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Mod that I'd like for fallout: removing the scope shaking when aiming from power armor. It makes 0 sense that what's basically a robot piloted from the inside would shake when it's not given commands to move, robots don't have a pulse.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 20:33:25 UTC from web-
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@maiyannah Eh, I enjoy bethesda sandboxes once I manage to make them not crash constantly.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 20:36:44 UTC from web-
@nerthos They're very average. But "once I manage to make them not crash constantly" is probably why having Obsidian make one was a bad idea. They are not good at making code that doesn't fold like a house of cards.
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@maiyannah Funnily enough NV was the one that gave me less trouble of the modern ones. 3 and 4 were the ones to crash a lot in my case, 3 just because and 4 due to freezing while loading anywhere near central boston.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 20:40:25 UTC from web-
@nerthos NV literally crashed so hard it ate my MBR when I played it for review, back in the day.
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@maiyannah Huh. I didn't play it at release (when it was probably much worse stability wise) because I had a sempron 2800 with 256mb video back then, but when I did play it it didn't have that many crashes in comparison to the others, and it was probably my favourite as far as story and options go as it had a lot of mechanics I loved and the characters weren't as retarded as 3. My biggest issue with it is the whole thing with placing invisible walls to keep the player from climbing around the map.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 20:47:05 UTC from web-
@nerthos 3's characterization outside of "Dad" was pretty bad, but the DLCs were better. I don't know. I liked New Vegas' story better if I consider it in a bubble, but it doesn't feel like a "Fallout" story to me. The formula punishing a player for exploration I felt basically broke the basic premise of a modern Fallout game too. The whole idea is to explore freely and find interesting locations with neat backstories. In New Vegas if you go five minutes in the wrong direction you'll get a free ticket into orbit from the walls of death that are the overlevelled asbatcaves.
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@maiyannah I consider "Dad" the biggest of all the retards. His son is pretty much the walking avatar of death, tougher and faster than a deathclaw and encased in power armor, and the idiot commits suicide thus making all the sacrifices he and his son made to that point instead of letting him in when anyone can tell autumn and 2 soldiers don't stand a chance. As for New Vegas, I actually liked that aspect of it. The world doesn't level with you, it's more realistic. Dangerous people/animals are dangerous from the beginning, and you have to figure out how to not die. I had loads of fun at low levels because of it playing in survival as I actually needed tactical advantages and careful planning or I'd die. Counting how many bullets I carry, what armor and weapons I use, where to position myself before engaging and how to scout, the whole pack.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:29:10 UTC from web-
@nerthos Well, that's an example of ludonarrative dissonance that acts to the detriment of the story. The character's actions don't make sense within the context of the game world, so they stick out as irrational and stupid.
Still, one has to concede they can tell where the writing effort in 3 went. The side characters are _bad_.-
@nerthos Characters acting in a way that doesn't make sense for them within the confines of the fiction is a big way to instantly rip me out of any fictional work, be it video games, movies, comics, or whatever.
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@maiyannah In my first playthrough I was trying to play an objectively good character AND do all the quests but I struggled so hard with not shoving a ripper into three dog.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:40:07 UTC from web-
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@maiyannah He's a papayar in all the senses of the word from the annoying way of talking and poor english to his selfish and extorsive way to do everything. Some desperate guy shows up at your door looking for his missing dad, wounds all over, you know where the dad is, will your first choice of what to tell him be "fix my antenna lol and then I might say something"? IRL that's enough to give the guy a beating.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:46:10 UTC from web-
@nerthos All I'll say (in an entirely politically incorrect way that will be called racist) is that for certain communities of blacks in America, this is entirely normal behaviour.
(It's why we have BLM after all)-
@nerthos But it just highlights the lack of actual choice in how to deal with things you're given in these games. I will agree that New Vegas at least tries to present more options in this regard.
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@maiyannah I openly show my hatred for that type of people. Race doesn't matter and will never be an excuse to be a damn animal. I have the same types where I live (with the difference that race isn't a factor here as those gang-like communities have the same racial makeup as normal people) and I'm sick of them dragging society down. I don't care about being called a racist by people who see through indoctrination glasses. Any insult those people throw at me is more of a compliment.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:51:43 UTC from web-
@nerthos Oh yeah, seems like every place has some version of them, the point I was making is that while a stereotypical depiction, it's grounded in reality (something many people deny)
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@maiyannah It's more of a reason to hate three dog.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:01:14 UTC from web -
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@gameragodzilla The main problem is that these "cultures" are defended instead of being singled out as being poisonous so that society at large can work on erasing or assimilating them.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:12:26 UTC from web-
@nerthos Well a lot of people on all sides tie race with culture, when race isn't necessarily the same as culture. Ergo, if you criticize said culture, you are assumed to be criticizing black people as a whole, making you "racist". Same goes with if you criticize so-called "Islamic culture". That's, of course, not entirely accurate. I'm Chinese ethnically, for example, but if you ask any of my friends, I'm one of the most American people you'd meet (FrankerZ yeah!). Because I embraced American culture, y'see.
