In defense of online Fallout

[Mikey]

and of course, getting personal obviously shows wisdom.

anyway, seeing my motherlanguage isn't english it's possible i wasn't expressing my point well enough.
still, how the hell did you get that out of what i said, Saint?

i merely said that if you've got some supercomputer, the quality of what you see will probably be a lot better, but that only perception would increase your view range (and thus a first person view is suitable for FOOL and we don't have to stick by your precious isometric view. that's what we were originally discussing, too).
i tried to explain that your hardware, indeed, has nothing to do with your view range.

[Rosh]

and of course, getting personal obviously shows wisdom.

More like frustration, which is becoming more than understandable.

i merely said that if you've got some supercomputer, the quality of what you see will probably be a lot better, but that only perception would increase your view range (and thus a first person view is suitable for FOOL and we don't have to stick by your precious isometric view. that's what we were originally discussing, too).

No shit, Sherlock. We established that about 5 posts ago. It was also established that it was fairly poor to do it that way for reasons that you've not figured out yet. Namely in how 3d rendering and system resources works.

i tried to explain that your hardware, indeed, has nothing to do with your view range.

You love running in circles, don't you?

And we're back to the start. Hardware has EVERYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR VIEW RANGE. If you have a comparatively shitty computer, you're going to have a smaller view range than someone with a better one. If you had a shittier computer, you might not be able to take advantage of the full "10 Perception" range.

Those in Asheron's Call who had the hardware capability could set their view range to an obscene level, getting an advantage over those with lesser hardware. In essence, they were "10 Perception", while those others were at a lesser. They could take advantage fully of their computer's specs.

A higher-end spec computer could do 10 Perception, for argument's sake. It could show and render out to that distance without any visual distortion, stutter, etc.

A medium-to-min spec computer for the game that could only render so far, to a fraction of the range that the higher computer. If the rendering capability was about half as good as the high-end, then the max capability for the mid-to-low computer would be about 5 Perception. They *could* have the potential for more, but they would not be able to take advantage of that because rendering that far would be pushing the limits of the system and cause stuttering/etc that was why the viewpoint was scaled back to that point to begin with.

Of course, you couldn't limit the game to just those with the ability of obscene hardware specs, so this implementation would be fairly idiotic for any developer to consider because it puts an unfair disadvantage established in the character mechanics.

Dmmit, Mikey, learn how graphics applications and 3d work before you make more of a fool of yourself.

[Strap]

one thing that would suck about FOOL if it is always CTB (most likly)
is that there could be a sniper in a tower, and the second you stepped out anywhere into his field of fire you would be toast.
it would be cool to have a FOOL fps game, even though many of you will hate me cause i like FPS games. this way you could acumulate money and kill people. and you could choose to be different races, all with thier beinifits and drawbacks. but the FPS idea is pretty much the anti-rpg, so forget it

[Mikey]

yeah strapon, FPS is almost impossible to keep the RP-aspect. almost. i kind of liked Anarchy Online's take on the whole first person/third person tom foolery.

yeah rosh, i know jack fuck about graphics. still, all what you're saying makes perfect sense and i knew those things. i suppose i'm not expressing my interpretations well enough for others to properly understand. hmm.

[RichardGrey]

I hate to point this out, but if it can't be done in such a way that it resembles Fallout, why bother making FOOL? After all, Fallout is more than the names of the things in it, and about all you could retain from Fallout are those names.

You could have the same (or a very similar) universe, atmosphere, similar mechanics and so on. Obviously some changes, but still many similarities. The same would apply to a sequel. The argument is a non-starter here just as it would be if you argued that a sequel, needing to be different in some particulars from Fallout 1, could only really retain the names of things from Fallout.

NEWS FLASH: Other games are SMALLER than Fallout. How long do you think it'd take you to walk from Reno to San Franscisco? Think that'd be fun to do in real life?

In a caravan, why not. Other games have used longer-term travel. Imagine getting on a caravan and playing for an hour or so as it travels from Reno to San Francisco. If there is gameplay in it the time doesn't matter.

