The Outer Worlds Impressions - Oh.....I get it now

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

The "dilemma" in Emerald Vale is laughable for how one sided it is. I mean they even try and give each side a "dark element" to them, but it's pretty lopsided given what we are shown from the opening moments of the game.

Eh? Laughably one-sided? I spent a while thinking about it, and the actually decent solution I came up with only worked because I'm roleplaying a rebellious idiot type character who isn't afraid of a little murder.

Spoiler

I mean, at it's core, you're deciding which pack of average joes should risk starvation.

Yes, Spacer's Choice are complete murderous assholes, Edgewater is led by a pompous douche and all the corps deserve to be taken down, but the regular townspeople don't know anything different, and probably wouldn't be able to eat/survive if the cannery is shut down.

Yes, the Deserters are overly idealistic and unrealistic, but many of their members either won't return home due to their justified hatred of Spacer's Choice, or CAN'T go home because they've basically been kicked out because they got the flu or because they were fired for incompetence.

Either way, innocent people get at best screwed over, or at worst die. The grunts who don't know anything other than assembly line work and might starve with the factory out of order, or people who have been crushed by the corporations might starve if their garden and refrigeration fails.

Fortunately, as I said, I'm playing a rebellious idiot who's ok with violence. So, he gunned down the leader of Edgewater in cold blood because "The fish really DOES rot from the head down!", redirected the power back to the town, and told the old deserter lady that she should run the town instead, allowing the deserters back in. Basically, nobody really "wins", but only one person lost, and they were a prick anyway.

Granted, I don't think it changes all that much on the ground level (I haven't gone back to check on the town since I left), but having that actually work as an option and the game recognize that was pretty great.

It's led to me noting which NPCs are behind bulletproof glass and which ones aren't, in case I feel like pre-empting the narrative and killing them to solve a problem. Nearly did it again to the Board dude on the Groundbreaker purely on principle once I heard "I'm afraid Organ Harvesting is quite normal and called for in this person's case", and only didn't because the Persuade/Idiot option "Why can't the two of you just work together?" actually worked.

I just enjoy when a game gives you the ability to take options like that, or at least let you completely fuck the situation up.

 

[sXeth]

The "dilemma" in Emerald Vale is laughable for how one sided it is. I mean they even try and give each side a "dark element" to them, but it's pretty lopsided given what we are shown from the opening moments of the game.

Eh? Laughably one-sided? I spent a while thinking about it, and the actually decent solution I came up with only worked because I'm roleplaying a rebellious idiot type character who isn't afraid of a little murder.

Spoiler

I mean, at it's core, you're deciding which pack of average joes should risk starvation.

Yes, Spacer's Choice are complete murderous assholes, Edgewater is led by a pompous douche and all the corps deserve to be taken down, but the regular townspeople don't know anything different, and probably wouldn't be able to eat/survive if the cannery is shut down.

Yes, the Deserters are overly idealistic and unrealistic, but many of their members either won't return home due to their justified hatred of Spacer's Choice, or CAN'T go home because they've basically been kicked out because they got the flu or because they were fired for incompetence.

Either way, innocent people get at best screwed over, or at worst die. The grunts who don't know anything other than assembly line work and might starve with the factory out of order, or people who have been crushed by the corporations might starve if their garden and refrigeration fails.

Fortunately, as I said, I'm playing a rebellious idiot who's ok with violence. So, he gunned down the leader of Edgewater in cold blood because "The fish really DOES rot from the head down!", redirected the power back to the town, and told the old deserter lady that she should run the town instead, allowing the deserters back in. Basically, nobody really "wins", but only one person lost, and they were a prick anyway.

Granted, I don't think it changes all that much on the ground level (I haven't gone back to check on the town since I left), but having that actually work as an option and the game recognize that was pretty great.

It's led to me noting which NPCs are behind bulletproof glass and which ones aren't, in case I feel like pre-empting the narrative and killing them to solve a problem. Nearly did it again to the Board dude on the Groundbreaker purely on principle once I heard "I'm afraid Organ Harvesting is quite normal and called for in this person's case", and only didn't because the Persuade/Idiot option "Why can't the two of you just work together?" actually worked.

