How is it?

[superflossman]

Hello.

After another school year has winded down, I have been able to come home and enjoy some games that were released during my time at college. After seeing a decent price drop for this game, I'm considering getting it on the PC, like I did for Fallout 3. However, before I get it, I would like some feedback on how it runs. Does it crash often? All that stuff. I'm worried because the only way I could get a stable experience out of Fallout 3 was playing on medium graphics in windowed mode with all the effects off, and not save over any saves, and while it was incredibly addicting at the time, I would like to maximize my experience with New Vegas.

 

So, yeah. Are you satisfied with how New Vegas runs? Are there any major problems/conflicts that get in the way of enjoying the game? Any answers are appreciated, but please keep them simple as I'm pretty terrible with computers (That's why I'm a history major). Thanks.

[antonkr]

Never really had much problems with it really, but I would suggest waiting for all DLCs to come out and buy GOTY version which will definatly save you a lot of money over-all. I really wanted to play New Vegas but I should have waited until the all DLC version came out. Overall really nice game defiantly worth it.

[superflossman]

Never really had much problems with it really, but I would suggest waiting for all DLCs to come out and buy GOTY version which will definatly save you a lot of money over-all. I really wanted to play New Vegas but I should have waited until the all DLC version came out. Overall really nice game defiantly worth it.

 

Thanks for your input (+1 kudos for you)! I have almost too much free time now that school is over, and I have enough money saved up. I'm probably going to pick up a copy this weekend and see how New Vegas is.

[nivea]

I enjoy the game, I love the western cowboy feel it gives and I think it flows a lot better then oblivion quest/story wise. The Companions are enjoyable (though I wish they talked more) and fights keep my interest pretty well. I love the feel of the world and as a fan of post apocalyptic worlds it draws me in, I can say I honestly I enjoy the vanilla game more then Oblivion.

 

Now... the bad part, stability. I am one of the lucky ones who have only had a fully corrupted save/game once (knock on wood D: ) and I get 2 or 3 freezes a hour on loading and very few "crashes", but I DO know MANY people who consistently crash all the time freeze when loading more often then me and who suffer many corrupted saves. So if you do get the game, turn OFF Autosave and quick save never use them. Try to install all the main mods you want and test them before you start your "keeper" game. Do not save over other saves, and back them up.

Turn off auto updates from Steam and hope they do not decide to turn on anyways... god I hate steam, its the only truely "bad" thing about the game imo.

[Klipperken]

Well: I am with Nivea here.

 

I am now about nearly 3 weeks exploring (literally), plenty of fighting, some nice mods that add even more fighting, DO get the Willow Mod (Companion).

She can be courted, she keeps babbling, sings, dances (if you're high enough in relation with her)...

And I probably have more than a week more to go.

 

I have not many mods, though Shilo's Pipboy Package is awesome, the Black Remnant Power Armor, and recently Vault 24, a MEGA vault (no life in there, not even finished, it's a WIP you can look into).

And seeing the sheer size of it, I probably will be about another week in there as well.

Not to mention the rims I will get lost.

 

Further there are the DLC packages.

These add another playtime.

 

Yes, pretty big, if you're not someone that just runs questing.

Reminds me of M:TES.

 

As for stability: my PC does the ever so more CTD.

THANKFULLY I had, just like Nivea, only like 4 savegame deaths, but since you can use about 1000 different saves, I think you are good there.

Just save often.

 

This I learned in M:TES, rofl.

 

I was near the end of Tribunal when a massive fail in the savegame occured, resulting in me having to start... FROM SCRATCH!

Painful, but nevertheless I enjoyed my second coming around thanks to 2 mods: The Romance Mod and the massive The Underground.

 

But still: If I were you, yes, go for it.

Stay VERY far away from Dragon ge 2, and get FONV....

[superflossman]

Are there any major issues/fixes with stability problems in New Vegas. As I said before, I was forced to play Fallout 3 in windowed mode with a bunch of particular settings so I wouldn't crash every five minutes. Have these issues been resolved, or is it really just a matter of luck?

[nivea]

I think a lot of the same ideas from FO3 can be used in NV such as the window mode, I do not at this time know of any mods that add stability fixes to the game.

Most likely it is a lot of luck on if your game will be fine, I see people with the exact same system/computer who are fine while others crash. :\

 

So far no patches from beth have fixed any of these issues for everyone... but its a really good game, if you think it will be fine get it now if not then wait till all the patches that will ever be released are done.

[drakeelvin]

Problems people report definitely appear to be system dependant and/or mod dependant.

 

I have a low end system and while this is not a game I would ever call "stable" I can play for a few hours without a crash. I find the game works fine with low res settings plus a few adjustments of my own -- I increased the range of visible objects to maximum but left textures low; and shadows, fog and stuff are all off.

 

The game for me is definitely less stable and has more lag with version 1.3 I hated that upgrade, but they did seem to have fixed companions dying from being give a stim when they were poisoned, which was a huge bug in the older version.

 

The price I pay for more stability / less frequent crashing is:

 

-- Almost no mods, and if I run a big mod I'll only run one big one at a time with some of my small and indispensible ones. On my system big mods sometimes won't even load but other people get them to work fine. So tehre's system dependant stability for you.

 

I tend to use a handful of tiny mods that do neat things, then I'll try loading one big one to play .. Rust City was pretty cool for example and I want to do try that one called Run the Lucky 38, that would be a mini-game in itself.

 

-- I never use auto-run (CAPS LOCK). I always walk and use SHIFT to run and when I feel the game start to lag I release the SHIFT key and resume walking: this avoids many (not all) crashes caused by the engine not keeping up with rendering when running. When the game smoothes out again I can press SHIFT again. If I run everywhere all the time I will probably crash twice per hour instead of once per 3-4 hours.

 

-- And as was mentioned, I only ever do full saves. No quicksaves. No autosaves. This really pays off after level 20 when you have done a lot of stuff. I'f you've been living on quick/auto saves for 20 levels your game is probably in serious trouble: it always started to cause me serious crashing around level 22 and I'd be forced to finish the game by 24/25 or abandon it out of frustration. After I went to full saves only, now I get to level 30 fine.

Edited June 2, 2011 by drakeelvin

[superflossman]

To be honest, I'm slightly disappointed. My computer's almost six years old, so it's not that great, but I was hoping to at least not have to run windowed mode.

 

How do you guys run it? Just curious.

Edited June 2, 2011 by superflossman

[drakeelvin]

Full Screen. Never had any problems with it.

 

I only run windowed mode when im doing diagnostic testing and want to switch between the game and some other application like Notepad if I'm taking notes down about how something works or going through a checklist of features in a mod I'm doing to verify features are working, etc...