• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Fallout 4: Changing the Shooting Mechanics

I'd be fine if they made accuracy stats based on weapon swing, weapon draw, and the like. I just don't want to be an expert mass murder when I step out the vault...unless I'm an expert mass murder.
 
And this is why the inbetween solution that Bethesda takes will never truly be great. Nobody is truly happy with it.

I honestly was. At least with Vegas's.

Though I think that they could make both people happy if they made the skills affect your gunplay in a way that still made sense for action combat (like making your hands less shaky if you have better gunskills. That way you still are hampered if you suck at guns and it makes it worthwhile upping them but at the same time it at least makes sense why you missed rather than having a deadshot and then it ruling you missed anyways).

Personally, I thought about it more and making gunplay more FPS like wouldn't really annoy me (though I'd love if they did what I and some others proposed like the shaky hands for the skill). But if htey got rid of other RPG elements like speech and skill checks (including some dialogue options if you have a good guns skill) that would upset me. I guess for me it's not that I care if my guns skill affects my shooting more than I care that they would move it more towards a pure FPS and get rid of other RPG elements. And the getting rid of gun skills affecting your shooting would scare me that they were more getting rid of the RPG aspects (basically it wouldn't be that that I would hate more than it would worry me about where the game was headed overall). I don't mind the FPS part and actually enjoy it. But I still want it to be an RPG overall.
 
I'd be fine if they made accuracy stats based on weapon swing, weapon draw, and the like. I just don't want to be an expert mass murder when I step out the vault...unless I'm an expert mass murder.

That plus actual recoil patterns depending on guns, making weapon mods matter, and that stats would have an effect on all that would be great. However, this is bethesda, and console shooting mechanics that isn't cod won't fly.
 
I hate everyone that wants to go back to Morrowind's hit-chance combat. I get it, you like seeing your character become better, but there are much less ridiculous ways to do it, like the weapon sway Solid Samus, Springfoot and Tigress talked about.
 
Weapon sway, twitchy nervous trembling gun sites. Make it hard at lower stats but if I hit the shot I hit the freakin shot.
 
So many people wanting this to be a pure shooter is so damn depressing. There are plenty of shooters already. Just let it be an RPG.

I played 3 and NV using pretty much VATS only. And that's one of the great things that made it unique.
 
I did not find accuracy dice rolls in non-VATS to be such a big issue in either FO3 or New Vegas. I played through those games with sniper builds, and it was perfectly serviceable provided you were using the right guns. It makes sense that a gatling gun should not have the accuracy of a sniper rifle, regardless of how good your aim is
 
I must admit I'm curious on how this will differ from Fallout 3.

New Vegas got around it somewhat with more iron sights, and IIRC, there was some recoil, but no real bullet drop or what have you.

In both games, the 'guns' stat was more about hitting milestones in which you reduced the majority of recoil/gun sway, depending on said gun stat and possibly a strength check.

We'll have to see, but the 'guns' stat making more of a difference in reticle size adjustment (growth/shrinkage), recoil reduction, etc... instead of a static number could be all that they're referring to.
 
So many people wanting this to be a pure shooter is so damn depressing. There are plenty of shooters already. Just let it be an RPG.

I played 3 and NV using pretty much VATS only. And that's one of the great things that made it unique.

I've come to terms that I don't mind the gunplay being pure shooter as long as the rest of the game is an RPG. But, I wouldn't mind also if they made it so your gun skill affected sway and maybe breathing while sniping. Hell, I honestly don't mind how Vegas did it, I really loved the gunplay in vegas (Ok, so I'm easily made happy, I just liked iron sights). No, I don't want it to be a pure FPS at all (you can see my other posts earlier in this thread to see that). But I think letting gunplay be more FPS won't kill it for being an RPG long as you still have skills affect other stuff and have ways of getting around things other than just fighting (skill and speech checks).
 
I greatly dislike excessive weapon sway and recoil as a means to convey the character's low weapon proficiency. I do not like having to fight my own character in order to aim my weapon. A bit of weapon sway and recoil is fine as a secondary, minor, display of weapon proficiency. Decreasing that as your stats improve is fine, but to use that as the the main or only means to convey the PCs lack of skill requires a stupid amount of weapon sway and recoil that is completely unrealistic and painfully annoying in practice.

I would much rather they keep the background dice rolls for determining Hit/Miss instead with some kind of minor hit chance bonus awarded to you for your actual accuracy as a player. Which is what they sound like they're actually doing which is perfect.

There's a ton of ways they can handle this bonus.

