miffy495

Fallout 3

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TBH Zukalous, I wouldn't worry about hording stuff before you get the mission for it. Pretty much everything is abundant and you won't have trouble finding more than you can carry when the time comes. Late in the game, money is not a problem.

Just kick back and relax.

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:( It's one of the things I get frustrated about in Fallout. I hate inventory management, especially when I am forced to drop some of my weapons. I remember having a similar problem in Oblivion.

Yeah, inventory management is annoying, but not a annoying as in Mass Effect.

I have a shit load of things at my home, which I couldn't sell because of lack of money. But now I don't feel like moving all that stuff back and forth again to get bits of money.

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At first I used to go through all the junk I picked up on an expedition and sell what I didn't think I'd need, until I remembered that traders have finite funds and I'd been accidentally giving stuff away. Now I just leave it all in a filing cabinet in my home. I'm doing OK for money, and I hardly buy anything, anyway. I've got my Repair up to 100, so I can free up a lot of space by repairing my equipment the moment it gets the slightest bit worn.

One thing that's kind of annoying me is how you generally can't bring a stat above 100, but it won't stop you wasting points or items on doing so. I got my sneak up really high a while ago, and now I'm getting perks and armour and books that boost it further -- it would have been to well over 100, had that been possible. I guess it doesn't really matter, and I shouldn't really obsess over it too much, but it's frustrating to think that I could have put those points into something else and ended up with a better build. Oh well.

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Surely you can use equipment and armour that boost something else instead?

Although the books are a waste I agree, and I see where you're coming from.

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I can, yes, and I am, although I didn't do the quest for the stealth hat until I was already at 100, so that seems a bit wasteful, but I guess it's no different than all the other quest rewards that I don't use. It's more the perks and books I'm concerned about, though. It feels like perhaps I should have planned ahead more, but that would require looking a load of stuff up before-hand, which seems against the spirit of the game. It doesn't really bother me that much. It's just an annoyance.

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I'm still absolutely fascinated by this game. Sure, there are lots of bugs and little annoyances, but most of them don't even feel like worth mentioning because of all the things Bethesda has done right.

I still haven't progressed very far in the main quest (I'm yet to complete Scientific Pursuits) but I'm already at level 17 or something like that. The level cap of 20 kind worries me and I'm already considering buying the DLC that increases it to 30. Does anyone know whether you can level past 20 in the original story after purchasing the DLC or is it only possible within the new content?

The karma system, however, is problematic as already mentioned in this thread. I have encountered at least two scenarios where this (in my opinion) shows quite well. First is the Tenpenny Tower quest where..

..you gain good karma for persuading the inhabitants to let the Ghouls move in even though they slaughter all the humans shortly after.

Fine, the player didn't know that this would happen, but it was pretty clear that something like this could happen. The situation raises a fairly interesting question of whether a deed should be judged by the intention or the result. In this case, is it enough for the player to mean well even if he is incredibly naive in doing so?

Unfortunately, the karma system makes the decision for you.

Another, perhaps clearer case is that of the Replicated Man quest where

..you are rewarded with bad karma for helping Dr. Zimmer locate an escaped android. On the other hand, you gain good karma for telling the right thing it is in fact an android, even if you let it kill Dr. Zimmer after that.

Again, the system makes the decision for you. Apparently androids aren't just sophisticated machines and their "lives" can be considered more precious than those of actual people.

There are situations where the system work pretty well though, like when receiving bad karma for lockpicking someone's safe only to find that he/she only has 26 bottle caps and a baseball in there. On the other hand, I don't necessarily need to be told to feel bad about that.

Was there any kind of karma system in the Fallout 1 and 2, btw? Where there consequences for generally being a good or bad person?

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I think the karma system would have worked a lot better if you didn't know when you've gained or lost karma. I give the game a lot of credit for providing scenarios like Tenpenny Tower that really have no good outcomes, regardless of what the player does or how good your intentions are. But having that "You've Gained Karma!" message there robs the thing of its ambiguity. It's like having the game designers in the room telling you "There there, don't worry, that's supposed to happen." I don't want to feel placated in a game like Fallout, I want to feel uneasy about the things I've done.

I've already gone into a whole spiel in the BioShock thread about how I hate the good-evil (and in this case neutral) system in games and I'm not going to repeat myself here, if only for the sake of not hijacking another thread. But I actually didn't mind it so much in Fallout 3, precisely because it offers choices that are so much more nuanced than "do a good thing or do a bad thing". I just wish they'd made the karma system a little more opaque.

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Yeah, I also wish they had hidden the karma system. The game feels considerably less black and white than most of the games offering choice that I can think of and I really like that. Being told whether my actions where ultimately good or bad somewhat diminishes it, however, especially since they decided to include quite a few tough in there.