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@gameragodzilla And that's how it should be. If you move to some country, you're supposed to embrace the place's culture. Nothing stops you from still keeping the traditions of your home, and meet regularly with others of your ethnia or original nationality for holidays or cultural events, but in day to day what people should do is become part of the country they live in. In the last few decades the idea has shifted to a ridiculous identity culture that does nothing but make people hate eachother. And it's not like it wasn't evident that'd happen, just look at India or Georgia or any other place where lots of ethnic groups that identify as such first and foremost constantly fight eachother or even explode into civil wars. Bringing that to stable countries is the easiest way to... well, make them unstable.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:22:50 UTC from web-
@nerthos Pretty much. I've always said, if you love your ancestral country so much, move there. If you don't want to because it's "poor", or "war ridden", maybe there's a reason for that. My parents left China because it's a totalitarian cherryhole and while I obviously am familiar with the country due to having tons of family there, I frankly hardly look back. Stuff like free speech, voting rights, uncensored internet etc. are more important to me than "muh heritage".
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@gameragodzilla And that's why you're the type of immigrant descendant that should be encouraged. I'm the same. My ancestors left Europe because europe was an utter mess, and while they looked back at times (one of my grandfathers went back to visit Spain multiple times after Franco's regime was in the past, and always loved Spanish culture) they identified first as Argentinians and worked and adapted to the local culture instead of pretending they were in their old countries. It's why back then immigrants were welcome by both government and population. Nowadays a lot of people forget they are guests in their new countries and are supposed to learn the rules and contribute.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:44:38 UTC from web-
@nerthos Well it's unbelievably selfish for someone to come to another country, expect to benefit from all the great things that country has to offer, and then refuse to adapt to their new environment. Like seriously, this is your new home now. This is where you live. Act like it.
I don't even fault people for wanting to keep a part of their heritage. I mean I still quite enjoy Chinese food, for example. But America is my home, so I will consider it my home and myself an American first.-
@gameragodzilla Pretty much, yeah. Here people have found a good compromise for the most part, having "foment societies" which are basically clubs that represent a nationality, and people from that origin meet there, make fairs, concerts and plays, fundraisers, and all sorts of activities related to their old culture, as well as often offering courses on their language and traditional arts; while at the same time inviting people that don't belong to the ethnicity to join them and learn about their culture. In my opinion that's the optimal way to go about it. Keep the old culture alive in a positive and welcoming way. And no one talks about stupid concepts like "cultural appropiation".
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:51:52 UTC from web-
@nerthos @gameragodzilla culture are basically large-scale clubs
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@nerthos Yeah I was just thinking: "isn't inviting others inviting 'muh cultural appropriation' or some apple?" lol
Glad to know most people aren't like SJWs and are perfectly happy spreading their culture.-
@gameragodzilla Honestly the SJW thing is really new outside north america and certain areas of europe. We have young imbeciles like that here too, but for the most part the established population is sane in this regard. Ethnic clubs here are for the most part more than happy inviting the rest of the town to come learn about them and show interest just like they were invited to live here long ago. Pay good will with good will. The only thing similar to willful cultural segregation we have here is the gay community and their insistence on making things "gay only" thus making normal people resent them. And then there's of course the gang-like anti-cultures but there's rotten apples everywhere and criminals always resent everyone else.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 23:51:23 UTC from web-
@nerthos Yeah. I wish societies everywhere would start going back to the concept of a "melting pot", where people from cultures all over the world come together, share, and mingle, taking the best parts from everything to advance society as a whole. Meanwhile, we seem to be living in a time when everyone is encouraged to just keep to themselves and "preserve the purity of their culture" or whatever.
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@gameragodzilla Yep. A stupid and regressive way to go about things, specially as anyone with a bit of critical thinking can see the flaws of their own culture and what cultures have better traits in that regard. I personally despise a few of the traits of my country, like the shortsigntedness, tolerance for corruption, and lack of effort; while at the same time I praise the practical skill most have, the ability to recover from a crisis in no time, and the capacity of the country to build geniuses in any area. If instead we purged our own cultures of their bad traits and assimilated the good traits of other cultures, we'd all be better as a whole.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:03:36 UTC from web-
@nerthos Pretty much. The melting pot was the American ideal for a long time and I view that as the reason why America became as great a country as it did. It's a popular destination for immigrants, who then bring the positives of their own culture, contribute it to the greater American culture, shedding the bad stuff in the process until it became the best of all worlds.