Everquest, AC etc. are pretty big. Traveling between towns in AC can take quite a while. It is OK, acceptable at least. There are only a couple of solutions to the problem and neither is dire (have ways of going fast and accept the consequences of that, or impose some time and accept the consequences of that and try to make it fun).

Welcome to I Don't Get The Idea Of Persistent Time Club.

It's actually not possible because you have to maintain a set amount of time for the server. Day has to come at the same time for everyone, you know. You can't just have Day for one guy and Night for the other because one player waltzed around outside city limits for a while.

As I understand this, it's a straw man. Time of day is completely orthogonal to travel time. For an example, return to the idea given immediately above. Taking an hour to get from Reno to San Francisco might not give realistic miles per hour for the travel, but it isn't as if one person sees day and the other night. This is comparable to old techniques of having game days last half or a quarter of real game days, so people in certain time zones don't always have to play at night and so on. The break in versimilitude there doesn't matter to almost anyone who plays, there is good gameplay reason for it and it's not totally absurd (hell, people put up with respawning immortality in just about every game out there, and that's COMPLETELY absurd).

Suspend one or more of the constraints.

Just because you're incapable of "getting it" doesn't mean it's not how it has to be.

Being rigid about things that aren't necessary isn't the same as recognizing things in the way they have to be. For example, suppose I complained that a Fallout sequel must have the vault dweller as the protagonist because I really liked the vault dweller. Clearly this does not leave much interesting scope for a sequel; that ground has already been covered. If I refused to suspend this constraint, I would simply not be able to be persuaded that a Fallout sequel would work out OK. But whether or not a Fallout sequel would work out OK or not has nothing to do with my artificial demands.

Fallout's character system IS the SPECIAL system. It was designed for Fallout, and that's how things are. Accept it.

Fallout 1's deathclaw sprites were designed for Fallout, and that's how things are. Accept it.

Is this reasoning why Fallout could not have new deathclaw graphics? Because different deathclaw graphics would not be exactly like Fallout 1's? Hmmm.. I'd have to say 'tough, it's still Fallout.'

This basically goes back to the statement, "If it doesn't resemble Fallout, why make it 'Fallout Online'?" If it doesn't have SPECIAL, the ability to use those skills in a manner that they're balanced in the fashion that they were in Fallout, then frankly, the only reason to slap the "Fallout" name on there is to whore it out.

If you think the only good thing about Fallout is SPECIAL, you are taking a pretty narrow view. The atmosphere, style, basic gameplay mechanics and many other qualities are tied to SPECIAL in existing Fallout, but are not literally entailed by SPECIAL and could get along pretty well without it. Another possibility is that it could be adapted for the purpose. I love SPECIAL. But retaining what is integrally a design for a single player game, completely intact, doesn't make sense for a multiplayer game. To this I imagine you would say - it's not the same, so why do it? Well, it's just an idea - but the reasoning would be like any game, because it would be fun. Compare this to the reasoning for making a Fallout sequel or prequel. It would be fun. It would even be fun, conceivably if the graphics were 3d instead of 2d, or if the main character were a ghoul, or if the game took place in Texas, or whatever. We aren't talking about a game called Fallout, but which is about about a clown who rescues his dog from space aliens with the help of up to 3000 online friends. Some things can change without everything changing. If no change is acceptable to you, then you won't accept a sequel.

If you are just selectively opposed to changes that adapt to a multiplayer format, again, this is just a matter of taste, not a principled objection. You pick out one class of changes and say they are totally unacceptable to you. Fine, you're more than entitled to that, much as I would be entitled to say 'what's the point in making a Fallout TV series' or 'what's the point in hacking Oregon Trail to contain references to the Fallout setting'? These extremely stupid examples should highlight that an online Fallout RPG is different, but not so different - but also in the end that someone who dug the idea of Fallout Oregon Trail is just as entitled to dig it as you and I are to think it's the goofiest idea ever.

Speech skill would be useless because it wouldn't work on players, dig? Gun skills, steal, and other skills would work. Which would you rather have? Something that works everywhere or something that only works in the rare case of NPCs shacked up in set towns?

I understood this in the original post, but maybe I didn't make that perfectly clear.

If there were a lot of NPCs, there would still be a reason to have it. One might use the skill in quests that were structured similarly to the single-player game's quests. Or there might not be a speech skill at all. Horrors. Whatever.

