Many locations in New Vegas sadly look underdeveloped. The strip was supposed this big and grandiose den of vice, but just ended up being a small road divided into three sections.

I think my main complaint would be the bugs in the game. It's got a lot of annoying bugs(i.e. torres inventory bug, the invincible general lee oliver from final legion quest, etc). FNV has a lot of replay-ability for me but the experience is usually ruined by a unforeseen bug.

There were also faction that could have been fleshed out such as the legion where we only get to see one side of them. It would be interesting to see how a hybrid of roman/spartan culture is working in the nuclear wasteland. There are also the various raider gangs, you only really see one side of them. IRRC the vipers have some serious lore and would have loved to see like an altar of theirs where they sacrifice people to snakes.

The land is also almost devoid of NPCs. It would have been interesting to see an actual engagement/small skirmish from the legion and the NCR especially near Camp Nelson and Forlorn Hope. It almost looks barren and boring without mods. With that being said there is also a lack of visual eye candy which makes traveling from one location to another extremely boring.

Edit:

I would have also loved to see a Jackal den and see their social interactions with each other

A large part of New Vegas' greatness was (is?) in its potential.  Mods have fixed many of the problems -- the strip these days looks much more glorious.  I think people see/saw that potential depth and glorious-ness in the groundwork laid by Obsidian, that a lot of people don't see in the future of Fallout 4.  

Very long optional ramble:
We're seeing huge overhauls/redos of things like honest hearts.  It's given me hope that someday an ambitious modder will do an overhaul to make the Legion into something less cartoonishly evil.  Even if I were a sociopath and pro-slavery and anti-democracy, I still wouldn't believe the legion to be capable of competent ruler-ship.  Not after Nelson and Nipton.  Vegas will _not_ be a glorious, profitable place after the legion gets through with it.  It will be a worse place... unless you really just hate drugs _that_ much.  

Caesar himself seems like someone who wants to believe that his plan is well thought out if quite harsh. But every aspect of the legion other than Caesar's pontifications points to them being nothing but raiders who throw around a bunch of latin phrases.  They might as well be fiends who hate drugs, except that even the fiends aren't stupid enough to fight the NCR with machetes.  The legion doesn't conquer and control targets in the Mojave, they burn down/gas/destroy/crucify the places they take in the Mojave.  The real Rome could be insanely brutal and conquer-hungry, but ultimately in certain eras they were certainly capable of admittedly harsh governance.  Towns are a rare and precious commodity in the wasteland.  Wiping them out a serious blow to humanity and the economy.  
Considering Boulder, the NCR isn't doing much better.  All the town-destroying may have just been a way of not having to make as many towns.

ahyuser001 wrote:

I think my main complaint would be the bugs in the game. It's got a lot of annoying bugs(i.e. torres inventory bug, the invincible general lee oliver from final legion quest, etc). FNV has a lot of replay-ability for me but the experience is usually ruined by a unforeseen bug.

There were also faction that could have been fleshed out such as the legion where we only get to see one side of them. It would be interesting to see how a hybrid of roman/spartan culture is working in the nuclear wasteland. There are also the various raider gangs, you only really see one side of them. IRRC the vipers have some serious lore and would have loved to see like an altar of theirs where they sacrifice people to snakes.

The land is also almost devoid of NPCs. It would have been interesting to see an actual engagement/small skirmish from the legion and the NCR especially near Camp Nelson and Forlorn Hope. It almost looks barren and boring without mods. With that being said there is also a lack of visual eye candy which makes traveling from one location to another extremely boring.

Edit:

I would have also loved to see a Jackal den and see their social interactions with each other

I think you're definitely right about the different raider gangs. I never knew that the Vipers were this religious cult that sacrificed people to snakes and their whole snake related origin story until I stumbled upon their wiki page.

Another thing is how underpopulated the wasteland is. It's strange standing on the strip, which is supposed to this big community and tourist destination, and only seeing 4 people from one end to the other.

Bethesda shouldve given obsidian more time. We could have a more flesh out legion story, more lore and quest for various raiders faction etc.

