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[Rolan7]

Whaaa?  But... Then what is it...
http://gamerant.com/fallout-4-vats-combat-101/

Okay so VATS doesn't completely stop time anymore, just slows it down.  That's actually kinda cool.  In particular, might help with the frustration of having a shot blocked, which required popping in and out of VATS to resolve.

The article annoyed me in places, though.

In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, VATS literally froze time, and allowed players to get shots in on enemies that had no hope of fighting back until the sequence was completed. A lot of players abused the system as a cheap way to keep themselves from death, and Bethesda hopes the tweaks they’re making to VATS will make it more compelling and less prone to abuse.

Like, wow.  Not sure this guy has ever played a Fallout game, new or old.  Particularly New Vegas, where enemies could totally hurt you in VATS.

Of course, I was hoping the game would return to the series's roots of real-time-with-pausing, which FO3 ported to 3D in a reasonable way.  Whereas NV nerfed VATS to shit, making the combat pretty much like other FPS.  Actually, it seems likely that they're un-nerfing VATS despite removing the absolute timestop.  So I might be getting what I want... fingers crossed.

This confused me though:

Another change being made to VATS is the way that critical hits work in the game. Previously, critical hits, marked by more explosive and devastating shots, were random. Now players will be able to choose which one of their shots in VATS will be the critical hit. This will allow players to be a bit more creative during combat, and should result in a more engaging combat experience overall.

I haven't looked through any gameplay footage, so maybe it's been answered, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to work.

[sambojin]

Thoughts on the SPECIAL system.

While some of the stuff seems weird from a standard RPG standpoint, it actually kind of makes sense. It's just that it's all arse-about-face.

Why does high charisma make you more resistant to drug addiction? Well, ummm, it doesn't.

It's more-so that highly charismatic people tend not to be known as addicts. Or at least appear not to be (even if they use shitloads of drugs and booze on a regular basis). Even excusing some Hollywood horror stories, until you knew the truth, you never would have known they were crack-heads. Thus high charisma=anti-addiction.

Perception for stealing? Again, arse-about-face. If you are stealing all this stuff, you must be a friggen ninja, seeing all around you and knowing your perfect time to purloin. And not only that, you must be more perceptive than those you're stealing from, because they didn't see you or catch you. So perception=stealing.

Strength for weapon making? When you think of a soldier with a double barrel shotgun, and a chainsaw attached to it, and a grenade-launching-minigun bolted on underneath, you tend to think of a big, burly son-of-a-bitch wielding it. Not some sciencey bloke who would actually probably make that sort of stuff, but some huge sod with a hammer and a welder and a grin and a firepower fetish. So, strength=weapon building.

I think that's as close as I can come to figuring out why some skills in the SPECIAL system got placed where they are. It's all about stereotypes, not really the attribute itself. What kind of person has/does that sort of stuff, and gets away with it/looks cool while doing it?

Can you do three lines, drink the bar dry, and still look awesome? That's charisma. They know you'll do it again tomorrow too. But it's because you're a legend, not a drug-addicted booze hound.

[Puzzlemaker]

The criticals are built up, like a power meter.  You can choose when to unleash the beast.

[sambojin]

It's a pity VATS isn't built up too. Think of the Freeze Time mechanic out of the original PC Space Hulk game. The less you freeze, the more it builds up. A simple, elegant mechanic that stops too much abuse of it.

It'd annoy turn-based players, because you'd have to real-time some longer battles. But since FO has pretty much gone into the FPS mould, but with lots of smaller sporadic battles with decent gaps in between, it shouldn't be too bad on them.

Then VATS is a resource, instead of a fall-back or "I win" button. You could even make equipment options that gives you more VATS time, or have it recharge faster, or slow time even more, etc. Possibly with positives and negatives to any of them, or accuracy/crits/dodge/enemy types/areas of attack/etc. Become a bursty leg chopper, or a rad-scorpion VATS hunter, or bullet-time-matrix-dodge-man.

I know that's more-or-less how it works anyway, but it'd be nice for it to actually be a resource to not only build/stat around, but to itemize around as well.

[scriver]

It's like they're actually aiming to make the mechanics worse.

[Rolan7]

The criticals are built up, like a power meter.  You can choose when to unleash the beast.

B-but, that's not a critical, it's a fricken limit break... 
Seriously, it's like they're *trying* to remove every Fallout mechanic from the game.  Probably in an effort to be innovative, which I guess is cool.  But they're taking it so far.

