Fallout 4

Tuco_sl said:

Karma is a shit system and I'm not sad to see it go.

Bethesda should grow some balls and build a smart NPC gossip-based network where the reputation hit or gain from an action depends on how many people see it. Kill a nomadic family in cold blood? Zero hit to your reputation. Get caught stealing from an NCR officer? NCR reputation hit, no hit outside of that. Get caught stealing from a little kid? general rep hit.

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I want stealing in rpgs to be revolutionized around a similar idea. Its kindof driven me nuts, in like every rpg ever, you are a ridiculous thief. Richest adventurer/hero in the world, and you barge into homes and pick up everything not nailed down, take all heirlooms, etc.. Games then add "stealing", but that is completely meaningless.

Two basics i want in these games.
1. A "perception" based marking on stolen items. When stolen, an item will marked from where it was stolen from. Trying to sell it back to its own owner will have a low DC check of perception/lore/bartering for them to ID it as stolen and call guards. Selling it to others in town, a slightly higher DC check. Selling to other towns entirely, even higher. The base DC check should be rated on the value/mundaness of the item. Aka, people will know a painting was stolen much easier then a piece of cheese. And of course since its checked by a vendors perception etc, there are better/worse ones to sell to.
2. NPCS NOTICE when things are taken. again a perception check every time an npc looks in the direction of a missing item. More items missing, more likely to notice. When noticed, calls guards based on value of item, and has all around negative impact. too much stealing in an area, entire town raises prices, has increased guards, spends more time checking their items, adds locks to chests, and traps, etc. when an item is noticed missing, selling it DC also goes up. And word spreads. your rep in other towns goes down, and they too start locking things down, and you lose rep as they notice things go missing when you the famous hero are in town..

Giving extra loot on the hardest difficulty is a really bad idea. In games that do this, it often becomes the case that the extra loot actually makes that difficulty easier by midgame, which obviously throws the difficulty curve off. Also, it makes players feel "forced" into doing that difficulty to get the best experience, even players not equipped for that challenge.

"Similar to Skyrim's reputation system, Fallout 4 will have a*Karma based reputation system.*Your actions will earn you respect in-game."

Everything we learned about Fallout 4 from QuakeCon 2015

I feel like I saw a reputation pop up in some leaked gameplay footage I saw as well.

The Black/White Karma system Fallout games have had isn't that good, and for all the same reasons that the D&D alignment system isn't. They worked fine for what they were designed for, GM driven pen & paper, but they don't use the strengths and weaknesses of video games terribly well.

I think a good <--> bad should be replaced by a system of "relationships" without clear indications for what "good" and "evil" is. The first Dragon Age had a system like this. Although it was underdeveloped, and easily bypassed with the gifts, it was clear that navigating the relationships with your party members was a far more subtle and interesting kind of alignment system than arbitrary judgement handed down on high by god (developers).

Didn't Two Worlds do a faction system very similar to what Tuco describes?

Zaide_sl said:

Didn't Two Worlds do a faction system very similar to what Tuco describes?

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Never played it - but simplistically speaking it sounds like how EQs was done... with an extra "general" faction level layered on top.

Droigan_sl said:

See people talking a lot about exp bonuses. You really go for those? I rather pick the skills that reduce exp gain, because the vanilla versions of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3/NV games all have been way too easy once you start gaining 20+ levels. Even with level scaling, Skyrim on master made it so you died a bit in the early game, but once you got close to level 30, most enemies became as dangerous as mud crabs.

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They are also forgetting that each point in IN beyond what they need for a perk unlock is effectively a lost level that needs to be made up by the +10% xp modifier. If you only need 4 IN for your build and take 10 IN anyway, you need 32 levels before you break even with the 6 lost levels that could have gone into stats you actually needed to unlock other important things.

And I agree 100% about Bethesda games being front-loaded with difficulty. Gimping yourself early at the only time their games are actually challenging for a pay off in the 30's when everything is already trivial is an awful plan. Sure, FO4 could be different... but it's not going to be.

Erronius_sl said:

I haven't had to consider making ammo yet, and I have enough caps that if I wanted to I could buy a metric fuckton of ammo.

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You make hand-loaded ammo because it's vastly better than normal ammo in almost all cases, not because you actually need the ammo. Hand-loader is easily one of the best perks in the game and should be taken relatively early on. The normal recipes at the reloading bench are indeed useless though.

Although I'm not quite sure what your playstyle is, since you mention both ammo and melee. You're right that melee and companions generally don't mix, since with melee you want to be sneaking and they will ruin that. One thing I can recommend though, use VATS as a gap-closer. You basically teleport to the enemy to land each attack.

It's kind of blowing my mind watching people in here trying to theory craft the game for optimal min-maxing. It's a Bethesda game for fucks sake, not an MMO.