>every skill other than small guns, lockpick and speech is either useless, sub-optimal or has no use for 85% of the game
and you call this a real RPG?
>but muh choice and consequence
yeah, muh >pick the obvious good deed and earn extra experience and great loot, or be a stupid jerk for little reward. So much choice
At least atmosphere is great but man, if this is the best the genre has to offer, better stick to tabletop RPG
It has a stat system so it's a RPG. How many of the stats actually work isn't important, as long as you get the illusion of choice.
You're right OP, I've always said the same. The modern Fallouts are no different.
>>3215759
>sneak
Let you pull off some amazing feints and turn-based goodness and avoid instakill random encounters, particularly Enclave in FO2.
>big guns
Flamer and Rocket Launcher are an underrated combo for crowd control and dealing with large groups. Superstrong in FO2.
>energy weapons
Best weapons in FO1, strong in FO2.
>throwing
look up the flare build or just get a few points in it. you don't have to aim with grenades, but having a positive chance of hitting a strong robot with pulse grenades is okay.
>doctor
50 XP every heal is a nice boost, fixing limbs is nice, and tons of quest XP from the skill in FO2
>science & repair
quest XP
>outdoorsman
good survival skill for FO2's tougher encounters
>barter
good in FO1 for short games especially with the skewed values letting you do shit like selling 2 items and buying 3 of the same items in one trade
>steal
cuts back on compulsive reloading and feeds more expensive playstyles
>unarmed&melee
perfectly viable, melee gives a kind of crowd control with sledgehammer pushback
>the rest
yeah, I guess.
Fallout is one of the RPGs of the time that actually had non-combat skill checks. Compare it to its contemporaries, or some of the classics of old that were even more barebones. Might and Magics were still exploration sandboxes and Ultima 7 was a point'n'click adventure with shitty combat. FO, you can at least make a few cool builds within each game.
>but muh choice and consequence
You're an RPGCodex troll looking for a discourse about your favourite game, anyway.
>pick the obvious good deed and earn extra experience and great loot, or be a stupid jerk for little reward. So much choice
Not many games that don't do that. M&M7 let you be an evil party of liches, but it was cosmetic and gave you access to different magics at most, not a real bummer about morals and shit.
>>3215851
>sneak
totally non-transparent mechanics, you can have 150% and still be caught out of nowhere, and useless if you have companions
>big guns & energy weapons
"has no use for 85% of the game". I remember picking up energy weapons the first time as my sole combat skill, it didn't go well
>throwing
I don't know about the flare, but there are too few grenades in both games, and they're kinda underpowered. Also no special perks related other than the useless heave ho
>doctor
maybe it's more useful in FO2, but not in FO1. 50XP is nothing and crippled limbs aren't that much of an occurrence.
>science & repair
"has no use for 85% of the game" in this case is literally "use them 1 or 2 times in the whole game". You can also train them through the use of books, so why pick them up?
>outdoorsman
maybe, useless in FO1. Special encounters are determined by luck, so another skill that isn't as useful as it should be
>barter
even without pumping a single skill point in it, you'll be swimming in loot and money very soon
>steal
I tried once to put full steal percentage thanks to a save editor, because it irked me how much reloading I needed to use at 90%. Guess what? even with full maximum steal and related perks, still failed a lot of time to steal stuff that didn't weight anything. so why pump it up? just savescum, you're going to need to whether you have 30% or 150%
>melee & unarmed
too suboptimal in a game where vast majority of foes have guns. Also in FO1 you get the power fist too late to be a viable option
surely the game was the shit RPG-wise in its moment, but is no better than the often-bashed modern fallouts in the RPG sense. This is what I don't get.
>>3215897
>I remember picking up energy weapons the first time as my sole combat skill, it didn't go well
Every character starts with enough Unarmed and Melee so you don't have to tag them, and then, if you so insist, the first Energy Weapons can be found by mid-game in both games.
>I don't know about the flare
It's a silly build someone invented, look up the guide on youtube. Basically you incapacitate people with 1AP flarethrows to the head and hope they die from instakill crit effect or use other skills to finish them off.
>50XP is nothing
Use it three times (the max you're allowed after a battle) to heal up all your lost HP, and you have 150 XP. That's like a bonus radscorpion. It's useful if you're in a hurry or playing ironman. And even if crippled limbs don't happen that often, it's still better to have an option to deal with them than not.
>"has no use for 85% of the game" in this case is literally "use them 1 or 2 times in the whole game".
You hack plenty of computers and repair a bunch of stuff. Sure, you can level it up through books, and that's a bit of a design flaw, but it's still non-combat skills that may end up good.
>too suboptimal in a game where vast majority of foes have guns
Maybe in F:T, but here, with rampant amounts of Psycho and Buffout to help out, not really. Situation gets a lot better in FO2 where unarmed characters get tons of special stuff and melee characters get a much better weapon progression, so I guess they listened to that particular concern of "nothing until Power Fist/Super Sledge". Nevertheless, Bonus Move and supersledging is very strong in FO1, Fast Shot (for 1 AP swings) or not (aimed sledgehammer to the eyes). No need to bother with ammo either.
>>3215897
Also
>useless if you have companions
is not how Sneak works.
>>3215941
Doesn't it reduce the awareness of opponents? You can snipe without enemies noticing you.
>>3215941
companions affect the chance to end the battle using sneak. Since they act on their own, you can't end the battle by sneaking because they'll fight until the end
>>3215960
You can use this to buy yourself time and escape a situation that would be a one-hit-kill otherwise.
>>3215759
>not soloing the game with a sniper rifle
Fucking casual.
>>3216434
>literally the easiest build to beat fallout
>>3215897
>outdoorsman
>useless in FO1
are you fucking DAFT?
>>3216665
Yeah, well, frankly, it is. The difficulty of random encounters in the first Fallout is pedestrian; it's mostly just molerats and radscorpions. Bandits are rare and don't pack much of a high caliber, and when it's a merchants vs bandits duel, you can wait for both sides to starve each other out then finish off the stragglers. And in FO1, the "spam A to never let your enemies move and leave an area" glitch works. Mutants are easy to beat too at the time you start encountering them.
FO2, Outdoorsman lets you not die constantly to encounters with tens of highwaymen with Combat Shotguns.
>>3215759
Pickpocket is pretty gud for getting better weapons earlier too.
>>3215897
>big guns & energy weapons
>"has no use for 85% of the game". I remember picking up energy weapons the first time as my sole combat skill, it didn't go well
That's what the Tag! perk is for. You start off using Small Guns, then once Energy Weapons start to become more common (and more necessary), you take Tag! and use it to bump up your Energy Weapons skill.
>>3217378
Pickpocket requires too much savescumming.
Who here /zerg rush/ for San Fran to steal shit from the market?
>>3218306
It's only fun if you take random encounters into account. Nothing is better than fighting Enclave soldiers or Press Gang with a sharp stick.
CRPGs and WRPGs are and always will be a joke
>>3220515
So desu, sempai. Yatta!
>>3215801
Absolutely fucking not.
>>3220580
>>3215801
Why not? This is a type of role-playing game. The point is that you play out your part, and I expect you to turn in a perfect performance. Complete your mission according to the simulation.
