Fallout 3 - Bethesda - PC

[Slyfeind]

Thanx! ^_^

[apocrypha]

Just finished a 2nd playthough on the PS3, I got the trophies urge...

Went heavy weapons this time and played on Very Hard. Big guns are shit. Really. Small guns & energy weapons piss all over them. All the heavy weapons do too little damage for the APs they use in VATS, they degrade too fast and are too hard to get replacements to repair them with and they use too much ammo. I had my big guns skill maxed out but level 14 or so but from level 15 onwards I switched mostly back to small guns because it was so much more effective.

Anyway, another playthrough at some point is going to be required to complete the trophies 

[lesion]

If you get your hands on Vengeance you can pretty much turn anything into laser hamburger.

[apocrypha]

Yeah I went and got that from the deathclaw sanctuary (having Charon & a dart gun helped a lot there). Still wasn't overwhelmed, mainly because it degraded so fast. The Terrible Shotgun actually has a higher damage per action point and is a lot easier to repair and get ammo for, although you have to be right in their face with that 

Plus, single-shot weapons like the Reservist's Rifle and Lincoln's Repeater have far higher crit multipliers and bonuses and zero spread, so even on very hard you can kill most things much faster than with Vengeance, especially with Commando/Sniper/Finesse perks.

The only times I found big guns better than small guns were against the super mutant behemoths, and then the Fat Man ruled all 

[Hindenburg]

You're calculating damage per ap?
What the fuck is wrong with you?

[apocrypha]

No, I was looking at the damage per ap numbers on the Fallout wiki because I was wondering why the Big Guns seemed so crap.

It's just yet another part of Fallout 3 that is very un-Fallouty. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great game, but it doesn't really feel like a Fallout game.

[Hindenburg]

You could've just said that they should've added a Bozar.
Downside was that the bozar's ammo was heavy as fuck.

[Slyfeind]

I can never get into VATS. I tried it, and I liked the shaky camera angles, but it just slows things down for me. Maybe I'll find important fights later on that call for it and make it more fun. I've only been playing it about a week now.

[Hindenburg]

Try it when you see someone holding a grenade.

[apocrypha]

Yeah shooting the grenade in the air is 

I'd probably use VATS less if I was playing on a PC rather than trying to aim with a controller.

[Hindenburg]

Not in the air.

In their hand.

[Kageru]

Finished the game using only hand to hand weapons (primarily spiked dusters) and explosives. This was after taking a character to level 16 using guns and realizing VATS and the very limited mob AI felt like cheating. Like all Betheseda games the game balance is dodgy, the combat is clunky and the complexity scales poorly. I ended the game with about 500 stimpacks and 16k caps allowing me to buy anything the game contained and pause the world to heal myself to full anytime I actually ran into something challenging. The ending was a massive disappointment when I realized it was on rails and the final binary decision was an insult to the open ended stories fallout 1 and 2 had. Not being able to continue exploring with your character just being a final blow.

However, I still liked the game. Wandering through the well-realised wreckage of our world (though odd that the power is still on) and just absorbing the atmosphere and scenery was awesome. Lots of nice little touches and scenes sprinkled over the map to keep you entertained. That and splattering any raider foolish enough to interrupt the tranquility.

[Slyfeind]

Stealth seems almost entirely useless to me, except...when I tried stealthing and then using VATS for my first round of attacks. That seemed to work pretty well. All other cases, it seems to have no effect on gameplay. With about 45% stealth right now...am I doing this rite?

The grenade tricks sound 

[Lantyssa]

Depends.  Are you trying to sneak up on things in plain sight?

I don't recall having excessive problems, but I always try to keep something between me and the target, and I move very carefully and deliberately.  Sneak is something I boost rather high, too.

[Slyfeind]

I was, but then started using cover. And then I realized that they wouldn't be able to see me anyway...which confuses me. Why have a stealth skill if it only works when there's no line of sight? It's like saying I have the power of invisibility, but it only works when everybody in the world closes their eyes.

[Lantyssa]

Sound makes a difference, and not all cover is perfect.  It gives you the edge when it could go either way.

[Reg]

Check to see if you have the always run toggle turned on too. Stealth doesn't work very well when you're running until you pick up the perk that lets you do that.

[Slyfeind]

I stop running when I'm sneaking. I read somewhere that you should turn your Pip-Boy off too; how do I do that? Or does that mean I just shouldn't use it?

So now, stealth is useful for getting that critical stealth hit during VATS. Not so much sneaking around. It's up to 60 now, so we'll see how it goes. I'll keep increasing it just because I'm curious!

[DeathInABottle]

Hold Tab to turn your Pip-Boy light on or off.

On that note, I agree about the fact that the world is powered.  Wouldn't things have been more interesting if there were only a few underground locations with light?  I would've liked the difficulty and atmosphere that darkened, Pip-Boy-lit Vaults and caves would have presented.  The Yao Guai caverns and Deathclaw Sanctuary wouldn't have been nearly such a walk in the park.