I just enjoy when a game gives you the ability to take options like that, or at least let you completely fuck the situation up.

You essentially just literally did the one actual path that completes that quest. I mean, you shot someone instead of persuading them to leave (it might not even be a persuasion required), but thats how that quest is meant to play out.

IF you do any other outcome the quest just dead ends and goes incomplete,

Spoiler

Route power to Deserters > Reed leaves, you shoot a couple of guards to take the power thing. Town general store shuts down but no one goes anywhere.

Route power to the town > triggers the reconciliation quest, but if you back Reed the Deserters just keep hanging out, no one moves, and a single store is lost at the Deserter post.

To actually resolve the quest (And solve the graverobbing), you have to talk to the Vicar, who tells you to power the town then see if you can resolve things as a hint (PArvati will also try and get you to do that at the console if you take her), route power to the town, then talk the deserters over. Who won't go unless you remove Reed.


That was kind of the thing I noted. Only one choice (that is heavily pushed by Vicar Max and PArvati) actually is fleshed out. The other choices don't even have a cursory mirroring to maintain status quo, they just abruptly stop dead.

 

[TopazFusion]

For those on PC, my advice would be to head on over to the game's PCGW page and follow the instructions for disabling "chromatic aberration". (I fucking hate this thing, and I have no idea why so many games use it. It literally makes my eyes hurt, and that's not an exaggeration.) Disabling this also has the added benefit of sharping up the graphics and improving graphical fidelity.

You can also disable mouse acceleration (highly recommended), and other useful things like disabling the intro movies. They also suggest increasing the font GUI scale to 1.15 which actually looks really nice (anything higher than this means things get cropped off the sides of the screen, at least on 1080p).

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

You do know that saying we haven't had a "good" FO game is just an opinion right? That's not an objective fact, because enjoyment isn't quantifiable, and varies from person to person. Because I found FO 4 to be a very enjoyable game. And I'm not sure what you consider a long time, but a handful of years isn't really that long.

Boils down to your expectations of the franchise and whether you're a goal-oriented or journey/exploration-oriented gamer.

If you're a goal-oriented gamer with the requisite game knowledge, not even a dedicated speedrunner, you can beat FO1 in about a half hour: Necropolis for the water chip if you like, military base, cathedral, Bob's your uncle. FO2 takes about the same time: straight to San Fran, whack Ken Lee, get access to the oil rig, get the GECK, blow the rig and escape. FO:NV takes about an hour, assuming you're not glitching: run straight to the Strip, kill Benny, kill House, blast through the factional wrap-ups, install the chip, deal with Kendall, and talk your way through Lanius.

By comparison, Morrowind takes about a half hour too and that's a forgiving figure, since all you need to do is abuse Almsivi Intervention and Icarian Flight to teleport to Ald'ruhn, hop over the Ghostfence to grab Sunder and Keening, then straight into Dagoth Ur to destroy the heart.

Meanwhile, FO3 takes about two hours: go straight to Tranquility Lane, then off to Rivet City and Citadel, Project Purity, grab the GECK, Raven Rock, and back to Project Purity. FO4 takes something like two or three, I've never tried it: rescue Valentine, off to Fort Hagen, Memory Lane and Virgil, build the teleporter with the Minutemen since you get the requisite rep by default, then complete the main quest with the Railroad since they offer the quickest and most straightforward endgame.

Where I'm going with this, is FO3/4 have a distinct design philosophy that sets them apart from the other games with more appeal to goal-oriented gamers: they have clearly-defined progression paths, and the games' main story paths are divided into smaller, gated, "acts" which must be completed in order. The macro-scale gameplay loop is to acquire and clear out side quests, progress to the next act, and repeat until completion; Oblivion and Skyrim follow the same design philosophy, in contrast to Daggerfall and Morrowind.

The end result being more deliberate, controlled pacing with metered rewards. I hesitate to call it "sequence breaking" in the case of FO1, FO2, FONV, and Morrowind since those games are only vaguely structured in the first place, but in the case of FO3, FO4, Oblivion, and Skyrim, it's very much an issue of "sequence enforcing". The time spent between beginning and end in that former group are entirely what the player makes of it; that is not the case in the latter group.

