Pirakahunter788 said:
(Fixed the title as it was a bit misleading.)
I understand there's a Fallout Online (Project V13) in the works, but the legal battles between Interplay and Bethesda keep it from moving anywhere.
The thought has been bouncing around for a while, so I figured I'd ask.
Some details as to why or why not it'll work would help.
Here's how I look at it.
The world of Fallout wouldn't be have bad as an MMO adaption. The large landscape helps ease the game genre in place. The only problems are Fallout's unique aspects.
1. VATS is used to slow down time to get some well placed shots in, similar to what Red Dead Redemption has. However, in RDR multiplayer, instead of slowing down time, you can mark spots on an enemy where you want, plus you can shoot faster than the gun's normal firecap to negate the loss of time being slowed down.
2. As Zaik listed, having a whole bunch of people running around would ruin the atmosphere that Fallout specifically offers. Loneliness. The fact the whole world has been nuked adds an eerie feel to everything. With tons of people running around, it makes the game feel more silly and occupied. The Guild Wars card has been brought up many times, so it could have deal with this problem.
3. Quests. Since the quests are built around the player's presence, your impacts on the people around you are more felt than if you had 100,000 people do that exact same quest.
4. PVP would be a large issue. You could have level based areas, like what Mazza stated, not to mention areas built for PVP or arenas, but I'm not sure.
But RDR and Borderlands, etc. are not MMO's. They just have multiplayer components, and yes the distiction is very important. It's not entirely comparable.
As to VATS, that was something implimented with Fallout 3 and is likely not going to have anything to do with Fallout Online. In fact, Interplay's Fallout Online will likely have little to do with Bethesda's fallout since Bethesda has been uncooperative and Interplay created the original fallouts. I'd suspect they'd be more like the original two rather than the last two.
If I'm correct, combat would be more like WOW than any shooter game. Everything would likely focus on traditional RPGs.
And that's the key thing you're forgetting. Fallout's not really a shooter at all - it's an RPG that currently has shooter mechanics, but didn't always. It used to have more things in common with turn based strategy than current fallout design, and that's the likely approach a new game would take.
To make fallout work the way it sounds like you're invisioning it, it would require a new engine and new mechanics. But to put it simply, using the previous fallout engine and game design, it would epically fail.
