I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to think about posting this. I have a problem with FO3 (other than the incredibly annoying amount of far-apart different buttons needed to navigate the various screens in the game)
It is that when you waste someone in V.A.T.S. your character is vulnerable while you’re watching the slo-mo orgasmic action.
I propose that (if possible) a Mod be made that shows you the slo-mo. But then puts you back at the point where you clicked the V.A.T.S. button. That makes sense after all. How many people would risk death to watch the results of their most recent act of shooting their weapon?
And to kill several birds with one stone:
I love this game. I’m up to level 34 (using level cap removal) and There’s still a good few perks I’d like to have (not to mention skills which aren’t at 100). There are still difficult bits (even though my character is beyond the ‘designed’ level cap. And especially in the expansion-pack areas)
There were two other almost profound things I thought about while playing the game today that I wanted to tag onto this thread, but as soon as I shut the game down, and despite willing myself to remember them. I have forgotten them.
I guess when (or more likely ‘if’) they come back to me they’ll be in a post rather than the OP.
In the un-modded game you are significantly less susceptible to damage while in VATS (I think you take 25% or normal damage by default), and I have seen mods that change this number to 75-100% for those people that want the game to be that much harder. But given that it seems to be somewhat simple to change that number I imagine that you could find, or even make, a mod that makes you completely invincible while VATS is active which I think would solve your problem much more simply.
My pet peeve was the lack of interactivity. 75% percent of the switches in the game seemed to be for turning on radio stations, and the other 25% were for revealing staircases to the next part of the area. The rare exceptions (such as the final computer in the survival guide robot factory quest) were refreshing, but they served to make it obvious just how cookie-cutter everything else was.
In short, just because combat, talking, and items are a big part of RPGs doesn’t mean that’s all there should be. FO1 and 2 managed to balance things out with a more interactive world, but FO3 seemed to be missing that bit of depth.
To be fair, it also seems to be missing the depth of bugs the first 2 had, particularly the 2nd one. (Inconsistent endings based on events in the game are kind of unforgivable bugs.)
You know, the game really doesn’t get enough credit for this. Considering the buggy history of both the franchise and the publisher, it’s a miracle the disc doesn’t spontaneously combust when you take it out of the DVD case.
Stealth and VATS are both way way way overpowered. Also, at the end of the day, Agility and Intelligence are really the only useful SPECIAL stats. Some of the perks are so clearly, obviously better than other perks of the same level that all your characters end up pretty much like all your other characters. Unlike every other Bethesda game, when you play through once, you’ve played every legitimate character style. You can get a different ending if you want, but you’re still playing the same way, sneaking up on stuff, shooting it in the head, and VATSing it to death. Boring, in my opinion.
Also, much too little emphasis on FPS-style gameplay. VATS was cool for a while, but soon became quite tedious when you watch yourself emptying an assault rifle into a stone pillar (or a rocket launcher for extra nerd rage). Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, but I think it would’ve been an altogether different (and much better) experience to open up the combat range significantly. Mods exist that do this by essentially rendering all the guns perfectly accurate and I find it’s an improvement, but the game hasn’t been balanced for that.
That’s why I tended to move around a lot before pressing the VATS button. I’d move such that I had a clear line of sight, but wasn’t too exposed. I found that this actually improved my real gaming skill.
That brings me to two other things that got on my tits…
Dogmeat seemed hell bent on BEING IN BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR TARGET!!! Unlike Fawkes who would be at your side with his (weedy) gatling lazer.
And the Plasma Rifle. Awesome in VATS. Pretty much shit everywhere else. You could hit something if it was near enough to be filling most of your view… or if it was ABSOLUTELY still. I stuck with it because I used VATS most of the time.
The other draback of the PR was the shitty magazine capacity (12!!) meant I was always reloading. And reloading that weapon took ages, so if I didn’t have cover I found myself playing dodge with the (usually) faster-at-running-than-me enemy.
And most enemies seemed to have a god-like ability to know exactly, to within a milimetre where you were aiming, and not be there. It’s like trying to play those ‘click me’ internet games where the button would move each time you try to click it.
That made using VATS essential.
ETA:It’s a pet-peeve of mine where NPCs seem to have access to the location/position/direction-of-aim data for your character. Whereas in real life that wouldn’t be the case. An aimed at enemy would know he or she is being aimed at. and exactly where he or she is being aimed at. He or she would only know they are probably being aimed at but not know where, and also not at all if you haven’t been detected.
As opposed to my FO3 game where an entire town was indirectly wiped out due to a known physics glitch.
(Specifically the Big Town robot problem. I didn’t know there was a second robot out in the middle of the wasteland somewhere due to being flung across the map by a physics glitch, so I only repaired one. Needless to say, that wasn’t enough to stop the super mutant attack.)
I love the game and think it might be my favorite game of all time, and I’ve been a gamer since the 2600.
That aside:
Every enemy has perfect accuracy and ridiculous range. I have raiders hitting me that are so far away I can’t even see them.
Just plain not enough different songs. For a game that people are going to autistically put 100+ hours into, it would be great to have more than about 20 songs over and over and over. The actual music used was outstanding, though. Just…more.
Has anybody ever seen…a tree?
VATS slo-mo not being skippable. I love it most of the times, but there are circumstances in which I would prefer to just see it play out in realtime. It should be toggle-able, realtime w/ the cool camera angles or slo-mo.
I’m referring to three-dog’s most irritating piece of dialogue in the entire game, one of the worst pieces of voice acting I’ve ever heard, and which seems to come up about every four minutes when I play.
Oh, My bad. I eventually stopped listening to the radio. The game has music when the radio is turned off, but as you mentioned, there’s not much variety.
I quite like the bit of tune you hear if you stay on the loading screen for long enough.
I honestly didn’t know the game had backgound music until after I had already put 100 hours in. I like just the ambient sounds. Plus it helps to keep radscorpions from sneaking up on you.
Picture a lone soldier (i.e. your character) cresting just over a hill so that he can get a tank in sight of his satellite bomb targeter (which uses binoculars so you can even be further away from your target) while the target tank is facing away from him and its turret is pointed away as well.
Then picture that tank quckly swiveling its turret toward you right as it comes into your view and immediately shooting at you.
My suspension of disbelief when playing a game only goes so far, and doesn’t extend to things that can instantly target you when realistically they couldn’t see you.