But alas, with the rise of SJWs and "multiculturalism", now everyone just has to be separate and grape. It's stupid. No one grows when they get stagnant.-
@gameragodzilla Not only no one grows, the worst of each culture is encouraged and harms everyone.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:16:42 UTC from web-
@nerthos Pretty much, because it puts people on the defensive. They view every part of that culture as a fundamental part of their identity rather than something that they can modify and grow. No one's gonna criticize the good parts of any culture, but if someone criticizes the bad, people treat it as an affront to their identity rather than a valid topic of discussion.
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@gameragodzilla Identity culture was the greatest social mistake of the last century.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:26:05 UTC from web-
@nerthos Well identity culture has existed for a long time. I just thought it was mostly in the realm of the far right with white supremacy and racial purity and all that cherry.
Meanwhile, the Left now engages in the exact same thing, only in the opposing direction, so here we are...-
@gameragodzilla Yeah, and back then it was despised by a vast majority. No one that wasn't involved would tell you it was a good thing.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:34:32 UTC from web-
@nerthos Well apparently this is different because Reasons(TM).
Well the "reasoning" is that this double standard is okay because "X group faced historical oppression", which is the exact same kind of reasoning white supremacists used in the "the world is run by some secret Jewish cabal that's putting down the Aryan race" justification for the Final Solution. Easy to get even normal people whipped up into a frenzy when they percieve, real or not, to be victimized in some way.-
@gameragodzilla People are stupid and that's the basis of most our problems.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:45:46 UTC from web
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@maiyannah As for NV I felt they did to a degree, at least in how I interpreted the game. The guy wakes up from a lethal wound and not much of a memory of what happened before, and instead of rushing towards the guys who put him down the first time he gets ready first. Goes off on side quests to get support and resources to take revenge when he's in a better position, obtains unique signature gear. Lucky was my main weapon in that game along with an antimateriel rifle later on and I considered the gun a really important part of who the character was.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:43:29 UTC from web-
@nerthos The big problem for me with NV is that the organizations that I'm supposed care about all evoked my empathy like pictures of Andrew Lloyd Weber evoke animalistic lust. Which is to say not at all. In my NV character's position I would have just taken a place over myself and told everyone else to Potato Knishes off.
Maybe that's why FO4 had the settlement mechanic.-
@maiyannah It was different for me. I played my character as if he was sick of the wasteland. In 3 I played as if I cared about "dad" and about the friends my character made through the trip, and wanted to make the wasteland a better place. In 4 I played as a soldier of the old world who had his life stolen and won't put up with the wastelanders, either forcing them to behave like civilized people or ramming through them as almost none of them can compare to the old world armies the character fought. He went there to conquer the place and force the wasteland to give back what it stole. In NV however I played as a wastelander that was sick of the lawless place that almost killed him with impunity. He decided to become tougher and take revenge, and then change how the place worked. Organized the defense of Goodsprings and showed the people of the place there can be change, and then sought out the big factions once ready. (cont)
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:58:12 UTC from web -
@maiyannah Worked for a while with the NCR until realizing how completely rotten they were, being no better than the governments that killed the old world, then went to the legion and saw that they were shortsighted and content with living as tribals. Then met Mr. House and saw a chance to take back the place, marveling at the potential of working with someone who could have saved the place with enough time, so he joined him for a chance at an actual future for humanity. I loved the game.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:00:29 UTC from web -
@maiyannah As for the settlement mechanic in 4, that's likely my favourite feature of it, and something the previous games REALLY needed. The wastelanders lived for 200 years in crumbling buildings... why? They had immense amounts of concrete, stone, processed steel, all the resources they needed to build proper homes and fortresses to live in. Instead they choose to live in crumbling shacks and blasted buildings. They don't even bother to get a broom or shovel and clear out the rubble in their houses. In 3 the brotherhood of steel recovers the pentagon, and in the pitt they restart the industry. In NV some factions try to recover pre-war machinery. In 4 however, the character is given the chance to rebuild, which is mandatory as a pre-war man would be used to building and caring for his house. There's steel production and weapon building. The characters actually care to move forward again, like in the first two games. IMO the only thing it lacks is proper attacks against settlements.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:38:37 UTC from web-
@nerthos It really was begging for a proper management aspect, in having to deal with people trying to take over your new settlement or screw with it in and other ways.
