Fo3 Mark two Official Thread

[ecksile]

Just make what you want to make in the order you want to make it. Trying to cater to a bunch of fickle strangers is probably not worth the effort.

 

Amen to that.

[Wolfhound646]

Just make what you want to make in the order you want to make it. Trying to cater to a bunch of fickle strangers is probably not worth the effort.

 

Amen to that.

 

I disagree. That entirely matter's on what kind of modder you are. If you're the kind that make's mods for themselves, then yes, do that. If you're the kind that enjoy's making mods for other people to enjoy, then keep on doing what you're doing. And judging by the fact that there was a giant survey in the begining of this thread, I'm guessing the maker's of this mod or part of that second group.

[Nadin]

I'm kinda both. I'm making this mod with content I want in the way I want, as it started as a mod for me, but I realized other people would want it too. So it's entirely thing I want in my style, but seeing as I'm distributing it to the general public, I might as well gather ideas, concepts, and preferences from the audience.

 

In other words, yes, I'm taking advice from finicky strangers, but only when I agree with them.

[pkleiss]

Just make what you want to make in the order you want to make it. Trying to cater to a bunch of fickle strangers is probably not worth the effort.

 

I agree that you should make what you want. Its really not possible to please everyone all the time, as I am sure you are aware. But I will elaborate never the less.

 

Weapons and armor and player houses are over-done. IMO we don't need more of that. What we need are more places to explore, more large scale adventures and new cells (exterior or interior) - like DLCs. I think there is an over-abundance of weapon/armor/house mods because they are relatively easy to produce; meaning they don't take a long time. But a good adventure mod takes a long long time and requires a large commitment. To me, this is where the fun factor is. I think its more fun to explore some place new that takes hours to complete than it is to load a new gun and go kill the same creatures in the same place as I have already been in another game. I couldn't care less about getting new equipment, because a really fun mod could be made with the player wearing wasteland scavenger outfits and wielding a 10mm pistol, if its done right. Making new models isn't that important either. A good level builder can use vanilla content, but arrange it in new and interesting ways that make it look original. Using scale and rotation and having objects combined and jetting out of ceilings, walls and floors can be just as interesting as making a whole new model. I am not saying to skip new models altogether, but if I played a mod that was made with nothing more than new models, but had not plot/adventure, it would get old very quickly.

 

"Oh look! That's neat, now what?" <--Try to stay away from this.

[Giggsy]

I think you should add more weapons using the CALIBR system. I want more scoped pistols. Here are some examples :

 

Weapons:

-Falcon 2 Scoped (Perfect Dark-weapon. Might want to alter the name for trademark reasons?).

-Remington 870 Pump-Action Shotgun

-Taurus "Judge" ;a revolver that uses shotgun shells

-Chauchat ; French light machine gun. Worst one in history. You could find it in Fallout Tactics, deep underground, hidden away, but as soon as you equip it, it jams :p

-Colt 1849 revolver. I love those old, sweet revolvers.

-Stevens "New Model Pocket Rifle" ; a one-shot revolver.

-Beretta 682 Shotgun ;just a beautiful gun

-World War 2 Trench Gun : A short pump-action shotgun.

-Sig Sauer P228

-CZ-75 ; a pistol that is essential the same (looks) as the Browning Hi-Power

-Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistols

-H&K VP70 ; famous for being the pistol that Leon uses in Resident Evil 2.

-Glock 17

-Glock 19

-Beretta Silverhawk

 

 

New missions/plot/vendorr:

-A character that collects pre-war money and will buy it from you for 40 caps a piece. Once you give him 50 bills, he will give you some reward(but you can still deliver pre-war money to him still.

 

-Adventures about/with vampires. Some "evil" and hostile maybe.

 

-Facial expressions when you encounter people, fight and such. Locking eye-contact when you encounter friendly people (just like in Oblivion).

 

-A mission to activate or fix the various power-stations that are around or something (concerning the power-stations).

 

Armor :

-Enviromental armor from "Fallout: Tactics" and NOT JUST a retex of the Radiation Suit.

