Losing the Empires respect without knowing

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Dr_Nomz
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Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2018 2:36 pm

Losing the Empires respect without knowing

Post by Dr_Nomz »

I love everything about this game (especially the Empire and all of it's quests) but I feel there's a bit of an issue:

Obviously, stealing from the empire or killing innocents is going to make Lystra leave the party, but nothing says that I'll lose the Empire itself by doing these quests, which really sucks, because:

I went with the Mutant Hunter in Power Armor by the front gate (forgot his name) and did that one quest thinking it was fine and Lystra didn't even seem to mind, so I thought it was all good.

Come to find out after wasting several hours in Sedit, the Empire didn't like that, even though it was a perfectly innocent quest to protect Albuquerque. :/

Now I know the game is pretty old at this point, but could you make it clearer about the ramifications of what exactly you're doing before it's done? Like he could have said something along the lines of "you can't work for the Empire after this" or have Lystra say "this is a bad idea because" you know?

Either way there really should be some IMMEDIATE notification that you just did something they didn't like, because playing the game for hours without any knowledge of what you did only to come back and realize you have to undo allllllllll of that hard work is kind of terrible. If you can't I understand, but I feel it would a great improvement if this was fixed.
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Muttie
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Re: Losing the Empires respect without knowing

Post by Muttie »

I restarted (well, reloaded) the game at the same point.

However, I don't think it's a warning problem. The issue is that the player overlooks it as it's not an established Fallout mechanic. For example, you run into a guy and he says “Working for us may make you unpopular around here.” The player is like, yeah, whatever...I accept. If you know that there is a faction choice you see the warning, if you don't, it's easily overlooked. And I believe the majority of players overlook and discard the warnings on their first play-though as “fluff”. At least I didn't realize any of them (all trial and error).

In this case the warning is when you ask Kraig to join the mutant-hunters, at which point he says something like “If you join us, people around here won't like it”. And a replay option is “In that case I'd rather not.” After the medical Lystra comments, too (“if you go through with this I'll leave” and she will once you become a hunter).

I think the only time where there is no warning, is when the player goes hunting with the tribe. The only hint is that people around the Suburbs don't talk nice about the tribe, but there is otherwise no warning, as far as I know. It's just “Can I go with you?” “Yes” “Cool” and done. I think there is only the small hint that they are “loosing hunters” and the player may figure it out at that point but it's asking a lot. And if rushing through the entire tribe quest-line one may get caught by surprise when trying to join the Mutant-hunters.*
Otherwise the warnings are always there (I think).
Still, Kraig's warning is probably the worst to miss as there is so much game time in between before it becomes evident. EDIT: It also doesn't help that Fallout players usually try to maximize their quests (that's how I got caught with Kraig, I thought 2 out of 3 is fine as long as I don't join :P ).

However, I think this is difficult to fix. The warnings could be more obvious, but I wouldn't go as far as putting them in bold, as games started to do to separate gameplay info from fluff. Other than that there could be a pregame warning, like telling players that there are factions in this game and that you have to be careful when choosing sides, aka pay attention to “hints”, “animosities” and “seemingly casual warnings”.
Otherwise I would suggest to take it in stride. Eventually one has to play both sides anyway. Classic Fallout is at its core a RPG with a lot of depth and replay-ability. And for the most part it wasn't bothering me. In fact I liked the incitement to play it all over again.

EDIT: *Vice versa is the same, the donor-hunters don't warn either. However, I'm not really bothered by this, as the player has to go with one side anyway, and the decision is obvious (help tribe (good) or help donor-hunters (evil)) and the player should be OK with it, even if stumbling into the faction lock unwittingly.
However, over the day it occurred to me that that is another factor: Factions being obvious. For example one knows there is a war between Julian and Leonard, and that there is conflict between Nestor and Uncle. In other cases the conflict isn't obvious at first, but unfolds when the story develops (Rodriguez and Ghouls) and (Empire and Mutant Hunters) and that „development factor“, turning tension into open conflict, makes it more difficult to see the warnings as what they are.
However, I really do like the faction system, but there is a learning curve before adjusting to it properly.

EDIT II: **I completely forgot that it is possible to switch sides either way during the (tribe vs donor-hunters) conflict, so stumbling into that is even less of an issue as I thought.
Dr_Nomz
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Re: Losing the Empires respect without knowing

Post by Dr_Nomz »

Those are all really good points. :/ I just wish the "losing empire message" came immediately after, you know?
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