"Deconstructing Vats" by Cimmerian Nights

[St. Toxic]

Link to bitching?

[Cimmerian Nights]

Well, I wouldn't sweat it, some people clearly read the piece and some people saw the title and went kneejerk. I think that's a pretty balanced thread to tell the truth, nice to see some fellow travelers pick up the torch. The cool thing is, it's generated some convo over there. But that thread has taken on a life of it's own to the larger dumbing down/selling out topic.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little kick out of tweaking those kind of konsole kiddies that would get upset by this. That's a bonus.

Link to bitching?

Escapist
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/ ... eye?page=1

KOC also posted on Reddit, it's getting some love/hate there as well
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... fallout_3/

I got it news posted on NMA, Codex, RPGwatch as well. I'd link on the Bethesda boards, but, well, for some reason they didn't like me posting there. Can someone else indulge?

[TwinkieGorilla]

registered at the escapist to join in the fun.

[St. Toxic]

Link to bitching?

Escapist
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/ ... eye?page=1

How horrible. It's sad to know that Fallout 3 really did half of what Strife managed to do, in 96, yet the dunce-market neither knows nor cares to know and, even if they did/do, would issue no demand for the same level of quality in modern games.

Most of the entries flat out prove that reading has become an unpopular practice, while the rest prove much the same regarding thought. The editorial was fine, though, as pointed out before, t'was mainly preaching to the choir. My preference, however, still rests with the shorter summary:

Here's the thing with Fallout 3. It's not based on SPECIAL or GURPS or the Fallout RPG system. It started with a FPS and kind of added Fallout window dressing to it. They didn't start with Fallout and it's mechanics as a basis, they used Oblivion as a basis for everything and worked off of that.

Fallout is (was) as much as setting as it was a RPG system - and a throwback at that to PnP days. Just like D&D.
Betehsda has no interest in crafting RPGs with any kind of integrity. They are out to make a game for the LCD that's filled with "Kewl shit" i.e. samurais, mutant rednecks and Transformers.

You're going to hurt your brain pondering how Bethesda can reconcile the lobotomization and emasculation of Fallout into a FPS when it's whole raison d'etre was the emulation of PnP RPGs.
It's not there, that's not what they do, and they wouldn't be capable of it if they tried.

Giving Fallout to Bethesda is like giving MacDonald's a porterhouse steak - their end product is going to be the same tasteless, grey, bland shit they always made.

Hey, they were right about something. They did what they do best.

I think it has more of a punch, and the first part cannot reasonably be denied (though, asking for reason may at this stage be too much). And I'm sure it's easier to digest for the TLDR crowd.

[Cimmerian Nights]

I'll post it over there to stir the pot a little.

[Manoil]

Yesterday, I referenced your article in a thread on Nexus requesting a melee combat mechanics revamp. Checking in now to see if anyone replied.

Nothing negative. People agreeing, actually-- at least with the statement that melee was of poor priority in Fallout 3.

The Thread

[kassikas]

Seems to me that there are two basic ways to counter the bulk of the criticism written in the first post.

A: If you don't like vats don't use it. The game is perfectly playable without it. In fact, I personally only use vats in emergencies.

B: You don't have to spend all your AP in one place. You can move to cover, fire off some shots, run out, switch to a melee weapon when confronted by an oversized flanker, slip into vats to bash the slobbering giant to paste, switch to a shotgun, blow his ranged friend's face out the back of his skull, switch back to a mid ranged assault rifle while dashing through a doorway and drop into a crouch ready to spray your entire clip at anything that eclipses the doorway.

Fallout isn't a turn based game anymore, and while I would love to see a 'Classic Fallout' release for twenty bucks on the virtual console that was strictly 100% top down turn based campy gold it really isn't possible to produce such a game with today's technology and expect it to sell for sixty bucks a pop. That means if company wants to slip turned based elements into a triple A title those elements have to combine with a real time engine to form a hybrid.

The end result is vats. Sure, if you really wish to you can simply pop up, get your money shot, hide until your AP regenerates, and do the same over and over. That path is left open to autopilot junkies that do not wish the challenge of developing a strategy. The inverse path is however wide open. One is allowed to choose for themselves how they will play the game, and which difficulty setting they will play it on. If you choose autopilot easy street then there will be no need to conserve AP points, pause to use recovery items, move strategically, and think before you act.