[Nadin]

Giggsy,thank you for being specific. Most of those ideas will be worked into the mod.

 

And Pkleiss, I do have one new worldspace so far. It's fairly large, and we're hoping to expand it. We're also looking forward to adding more VR simulations in the style of OA, including one that's a knock-off of the "Hazard course" from half-life.

I'm having issues figuring out how this could work, but we are going to try to add a "Dreaming" feature. That is to say, when you fall asleep or wait, you go to one of a random series of worldspaces or interior cells with randomized stats and perks and weapon, Etc. For a amount of time varying between fifteen minutes and two hours. Being dreams they will be bizarre and, we hope, interesting locations. This seems to be what you were looking for.

[Tony the Wookie]

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't bother playing a mod that just adjusts what is already there. The reason for this is simple, I have already played the game through multiple times. It would take some incredibly miraculous stuff to make me want to go back and play through the main game again.

 

And really, at this point in the lifespan of Fallout 3, I think almost everyone else has beat the game about as many times as they are going to. No one I know of is looking to play through the game another time, just with improvements and better balance.

 

 

 

And on another point, though unlike my point before is pretty much just me. I never download weapon mods, ever. I don't think they do anything at all to help the game. Unless you can make a weapon that alters my playing style I am not interested. Just having another variation of a pistol or a rifle bores me to no end.

 

 

 

But anyways, to get to what direction I personally would like. The thing that is 100% essential to Fallout 3 and the thing that gets people to come back and play the game all the time is the Open World / Sandbox aspect of Fallout.

 

I forgot who said it earlier, but someone said that the mainquest/storyline is essential. With all do respect I couldn't possibly agree less. The main storyline is an afterthought of Fallout, and if that was the draw of the game then there is no way it would be averaging a 9 out of 10 rating on most websites and magazines. The thing that draws people to Fallout is that they can forge their own story and go their own path.

 

The defining moment of Fallout is when you step out of Vault 101 and you see the vast Wasteland before you and you thing "wow... what should I do" and then you think, "I can do whatever I want!"

 

 

 

So my point is, if you really want to make a mod that improves the game, expand the possibilities of the sandbox.

 

The important thing is to focus on the kind of things players can continue to do that are fun, that doesn't require a scripted plot to be done. Dynamic aspects are more important than scripted quests.

 

 

Sidequests are cool and all, but rather worthless when they don't loop back into "how does this help me" or "how does this improve the condition of the game world"

 

 

I think your dreaming idea could fit very well into helping refine the sandbox aspect of the game. Stuff that doesn't happen because of a planned plot even, but just because that is how life in the Fallout sandbox is.

 

 

 

I won't go into too much detail on specifics of how to go about expanding the sandbox and stuff unless you want me to, but for now I would just suggest something that expands on non plot of quest based battles. Stuff like having factions fighting for power or something, maybe randomly having Megaton or someplace under siege by Raiders that you can defeat or join. Anything that lets the player carve out their own path and identity in the Wasteland.

 

 

 

 

But anyways, that's just my opinion. Take it for what it is.

[Nadin]

Thanks. I appreciate it.

 

We're planning on adding something similar to the DC interiors project-- that is to say, opening all those god-awful blocked buildings. I'm also hoping to just expand the nearby areas.No invisible walls surrounding the wastes, but it DOES become more waste-like once you leave the capital wasteland. Only one or two settlements, less random spawns, more abandoned buildings.

 

You'll also be able to see a steady stream of brotherhood soldiers going from the citadel to DC and back. That said, there will be more soldiers altogether.

The same will be true with the mutants. There will be occasional battles between squads of soldiers and the mutants while in DC, there will be raids by the brotherhood on paradise falls,raids by the outcasts on the citadel,Etc.

 

The slavers will also be a much stronger faction, controlling much of the north-eastern part of the wastes. As a matter of fact, we're going to try and phase out some of the endless crazed raiders with slavers.