Given that players might want to kill you, and that Speech skill won't save you from those people, think you'd be likely to use it? If you didn't say, "no" here, you're dumber than I can give you credit for.

Given that players might want to kill you, and that Weaponsmithing won't save you from those people, think you'd be likely to use it? Well, if the game has some OTHER purpose for weaponsmithing, as muds generally tend to do. If speech worked exactly as it did in Fallout1/2, it would have to fall into a niche like this.

Of course, it would be a major error to import skills uselessly into the game just because they were like Fallout, as the atrocious FOT did.

Actually, fighting is all people would do. Why? Because you can't limit the ability for players to kill one another in a setting like Fallout. It's been established in the game that nothing is immortal.

Doesn't follow. From 'people can kill each other' - and, I'll go further to grant 'people like to kill each other' - you don't get 'fighting is all people would do.' It doesn't follow. So let me assume you mean that people would mostly fight each other. Ok, suppose I grant (as I actually don't have to) that people in an online game along rough RPG lines are pretty much gung ho about fighting and not much else, there is a lot of truth in that. What about fighting mobs? Several big games have pretty terrible PvP. Lots of people like them anyway.

Furthermore, if you can't kill people, what are you going to do if someone uses the Steal skill on you? Complain to the nearest server admin?

This truly sucks about MMORPGs in general. I am way too attached to stealing in RPGs.

It has nothing to do with "what's popular", is has to do with a little thing called, "reality". Players have to be able to kill other players, to twart them if they're evil, or for evil people to be able to do "bad stuff" to good guys.

You think an MMORPG can survive with 10-200 players? Here's the part where I have to flat out say that you're a moron. Server rental alone would cost more than the monthly fees would generate.

First, the easy answer. You run multiple instances. Done.

Even overlooking that, it isn't impossible to get games that work on different scales. NWN works fine, though it's a bit of a different fish, it IS online and IS an RPG and so on. It's more or less incidental to this point that it's basically crap as a game :) I could shoot down any game with the reasoning that it'll collapse under the weight of a million people. But who needs a million people per se? A change in model allows down to NWN ranges. UO was originally designed for far fewer than it ended up supporting. That was all I meant, it's not difficult.

[RichardGrey]

As Prov said, speech and social skills are a slim minority focus, and speech is only good on NPCs. People are hardly going to dish out a load of money to sit around chatting when they could get that for free. MMORPGs, as most large online games do, get their focus from conflicts. From PvP, PvM, etc. Otherwise, the game loses it's thrill due to doldrums and the game then only has whatever features and skills to explore as it's expected longevity. When the novelty of those go away and any long-term drive to be on the game fades, so will the subscriber's interest have faded long before then.

This is thoughtful (which I appreciate) but not thorough. Sneaking game mechanics and the like are possible in an online game, have been done for years. Even in boring dikus. The Fedex aspect of Fallout, while not the best, is also abundantly done in online games. It really is possible to have an online game that is not all fighting. Fighting will be important, sure. It was pretty important in Fallout for most characters, too. Finally, note that existing online games already support non-fighters, but in different ways. There is a lot of this on Achaea, a pay game. In free games, MUSHes really involve little fighting and so on. There is enough wiggle room that this isn't a fatal objection.

Where are you from ... that MUDs are subscription pay? Most are free. In fact, a definite minority are pay.

This is a definitional quibble. 'MUD' has a generic use too, but that's hardly material. Your comments on mud scale would be more cutting, but see the previous post - scale is not necessarily tied to pay model this tightly. Again, wiggle room.

[RichardGrey]

I can't wait for Civilization: Fallout and Fallout: Caravan Trader. Let's just hoare the name out some more shall we?

Nice counter-troll. But from 'I would like a game that was very much like Fallout, with some differences, perhaps only what was necessary to make it multiplayer' one cannot argue that I meant 'I would like a strip poker game called Strip Poker: Fallout' or 'I would like a game with mutants in it but don't really care about the rest.'

But actually I'm liberal enough that I like other games with similar aspects that are in some ways quite different. E.g. Wasteland. Again, this is not the same as saying that the Fallout franchise OUGHT TO BE whored out for totally unrelated reasons.