That said, are we really talking about combat on a diehard old school Fallout fan forum, and using one optional combat element to argue what is wrong with a game? I have been a Fallout Fangirl for almost a decade and a half, crazy enough to actually name a pet dogmeat, but even I have to concede that Fallout combat is hit or miss at best, and usually packed to the rafters with bugs, glitches, terrible game play mechanics (See companions) and frustration.

In one notable case, an individual is forced to lock up party members for their on good. Rather then being an asset, your raggedy companion is an accidental liability.

Combat is, in a nutshell, the absolutely worst part of any Fallout game worth the name. It is sort of like what a lead programmer and producer once said: 'My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a postnuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun.'

Saying a Fallout game has or is going to have deeply flawed combat mechanics is redundant, and in my opinion misses the entire point of a Fallout title. Combat can be fun in a Fallout game, but if this is the case it is in spite of deep flaws, not because it is masterfully crafted.

[SenisterDenister]

[Manoil]

. . .

While some of that was true, your story of ducking in and out of cover relies on your personal skill in an FPS. Very COD type of gameplay, with rifle accuracy and evasiveness taking priority over strategy. Nonetheless, while combat didn't have priority in the prior Fallouts, the lack of it was made up for in excellent writing and interactions: assets lost in Fallout 3.

Don't worry about this article being relative to only one problem of Fallout 3; as of yesterday, the expansive article addressing all of Fallout 3's problems was put back into production.

[Kickstand27]

haha! pushing left on the thumbstick, then locking in in vats, spending a quarter of your AP and then pushing right on the tumbstick (or keyboard) requires virtually no skill, player or otherwise.

sidenote: thats a funny thing though..
RPG VS FPS. this whole "player skill" thing that i see thrown around on all of these gamer forums.
F1&2 are said to be so much harder than F3. but whats this, you dont need any skill to play it? how does that work?
or could it be that its still requires player skill, but it's just not as hand eye co-ordination heavy?

[SenisterDenister]

Special kudo's are given to TwinkieGorilla for his valiant effort in locking the Escapist thread before more of those children could attempt to impress us with their stupidity.

[Cimmerian Nights]

Seems to me that there are two basic ways to counter the bulk of the criticism written in the first post.

A: If you don't like vats don't use it. The game is perfectly playable without it. In fact, I personally only use vats in emergencies.

B: You don't have to spend all your AP in one place. You can move to cover, fire off some shots, run out, switch to a melee weapon when confronted by an oversized flanker, slip into vats to bash the slobbering giant to paste, switch to a shotgun, blow his ranged friend's face out the back of his skull, switch back to a mid ranged assault rifle while dashing through a doorway and drop into a crouch ready to spray your entire clip at anything that eclipses the doorway.

Here's the problem that you're overlooking. AP has no use outside of VATS. How do you use AP in RT when there are no rounds? Do higher AP builds move faster in RT? No.

So effectively AG becomes a dump stat.

When CH is taken out of dialogue, and followers are limited to only 1 (in the past high charasmia builds could attract more followers).

CH now too is a dump stat.

What's the point of AG and CH? I'm sure other stats were nerfed as well if anyone can help me remember. Does PE effect shooting significantly? There's no more strength requirement for guns, toss that out.

Little by little SPECIAL gets watered down until it's just window dressing on top of Oblivion. What its it now SPEIL?

It wouldn't bother me so much if they were messing around with an intellectual property that they created or if they were honest enough to try and sell their games as FPS and not the new epic pinnacle of the RPG evolution, one might be inclined to give it a chance.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Special kudo's are given to TwinkieGorilla for his valiant effort in locking the Escapist thread before more of those children could attempt to impress us with their stupidity.

well shit. now i guess i have to work while i'm at work.

[kassikas]

. . .

While some of that was true, your story of ducking in and out of cover relies on your personal skill in an FPS. Very COD type of gameplay, with rifle accuracy and evasiveness taking priority over strategy.

I haven't actually played Call of Duty (Assuming I am accurately translating the acronym.) but I have seen it played quite a bit. I have never seen my boyfriend pause Call of Duty to use a bunch of stimpacks, take some chems, call his shots to get someone to drop a weapon or to cripple the movement speed of a giant so he could run away, change his armor, repair his armor, repair damaged weapons, pick the head off of a blitzer savaging his dog, or much of anything else.