 

As far as expanding sandbox characteristics, there's a lot in the works. Including the ability to upgrade the pip-boy, scrap weapons and armor for parts that build new weapons and armor, have an infinite number of followers, and possibly even working vehicles. If you have any ideas, I'd be more than happy to put them in.

[Tony the Wookie]

Well, a lot of my ideas end up being centered around having a player base of some sorts, because after all that is what my mod is about, and that is what I have been thinking about. But when it comes down to it, I find it almost essintial to have some sort of hub, or place that you feel conected with and can call home. I can't name a single sandbox game that doesn't have that kind of centeralized hub.

 

The problem with Fallout, especially once modded is that there are a lot of options for player homes, so it would be hard for you as the modder to make things work universaly.

 

 

 

 

But anyways, first and foremost to improve a sandbox mod you have to think about encounters that can continue on without a script. Not just mindless hordes of enemies though, that is boring. But some sort of dynamic system, like a group of invaders that will attack you or your base at certain times. Maybe throw in a feature to negotiate peace.

 

You could even add in multiple factions fighting for power and be able to make aliances or whatever. On top of that you could throw in some sort of territory system, where you can take over buildings and towns for your group.

 

Stuff like that is what keeps me and many other people playing games like Civilization for hours on end, it has no sort of plot at all, but encounters that never get old because they are dynamic.

 

 

 

 

Ok, and now for this part I will have to first explain to you the way I played through Fallout that I found the most fun. I have tried a lot of different stuff in my playthroughs, but this one was by far the most effective and made me keep playing the longest.

 

The general idea is that I play from my centralized hub, which happened to be my Megaton house. If I was in the DC ruins I would always make sure to have a room in Rivet City, same with every place I go (though most don't have official hotels, I just acted like they did... but that is a point you might want to take note of when improving the game)

 

So, with the Wasteland already being a dangerous place I decided that it was very much a bad idea to be traveling the Wasteland at night. (you should add in something to make nights a lot more dangerous on your mod, so only higher level characters can travel at night) So basically what I started was a system of waking up, tradeing with the vendors in town, going off and completing a quest or two, and then returning home.

 

I personally found this system of doing things on a day to day bases to be the biggest immprovment to the game, even bigger than any mod I have used.

 

But anyways, I also put a limit of 125 pounds that I could carry at one time. This immproved the game a huge deal, simply because it only allowed me to bring a handfull of weapons. This coupled with mods that made ammo harder to find made me carefully decide which weapons I wanted to bring that day. I would think of the mission before hand and pick out only the weapons and armor that I wanted to use. Through this I started to better appreciate all the different weapons, as opposed to just scrubbing with the Blackhawk Magnum.

 

Also, the weight limit forced me not to go around and pick up the armor off of every single person I killed, which saven me from having to do the boring task and also completly balanced out the problem of having too many bottle caps I had on previous playthroughs.

 

So every night I would make sure I returned home so I could go back to my locker and repair items and restock for the next day all well rested up.

 

 

 

So, that brings me to the other thing I would like to see from a home base. A better well rested bonus. But not just upping the stats on it, but a dynamic well rested bonus that improves based on the living conditions you create around yourself. It is all part of giving the player a reason to want to improve the stuff around them.

 

You could give bonuses based on upgraded furniture or other stuff you add to your home. Better cooking equipment, weight bench, shooting range, and even a shower to help your carisma. You could even throw in bonuses for having family.

 

 

 

But anyways, I will get to some more ideas later on. I would go into my follower idea and how I would like to create a more party based system like in most RPGs, but I don't have enough time at the moment.

[Nadin]

No home base. There will be areas where the player can sleep overnight, but that's it. There are so many player homes I refuse to add another.

 

Also, at night there is now a severe temperature drop, as well as limited visibility and nocturnal creatures. All very dangerous for the low-leveled.

 

There won't be a lower cap for the weight limit, but some items will be much heavier. If you want power armor and a minigun, you won't have room for much else.

 

You are a wanderer, after all. You should be closer to a drifter than a tenant.