I'm sure everyone will be thrilled when it takes them four hours online to move from one city to the next.

You know, if you asked me whether people would be thrilled to sit around bashing stupid monsters all day, and I hadn't played any sort of MUD, I would have to guess no. Actually longer term travel than teleportation has worked fine in all kinds of games, though it can be done very poorly.

I think the problem here is the World Map. You can't travel on it in an MMORPG. If you did, you'd pop onto it, whip across it and appear at another city in no time at all when supposedly a few days game time has passed. If game-time actually passed while travelling, then the time you character arrived at a city would be different to the time for my character.

The travel time could be cut down. That doesn't mean different timescales. Technically, if you sat around with a calculator, it might imply that the caravan travelled 100mph, which isn't perfectly plausible. But we put up with far worse breaks in realism in games. Deathclaws don't exist. No one can carry a fraction of the amount of shit characters in Fallout carry (and even then one worries much about room in inventory). We deal with it. It works, it's fun. Fastish travel times are not an egregious measure.

Fallout is what they call an "RPG". You're talking about ditching that and making an online game where everyone would simply run around and kill everyone else.

I didn't say that or even imply it, so you're arguing with yourself.

... and when it comes to talking to other players, speech is completely useless.

And when it comes to talking to other players, fighting skills aren't really useful either. But they're useful in other ways. It's obvious that not all of the mechanics apply with equal sanity to other players, the question is: so what? Same for barter.

MUDs are made for free, aren't they? They don't need millions of dollars in development, they don't need anyone to pay much for them. They're also low on graphics and bandwidth requirements, compared with an MMORPG.

For a long time MMORPGs were just called 'graphical MUDs.' Devs on those projects sometimes use the same terminology. But in a way you bring up an interesting point, which is that a fan based game could have similarities to Fallout. not a ton of these projects have gotten off the ground yet (Furcadia is a silly but successful example of such a free but largish graphical project) but they may in the future.

Also, how are 10 people going to enjoy a Fallout MMORPG? Do you actually know what the "MM" in that stands for? Here, I'll tell you, Massively Multiplayer. 10 people is not "Massively".

Sure, for whatever it's worth. You can demand that the game have exactly 30,000 people in it, but that doesn't say anything about whether it would be worthwhile to have 29,999 or 100 or 10; they're just different ideas.

Also, if only 10 people where playing at any one time, they wouldn't be generating enough revenue to keep the server alive.

To repeat: different models support different scale games... NWN does fine on 10 people per server, with a different model. People play tabletop in small groups in somewhat similar fashion. UO shards are often smallish in population. Depending on the game, one could run multiple instances and house the same number of players. There are all kinds of possibilities. There isn't any one killer argument why the game must be any particular scale, or why any particular scale game (even assuming it had to be a particular scale) absolutely must collapse and die under all possible circumstances. Different adjustments for different scales, etc.

[Rosh]

As Prov said, speech and social skills are a slim minority focus, and speech is only good on NPCs. People are hardly going to dish out a load of money to sit around chatting when they could get that for free. MMORPGs, as most large online games do, get their focus from conflicts. From PvP, PvM, etc. Otherwise, the game loses it's thrill due to doldrums and the game then only has whatever features and skills to explore as it's expected longevity. When the novelty of those go away and any long-term drive to be on the game fades, so will the subscriber's interest have faded long before then.

This is thoughtful (which I appreciate) but not thorough. Sneaking game mechanics and the like are possible in an online game, have been done for years. Even in boring dikus. The Fedex aspect of Fallout, while not the best, is also abundantly done in online games. It really is possible to have an online game that is not all fighting. Fighting will be important, sure. It was pretty important in Fallout for most characters, too. Finally, note that existing online games already support non-fighters, but in different ways. There is a lot of this on Achaea, a pay game. In free games, MUSHes really involve little fighting and so on. There is enough wiggle room that this isn't a fatal objection.

Try reading next time. Fantastic way of replying with something that has little relevence upon the subject matter. I underlined the irrelevent shit. Please note that people, in a MMORPG scale, will not pay for something that is an overglorified chatroom (which is what AC2 has become, and now has very few subscribers left), nor will use social skills (pay attention, Sparky), when they could become a much better fighter - which was my original point but either reading is a bitch for you or it breezed over your head.