And I think people harp on Fallout 3's writing unfairly. Yes the main story is kind of silly, but again that is sort of a trend in Fallout games. Fallout is about the wasteland and the encounters you have within it.

Like the Mindfield encounter. I view that example as pure: 'exploring...the ethics of a postnuclear world' brilliance, despite the fact that there isn't one line writing involved. I also kind of enjoyed when I got hit over the head with a fire hydrant for freeing a giant super mutant's teddy bear.

Yeah, there are a lot of nits to pick with Fallout 3. I was deeply unimpressed with what they did to super mutants, given how much pleasure I took in stopping the plans of anti-mutant bigots in fallout 2 and handing them over to the bi-racial authority. Turning them all into massive green retards was flatly upsetting... save for the above aforementioned teddy bear moment.

But that is no reason to jump on the “Fallout 3 is the suck� bandwagon. There is a lot of Classic Fallout in Fallout 3. It isn't in the main story or the combat mechanics, but if you are looking for Fallout there, you missed the point of Fallout in my opinion.

Here's the problem that you're overlooking. AP has no use outside of VATS. How do you use AP in RT when there are no rounds? Do higher AP builds move faster in RT? No.

So effectively AG becomes a dump stat.

When CH is taken out of dialogue, and followers are limited to only 1 (in the past high charasmia builds could attract more followers).

CH now too is a dump stat.

I am not sure what to make of this argument. First, companions were usually a detriment in the combat of Fallout 1&2. I loved Dogmeat to bits and pieces, but to me he wasn't a stalwart companion that stood between me and my enemies, he was a lovable role playing opportunity I desperately tried to protect as he launched himself at enemies and entropy he could not withstand.

The same applies to most of the human companions, minus the lovable part. I mostly found that my allies would shoot me as often as the enemy if I was Melee, and would turn on me at the drop of the hat if they got winged by a single bullet if I went ranged, despite the fact that had just, literally moments before, plastered my spine with buckshot.

I don't see how anyone could argue that Fallout 3 rendered the charisma stat useless by limiting someone to two companions. CHA also does aid in dialogue in Fallout 3.

As for AGI, AGI is a pretty useless stat out of combat in every Fallout game. I walked through Fallout 2 with an AGI of 5 and rarely ran into problems because I was suave and sneaky. Was kind of a throw away stat for me in both games.

I also think you are focusing way to much on the nuts and bolts game play mechanics. I have difficulty wrapping my head around the claim that SPECIAL made Fallout special, particularly in a thread who's OP featured the quote:

My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a postnuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun.

That right there was what made Fallout fun, at least to me, combined with the freedom and humor. Had little to do with statistical optimization. Then again I am a role player, not a godmodder.

[Retlaw83]

Fallout 3 does not explore the ethics of a postnuclear world, due to it's piss-poor plot and lackluster writing.

Also, to me, this article isn't so much about VATS as it illustrates the design philosophy of appealing to the common lowest denominator prevalent throughout Fallout 3.

I've stated many times that I would have found Fallout 3's combat forgivable if the plot and writing were decent, but since they aren't, combat is all Fallout 3 has to fall back on. But compared to any other first person shooter, Fallout 3's combat mechanics are amateurish.

The first two Fallouts, from a mechanical standpoint, were not perfect. I found the inventory system to be especially shitty; Bethesda blew my mind and did even worse.

When you spend millions of dollars on graphical assets, voice actors, programmers and marketing, but fail to surpass a 13 year old game in story, writing, interface, combat and atmosphere, your company has issues. Bethesda is good at making world spaces and using visual cues to set a scene. Everyone outside of those departments in their employ, however, seems to lack the talent necessary to work on multi-million dollar projects.

There are things in Fallout 3, taken on their own, that worked. The black and white computer simulation. The GOAT test. The tarmac battleground in Broken Steel. The effigy outside the Cathedral of Learning in the Pitt. And despite the intelligence-insulting tedium that preceded it, exiting Raven Rock and seeing the squadrons of fleeing vertibirds while everything around you blows up was done well.

In short, Fallout 3 only works as an experience only when you're not using any gameplay mechanics or talking to an NPC.

[Wolfman Walt]

Then again I am a role player, not a godmodder.

