Faction System in Fallout 3?

[chaos_ocean]

I could want to see it in Fallout 3; different Factions, making pacts or wars between themselves, Like Anti-Humanist Movement of the Damned, Enlightened ones (ghouls), Green hand of the Nature (Enemy to the ones that use technolgy), Feodal and Free People of the Sacred (people living seperately who became unity afterwards), Conquerors of the East (Turks, who settled in the game zone, riders of the mutated horses)....
It could be interesting that you could start the game in each group and had different quests in guilds. :arrow:

 

[Schuljunge]

PLEASE PLEASE I WANT IT, TOO!
shall our prays be heard.
(hey, we gotta stay optimistic at such points)

the base idea is pretty good. but i dont want to see the system in "oblivion" -style, i rather want to see it in "fallout"-style, like the slaveguild with Metzger, that was very realistic. Or the Brotherhood of Steel, ya know, Fallout had a little touch of that system, like if you were an Slavetrader you couldn´t join the "forgot the name" in NCR.

its just the problem, to make it realistic to the fallout-canon. I definetily would like to some new Mafia-bosses in New Reno.

 

[Sander]

Re: Guild System in Fallout 3?

I could want to see it in Fallout 3; different guilds, making pacts or wars between themselves, Like Anti-Humanist Guild of the Damned, Enlightened ones (ghouls), Green hand of the Nature (Enemy to the ones that use technolgy), Feodal and Free People of the Sacred (people living seperately who became unity afterwards), Conquerors of the East (Turks, who settled in the game zone, riders of the mutated horses)....
It could be interesting that you could start the game in each guild and had different quests in guilds. :arrow:

...

'Guilds' work very well in structured settings, generally medieval ones. Fallout's world is a world fallen apart and lacking a lot of structure. Guilds as such would not fit in any way, especially not with the examples you mentioned.

The world of Fallout forces people to form groups and bands to survive, but structured guilds are not fit for this.

 

[Duckman]

Interesting, I must say, but it isn't really Fallout.

Simply not Fallout.

 

[Lith]

Howabout not guilds per se but Gangs play an important part of fallout, and city affiliation did as well in FO2. A dynamic system that might allow change of atitudes depending on what's happening in the world, not necessairily related to player involvement.

 

[chaos_ocean]

You can be right about that "gang" stuff, but, think about the Brotherhood of the Steel. They were far from a "gang". They were like a "faction". And this movement could spread among all gangs and push them to unite against these factions. remember. Brotherhood of the steel had no strong enemy who had the same strength except those Machines. In future, the gangs will have to unite against massive factions. I think Fallout in future would be more "structive :arrow: "

 

[Sander]

You can be right about that "gang" stuff, but, think about the Brotherhood of the Steel. They were far from a "gang". They were like a "faction". And this movement could spread among all gangs and push them to unite against these factions. remember. Brotherhood of the steel had no strong enemy who had the same strength except those Machines. In future, the gangs will have to unite against massive factions. I think Fallout in future would be more "structive :arrow: "

...
Machines?
Wait, you're talking about *Tactics*?
Die, please.

Anyway, the Brotherhood of Steel did not meddle in anything outside of their own place. Hell, they didn't even want to battle the Super Mutants, let alone establish themselves as a major power in the region. The Brotherhood would not force factions to start banding together in any way.

Also, a guild is very different from a faction or gang.

As for the gangs and a 'dynamic' system...no. Affiliations and the like automatically exist in the Fallout world because you have the option to perform quests for different people and sometimes those people have opposing goals. There's no need to *dynamically* start changing things there, especially because this would mean detracting from the lone wasteland hero deal.

 

[chaos_ocean]

hell, it doesn't give you permission to want me dead, "Moderator", we are in a democratic forum "and" i can share my opinions about upcoming fallout 3. And, in some points, you are right. The "guild" word was wrong. But I still want factions, and a dynamic world, where all factions are pacting and fighting.... And i believe there are people who shares the same opinion with me.

 

[Sander]

hell, it doesn't give you permission to want me dead, "Moderator", we are in a democratic forum

No, we're not.

"and" i can share my opinions about upcoming fallout 3.

"And"(sic) I can share my opinions about your bullshit opinions.

And, in some points, you are right. The "guild" word was wrong. But I still want factions, and a dynamic world, where all factions are pacting and fighting.... And i believe there are people who shares the same opinion with me.