I'm still really optimistic about the setting and plot, it's just so weird.  The Fallout 1 demo was one of the first PC RPGs I played, so I *kinda like* the core mechanics.  And FO3 did a surprisingly good job of translating them into 3D.

Now some of these clueless reviewers are literally saying that it's so great that FO4 is going to be more like Borderlands, and I'm just really sad and confused about that!  Guess we'll see how it turns out.

[Bohandas]

I don't get what's so great about Borderlands. Borderlands sucks!

It's a shallow, linear, unpolished piece of shit.

I'm definitely not buying Fallout 4 now.

[Rolan7]

Er actually I kinda loved Borderlands, especially Borderlands 2...  It's just a totally different kind of game, or was.

They're shooters with RPG elements.  Whereas FO3 was a RPG with optional shooter elements.  Then New Vegas was a shooter with RPG elements, but at least the RPG elements were still Fallout mainstays.  Now I'm worried they're throwing out the Fallout mechanics in all but name.

[sambojin]

Wait for a week or two after the decently objective reviews come in. I think those comments are meant to mean "It's gruff, a bit in-your-face, with some reasonable RPG stuff for a shooter. Diablo 2 with guns. And heaps of other stuff too."

Lots of people played Borderlands 1+2, so they have a vague gist of what the person is saying.

Borderlands was great at the time to expand the possibilities of FPS games. Hopefully FO4 is way better, because open'ish world FPS games have come a long way since then too (Bioshock series, Dead Space series, even GTA, et all). Still semi-linear, but rewarding. Bethedsa tends to do far more open worlds than those mentioned as well (well, other than GTA. But more fantastical in its setting). So the major plot will probably be progressive/semi-linear (it has to be for there to be a plot), but there's going to be more "I want to do this, screw the quest or grind" stuff available.

I'm looking forward to it, but it's not a first day purchase for me either.

[forsaken1111]

I don't get what's so great about Borderlands. Borderlands sucks!

It's a shallow, linear, unpolished piece of shit.

couldn't agree more

[scriver]

Edit: phones suck, tru fact

[scriver]

Er actually I kinda loved Borderlands, especially Borderlands 2...  It's just a totally different kind of game, or was.

They're shooters with RPG elements.  Whereas FO3 was a RPG with optional shooter elements.  Then New Vegas was a shooter with RPG elements, but at least the RPG elements were still Fallout mainstays.  Now I'm worried they're throwing out the Fallout mechanics in all but name.

Why would you describe NV as being more of a shooter than FO3 when it's literally the same engine except with more (and higher qualiry) RPG content?

[Rolan7]

Aw, I thought you were agreeing with me by emptyquoting ):

Anyway, because in Fallout 3 you could easily get through on VATS alone.  Firing the weapons manually was a bit awkward.  The VATS hit percentages were quite generous and you were either mostly or totally invincible during the sequence.  Your "turn", you could say.

By comparison, VATS was seriously nerfed in New Vegas.  Especially for distant targets, which is... most enemies in the desert.  It has some very limited use in close quarters fights, but even then it's usually just a couple of bonus hits to give you an edge.  New Vegas basically forces you to shoot and swing manually.

And is it really the exact same engine?  It looks a lot better, I assumed it evolved like the Source engine.
I liked New Vegas but I wish I could play it as a real-time-with-pausing RPG like FO3.  I'm sure there are mods, but it's a fundamental design difference.

[Bohandas]

Er actually I kinda loved Borderlands, especially Borderlands 2...  It's just a totally different kind of game, or was.

They're shooters with RPG elements.  Whereas FO3 was a RPG with optional shooter elements.  Then New Vegas was a shooter with RPG elements, but at least the RPG elements were still Fallout mainstays.  Now I'm worried they're throwing out the Fallout mechanics in all but name.

Why would you describe NV as being more of a shooter than FO3 when it's literally the same engine except with more (and higher qualiry) RPG content?

In fact, if you want to get technical, I'd say that in a literal sense FNV technically had less shooting, theoretically at least, because melee combat was so much more polished. I suppose one could argue that that constitutes the RPG elements being slightly diluted by hack-and-slash elements, but if so the shpoter emements were also diluted to an equal or greater degree.

[KingofstarrySkies]

I don't get what's so great about Borderlands. Borderlands sucks!

It's a shallow, linear, unpolished piece of shit.

I'm definitely not buying Fallout 4 now.

Tears sure are delicious.