Thoughts on light armor balancing in TTW3.2.1

[EnderDragonFire]

I'd prefer to rebalance everything in New Vegas, the non-leveled system is not to my liking and makes the game boring and unchallenging. The economy is totally broken imo. Many people totally disagree with that and like everything to be static levels and more linear.

I am one person who disagrees. I see no value whatsoever in a leveled system. I vastly prefer New Vegas non-leveled approach to items. It's what makes the game better, IMO, than Fallout 3.

Which only corroborates the fact that it's a difference of design philosophy. What you think the game should be like is totally, and irreconcilably, different from what I think it should be like. Neither way it right or wrong. Since you are the mod author, ultimately, what your prefer takes precedence.

[RoyBatty]

I would do such things as a mod.

[brfritos]

That also hinders role-playing, for ex in Fallout 3 I can leave the vault, and go anywhere on the map with very few exceptions (like the deathclaw sanctuary), do DLC (except Point Lookout), etc without a worry about it being too hard for my character. I can go do whatever I want, unlike NV where areas are blocked off from me and I can't go there without dying regardless if there is a quest in that area or not. This is content walling, and I don't like it for the same reason I don't like NV's speech check system. It's too linear for my tastes, not that linearity is a bad thing, I just prefer that linearity reserved for quest lines.

Also after playing the game dozens of times, I want a different experience, one that's more suited to my play style which is focused more on exploration, combat, and survival.

Like EnderDragonFire acccurate said, it's a difference of design philosophy. FNV roleplaying is through quests, while FO3 is through combat and survival.
I prefer FNV approach to be honest, the quality of the dialogs in A LOT of quests in FO3 is pure poop and after a while is tiresome to fight, fight, fight and... decorate my house? Collect tedddy bears?
The quests itself are very so-so in FO3, since most main or important characters are "essential". I think the player should own the consequences of his or her actions in a RPG, I can literally go to Hoover Dam at level one in FNV and kill Colonel Cassandra Moore.

Sure, it's a shit decision and a harmfull one - at least exploit the NCR a little, would you - but is the player's decision.
In FO3 we don't have such things, you have a narrow narrative and have to follow it without deviation.

I'm so used to the freedom of solving most quests my way in FNV, that this literally bite me in the a** in FO3.
When I saw Roy Phillips I tried subverting the quest line and killing him before entering Tenppeny Tower. Ops, not so fast junior. LOL
Not only you can cripple his leg and this doesn't make a single difference - the guy still runs like hell - but no one acknowledge the kill and I can't tell the inhabitants or chief Gustavo that Roy is dead.
I still need to complete the quest "the right way".

Ah, if only the quests were like The Nuka-Cola Challenge or Moira's guide...

I think I like TTW because of this: the two different worlds of Mojave and DC are connected, but separated at the same time.
We have the best parts of both.

[RoyBatty]

Hrm well I will disagree partially, very few characters in Fallout 3 are essential, and the ones that are often have that tag removed from them at some point.

There is consequences, Tenpenny is one such quest. You have 3 outcomes, nothing, the residents die, or the ghouls die. This is called a catch 22, damned if you do and damned if you don't. There's just no "happy" ending.

Almost all of the quests have multiple ways of solving them other than the main quest, however in broken steel you can do what you want and nuke the BoS for revenge if you like.

Sure it's true that NV has more choice in the quests, but the time they spent on that made the world suffer instead and it's boring and drab with little to do and a forced path that you must take.

NV also has some horrible bad dialogue... don't pretend it doesn't. Both games spent too much money on stupid celebrities who sound bored, rather than hiring more people to do all different characters instead of using 10 people to voice thousands of lines.

Both games also wasted money on licensed music for the stupid radios that gets old an hour into the game... a lot of money was spent on that and time put into the radios that would have been better spent making a better game on both account.

Yep there's a million different things we can bitch about and never agree on... so now this entire thread is way off topic. Probably my bad though.

[brfritos]

Yep there's a million different things we can bitch about and never agree on... so now this entire thread is way off topic. Probably my bad though.

Nah, it's never bad to bitch about Fallout. Any Fallout!

Sure it's true that NV has more choice in the quests, but the time they spent on that made the world suffer instead and it's boring and drab with little to do and a forced path that you must take.

What I'm about to say it's not a free pass at Obsidian, I wish people keep this in mind.

The problem was the develop time they had. 18 months in not enough time to build a game with a new developer, I think the industry needs to keep this in mind.
If FNV had another 6 months of dev time on top of the already 18, I think the game would turn out much better.

One game that suffer EXACTLY the same fate was Mass Effect: Andromeda, which by numerous sources had the same proper dev time than FNV.
Man, Andromeda had so much potential and it's not a bad game by any means, but it's irregular as hell concerning quests and story progression.

[Decker]

Okay then, lets go fully offtopic then.

