This game's ammo system is an absolute mess, here's why.

[zed]

Ammunition in this game takes the form of three different types, Light, Heavy, and Energy.

In a game like say Fallout New Vegas, my pistol, shotgun, and machine gun use different ammo types. I can fall back on my pistol that fires common 9mm bullets whenever I'm trying to conserve ammo, I can use my scarce amount of shotgun ammunition to take out a big threat, or mow down a crowd of enemies without my other ammo reserves taking a hit.

In The Outer Worlds, however, those three guns share the same ammo. I have no reason to use my pistol as a backup weapon because my shotgun can simply dish out more damage while using the same ammo, if I use my machine gun I run the risk of running out of ammo for my other weapons, or if I'm in a situation where I have plenty of ammo for said machine gun, I could also just switch to my shotgun and have what feels like an endless supply of ammo.

I don't have to think about if I want to use a powerful gun with scarce ammo, I can just spam my grenade launcher since I have seven thousand heavy bullets for use with my heavy machine gun. I have no reason to use my pistol if both my shotgun and assault rifle can simply do everything better while using the same ammo type.

It's also kind of immersion breaking to shove the same ammo you're using in your sniper rifle into a grenade launcher.

[Taberone]

so it's like Deus Ex: Invisible War where there's a crappy "universal ammo" system meaning that if you run out of ammo for your stronger guns, then your weaker guns (ex. pistols) also become useless?

[zed]

Originally posted by Taberone:

so it's like Deus Ex: Invisible War where there's a crappy "universal ammo" system meaning that if you run out of ammo for your stronger guns, then your weaker guns (ex. pistols) also become useless?

Basically

[Flybye]

How dare they make a future shotgun compatible with different ammo.

[Death Approaches]

"... In a game like say Fallout New Vegas..."

OK. Stop right there.

[zed]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

"... In a game like say Fallout New Vegas..."

OK. Stop right there.

What do you mean? I think it's a fair comparison in terms of gameplay.

[Death Approaches]

What I mean that half this game's problem is comparison to something they did previously, no matter how many interviews they said it wouldn't be Fallout New Vegas in space or any other form, it would be an action adventure FPS game with RPG elements...

If that damn "Fallout! But in SPACE!" thing never happened, they'd be so much better off. The irony that MicroBethimaxSoft or whatever the corporate entity will be known as by release date, will now actually make Fallout In Space, aka Starfield. Although technically I think Todd said it was "Skyrim in Space", not because of the comparison to the gameplay, but because he's a rampant capitalist and knows alliteration sounds better in an interview.

I do get what you're saying -- and thematically it would have made sense to require corporate-specific ammo for each weapon category, even if there were only 3 categories, and I expected elemental melee weapons to require power or default back to good ol bash-n-slash plain kinetic... "Spacer's Choice 5.94mm is the ONLY Long caliber ever needed!" etc.

... but neither of those things happened. Does it detract from the gameplay? Not much. Immersion? Ahh. See there we go, again, back to comparing it to a Fallout-style game. It's as much a perception problem as anything, really. You don't discuss "immersion" in Borderlands... if the healthbar is red, shoot until they're dead.

[zed]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

What I mean that half this game's problem is comparison to something they did previously, no matter how many interviews they said it wouldn't be Fallout New Vegas in space or any other form, it would be an action adventure FPS game with RPG elements...

If that damn "Fallout! But in SPACE!" thing never happened, they'd be so much better off. The irony that MicroBethimaxSoft or whatever the corporate entity will be known as by release date, will now actually make Fallout In Space, aka Starfield. Although technically I think Todd said it was "Skyrim in Space", not because of the comparison to the gameplay, but because he's a rampant capitalist and knows alliteration sounds better in an interview.

I do get what you're saying -- and thematically it would have made sense to require corporate-specific ammo for each weapon category, even if there were only 3 categories, and I expected elemental melee weapons to require power or default back to good ol bash-n-slash plain kinetic... "Spacer's Choice 5.94mm is the ONLY Long caliber ever needed!" etc.