As already been said in this topic, Fallout New Vegas lacks the same type of environment that Fallout 3 has : undergrounds with encounters, many places in FO3 are interresting and gives me some good feelings while wandering. I do not feel the same with FNV. Mojave looks almost like....a map in an editor to me..something unfinished yet, missing some depth...it's like an empty space. I do not feel the same with FO3 : I've replayed the game dozen and dozen times I stopped to count and unlike FNV, I'm not bored, even doing nothing and just wandering. Despite better mods installed than seriously enhance the gameplay, I can not play for 1 to 2 hours without being bored. May be it'll change and I need time to much appreciate the game, we'll see...

I felt as though some of the design choices were done out of fashion then actually thinking a form and functioning aesthetic through. The fact the elite NCR rangers are dressed terribly for any sort of tactical operations tells that greatly. Though in other aspects, it's clear some thought was put through- the basic rangers have their own combat armor which looks superior to anything in the wastes and covers more of the body, yet I'm supposed to believe a simple riot vest and duster can protect someone more?

Then you have the issue of a lot of the armaments being simple cowboy weapons. Not a lot of Fallout taste there, I get more a sense of Mad Max thrown in than anything else. I was hoping we'd get some more of the Gun Runners taste; post-war made weapons that are functional and capable in the new world. The Service Rifle is a taste of that; simple and elegant. I would've liked to see more. It's been 200 years and there's clearly manufacturing. I'd like to have seen more of that. There's so much potential there.

I agree with darkstyler's assessment above: the environment is nothing but lackluster. And the desert-setting is no excuse, especially not when talking about the Mojave as a quick google picture search will proof.
Overall I miss the "craziness" of the old Fallouts ( ): the newer ones are so desperate to be taken seriously they end up being tame and shallow.

Lallajuice wrote:

I think you're definitely right about the different raider gangs. I never knew that the Vipers were this religious cult that sacrificed people to snakes and their whole snake related origin story until I stumbled upon their wiki page.

Another thing is how underpopulated the wasteland is. It's strange standing on the strip, which is supposed to this big community and tourist destination, and only seeing 4 people from one end to the other.

The Vipers were a pretty badass group back then. They even managed to kill a BOS Eldar(then they were hunted to near extinction by the BOS).

It would have been awesome if we got to fight one of their giant snakes(if it was real), a quest related to the creature or see it fight the cut gecko "Gojira".

There were also a ton more gangs that Obsidian could have included like the Yakuza and the Wright family. Seeing as the setting was in the city of sin, I don't know why it wouldn't lure these groups to that location.

Yes I agree with all the criticisms done before mine.
The Mojave Desert is empty but thanks to our good modders we now have a FO3 like spawning system in FNV. The Mojave can be impacted by our actions. We can have a lot of battles on this former empty map rather than here and there three raiders or a little pack of ants for entertainment. With TTW we can have FO3 merged into FNV for a larger game experience and for bringing into it all the little things we loved in FO3.
The true default we found in FNV came from the greed of Bethesda. Obsidian didn't have enough time to finish FNV due to producters' will.

Overall I think the whole game was rushed. And after reading many interviews by the game dev's it was. Some parts of the game are clearly cut, mashed and molded together. My biggest issue is that it used too many of Fallout 3's assets. Making the game feel less like its own unique game and more like an expansion. Mods are great because it corrects the dated look of the gamebyo engine. And the bugs oh the BUGS. That is a reason why you never make an massive open world RPG in a year and a half.

Also, they did not do a very good job at recreating the Mojave desert. In reality it is very very flat, large, hot and empty. Which I guess are all things that gamers hate. But having been through many times, I would much prefer a more realistic look. As for the color pallet, That was not a good idea. Like the green around Camp Searchlight or the foggy grey on the top of Black Mountain. Which I have to point out, black mountain is in the wrong place in orientation to lake mead.

Performance issues by the number, cut content by the score.

DonEsteban wrote:

Performance issues by the number, cut content by the score.