Probably the simplest is just a flat bonus to your chance to hit based on how good your aim is. Varying degrees based on how accurate your shot is. Center Mass +10, almost Center Mass +5, Head +3, Arms/Legs +2. Or something like that, they could make it much more gradual and detailed than that based on where you're aiming. If the Chance to Hit Bonus is a fixed value, independent of character level, this would rpobably help low level starting characters much more than higher level characters where you would see diminishing returns as you level up and increase you base stats. Which could be good for those people who dislike how somewhat unrealistically shit your character can be early on in the game. As a fixed bonus this would also likely reward engaging from a distance, at least from the start of battle.

Or, it could just be a second dice roll that if passed would trigger a re-roll of the Hit/Miss roll in the event of a Miss. Aim Center Mass and you get a 30% chance to re-roll a missed shot. This way you overall chance to hit stays the same but you get a second shot at it, which in the long run works to your favor. That said with this mechanic the effect would be far more subdued for low level characters. If you only have a 30% chance to hit getting a second try at that doesn't really mean a whole lot since your odds are still so low. You'll get a few extra hits here and there, but not so many that it dramatically turns the tide of combat. Where as higher level characters who have 70%+ chance to hit will see a more noticeable impact on their Hit/Miss ratio. This method would also likely reward players for close combat as that would naturally increase their base chance to hit so a re-roll would be more meaningful, compared to a ranged shot which would have a much lower chance to hit so a re-roll won't do you all that much good.

I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other ways to handle this as well. I think the characters stats should be the lion's share of what determines your Hit/Miss as this is supposed to be a reflection of their abilities, not the players, but given the nature of the game and the fact that the player has direct control as to where their character aims their weapon it would be silly to completely ignore in the outcome of shots. So some type of small, but meaningful, mechanic that influences that Hit/Miss equation based on the player's proficiency at aiming seems like the best solution to me.
 
Who cares? Does this skyrim have these weird misses also? I really don't remember. I hit with sword and it hit. That game was still a fine RPG.

Don't see how aiming makes this less of an RPG.
 
Who cares? Does this skyrim have these weird misses also? I really don't remember. I hit with sword and it hit. That game was still a fine RPG.

Don't see how aiming makes this less of an RPG.

Some fans of the older games and of New Vegas (made by obsidian) try to use everything they can to hate on Bethesda. We can't say something specific about this system yet since we have to see it to really judge it.
It sounds quite logical to me so far...
 
Personally I still want an RPG to be an RPG.

The game is still a RPG.

You are role playing as a badass survivor with a genetic make-up of a master gunman since Day 1.
However, for some reason, people want a character that is cross-eyed and can't aim for shit at point blank.
Those dice rolls brah....
 
The game is still a RPG.

You are role playing as a badass survivor with a genetic make-up of a master gunman since Day 1.
However, for some reason, people want a character that is cross-eyed and can't aim for shit at point blank.
Those dice rolls brah....

When your stats are low, yeah, that's what people want.

Just like they want a character who's got the HP of a piece of tissue paper when they start out with level 1 health, and who mumbles and stumbles through their words with a low speech skill and can't talk their way out of a paper bag. "Player skill" at navigating conversation doesn't help, so why should skill at aiming?

Player skill at lockpicking and hacking shouldn't matter either. If your skill's too low, you can't even attempt those 100 point locks and computers. Why should you have dead-eye perfect aim, even as you fumble with lockpicks and can barely find the power button of a computer?
 
The game is still a RPG.

You are role playing as a badass survivor with a genetic make-up of a master gunman since Day 1.
However, for some reason, people want a character that is cross-eyed and can't aim for shit at point blank.
Those dice rolls brah....
You know, in a stupid way it makes sense. The Sole Survivor is a Resource War veteran. Thus why they can use power armor from the start and an excuse as to why they'd be better with guns right off.


But that's a whole other can of worms. The stripping of player agency by heavily predefining the character.
 
When your stats are low, yeah, that's what people want.

Just like they want a character who's got the HP of a piece of tissue paper when they start out with level 1 health, and who mumbles and stumbles through their words with a low speech skill and can't talk their way out of a paper bag. "Player skill" at navigating conversation doesn't help, so why should skill at aiming?

Player skill at lockpicking and hacking shouldn't matter either. If your skill's too low, you can't even attempt those 100 point locks and computers. Why should you have dead-eye perfect aim, even as you fumble with lockpicks and can barely find the power button of a computer?
Because the act of shooting, as in pointing a gun at something, has a shit ton more interactivity than talking. It feels way more immersive were your skill has more of an effect on gameplay than stats.
 
When your stats are low, yeah, that's what people want.

Just like they want a character who's got the HP of a piece of tissue paper when they start out with level 1 health, and who mumbles and stumbles through their words with a low speech skill and can't talk their way out of a paper bag. "Player skill" at navigating conversation doesn't help, so why should skill at aiming?