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Whilst I don't really have a problem with it in practice, in ideological terms I think even having a numerical representation of moral status at all, even if it's internal and obscured from the player, is risky. In Fallout, I don't believe it's possible to see the actual value assigned to each karma event, or your precise karma level beyond the broad very bad/bad/neutral/good/very good classifications, but the fact that it's quite easy to remain very good despite numerous small crimes is a little problematic. I don't go around pickpocketing or safe-breaking much, but if there's something interesting or unique, I occasionally go for it, and I haven't yet even dropped down to good. I can understand that the goods done in quests will generally outweigh more general small sins, but the fact that the character can remain not just good, but very good is somewhat suspect. I would have thought an exemplar would be someone beyond reproach. Apparently theft isn't a problem.

I guess I haven't done too much of that, but I did feel quite bad after stealing all the money out of the safe in the floor of some Megaton establishment (I think was the bar or something). I went for it because it was so much, but in retrospect I didn't really need it. It's an example of how my behaviour in games is completely different than that in real life, and kind of psychotic. As a rather mundane tangent, I also find it interesting how the simple act of walking instead of running in a game makes things incredibly boring, yet if we ran everywhere in real life we'd look like lunatics. I suppose we come to these things with different expectations. Games aren't virtual life, because that's not what we expect or want from them.

Sorry, that tangent was dumb.

While writing this post, it occurred to me that it might be interesting for a game with an explicit morality system to close off ranges to the player. For example, if you displayed the scale, you might make it impossible to reach the highest rank, as a kind of comment on the reality of life. Or perhaps you could only attain it at a young age, then inevitably lose it as the world corrupted you or pragmatism forced you to let go of some of your values OR WHATEVER. I don't know, perhaps that's stupid.

EDIT: What might also be quite interesting, if hard to implement, would be to have a subjective morality system, whereby each character would judge you according to your actions and how they each felt about all of them. Ethical relativism is a bit of a slippery slope, and I'm not too happy about it as an approach to things, but it's undeniable that different people have different conceptions of what is right and wrong, so it seems a little absurd to have a universal scale which people prefer different parts of. I guess that's probably been done on a limited scale, as in characters reacting to particular events, but I don't know of a fully-fledged morality system working that way.

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Do the ghouls inevitably slaughter everyone? I only went back to Tenpenny Tower once or twice but I saw ghouls and humans living in harmony. Meh.

Maybe there is scope for a mod to rework the karma system. At the very least making invisible shouldn't be too hard (then the only way you would know would be by listening to GNR and which group starts hunting you). It might even be possible to add a rule like "cannot reach exemplar if you have committed a bad action in the last n minutes" (and opposite for minimum karma).

There does seem to be a start of a backlash against the whole light side/dark side morality systems in games. Bioware's upcoming Dragon Age will allegedly have character specific reputations - different NPCs will react to you differently depending on how you have dealt with them and their friends; and there is no objective morality measure, just consequences.

Edited by Nick

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The only problem is that the example they keep trotting out to demonstrate the "complex morally-grey decisions" is... well it isn't very complex, just a typical 'bargain or kill and loot' binary. Hopefully it is not actually representative of the other chocies in the game.

(BTW I had to double-post because Idle Forums decided to refuse my paragraph in it's entirety. Ask Nick - he couldn't post it even with mod powers. Bizarre.)

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Karma doesn't bother me, except the really weird assassination contracts put on your head when you're good. Why is there someone in the world that wants to keep everybody miserable?

Or random people giving you stuff, just because you're good. Like things are not rare in this world.

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Looks like /kill is interpreted as some sort of command. I was originally going to post an inquisitive "bargain/kill?" which was allowed, presumably because of the question mark.

It's weird that the contents of posts is parsed like that. You'd think vBulletin would filter for that kind of stuff.

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The weirdest karma value came in the main story quest Tranquility Lane.

A mad overseer has trapped his subjects in a virtual reality simulation of an idyllic 1950s neighborhood. He refuses to let you leave the simulation unless you do his bidding, beginning with making a child cry, and leading up to mass murder of all the civilians. You get negative karma for this, but the game makes it clear that such torture is only to the vault dwellers' minds as the simulation can always be reset. The other option is to call in the override, which kills every vault dweller in real life *except* the overseer. This gives you *good* karma, even though you slaughtered an entire vault in order to trap a man alone in a computer simulation for eternity. I couldn't find a way to save everyone from continued torture or death. Both options are morally vague and not clear-cut good and evil, though the karma associations assign a clear moral stance.

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Yeah, that was the most glaringly weird karma thing for me so far.

I think it's pretty disgusting to assume that all these people would rather be dead. Sure, they might not be as happy as their role requires them to act, and the overseer does repeatedly fuck things up for everyone, but the assumption that death is the only solution, and a good solution, is pretty abhorrent. I guess they've lived longer than most people do, but it's still pretty objectionable to just storm in and turn everyone off.

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I spent most of the weekend finally getting into this, it's glorious.