This! Ironically, and this may seem like the epitome of fanboyism, most of New Vegas' faults to me can be traced to Bethesda and the absurd development cycle they imposed on Obsidian. For me one of NV's greatest triumphs was that it showed how could a game based on Bethesda's "New Fallout" could be so much better than the original effort itself (Fallout 3), and its overhyped sequel, Fallout 4, which featured both a longer development time, and a much larger team (approximately double, if my Google-fu does not fail me).

New Vegas has many failings, but with the help of the passionate Fallout fan community, and no thanks to Bethesda, those failings have, with time, been greatly diminished, while the core of the game can really shine through and become the all-time classic it deserves to be.

People that complain about too few settlements:
This is a POST APOCALYPTIC game, there shouldn't be settlements every mile, there should be couple big cities with defenses from raiders and mutants and small raider camps around the world, and bunkers/vaults with "settlers"
There is ZERO logic in what was done in Fallout 4, the settlements would of been robed by Raiders, you maybe can defend it for one day and kill one group of raider but comes the night when you licking your wounds another comes or worse super-mutants, ghouls or otehr mutated animals.

Im all for more camps and cities BUT Its time for Fallout to move to much much much much bigger map, wasteland should be like in MadMax, you walk or drive (if you can afford) for MILES between big cities and protected settlements and there shouldn't be ANY and i mean ZERO open farms, it should look dead, scary and empty. Part of Fallout should be walking simualtor, wondering in the ruins looking for stuff, its RPG not a shooter, big cities/settlements should big actually BIG and should be a prize, getting to one should be costly and take time and quests

FNV is my favorite fallout out of the two 3D fallout games (F4 is NOT real Fallout game so i dont count it). Its missing bigger map and more quests, otherwise its fine

@ViruzZ Fallout 4 had like, what, 2 settlements? Goodneighbour and Diamond City. I'm not going to bother counting other "Settlements" where you get quests or whatever, they don't count. I guess the DLCs added some, but base game content is laughable

FNV had as much content as it needed to have. Every corner of the map that was used was used well. Even F3 did that, to a degree, there was always something to do no matter what part of the map you were in, even if that something was just a repeatable quest like the one with the fingers, I didn't really see any of that in 4, unless you like the same mindless radiant fetch quests over and over again

the main issue i have with FNV is (and this seems to be a common complaint in this thread) how the Legion was handled. most of the time in games where there's a faction of "Bad Guys" i've noticed there's at least two or more redeeming qualities to them

the BOS throughout all games has a lot of negative qualities but a lot of positive ones too, same with The Institute (FO3/FO4). even treading into a different game's waters like say Mass Effect, Cerberus has some arguably good qualities, etc etc - not listing said qualities for any just in case, since i don't wanna spoil anything for anyone

it's almost as if the devs wanted everyone to hate the Legion, and i do, which is my main issue with it. i'm aware game devs don't cater to everyone, but personally i feel even the worst of the worst should have some redeeming traits, yeah?

how i personally feel about the Legion (like what they do, how they accomplish it and stuff) is due to my own moral compass, but that doesn't stop me from wanting more content with them and wanting at least 1 reason to like them lol.

What a great thread!

I can't add much more, everything that bothers me has been pointed out. I'll just say that my main complaint was, as has been said, that it felt a bit lifeless, I mean, not only in the present, but in the past. I think that if FO3 did something wright was selling me that there had been a war there, that it once was a place lived and now it's gone, but in New Vegas it seems like there was nothing before there, and The Strip was a massive dissapointment.

The performance of the game not allowing more than 2 gbs of ram. The strip was terribly small. Don't get to see the after effects of endgame. I felt there was not enough side quests. And without mods the game seems unfinished in places.

@ninja3883 The game had less than a year of development, with a team not familiar with the engine, and the game had to run well on consoles. I remember they removed a lot of misc stuff even after release to improve memory allocation(Drill sergeant in Mccarran comes to mind, many of the newer players don't even know he exists)

It's amazing how much was done with all those considerations in mind, especially when you see fallout 4, a game that was given nearly a decade of development time, compared side by side

I think fallout 3 has better memorable locations. But nv has casinos instead. Some missions in nv are not as creative as fallout 3. But considering that this is a flexible modeable game, I think new vegas is still the best fallout.
Also some other issues were fps drop and that yellow filter imho.