http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showforum=35
That’s the link to the official tech help forums (didn’t know which system you had, though). I see at least one post in PC mentioning a similar situation, but no answers. I’ve seen it mentioned before, so maybe you’ll be able to find the answer with a search.
The reason VATS is so easy is because the enemy is frozen while you fire. It’s turn based combat where only you get to move. This is why VATS is a glorified bullet time mode, not a proper RPG battle system.
I’m not saying that Fallout 3 is a bad game. It’s a very, very good game. But to me it’s not a true Fallout. One of the things I loved about the original was the turn based combat. It was simple, elegant, and thoughtful. You didn’t have to be a turn based strategy nerd to do well at it. A friend of mine who plays FPS games almost exclusively loved the original Fallout combat. And I don’t buy that turn based is too old school for today’s gamers. Fallout 2 came out in 1998, it wasn’t THAT long ago. The late 90’s was a sea of FPS clones. Quake had already made its foothold, and yet Fallout 2 managed to do well enough for itself.
I’m just disappointed that Bethesda chose to jettison one of the best facets of the original games. I know action RPG is their thing, but why did they have to go and Oblivionize one of my most beloved franchises? They could have called Fallout 3 “Post-Apocolyptic Wasteland Shooter 3D” and left references to Jet and Brahman out of it and called it a day.
Actually I do believe I’ve seen my target moving and shooting back at me while VATS is going on. VATS is easy because I’m shooting my target 4 times in the head in rapid succession. Nothing more.
I’m not even going to get into the rest of your post. The endless debates about how F3 is or isn’t Fallout just piss me off.
VATS doesn’t freeze time and let you, exclusively, move. It let’s you queue up shots in frozen time, but when you execute those shots they basically go at normal speed (it’s all slowed down, but you don’t fire super fast and your opponent isn’t frozen). The enemy is DEFINITELY firing back at you while you’re executing your queued shots. Don’t believe me? Run up to an enemy with a shotgun or, especially, a minigun, queue up some shots, and just watch. They will unload on you as you unload on them.
Well that’s the thing with making a sequel to an established franchise. You get to use its themes and setting, but you also have a heavy burden to shoulder. To me Fallout stopped being true Fallout as soon as it went FPS. Fallout 3 seems more like a spinoff, like that godawful Brotherhood of Steel game (not that I’m equating the two in terms of quality).
I tested VATS again and indeed I was wrong about enemies not shooting back. I still maintain my position that it needs more depth, however. Just a choice of shot types (burst, aimed, normal) would go a long way. Look, Fallout 3 is a good game and I’m enjoying it, but heaping endless and undeserving praise upon it is something best left to major game review magazines. It certainly has its flaws, and I think VATS needs a lot of work. So does the horrible pipboy interface. 
On a game related note, I’m unable to find Moriarty in Megaton. I talked to him a while ago about my dad, and he offered to sell me info for 300 caps. Since I didn’t have that much at the time I told him no thanks. Now I have about 600 caps but I can’t find the bugger. He’s no longer in the back of his saloon. Does he have another place he goes or is my game glitched? I can always hack his terminal once I get 50 science skill, but I’m trying to play a goody goody character.
Important information!!!
When you first get to the Scrapyard (near the town of Minefield), Dogmeat, yes, Dogmeat will be there killing some raiders. If you can to him afterward that he’ll join your part. BUT, it seems that if you don’t realize he’s there, you can never get him. I don’t know if it’s a bug or what, but after putting a hell of a lot of hours into the game I found a thread on another forum about Dogmeat, went straight to the Scrapyard, and he’s just not fucking there. GRRRRRRRRRRR! If you want Dogmeat in your party, make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
Like I said, I’m not getting into the fanboi debate with you.
God the map on the pipboy is awful, lol. It seems to have a waypoint or point-to-point feature that might redeem it. Still a step up from the F1 & 2 pipboy maps.
smack
I know, I know. And when you weren’t here he was talkin’ smack about yo’ momma. Something like, “Johnny Angel’s momma’s so fat, they dropped her on Washington DC instead of the bomb.”
