NPCs using shotguns/automatic weapons are too susceptible to DT

[Question]

Taking only 20% of damage from attacks for all intents and purposes makes it just an annoyance. I would say its an issue with both NV and making FO3 work with NV (given the transition to a DT system). The super mutants with assault rifles could hurt you due to the DR system, but with DT they are just going to do 20% damage which is not going to be any threat to a player.

I was hoping we could come up with ideas on how to make FO3 enemies actually be capable of posing a threat to players without just giving them all slugs/AP ammo.

[Kameraden]

[quote=Question]

Taking only 20% of damage from attacks for all intents and purposes makes it just an annoyance. I would say its an issue with both NV and making FO3 work with NV (given the transition to a DT system). The super mutants with assault rifles could hurt you due to the DR system, but with DT they are just going to do 20% damage which is not going to be any threat to a player.

I was hoping we could come up with ideas on how to make FO3 enemies actually be capable of posing a threat to players without just giving them all slugs/AP ammo.

[/quote]

But in all respects the DR system did the same thing in the end 85% DR would absorb most of the damage you would take per shot from an assault rifle as well.  It was very possible with the right perks, and Combat Armor or Ranger Armor to get to 85% DR without Power Armor for example.  I remember on Fallout 3 watching Super Mutant Masters and Brutes using the Assautl Rifle or Chinese Assault Rifle just tickle.  

[Question]

Yes, but my point was that it didnt discriminate between weapon types. 85% DR (which IIRC was quite hard to achieve without taking chems) was equally effective vs both burst and sustained DPS weapons.

With DT, you have situations where a NPC spawns with a riot shotgun and does nothing against a player in low level armor, while the same NPC could have spawned with a brush gun and actually pose a threat. The easiest way to see this in action is to do the old world blues DLC at high levels where lobotomites can spawn with high level guns.

[JaxFirehart]

It sounds as though you are criticizing the DT system as a whole. It has its flaws, but it isn't TTW's place to fix them.

I personally think it is nice, every now and then, to have an enemy you just completely stomp into the ground. It provides a good change of pace. It would get old if every enemy at L50 had an AMR or Gauss Rifle or the like to punch through your armor.

Do you have a solution or even a general direction in mind?

[AnvilOfWar]

You know Question, I can solve this in one easy sentence:

"That's what mods are for."

Something too easy for you? Mod it! Something too hard for you? Mod it!

TTW itself has the stated mission of making FO3 into a giant content mod, for New Vegas. In no way is it going to be all things to all people all of the time, even to suppose that is the case is folly. Myself, Project Nevada and Realistic Weapon and Explosives Damage is a huge overhaul to how the game mechanics work, all weapons and damage types are viable. Screw up and get too close to a grenade = your dead, Raider gets the drop on you with a 9mm = your dead. Super Mutant gets too close with a missile launcher = your pulped and turned into so much of a smear on the ground.

"Vanilla" TTW does not need to fix these things, since it seems to be following the design cues from Obsidian for how to make FO3 content behave as it should under the New Vegas engine. I'm going to outright say that either way "Vanilla" FO3 OR New Vegas is PISS EASY, the game holds players hands quite a bit. Where to go, what to do, VATS, ect, ect, ect.

Players have gone though New Vegas without killing anyone, and other plays without healing at all. Does that sound like an intrinsically hard game to you? It sure doesn't to me. You seem to hold the opinion that your personal perception of balance is the only one out there, well guess what it's not. Some people love an easy game, others like myself seek to push the game to it's limits and make it as hard as possible to drive home that point that the wasteland is a hostile place. If you haven't yet found your personal comfort zone, do some research, find some good mods, ask around, people here are helpful, but they also have to help themselves first. Many of your posts have been more whines about: "this is too good" or "this is too easy", there is NO WAY the TTW Team is going to please everyone, and honestly they shouldn't have too. As of this post you have been on this forum for 3 days, there are TTW team members that have been working on this project for 3 YEARS, tell me again, why they should have to please everyone, and in particular your precise views.

[RoyBatty]

Something to note here is we are balancing against vanilla too. The vanilla game, is for all intents and purposes, even at Very Hard, quite easy in late game.

Balance is also something that can be argued (and has been in these forums) until the end of time and always ends in conjecture. The reason for that is because the game is quite complicated already (FNV), toss in FO3 with it's often very strange and even vindictive balancing by Bethesda because of player feedback and it becomes even more difficult.

In the end, you can't please everyone. So you make it work as best you can for the majority of players, which are generally not hardcore players. The game needs to balanced for normal people to play the game and still be able to win, which means erring on the easy side of things.

As Anvil has pointed out, the games are moddable, and rightly so. So if something doesn't fit your idea of how it should be (and vanilla certainly doesn't fit mine at all) then you mod it how you like. There are plenty of rebalancing mods already for both games which fit almost anyones desire of balance and difficulty. That, is up to you, the end user to determine.

