I think you're right, but I've built my character to use Heavy weapons and energy weapons and I've ignored the small arms. I have noticed that using my laser rifle in real time is pretty effective if I put it on target.
Until recently the only ranged weapons I had were the mini gun, missle launcher, and fat boy. Those aren't weapons that like being fired in real time mode.
My mini gun burns through so much ammo I could barely afford it in real time. Using VATS with the minigun is more efficient. I suppose the missle launcher can be lined up nicely, maybe I'll try that.
Using the fat boy in real time is a suicide. It's pretty hard to aim accurately and I've blown my self to hell plenty of times.
Next time I pick up a hunting rifle I'll try using it in real time to take out long range enemies. I would hope that my low small arms skill would make the rifle horribly inaccurate, it's be a little disappointing if my shots land right on target...
It depends on the gun, I don't think small arms makes that big a difference outside of VATS.
The 10mm pistol is horrible inaccurate and goes all over the place outside of VATS. The 10mm SMG is pretty tight, the assualt rifle is reasonable tight, and the hunting rifle has an ok spread. Laser pistol, laser rifle, and sniper rifle are near perfectly accurate outside of VATS. Combat Shotgun is accurate, but seems to taper off in damage fast at ranges outside of VATS.
You just have to experiment with them. The big thing is you can usually get a lot more shots in without retaliation in VATS.
Experiment and you get a real good feel for what you should do in VATS and what is best done outside VATS.
When developers make no efforts to optimize a game for the PC platform, I see that as half-assed. You can call hotkeys or large text "minor," but the fact remains that they are easy fixes and should have been implemented. Unfortunately, they weren't, so the port is half-assed.
This game actually is on the half-assed side for the PC release. It has some nasty stability issues. Plus once you complete the game the main story line feels extremely half-assed as does the ending. The "500+" endings they advertised is complete and total BS. You get about 8 and they all suck.
Its a game that could have been great, but they just dropped the ball in a number of placed. It is above average, good, but it is very clear they just didn't give a crap at some points. What makes it hurt is it is very clear that with just a little more effort this game could have been legendary.
This comment was edited on Nov 6, 2008, 22:13.