Player skill at lockpicking and hacking shouldn't matter either. If your skill's too low, you can't even attempt those 100 point locks and computers. Why should you have dead-eye perfect aim, even as you fumble with lockpicks and can barely find the power button of a computer?

It is like how a rogue can equip a dagger from the start and later improve into using dual wield or specialize into a shitty thief with mugging and lockpicking skill.
And this game, you are playing a wasteland survivor that can use basic gun from the start and later improve into bigger higher tech weaponry.
Stats are just improving your basic role and expanding the characteristics that you want your role to have. But you shouldn't make him a cross-eyed or a blinded marksman until he gets optic implants.

But seriously, what kind of scrub calls them a wasteland survivor that can't shoot for shit? How the hell did he even survive that long?
 
People in this thread seem to be exaggerating the way it was before. Guns weren't 100% accurate but they were hitting pretty damn close to where you aimed and more often than not if your aim was on point and the enemy was in your weapon's effective range, you would hit them. Then again I'm always maxing guns so it might be a little different for some.

It sounds like they're making it a bit more about player skill than character stats, which is fine by me as long as rusty pistols don't become pinpoint accurate at 200 meters.
 
Well it is post apocolyptic plus an RPG, so I would say this would totally negate the need or use for skills at all.....

they could change it to damage modifier "oh you hit that but your toon sucks so 10 dmg instead of 100" but people would still bitch.

It's not supposed to be based on your skill its your characters skill, otherwise its just a FPS...
If your toon sucks then blame him he twitched or jerked or didn't clean the gun properly and you found the gun in a dumpster, what'd you expect that it would just be sighted perfectly?

If the animations during gunplay suggested as much then that would be fine. When I play modded Fallout 3, they do. My janky, shitty guns jam all the time, and my aim sways when I have low gun stat. In vanilla Fallout, I'm not gonna say 'my character's twitching' when what happened visually is 'my bullet left the gunbarrel and then turned left of its own volition somehow'
The game is still a RPG.

You are role playing as a badass survivor with a genetic make-up of a master gunman since Day 1.
However, for some reason, people want a character that is cross-eyed and can't aim for shit at point blank.
Those dice rolls brah....

That's not how I'm roleplaying. I'm rolling Baseball Enthusiast when I get my hands on Fallout 4. When I'm forced to shoot a gun, my relevant stats will be so low at first that I'll fully expect that shit to miss.

So I doubt they're going to do anything I'm about to mention, but I think it would be cool.

I think a really smart and fun way to handle this duality would be to have the stats directly affect the "physical" FPS aiming mechanics. Having low stats for areas that change your shooting effectiveness in VATS would then translate to wobbling, shaking, breathing sway, etc. in your weapons when you try to aim in first person.

Make it so aiming down the sights really means aiming down the physical front and rear sights, which you can see swinging and bobbing out of alignment if your stats are too low. It would significantly delay anyone trying to shoot accurately at a distance, and it would sort of turn it into a Golf-like minigame where you'd have to wait and pull the trigger at just the right time when everything was lined up - the timing for that would be unpredictable if multiple forms of movement were layered on top of each other (breathing undulation, micro hand quiver/shake, and macro shake/sway).

Meanwhile, if you ran up to melee range, none of that would matter and you could plug away at the enemy just as your character would regardless of low shooting stats.

Basically the idea you'd be working with here is a tradeoff between time and accuracy. VATS operates on a constant timeline, but choosing to use it means dealing with a variable accuracy rating that may cause a miss. Meanwhile choosing to shoot in FPS mode would penalize the player with time by forcing them wait until their sights align to give them a good shot, all in exchange for the ability to hit accurately if they do manage to pull the trigger at the right moment.

EDIT: To be clear, the turbulence of this weapon sway would scale with applicable skills. So if you had absolutely no points put into anything related to weapon accuracy, then your FPS aiming would look like you're in an earthquake and show your character's hand and weapon making wide swings around the entire screen, making hitting anything farther than point blank effectively impossible (even point blank would be hard, like they would literally aim almost straight up or to the side at certain points in the swinging motion with 0 stats). Meanwhile nearly maxed out stats would be similar to Call of Duty or Battlefield where your character is a machine and keeps the aim perfectly level and steady. Everything else in between would just be closer or further to one or the other

High five. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm hoping for and as far as I can tell by the combat trailer that's exactly what Bethesda is going for too.

That's also basically exactly how I mod my gunplay out to be when I play Fallout 3 and to a lesser extent New Vegas. (New Vegas supported iron sights out of the box. Fallout 3 didn't, but the modded-in version is a lot more like what you're describing than what even the best mods to NV's gunplay work to achieve.)
 
I don't like this but oh well.. I guess good thing is that now I can put my points on lockpick and speech or on other things early on instead of wasting them on small guns skill.
 