The travel time could be cut down. That doesn't mean different timescales. Technically, if you sat around with a calculator, it might imply that the caravan travelled 100mph, which isn't perfectly plausible. But we put up with far worse breaks in realism in games. Deathclaws don't exist. No one can carry a fraction of the amount of shit characters in Fallout carry (and even then one worries much about room in inventory). We deal with it. It works, it's fun. Fastish travel times are not an egregious measure.

Weak point, the Deathclaws don't exist. Other than that, your points about the travel time have been nothing short of really destroying a sense of immersion. Seriously, who is going to sit around and wait for travel to go on for an hour? You've GOT to be dense if you think that would be accepted. In DAoC, horse travel takes awhile and is barely tolerated when it lasts for 5-10 minutes. There's also reasons why recalling and portals were a function in AC and UO.

There's no viable way for fast travel in the Fallout universe that can be accessible by many. The rationale for a car would be just as ludicrous, given that only a few could have them, population-wise, a very slim fraction.

Either get a clue about the setting or stop humiliating yourself.

... and when it comes to talking to other players, speech is completely useless.

And when it comes to talking to other players, fighting skills aren't really useful either. But they're useful in other ways. It's obvious that not all of the mechanics apply with equal sanity to other players, the question is: so what? Same for barter.

That's a bloody moronic straw man to use and only serves to reinforce the uselessness of a skill that would be ignored by a majority of the population in favor of fighting skills.

You could have the same (or a very similar) universe, atmosphere, similar mechanics and so on. Obviously some changes, but still many similarities. The same would apply to a sequel. The argument is a non-starter here just as it would be if you argued that a sequel, needing to be different in some particulars from Fallout 1, could only really retain the names of things from Fallout.

The above shows complete cluelessness of game design and MMORPG mechanics.

Fallout 1's deathclaw sprites were designed for Fallout, and that's how things are. Accept it.

Is this reasoning why Fallout could not have new deathclaw graphics? Because different deathclaw graphics would not be exactly like Fallout 1's? Hmmm.. I'd have to say 'tough, it's still Fallout.'

Hey, someone hasn't played Fallout Tactics.

Given that players might want to kill you, and that Weaponsmithing won't save you from those people, think you'd be likely to use it? Well, if the game has some OTHER purpose for weaponsmithing, as muds generally tend to do. If speech worked exactly as it did in Fallout1/2, it would have to fall into a niche like this.

Of course, it would be a major error to import skills uselessly into the game just because they were like Fallout, as the atrocious FOT did.

FREE CLUEPON: Weaponsmithing helps you make weapons that are often better than store-bought or monster-dropped. Speech would still have NO affect upon PvP combat, even in a peripheral sense or a weak design sense like "you have to have 150 speech in order for this guy to give you this item". That just pisses people off. Speech still would have no purpose outside of NPC relations; weaponsmithing is still a skill that can be used to make items others can buy.

Try not to use any more bad straw men, it's getting obvious.

First, the easy answer. You run multiple instances. Done.

Not if you don't have the subscription as a whole. He was talking about whole population.

Try reading in context next time, moron.

[RichardGrey]

Try reading next time. Fantastic way of replying with something that has little relevence upon the subject matter. I underlined the irrelevent shit.

I was waiting for someone to underline the irrelevant shit.

You're a peach :)

Please note that people, in a MMORPG scale, will not pay for something that is an overglorified chatroom (which is what AC2 has become, and now has very few subscribers left), nor will use social skills (pay attention, Sparky), when they could become a much better fighter - which was my original point but either reading is a bitch for you or it breezed over your head.

This chat room bit is a straw man... but you know that, hopefully.

AC2's success or failure is obviously a function of lots more things than whether or not you think it is a glorified chatroom (not sure how one overglorifies a chatroom, but that's not material).

