Speech-crafty
Let’s be honest. If you have ever failed a Speech challenge, which then forced you to, say, retrieve an object for some old robot, chances are that you reloaded your last save and just started your Speech challenge again. In fact, you might have become so adept at shamelessly abusing the quick save function that a few steps before any NPC can suck you into an automatic encounter, you save. Sure, you might be so unskilled at speech that you only have a 6% chance at success, but reloading and retrying for the next five minutes beats having to waste some twenty minutes or more doing a roundabout task (and not getting that Achievement for Speech success sooner). And then there are times when you have a 94% chance at success and still flat out fail, which doesn’t say much for percentage-based speech challenges and their all-or-nothing outcomes.
 Of course, the designers can’t prevent you from exploiting the save system and no one takes any pleasure in having to enter some inn or huddle around a sparkly orb just to save. Still, this doesn’t mean that investing skill points in Speech should be worthless. As long as players are open to every dialogue option, the quicksave can be used as a substitute for the Speech skill.
One way to fix this is to draw from the attribute-based dialogue options, where you need to have a high number (7 or higher) in a certain S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute before the option is available. The idea is to have some speech options only be available if you have allocated enough skill points in Speech, perhaps categorizing speech options by difficulty (Very Easy to Very Hard) just as the game does with Lockpick and Science. Another idea is to unlock certain benefits that only having a certain skill level in Speech would bring, like more caps or a better outcome - anything that makes Speech worth its weight as a skill and as a feature that dynamically affects how you experience the story.
Side-note: Barter should be a benefit of Speech, not a separate skill. Not only are there heaps of junk and extra weapons for scavengers to sell, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use words when they barter, unless that person is pantomiming (and thus my sworn enemy).
Terminal Grinding
Unlike lockpicking, hacking terminals doesn’t require much skill. Pouring points into the Science skill only unlocks "more difficult" terminals and makes them slightly easier to hack, but that’s only if you don’t already exploit the reset function of the hacking mini-game. Every time a hack-able terminal is activated, you are given four tries to locate the password in the mock memory cache, but you can choose to ignore the clues and the special bracketed entries that help you remove dud passwords. If you get into a tight spot and have only one try left, you don’t have to guess and lockdown the terminal forever (unless you have the Computer Whiz perk). All you need to do is use three guesses on the first three words, and if none of them go through, reset the terminal and try again. The puzzle changes each time the terminal is re-activated, but within a minute of trial and error (mostly trial), any terminal can be unlocked with little effort.
This exploit can be amended in a number of ways while keeping terminal hacking as realistic as possible. That a computer goes into lockdown after too many incorrect entries makes sense, but having the password change every time the computer is reset doesn’t. So either the player should only get one attempt (with perhaps more than four tries), or there should be a reusable item like a hacking tool that needs a limited resource to work, similar to bobby pins for lockpicking. The system should make you feel rewarded for cracking a difficult puzzle rather than breaking the system.
Three Dog Needs An iTunes Store
 I won’t mince words. The soundtrack for Fallout 3 is the first soundtrack that I have ever purchased by browsing through various online music stores and actually buying each track separately. I have always had an old soul when it comes to music, a side of me that gushes whenever I tune into Three Dog’s Galaxy News Radio. The big-band jazz tracks and a 1940s/1950s mini-anthology which includes the likes of Billie Holiday, The Ink Spots, and Cole Porter make it one of the best video game soundtracks I have ever heard.
That is, except for its length. Most people are surprised when they learn that Galaxy News Radio actually has twenty tracks, instead of what seems to be somewhere between ten and fifteen. That most songs from the good ol’ days only last about three minutes doesn’t help (which shows how much extra chorus-padding “modern” songs have nowadays), but the main culprit is revealed by comparing Fallout 3 to other titles with radio stations – Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row 2 have the luxury of featuring many stations, each with at least ten tracks in a different genre.
Though you can unlock Agatha’s classical station and tune into the Enclave’s patriotic station (but why would you?), the selection of songs in Fallout 3 doesn’t have the range or depth to keep the player’s attention for the entire length of the game, which can run upwards to 80 hours or more. A free-floating quest that has you collect long-lost records, at least fifty of them, for Three Dog (or perhaps the Enclave... interesting) would not only extend the soundtrack, but also give players a better incentive than pre-war books and Nuka-Cola Quantum to explore the wasteland.
Or hell, just let Three dog play my MP3 collection. Problem solved.
Side note: Whoever decided the constant muzak in Tenpenny Tower should be a seven second endless loop needs to be fed to the deathclaws.
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