So many people wanting this to be a pure shooter is so damn depressing. There are plenty of shooters already. Just let it be an RPG.

I played 3 and NV using pretty much VATS only. And that's one of the great things that made it unique.
Not everyone likes VATS. Why get depressed? It doesn't sound like this will affect you at all.
 
This sounds fine to me. If you aim well with the controller/mouse then you shouldn't be punished too much for your accuracy. It makes perfect sense. Otherwise use VATS which is entirely stat dependant.
 
Don't like how Fallout transforms more to an action game a la Mass Effect with light RPG elements tagged on. I usually only play with VATS because that's how I've played it since Fallout 2. If you don't skill your gun efficiency then you're not supposed to shoot everything away like a pro sniper. Simple.
 
We can have a whole other discussion about how to strike the right balance between an action game and an RPG, but the thing is, Bethesda is still mainly an RPG developer. That's its history, and because of that I still think combat in Fallout 4 will still feel more like an RPG than an action game. It's the same reason combat in The Witcher isn't on the same level as Dragon's Dogma -- a game made by some of the guys responsible for Devil May Cry.
 
Awesome news, it was always really weird missing some shots that even a blind man would hit cuz of some RNG shenanigans. They should just focus on increasing dmg or the chance of critical hits the more points you have in shooting.
 
Don't like how Fallout transforms more to an action game a la Mass Effect with light RPG elements tagged on. I usually only play with VATS because that's how I've played it since Fallout 2. If you don't skill your gun efficiency then you're not supposed to shoot everything away like a pro sniper. Simple.

The skill stats are necessary even without the accuracy benefits because they increase damage. Things are very hard to kill even when you hit them with low stats.
 
MY issue is that after Skyrim, i don't trust Bethesda whenever they announce they are overhauling something.

cause that usually means dumbing down or taking away variety for the sake of simplicity.

and when i say simple, i don't mean streamlined, i mean less options or more rudimentary choices.
 
Don't like how Fallout transforms more to an action game a la Mass Effect with light RPG elements tagged on. I usually only play with VATS because that's how I've played it since Fallout 2. If you don't skill your gun efficiency then you're not supposed to shoot everything away like a pro sniper. Simple.

Then you must die A LOT. You only have so many AP and once they're gone they take a while to regenerate. You always had to rely on real-time combat in FO3 even if you tried to stick to VATS because VATS wasn't unlimited.
 
Game gets worse by the minute.
Just like your posts.

If you’re good at aiming, says Howard, you can compensate somewhat for lower stats. But not entirely

Sounds like it's still very stat-driven. And it's Bethesda, so of course it will be. They aren't action game designers. They make RPG's.

Roll on the overreactions, though!

EDIT: Yup, just about everybody is overreacting massively, as always.
Yup it's always the same people to, the ones that are obsidian fanboys that love to shit on everything bethesda.

As an aside, this topic just further reinforces the fact that FO3 is horrible in comparison to New Vegas.

Actually, even by itself.
You are wrong, there's no two ways around it.

That's great and all, but FO4 isn't a shooter with RPG elements. It's an RPG with shooter elements. Hence the character attributes and their effect on your performance.

Stalker doesn't even have an attribute system, so the comparison is a bit of an ill fit.

Edit: I'm actually getting a headache from some of the replies here. Holy fucking shit it's obvious some people just want a COD with dialogue wheels. RPG fans my ass.
No but I don't think it's fair to automatically assume that because they are making the shooting better along with RPG stats like they had in the previous fallouts. it's going to make the game terrible or they want it to be COD with RPG.
If they have it where you need to level up specific skills to get shooting better but that some shots will hit the target before if you aim right, there will be nothing wrong with that. It really seems like a ton of overreactions.
 
This is sad news.

What is the point in investing skill points in firearms if you can be laser-precise from the start? I hope weapons malfunction and there's horrible gun sway unless you rank up. Otherwise you just broke the game Bethesda.
 
So I can spend all those points on stealth, steal a fairly acurate weapon and somehow be still be the top sniper in the entire US armed forces? Neat.
Also people, install Tale of Two Wastelands and never touch FO3 again.
 
Why is it a downturn to allow for some skill in a RPG?

I guess Mass Effect etc are my favourites.. so that's kind of my bag anyway, but still...

You want to be good with Guns? You want skill? Invest skill points in that section. It's an RPG, if your guy is shit in guns, he has no skill.
 
If that really were the case, player skill would be irrelevant and outcomes would be determined by character skill (or lack thereof).

RPG's have to take player skill entirely out of the equation? If player skill is in play, it's not much of an RPG? That seems narrow-minded.
 
Personally I would like to see the whole vats and stat-based aim go entirely. There are other ways to have rpg character progress in FPS games. give me stalker-like shooting (but better ofc)!
 
Top Bottom