Fallout: New Vegas

[Dufresne]

Difficulty? Because I was playing on Very Hard, and that wasn’t my experience at all. It took several hits with a throwing spear to get a limb dismemberment.

The jumping about issue is much less of a problem if they’re not alerted and standing still. Once they’re moving, though, getting a hit from a distance was very, very chancy. Even in VATS, I’d get cases where my chance to hit was displayed as 60%-70% and my actual hit rate was 25% or less.

I was playing Very Hard too. I think I know where the issue is, though. As I said, I was playing stealth/melee. So I was getting stealth criticals every time with the spears. I believe I also had the Heave Ho! perk, which helped my throwing arm. I also never aimed for arms or legs; I just went for headshots.

[Razgon]

Difficulty? Because I was playing on Very Hard, and that wasn’t my experience at all. It took several hits with a throwing spear to get a limb dismemberment.

The jumping about issue is much less of a problem if they’re not alerted and standing still. Once they’re moving, though, getting a hit from a distance was very, very chancy. Even in VATS, I’d get cases where my chance to hit was displayed as 60%-70% and my actual hit rate was 25% or less.

You were playing a lot outside of VAT’s, werent you? At least, thats what I seem to infer from your posts. That may add to the difficulty. My MO was simply to equip the best weapon I had, enter VAT’s, kill the bastards with headshots, which usually ended in them exploding, and if they didn’t, I’d leave vats and chop them with a spear

[Gus_Smedstad1]

I like VATS, but I usually don’t use it until the percentages are fairly high. If I’m playing on a PC, my odds of hitting manually with most firearms is much higher outside of VATS than inside it, at least until the target gets fairly close. I depended on it more heavily when I was playing Fallout 3 on the 360, and I’d like to use it more often, but usually I’d be gimping myself if I did. The spear-throwing thing being an exception, and even then it’s mightily annoying to queue up several spear-shots and have them moron VATS AI decide to throw 70% of them into an obstacle if the target moves.

Anyway, for throwing spears I tried both, and used VATS almost exclusively because I found it impossible to aim for body parts. I was playing stealth as well. My Stealth skill was kind of low (76) when I started because I’d been using the Stealth Suit from OWB, but I cranked it up to 100 eventually during the expansion. My melee skill was only around 60, though.

I was going for limbs, not headshots, because Elijah tells you up front that headshots aren’t that effective. I guess you’re saying to me he was lying?

[TheWombat]

I like VATS, but I usually don’t use it until the percentages are fairly high. If I’m playing on a PC, my odds of hitting manually with most firearms is much higher outside of VATS than inside it, at least until the target gets fairly close. I depended on it more heavily when I was playing Fallout 3 on the 360, and I’d like to use it more often, but usually I’d be gimping myself if I did. The spear-throwing thing being an exception, and even then it’s mightily annoying to queue up several spear-shots and have them moron VATS AI decide to throw 70% of them into an obstacle if the target moves.

Anyway, for throwing spears I tried both, and used VATS almost exclusively because I found it impossible to aim for body parts. I was playing stealth as well. My Stealth skill was kind of low (76) when I started because I’d been using the Stealth Suit from OWB, but I cranked it up to 100 eventually during the expansion. My melee skill was only around 60, though.

I was going for limbs, not headshots, because Elijah tells your up front that headshots aren’t that effective. I guess you’re saying to me he was lying?

VATS does not seem to be nearly as effective as basic FPS aiming on the PC, in my experience as well. I can get headshots and one-shot kills at range outside of VATS, while in VATS at the same range with the same weapons I’d get like a 4% chance to hit or something.

[Wallington]

Melee VATS can also be fun. One time I was being chased by two guys down a corridor and I ran around a corner, whipped out my fire ax, an waited. When they popped around the corner I went into VATS and gave them each a swing in VATS.

Which meant I got to waych in slo-mo as they started their attack and my character lopped off one head, then an arm. Amazing stuff.

VATS is also good for aiming at say, the head quickly close up. Use VATS to take one shot and your aim will be approximately aimed at the right place.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

That melee VATS story sounds fun. I got turned off by melee in VATS early on in Fallout 3 because it won’t let you choose targets the way can with firearms, and blowing off (or lopping off) limbs is at least half the fun of the slow-motion VATS combat. I aborted my one try at a “ninja” (stealth / melee build) because it was just less fun to play than a gunslinger.

When you’re at point blank range, VATS is remarkably useful when you’re using a firearm. It can be rough trying to track an enemy when they’re right in your face, let alone target a head or a limb, and VATS does that pretty well. Though sometimes it does some odd things when a Nightstalker or something is trying to bite your face, you end up aiming for the sky, and VATS insists on firing full bursts from automatic weapons, even after the target is dead. I find my ammo consumption is often better if I fire a K9000 or LMG manually.

