Fo3 Mark two Official Thread

[Tony the Wookie]

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.

 

I didn't mean add another player home, but to make use of the ones that are there in some way.

 

But like I said, I have been doing most of my brainstorming around things that have to do with my mod, and the primary focus of my mod is to make you not be a wanderer.

 

So a lot of my ideas may not work for you, so take what you want and leave the rest, I just figured I would throw them out there.

[Nadin]

That's fine. I appreciate them.

[Tony the Wookie]

Ok, I have had some time to think about this a bit more, and this time I was thinking more about a Drifter type mechanics.

 

If you want to focus on being a wanderer / drifter I think you should try and take the idea further than what the vanilla game does. I personally would go as far as not even allowing player homes, because that pretty much would water down the idea. But then again, you might not want to go as extreme as I think.

 

Wanderers, drifters, and people on journeys have traditionally made up a much larger majority of game characters. The idea of having a home base is mostly used in non RPG strategy games and most recently in sandbox/open world games. That being said, I can't think of any sandbox game that doesn't have some sort of focus around your home base.

 

So pretty much I would suggest really looking into the idea of expanding on the sandbox possibilities of a drifter. Though your character is a "lone wanderer" in the vanilla game, they never really touch on the aspect of being a drifter trying to survive.

 

 

Before I would have been against the idea of having mods that require food and water, but I think if used sparingly (once or twice a day) it could really help out the feel of being a drifter trying to survive out in an unfriendly Wasteland. I think you should touch more on the aspect of constantly having to find a new kind of shelter in order to survive the harsh nights of the Wasteland.

 

You could possibly take a handful of the existing home mods but make them more of temporary shelters that will end up becoming dangerous if you stay for too long.

 

Things to keep a drifter on their toes could be anything from animals being attracted to the areas you are staying in, groups of other drifters that will come along and fight you, or maybe some sort of group that is constantly following you (similar to the Talon Company) but they only catch up to you when you stay in one place too long, and the longer you stay the more problems you get.

 

 

Then you could also go along the aspect of getting towns to let you stay for amounts of time based on you helping or threatening them. But in the end you would end up having to take sides with someone in order to keep having shelter, whether that be Raiders or Wastelanders.

 

You could also throw in some wilderness shelters from abandoned homes and stuff or even caves. Just anything that will keep you safe from the harsh nights.

 

 

I would still strongly suggest lowering the weight cap though. I think it is by far the biggest balance killer in the vanilla game. Not only does it allow you to bring way too many overpowered weapons, but the collecting of armor and stuff it allows you to become way to rich way to fast to keep things feeling like you are struggling in the Wasteland.

 

Part of being a drifter would be constantly having to adapt you supplies and trading with people you come across, and always having room for everything you need would make things a lot less drifter like.

 

 

 

 

 

But anyways, back to the thing I was saying earlier about companions. They become much more important in a drifter case than in a case like mine where you have a home base. The people around you become your lifeline when you area drifter.

 

The thing is, the vanilla companions are just plane boring beyond all belief, and the only thing you can really do is give them weapons and ammo, and some like Fawkes don't even have that.

 

I don't really have a detailed idea on the best way to fix it, but if you look back at any other RPG series that has been successful, almost everything revolved around a main character and then a party that follows them. Your party becomes like your home base. You want to make them happy and upgrade them to make your squad as a whole more powerful and it makes the things you do in the game world somehow more important.

 

Party members have traditionally been used a lot as commentators to help tell the story. The way they can comment on how they feel about certain situations gives a natural narrative and perspective to the player character who doesn't really have a voice on the matter because he is controlled by you.

 

But anyways, I would just suggest looking back on other RPGs not made by Bethesda too see how much party based stuff improves the story telling of a game. Bioware has some very good examples of this.

[pob255]

When I talked about Plot before I didn't mean the main plot, infact I summed up the whole main plot from the original fallout (which I still dearly love) in 4 points, while bethesda did give fo3 a far larger scripted plot with far more parts to it, they also kept a good dose of the original games flavour in that the world has far more story to tell than that of the player.

all the bits hidden away from the main plot which tell how the world got from point A the bombs falling to point B the current wasteland.