This should be edited in to the OP. The game-breaking factor of it HEAVILY outweighs the spoiler factor, to my mind.
ETA: Reported to mod with that suggestion.
Yeah, Fallout 3 stays true to its roots by having horrible pipboy maps It will show a wall in front of you when one isn’t there. That could mean said wall is above you, or maybe below you, or maybe not there at all. There’s no way to navigate by landmarks since everything is a green messy blob.
One big annoyance is the tab key is always set for closing the pipboy, even if you bind the pipboy key to something else. To open the pipboy I push * on the keypad, then have to reach over and hit tab to close it. Grr. I hope they patch a fix for that, or at least put in a clickable close button on the pipboy itself.
I’ve been playing a very morally straight character so far. Has anyone tried going apeshit and killing everyone in sight? Is it like the original games where you could slaughter pretty much anyone? In Fallout 2 I must have killed and looted Tubby the gun dealer in The Den at least a hundred times. Poor Tubby.
Actually I’ve read that dogmeat can appear in a few places in the game. It seems to be random.
Some people find him right outside the vault, others at the minefield and at least one other place as well, though I’m not sure where that is).
I’m kinda curious and unhappy about how, exactly, you kill super-mutants at level 5 or earlier. I’ve heard of people wasting them at level 1, just with normal guns. This frightens and confuses me. Please explain.
I’m at level 5. They’re pretty easy to kill with a good weapon. Frag grenades and mines work well, too. I don’t think I could have taken one at Level 2 with just a 10mm pistol, but I only worry now when there’s a whole bunch of them and I’m low on HP.
Here’s my question for all you Fallout experts: what should I do when I’m too low on health to fight my way out of an area, but can’t “fast travel” out because there are enemies near by (even though I’m not actually in combat with them). Is there a good solution here that I’m missing? Or should I just try to run for it and hope for the best?
Also, had a pretty big bug happen last night. I died while holding the Fatman and everytime the game reloaded, it immediately fired a nuke into the wall right in front of me, so of course I would die again. Basically got caught in a loop where I couldn’t do anything except load-die-load-die-load-die. I had to go back to a previous save and lost a bunch of progress. I guess I have to manually save more often.
I, for one, would be perfectly happy to see them turn out Fallouts using the F2 engine pretty much until the end of time. The whole point of the game, for me, was that all the development time went into making the storyline cool and writing endless neat little miniquests and stuff.
In fact, I would be happy if they just kept releasing expansion packs for F2, and would buy them all.
I will buy this game just because it has the Fallout label on it. I may have to buy a new damn computer first, though.
In any case, this is what I’m really looking forward to.
Yeah, I had checked that out last night but didn’t find anything on my specific problem. How I ended up ‘solving’ it was to uninstall the game, re-install and go with the default video settings (for some reason the default settings for my machine were high…I had toned em down as I usually do to start) and then re-launched the game. This worked like a charm…went up to the point where you select the sex of your char and then through the sequence where the woman dies (never got that far before). After I when through the entire vault (were you supposed to shoot your way out? No idea, just whacked everyone with a uniform on including the Overseer) and outside I was able to reconfigure the video settings with no problem (though I have to admit the game was running fine at the highest settings, even on my older rig).
The game is simply beautiful IMHO. I really like VATs too, though it can be a bit quirky and wonky at times. I haven’t found that it makes the game too easy, though I’m playing at the higher difficulty setting so maybe that’s part of it. I’ve only just started playing and already I can’t wait to get back in. Was up until 4am last night going through some old highschool full of raiders and basically whacking everyone there. There is just so much stuff around that I have no idea what to pick up and what to leave. There are books everywhere and I keep thinking I should check them all out in case there are any survival guides or whatever like from the older games…but there is just so much that it overwhelms me doing more than a cursory look.