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@maiyannah Honestly I'd just like to a) have proper settler AI as opposed to opening the perimeter gates to go shoot raiders at close quarters despite having a fenced fortress to fight from and b) have actual sieges in my settlements so bulding defenses is meaningful. So far the only settlement that had a proper invasion was the farm in the north of Far Harbor after I had built a fortress there, and it was one of the most fun fights in the game having actual fire support from my castle.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 23:36:13 UTC from web-
@nerthos God yes, and there is so much you can DO with this. Trust Bethesda games to be a kind of disappointing waste of potential though, I guess.
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@maiyannah Well here's hoping someone makes a mod to make settlements and AI better. Give instructions to settlers and a plan of action in case of attack, and face actually dangerous enemies when attacked.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 23:47:24 UTC from web-
@nerthos While Bethesda relies on mods way way too much, the modding potential is nonetheless what keeps all of their games afloat these days.
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@maiyannah Yep. They count on it though, they know the game would have no lifespan without the mods, and that people will get it solely to load mods into it knowing the modding community will fix the bugs. It's an abusive way to do things but it's what we have I guess. Modders and players are held hostage because there's not enough games that allow the same degree of modding freedom. I'm sure many would jump ship if another more professional company offered a similar product.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 23:53:56 UTC from web-
@nerthos Doom used to have this, which is why I'm critical of SnapMap. As nice a tool SnapMap is (@gameragodzilla has made a p cool remake of the Doom Comic on it), its no replacement for the FULL SOURCE CODE what Doom 3, 2, etc have available. And we're not likely to get now, since they're published by Bethesda now.
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@maiyannah @nerthos Yeah. The issue with SnapMap is that it's designed for consoles as well, so you're never gonna get as powerful tools as you can with proper mod support. You can do some hack-ey bullcrap to do some interesting things (my best friend literally used the musical notes part of SnapMap to recreate the theme from Evil Dead, which was impressive), but you can't do anything too radical with the game.
Sad too as the old id Techs were phenomenal at modding, so I could use it to fix minor niggles I had with games, but alas, with Carmack gone and Bethesda at the healm, we're probably not gonna see proper mod tools or source codes for id Tech 5 and 6 anytime soon. -
@maiyannah IMO the biggest strenght of Bethesda games is that they make available a lot of modding tools that don't require advanced knowledge in any area to be used at a decent degree, and allow amazing things to be done by people who know lots. Other companies tried to do something on the same road, like CDprojekt with witcher 2 and 3, but the tools aren't as easy to use and extensive as Bethesda's so the amount of big mods released wasn't too big..
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:07:03 UTC from web-
@nerthos Can't beat the full source code access Doom used to have. They're pretty much the only commercial game that did that, although they limited it to non-commercial use.
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@maiyannah Again, the issue with it is that having the full source code means you can do ANYTHING with it, but you need to know a lot to do it. Bethesda's tools allow people who don't know anything about coding to contribute too. I don't know a single coding language and yet I've fixed a few things I didn't like and built a few mods that I felt would make the games better. I couldn't do anything with the source code but no user-friendly tools.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:16:01 UTC from web-
@nerthos Doom had a lot of powerful tools for it that was the thing. I'm willing to concede that they were mostly made by the community, sure, but they existed. Bethesda originally saw the success of the Doom community with that kind of support, and offered their own tools, like the ESCK or whatever it was they called it I forget offhand.
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@maiyannah Well I won't argue that. There just needs to be more companies that properly capitalize on modding so that Bethesda is forced to move their asses and deliver finished products.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:25:30 UTC from web
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@nerthos @maiyannah Actually, many id Tech games are built like that too. The most significant thing I've done coding wise was self-teaching myself some C++ in order to modify the source code for Doom 3 to port an extra weapon. Otherwise, most of the stuff I screw around with are simply done via a PAK explorer and notepad, because I mostly just modify values here and there to fix some niggling issues and rebalance the game to my liking. For instance, I didn't really like how Soldier of Fortune 2 was more realistic whereas Soldier of Fortune 1 was a fast paced action movie, so I changed the movement speed, removed weapon recoil, and modified the enemies so they drop more exotic (and thus cool) weapons.