 

Even a lot of Tony the Wookie ideas come into the catagory of plot, just because they are randomly triggered events doesn't change the fact that they need some reason to be occureing with in this sort of game.

You couldn't make it totally random, aka civ, as the game is a very different and more dynamic structure and you also hit the issue that without some reason to do things the game just becomes a bunch of random stuff for you to do ut without any real reason to do it or keep doing it.

This is always the biggest ballancing act, too little freedom and the game feels too ridged as has little to no replay value, to much freedom and you lose direction and motivation.

 

 

Personally I'd like to see something a little closer to the originals esp in view of the world, this would mean expanding the towns and make them more like places people live, while the rest of the wasteland become far more desolate and empty.

This is the remains of a blasted desolate world with the few surviving people struggling for survival in a dangerious radioactive waste, some more environmental hazards would be nice.

However this would require a major reworking of the world map and a lot of work.

The main thing I'd like to see thoe is a major reworking of the towns with more things to do within them as these are the hubs of humanity.

[Tony the Wookie]

Even a lot of Tony the Wookie ideas come into the catagory of plot, just because they are randomly triggered events doesn't change the fact that they need some reason to be occureing with in this sort of game.

You couldn't make it totally random, aka civ, as the game is a very different and more dynamic structure and you also hit the issue that without some reason to do things the game just becomes a bunch of random stuff for you to do ut without any real reason to do it or keep doing it.

This is always the biggest ballancing act, too little freedom and the game feels too ridged as has little to no replay value, to much freedom and you lose direction and motivation.

 

 

I think we pretty much agree on the theory, just not on the wording of it :biggrin:

 

The thing I was trying to say is NOT that there shouldn't be any sort of scripted plot, but that the scripted plot is not what draws people to keep playing Fallout. The scripted plot is neccessary, but it is the open world dynamics that really drive the game.

 

Really my point was that in my opinion to make a successful mod you would have to make a priority shift from adding more scripted plot to a perspective of adding more dynamics to life in the Wasteland.

 

 

 

I couldn't agree more about the part about the story behind the world. I think that the exploration and discovery of the world is far more immportant than having a main plot. The idea of being set out into the world with all this story behind the people in it and the history of the settlments and how people survived after the bomb and everything is really the draw of a sandbox game.

 

This stuff is what I consider dynamic story, it isn't just handed to you as scripted plot, but the player goes out and discovers it in their own way.

 

 

The whole entire bases of my mod is having a truly dynamic town that gives you lots of ways to interact with it. The story of the town is not one of a quest, but stuff they you discover by exploring it and interacting with the people inside. Everything is about how dynamic and gameplay driven I can make the plot of my mod.

 

 

I am not against story at all. I honestly think story is the biggest driving force behind games. It is just my goal as a game designer to try to merge the aspects of gameplay and story into a truly player driven expereince as opposed to using pre-writen plot driven story.

[Nadin]

All true. Thanks for the advice on the companions.

 

I'm certainly going to be adding in things like the sidney follower mod and such-- the ones that create dynamic companions that focuses on the situation and such.

 

I was already planning on the player homes into shelters idea, but I actually really like the concept of an organization that tracks you down and causes trouble if you stay in one place too long. Maybe slavers?

 

One of the other things is that, with luck, the BOS soldiers will now follow you after a certain point in MQ, like the soldier do in anchorage.

 

I'm also hoping to adjust the AI's. BOS, OC, and ENC should go around in a squad formation, taking tactical positions when under fire and whatnot. Slavers will fight in an organized manner, but quite military quality. Mercenary's will probably use the military manner, while most of the rest will be, quite frankly, stupid. This is probably not going to happen, but it's worth a shot.

 

I'm developing a toned-down primary needs mod--you only need about 3 hours of sleeping a day, Two drinks of water, and one thing of food. You can also take drugs and vitamins in place of some of these.

 

In an earlier post, you said that weapons were basically fluff unless they REALLY change how you play. I'm hoping to make some of these.

There is, for instance, a new system of hard-shelled and soft-shelled targets. Hard ones have an incredibly high DR, filtering out most damage. On the other hand, they have very low health, making it easy--and quite satisfying--when you do kill them. With these, thing like machine guns and flamers that create a steady stream of low damage are essentially worthless, while sniper rifles--which will now ignore DR--are much more useful.