I read and understood every sparkling word of what you said before and what you just said, too. This is just your opinion against mine. People pay for all sorts of crap. They pay for horrifyingly mindless crafting, extensive contact with stupid teenagers, amazingly shallow and canned quests. They pay to lag and be player-killed (whether they'd like to is a different issue from whether they terminate the subscription) - all above and beyond paying for horrifying mindless rat slaughter, which they also complain about a lot. In addition, support roles and other trade-offs AGAINST fighting ability are at least as old as D&D. So if your argument is that people value fighting ability above all else, I have to disagree on the basis of virtually every game in the general MUD lineage I have ever seen. If your argument is that very few will buy outdoorsman skill, that's true, assuming that outdoorsman skill is totally pointless. But if there were a FOOL it would clearly be up to whoever made it to decide whether or not it would be pointless. The whole thing is a wash. You don't have any inevitably compelling arguments for this.

Weak point, the Deathclaws don't exist.

Well, you (probably) set yourself up with it arguing that any break in realism is completely intolerable, which is obviously not true (hence the weak point). If you don't think that any break in realism is completely intolerable, then you can ignore the point altogether; it either applies or it doesn't.

Other than that, your points about the travel time have been nothing short of really destroying a sense of immersion. Seriously, who is going to sit around and wait for travel to go on for an hour?

What do you do in caravans in Fallout for the 5 minutes or whatever it takes there? You fight in encounters, etc.; there is game to play. A (gasp) change in gameplay would be for you to navigate, and on and on.

You've GOT to be dense if you think that would be accepted. In DAoC, horse travel takes awhile and is barely tolerated when it lasts for 5-10 minutes. There's also reasons why recalling and portals were a function in AC and UO.

You don't even steer the horse, I'm not at all surprised. But games always trade off somewhere on this scale. Some give tons of teleportation, others don't. Fallout didn't give teleportation all over, but that doesn't make it inferior to Diablo (though you could go ahead and speculate that it was less popular for that reason if you like, it's not as if I care).

You seem to have accepted my point that the travel problem is not necessarily tied up with nasty problems like one guy seeing day and the other night, which is encouraging progress.

There's no viable way for fast travel in the Fallout universe that can be accessible by many. The rationale for a car would be just as ludicrous, given that only a few could have them, population-wise, a very slim fraction.

I have maybe once played a video game in which the walking speed was actually plausible. That says a lot to me about how much exactly how the exact speed of travel matters for immersion, versimilitude, whatever you want to call it. It gets silly at extremes, but nothing says it must be extreme. (Do recall that choosing your own premises and knocking them down is not a way of arguing with anyone but yourself).

Temporarily, for the sake of discussion, drop the argument that no one wants to wait for an hour to travel 30 miles in game, or whatever, and temporarily grant that someone would accept an hour for that much distance. The only problem remaining with taking an hour to travel the 30 miles is that it implies travel at 30 miles an hour. One assumes that there aren't that many ways to travel 30mph in Fallout. So that seems to break with the setting, which perhaps does not literally include travel at 30mph without a car. But this isn't really cause to be triumphant that it's totally impossible, not because it's a good thing to break the setting, but because little details like that pass right by us all the time. If you don't see the landscape whizzing by, and especially if you profit from not having to take two real time days to travel that far in the game, then if you are most people you probably don't really care. How does the car in Fallout make its way across the entire landscape on tires? How is it that mutation magically creates vastly new sentient species in no time? (Indeed, it's an assumption of the setting that mutation works like this; this might look like a straw man, but it is like the prospect of people walking a distance in a time that would require 30mph).

Let me also point out that if the entire time scale of the game were 4 days per realtime 24 hours, that a day's travel would take place in six hours. Here you can fall back on saying that people have no interest in even slightly long travel times (you don't even need to bother typing it out again unless you want the exercise). Here again I would say that it depends on whether there is anything fun to do while traveling.

Of course, if the past is any indication then you will argue that I don't know anything about the setting of Fallout, because Fallout has 24 hour days and not 6 hour days.

Either get a clue about the setting or stop humiliating yourself.

See above. I never suggested that everyone would have access to a car, any more than I suggested that everyone would be a weird sort of being who didn't have to eat. Though indeed, eating in any kind of MUD is generally really boring and not worth doing, whether or not the game insists on eating in gameplay has nothing to do with whether we can suppose the characters in game get hungry.