 

[sXeth]

The end result being more deliberate, controlled pacing with metered rewards. I hesitate to call it "sequence breaking" in the case of FO1, FO2, FONV, and Morrowind since those games are only vaguely structured in the first place, but in the case of FO3, FO4, Oblivion, and Skyrim, it's very much an issue of "sequence enforcing". The time spent between beginning and end in that former group are entirely what the player makes of it; that is not the case in the latter group.

New Vegas has a fairly obvious sequence if you follow the intended path, rather then wiki/fluking your way through otherwise impassable deathclaw/cazador hellscapes to break it. With the same full on scripted events to introduce factions that you run into FAllout 4, albeit nothing so cinematic as the airship showing up.


One of the big issues with FO4 (And Skyrim) was really the radiant stuff. Not even so much that it was there, but the sheer unwillingness to vaguely curate it to be sensible. If they had it sprial outwards from a starting zone into ever-more exotic locales, and introduced some kind of control to actually give locations you hadn't visited instead of repeating ad nauseum, that might've worked out as a functional system to sort of organically structure the open world. Instead they have nonsense RNG where people dropped their wallet in an active volcano on the other side of the world at level 1, and the same raiders keep repopulating that building across the street every other day.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The end result being more deliberate, controlled pacing with metered rewards. I hesitate to call it "sequence breaking" in the case of FO1, FO2, FONV, and Morrowind since those games are only vaguely structured in the first place, but in the case of FO3, FO4, Oblivion, and Skyrim, it's very much an issue of "sequence enforcing". The time spent between beginning and end in that former group are entirely what the player makes of it; that is not the case in the latter group.

New Vegas has a fairly obvious sequence if you follow the intended path, rather then wiki/fluking your way through otherwise impassable deathclaw/cazador hellscapes to break it. With the same full on scripted events to introduce factions that you run into FAllout 4, albeit nothing so cinematic as the airship showing up.

So does Fo1, Fo2 and Morrowind too. Fallout sort of assumes you will head to Shady Sands then Junktown then the Hub and it is around there it opens up. Fo2 expects you to go to Klamath, then the Den, then Vault City and after that New Reno. Morrowind clearly points you to Balmora, from where you will go to Ald'ruhn early on and then send you on missions around the southern part of the map before eventually sending you up north.

These games have a clear progression you need to follow unless you know exactly what you are doing (good luck beating an Enclave Patrol at level 2). It is only after multiple playthroughs (or online guides) that you can ever sequence break the whole game by making a beeline straight to the end game quests. For players who haven't memorized the locations of plot critical items and the correct set of skills (and in the case of Morrowind, the alchemy/enchantment exploit) it is impossible to just skip large swathes of the story. Ironically, Fallout 3 is probably the game of the lot where sequence breaking is the easiest, as a bunch of people reported finding Dad by accident while exploring when the game released (thus skipping over meeting Three Dog, the BoS and Rivet City and essentially cutting out the first half of the story). I've yet to come across anyone who played Fo 1/2/NV or Morrowind who accidentally found the water chip, stumbled upon Navarro, persisted in heading through Quarry Junction or found Keening and Sunder by mistake. All four of those games heavily encourage the player to follow the intended progression, if only because the end game enemies will murderdeathkill the player and skill checks are nigh impossible to beat for a low level character.

 

[Erttheking]

Haven?t had a lot of time to play it but so far so good. Enjoying the world, presentation, and just the overall feel of it. Will report back when I actually get out of Edgewater.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

New Vegas has a fairly obvious sequence if you follow the intended path...

...Fallout sort of assumes you will head to Shady Sands then Junktown then the Hub and it is around there it opens up. Fo2 expects you to go to Klamath, then the Den, then Vault City and after that New Reno. Morrowind clearly points you to Balmora, from where you will go to Ald'ruhn early on and then send you on missions around the southern part of the map before eventually sending you up north.

These games have a clear progression you need to follow unless you know exactly what you are doing...

I don't think you're exactly getting my point, here. FO1, FO2, NV, and Morrowind have progression paths laid out through breadcrumbs and dialogue, but it's not enforced on the player. There are 1-2 key objectives the player must accomplish, and the endgame, but no more. Morrowind takes to such a degree players can whack essentials left and right, get the message about the game no longer being possible to complete, but proceed to complete it anyways because all the information you actually need about Kagrenac's tools and the Heart actually come from books and notes you pick up from those same NPC's.

