Fallout: New Vegas patch 1.3 released

The new patch for Fallout: New Vegas has gone live, bringing with it stability updates and a ton of weapon balancing. Senior producer Jason Bergman says it may even be available on PSN, despite the outages.

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Fallout: New Vegas received its 1.3 patch today. The patch notes are vague on stability improvements, but senior producer (and Shacker extraordinaire) Jason Bergman previously promised that it would fix most of the crashes and lockups in the game.

The patch notes do include a hefty list of balance tweaks for weapons, including damage, better zoom functionality on the missile launchers, and less ammo consumption for some energy weapons. Possibly the best update description is for the Splash Damage perk, which simply reads: "Functions properly." Thank you, Obsidian, for your blunt honesty.

The continuing saga of the PlayStation Network outage means it's hard to tell if the patch will go live on PS3 as planned. Bergman tweeted, "I'm told game updates may be functional over PSN, despite the outage (system updates are). If so, the FNV patch will be live at 00:00 GMT." Unfortunately, that's not really a guarantee.

We'd heard rumors that a new bit of Fallout: New Vegas downloadable content called "Honest Hearts" would follow the patch, and Bethesda would show it off its recent event in Utah. No such reveal took place at that time, but now that the game update is live we'll have to see if the rumor of more DLC pans out.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    April 25, 2011 4:15 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Fallout: New Vegas patch 1.3 released.

    The new patch for Fallout: New Vegas has gone live, bringing with it stability updates and a ton of weapon balancing. Senior producer Jason Bergman says it may even be available on PSN, despite the outages.

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      April 25, 2011 4:20 PM

      kind of weird to nerf guns in an SP game

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        April 25, 2011 4:30 PM

        Huh? In the patch notes 90% of the weapons listed became more powerful or accurate.

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          April 25, 2011 8:34 PM

          i was saddened by the cowboy repeater :(

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            April 25, 2011 8:38 PM

            I lowered the ROF on those myself back at release, otherwise the animation looks crazy. The AP hike and the lower accuracy is a bummer though. Yay for being an easily modded game. :D

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      April 25, 2011 4:29 PM

      It's great that they are still putting out patches for this. Maybe it's time for another play through.
      I think this means that another DLC is on its way out too.

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      April 25, 2011 4:43 PM

      On downloading patches through the PSN: I've been able to connect to online servers and download/install patches for several games through the outage, so here's hoping the patch goes live tonight! It'll be a busy week, for sure.

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      April 25, 2011 4:56 PM

      I'm currently playing New Vegas again, for the 2nd time. This time i'm playing Hardcore, and I gotta say, this is the way the game should be. It's a lot of fun, and adds a little bit more to the experience of being in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Also, most people don't help the Legion, but I have to recommend it, the quest lines are a helluva lot of fun. I'm happy to see continued support, and looking forward to the next DLC.

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      April 25, 2011 4:57 PM

      Hmm maybe it's time to buy the game now.

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        April 25, 2011 5:23 PM

        Wait for all DLC GOTY on sale + final patch + comprehensive all in one mod.

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      April 25, 2011 6:51 PM

      If you can look at that headline picture and not laugh, you're a better man than I.

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        April 25, 2011 6:55 PM

        Not today. :(

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        April 25, 2011 6:57 PM

        Looks amazingly Ralph Steadman-esque. Like....The cop who pulled Thompson over in the Great White Shark. Gary Busey!

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          April 26, 2011 7:04 AM

          Can I have... just a little kiss...? It's very lonely out here.

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        April 25, 2011 7:44 PM

        Hello, dear. Grandma has a present for you!

        You read that in Lily's voice.

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      April 25, 2011 7:49 PM

      Where is the DLC? At this rate it'll be mid to late 2012 before the 4th or 5th DLC pack arrives. 7 months post release and only 1 DLC mission? That's pretty sad for Fallout game. So much for striking while the iron is hot.

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        April 25, 2011 8:05 PM

        I don't think we will see any more DLC then the first. Obsidian has probably moved onto their next half assed project.

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          April 25, 2011 8:09 PM

          There are 4 further DLCs planned, the 2nd is done and ready to go, it was waiting on this patch. Once the consoles are patched as well, it should be out shortly.

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            April 26, 2011 12:17 PM

            Yes, it should be out any day now unless they used to downtime to put more work into it.

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          April 25, 2011 8:41 PM

          [deleted]

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            April 25, 2011 10:39 PM

            After the success of Fallout 3's DLC strategy I was ready for monthly DLC releases going on for at least a year after launch. 6 months with only 1 lukewarm expansion later and I have simply moved on to other games. Now I'll just wait for the Game of the Year edition and the mods should be mature by then. Botched opportunity if you ask me.

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              April 25, 2011 10:48 PM

              I agree they botched it , but seriously, Obsidian releasing a game that wasn't buggy? Future DLC was delayed for this stability patch, so I guess they sort of have their priorities in order.

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                April 25, 2011 11:26 PM

                Yeah. The foundation has to be stable before you start adding shit to it. I thought all the shack talk about Obsidian's reputation for releasing buggy games was just local shack haters doing their thing because I haven't bought a lot of Obsidian's products, but now I think I am a believer and will be wary of Obsidian's future offerings.