Since I'm pressed for time due to having to go to work, I just wanted to address this. Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to roleplay your character in the same capacity as the prior Fallouts. I never once felt like I could accurately play the role of anything due to the clumsy dialogue and bad game mechanics via things such as unkillable NPCs. I never felt like I could do what I WANTED to do, just what the game would allow me to do. Yes. I realize that every game has these sorts of restrictions (I can't go off the map in FO 1 or 2), but overall I felt that FO 3 posed MANY more restrictions while also limiting the roleplaying, making it inferior to everything from a roleplaying standpoint except POSSIBLY atmosphere, but even that is debateable.

As for AGI, AGI is a pretty useless stat out of combat [in the context of the original fallouts]

I beg to differ. AGI is important to many skills, such as sneaking and stealing. Those are non-combat functions. You can have a high Agi stat that is important and NOT use it for combat.

I'd stay and argue, but I honestly have inmates whose lives I have to make miserable.

[Manoil]

. . .

While some of that was true, your story of ducking in and out of cover relies on your personal skill in an FPS. Very COD type of gameplay, with rifle accuracy and evasiveness taking priority over strategy.

I haven't actually played Call of Duty (Assuming I am accurately translating the acronym.) but I have seen it played quite a bit. I have never seen my boyfriend pause Call of Duty to use a bunch of stimpacks, take some chems, call his shots to get someone to drop a weapon or to cripple the movement speed of a giant so he could run away, change his armor, repair his armor, repair damaged weapons, pick the head off of a blitzer savaging his dog, or much of anything else.

And I think people harp on Fallout 3's writing unfairly. Yes the main story is kind of silly, but again that is sort of a trend in Fallout games. Fallout is about the wasteland and the encounters you have within it.

Like the Mindfield encounter. I view that example as pure: 'exploring...the ethics of a postnuclear world' brilliance, despite the fact that there isn't one line writing involved. I also kind of enjoyed when I got hit over the head with a fire hydrant for freeing a giant super mutant's teddy bear.

Yeah, there are a lot of nits to pick with Fallout 3. I was deeply unimpressed with what they did to super mutants, given how much pleasure I took in stopping the plans of anti-mutant bigots in fallout 2 and handing them over to the bi-racial authority. Turning them all into massive green retards was flatly upsetting... save for the above aforementioned teddy bear moment.

But that is no reason to jump on the “Fallout 3 is the suck� bandwagon. There is a lot of Classic Fallout in Fallout 3. It isn't in the main story or the combat mechanics, but if you are looking for Fallout there, you missed the point of Fallout in my opinion.

You're ignoring the point.

Being able to pause and insta-heal in the middle of combat doesn't encourage strategic thinking. It encourages the idea that, even if you get into a firefight with the odds stacked massively against you, you can survive so long as you have enough stimpacks and pause enough times. Also, attempting to repair armor in the middle of a battle isn't much related to strategy as a whole and is more of a side activity that should be done out of combat.

And if you think Fallout 3's writing was unfairly criticized, you need only look towards the conversation with President Linux. Three options are identical. Virtually all of them are acting towards the same outcome. None of them require much difficulty whatsoever to accomplish.

What happened to the supermutants was nothing short of castration of a concept. Hulking green soldiers who were of standard intelligence with physical superiority and just working towards survival were turned into piss-yellow highly-ignorant cannibalistic brutes who couldn't form a complete thought without grunting first. Behemoths weren't the worst idea introduced, but their over-scaled presentation didn't help. You can see the dev's laziness when the fire hydrant (not counting the pipe) is as large as your entire body.

And I would disagree with your final point as well. While I long defended Fallout 3, the more time I committed to it, the more I realized how many excuses I was making for it; let me assure you, there is more than enough reason to raise dissent over it. And while Fallout is more than just aesthetic imagery to be found, its true existence lies in the intricacies of the interaction, from dialogue to consequence of choice. Fallout is more than gunfights; it is the dark humor and depth of its characters. It's hunter-gatherer survival in an endless wasteland of dirt, beasts, and ruins of mankind. It's coping with the situations like half the people left alive on Earth hate your existence because at a turning point, you got greedy. And maybe, you didn't even intend to piss people off; you just wanted to survive that much more.

For people to enter this haven and say we're unreasonable when they choose to defend a game focused on combat, when the ENTIRE purpose of the series at hand is complex interaction and not combat, well... that's just... self-explanatory.