Spoiler

You might argue by doing this you're not actually completing the game, just defeating Dagoth Ur without actually fulfilling the Nerevarine prophecy...but bear in mind two things. One, Elder Scrolls don't obey the laws of time or causality as understood, their content changes depending on who is reading them and when -- the same person reading the same scroll twice won't get the same message. Their text is only "finalized" once the events occur, and until that point, their content is actually what the reader must do to ensure its related prophecy comes to pass.

Two, the Neverarine prophecy wasn't from an Elder Scroll in the first place, but rather Azura. Azura may be the most benign and straightforward of all Daedric princes by mortal standards, but she's still a Daedric prince and the prophecy was her promise of revenge against the Tribunal for having betrayed Nerevar and misappropriated the Tools and Heart for their own use. The prophecy was one of the Scrolls' topics as a major event that would dictate Tamriel's future, but a Scroll wasn't the prophecy's origin.

So, in any case the Nerevarine prophecy as understood may have been a red herring all along, either to initiate the events that would lead to the Tribunal's downfall, or to hide the Nerevarine's true movements from the Tribunal.

This is why I feel it's important to make that distinction between sequence breaking and sequence enforcement. I don't necessarily consider it sequence breaking to bypass a series of intended, but not enforced, events or locations; the key is whether that intended progression path is enforced upon the player by some gating mechanism. Finding James in Tranquility Lane straight away isn't necessarily sequence breaking, but getting into Vault 87 without going through Little Lamplight is.

That's where the distinction lies. FO1, FO2, FONV, and Morrowind aren't heavily gated; FO3, FO4, Oblivion, and Skyrim are. The funny thing about FO:NV in relation to this:

...Fallout 3 is probably the game of the lot where sequence breaking is the easiest, as a bunch of people reported finding Dad by accident while exploring when the game released...

is my memory of FO:NV is quite different. The player is straight up told they can go straight to the Strip at the game's beginning, if they can figure out a way past the cazadors and deathclaws; they're just warned about it. Lots of players didn't think to follow the NPC's advice and take the longer route through Primm, Nipton, Searchlight, and follow Route 95 north, and complained getting to the Strip was too difficult. Or, they managed to get to the Strip and had no idea what was going on, or thought the game too short, because they skipped the entire first "act" and its world-building.

 

[happyninja42]

The "dilemma" in Emerald Vale is laughable for how one sided it is. I mean they even try and give each side a "dark element" to them, but it's pretty lopsided given what we are shown from the opening moments of the game.

Eh? Laughably one-sided? I spent a while thinking about it, and the actually decent solution I came up with only worked because I'm roleplaying a rebellious idiot type character who isn't afraid of a little murder.

Spoiler

I mean, at it's core, you're deciding which pack of average joes should risk starvation.

Yes, Spacer's Choice are complete murderous assholes, Edgewater is led by a pompous douche and all the corps deserve to be taken down, but the regular townspeople don't know anything different, and probably wouldn't be able to eat/survive if the cannery is shut down.

Yes, the Deserters are overly idealistic and unrealistic, but many of their members either won't return home due to their justified hatred of Spacer's Choice, or CAN'T go home because they've basically been kicked out because they got the flu or because they were fired for incompetence.

Either way, innocent people get at best screwed over, or at worst die. The grunts who don't know anything other than assembly line work and might starve with the factory out of order, or people who have been crushed by the corporations might starve if their garden and refrigeration fails.

Fortunately, as I said, I'm playing a rebellious idiot who's ok with violence. So, he gunned down the leader of Edgewater in cold blood because "The fish really DOES rot from the head down!", redirected the power back to the town, and told the old deserter lady that she should run the town instead, allowing the deserters back in. Basically, nobody really "wins", but only one person lost, and they were a prick anyway.

Granted, I don't think it changes all that much on the ground level (I haven't gone back to check on the town since I left), but having that actually work as an option and the game recognize that was pretty great.