... but neither of those things happened. Does it detract from the gameplay? Not much. Immersion? Ahh. See there we go, again, back to comparing it to a Fallout-style game. It's as much a perception problem as anything, really. You don't discuss "immersion" in Borderlands... if the healthbar is red, shoot until they're dead.

I agree with you that comparing the game as a whole to Fallout New Vegas is somewhat unfair. But comparing aspects to other games in the genre is important.
I feel the simplified ammo detracts from the gameplay a lot, in other games ammo is divided into separate calibers or at least an ammo type per category of weapon. But in this game I use the same ammo for my sniper rifle, heavy machine gun, and grenade launcher, and heavy ammunition isn't even that rare.
In other games grenade launcher ammo would be a rare and expensive commodity, but since I have fifty thousand bullets for my HMG I can just be absolutely reckless and blow everything up. Because my sniper and HMG use the same ammo I can either blow through tons of ammo with the HMG or have endless ammo for my powerful sniper rifle and not have to worry about a thing.
The oversimplification of ammo only harms the experience and makes the gameplay less compelling.

[Radene]

Originally posted by zed:

The oversimplification of ammo only harms the experience and makes the gameplay less compelling.

Matter of taste. I, for one prefer it this way. Hell, I was raging when Mass Effect brought reloading back...

[Icedfate]

all the weapons using the same ammo could be explained away by the corporations "standardizing" the ammo so it is compatible with all the guns, with the only decisions a consumer has to make is the the style of the shots they want to shoot out.

but then again, in a hyper competitive corporate feudal system, i would have thought every manufacturer would have their own proprietary ammo that only works in their own guns, thereby guaranteeing customer loyalty.

actually, that would have been interesting. they should have done that. . .

[Flybye]

If guns were limited to ammo only from it’s manufacturers, the game would only have 1 star reviews from people whining about it 🤣.

But if that were the case, I’d expect some type of manufacturing capability. Personally, I’d love the management of different ammos.

[Death Approaches]

Hmm I've always thought it's more fair to compare to Borderlands. Evil corporation. Outposts and colonies are safe and give simplistic kill or fetch quests. In the wild, mobs respawn, and the higher level you are the faster they are back, there's elemental damage including a mystery N one! The loot makes no sense because it's rando x level, not lookup table. The same things over multiple times, weak/strong/insane? And most importantly the aim is just "get it close" it's the aim of console gamers using sticks and directional pads not sub-pixel accurate mice... there's also no leading your shot; put the crosshairs on a target and click the mouse. Plonk! Hit. It's Americanized Borderlands, not FNV in Space.

But the point is, it's not even about what game(s) it is or isn't like. It's what we establish is acceptable to change and what isn't.

Like OK - have you seen one person complain once about the colony ships travel thing? So giant ships take many decades to get out here, but small ships, shuttles, drones, delivery ships, well they only take weeks? Uhhh... not by any physics I've ever heard of. I guess if you have really tiny engines it might take decades for that whole overcoming inertia thing, but in space with no or microgravity, what exactly would the dimensions or mass of the ship have to do with travel time?

No one brings that up. Well, maybe it's because the average gamer is dumber than a box of rocks and we're lucky they can press down on the tip of their index finger when the brain sends that particular control signal. I don't know.

But those kinds of things we can overlook, right? In the prologue Phineas tells you you've been cryo'd 70-ish years, but then on the terminal you see it's 40... do you get a non-continuity boner and run to the forums to complain? No. You don't care. It's a typo for all that it matters. Or let it slide. You can fit it into the story easily. Even though if a colony ship went missing, there would have been a schedule to keep for departure, everyone's individual cryo date would be known to the second, it would be part of history.

