There *is* a way of fixing this.
Make the accuracy for hitting the head REALLY low will deter people from only attacking the head.

@Leonardo DiCaprio: I am not a clever man.

In a game where mechanics like slow are baked in and balanced, often there's an appreciable tactical advantage to debuffing opponents.

Slowing an opponent (or speeding an ally) might mean that you get two turns to every one of theirs, doubling your effective DPS.

Ah V.A.T.S, saving my ass ever since i started playing Fallout.

@Anon E Mouse (Mock Nerd Rage): I bet you feel rather clever right now.

[url=#user_comment_220572]@sigterm[/url]: Hah! Talk about dumbing down. Fallout 2 is just a string of out-of-place references and lame jokes. Utter crap. And Fallout? Horribly simplified controls and the only good parts of it's story was stolen. Now, Wasteland - that's a great game. Early games were so much better than modern crap

In fallout 2, playing unarmed combat fighter was plenty of fun. You could *punch* the guy in the leg, knocking him down, and then kick him in the eye, causing critical. It is a pity that bethesda has dumbed down melee/unarmed combat in Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas.

the only RPG's i found the "damage in the best crowd control" to NOT be true is Eternal Poison.

I played this game on past, what is it name ? Was a Flash based game.

It is little pointless when you can kill anyone with a couple of shots (like in Fallouts). When enemies are tough and disabling shots are really effective, it's other way around.

Fallout 1 and 2 did it right. There was no way my under-leveled Combat Boy would have taken out that Deathclaw if not for called shots to the legs with that sledgehammer.

simply nerfing the headshot to 1.5x or 2x damage instead of 3x would make it more of a legitimate tactical question. Even if one option is statistically guaranteed to do more damage over a large enough range of attacks, there's reason to consider reliability *now* over reliability long term

Some games force a npc to spawn an item in their loot table, that they normally wouldn't have, if your weapon has certain abilities that affect items.

Such as a weapon with Ruin Armor(Bebilith) cause drow npcs to have "drow armor", even if they wore no armor, in neverwinter games.

Well, there is still the use of attacking the weapon itself if it's holding, say, a missle launcher.

Yay for targeting groins and eyes on the first two Fallout games.

it also reminds me of MECHWARRIOR. One strategy is to hit the head (cabin) but, for strongest enemies, the best strategy is to destroy a leg or destroy the weapons.

Whether you slow/maim/DD is just a matter of deciding what most effectively allows you to kill them before they kill you.
Whether that is best achieved by making them die faster or making them take longer to kill you is personal preference.
Nice folks kill them fast otherwise you slowrolltroll.

Anyway, regarding fallout it's true, but I did have a tendency to shoot at the groin with my revolvers, just reading those "uuuugh" of pain was soooo satisfying :).

If there's one thing some game designers don't realize is how often some gamers take advantage of the rules of theoretical probability.

Aiming at body parts in FF Tatics Advance is fucking OP because your archer have +hit chance and every effect nulls the opponent for almost a full fight

This makes me think of Fallout 3. But it does seem to make a difference as crippling their arm stops them from shooting. But that's about the limitation of its value.

[url=#user_comment_220129]@Vulpis[/url]: Without knowing whether it'll hit or not in advance, you can expect to do a lot more damage going head/head/head than body/body/body. They'd have the same expected damage if the headshot only worked a third of the time. You'd only really use bodyshots if he was near death already.

Aaaactually, going for the head is the best decision only 60% of the time...the other 40%, it was a poor choice and you should have gone for the body shot instead.

[url=#user_comment_220070]@Max[/url]: Depends. Sometimes, you run into enemies, which just can't get past your shields. Suddenly, shooting his weapons becomes totally pointless! And if you got defense drones, nobody is going to care about missles, either. So, no - always shooting weapons and shields is NOT the best thing.

[url=#user_comment_220111]@blub[/url]: No one was talking about Dota or dota-clones. That mindset doesn't apply at all in this situation.

I'm sorry, but disables are always better than nukes, especially against tankier heroes or carries with lifesteal... nukes are really only good the first ~20 minutes, after that you won't be able to nuke anyone down except an underfarmed support maybe...

Well.. In fallout 3/NV (yes yes, I've never played the originals..) on higher difficulty it's way more profitable to shoot legs (if the enemy is melee)and arms (if enemy is ranged or melee, but too close to you) first.