Then there's soft-shelled targets, which have obscenely high health but very little to no DR. For these, you must choose things like flamers and miniguns.

Then there's the fact that there shall be more "Scripted" weapons, including a taser that causes paralysis and an EMP effect, while having an excruciatingly slow reload time and less damage than most pistols.

In short, yes, the guns will change how you play.

 

I'm also going to change radiation. Radaway is much rarer, and when you contract radiation poisoning you must take certain medications until it goes away.

 

For example, with advanced radiation poisoning, you must take two rad away to completely cure it. Until then, however, you must take the more common dianthril twice a day or suffer a permanent -1 to strength and endurance for each day you don't take it. After ten days of not taking it in a row, you die.

Also, over 1000 rads does not kill instantly. The punishment, however, will make you wish it had.

After fatal rad poisoning sets in, it's a race to get to radaway. It starts off with -1 from each special per minute until all are at zero, then it's the same for skills. Then you either die or there's a 10 percent chance of ghoulification. Even if you get to radaway, none of these effects are reversed-- you simply halt their continuation.

 

Do you think it's too intense?

 

Thanks for all the advice, again.

 

 

EDIT: just saw your new post. Yes, story is going to get a lot of attention. I'm still working out how, though.

[Nihilisaurus]

"working vehicles"

There's a hummer I could script in 60 seconds with a midified J3x setup if it were ever rigged to a skeleton.

[pob255]

concerning weight, one thing I would consider is going back to the original fallout in that everything has weight, including cap's and ammo, say make it 25caps to the pound and all of a sudden thoes 1000caps you're happly got stuck in your back pocket suddenly weighs almost as much as power armour.

The other thing would be a volume as well as mass system (not sure how hard that would be to make) simply give each item a size value and the player a max volume carrying capasity, this could be expanded with things like backpacks, worn and carried items would not count towards volume.

all of a suddent you cannot carry around 2 spare suits of power armour or 6 large guns or 1000's of rounds of every ammo type, and thoes 1000 bottles caps are also going to take up quite a bit of space.

 

If you do use that idea or even just greatly reduce carry weight then I'd also consider the addition of a Brahmin like the traders have as a pack animal.

It would have course have the down side of things like running away duering combat, so at the end of a firefight you're going to have to go chase your Brahmin down to get it back so you can stuff all your loot into it's pack and you'd need to find stableing for it at every town or it's just going to wander off as no one will let you just walk into their shop/home/whatever with a cow in tow.

 

For the armour system I'd look at hard armour, soft armour system, this is seperate from DR, ie in stead of a single DR each armour has a DR for eeach seperate damage type.

weapons would also have two damage numbers, vs soft and vs hard

This is less realistic but does make for a better ballance system, you can generate a wider range and scope of weapons with no one weapon being uber, and the right weapon against the right armour will be far more effective.

You can still keep HP seperate for difficulty purposes.

[Tony the Wookie]

If you do use that idea or even just greatly reduce carry weight then I'd also consider the addition of a Brahmin like the traders have as a pack animal.

It would have course have the down side of things like running away duering combat, so at the end of a firefight you're going to have to go chase your Brahmin down to get it back so you can stuff all your loot into it's pack and you'd need to find stableing for it at every town or it's just going to wander off as no one will let you just walk into their shop/home/whatever with a cow in tow.

 

I could make you a pack Rhino if you want to take thnings to a whole different level :tongue:

 

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm98/Supernaut14/zbrushrhino-1.jpg

 

That would deffinatly be an interesting story.

[Nadin]

Ammo will have weight or not, depending on type.

 

Caps will be about 75 a pound.

 

I'm still considering the volume idea. It will, if done, be enough to be challenging, but probably not realistic. If it is done, it would require some other features first, mostly to allow you to cache your items in locations rich with loot.

 

As is, power armor will vastly increase the amount of stuff you can carry. A volume system would help this be much more realistic. It will hopefully also change the player's scale, making it somewhat more realistic.

 

The hard and soft armors sound unnecessary and complicated. No go, sorry. It's just redundant with the fire, radiation, frost, EMP, energy, and all those other assorted resistances.

 

The brahmin is a good idea. I think it's been done, maybe I can merge it?

 

And if that rhino models done, I'd be happy to add it in. Please?