Foxstab
4741
Well, nigh time we start demanding over-hyped products to deliver, no?
But I guess that’s the same old problem, zero gamer unity.
To borrow from fallout, could barely decide to take a piss much less agree which pot to piss in.
Aeon221
4742
Oblivion didn’t let you sell stuff back to shopkeepers. Stolen stuff was stolen, and you needed to use a fence.
Which caused its own problems. You could steal a loaf of bread in the dead of night while stealthed and no one was awake within fifty yards. Then if you got within sniffing distance of a guard, you’ve got your own personal Javier chasing you down. There’s no way he could know, but that motherfucker wants to take you in!
That never happened to me when stealing stuff. I only got in extra trouble if the guards caught me for something else. They’d slap some obscene fine on me for theft and take all my stolen items (which was pretty much everything I was wearing).
My main problem with Oblivion’s crimebusting AI was how if one city knew about something, they all did. Even Fable made crimes city-specific.
Foxstab
4745
I’d make it progressive. The more time pass, the more cities know.
I’d also involve certain percentages and statistics, and try to rig a sort of “get busted in the town first time, they try to find more details about you, next time you’re busted they have your entire rap sheet and the outstanding extradition from the town 5 miles across” sort of a scheme.
So in some places you’d be unknown, and in some places they’ll be waiting for you with spikestrips, so to speak.
And how would you communicate that to the player?
Exactly.
Also, funny how everyone’s an armchair game designer when a game (like Fallout 3) doesn’t do everything they want it to. :)
In Fallout I saved Killian’s ass and he acted like he had no idea who I was every time I returned there.
Could someone who has seen this game in person and didn’t like it explain what folks are talking about when they keep saying the animation and voice acting is “horrible” and how it’s a “bad shooter” and stuff? I’ve watched some of the pirated gameplay and some of the gametrailers PAX stuff, it all looks good to me. I’m not seeing what you are seeing?
I’ve been a fan of Fallout for over a decade now, since the first one was released (I forget when that was, 1997?) and I’ve been playing them on and off for years, and to me FO3 looks pretty damn fun. Perfect? No, what game fits your conceptions and expectations? But I liked Oblivion, and the big problems I had with Oblivion are being addressed (level scaling, RPG character building (leveling), shit like that) in FO3, plus it really seems to have a lot of the Fallout spirit/flavor, so what’s the problem? Why do so many folks seem to just be completely opposed to enjoying (or at least TRYING to enjoy) the only Fallout game we’ve had in YEARS?
Just curious. I’m going to pick it up and play the HELL out of it when it drops, regardless. I would have preferred an isometric view (or at least the option to have that view pop up when combat started, and full turn-based at least being an option) but I think I actually prefer the first person for exploration and walking around and talking. I guess we’ll see!
Sarkus
4750
What more do you need? Desslock is reviewing it and has said some things and I doubt anyone is going to come on this board and say “yeah, I played the pirated copy, and this is what I think.” Besides, people are viewing those movies and comments from whatever perspective they are bringing into it. Draikin and those who want it to fail find all the faults they want, for example.
You’re just going to have to wait like the rest of us until it’s actually released and look at reviews and impressions from a variety of sources if you have your doubts.
They’re seeing what they want to see. I played a good amount of it at PAX, and the voice acting and animation is fine. Certainly a cut above Oblivion, at the very least. As for the shooting, it plays similarly to BioShock (at least early on) in that the game is clearly encouraging you to use VATS to help with your gunplay in a similar way to how you’re expected to use Plasmids.
I wouldn’t call what I played perfect, but someone calling it “horrible” needs to go play some actual bad games, because they have lost all perspective.
Sure the merchant problem seems idiotically easy to solve when you haven’t bothered to think too much about what kind of design trade offs the possible solutions would entail. It also seems like something that should have been easy for Bethesda to spend time properly addressing when you haven’t considered the thousands of other weird scenarios that they probably had to address in such a free form game.
If you’re not willing to let a few things slide then you are never going to enjoy a game. The fact that this same issue was present in the original Fallouts just means that we already know we can still enjoy the game, as we did before, with the issue present. It also makes it more excusable, in my mind, because I know it’s a problem that other designers have overlooked or had trouble dealing with it.
That’s actually helpful, thanks. It’s in line with my own assumptions (having not played the game myself) about what the “diehard” fallout fans think. Except, I’m a diehard fallout fan and I’m pretty jazzed about FO3. Hmn… what does that make the Codex/NMA crowd then? Zealots?
Dhruin
4754
Not hating on Fallout here, but what trade-offs are those?
Well, the obvious solutions to me are to either make it so a merchant recognizes his own stolen goods, or force a time limit before the player can safely sell back those goods. Both of those solve the problem when a player steals everything from him and tries to sell it back, but, off the top of my head, what if the player steals a few bullets? It’d be ridiculous and frustrating for the merchant to recognize that. Especially if you never intended to sell them back to him but end up doing so a few minutes layer because you found a new gun that takes a different kind of ammo. Suddenly, you’re getting killed because you couldn’t be bothered to keep track of where you got which bullets? Realistic? Questionable. Fun? Probably not.
It seems to me that whether such solutions change the overall experience for better or worse only becomes apparent with testing.
I’m sure we’ll find out when the modding starts.
stusser
4756
F3 doesn’t come with the construction set. It may or may not be made available post-release. So, no mods. It’s a real bummer.
I think you mean that there may not be mods. I cannot imagine Bethesda not releasing a CS after seeing how much it increases their game’s lifespans.
There was an interview recently where Hines says that when the game is done they’ll start putting the developers on different projects, including one which might be the CS.
Or, there’s always the possibility that modders will figure out how to mess with the game without official support. Stuff like that happened for the original Fallout games, the Jagged Alliance 2 demo, the medieval 2 demo, etc.
Yeah, they might manage to reverse-engineer the Oblivion editor for use with Fallout 3, seeing as how they’re related to one another.
mono
4760
The relevant Todd Howard quote:
“If and when one is available, it will be a free download. I wish I could promise that an editor will be coming and when, but I can’t,” he explained. “It’s a major undertaking getting an editor ready for release, and making sure the game plays nice with the data users create. That being said, we’d love to see it happen.”
I’d be awful surprised if there’s no editor out within a few months of release, if not weeks.
