Suggestions for things that should NOT return

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Galaga Bee
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Suggestions for things that should NOT return

Post by Galaga Bee »

This thread is dedicated to suggestions people may have for things from the previous games that people do NOT want to see return. Here's a couple of mine:

1) The "bloody mess" option. You can read my other posts on this subject, but basically, I'm a glass-half-empty kinda guy. The game should be really violent to begin with, and if you're not into violence, then buy a different game.
2) "Out of place" content/easter eggs. For example, in Fallout 2, it was possible to come across a crashed Star Trek shuttle in the middle of the wastelands. While this may have been funny/interesting, it didn't really seem like it had much to do with Fallout, and kinda took away some of the immersion. I'm not against satirical/humorous content and easter eggs, but it should make sense, and fit within the Fallout universe.
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Post by Kipi »

[QUOTE=Galaga Bee]1) The "bloody mess" option. You can read my other posts on this subject, but basically, I'm a glass-half-empty kinda guy. The game should be really violent to begin with, and if you're not into violence, then buy a different game.
[/QUOTE]
No offense, but I do not agree with you there. If the game was meant really violent, there wouldn't have been ways to reduce the gore. Also, if you don't mind, I would like to hear your reasons for thinking that way...
2) "Out of place" content/easter eggs. For example, in Fallout 2, it was possible to come across a crashed Star Trek shuttle in the middle of the wastelands. While this may have been funny/interesting, it didn't really seem like it had much to do with Fallout, and kinda took away some of the immersion. I'm not against satirical/humorous content and easter eggs, but it should make sense, and fit within the Fallout universe.

You have point there. Of course, as you said, easter eggs should stay, since those keep the game more interesting since you don't know what you can find next time. But the ST shuttle is good example of going to far on that.
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Galaga Bee
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Post by Galaga Bee »

Well, as I've said before, you can either look at it as being a way to "increase" the violence in the game, or as being a way to "decrease" the violence in the game (by not choosing it as an option). Either way though, I've never been a big fan of "scaling" the violence in any game (such as "turning off the blood effects", for example).

It takes away from the immersion if you are able to alter the graphical effects according to your own squeamishness (what a great word - "squeamishness"). Not only does it use up valuable resources by creating multiple visual effects for the same action, but it also takes away from the realism. If I shoot somebody in the head from 5 feet away with a .45 calibre pistol, his head should explode. Likewise, if I punch somebody in the gut just barely when they're on their last legs, their head *shouldn't* explode.

I suppose you can debate whether or not Fallout is meant to be ultra-violent (IMO, yes, but within reason), but that's a different topic. Regardless of what it's "meant" to be though, IMO the developers should create one game, with one system of graphical effects, and if it's too violent (or not violent enough) for too many people, then the developers haven't done their jobs. Sure, there's always going to be people who aren't satisfied if the game doesn't meet every single one of their expectations exactly, but I definitely think that it's possible to create a game which finds a delicate balance between violence and non-violence.

As an add-on to this discussion, I think that historically speaking, the "bloody-mess" option was mostly just a way for the developers to dodge criticism at the time because of the level of violence in the game. It allowed the developers to say that people were being given alternatives to decide just how much violence they wanted to experience, thereby giving them the excuse to make it more violent, so long as people can opt out. Video games have become much more violent since then (just take a look at games like "Condemned" or "Doom 3", which owe a lot to the Fallout series for desensitizing people), and while Fallout 1 and 2 were pushing the envelope for violence when they were released, much of it seems relatively tame by today's standards (although some of it is still fairly extreme, which is a testament to the game's longevity). Given the kind of controversies today surrounding other games like GTA, I think that as long as there's no pornography, Bethesda should be able to get away with making the game with as much or as little violence as they want without including some sort of "violence slider" to appease their critics.

Edited:
What, no suggestions of your own?
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Post by Smoke_Jaguar »

When seeing your posts about violence in the game, I was *SHOCKED*.
When refering to violence in games, I can say this:

VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME ! (laughs fiendishly)

About the 'turn off the violence daddy' type a thing, I always wonder what people who turned them off *thought they were doing.
Newsflash people! If you shoot a guy, bood comes out.If you shot a guy with a shotgun, gore comes out.If you shot a guy with a bazooka, well....
So what, you are ok with the shooting, but hey...''i just like the guns and killing but ahhh I can't stand to see blood in video games'' type a guys???
I am totally with Galaga Bee on this one.

I don't want to see those damn stupid traits, like chem reliant and night person, etc.They really don't count when they re in the box with traits like gifted or fast shot, skilled or heavy handed.Everybody agrees on this, so I'd like to see better traits.
Don't forget this is a great game, with little problems except the *bugs*.
The factions looked boring, and to say the least, I didn't like the fact that [b]EVIL actions didn't give much exp . so I stayed away.
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Post by Galaga Bee »

I agree that the traits could be balanced better, however I don't necessarily see a problem with continuing to allow traits that offer some negative side-effects, as long as the payoff is appropriately balanced.