Pokemon boiled down to this for me, you could lower their attack with a growl or you could get a new attack move to KO them faster.

And in Dwarf Fortress adventure mode you can grapple enemies, breaking limbs and tearing out jaw so all the floor will be littered with teeth and covered with blood. Human taller than you? Chop off his legs!

Targetting worked fine in JA2. Head was usually a good choice but with auto weapons you, more often than not, went for torso, and sometimes enemies had good armor (and you had crappy weapon) so the best choice was to go for the legs. Also torso hit leave enemies with no breath.

>quick save
>shot head
>hit?
>yes:go step 1
>no:quick load, go step 1

indeed ftl is mainly take out weps/shield then dodge

[url=#user_comment_220022]@Bindal[/url]: Yeah, but if you don't attack their weapons first, and they get a missile launcher, they'll hit you at least 3/4 times by the time you'll make them suffocate. Same for the rest, yes it's useful if you have teleport but otherwise weapon(or shield if they are big) focusing is more effective.

Things like his definitely need to be balanced out with different kind of enemies, like ones with helmets that either negate the damage bonus or make it harder to hit, making the other options much more viable. The Deathclaw example is good too.

This actually works in games where you can choose between a few powerful dudes and many weaker ones. If I have more boots on the ground, I can have some of them go for the less-damaging status attacks, thus bringing your bigger dudes down to my dudes' level.

[url=#user_comment_220022]@bindal[/url] the ship designs are kinda funny in ftl if i recall right at least ship had oxygen inaccessible to it's crew due to a lack of a door.

As others have pointed out, Fallout did this well for the high-end enemies like Deathclaws; doesn't matter if you're max level with the best weapons, if one of them gets close to you, you're dead. Ditto for the super-tough foes in FO3 and NV. But for ordinary foes like Raiders.. not so much..

GO FOR THE EYES, BOO! GO FOR THE EYEEEEEEES!

mage has not done anything because he's still deciding if he should go frost or arcane due to a stupid hotfix blizz just put out nerfing his fire spec.

[url=#user_comment_219989]@Max[/url]: That I can answer you. Engine/Piloting (both got the same result): Prevents them from dodging and from fleeing. Oxygen: Suffocates them, granting you more stuff. Medi-Bay: Because they can heal, which can be an issue if you want to go for suffocation Doors are, indeed worthless, however.

Fallout 1 was exactly this, just aim for the eyes and his head is gone. In dwarf fortress this has been done propely, you generally go for the limbs first to cripple the opponent in order to achieve that headshot.

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (which btw I find to be more enjoyable than FFT, personal opinion) archers abilities are AMAZING at lower levels. They can immobilize, blind (which both lowers their chance to hit by 70% or so and makes them much easier to hit), disable, confuse and many others.

but see, if you didn't have the "deeper tactical experience" you would only be able to attack the body instead of getting that 3x bonus, so you still win out overall.

sometimes cc is really turn efficient and necessary

Reminds me of my philosophy as to what is the best counterspell... Killing the spellcaster.

Same for faster than light.
Why bother shooting the hyperdrive or the door system? Just nuke the shield, or if you can, directly the weapon, and it's GG.

That said, in Fallout 1 and 2, my main tactics was to attack the eyes to blind enemies, or maiming his hand when he's wielding a 2-handed weapon. I could do it in the first turn, so it was oddly effective.

Many games suffer this. It's the "killing them dead first" syndrome. Don't bother with slowing down enemies or weakening them. Just kill them to remove the threat.

groin, while easier to hit than eyes hitting there is guaranteed that enemy wont be doing anything to attack for a while
old fallouts had nice targeting system. though in the end it went double shot to eyes or groin.

[url=#user_comment_219825]@DeltaPangaea[/url]: You're wrong on that. The problem in most games is, that your enemy isn't an actual threat to you. In games where you have a good chance of dying in a "fair" fight and can't overwhelm everything quickly by damage, disabling abilities become golden. It's just rare to see it these days.

For high HP opponent:
Ranged vs. Melee: Aim for legs to slow, then aim for head.
Melee vs. Ranged: Close in, aim for legs to prevent escape, then aim for head.
Ranged vs. Ranged / Melee vs. Melee: Aim for arms to debuff, then aim for head.

For horde of low HP opponents: Always aim for body.

