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| Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by Jerry Whorebach 12/29/2009, 3:45pm PST | ||||
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| The combat skills are a fucking mess. Let's take a look!
Big Guns Explosives Energy Weapons Melee Weapons Small Guns Unarmed Out of thirteen total skills, six are for killing things. Yeah, that sounds about right... for a game that values combat DISPROPORTIONATELY!! But seriously, combat is awesome and I appreciate having options, the problem is most of these skills are varying levels of redundant and useless. Small Guns is decent, if they could've compressed the other five skills into one or two skills every bit as well-developed as Small Guns I would've been happy. The first thing that jumps out at me about that list is the presence of both Melee Weapons and Unarmed. I could see splitting melee combat into two skills in a game that revolves around kung-fu and swordplay, but I think you'll agree Fallout 3 isn't that game. On top of that, the designers really half-assed the implementation - the "melee damage" bonus you get from the Strength stat only applies to Melee Weapons, not Unarmed. D'OH! These two should've been one skill. The next thing I question is the logic of having different skills for pistols+rifles and laser pistols+laser rifles. Isn't the skill-intensive part of operating these devices - basically pointing the barrel in the right direction - the same, whether they're firing bullets or particle beams? If they had to have multiple marksmanship skills for balance purposes, it would seem like a more useful distinction might be between one-handed guns (pistols, laser pistols, Uzis, sawed-offs, etc.) and two-handed ones (rifles, laser rifles, machineguns, combat shotguns, etc.). I know when I'm envisioning a character, I think more about the size of the weapons he's going to carry than what kind of projectiles they shoot. The one combat skill I actually like is Explosives. In the old Fallout games, this used to be broken up into Throwing (for grenades) and Traps (for mines and other charges), neither of which anyone actually put points in if they could possibly avoid it. By combining two half-useful skills into one, Bethesda made Explosives a genuinely attractive proposition for gameplay purposes as well as roleplaying ones. I remember making this case to JE Sawyer on the Black Isle boards the last time they tried to make a Fallout 3, but he was steadfast in his opposition to illogically combining two very different activities (physically heaving grenades and carefully arming/disarming IEDs) solely for usability purposes. In retrospect, I think he was right - Throwing and Traps should be different skills, but (and this is a big but) only if you can make them cheaper per rank than something genuinely useful, and that's something no Fallout developer has attempted at this point. |
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I have grave misgivings about Bethesda's implementation of the Speech skill by 12/29/2009, 2:30pm PST  Bitch bitch bitch bitch about RPG's NT by 12/29/2009, 2:44pm PST Maybe all dem xbox arcade games turned his mind into mush. O_O NT by 12/29/2009, 2:53pm PST Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by 12/29/2009, 3:45pm PST Re: Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by 12/30/2009, 7:28am PST It's not crazy math, it's just not generating a new random seed. by 12/30/2009, 8:23am PST On gamism and simulationism by 12/30/2009, 1:11pm PST Re: Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by 12/30/2009, 9:04am PST I agree, one marksmanship skill ought to be enough for any game. by 12/30/2009, 12:18pm PST at around lvl 16, dump points into energy weapons by 12/30/2009, 6:37pm PST There's no room for negativity in Caltrops, mister! NT by 12/30/2009, 6:17am PST |