It's led to me noting which NPCs are behind bulletproof glass and which ones aren't, in case I feel like pre-empting the narrative and killing them to solve a problem. Nearly did it again to the Board dude on the Groundbreaker purely on principle once I heard "I'm afraid Organ Harvesting is quite normal and called for in this person's case", and only didn't because the Persuade/Idiot option "Why can't the two of you just work together?" actually worked.

I just enjoy when a game gives you the ability to take options like that, or at least let you completely fuck the situation up.

Yes it is one sided if it's supposed to be presented as a moral dilemma, which is what they tried to do. But if you actually look at the different views of the 2 groups, it's really no contest.

Spoiler

If you give power to the town, this, in theory, makes the people at the greenhouse, go back. But to what? The society of Emerald Vale is dying, literally. Their entire philosophy is profoundly stupid and flawed, and the addition of more people doesn't solve the underlying issues of their society, it just means more people will slowly die as they milk them for every penny of profit. They promote a form of religious slavery based on determinism and the teleological argument, and use it to literally own people from the moment they are born, to even after they are dead. They withhold medicine on the flawed idea that "sickness = laziness and flawed morality, so you deserve to be sick" which is a notion that died back in the Victorian era, so I find it the height of absurdity to see it again in a space faring culture with the access to science they have. They are feeding them filth that is slowly killing them, depriving them of needed medication to stay alive, and fining them for everything under the sun. So that's the Establishment Route, if you want to label it, and while it's an option, if you are trying for a "good" route, it's clearly a terrible one.

Then there is the Greenhouse Route. Basically, everything presented about their group is a direct opposite to Spacer's Choice philosophy, and is shown so far to be the better method of living on that planet. The people are not enslaved to a task they may not want to do, because The Law of Science says it's their Determined path. They eat food that is far more healthy for them, and is apparently good enough to keep them from getting sick going forward (possibly due to a more balanced diet providing all necessary nutrients compared to just saltuna all day. The people work, help each other, and are attempting to terraform the soil to become totally sustainable. The only negative aspect presented about them, is if you find the grave robbing, which is presented just as poorly as a negative side. Pavarti tries to argue "you don't give them a choice if they wanted to be fertilizer." Which I fail to see as being a valid argument, for someone who is from Spacer's Choice, and entire culture built on NOT having choice. This is actually a recurring point they hammer home in the dialogue in Emerald Vale. How whatever job Spacer's Choice tells you to do, that's what you are supposed to do, because you don't actually have choice, it's all predetermined. So to cry foul that a person who has no choice at all, has no choice over what happens to their corpse, is laughable. And it's not even a bad thing they are doing. They are on a colony, on a planet that isn't biologically compatible with human life, so they have to provide soil enrichment to sustain agriculture. This isn't a new thing, it's an incredibly common trope in scifi colony stories, how the colonists will eventually be recycled into the ecosystem, to help sustain the crops they live off of. Adelaide is not wrong when she says that death feeds life, and the nutrients in a human corpse can provide a lot of valuable crops with food to enrich the soil. That's pretty much the only negative thing presented about them prior to making the choice.

AFTER you side with them, Adelaide does make a comment about "keeping things pure" implying they won't allow everyone to join their group, because devout Choicer's will likely try and sabotage their efforts (which given their philosophy, is likely to happen really). So you have to accept that some of the people will die in Emerald Vale because of your choice. But if you side with Emerald Vale, they're all going to die anyway. There is NOTHING good about how Spacer's Choice runs that town. It's a flawed setup from the foundation, that is doomed to slow failure, and death to all involved. So to pick between the slow death of everyone in a festering pit of a town, choking on rancid meat in cans, or helping a group that has at least something of the basis for a sustainable system on the planet, yeah I'm siding with the Greenhouse.

So no, I don't call that an actual "moral dilemma" by how it's presented to us. Which is clearly what Obsidian tried to make it based on how the two groups talk.

 

[Dansen]

Well after another 12 or so hours with the game I wanted to give and update on the impressions I originally had.

Namely, combat is not great. It's actually kind of bad imo. The gun play nor the melee is fun enough to want to actively do combat and I found myself letting my companions do all the work because I simply can't be bothered, also they do way more damage than I do for some reason even though I'm upgrading my equipment and barely giving them anything. So I really don't understand that. Also explain to me how my 81 dps mace deals way more damage than my 320dps handgun? Can anyone explain that shit? Because all my damage stats are in guns, so why do the guns suck? I don't get it.