[kassikas]

Since I'm pressed for time due to having to go to work, I just wanted to address this. Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to roleplay your character in the same capacity as the prior Fallouts. I never once felt like I could accurately play the role of anything due to the clumsy dialogue and bad game mechanics via things such as unkillable NPCs. I never felt like I could do what I WANTED to do, just what the game would allow me to do. Yes. I realize that every game has these sorts of restrictions (I can't go off the map in FO 1 or 2), but overall I felt that FO 3 posed MANY more restrictions while also limiting the roleplaying, making it inferior to everything from a roleplaying standpoint except POSSIBLY atmosphere, but even that is debateable.

I think this has more to do with rose tinted glasses then clear objective difference. You can kill 99.9% of the population of the DC wastes, if not more, which is roughly the same percentage of the people you could kill in Fallout 2, at least for gamers everywhere but the US, and if I remember right child killing got patched out of Fallout 2 in the US.

In addition, you can do a lot in Fallout 3 that you couldn't do in others, such as genuinely effect your environment. In Fallout 3 you can nuke a town, and then handover tenppenny tower to ghouls. You can sell out little lamplight to slavers. You can cleanse the Lincoln Memorial of slavers and hand over the monument to abolitionists, or hand over the abolitionists to the slavers. There are lots of other examples.

While it was technically possible to do similar things in previous installments, you really didn't get to see it happen, you just got an update about each city in the ending cinema that may or may not have a sentence outlining the consequences of your choice.

In Fallout 1&2 you had to use your imagination to fill in most of the role playing blanks. While this is still the case in 3, you have to use a lot less of it.

I beg to differ. AGI is important to many skills, such as sneaking and stealing. Those are non-combat functions. You can have a high Agi stat that is important and NOT use it for combat.

I'd stay and argue, but I honestly have inmates whose lives I have to make miserable.

Sneaking in Fallout 1&2 had more to do with picking your pathing and choosing when to strike then stat points, at least at anything but insanely high values Perhaps having 200 sneak was radically different then having 80, but there wasn't much of a difference between 80 and 90. Same applies to 5 agi vs 6.

The problem with detailing the radical differences between having 80 sneak and 200 sneak, or 5 agi and 10 agi is that you are not really talking about gameplay mechanics anymore. If someone has 200 sneak then their level is probably so high that sneaking is rendered obsolete.

And if they have 10 agi, odds are they are using a character editor, particularly if you want things like high sneak and lockpick skills.

I honestly don't know about stealing. Stealing required too much saving and reloading for me, which I am against.

[SenisterDenister]

And if they have 10 agi, odds are they are using a character editor, particularly if you want things like high sneak and lockpick skills.

Calling bullshit on that.

Legit character right there, its very easy to have 10 as a SPECIAL stat. Being a gunslinger requires Fast Shot and 10 Agility, get two shots and a chance to reload in one turn. Very cool, minus not being able to aim.

[kassikas]

You're ignoring the point.

I would say there is a great deal of that going around. You claimed Fallout 3 played like Call of Duty. I listed a bunch of reasons why the two are radically different even if you narrow down the focus strictly to battle.

And if you want to argue there is little death of strategy in a fallout 3 firefight, that is your right, but the same pretty much applies to Fallout 1&2. Saving two action points to step behind cover and thus become invincible for a round isn't exactly a supreme example of on your feet tactical thinking. Pausing to use stimpacks also isn't all that different then using your super awesome movement ap perk to outrun badguys and use three or four stimpacks a round without interruption.

And if you think Fallout 3's writing was unfairly criticized, you need only look towards the conversation with President Linux.

This is another case of rose tinted glasses syndrome. The other Fallout games had tons of these. Heck Fallout 1&2 both start out with examples quite similar to this one.

SenisterDenister: I said "Odds are" rather then "It is metaphysically impossible unless" because it is possible to have 10 in a special stat without using a character editor, particularly if you heavily gimp yourself in other areas.

That however doesn't change the fact that if you have ten points in AGI, you are probably using an editor.

I do however thank you for pointing out the gunslinger build. That particular build's viability nicely disproves the claim that Fallout 2's combat was so much deeper then Three's. Bang! Bang! Reload. Bang! Bang! Reload. Bang! Bang! Reload isn't exactly tactical brilliance in motion.