Couple things I wish they would wake up on:
Pacing - At least give us a flexible in-game option for the scale of things. I want an epically long first experience. I don't want to be rushed to the end and encouraged to "play it another way." I want to play it the way I want and have it be a substantial, paced play through. If we can tweak how many hps guys have, or how many drops, why can we not tweak those one or two values that control XP rates? Because it takes too much time to do the math how the game is balanced at "default" "less than default" and "higher than default?" Yeesh.
Skills and such - The system of stat --> skill --> result works fine for table top, because table top games can invent whatever they need to, to make things more interesting. Oblivion? Fallout 3? You can look at the skill list and know, almost without failure, exactly what you're going to be allowed to do in the world. Shoot, sneak, pick, hack, repair, strike, spell cast, run get dialog options. That's....pretty much it. The first thing I do when I start an RPG game is look at the complete skill list, because it quickly tells me how much play their mechanics have. Oblivion was pretty depressing in that regard. FO3 was moderately better in that the perks covered up the again bare bones nature of their design.
It's nice that Beth games always leave the door open for modding. But it's a huge disincentive to me to buy when having the experience most people feel like the game should give, involves a laundry list of mods and deciding whether the tweaks are worth all the other crap they include.
Pacing - At least give us a flexible in-game option for the scale of things. I want an epically long first experience. I don't want to be rushed to the end and encouraged to "play it another way." I want to play it the way I want and have it be a substantial, paced play through. If we can tweak how many hps guys have, or how many drops, why can we not tweak those one or two values that control XP rates? Because it takes too much time to do the math how the game is balanced at "default" "less than default" and "higher than default?" Yeesh.
Skills and such - The system of stat --> skill --> result works fine for table top, because table top games can invent whatever they need to, to make things more interesting. Oblivion? Fallout 3? You can look at the skill list and know, almost without failure, exactly what you're going to be allowed to do in the world. Shoot, sneak, pick, hack, repair, strike, spell cast, run get dialog options. That's....pretty much it. The first thing I do when I start an RPG game is look at the complete skill list, because it quickly tells me how much play their mechanics have. Oblivion was pretty depressing in that regard. FO3 was moderately better in that the perks covered up the again bare bones nature of their design.
It's nice that Beth games always leave the door open for modding. But it's a huge disincentive to me to buy when having the experience most people feel like the game should give, involves a laundry list of mods and deciding whether the tweaks are worth all the other crap they include.
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