The fact it stole Fallout 4's cryo opening -- isn't that a giant middle finger after kicking you in the balls? Telling you we're not fixing a single error you find, we don't care, this is a money grab to finance our next game based off the fame of our contracted Bethimax thing? Nope. No one cares. :-)

And that's the point. I think if we complain there's only a few ammo types, that's just one more of those loose threads. We pull that thread, and then it's just a ♥♥♥♥♥ fest about all the things that are wrong with the game, we end up with an unraveled sweater we don't want to wear anymore. Play anymore. Sorry flawed comparison from the start.

When it's more fun to just play it for what it is. There's guns? Yep. Guns have bullets? Yep. Some guns use bullets that are not similar in the real world, like shotguns using rifle bullets and grenade launchers using heavy machine gun bullets? Bullets that can be electrified or dripping with acid or superheated and such? Yep.

OK!

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by Flybye:

If guns were limited to ammo only from it’s manufacturers, the game would only have 1 star reviews from people whining about it 🤣.

But if that were the case, I’d expect some type of manufacturing capability. Personally, I’d love the management of different ammos.

yes, but it could be justified, because of the parodic nature of the game. it's just the sort of thing the companies in the game universe might do.

i don't think itmwould be that bad gameplay wise though, since ammo weighs nothing, all it does is make you switch weapons more often, to use make you consider using the ones you have ammo for, which i think was one of the main points of OP's criticism is that there is no incentive to switch weapons if they all use the same ammo, you are just gonna put on the strongest weapon and never use the others.

I myself mostly stuck to those laser rifles that you charge up and fire them, because yeah, pistols don't do enough damage, automatic weapons have too much recoil, barely hit anything even point blank range. . i used a shotgun in the early game, until i started finding those energy rifles. in the endgame, i had 4 rifles in the quick slots, 1 for each damsge type.
although i didn't like that 4th damge type the one that does half damage but irradiation DoT instead. I always hate using DoT's in games. I feel like they put those in there for the enemies to use on you.

i think it's always better to just kill enemies quickerwith more front loaded damage before they can act than to infict dots and then sit around waiting for them to die while they still continue to get their full action economy.


Borderlands, i think the game is great, but isn't a "true" fps because when you shoot at enemies, it doesn't use physics to determine ifmyou hit. It makes a dice roll to see if you actually hit, which is adjusted by the level difference between you and the target, so anything more than 3 levels above you, all you're gonna see is "miss,miss,missmissmissmissmissmissmissmissmissmissmiss" even at point blank range and yeah, that just sucks. like I said, it's still a great game, but that enemy level difference thing is kinda BS heavy handed way to keep you on thelinear path through the quasi-open world

[Icedfate]

i remember reading about something related to space travel and colonizing planets.

take a hypothetical situation.

in the year 2200, we might send out a colony ship to an uninhabited planet and it will take 400 years to get there, so we put everyone in some sort of hibernation or stasis (assume we have the tech to do that)

then in 2250, we improve on the technology and create a ship that can get there twice as fast.
the second ship reaches that planet in the years 2450 and starts building a colony.

then the first ship reaches there in 2600 and sees the planet bustling with people, even though it was uninhabited when they left Earth.
and then all sorts of political stuff could have happened in those 150 years that the second set of colonists were there, whole governments could have risen and fallen. corporations taken over. wars fought etc. .

the second set of colonists might have completely forgotten their original mission or maybe they might no longer have any allegiance to earth anymore and consider themselves a sovereign planet and they might even be hostile to Earth and consider the first set of colonists to be "alien invaders"

[erastisa]

I think this is right to a certain extend. At the mid game players will have more than enough ammo of any types. But I still like this kind of ammo system more than New Vegas Because I am not a gun nut. So I don't know what's this .338, 7.65, 9.9999 bullet is for? etc. I like it more when it's named in easier way to understand which gun it's used for.

But on the other hand they need to have more types of bullet rather than 3 to rid of using the same gun problem. And maybe also make the gun feel more vary in the different situation.

[lolic_lol]

Why do you need ammo at all? You have two companions who do not consume ammo.