DPS is a misleading stat. Each swing of the mace probably does way more than each your bullets, it just takes more time to swing than shoot. Say you can shoot 3 bullets in 1 sec outputting 1 dmg each, it gives you a dps of 3. Compare that to a mace that does 3 dmg each swing but takes 3 seconds to swing, its dps is 1. You can do damage quicker but you need to land more hits to do the same damage as the mace. A super attack that does 60 damage every minute has a dps of 1.

Basically low dps doesn't mean low damage depending on how frequently you can attack. MH has the opposite problem, I think weapons show raw damage so the big slow weapons look stronger than the small fast ones at face value. In reality you can get similar levels of damage between weapons if you are using them optimally.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

DPS is a misleading stat. Each swing of the mace probably does way more than each your bullets, it just takes more time to swing than shoot. Say you can shoot 3 bullets in 1 sec outputting 1 dmg each, it gives you a dps of 3. Compare that to a mace that does 3 dmg each swing but takes 3 seconds to swing, its dps is 1. You can do damage quicker but you need to land more hits to do the same damage as the mace. A super attack that does 60 damage every minute has a dps of 1.

Basically low dps doesn't mean low damage depending on how frequently you can attack. MH has the opposite problem, I think weapons show raw damage so the big slow weapons look stronger than the small fast ones at face value. In reality you can get similar levels of damage between weapons if you are using them optimally.

"DPS" is a bullshit, irrelevant stat in nine out of ten games its shown in stats or paper dolls...and frankly, in that tenth game, its relevance is at best dubious, circumstantial, and puts stupid ideas in players' heads about how one might best proceed. Pretty much your first, best test when it comes to detecting bullshit in "DPS" is whether the game's multiplayer and competitive. OW is neither, so there's no point considering "DPS" at all.

Underscoring this fact, is even having just watched a bit of YT video one can figure out OW's armor and damage formulae more closely align with FO:NV's than other comparable FPSRPG's, in that armor rating provides normalized or flat benefits as opposed to proportional benefits. Googling it, it seems to be a flat reduction in damage dealt on a per-hit basis, which puts it in the same camp as FO:NV in that slower and harder hits are always better against armored targets, while rapid-fire, high "DPS", weapons only function as advertised against unarmored or weakly-armored targets.

 

[happyninja42]

DPS is a misleading stat. Each swing of the mace probably does way more than each your bullets, it just takes more time to swing than shoot. Say you can shoot 3 bullets in 1 sec outputting 1 dmg each, it gives you a dps of 3. Compare that to a mace that does 3 dmg each swing but takes 3 seconds to swing, its dps is 1. You can do damage quicker but you need to land more hits to do the same damage as the mace. A super attack that does 60 damage every minute has a dps of 1.

Basically low dps doesn't mean low damage depending on how frequently you can attack. MH has the opposite problem, I think weapons show raw damage so the big slow weapons look stronger than the small fast ones at face value. In reality you can get similar levels of damage between weapons if you are using them optimally.

"DPS" is a bullshit, irrelevant stat in nine out of ten games its shown in stats or paper dolls...and frankly, in that tenth game, its relevance is at best dubious, circumstantial, and puts stupid ideas in players' heads about how one might best proceed. Pretty much your first, best test when it comes to detecting bullshit in "DPS" is whether the game's multiplayer and competitive. OW is neither, so there's no point considering "DPS" at all.

Underscoring this fact, is even having just watched a bit of YT video one can figure out OW's armor and damage formulae more closely align with FO:NV's than other comparable FPSRPG's, in that armor rating provides normalized or flat benefits as opposed to proportional benefits. Googling it, it seems to be a flat reduction in damage dealt on a per-hit basis, which puts it in the same camp as FO:NV in that slower and harder hits are always better against armored targets, while rapid-fire, high "DPS", weapons only function as advertised against unarmored or weakly-armored targets.