There are also people who believe Oblivion was a good RPG, doesn't make them any more right.

Now, let me explain this again: Fallout is a PnP based game. Factions are fine, but don't fit Fallout in the extensive you want it to, simply because factions will be much more limited to their locale.
Furthermore, dynamically changing factions doesn't fit Fallout, where part of the design is that you, as a player, can change the world. To let the world then change dynamically, completely independant from the player destroys that principle, and is also a waste of developer time in this case.

 

[chaos_ocean]

i think i didn't make myself clear. You are right. Oblivion was not good. But i talk about a world that "you" are the first, and the factions you join, could change the events, just like Destroying Gecko Factory, or killing NCR president. İ meant that. And i want a lot of bands or factions you can join in the game. That means more quests, longer play hours.

 

[Sander]

i think i didn't make myself clear. You are right. Oblivion was not good. But i talk about a world that "you" are the first, and the factions you join, could change the events, just like Destroying Gecko Factory, or killing NCR president. İ meant that. And i want a lot of bands or factions you can join in the game. That means more quests, longer play hours.

So you just want more quests?

Again, factions in the way they are generally used in RPGs (which is having a say in the entire game world) would not fit, just because of that. More quests are good, but they don't need to be connected to specific factions to 'advance' you in those factions at all.

 

[Ashmo]

In case you were truly shocked about the "die, please": LURK MOAR. Tactics is not canon, so expect hostility if you refer to it as if it was.

On topic: The faction models most RPGs use is more of a hack or simplification of non-linear quest development. Most games with faction models force you into one particular faction.

Having in-game choices visibly affect the game world rather than just tweak a variable on your character screen would be neat, yes.

Right now Fallout already has a faction system. Even the original Fallout did. Remember the battle between the Blades and the Regulators? The factions already exist, but they aren't rubbed in your face as badly as in some RPGs.

The factions in Fallout are just a lot more local than what you see in most RPGs. The towns are also more seperate, the inter-town politics were a lot more subtle before Fallout 2, for example.

In fact, if you consider all the minor local factions in Fallout alone, the politics were already more complex than what you find in your average "faction heavy" RPG. The towns were just too caught up in their own microcosmos to care much about any large scale politics.

Fallout 2 streamlined the factions by making most towns a lot more homogenous. Compared to the whole mess the Hub was, New Reno was almost beaurocratic. Instead of the Skullz duking it out with Darkwater and Gizmo, you had the NCR trying to establish relations with Vault City.

As for "joining" any of these factions... that's one of the many reasons Tactics failed so miserably. Fallout isn't about some goon in group XYZ, it's about a lone wanderer. The keywords here being "lone" AND "wanderer". You didn't stay long in one place and (with the exception of the originally rushed and then overdone party system) you didn't get much company.

Again, Fallout 2 screwed this up: instead of incidental romances (the rescued hooker in Junktown, the "job interview" at the caravans) you had a shotgun wedding; instead of the odd like-minded stranger joining you, you had a whole gang tagging along.

While you could "join" the Brotherhood in Fallout, you never even took the chance to climb in ranks. You didn't get any orders, joining was merely the way to get into their base and get access to their supplies and information. Again, Fallout 2 overdid things by letting you join a number of organisations for no real purpose whatsoever, but the problem was mostly that joining these groups didn't seem to get you anywhere (except for trouble, if you joined the slavers).

 

[Lith]

What Ashmo said is right but add on a dynamic system and here's what you get.

Brokenhills was supposed to be sending uranium to Gecko but the shipment never made it. did VC intercept and stop it? was it raiders? was there and accident in BH or did it get wiped out? etc. Gecko has no way of knowing, so new quest pops up in Gecko with a timer that run until the next schedual run is supposed to happen, if it comes then presumably it came with an explanation. If no caravans come for months, the quest gets tagged more important and so the rewards are better.

The Brahmin drive didn't make it from Modoc to VC, so prices of edible items goes up.

You keep selling all your spare guns in the Den, it's guards soon become much better equiped. etc.

That's more of what I meant by dynamic system, I don't mean the world will change dramatically without PC intervention, but he isn't the only one crossing the wastes.

 

[Sander]

What Ashmo said is right but add on a dynamic system and here's what you get.