I wish the accuracy didn’t fall off so much with range. If there’s virtually no chance that a so-so player like me will miss, I shouldn’t miss in VATS. I guess the fall off allows for “shooter” skills, but I like to think of Fallout as RPG, rather than a shooter.

[Guido_Jones]

I did exactly that. Having a story-essential NPC show up in the middle of combat, right behind a hostile that looks just like him is just poor scenario design.

I did not say what you’re responding to.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

Right, that was MarchHare. Sometimes editing down a multi-quote response ends up with some errors in the headers.

[Guido_Jones]

Right, that was MarchHare. Sometimes editing down a multi-quote response ends up with some errors in the headers.

Uh, sure, but you didn’t even respond to anything I said in that post.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

True. I’m pretty sure I originally included your post in the multi-quote, and then deleted my response to your post as not really adding anything to the discussion.

[Razgon]

I like VATS, but I usually don’t use it until the percentages are fairly high. If I’m playing on a PC, my odds of hitting manually with most firearms is much higher outside of VATS than inside it, at least until the target gets fairly close. I depended on it more heavily when I was playing Fallout 3 on the 360, and I’d like to use it more often, but usually I’d be gimping myself if I did. The spear-throwing thing being an exception, and even then it’s mightily annoying to queue up several spear-shots and have them moron VATS AI decide to throw 70% of them into an obstacle if the target moves.

Anyway, for throwing spears I tried both, and used VATS almost exclusively because I found it impossible to aim for body parts. I was playing stealth as well. My Stealth skill was kind of low (76) when I started because I’d been using the Stealth Suit from OWB, but I cranked it up to 100 eventually during the expansion. My melee skill was only around 60, though.

I was going for limbs, not headshots, because Elijah tells your up front that headshots aren’t that effective. I guess you’re saying to me he was lying?

Oh, I didn’t notice that Elijah said headshots werent effective - I guess the big difference is the difficulty level you play on. On “Normal”, with a firearm I usually explode the bastards heads using up an entire VATs session. I guess it wouldn’t work that well on harder levels though.

[godhugh]

Oh, I didn’t notice that Elijah said headshots werent effective - I guess the big difference is the difficulty level you play on. On “Normal”, with a firearm I usually explode the bastards heads using up an entire VATs session. I guess it wouldn’t work that well on harder levels though.

That strategy worked fine on Hardcore/Hard. I used it the whole way through.

[Equisilus]

Wow, New Vegas and all DLC are 50% off today on Steam. I didn’t think the price would get that much better so soon after the recent big sale, but there you go. If anyone’s left who doesn’t own it, now’s a great time to pick it up.

FO3 & it’s DLC are 66% off, too.

[Jason_McCullough]

Use my new mod pack!

[nKoan]

Wow, New Vegas and all DLC are 50% off today on Steam. I didn’t think the price would get that much better so soon after the recent big sale, but there you go. If anyone’s left who doesn’t own it, now’s a great time to pick it up.

FO3 & it’s DLC are 66% off, too.

Awesome. Thanks for the heads up.

[lordkosc]

I finally own Vegas now for PC, time to play the hell out of it with mods.

I grabbed the 3 dlc’s also, I am shocked the new DLC (Old World Blues) which came out on July 19th, 2011 , is 50% off!

I guess there is 1 more DLC to go, and they are done with Vegas.

[ShivaX]

Wow, New Vegas and all DLC are 50% off today on Steam. I didn’t think the price would get that much better so soon after the recent big sale, but there you go. If anyone’s left who doesn’t own it, now’s a great time to pick it up.

FO3 & it’s DLC are 66% off, too.

Noooooo!

I was looking at them last night and talked myself out of it.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

FO3 plus all 5 expansion packs: $10. Hard to argue with that. I’ve played it through of course, but that was on the XBox 360. I figure one of the mods out there can probably make up for most of the stuff I feel FO3 is missing compared to New Vegas, namely the much more interesting weapon mix, crafting, and more varied skill checks in dialog.

[Kadath]

I finally installed this after getting all the DLC with the Quake Pack today. Menu came up, I saw files and chose all of the DLC, fired up the game and it crashes at the goon with a six shooter screen. Checking google there is a 400 page wiki that suggests I need to edit fucking .ini files to fix this. Are you fucking kidding me?

Edit: rebooted and now FNV is loading all of the files needed for the DLC on its own I guess. PC Gaming2011: Still full of fail

[maxle]

I hadn’t realized that the switch to Steamworks would mean that I don’t have to wait fucking ages for the DLC to not add another $50 to the total cost of the game. I like.