if they can, so why have a 10% chance of failure if all that means is you're training the player to hit quick-save before every dialog?

I also don't think most games, Fallout games in particular, should have "combat free runs." There can be quite a few options where combat isn't required and you can get similar results in completely different ways, but I don't think *every* encounter needs all of the same options and that all of those options should have the same net positive or negative. There shouldn't be a "diplomatic" way out of every encounter with super mutants, deathclaws, and rats. Just as there shouldn't be good ways out of every area simply by killing everything that moves.

[Morty]

Quite a lot like the modern Deus Ex games, but with an Alpha Protocol style timer to input a response with no response being taken as "your character stayed silent".

With the aim in a lot of cases being to distract the person you're talking to, to keep them talking whilst something else happens you don't want them to notice. Which could be your party setting up for a decisive ambush, or stealing something, or freeing a prisoner, or any other thing a party face might distract people to accomplish.

(That's something that is very rare as an outcome in games, part of the problem of conversations as implemented in CRPGs is the unimaginative nature of success, it's usually just "win without a fight", but there could be lots of other ways that can be realised).


Actually having to make a cogent argument would be a nice change. Most games with a speech check will just have you select the highlighted option that says "Speech skill 7 required" and if you roll high enough then the NPC believes you and that's it. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was mentioned, and that game had what I call "conversation bosses" where you go into a full cinematic and debate an antagonist. Not only do you have to pick the correct conversation option several times, but the way the conversation goes is semi-randomized and follows on from your opening statement. You can give the same answer to the same response and get a different result based on how the earlier conversation goes. The only way to actually win the battles is to learn what argument style works best on the person you're talking to and then craft a compelling argument where you don't contradict yourself.

It's the coolest speech feature I've ever seen in a video game, and it's never been replicated. The Council came closest, but it still felt much more stilted.

Sure, make it so that the speech ability gives me a greater chance of success. Just don't label it with "Press here to win the debate!" An example of this done wrong is Tali's trial in Mass Effect 2, where having sufficient Paragon or Renegade reputation gives you the appropriate Blue or Red choice. You just mash that choice repeatedly, and the game rewards you. The game should be hiding what the Paragon/Renegade path is, and force you to actually put an argument before the court that follows your actions and your character's personality.

Speech checks are an area where I feel the game needs to be hiding the dice, and few games bother to do that.

Edit for ninja:

By the way, the Deus Ex games did have the "remain silent" timer. It was hidden, but if you took too long the NPC would take your silence as being rendered speechless and would triumphantly press on with their argument.

Good point about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, though I haven't played the other "new" DE. Still, something like that could work, maybe. I bounced off Alpha Protocol real hard, so I can't comment on that.

[GloatingSwine]

Good point about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, though I haven't played the other "new" DE. Still, something like that could work, maybe. I bounced off Alpha Protocol real hard, so I can't comment on that.

Alpha Protocol is quite similar in that you're choosing your style of conversation based on what you think will appeal to the person you're talking to.

It was also a bit more complex than just "winning" a conversation because many characters could be just as useful to you if they disliked you as if they liked you.

[Winthur]

@Withur Strength is also required to use a number of different weapons, at least if you want to use them well.
It's a flat -20% penalty to using a weapon for every point in Strength you are missing from the minimum. This is negligible because heavy ranged weapons can have this penalty offset with just pumping more skillpoints into the weapon or having high PE. So, basically, name of the game is, pump PE and IN.

And even with the car carrying weight has a pretty big impact on how the game plays.
The only time you're ever seriously encumbered is also the time where you have a whole bunch of NPCs and a car with a ton of storage on top of your own storage, and there's plenty of stores to dump all that stuff into to turn into cash or light drugs.

The issue with ST in Fallout is that it's a convenience stat rather than having any meaningful impact. Its effect on melee damage is hilarious. A sniper can have respectable carry weight for all of his guns with ST 5. A brawler will punch out others very easily with just ST 5; in fact, if it weren't for special unarmed maneuvers in FO2, you could make a powerful melee fighter with ST 1. Meanwhile, the game's pre-built "brawler" characters are built to be bad at Fallout combat; it's like if you asked your DM to help make you a competent but still straightforward to play D&D 3.5 melee character and he gave you a straight Monk.

Event requires X still/state to pass is not the only measure of how useful something is. You can't say trap sucks because there is only a couple skill checks that use it when you could also use it in a huge number of fights by setting up explosives before a fight, which was my friends preferred method of dealing with many encounters in the game, it was a very viable and fun way to play.
No other combat method relies on you using two skills that are utterly unreliable and lack transparency in their use (Steal and Traps are both just as likely to fail epically from time to time regardless of how you use them and how many points or even perks you put into making them work). It's a badly designed skill even for a character that relies on it. Similar to Barter between FO1 and FO2, where in the former you could pump it to the point where you could sell 2 stimpaks for the price of 3 stimpaks creating an infinite loop, and in FO2 where it was nerfed to the point of being barely worth investing into.