For example, if the developers (hypothetically) decided to include a "one-armed" trait where your character was missing an arm, then you'd better be pretty damn good with that other arm, and even a little better overall than you would have been with 2 arms, or else it doesn't make much sense to have the trait in the game because people won't have a reason to choose it.

IMO, the traits should definitely be balanced a little better than they were in the previous games, and all of them should result in a "net gain" for the player when they are chosen, even if they also have some negative side-effects.

Overall, however, I do think that some selection of traits should be implemented into the game. In my mind, it's more a question of which traits should be included and how they should be balanced, rather than a question of whether or not there should even be any traits at all.
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Post by Smoke_Jaguar »

The trait system in Fallout was the greatest (what did you expect from a Fallout forum?!) because not only you could go in depth with your char, but let's not forget you could have chosen NONE, as opposed to other games, who force it on you.
I didn't mean chem reliant is a ****ty trait because it was a neg, but because it was useless, like other traits like night person, kama sutra, you get what I'm going at...
the typical humor of BI is what i'll miss though.....
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Post by Galaga Bee »

I thought the trait system was very innovative, to say the least, however I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the "greatest", since there's been about 10 years in the meantime for other developers to implement their own systems and improve upon it.

I agree about being able to choose "none", but if there's a "net gain" for all the rest of the traits in Fallout 3, I doubt there would be much reason to choose it.

I also concur that some of the traits weren't very good because they had very limited uses, which was basically my point earlier when I said that the traits needed to be balanced better, since some of them were a lot more valuable (such as "gifted") than others.

BI's humor was pretty good, but nothing compares to Rockstar's humor when it comes to their GTA series (are you listening, Bethsoft?). I couldn't possibly count the number of times I fell over laughing at some of the stuff they had on the different radio stations in the various cars as you were driving.

I think humor can be crucial to a game's success, because it ramps up the entertainment level exponentially while you are playing. Humor can be difficult to do (especially when targeted towards a younger audience), but every game should deliberately have at least a little bit of humor (IMO), so long as it doesn't sidetrack the major parts of the gaming experience. To continue with my example of the GTA series, one of the things that made the radio stations so entertaining to listen to is that you didn't really have to actively do anything to experience the humor. Basically, you would hop into a car, and as you were driving around you could listen to just about anything you wanted, but it didn't really distract from the rest of the game.

This is why my favorite humorous items in games tend to be "optional" things like the aforementioned radio stations, poster/pics on walls, in-game books, interactive objects, dialogue, etc. You can always turn off or change the radio stations in GTA, you can look away from posters/pics, put down books, etc., but it can really ruin your gaming experience if you're forced to interact with something that doesn't make any sense.

I'm sure Bethesda will manage to come up with something that completely flies in the face of what I just said, though.
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Post by Smoke_Jaguar »

I get it, you see humor in games as something 'optional', not to force it on you.But, the humor was a very big gamble for BI, because they thought it was too 'intelligent' and some ppl won't get it.That was true, even though they liked the game and loughed at jokes that weren't actually jokes, but I guess it all payed off in the end.
I liked BI humor because it was dark, someplaces very dark, and that is the violence-satirical-pushy-political-social humor I like.Did I mention it was dark?
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Post by Galaga Bee »

I have a fairly dark, ironic, satirical sense of humor also. However, that doesn't mean that everybody else does (although they should :cool: ).

Not sure if you picked up on this or not (I assume you did, but just in case), but my point wasn't that the inclusion of humor into the game should be optional (edited: optional for the devs) - I think every game should make some sort of stab at humor - but rather that the player should have a fairly easy opportunity to "opt out" of the humor if they want to, so that it doesn't ruin the rest of the game for them. Otherwise, the player may end up choosing to "opt out" of the game entirely if they don't get the humor.

I doubt Bethesda will have much trouble coming up with some good humor for the game though, so this is probably a moot point anyways.
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Post by Smoke_Jaguar »

what was this thread about anyway ?
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Post by Galaga Bee »

Yeah, we kinda got sidetracked on this topic.

Another thing I would like to see changed is the interface. One of the problems with isometric games is that they often seem to come with huge interfaces that clutter up the screen, which is yet another reason I'm a fan of the
1st person perspective.

However Bethesda decides to develop this game, let's just hope that they find a way to limit the amount of stuff cluttering up the screen at any given time so that more of my time can be spent admiring the graphics and less time can be spent staring at a map that takes up half the screen.