Compared to FNV, I would daresay that MEA is more like a complete disaster - Not only was development work restarted and lots of work scrapped with different specifications (like a sudden surprise new engine and abandonment of procedural planet generation features) too late, the project management was quite obviously incompetent (and/or bossed around by EA) and just about all of the Bioware's best devs involved quit their jobs well before MEA was anywhere near 'ready' for release. Writing was bad, at points like terrible scifi fan-fiction level of bad when compared to previous Mass Effects and so forth.. The 'tired faces' and animation bugs of the MEA characters were just the icing on a whole cake of failure, really.

FNV does of course suffer from it's short development time, but from start to finish it was done by competent developers, had mostly good writing where it matters the most, and it was overseen by decent project management not incluenced by EA. Dev time was not wasted with FNV, like it was with MEA. And after the main game was done, FNV was accompanied by some of the best Fallout DLCs seen so far, like frex Old World Blues. FNV with half a year more development time would have been a lot better for sure, more polished, with even more content, (but no, it still would not have been bug-free.)

FNV will deservedly be remembered fondly by many gamers for decades as one of the best Fallout games ever made, while MEA will not be remembered as one of the best ME games - If anything, MEA might look more like the death of the Mass Effect franchise than even the infamous Mass Effect 3 ending did.

Sadly, after some disappointments with Fallout 4 (not a terrible game, but a few steps backwards from FNV nonetheless), the whole Creation Club idiocy by Bethesda, and the worst video game disappointment of the year 2018 that is Fallout76 (it's like a gift that keeps on taking), the future of the Fallout franchise does not look very promising - odds of a good Fallout game being released do not seem good from now on.. Well, at least we still have Tale of Two Wastelands, and hopefully Cyberpunk 2077 by the CDProjekt Red will be as good as it seems.

[Kaxleon]

I thought this thread is about Thoughts on light armor balancing in TTW3.2.1 not a Thoughts on your games preferences.

[Decker]

So did I, starting the thread..

Let's try to bring the discussion back on topic - What do you think, were any of my original suggestions for light armor weight and DT statistic changes, and the reasonings behind them plausible at all? Or do you perhaps think that none of this matters at all for your TTW gameplay experience?

Do you think it's perfectly fine and reasonable for a 1 pound Wastelander's Gear outfit (DT:12) to bounce pistol bullets? .. The outfit seems to consist of a leather jacket, jeans, gloves and almost knee-long motorcycle boots as well as ammo belts - If it was ordinary clothing, what kind of materials could bring such outfits weight down to only 1 pound total (453 grams in metric)? What if it has DT:12 armoring like in the game and still weighs only 1 pound, what kind of stuff is it supposed to be made out of?

My idea with all this was maybe adjust or at least rethink a few stat values a bit, instead of reworking the whole system including pricing - Complete rebalance overhaul would be cool to have as a mod for sure, but this would be a gigantic undertaking instead of just some few little adjustments like the ones I was suggesting in the original post.

[brfritos]

So did I, starting the thread..

Let's try to bring the discussion back on topic - What do you think, were any of my original suggestions for light armor weight and DT statistic changes, and the reasonings behind them plausible at all? Or do you perhaps think that none of this matters at all for your TTW gameplay experience?

Do you think it's perfectly fine and reasonable for a 1 pound Wastelander's Gear outfit (DT:12) to bounce pistol bullets? .. The outfit seems to consist of a leather jacket, jeans, gloves and almost knee-long motorcycle boots as well as ammo belts - If it was ordinary clothing, what kind of materials could bring such outfits weight down to only 1 pound total (453 grams in metric)? What if it has DT:12 armoring like in the game and still weighs only 1 pound, what kind of stuff is it supposed to be made out of?

My idea with all this was maybe adjust or at least rethink a few stat values a bit, instead of reworking the whole system including pricing - Complete rebalance overhaul would be cool to have as a mod for sure, but this would be a gigantic undertaking instead of just some few little adjustments like the ones I was suggesting in the original post.

Let's do the discution by sections then.

I think you should left the unique armors out of the equation. After all they are... er... unique.

You only have one single armor in the game with 12 DT and 1lbs and that's the Wasteland Armor.
More over you only have a single copy of it: no merchant, quest reward, loot or anything can give you the armor, only a random encounter.
The same also apply for example to Arcade's Enclave armor, which is a unique power armor rated as medium, not heavy, so you don't incur in the penalties PA have. But usually you can only have this armor by the end of FNV or if you speed the game and follow a path that rush to the end.
There's also a single medium armor in the game rated as light: Lag's-Bolt combat armor.
Is a Talon combat armor, with all the stats of the usual combat armor, but rated as light.

Imagine that! You can have the protection of a combat armor, but with the benefits of light armor and also the various perks that benefit light armor (Light Touch, Travel Light, +5% speed from the agility bobblehead and so on).
The problem is: this armor is only available after the main quest, since you need access to the presidential metro, so you need to play a good chuck of the game to being able to have it.

Also keep in mind that when using light armor the various perks like Travel Light, Light Touch and Thoughness are almost as much mandatory, otherwise you will take A LOT of damage. Fast.
So you need to spent perks to complement the armor.

So in my opinion this armors should stay as they are.

[Risewild]

Lag-Bolt armor being light was a bug. It's already fixed though.

I don't know what a Wasteland Armor is .