I’m not sure I agree with their reasoning for folding traits into perks. Then when he goes on to say there won’t be any penalty to any of the perks. Where’s the risk/reward? Also, why do they keep saying SPECIALS? What’s the last S supposed to be for?
Seems like the “risk” is a pretty simple opportunity cost, like most other RPG stats/skills.
Wow, Todd goes on and on about how much fun levelling should be, but then states that a typical run through only gets you to about 12-13. Personally, I’d want to see my char capped, or near to it, by the end of the game, even taking into account their stated goal of having more focussed characters.
What was the cap in FO1? 20? I think I get to around that when I play. FO2 is bigger, and uncapped, and I can remember my first run through getting to about lvl 28. Obviously, it’s not directly comparable with FO3, as they’ll have scaled the levelling curve and experience gain differently to the previous titles, but the anticipated finish at lvl 12-ish leaves me a little cold.
That doesn’t seem like enough risk for me, I thought that was the main difference between traits and perks. I think giving a slight penalty to some of the perks would also help them emphasize that “you can’t be all things to everyone in one play through” thing they’ve been talking about.
If he’s saying the average is 12-13, and the cap is 20, then I’m guessing he means your average gamer won’t play that much more than the main quest. Main quest is supposed to be like 15-20 hours, then plus all the side quests it’s supposed to be over a hundred, right?
By the way, where does he say this?
I, too, prefer negatives mixed in with positives - I think it helps to focus your character.
That still sounds a bit off. You get over half your experience in a fifth of the game’s content, leaving the remainder spread out over 80hrs or so of non-main quest adventuring. I can imagine this leading to a situation where the player is getting trivial xp gains for the same activities that get much bigger rewards in a main quest. This could get a bit frustrating - “I’ve played the last 10/15/20 hours, killed shitloads, saved (irradiated) damsels, and only levelled once!”
By the way, where does he say this?
In the Gamesradar interview
It’s let us balance the game better to say “these creatures are this hard, Deathclaws are this hard,” and then not have you at level 40 and Deathclaws are just falling over.
That’s cool. I can live with that. Seems like it makes more sense in this environment as compared to a fantasy one. I certainly prefer it to having everything be your match the whole way.
It’s half your levels, not half your experience. Assuming F3 is like every other RPG ever, each level you gain will either require more experience or decrease the amount of experience that you get for any given activity, which are functionally the same. So if you power through the main quest and then do the side quests, yes, you’ll level more slowly. If you do the opposite, you’ll level faster during the side quests than the main quest.
Hmm. I think I didn’t express my point very well. If the amount of content needed to get to say, lvl12 is about 20 hours (length of MQ) - irrespective of whether you’re doing main quest or optional stuff, then that’s about one level just under every two hours or so. So doing the remaining content will take you from lvls 12 - 20, that’s 80 hours ish, at a rate of one level every 10/11 hours. That makes the levelling curve very odd.
I’m sure there’s some misunderstanding somewhere, probably in my head, but Todd’s description is not very clear.
Zylon
3091
The player doesn’t seem to have any trouble reading and understanding the many, many technical manuals left over from pre-war. But really, the crux of the matter is that the Fallout world is inherently goofy, and doesn’t bear up to any sort of logical scrutiny. So while it’s straining credulity that the world of Fallout 3 is still in a post-apocalyptic state 200 years after the apocalype, it’s not something I’m inordinately concerned about.
That’s just it-- it DOESN’T take the same amount of time to get to level 12 no matter what you’re doing, because main quests hand out more XP than side quests. Todd seems to be saying that the main quest line rewards enough XP to get to level 12. To get those other 8 levels you need to exhaust all the side quests. Which is encouraging, because that means (fingers crossed) there are a metric asston of side quests. Also…
Good. It’s not strictly logical, but hopefully they’ve elimited absurdities like someone with a low throwing skill trying to drop a grenade at his feet, and instead tossing it across the room.
So, here’s a handy chart from the original Fallout: http://www.gamebanshee.com/fallout/experienceguide.php
Relevantly, level twelve requires 66,000 experience. Level twenty-one, the cap, requires 210,000. That means that, in terms of total levelling assuming you’re going to reach the cap, getting to level twelve accounts for roughly thirty-one percent of your levelling, despite being over half of the actual levels available. I’m pretty sure that what Todd Howard said about the total time to do everything in F3 was that it was 80-100, which means probably 80, which means that the twelve levels you might get in the main quest accounts for one-fourth the time in-game. That’s not terribly far off, and again, this is how every RPG ever made is.
Unless you have him actually saying this (in which case, please cite), this is an utterly bizarre extrapolation.
Zylon
3093
Am I wrong in thinking that most RPGs hand out more XP for plot quests than side quests?
I think so, yes. Aside from a couple windfall quests in F2 (turn in the Vertibird plans, find the GECK), side quests give just about the same amount of experience, and you often end up with more if they’re combat-related.
Without specific evidence, yes.
The only one I can think of that handed out more for the main quest is Torment, but Torment had a totally different view of XP than almost any other RPG.
anaqer
3097
These contain detailed XP breakdowns for Fallout1 and Fallout2. I can’t be bothered to count 'em all up, but a quick vgrep seems to suggest that plot quest in general have something like 3-10 times as high XP rewards than side quests.
It just makes sense to do things that way, though. You want the guy who only does the main quest line to be able to finish the game, so you need to make sure that only doing the main quest gets you enough levels to complete the game. On the other hand, you don’t want obsessive side-quest finisher to be disappointed when he one-shots the main bad guy, so you give less exp. You make the sidequests worth while by giving them alternate rewards like a better understanding of the game setting, fluff items that don’t give a big bonus but that have a cool factor, money, etc.
When I am talking about the Fatman (the nuclear catapult or launcher) I’m talking about the weapon we see in the demo at the very end. I apologize for saying it is like a bazooka. Clearly it is not since you put the nuclear bomb into its moutpiece? (in the front of it instead of in the back of it)
I also agree that it could possible that there would be seuch a weapon, since the Davy Crocked (that does stand on a catapult thingy) could have been developed into this portable (hand) weapon.
Just because I also like to frequent NMA doesn’t mean that I’ll always have the same opinion as the NMAers do. No one at NMA ever does. We all have our own opinions.
And again, please do not mistake being critical for being negative…
Miramon
3100
Chiming in again without reading much…
It suddenly occurred to me that Fallout is really very consistent in style with other Bethesda games in one key element, at least.
Fallout 2 was as I recall totally unbalanced. Some character paths were just more powerful than others. You could find all kinds of random superpowerful junk just lying around, or you could wander around in the wilderness and scavenge quality loot from parties of fighting opponents without ever getting involved. You could just run to the end of the game and pick up powered armor and plasma rifles.
And of course the same observation applies to the elder scrolls series. Totally unbalanced character system, and you can wander around looting stuff from all kinds of strange random locations if you want to.
On the other hand, Fallout 2 had some of the best humor I’ve ever seen in a computer game, and Bethesda writing tends to be pretty stilted and lame, but whatever… Does that comic above really suggest that Fallout 3 will have a Teen rating? Oh, the horror. The whole point of it is the “adult” black humor, isn’t it?
Well, of course I will preorder it, anyhow, regardless of whatever further dismaying details arise in this lengthy thread.