[Question]

[quote=JaxFirehart]

 

It sounds as though you are criticizing the DT system as a whole. It has its flaws, but it isn't TTW's place to fix them.

I personally think it is nice, every now and then, to have an enemy you just completely stomp into the ground. It provides a good change of pace. It would get old if every enemy at L50 had an AMR or Gauss Rifle or the like to punch through your armor.

Do you have a solution or even a general direction in mind?

[/quote]

Thats why i made this discussion thread so that we could discuss it. I already raised a possible solution : to give enemies slugs/AP ammo, its up to other posters to respond to it. As i mentioned, this isn't a vanilla only problem, it's a problem that affects the ported over content due to the change in DR to DT.

Really, this is no different from vault 101 armor being weaker compared to vault 34 armor. Its so that content isn't trivialized by giving the player a massive advantage that didn't exist in FO 3. I mean, the team could have simply given vault 101 armor 16 DT then said "You think it makes the game too easy? Go mod it then.", but there are some very good reasons why that wasn't done.

I understand some may not agree that this is a problem, fair enough, but at least allow others here to discuss it.

[Thenryb]

Good comments. Most of the arguments I have seen are that TTW is not more like vanilla FO3. (this very thread debating about DR vs DT is a perfect example). I, for one, do not want any more FO3 attributes in this game than it already has. I like playing in the Capitol Wasteland using the New Vegas engine and its weapons and if it were not for this mod I would not be in the Capitol Wasteland at all. I know that a player with the light touch perk and the armor obtained from Moira just for the asking is not going to be affected much by muties and their assault rifles. So what? There are still a few who will blow you to bits with missile lauchers, blow up a nearby vehicle or fry your ass with incinerators. If Question wants them to have AP ammo and Slugs, let him add them to his game.

[AnvilOfWar]

[quote=The TTW FAQ]

Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) is a project that seeks to merge the content from the popular video game Fallout 3 into the more modern game engine of Fallout New Vegas so that both games can be played in the Fallout New Vegas engine.

[/quote]

[quote=JaxFirehart]

It sounds as though you are criticizing the DT system as a whole. It has its flaws, but it isn't TTW's place to fix them.

[/quote]

[quote=AnvilOfWar]

"You know Question, I can solve this in one easy sentence:

"That's what mods are for."

Something too easy for you? Mod it! Something too hard for you? Mod it!

Many of your posts have been more whines about: "this is too good" or "this is too easy", there is NO WAY the TTW Team is going to please everyone, and honestly they shouldn't have too. .....  tell me again, why they should have to please everyone, and in particular your precise views."

[/quote]

[quote=RoyBatty]

In the end, you can't please everyone. So you make it work as best you can for the majority of players, which are generally not hardcore players. The game needs to balanced for normal people to play the game and still be able to win, which means erring on the easy side of things.

[/quote]

[quote=Question]

I understand some may not agree that this is a problem, fair enough, but at least allow others here to discuss it.

[/quote]

No one is stopping any discussion about it, and you are competely free to mod your game as you personally wish. So since you have seemed to completely ignore what myself and even Roy said, and I challenged you directly and it's still gone unanswered.

There are many mods that are already rebalance Fallout New Vegas, and would work perfectly fine with TTW.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/40040/?

https://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/realistic-weapon-explosive-fire-poison-and-electricity-damage

https://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/jsawyer-ttw-0

Attempting to have TTW itself rebalance a basic New Vegas game mechanic, (which is not actually broken mind you), and specifically something that goes against what TTW is even trying to accomplish.

Answer this: Why should the TTW Team even need to rebalance such a BASIC Fallout: New Vegas game mechanic?

[RoyBatty]

Yes if you use something like RWED... you will die, you will die a lot, no matter what armor you have.

Lets do the math with that, with RWED's headshot multiplier on the player.

The R91 and CAR both do 16 base damage, regardless of DT a minimum of 20% of that gets through.

(16*.2) * 5 = 16 ... well now see how that works out? It's like you are wearing no armor at all on your head when you use this mod and take headshots. Small handguns are still pretty impervious, explosives have their damage boosted, as well as fire, poison, and electricity and they stack. This also works both ways, so you can get passed that rediculous DT that SM's have, and even Albino Rad Scorps mountain of health if you aim for the stinger.

This very simple mod accomplishes what you desire, without the need to edit the lists of all the NPC's to give them AP or Slugs or other rounds, which are supposed to be rare and expensive and not just common things you pick up off of common enemies. Which brings me full circle back to the complicated comment, when you change the balance of something that seems simple, this also affects other things you may not have thought about at first glance. In this case, it would completely make normal ammo useless, the player would have a surplus of expensive ammo to get an even more ludicrous amount of caps from, and would negate the need for weapons above tier 1. That is not how to solve balancing issues, that's a band-aid with more negative effects than positive ones.