Olio CafeFallout 3's VATS system helped compensate for Bethesda's lack of shooting chops: "We were never going to create gun combat that was on par with Call of Duty or Battlefield"
Agent_Karyowww.gamesradar.com/games/fallout/fallout-3s-vat…
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I mean sure. Especially if you’re coming from Oblivion or Morrowind, where even the archery was pretty rough.
I do like VATS though. I actually liked 4’s version where it would just slow down the world instead of completely pause it.
SSTFThe Project Nevada mod for New Vegas did away with VATS entirely and replaced it with slow-mo that drained your AP. Combined with tweaks like improving the iron sights, I enjoyed it much more than VATS which I’ve always felt as an awkward kludge.
I feel like trying to mix an action game (eg: click on their head!) and a stats game (eg: your precision stat gives you a 80% chance to hit their head!) almost always has bad outcomes.
Bethesda games are kind of the quintessential example of it. Everyone’s probably had the experience where there’s some half naked goon, you slam an axe right into his head, and… he just gets mad. Maybe your damage is low, his HP is high, or your accuracy is low so it “missed”. Fallout is full of “I shot this guy four times in the face and he didn’t die!” dissonance.
You could probably do a lot of work so the animations map to the outcomes better (eg: they dodge or parry), but Bethesda seems happy with just not doing that. So you get goons in Skyrim with 20 arrows in their face, because they’re higher level than you.
TotallynotJessicaI disagree that misses are a problem in the 3D games. Most shooters have bullet inaccuracy if you’re moving, not aiming, or have low skill. VATS follows the same principle in addition to a skill check to compensate for the player not being in control of their own aim. Melee weapons always hit both in and out of VATS so long as you’re close enough, while Morrowind was the last Elder Scrolls game to even feature misses that don’t match their animations.
Elder Scrolls games don’t have locational damage, so hitting someone in the face is the same as hitting them in the toe. Most melee focused games are like that because trying to aim a close range attack is it’s own type of jank.That said,
The bigger problem with Bethesda games is the way they balance damage and leveling. Enemy health is based on player, with the enemies getting spongy at later levels because the player gets spongy at later levels. They want players to feel like they can go anywhere at any level and don’t want fights to feel unwinnable at lower levels. They fear the game being too tough for players who don’t understand the mechanics will cause them to get frustrated and stop playing.
If I had to suggest a way to balance it better, it’d be to make all humans (including the player) far weaker at their peak. They could also have heavier benefits and tradeoffs for power armor, with you being able to make your character a tank with it on, but unable to get stealth damage bonuses that can oneshot tough enemies.
I disagree that misses are a problem in the 3D games
It’s not so much about missing in 3d games. It’s about the game showing a bullet going into someone’s eye, and then that someone not reacting appropriately. Usually that’s because they have a lot of HP or armor, but the animations and mechanics are out of sync.
One solution, if you want to keep the weird HP bloat, is to animate “hits” when they have HP left, as misses. Only show the bullet hitting their face when their HP drops to zero. If they have HP left, animate them dodging or something.
The other solution is don’t do HP bloat, and have anyone die if they get shot in the face.
Or, don’t let people free aim like an action game.
Probably other solutions, too. Bethesda just does a bad job
It sounds to me like you’re struggling to suspend your disbelief. In reality, it doesn’t make sense that anyone can get shot anywhere in their body and walk away from it relatively intact. Even with the best armor we have, bullets can break bones and cause massive trauma, with a direct rifle round to a person’s helmet usually being lethal even if it doesn’t make it through.
Like every story ever told, you need to fill in the blanks of what’s actually happening in the game, and how well people do that is an individual difference. Animating every detail in painful realism is not only unnecessary for most people, but expensive and time consuming. I’ve had better experiences with some shooters that have no headshot bonus than ones that do. So long as elements in game represent what they need to clearly, it doesn’t matter if they’re realistic.
Bethesda Fallout games have so many problems, but I don’t think doing things that plenty of amazing shooters have done for decades is a big one.
Or, don’t let people free aim like an action game.
In this case, it’d be best to go back to turn based gameplay. It’s certainly easier to enrich RPG elements when you don’t have to worry about shooting mechanics. It puts 100% of the skill onto strategy and planning rather than reaction time and aiming. As Baldur’s Gate 3 demonstrated, there is still demand for modern turn based story driven RPGs. Who knows, if people can’t afford their own systems anymore and need to stream games from repurposed AI data centers, maybe we’ll see an modern turn based Fallout game in the future.
It sounds to me like you’re struggling to suspend your disbelief.
Well, yeah. It looks stupid that someone takes multiple shots to the face and doesn’t react appropriately. Takes me right out of the game. Same as if a character inexplicably walked through walls or flew off into the sky.
Maybe some people don’t mind that but I don’t like it.
In this case, it’d be best to go back to turn based gameplay.
Yes. This was my initial thesis. Either do an action game, or do a stats RPG. Doing both at once clashes.
that last paragraph is pretty close to fo4 survival mode. molotov cocktails become the scariest thing in existance
I think this article sort of misses the point.
FO3 isn’t a shooter - it’s a roleplaying game with guns.
If it had focused more on the shooter mechanics, it would’ve risked turning into a shooter with some RPG elements.
As an avid and long-time player, a lot of what I appreciate about FO3 is that, with VATS, I don’t have to be always on edge and focused on my own reflexes - I can relax and focus on roleplaying, and when combat happens, it’s more a matter of the character’s skill than my own, which is how it should be in an RPG.
And if I want, I can forego VATS and handle it like a shooter. And yes - it’s not as good that way as a dedicated shooter is, but I wouldn’t expect it to be, just as I don’t expect the racing in a GTA game to be as good as the racing in a racing sim.
I think that a better argument for VATS is that the Fallout player base, especially at the time that Fallout 3 came out, were fans of a series that had used only turn-based combat. They were not about twitch gameplay at all.
The reason a player buys more games in a series is normally because they like the ones in the past. A successful series builds up a pool of fans who like the sort of stuff in that series. If you radically change the trajectory of that series, you may not be putting out what the fanbase likes.
Shit, id be happy with rpg elements on par with the Elder scrolls or Fallout.
Yeah, the gunplay was pretty bad. I like the game more after cheating my guns skill to 100 so the bullets go straight instead of curving to miss because RNG says your attack misses. The problem with that was it also means the shots I aimed poorly would curve to hit because RNG says that attack should have hit.
I also found the graphics problematic. Not low quality, just so extremely bleak that its emotionally disturbing to play for long stretches.
I think that the problem there is just the setting. Like, it’s kind of what you’d expect from a weathered, destroyed city.
checks Wikipedia
Fallout 3 was released in 2008. What did games that were ranked top for graphics in 2008 look like?
goes looking
Apparently these guys ranked Fallout 3 as #2 in the year for graphics, so it probably wasn’t too far behind-the-curve.
https://archive.rpgamer.com/awards/2008/results/graphics.html