"Deconstructing Vats" by Cimmerian Nights

[Retlaw83]

The nerd rage I generated in some of them was pretty lulzy.

[popscythe]

nicely written

[UncannyGarlic]

I think that your section about the role of player skill could do with some rewriting for clarity. It isn't so much that player skill doesn't matter, it's the type and pervasiveness of player skill that matters. RPGs are really a type of strategy game so there is a lot of player skill involved, it's just entirely about tactics and strategy, not twitch skills.

That said, I think that the hardcore RPG community is too quick to dismiss twitch gaming in RPGs as I think it's probably ideal for some or many ARPGs. I actually think that Bethesda was right in their justification in removing dice rolls for attacks in Oblivion as it's frustrating for players to get a visual cue that they hit and yet still miss because of a dice roll. That is to say, a successful hit that does damage should look different from a successful hit that doesn't. The player needs to be given the correct visual feedback for their actions and it needs to be clear.

This can be as simple as showing a sword bouncing off of an enemy's armor rather than slicing through it's full motion. Personally, I think that if you're going that route then you shouldn't be using dice rolls to determine hits, you should have the enemy AI be smart enough to block and dodge and leave it to player skill.

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.

That's ridiculous, there is no reason that a Fallout game could not or should not have good combat. The original game's biggest problem was probably companions (AI in general, as enemies did the same things to their allies too often) and speed (it got too slow with big groups, shooting animations needed to be accelerated for a start). The combat wasn't as deep as it could be (and should be should another be made) but it was mechanically sound and had a solid UI. I'd actually say that Fallout had a better combat GUI than JA2, particularly for aimed shots and showing your chance to hit. JA2 provided you with the formula and changed the reticle based on your hit chance so it should just display the %.

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.

You can shoot weapons out of enemies hands in some FPSs (Perfect Dark comes to mind), you can toggle a super mode that slows down play so that you can make more precise shots (Max Payne), you can use healing items in the middle of a firefight (Max Payne), and you have to manage durability of armor and weapons (STALKER). The point being, none of those things are new to FPSs.

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.

A big part of role playing is statistical optimization, that's how you make characters that will be good at the types of things that you want them to be. Keep in mind that stats and skills matter for more than just combat, in a good RPG they have many noncombat uses as well (like dialogue options, stealing, sneaking into places, eavesdropping, etc.).

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

The same way I never used laser weapons, because I always missed. Oh hang on, you could just raise the skill. My bad.

Actually that's a valid complaint. Fallout 1&2 did a good job convincing me that dice rolls have little to no place outside of combat, threshold checks are a much better way to deal with it. I don't like that Fallout 3 told you exactly what you need in order to pass a check but the choice to have use direct skill comparisons for checks outside of combat was a good one. Actually, you're using the same argument that people who defend VATS like to use, if you don't like it then don't do it.

SPECIAL and the derived skills left room for improvement. So didn't Fallout 1's really shallow TB combat, but Bethesda threw the baby out with the bathwater by scrapping it all and using Oblivion as it's starting point.

I'd say that SPECIAL's biggest problem was it's skill balance, the developers didn't do a good job narrowing down the skills enough and ensuring that all of them were equally useful.

[Cimmerian Nights]

Special props to Uncanny Garlic since I basically lifted an entire paragraph from one of his posts.

I think that your section about the role of player skill could do with some rewriting for clarity. It isn't so much that player skill doesn't matter, it's the type and pervasiveness of player skill that matters. RPGs are really a type of strategy game so there is a lot of player skill involved, it's just entirely about tactics and strategy, not twitch skills.

I only touched on it superficially, it's tough because on one side, we have a group of old-school Fallout fans who are so well steeped in these RPG arguments (player vs. character skill, ISO vs. FPS, TB vs. RT, PC vs. console etc.) I didn't want to open up that whole can of worms, but at the same time I've learned that you can't take for granted that some of the new breed are even cognizant of these kind of concepts and how they (along with Choice & consequence, reactive gameworld etc.) are the foundation.

That said, I think that the hardcore RPG community is too quick to dismiss twitch gaming in RPGs as I think it's probably ideal for some or many ARPGs.

I actually liked where Arx Fatalis took spell casting. That was an innovative approach to a tired, staid RPG convention.

SPECIAL and the derived skills left room for improvement. So didn't Fallout 1's really shallow TB combat, but Bethesda threw the baby out with the bathwater by scrapping it all and using Oblivion as it's starting point.

I'd say that SPECIAL's biggest problem was it's skill balance, the developers didn't do a good job narrowing down the skills enough and ensuring that all of them were equally useful.

And I don't think it singles out Bethesda, BIS left a lot of room for improvement. Rather than simplify things by scrapping/merging skills, why not build a world that would utilize them better? The dropped the ball again on that.

That may be what pisses me off the most about FO3. Fallout had some glaring weaknesses (Very rudimentary TB combat, shitty inventory system, some underdeveloped skills). But rather than improving Fallout, they reskinned Oblivion and repeated a lot of the same mistakes.

They have a real fucked up approach to game design, where they basically start each game in a series tabula rasa.

[UncannyGarlic]

I only touched on it superficially, it's tough because on one side, we have a group of old-school Fallout fans who are so well steeped in these RPG arguments (player vs. character skill, ISO vs. FPS, TB vs. RT, PC vs. console etc.) I didn't want to open up that whole can of worms, but at the same time I've learned that you can't take for granted that some of the new breed are even cognizant of these kind of concepts and how they (along with Choice & consequence, reactive gameworld etc.) are the foundation.

Yeah, I knew what you meant, as should everyone familair with the argument, but outsiders probably won't and didn't seem to. I appreciate you striving for breivity though, it's better than being long winded.

And I don't think it singles out Bethesda, BIS left a lot of room for improvement. Rather than simplify things by scrapping/merging skills, why not build a world that would utilize them better? The dropped the ball again on that.

Oh most certainly, BIS is definitely as guilty as Bethesda. I'd say that Fallout needs a number of skills to be scrapped and merged, they really have too many to really show enough attention to all of them. I'd love to see a game that was that deep but it just doesn't seem very practical to pull off.

There's also something to be said for being more concentrated and not getting too caught up with worrying about individual elements at the expense of the whole. I can very well see a developer getting distracted by making stuff to do with all of the skills and losing focus on the rest of the game. It seems to me like you should make the game and then make the skills to fit the situations rather than the other way around.

All in all, it's a really cool idea, I'm just not sure that it could really be done well.

That may be what pisses me off the most about FO3. Fallout had some glaring weaknesses (Very rudimentary TB combat, shitty inventory system, some underdeveloped skills). But rather than improving Fallout, they reskinned Oblivion and repeated a lot of the same mistakes.

Yeah, I feel like they are adverse to making something different. I'm not sure if that's because the suits force them to be or if it's more of Todd Howard's lead and it's made worse by what seems to be a complete disinterest in fixing the flaws in the design they keep reusing.