In the old Fallout games this was done right; shooting a deathclaw's leg was the only way to survive for most players because they took too long to kill before they reach melee otherwise, and shots to the crotch or eyes were useful at different levels of skill and different situations.

I love when games make me do a choice that isn't the "KILL EVERYTHING" route

But FE9 priest pushing level was so evil

Well, it really depends on the game, on how well done it is. On poorly designed games, you are quite right Jo.
On others, like AOW2, it's not so correct. For example, in Kings Bounty you could turtle your way to victory. With the paladin, i often played long battles and ended with 0 casualties.

I'm with Dew. Against the computer, the is absolutely no reason to put non-damaging moves (with few exceptions) on your 'mon. What works more efficiently, confusing a zubat so that it might not hit you when you finish it off, or finishing it off right now?

70% chance slow gives you the chance to first hit if you were anyways last one to attack you will get a second hit for free now that he attacks last and you see Chargeable attacks earlyer to prepare urself better.

idk i would slow, hit head till he is low and than go for body to secure the kill.

Go play Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3 patch, you CAN'T powerhouse to win

You should play FinalFantasyTactics

100 hits x 60% chance x 300%hit dmg x 9999dmg = 1799820

100 hits x 100% chance x 9999dmg = 999900dmg

Within 100 hits against redhood here you would kill him faster with hitting the head and i mean 180% faster.. than hitting the body.

[url=#user_comment_219893]@Drascin[/url] While that may be true if you have additional damage that doesn't get multiplied by a headshot or some really good effect that might trigger, in this basic case you end up doing about 180% of the body damage by going for the head. 0.6 x 3 = 1.8

Actually, it would seem going for the body is the best damaging decision here.

Going for the less hit chance shot is very rarely worth it.

The body shot looks like it should actually be beard shot.

"Hit causes shame and sense of nudity"

Dat pic is wrong. Head damage causes silence.

THIS IS SO TRUE!!! I haven't seen one game that has made the targeting thing work.

Well in the original Fallout when fighting Deathclaws crippling their legs will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce their movement that kiting them to death is possible if you have enough Action points

Shouldn't the mage be buisy casting a fireball at the gazebo?

Persona did turn based tactics right. It encourages you to find your enemy's weakness and exploit the hell out of it and kill them ASAP but sometimes that's not possible and you have to think about how you'll deal with it.

Happy 900th comic according to the site! Only 100 more to something truly astonishing!

@Count N. Dew: Huh?

Bethesda Fallout games in a nutshell.

and thus sums my entire pokemon playing experience

Go for the eyes.

The simply problem here is that it's too easy to hit the head.

There should only be a 33% chance to hit the head to balance it out towards hitting the body.

And this is the point when Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode steps in, especially next update when non-lethal combat and sneaking go in, therefore meaning you don't always just kill everyone (because you need them alive or it will bring the goblin horde down on top of you).

[url=#user_comment_219809]@Nope[/url]: The same place as the horseman's head.

Multitargeting is only good if you are fighting a big enemy.

60% of the time, it works every time.

The lack of strategy is because there's rarely a point that you DON'T want to kill someone. You never want to stop someone without killing them, so incapacitating them is just faffing around. You never need to stop someone running away, or make them stop attacking. We need more variety than killing.

For all the (completely unwarranted) crap FF12 gets, it nailed status afflictions. Poison, blind, mute, etc. actually mattered in that game. It was amazing.

In Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode, I find that the tactical selection works extremely well, more so than I have seen it in other games. Mostly because injuring and disabling the enemy with sure hits means less chance the enemy hits you back. Then again, that game gives 0 fucks if the player dies.

This is kinda why more in-depth TBC games have been in decline: When you're aiming for immersion, TBC just doesn't work. Sure, the settings might be nice, but you'll never feel like you're actually there. I feel the main reason that TBC games attempted the right panel was technology limitations.

So true

"Dominant strategy occurs when one strategy is better than another strategy for one player, no matter how that player's opponents may play."

I don't necessarily agree with the comic, as usually the options aren't cut and dry in good strategy games; like the original XCOM games.

Protip: Shoot the enemy until he dies

And then you fight the headless horseman. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!?!?

In Fallout i always go to the groin or hands and legs because stategic stuff, and when i only to kill kill, groin and body.

Wakfu?

DerP