See I'd like to think that's the case, but I've been finding results that directly contradict what the game tells me is best for different enemies. For example, it says shock damage is great against automechanicals. Ok fine, I have a really powerful tactical shotgun that does a ton of damage, and I modded the ammo to be shock. I have it for my robot slaying. And yet, when I actually use it on robots, it hardly seems to phase them, and my companions constantly yell out that it's not working, implying the damage type isn't ideal for that enemy. So I switch over to plasma, which is supposed to be best against organics, and it just eats the robots alive.

So...yeah I don't really get their rock/paper/scissors system for damage/armor, because it doesn't seem to pan out in the actual play.

 

[IceForce]

On the subject of damage vs "DPS", there's a setting in the options menu that lets you change the default weapon info display from "DPS" to "damage" or vice versa. Not sure if this is helpful to anyone or not.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

See I'd like to think that's the case, but I've been finding results that directly contradict...it doesn't seem to pan out in the actual play.

It is the case, and that is how it pans out in actual play. There are a couple intervening variables you have to take into account.

Don't forget shotguns fire multiple pellets, that individually do less damage each but total up to the paper doll value. Which means the game will check versus armor rating not against the sum total of hit pellets, but on a per-pellet basis. In games like these, they're always to be considered in the same "niche" as burst-fire or automatic-fire weapons for this reason.

Plasma and shock have their own armor rating values to check against, but it seems to be the case that's almost always equal to physical armor rating. What matching damage type does, is apply a coefficient to damage dealt, but I couldn't tell you when in the order of operations said check and application occurs (my gut tells me it's after armor reduction). Even though mechanicals are "weak" against shock damage, their heavy armor will still apply and that will mitigate far more than the bonus from matching damage types.

I'm guessing from the context of your post you're using the plasma rifle, which is thoroughly in the "slow but heavy hitting" category especially with the charge feature. So, it's working as intended, you're just not accounting for the second rock-paper-scissors mechanic the game doesn't exactly make obvious, but is nothing new to anyone who's played FONV extensively: how weapon damage and armor interact. So, if you'd stuck your Mag-2-Zap mod inside a revolver, for example, you'd be seeing much stronger returns when using it versus automechanicals.

Assuming a major bug didn't make it to retail, and something goofy is happening like physical armor ratings are applying when they shouldn't.

 

[happyninja42]

And as of about an hour ago, once I got to Roseway, the game has developed a bug where it locks up on an infinite load screen anytime I try and transition from one location to another, or even just load up my save file at this point.

So that's nice.

 

[Erttheking]

Just got the system to open up and this game is just making me smile so much. The companions, the way I spin to try and find solutions to problems, the weapons, the look, it's just fun and endearing.

I stopped playing because I couldn't play anymore because I was getting tired. Not many games do that to me nowadays. I'm having a grand old time.

Next stop, Roseway.

 

[CritialGaming]

Just got the system to open up and this game is just making me smile so much. The companions, the way I spin to try and find solutions to problems, the weapons, the look, it's just fun and endearing.

I stopped playing because I couldn't play anymore because I was getting tired. Not many games do that to me nowadays. I'm having a grand old time.

Next stop, Roseway.

Nice to see you loving a game Ert. I don't think I've ever seen you genuinely love on a game on this forum, at least not in a long time. Gratz.

 

[Erttheking]

Just got the system to open up and this game is just making me smile so much. The companions, the way I spin to try and find solutions to problems, the weapons, the look, it's just fun and endearing.

I stopped playing because I couldn't play anymore because I was getting tired. Not many games do that to me nowadays. I'm having a grand old time.

Next stop, Roseway.

Nice to see you loving a game Ert. I don't think I've ever seen you genuinely love on a game on this forum, at least not in a long time. Gratz.

Honestly I post mostly on SpaceBattles nowadays. But even then, I distinctly recall going to bat for Fire Emblem Three Houses. Adored that game.

 

[happyninja42]

Just got the system to open up and this game is just making me smile so much. The companions, the way I spin to try and find solutions to problems, the weapons, the look, it's just fun and endearing.

I stopped playing because I couldn't play anymore because I was getting tired. Not many games do that to me nowadays. I'm having a grand old time.

Next stop, Roseway.

Be careful on Roseway, as that is where I've run into the "loadscreen lockup" bug. Never saw it anywhere else when I was planet hopping, and I haven't seen it anywhere else since leaving Roseway to test the bug out. So, while it's hardly conclusive, it seems that the bug is (for me anyway) exclusive to Roseway. So, save often .