Brokenhills was supposed to be sending uranium to Gecko but the shipment never made it. did VC intercept and stop it? was it raiders? was there and accident in BH or did it get wiped out? etc. Gecko has no way of knowing, so new quest pops up in Gecko with a timer that run until the next schedual run is supposed to happen, if it comes then presumably it came with an explanation. If no caravans come for months, the quest gets tagged more important and so the rewards are better.

There's nothing dynamic about that, because it's still entirely hand-coded. If done completely dynamically it would either rob many players of content by forcing them to constantly check back to see if there is something to do, or it just generates a shitload of standard (and hence un-Fallout-y) quests.

The Brahmin drive didn't make it from Modoc to VC, so prices of edible items goes up.

You keep selling all your spare guns in the Den, it's guards soon become much better equiped. etc.

That's more of what I meant by dynamic system, I don't mean the world will change dramatically without PC intervention, but he isn't the only one crossing the wastes.

Again: nothing dynamic about that at all. That has nothing to do with dynamic faction quests but purely with supply-and-demand economics.

 

[Morpoggel]

Destroying Gecko Factory

Holy shit! Geckos come from a factory?

Anyhoo, I think it is fine the way it is in Fallout. There are several "gangs, factions, groups, whateveryouwannacallits" and you can do quests for them, if you like.

 

[Ashmo]

I'd argue that it is dynamic. At least it is more dynamic than the static system in place.

Supply-and-demand economics ARE more dynamic than a static supply.

Of course it'd need to be scripted in advance to prevent a generic non-sensical mess like the whole AI of Oblivion, which was an example for what happens if you try to turn a story based game into a sandbox.

None of this is patently new, though. It's just MORE of what Fallout already had. I agree that more of it would certainly be fun, but it's also more work.

As an example, imagine you could cut a deal with the Gun Runners to supply Dexter's underground in the Hub. A few weeks later they would have taken over the Hub and replaced the police force, making the big money by bullying the caravans into paying them protection money.

Of course that would be neat, but it would require a great amount of work. Some priorly available quests suddenly wouldn't work anymore, so you'd need to add quests which account for this situation.

The more interactive a setting becomes, the more situations will you need to account for. That means new quests, new NPCs, new dialogues en masse. Also new maps and graphics if something implicates a major change.

I don't see that happening in a day and age when eye candy and buzzwords (RADIANT AI ZOMG) are more important than content.

 

[Sander]

I'd argue that it is dynamic. At least it is more dynamic than the static system in place.

Supply-and-demand economics ARE more dynamic than a static supply.

They aren't in any way a part of a dynamic faction-quest system, and they are, in fact, completely seperate from factions.

Of course it'd need to be scripted in advance to prevent a generic non-sensical mess like the whole AI of Oblivion, which was an example for what happens if you try to turn a story based game into a sandbox.

None of this is patently new, though. It's just MORE of what Fallout already had. I agree that more of it would certainly be fun, but it's also more work.

As an example, imagine you could cut a deal with the Gun Runners to supply Dexter's underground in the Hub. A few weeks later they would have taken over the Hub and replaced the police force, making the big money by bullying the caravans into paying them protection money.

Of course that would be neat, but it would require a great amount of work. Some priorly available quests suddenly wouldn't work anymore, so you'd need to add quests which account for this situation.

The more interactive a setting becomes, the more situations will you need to account for. That means new quests, new NPCs, new dialogues en masse. Also new maps and graphics if something implicates a major change.

I don't see that happening in a day and age when eye candy and buzzwords (RADIANT AI ZOMG) are more important than content.

Anything like that will amount to pre-designed quests that just pop-up at more random times. Whether this is desirable is debatable, what isn't is that this is hardly necessarily related to guilds and/or factions.

A truly dynamic system is very different and will (with the current level of development) mostly amount to FedEx quests, which is hardly worth the trouble.

 

[chaos_ocean]

Ok, guys, we can solve this problem by putting a "dynamic world" option, which has "on" and "off", into the game options menu and everyone will be happy but this requires tons of codes

 

[Wooz]

No. We can solve this problem by having you play the game with your brain and comprehensive skills on.

Your ideas might be something interesting in their own way, they don't have anything to do with Fallout's 50's retrofuture americana setting.

 

[chaos_ocean]

After hours of thinking, i must agree with Sander, in some points. I hate FedEx missions. And i hate a dynamic system that would create random but routine quests. But not all dynamic systems can be bad. At least i hope in future there will be a dynamic system that can create or change its OWN scripts according to your behaviours in the game.