I basically just managed to get to level 12 and struggle over the hump where it gets much easier to make money, keep weapons maintained, and have lots of ammo. Traders have so few bottle caps that it took me a little while to work out how to rinse them: Pick up everything you can, pay them to fix the stuff you'll keep, then offload all the crap to get your bottlecaps back. Repair all the raider armour you pick up yourself, to maximise money-to-weight. Oh, and use buffout to get those extra 30lbs or so back with you, you can make more from one 30lb load than it takes to cure a buffout addiction.

Combat with VATS is a bit strange; as long as the enemy are few enough or weak enough, it means nothing beats a kamikaze run with your best gun to get in a few close range headshots. It feels too easy; Yao Guai were the only challenge I was finding and the animal friend perk just put paid to it (the flying robots with flamers and Talon company mercs in groups can be pretty tough at the moment too).

The only

behemoth I've run into so far I killed by the AI being dumb. I spent a long time clearing the Evergreen raider/slaver camp, bazaar, etc, then released the slaves, then went over to the behemoth enclosure to get a look at the gates and realised that, though the gates were still electrified, someone had let it out. After seeing it stroll by I almost wet my pants and wandered up on to a balcony. A couple of raider snipers drew it towards the exit of the town, where it got stuck between a box car and the cliffs, so I massacred it from above with the chain gun.

I also can't believe how much they've packed into the wasteland too. Going around discovering new locations is a real pleasure. It's like the opposite of Far Cry 2 (and much friendlier than that or STALKER). The inventory system has been designed to not get in the way of fun too much. I started a session with a single side mission (last mission of the watseland survival guide) in view, and got so sidetracked by exploring new locations and the other missions coming up from them that I didn't get around to the survival guide until about ten hours later.

I haven't done many story missions at all. I was really impressed that by finding someone from a later story mission before doing the galaxy radio one, it automatically completed that one and gave me a later one. They're not perfect, but the mission structure, AI, and dialogue trees seem pretty robust (I watched the wedding at Rivet City, she held a carving knife in one hand throughout and they played through the wedding vows without the groom there).

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First post (gratz to me)

Totally offtopic to with regards to the above posters and sorry for destroying any flow of conversation.

Anywho... I rather enjoyed this game because I had my most hilarious game bug/mishap ever with this game.

During (spoiler):

The simulation mission I chose the good path to send in the Chinese army virus thing. They quickly murdered the whole street and then for some reason each and everyone of them began bobbing up and down in a tea-bagging motion.

Did anyone else experience this or was it intended to happen for a laugh?

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I hate Rivet City. It's a damn annoying place to visit (and find people).

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Yeah I also found the layout way too confusing. Also all the load screens are a pain.

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Yeah, though I'm glad the door straight ahead from the bridge goes directly from the market. I did a couple of side quests there, got annoyed at finding people, and now only go there to trade.

I'm at level 15 and only finding fights with the really heavy sentry bots difficult now. Upgrading the big guns skill will probably make them easier, but some well exploited terrain and a few rockets seem to put paid to even the beefiest enemies. I want to upgrade my sniper rifle skill and wipe out the Talon Company encampment near

Evergreen Mills

soon, but given that the random encounters with them tend to be the hardest fights I get into, I'm not sure it's particularly doable. Maybe if I nibble the sentries off one at a time...

Deathclaws are also annoying at the moment. I took the perk that stops Yao Guai (terrible, terrible pun to name them with with ¬¬) and lesser animals from attacking, and that saves me quite a bit of ammo, but sometimes if I send dogmeat back to 101 and there's one nearby it will kill him. His pathfinding and gung-ho attitude mean he sometimes runs off around some scenery only to turn up in my sniper rifle sights in the middle of a stupid number of enemies. Any fighting without VATs also = a pretty high risk of him getting caught by my fire too. The fights are getting to the point where he isn't tough enough to accompany me everywhere, which means I'm finding him a lot more annoying than the dog in Fable 2 and tend to just leave him at Vault 101 all the time. He's frustratingly fearless for a character that can die.

Edited by Nachimir

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I'm on level 18 (I think), but don't have a companion yet. I did have a team mate for a while when hunting for some documents in the archive in DC. But that latest for a short time (suicide induced by a heavy sentry bot).

Another thing I don't like about fallout 3 is that there are not a lot of independent side quests. It happens quite often than you can take a short cut in the main story (making the story incomprehensible). For example, if you complete the waste land survival guide side quest in the beginning you can skip a lot of the story without even noticing it.

The auto reloading when the clip is empty is also a bit annoying. I died quite a few times because my character was reloading while I actually wanted him to use a stimpak.

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I still haven't done any of the main story, though I'm about to look in a vault that my father is supposed to have gone to. I was actually quite impressed that I could go to Rivet City and skip the first mission of the main story.

One thing I'm finding is that the more of the map I explore, the less of a pleasure it becomes. There was something nice about the mystery and intimidation of it at the beginning, but now, knowing I can handle pretty much anything the wasteland throws at me, it's getting duller and I want to race through it.

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Ok, the vault 112 mission was a let down. I expected more, this was simply way too short. But the slight change of scenery was nice, reminded me of the magic painting quest in "Fallout with horses and swords"... erm, Oblivion.

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