Also, I've noticed a weird bug when using my new sniper rifle I found on Roseway. I was testing out it's range and hitting power, and wanted to see how accurate it was at max range. So I went to the point where the enemies despawned due to draw distance while aiming through my scope, and shot them.

Since Outer Worlds apparently adopted Skyrims physics engine of "excess damage to a target translates to vertical velocity, thus launching them into space" it means that when I would snipe these raiders, and it flung them back (outside of my draw distance), it would apparently despawn them entirely. So, no loot. So that's fun. :/

 

[happyninja42]

You do know that saying we haven't had a "good" FO game is just an opinion right? That's not an objective fact, because enjoyment isn't quantifiable, and varies from person to person. Because I found FO 4 to be a very enjoyable game. And I'm not sure what you consider a long time, but a handful of years isn't really that long.

Boils down to your expectations of the franchise and whether you're a goal-oriented or journey/exploration-oriented gamer.

If you're a goal-oriented gamer with the requisite game knowledge, not even a dedicated speedrunner, you can beat FO1 in about a half hour: Necropolis for the water chip if you like, military base, cathedral, Bob's your uncle. FO2 takes about the same time: straight to San Fran, whack Ken Lee, get access to the oil rig, get the GECK, blow the rig and escape. FO:NV takes about an hour, assuming you're not glitching: run straight to the Strip, kill Benny, kill House, blast through the factional wrap-ups, install the chip, deal with Kendall, and talk your way through Lanius.

By comparison, Morrowind takes about a half hour too and that's a forgiving figure, since all you need to do is abuse Almsivi Intervention and Icarian Flight to teleport to Ald'ruhn, hop over the Ghostfence to grab Sunder and Keening, then straight into Dagoth Ur to destroy the heart.

Meanwhile, FO3 takes about two hours: go straight to Tranquility Lane, then off to Rivet City and Citadel, Project Purity, grab the GECK, Raven Rock, and back to Project Purity. FO4 takes something like two or three, I've never tried it: rescue Valentine, off to Fort Hagen, Memory Lane and Virgil, build the teleporter with the Minutemen since you get the requisite rep by default, then complete the main quest with the Railroad since they offer the quickest and most straightforward endgame.

Where I'm going with this, is FO3/4 have a distinct design philosophy that sets them apart from the other games with more appeal to goal-oriented gamers: they have clearly-defined progression paths, and the games' main story paths are divided into smaller, gated, "acts" which must be completed in order. The macro-scale gameplay loop is to acquire and clear out side quests, progress to the next act, and repeat until completion; Oblivion and Skyrim follow the same design philosophy, in contrast to Daggerfall and Morrowind.

The end result being more deliberate, controlled pacing with metered rewards. I hesitate to call it "sequence breaking" in the case of FO1, FO2, FONV, and Morrowind since those games are only vaguely structured in the first place, but in the case of FO3, FO4, Oblivion, and Skyrim, it's very much an issue of "sequence enforcing". The time spent between beginning and end in that former group are entirely what the player makes of it; that is not the case in the latter group.

So far, from what I've seen of Outer Worlds, it's very "sequence enforcing" as you put it. You can't just break the sequence and jump somewhere because you the player, have meta knowledge. You are forced to jump through the hoops in the order the game provides to push the narrative forward. So I don't really see how that is a feather in the game's cap? Because it's core story design is identical to the games that it is compared against. You are forced to move from location to location, accomplishing the tasks put in front of you by the main quest (it's even notated as being the main story, versus side quests). And that main quest often requires you to do the side quests so that you can progress the main one, thus forcing you to jump to another location whether you really feel compelled to do so or not. You can't sequence break Outer Worlds.

Personally I don't see an issue with either method, as having a story that is so linear as to allow you to just skip all of the content and bolt to the end seems contrary to enjoying the game. I mean, ok so the game is designed where I don't have to actually play the game to win it? Um...yay? Good job designers, I didn't have to actually play your game. I fail to see how that is a positive trait of game design. But seeing as you presented it as a negative for the design of FO3 and 4, I think it's only fair to point out that OW utilizes that same negative design trait in it's own structure.