No idea if it’s the best way to go, but I went small guns, repair and lockpick, and I’ve tossed spare points into science and energy weapons (very few in this so far as I doubt I’ll be finding an energy weapon any time soon). I think I’ll also put at least some points into explosives.
-XT
Two complementary strategies I can think of:
Guess this is as good a place as any for this story:
So I’m wandering the Waste near an outdoor cinema looking for traces of some gang called The Family when I walk up on my first Super Mutant by some picnic tables. I’m not sure how this is going to go, but I’m ready to give it a shot. We exchange a few shots trying to use the picnic tables for what little cover we can and things look like they’re going well for me when suddenly there’s an explosion nearby. I’m thrown around a bit and my health takes a big dip. What the fuck.
Glance left and see Big Fucking Super Mutant coming over a rise while reloading his missile launcher. Oh. Shit. Feets don’t fail me now. I’m already running back toward Hamilton’s Hideaway while the dirt and debris finishes raining down around me. Put the gun away to pick up speed and boom- another explosion behind me, another dip in health, another rain of debris. I zig-zag back and forth like my virtual life depends on it, explosions to either side of me chipping away at my health, bullets whizzing by my head.
Finally I get to some rocks near the Hideaway and duck behind to load up on stimpaks; sweet, sweet relief. Take a look back; they’re still coming, but at least they’re slow and pretty far behind. Sprint to another set of rocks, check again. Looks like they’ve lost interest in chasing me and started to wander back the way they came, drifting apart. Bad idea, bitches. Out comes the sniper rifle that a Raider helpfully donated to me a day before. Wait for the little guy to get a good distance from his buddy, then I reach out and touch him. Insta-slump; sneak criticals are good.
Line up on Big Bad Mutie as he gets to the top of the hill and fire. Not sure I hit, but Mutie’s turning back towards me, kind of hesitatingly and confused. I put a bullet in his chest to clear things up for him. I get off another shot while he fires the missile launcher again. Time to move. I have plenty of time to side-step the missile and run behind a wall of rocks to the side. He’s hurting bad now, so I think (hope) I can finish him with a corner ambush using the SMG. He charges around the corner and I unload on his head at point blank range. Crap, not quite done yet, so I dance backwards still shooting while he shoots back, surprisingly, with a pistol.
Doesn’t take too much more to finish him off, though I get a bit bloodied again. Check the corpse and it’s a Super Mutant Brute (guess that makes it a super Super Mutant). The missile launcher is completely broken, meaning it must have been pretty shitty before all this started; probably the only thing that saved my butt. I loot the remaining missile, gun, and ammo, then go to check on his buddy. Life’s a bitch out here in the Waste.
I admit I want the series to move forward and use 3D to show the world, I do miss the tactical combat. FPS view and VAts sounds very different. And while it’s neccessarily bad, it’s fundamentally different and makes the game mroe action oriented. And I happen to like both action-shooters and tactical combat. My only beef with the older Fallouts was the iffy party AI. I want to be able to have my team work together (a la Fallout Tactics), and while that’s not impossible in a FPS game, it’s harder to manage.
Everything I’ve heard/seen points to allies being almost totally unnecessary in F3. Action Boy, Grim Reaper Spirit and Sniper, all bundled together turn you into a one man army.
Personally I blame the console generation.
But I blame them for everything, so you are free to ignore me 
VATS would be cooler if you could queue up movement, attacks, and weapon swaps. Also if you had different type of attacks available (I’m thinking targeted shots, wild shots, etc). I’m picturing something akin to Mass Effect. In fact, they should have also added the cover mechanics that we’ve all come to love and appreciate in some shooters.
So I could be behind a crate and a mob pops out in the corridor ahead. I hit the VATS key and Que up a grenade toss, a switch to my rifle, a shot to the mob’s legs, and a move from the cover of the crate to the cover of a nearby wall. It would then play out as me tossing the grenade from cover, drawing my rifle and firing at the legs AS I move to the wall for more cover.
That would be sweet.