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@gameragodzilla Sounds like my experience with Witcher 3 modding before all the fancy tools came out.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:29:14 UTC from web-
@nerthos I'm not good enough to have complex maps or models and animations to work with, so my ability to mod is relatively limited. lol
But once I do find mods that have animations and models already to work with, I can easily fiddle around with the files to change their attributes and add them to whereever I please. I ported the DB Shotgun from the expansion pack into the base game of Doom 3, and it was trivially easy to just modify a few normal shotguns into DB Shotguns in order to let the player pick it up within the normal levels.-
@gameragodzilla Yeah, I get you. I have no issues with modeling and the like but then adding the new files to the games is way too bothersome.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:42:29 UTC from web-
@nerthos A lot of the stuff in the games I mod, at least, are well documented so you easily now what each variable does and how everything is formatted. Once you know that, you can fiddle around to your heart's content. Sometimes there are weird things that I don't understand what's going on, but I often manage to find some contrived way to get around it. For instance, in Soldier of Fortune 2, one of the mods I installed causes a helicopter I'm on in the game to fly a different path than usual, resulting in it constantly flying into a SAM missile and taking damage. There's no way to avoid it as it's scripted, so I worked around it by simply making the SAM do zero damage and that seemed to work.
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@gameragodzilla I often stick to modding small gameplay things or changing stats on gear so I can actually keep using the stuff I like most, or building areas to use. I haven't dived into more complex stuff because it's a lot of work and half the time I forget about uploading anything so it's kind of a waste.
Tuesday, 13-Dec-16 00:48:30 UTC from web-
@nerthos I've hardly ever uploaded anything. Most of the stuff I make is personal preference anyways.
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@nerthos @maiyannah And half the time you just end up sleeping with him and saving him from the legion camp... What? My character had brain damage; It makes sense in context! https://gs.smuglo.li/attachment/237410
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@dolus Haha, I only ever advanced far enough with a male character so there was no romance involved.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:01:55 UTC from web
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@nerthos @maiyannah Well to be fair, "cutscene/scripted event incompetence" is a common thing in games, especially action games. The hero in gameplay is a walking god of death capable of fighting off entire armies by himself. The hero in cutscenes gets easily ambushed and surrenders to three enemies pointing guns at him even though he fights ten times as many people routinely.
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@gameragodzilla @nerthos Doesn't mean that it doesn't weaken the story a lot every time it's used though.
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@maiyannah @nerthos True. Wonder how you'd really reconcile the gameplay and narrative though. I've seen some cases where the game gets around it by having a character defeat you in gameplay as well with an invincible boss, which, while obviously scripted, still shows that gameplay hero could be beaten as well. Quake IV comes to mind.
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@gameragodzilla Yeah, it's what I dislike about many of them. Especially as it's not hard to pull it off right. In 3 for example they could have thrown in a vertibird in there, a decent number of enclave soldiers with plasma rifles, or a guy with a fat man. Then it'd make sense for the character to surrender as even if he -could- survive, it'd be hard and almost everyone else was sure to perish. In this case it didn't at all.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:10:58 UTC from web-
@nerthos Yeah. The way I described in Quake IV involves you actually fighting said boss as you would normally any other boss, whether in the game or in order FPS games, but even if you do whittle the health down, the boss is effectively invincible and will beat you anyways. It's all done just to establish you getting captured and Stroggified, but because it's done through gameplay, and mostly unscripted gameplay no less (the only scripting is at the very end), it feels like the character was legitimately beaten rather than giving up like an idiot.
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@gameragodzilla And more people should follow that road. Another way is giving the boss an advantage like say, a forcefield or something? magical or technological, that at that point you can't overcome. The enemy beats you despite your strenght and valor due to it, captures or subdues you, and later on you learn how that works or find a way to nullify/shut down the advantage or get a magical sword that can hurt the sorcerer, or any other similar thing. It feels more fair as there's an explanation regarding your defeat.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:25:34 UTC from web-
@nerthos Yeah. But I guess that's kind of the issue when there's that segregation between gameplay and story. A lot of games storywise treat the player as just your average, every day normal schlub, capable of only what average, every day normal schlubs are capable of. But in gameplay, the player is a god of death who can perform ludicrous feats of heroism and power, and that disconnect causes a lot of stupid moments to arise.
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@gameragodzilla I completely agree. The game should treat the character based on their feats.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 22:47:42 UTC from web
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@maiyannah As for the story, while a bit far fetched, I also liked it quite a bit as you could actually decide stuff. It was also great from an RP perspective. I went into Lonesome Road at level 15 and struggled with every enemy, before even getting into the strip. By the time I came out my character was hardened past the point most characters in the game were, clad in unique gear, and had nuked both factions. He wasn't a nobody that just followed a bread trail but rather a real asset to any faction and able to negotiate his position in an equal level with anyone. It actually felt like the character was important to the story and it made sense that everyone wanted him on their side, and there was a difference regarding the choice of who to support.
Monday, 12-Dec-16 21:33:28 UTC from web
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