Also, you're completely transparent. Here, for your satisfaction I will actually say some stupid things about Fallout. Feel free to quote me on this and see how humiliated I get.

In Fallout, you play Queen Anne III, a girl with a sarcastic dog companion, played by Ron Perlman in a fat suit. The gameplay is just like Bust-a-move/Puzzle Bobble, but with videos of breakdancing every time you pass a stage.

That's a bloody moronic straw man to use and only serves to reinforce the uselessness of a skill that would be ignored by a majority of the population in favor of fighting skills.

As I've already argued, people buy into crafting skills (food, clothes, weapons, etc. etc.) all the time in MMORPGs. All that means is that people will buy non-fighting skills. If you agree, there's nothing to argue about.

In Anarchy Online, a lot of people focused on skills tailored to let them run through the missions without killing the mobs. Like the run speed skill. You could make decent money that way. People liked that skill and it wasn't a fighting skill. This was an MMORPG, clearly. So clearly there are some situations in which people will buy a skill that serves only to give an alternate way of arriving at much the same rewards one could get by fighting. You can make the comparison yourself.

FREE CLUEPON: Weaponsmithing helps you make weapons that are often better than store-bought or monster-dropped.

In some games, yeah. The point, if I recall it, was that it was a non combat skill that people use. You obviously agree...

Speech would still have NO affect upon PvP combat, even in a peripheral sense or a weak design sense like "you have to have 150 speech in order for this guy to give you this item". That just pisses people off. Speech still would have no purpose outside of NPC relations; weaponsmithing is still a skill that can be used to make items others can buy.

Yes, speech with any reasonable correspondence to the skill in Fallout would only apply to NPC relations. Whether that makes it useless is arguable. People play entire games doing nothing but PvE, and buying nothing but skills for doing PvE. Also see my example from AO above, about running through missions.

You seem pretty pissed off and shrill about the whole issue. Maybe we can talk about something that excites less controversy, like eugenics.

[weetchex]

Everyone here seems to be focusing on issues that could be fixed for online play. The REAL problem in making FOOL would be quests. The best part of Fallout was its depth of role-playing. If I felt like a being a nice guy, I could do that. I could take everyone's quests, get some XP and be on my way. However if it was a sick bastard day, I could do evil things like capping those damn pickpocket children or plant dynamite in the pockets of anyone who pissed me off. That was a lot of Fallout's appeal. After the apocalypse, there is no law. Order requires that everyone cooperates to get things done. There is a lot of fun to be had in tossing a monkey wrench into humanity's rebuilding effort.
Now, lets say FOOL does get made. If you wanted to gain XP, you would likely have to get quests from some neutral NPC, like for example Lynette in Vault City. Suppose Lynette's bad attitude made pissed comeone else off that day and ended up with her getting killed (dynamite, knife, gun, club, the ways I enjoy kiling her are many). Now there would be noone to get quests from.
What could be done about this? Well, you could make quest-giving NPCs invincible, which goes completely against the fun of knowing that anyone, everywhere in the game is accountable to you and your moods.
I'm not saying I play a berserker every time, but some days, its damn fun.
This couses TONS of problems for the devs in coming up with extra content and missions that could be given, because I'm willing to bet that someone, somewhere on the servers is having a bad day and is going to take it out on a critical NPC.

[Carib]

No one wants to play an RPg and worry about some newbie sniping vetran players for XP.

I mean Rosh and them are right and they must be laughing their areses off hearing me admit this.

Fallout Online couldn't work. Too many friggin' newbies and of course travel and all those other things would be a hinderance.

If it had to have a multiplayer function it should be real limited like that of Diablo 2 or Icewind dale.

I mean a four player or six player max co-op game. Even that would be tough to manage. But I suppose the future will tell.

[Nuka Cola]

I want a post apoc MMORPG. Not necessarily Fallout, just post apoc. It's a lot like BoS' concept: It could be done right.

However, the thing that most people think about is a Fallout 2 with a ton of people. Nah, that wouldn't work.

I think that, if attempted, it could be executed. But not by IPLY. I'm hoping that IPLY goes out, and Tim Cain takes over.

