{"id":2889,"date":"2011-01-16T09:46:24","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T09:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielprimed.com\/?p=2889"},"modified":"2011-01-13T12:17:34","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T12:17:34","slug":"wasteland-ventures-fallout-5-%e2%80%93-3-forms-of-grind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielprimed.com\/2011\/01\/wasteland-ventures-fallout-5-%e2%80%93-3-forms-of-grind\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasteland Ventures (Fallout) #5 \u2013 3 Forms of Grind"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There I was really digging Fallout’<\/em>s professional storytelling and engrossing atmosphere when the grinyness of the whole experience dawned on me. Now forget for a minute the collocation of \u201cgrind\u201d<\/em> to JRPGs, because Fallout<\/em> is nothing of the sort. Rather than being based on mindless repetition, there are three other elements which significantly chaffed up my Fallout<\/em> experience.<\/p>\n

Interface<\/h3>\n

Managing large amounts of inventory in Fallout<\/em> is just a complete and utter mess in micro-management due to the forced reliance on the clunky interface by the inventory-limiting strength stat<\/a>. Let’s start with the equipment screen.<\/p>\n

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This screen is used for checking stats and equipment items for use. There’s an obvious issue here in that only 6 items are displayed on-screen at the one time and that access to other items requires repeated clicking on the two arrow buttons. This interface quirk is exacerbated by the fact that every new item gained or de-equipped automatically goes to the bottom of the list. The items that you use most frequently are the same items that are constantly equipped and then re-equipped (for instance, switching out guns to accommodate enemy types), so over time the least used items become the most readily available ones and accessing useful items becomes a chore and creates dead space in the gameplay.<\/p>\n

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This screen is the looting and stealing screen. It is effectively the screen for \u201cfree trading\u201d<\/em>, being stealing, trading with NPC cohorts (which, by design fault, is also stealing) and taking items from interactive window dressing (cupboards, bookcases, tables, etc). The issues here are doubly worse than the prior screen because this time there are two limited displays of inventory, one for either party. Just like with de-equipped items, anything traded automatically goes to the bottom of the heap.<\/p>\n

Let’s say that you stumble upon a rare item, but are filled to capacity. The obvious thing to do is to offload excess gear to an NPC to make room in your inventory (space, ie. weight, which is dependent on your strength stat). Keep in mind that the total weight can only be seen the inventory screen (above) and weight of individual items is shown on the same screen after right clicking and selecting observe (this changes the text in the box on the righthand side). Weight is therefore only displayed on this screen. So, you trade away. The rare item that you want is, let’s say, 3kg. You have 1kg of free room in your bag. You trade away one lot of ammo that is 1kg and another that is .75kg, leaving only 2.75kg of space. After making the initial trade with the NPC, you try to pick up the rare item again but you still can’t, your bag is supposedly full (short .25kgs). So, you go back to trade, and trade some more to the NPC, but whatever you try to trade is too large by maybe .30kg. Therefore, you trade the prior items back and start again hoping to match a winning combination. All of your trading is done rather arbitrarily, as it takes exiting a trade and looking through the inventory screen to view the actual weight, and doing this for each item consumes copious amounts of time; that is even if you can hold the items you’re wishing to weigh. Also consider that each time you trade back items, you must scroll to the bottom of the list to find it. Needless to say, trading items when you’re near full capacity is a disaster best avoided.<\/p>\n

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Maybe the biggest cock-up of them all is the bartering screen. Four sets of scrolling inventory. At least this time there is a value which indicates if the transaction is even possible.<\/p>\n

Repair:<\/strong> The simplest form of repair would be to use the white space to the left and right of the interface to display more items. Specifically, the \u201cfree trading\u201d screen could display 18 items per character if it used both the outside whitespace and the internal space, granted the avatars for the parties were placed above. And for the bartering screen, there’s an easy fix: don’t waste the above area in the middle of the screen.<\/p>\n

Lack of Quick Exit<\/h3>\n

Watch from 6:28 to end (may wish to mute sound)<\/p>\n