I'm also a fan of having "hideable" interface options, so that the player can choose which features of the interface appear on the screen according to their own preferences. I know that this type of thing can always be modded anyways, but not if it's a console game (which is still unknown). Besides, I guess I just don't see why it would be so tough for the developers to include that functionality, but maybe there's something I'm missing here.
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Post by Zantheus »

Traits Special

Hey! I got a idea about the Choosing Traits feature! How about having an overall traits points at the start of a creating a new charactor and having traits with different points. Popular traits like Heavy Handed and Fast Shot could "cost" more in terms of trait points and less polular traits like night person, kama sutra etc... have lower "cost". Traits that give the overall character a "disadvantage" could have "negative cost" so the player can more trait points to buy other traits. i.e. 10 trait points at the start. Heavy Handed, Fast Shot, Gifted etc... = 5 points to buy. Night Person, Kama Sutra, Bloody Mess = 2 points to buy. One Armed, Radiated, Jinx etc... = -2 point to buy. So you could in the end have a Gifted (5), Bloody Mess (2), Night Person (2), One Armed (-2), Radiated (-2), Fast Shot (5), guy!! Of course proper balancing must be done on the different Traits heehee.
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Post by Blumpkin »

lol I loved D&D Skills and Powers :P
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Post by Tkwiget »

I hope they give us the same view angle like in the other Fallout games but with a zoom in and out feature with the mouse wheel. That solves your freaking whining about cluttered up UIs.

Most of this thread just seems to be a bunch of whining. The whole idea behind easter eggs and special encounters of the other games were not only add humor, but to give you something to look around for if you don't want to proceed with that next mission. The thing they should do with them is make them benefitical to you in some way with every easter egg and special encounter. When I read about the Star Trek easter egg I got disappointed that you didn't get any energy pistols or rifles near the area other than Hynos. Heck, I would have been happy with simply getting energy ammo.

You want a 1st person view...play a First Person Shooter. Then again they're going to go with what they're good at and I believe I read there's a good chance it's 1st person. Not that it matters anyway.
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Post by Kipi »

Just a note to remind everyone, this is about things that should NOT return from the older games...

There is other thread about new ideas... ;)


In my opinion, depending on what time and where the game is situated, Beth should not put characters from older games to the F3. Of course if the timeline allows, some old ones should be there, but at least I found it rather stupid to find Ian and Dogmeat from Fallout 2, when they surely shouldn't exists anymore. Yes, you were able to find them from special encounter, but still...
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Post by Deadalready »

The bugs.
Warning: logic and sense is replaced by typos and errors after 11pm[spoiler], it has yet to return[/spoiler]
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Post by sultanselim »

Gore must be optional. Come on guys, you can't be such prejudicial about people who don't have a taste for blood. You can't kick them out of the FO universe just because this. If it's optional, you enable gore, and play the game as you like. And let the others play as they like. That's called respect for other peoples' freedom of act/thought etc.

The thing I don't want to be returned is, the cheesy parts.
Like you shouldn't be able to go southwards to steal the power-armor at the beginning of the game. Or bozars-gauss guns etc. (I mean you should have the freedom, but wouldn't have the toughness to survive the act etc.)
Or you shouldn't save-steal-load-steal-load-steal-*succeed*-save-steal...
Or gamble, or similar things.
That spoils the game a bit.

My two pennies go for a different save design. Like being able to save in 5minute intervals at least. Or being able to save at save-points. etc.
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Post by Deadalready »

Well the question is, whether that's the fault of the designers or the fault of players for abusing the game. I don't think the developers are to blame if the player wants to power play or take advantage of any features in the game.

The same thing was brought up when the game Doom 3 came out, gamers accused the game of being too easy due to the quick save and quick load feature, what I find hypocritical is that the gamer is responsible for abusing the system.

If a person doesn't like loading or speed running, then they should avoid doing so; stopping other people from having fun though isn't the way in my opinion.

~

I myself enjoy taking things slowly and climbing through the levels and doing all the quests I come across, other times I feel like just going on mass bozar killings, sometimes I just playing with the magic 8 ball for a while. Fallout had a lot of freedom, it'd be a shame to loose any of it.
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Post by Xandax »

sultanselim wrote:<snip>
My two pennies go for a different save design. Like being able to save in 5minute intervals at least. Or being able to save at save-points. etc.


This is one thing which makes me not want to play games. When it gets to decide when I should save the game or not. Forcing me to play through crummy parts just because a "save point" isn't reached yet.
It is one of the epitomes of poor development to include such things in a game and is a poor excuse for attempting to make a game "difficult", but rather makes it frustrating.

As for cheese, then that is purely up to the player. Don't want to play cheese, then nobody is forcing you. I never went for the powerarmor until it was within the story line to do so.
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Post by Trias12 »

I don't want to see another "save the ________" type story line. I want a story where no cities will burn or worlds end if you fail. In Fallout you had to save the vault and in Fallout 2 it was to save the villagers. That is enough of that.

Part of the reason why I liked Planescape: Torment so much was that it is about a guy trying to deal with his own problems and not the problems of the world. I'd like to see much more of this.
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