[Carib]

That would be a safer bet.

A blend of Fallout/Soldiers of Anarchy/Tactics/Wastelands....

[Spazmo]

The day that Tim Cain announces he is making an MMORPG is a sad day indeed for RPG fans.

[Strap]

The day that Tim Cain announces he is making an MMORPG is a sad day indeed for RPG fans.

indeed. stick to the good stuff.

[Koki]

*Sigh*

And I think that FOOL(Nice shortcut, btw) could be done.

The EXP thing. Take Fallout 1 or 2. Now do a quest. How many XP? Well, let's say 1000. Now kill something. Let's say, five Geckos. How many XP? See the difference? So don't say that everyone would be running and killing everybody.
The 'useless' skills: Doctor, Science, Repair, Speech... See the quest thing above. Speech was used in quests, wasn't it? So why should it be different now? Repair can be changed to a car maintainance thing. Science? Sierra Army Depot, what more to say? Doctor? Let's say you could hire yourself as a local doctor.

Neeext, the travel thing. A tough thing. But I would choose the 'slow' one. Yes, it would be boring to walk for XXX miles. Bummer, bear with it! You wanted to move from that damn city, right? There could be one thing to make it interresting: Food/Water thing. You have to eat, and drink. Surprised? ;) So you have to hunt. Walking from one city to another could be a Voyage, not just I click on city and go make myself a tea'. And, it could bring Random Encounters. Deserted city, lone fabric, abandoned Gas Station... and inside things just wait to be grabbed!

Combat. Geez, the graphic argument really bugged me... come on, it's MMORPG! Not HL2 or Doom 3! It could have the SPRITES and I would be happy. As long as they're nice ;) So the PER let's you spot things, AGI - you move faster... let's just say: FOT had nice real-time combat system.


Not it's(FOOL) going to be maked anyway, though ;)

[atoga]

The problem with your argument is, if such changes are made, then it wouldn't really be a *Fallout* MMORPG. TB combat fails to work with lots of people playing; and RT fails to please the Fallout fans. And kiss goodbye the 'lone hero' aspect. Why not just make a completely different post-nuke MMORPG without the name Fallout and avoid any discrepencies popping up?

[Hatchen]

lots of texted (blinks, and stares at screen drooling) i didn't read them really but i agree with the fallout online thing

[Rosh]

lots of texted (blinks, and stares at screen drooling) i didn't read them really but i agree with the fallout online thing

Truer words were never posted.

[Ancient Oldie]

The problem with your argument is, if such changes are made, then it wouldn't really be a *Fallout* MMORPG. TB combat fails to work with lots of people playing; and RT fails to please the Fallout fans. And kiss goodbye the 'lone hero' aspect. Why not just make a completely different post-nuke MMORPG without the name Fallout and avoid any discrepencies popping up?

Although I don't agree with the RT comment, I agree with everything else atoga said.

Maybe you could set the game way in the FO future and work around certain constraints like rebuilding ancient mag-lev train stations that connected all the cities and you could scrap several skills like outdoorsman and barter since they either won't work well or won't be necessary, but that would only leave you with a mockery for a FO game that would be nothing similar to original.

In other words, the greatest problem posed to FOOL would be the Fallout setting and environment, and those two factors are precisely what makes Fallout so great.

Neeext, the travel thing. A tough thing. But I would choose the 'slow' one. Yes, it would be boring to walk for XXX miles. Bummer, bear with it! You wanted to move from that damn city, right? There could be one thing to make it interresting: Food/Water thing. You have to eat, and drink. Surprised? So you have to hunt. Walking from one city to another could be a Voyage, not just I click on city and go make myself a tea'. And, it could bring Random Encounters. Deserted city, lone fabric, abandoned Gas Station... and inside things just wait to be grabbed!

Boooring. Even in Oregon Trail the hunting sequences were only a couple of minutes long, and they became tiresome after a while. Can you imagine spending one hour having to do that crap, and having to do it over again whenever you wanted to travel to another city??? The game would be a failure.

EDIT: Shit... I didn't even realize how dead this thread was. I think it's safe to say the FOOL section is dead, although I did read some idiots post today that he would love to see a FO MMORPG.