acidstrider said:
So what you're saying is that horrible bugs made the starting area go hostile to you. Then you go on listing several illogical things about the story. Though if you hadn't ran into these bugs (I have never ever heard of Goodsprings going hostile, by the way), you'd have noticed the following in your romp through the sleepy little town:
1. You can ask around town for your attackers, and eventually find out who they were, what they did and where they went.
2. At least two people will mention that the road north is unsafe, and that if you want to find the people who killed you you're going to have to go the same way they did: southeast. The deathclaws at Quarry Junction are there for the explicit purpose of deterring low-level players from taking the short route to Vegas and missing out on the story and pacing the developers had intended; thus the bugs and nonsensical conversation when you got there. You're not supposed to go through Quarry Junction to get to New Vegas, the developers took precautions to MAKE SURE you wouldn't, and thus they didn't take it into much consideration.
3. You meet that robot two or three times on your way to New Vegas, if you go along the supposed route.
4. There are alternate ways to get into New Vegas other than paying 2000 caps. Look around Freeside, find out who's in charge.
In short, you suffered a few bad bugs in the beginning that crippled your game and based your opinion on that. From the controller comment at the end, I have to assume you're playing the 360 or PS3 version; these are MUCH buggier than the PC version. That's not fanboyism, that's a fact. You can look at New Vegas' bug page on http://fallout.wikia.com and I guarantee you'll find more PS3 and 360 bugs than PC ones.
As for the setting, quests, etc... I liked it. Which ones did you actually do? Try doing Veronica's companion quest (companions are MUCH more likeable this time around; they actually have personalities instead of just being armed and armored loot wagons with bad pathfinding), Restoring Hope, I Put A Spell On You, Beyond The Beef... I admit that some side quests aren't very original and a bit repetitive (did I spell that right?), but come on. There are more than a hundred of quests of varying kinds in New Vegas. Not all of them are marked in your quest log. There's just a whole frickin' lot more to do than Fallout 3 by any measure, and I can't seem to remember even Fallout 1 and 2 having that much to do. I'm not saying that quantity > quality, but quantity > scarcity.
So yeah. Get the PC version, wait for a patch, or just take the Wild Wasteland to give some perspective to all the crazy shit that happens. And please go south. No offense, but when you got killed by Deathclaws several times over, didn't it occur to you that finding another way might be a better idea?