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        April 27, 2011 7:27 PM

        This is where somebody says, "You can't please everyone."

        If they release tons of DLC without fixing patches then they're bad devs. If they patch the game without releasing tons of DLC (according to you) they're bad devs. Well, I'm with the former school of thought. If your game is broken you should be fixing it before asking for more money from consumers. But that's just me, I guess.

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      April 25, 2011 11:37 PM

      This is a better game than FO3 but I just haven't been as into it. I'm halfway through it then stopped playing. I'll go back eventually, though... probably once all the DLC is out.

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        April 26, 2011 3:56 AM

        In my opinion, this is a MUCH better game than Fallout 3. In almost every single way.

        The story and writing are a huge leap forward, while FO3 just retread all the same ground as FO1-2. Characters were better. Combat was better, bringing back the damage threshold system of old games and wider variety of guns. Better thematic elements too, with hardcore mode and better executed "moral dilemma" moments.

        I need to go back and play an "evil path" character. Not many RPGs have a fully fleshed evil path like the full Legion questline. Usually it's like Fallout 3, where you play the same main story missions regardless of karma/alignment, and just make a minor change at the end (choosing to spread FEV in the water).

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          April 26, 2011 1:10 PM

          It's not so much better as different. It has very little of the after-the-apocalypse ruined world feeling of F3. Instead, you're playing politics, deciding who'll get New Vegas in the end. The nuclear war is little more than a decoration, noises off.

          It tries to be more philosopical and realistic in places but doesn't always succeed. Sometimes, this is because being a game, it just has to do things too fast and too simply. Waltzing into Camp Golf and reforming the Misfits, in 100 words or less, for instance, hovers on the verge of silly. I didn't see any magic wand in the Courier's inventory. But I do have to admire how some things that should have been total asinine failures actually work really well. The chief example of these is Caesar's Legion. My first reaction was WTF, guys, didn't you wander in from another game? Ersatz Roman soldiers running around the Mojave? However, what you gradually learn and the back story make them very credible. (On the other hand, the Great Khans could have used a bit more back story to explain why a group of former Americans had decided to go all Mongol on us, and the idea that the Boomers are going to get an aluminum plane flying in a week that's spent the last 200 years under water doesn't so much challenge suspension of disbelief as knock it down and p*ss all over it.)

          The shift of tone in Dead Money was a brilliant move too, though it's depressing and sad enough to keep me from playing the scenario again. A video game about NOT getting the treasure? One where the chief prize turns out to be bringing all of your three companions through their personal crisises sane and in one piece? The thing reads as if it were written by a Buddhist priest. And Vera's last speech at the end, when she tells you that the whole quest had been pointless, that you didn't need to go to the Sierra Madre to "begin again"..... also very Buddhist (in the sense that Enlightenment is no more than finally realizing that you have been Enlightened all along but had been blinding yourself to it because of the world's temptations).

          I was going to put in a long screed about the bugs but you know about them already. All I will say here is that I hope the people who skimped on playtesting and bug squashing have recurring nightmares of being chased by cazadors, deathclaws, nightstalkers.... and getting stuck in the geography. Over and over again.

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            May 3, 2011 10:59 AM

            I thought the boomers were using their artillery to assist, not the plane?

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      April 26, 2011 5:26 AM

      Yay! One step closer to GOTY! It's hard to wait this long but I'm sure it's worth it =)

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        April 26, 2011 6:41 AM

        only 6 more months to go right!? hold me I can't wait that long

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      April 26, 2011 12:43 PM

      This is not an update. It's fiddling with a few weapon balances, that's all.

      After it installed, I made a beeline to the Silver Rush. Yup. The dumbest bug in the game, the one that allows you to steal everything in the store not screwed down rignt in front of the guards and the owners, has not been addressed. I control-zedded their entire stock into the bathroom, stuffed it in my pockets, and walked out cool as a cucumber. I even sold some of it back to Gloria without her noticing that she was buying her own merchandise from me, and that inside the store, I shouldn't be carrying any laser rifles to sell to her anyway.

      If the general concept and story of this game weren't so good, I wouldn't care. But these f'ups are sheer laziness and criminal negligence on the part of a company that's making piles and piles of money off our willingness to tolerate dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers bugs.

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        April 26, 2011 1:01 PM

        It shouldn't be too hard to fix it either, if you even try to touch that cow skull in the basement of the REPCONN facility he goes hostile

        Though with *that* many items around in that store perhaps people would keep accidentally dying!

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          April 26, 2011 1:17 PM

          A quick and dirty solution would be to simply nerf the command-z inside the store.

          Another one would be to set off an alarm if any unpaid-for merchandise was taken into the bathrooms, just like a lot of stores do in real life.

          I DO NOT expect a game this large to be perfect. I do expect that huge bugs be addressed, though. Valve, for instance, has repeatedly patched the Left 4 Dead maps to eliminate stupid exploits and glitches. It can be done.

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        April 27, 2011 7:25 PM

        "This is not an update. It's fiddling with a few weapon balances, that's all. "

        Except, that is an update. It may not have fixed one thing that you thought should be fixed but that doesn't exempt this patch from being called an update.

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