[Reg]

Stealth becomes awesome once it's maxed out and you have the perk that lets you run. Once I had that I stealthed everywhere I went.

[Hindenburg]

On that note, I agree about the fact that the world is powered.  Wouldn't things have been more interesting if there were only a few underground locations with light?  I would've liked the difficulty and atmosphere that darkened, Pip-Boy-lit Vaults and caves would have presented.  The Yao Guai caverns and Deathclaw Sanctuary wouldn't have been nearly such a walk in the park.

The death claw sanctuaries that I visited, along with several other locations, had to be iluminated completely by the pip boy. Was frustrating as fuck. I'm quite glad that most locations have electric lights. Darkness for a 40 hour long game would be very boring.

[fatboy]

I just picked this up last week for the 360 (my computer has no balls), and I'm loving it.

Way more fun than Oblivion to me, and I think because of what previous posters stated -- guns / ranged combat / VATS. 

Melee combat is just not good....in fact, it sucks ass.  Guns are everywhere, in many different flavors, so use them.

My first time through I am playing the stereotypical goody two shoes.....but I cannot wait to play again as an evil asshole....which can easily be done in this game.

[Tebonas]

Whats up with the expansion? I run around for two game days now and the hook to the Anchorage quest never happens. Have they screwed up their Windows Live marketplace?

[Surlyboi]

Shit, at least you could download it. I couldn't even log in to 'doze live to get the goddamn thing.

[Lantyssa]

Whats up with the expansion? I run around for two game days now and the hook to the Anchorage quest never happens. Have they screwed up their Windows Live marketplace?

Did you get the new radio signal?  Listen to the broadcast and check your PipBoy for a new quest.

Did you enable the ESM data files?

[Tebonas]

No new radio signal, the only ESM data file available was the original one. I'm trying a complete reinstall now, hope that helps.

Edit: They really ARE retarded.

Fallout 3 must be installed on the same drive (C:) as the Games For Windows Live client and content. If this is not the case, you may get the "loading content" message, but it will not activate or show up in the game.

Copied the three files into my Fallout Data directory and it seems to work, EXCEPT UNLIKE THE REST OF THE GAME IT IS IN GERMAN. Way to make me avoid you whenever possible in the future, Windows Live!

Edit2: Beyond retarded.

2 Emails with Bethsoft, and 1 Chat and 4 Phonecalls with Microsoft and MSN later (round 2 hours of my time, waiting excluded), I finally snapped and got the English files I needed over a torrent site in about 5 seconds. Way to make loyal customers question their willingness to give you money, you fucking idiotic douchebags. "You should go to your vendor and replace the version if you got the wrong language. Microsoft does that, we don't have anything to do with it" "We have nothing to do with that, its MSN you want to talk to" "Oh, maybe the WinXP support hotline can help you"  "We only do support for the installation for Windows XP servicepacks, try this number, which will cost you 12cents per minute"

Theres where I drew the line. Assholes


And now, thanks to those evil evil pirates, I have the content I paid for in the language I specified. And it works. Man, I wish software developers were as competent.

[Lantyssa]

And now, thanks to those evil evil pirates, I have the content I paid for in the language I specified. And it works. Man, I wish software developers were as competent.

Yep.  They went through a lot of hoops to encourage people to not give them money.  Well, they at least got yours, but I know people who tried and gave up after an evening of failure.

[Slyfeind]

Wow, thanks for the reports. I was looking forward to Anchorage because I lived there most of my adult life, and holy crap a video game set there! Now I'm not gonna bother.

Meanwhile, yeah I took that stealth running perk, and yeah, it's getting better. It seems that if you want to be a stealther, you can't just dabble in it. You have to build your character around it, which I'm fine with.

[Reg]

Your PIPboy light will still give you away but I found that after I went into graphics options and turned up the gamma a bit I didn't need it much.

[Slyfeind]

Heh, I never knew it lit up, so I wasn't turning it on anyway.

[Hawkbit]

IGN has a quick look at The Pitt expansion.  Looks to run 800 pts ($10.00).  Release is March 24 I think. 

Also, GFWL is fucking retarded.  I tried to dl Anchorage last night and gave up after 20minutes of updates and crap.

[Prospero]

I'm hoping that once Microsoft gets their pound of flesh the DLC is sold as a normal boxed expansion. I probably shouldn't hold my breath, but a guy can hope.

[Slyfeind]

I would totally pay regular money for those expansions if they were sold on shelves. I will not buy 1,000 MS points for something that costs 800, then fail to download it for hours.

[Sky]

But digital distro is TEH FOOOOTURE!

[Prospero]

It is., just not from MS. At least not until they pull their head out of their asses.