And for healing, I don't remember the exact amounts, but I remember first aid being better at HPs while doctor could do limbs
No, FA is worse at HP gain and doesn't fix limbs at all. It even gives less XP per "operation". FA is utterly and completely redundant outside of Fallout Tactics, where its shorter time to work actually makes some sense.


as well as first aid kits being much more common
They don't do anything special for the skill; it gives you a flat bonus to a skill you can keep using indefinitely until it finally works regardless how low you trained it, and which has no in-combat application so failure isn't an issue. After a while, you swim in Stimpaks anyway, and you can inject infinite amounts of those into your veins, even during combat, by simply spending 4 AP once.



than doctors bags and first aid being easier to get to higher levels.
You train these skills for free with books anyway, and you can't fail them. Only Doctor has a skill floor where it gives you benefits outside of healing.


It just seems like you've defined the game based only on your own very specific idea of what is best and how things should be done.
That would be the case if any of what I said was based on feeling and not on raw game data that shows strong characters aren't very strong and charismatic characters aren't necessarily at an advantage when speaking. The mechanical side of Fallout has deficiencies and only supports mechanical variability for doing quests if you blunder your way into it by making subpar build choices; if there was a reason to create Max Stone, Natasha or Albert and they could each shine in their expertise (fighty / sneaky / speaky) it would be great, but as it stands, Max Stone is a terrible fighter, Natasha is a so-so sneaker in a game that has very few purely sneaky approaches, and Albert is a terrible diplomat. Instead, everyone and their mother runs a Gifted everyman with maxed Intelligence, Agility and tagged Speech, and does 99,9% of the content the game has to offer in one go because this build lets you easily max out everything and experience near everything; the only argument that was had from my side in this entire discussion is that Fallout tries to offer mechanical variability for skill checks, but the problem is that most of the time (in RPGs overall), some skills will be better than others, narrowing down the options to an universal build that does everything well. While I love Fallouts for their world reactivity, choices, and worldbuilding, I merely lamented that build choices are almost always horribly shallow and illusory in spite of the developer intent to not be this way, hence the complaint about every Fallout protagonist having fairly easily unlockable potential to do absolutely everything there is in the world.



I also don't think most games, Fallout games in particular, should have "combat free runs." There can be quite a few options where combat isn't required and you can get similar results in completely different ways, but I don't think *every* encounter needs all of the same options and that all of those options should have the same net positive or negative. There shouldn't be a "diplomatic" way out of every encounter with super mutants, deathclaws, and rats. Just as there shouldn't be good ways out of every area simply by killing everything that moves.
Maybe not "diplomatic", but I figure that you should still be able to wiggle your way out of an encounter with stealth, and as DXHR showed, "forced boss fight" isn't a fun mechanic to deal with. That said, not everyone should be talked down to death, and sometimes the execution of that is kinda silly, where a character who starts off horribly hostile gets swayed with just a single sentence.

Fallout has that reputation of a game where you are supposedly "allowed to beat the whole game without killing anyone", but your actions lead to two nukes going off killing everyone inside the radius, so I always found that dubious.

[factotum]

I also don't think most games, Fallout games in particular, should have "combat free runs."

I like it when games give you alternative options to resolving problems, especially if that avoids combat. It was actually possible to persuade the scientists to blow up the Enclave base at the end of Fallout 2, for instance, although the game somewhat spoiled that by forcing you to fight Frank Horrigan on the way out no matter what you did.

Related note: I liked the way Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader handled stealth. Normally, if you sneak past things rather than fighting them, you lose out on the XP you would have gained from the fight, which makes using stealth all the time a suboptimal way to play. In Lionheart, you'd gain up to 75% of the combat XP for sneaking past someone. If your sneak failed and you had to fight, you'd only gain the remaining 25%. Made actually avoiding combat through stealth a somewhat viable way to play the game.

[GloatingSwine]

Although you can also just resolve that by not having combat XP.

I like the way Pillars does XP. You don't get XP for combat, but for bestiary completion. So the first 6-8 copies of a critter you fight* will give you some XP but none thereafter, and humanoid enemies never give XP. So most XP progression is from questing not fighting and since most quests have predominantly humanoid opponents it doesn't matter how many of them you fight or avoid for XP.



* Depending how many there are in the game, rare things you might cap out after one or two, but it's never more than about 12.

[Morty]

Yes, giving XP for quests and exploration instead of combat is the better solution all around.

From what I've heard of Lionheart, it's an interesting Fallout-like game for a few hours, then it's combat all the way to the end.

[Winthur]

I like it when games give you alternative options to resolving problems, especially if that avoids combat. It was actually possible to persuade the scientists to blow up the Enclave base at the end of Fallout 2, for instance, although the game somewhat spoiled that by forcing you to fight Frank Horrigan on the way out no matter what you did.
Well, technically, you can simply set up the turrets and convince Sgt. Granite to fight for you and Horrigan dies without you ever actually shooting him yourself; as mentioned above, I never understood how this is different from nuking the two buildings in FO1, other than having to press "Skip Turn" a few times.

[factotum]

From what I've heard of Lionheart, it's an interesting Fallout-like game for a few hours, then it's combat all the way to the end.

Oh yes, it was an amaazing game for the first half and then went totally off the rails, which is a darned shame. If it had been a better, more popular game then some of its better ideas might have been carried forward into other titles.

[druid91]

Honestly, I'm in the camp of disagreeing with Fallout 4 being a bad RPG.