Wasteland Wasteland 2 Thread - Director's Cut

[Lahey]

Are energy weapons worth using in the Director's Cut?

No.

 

[Haplo]

Fallout combat was considered trash already when it came out. That's hardly a standard of excellence that that WL2 should be compared against.

It may not be complex, but at least the combat in Fallout 1 & 2 is immensely satisfying => fun for me. The crazy critical hit tables, the visceral animations, the different weapon effects & sounds... I loved the combat in F1&2. The same CANNOT be said about WL2 combat, which is a boring slog.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Fallout combat was considered trash already when it came out. That's hardly a standard of excellence that that WL2 should be compared against.

The crazy critical hit tables, the visceral animations, the different weapon effects & sounds...

...the thrill of full party wipe after friendly fire from Marcus' minigun for 500th time...

 

[Fenix]

Give him power fist, you!...

 

[Zombra]

Are energy weapons worth using in the Director's Cut?

How soon we forget. Go back and read the several answers from when you asked the first time.

Should I bother with energy weapons at all?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Are energy weapons worth using in the Director's Cut?

How soon we forget. Go back and read the several answers from when you asked the first time.

Should I bother with energy weapons at all?

I was hoping for a different answer.

Looks like I won't even bother with them. Mal was claiming they're worth using in his youtube videos but I like to ask the Best Skeptics of the internet a couple times.

 

[Sykar]

Combat is much better in Wasteland 2 than fallout 1 and 2 there are many more weapons, tactical options and ways to kill stuff; even AR being criticized was bs for me this is what small units do use as basic infantry weapons since WWII with only one man needing to be heavy weapon/sniper/medic using pistol support specialist. On the other hand quests and dialogues even graphics looks far worse than original fallouts thanks to this trash 3D unity engine. Still its the only Kick starter game I don't regret to back and finished multiple times.

It is better than Fallout but sadly worse than Jagged Alliance 2.

Are energy weapons worth using in the Director's Cut?

How soon we forget. Go back and read the several answers from when you asked the first time.

Should I bother with energy weapons at all?

I was hoping for a different answer.

Looks like I won't even bother with them. Mal was claiming they're worth using in his youtube videos but I like to ask the Best Skeptics of the internet a couple times.

I have 1-2 EW users with me all the time. Still finish the game in Ranger. Don't care about the retarded HP bloat on Supreme Jerk.

 

[Trashos]

The discussion here, and the character creation screen (numbers porn), inspired me to buy this. I do not expect a perfect game, but I do expect a highly replayable game with all those character creation options. We shall see.

For the time being, some tough love (and I am pretty sure there is more to come):

- The portraits are terrible, at least in terms of variety. None of them looks nothing like what I had in mind for my rangers. First thing I did was exit the game in order to look for decent portraits. To be fair, I find most games' portraits terrible, with some notable exceptions (AoD, Arcanum).
- InXile say they want to make the game start less daunting in W3, but they can't even into explaining the options in the menus. When will people ever learn. Second thing I did, I exited the game again and searched why I couldn't change the difficulty setting in the gameplay options (ans: I can only change it once I start a new game, apparently). Why don't you try explaining the options and how they function instead of simplifying your games, industry?

Nevertheless, still excited about it.

 

[Trashos]

I just saved Highpool. The game is great fun this far. I am playing the DC version in Ranger difficulty.

The only major design issue I see is the success percentages on skill checks. This is just dumb, promotes save-scumming, and hurts replayability. Even New Vegas had hard skill checks. Was InXile too scared to use the same method?

There is some obvious consoltardization in the menus, but that's not enough to seriously hurt the game.

Unless I am missing sth, I need two mouse clicks in order to switch from group control to controlling a specific member of my team alone. Bad design there.

I have got praise too:

- Combat is fun! I do not see what everyone was complaining about, unless it was fixed in the DC. I am still watching the enemy AI, but it seems more or less OK. If the AI remains serviceable, this is the most fun combat I have seen in a non-indie RPG in quite a while. I am enjoying it greatly.

- Writing is competent. There was some subtle humor here and there which I greatly appreciated. The portraits had me worried, but noone has accused me of being a straight white male yet.

- I already feel connected to my rangers, which is a huge deal in a game like this. Well done, InXile.

- There is obviously a significant effort from the game to be noob-friendly in the right way. Not by dumbing down (well, except for the skill-checks mentioned above), but by providing information within the game. I applaud. The ball is dropped in a couple of instances (e.g., it took me a while to realize that I had to turn on Perception manually), but generally it is well-done.

So, at this point this looks like a 7-9 out of 10 game to me, and could have been 8+ if it weren't for the dumb %-based skill checks. Let's see if it keeps up.

 

[cvv]

I just saved Highpool. The game is great fun this far. I am playing the DC version in Ranger difficulty.

The most fun set up.

The only major design issue I see is the success percentages on skill checks. This is just dumb, promotes save-scumming, and hurts replayability. Even New Vegas had hard skill checks. Was InXile too scared to use the same method?

Yep, biggest annoyance ever. As Roxor famously said, with quicksave and percentage skill check every check is 100 percent.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, "You failed, press F9 to succeed instead" is really bad. Not gonna get back on this horse, but I have to support this sentiment when I see it.

Unless I am missing sth, I need two mouse clicks in order to switch from group control to controlling a specific member of my team alone. Bad design there.

Been a while, but I'm almost positive there's a hotkey for this. Might even be space bar.

 

[Alienman]

Play with a honor system

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Give him power fist, you!...

Sure you must be joking. Surviving a 20 minute fight with 1HP only to have Marcus delete half of my party in his last turn, is a quintessential classic Fallout experience. I always have him with minigun and I'll never play it any other way.

 

[Trashos]

Unless I am missing sth, I need two mouse clicks in order to switch from group control to controlling a specific member of my team alone. Bad design there.

Been a while, but I'm almost positive there's a hotkey for this. Might even be space bar.

Spacebar groups/ungroups, and then I need to choose the party member I want, so it's still 2 actions that need to be taken. Ungrouping defaults to the team leader.

There are the F1-7 keys to pick a specific party member, but unfortunately they do not ungroup. They just make the selected party member leader of the group.

I don't think it can be done with a single action, which is a shame.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Play with a honor system

My inner meta/power gamer is telling you to fuck off.

 

[Trashos]

I did Darwin Village. Very good design, with all the skill options and various alternative routes. Do we know who designed this area? I am impressed.

On the other hand, a second issue I have (secondary to the %-based skill checks) is the combat effects that carry over to real-time after the combat is done. Like Bleeding. It is very out of place. When I play turned-based, I am not in "Act fast!" mode, I am in "Think deep" mode. I do not enjoy having to hurry to take care of bleeding effects within 0.00012 seconds.

 

[CryptRat]

I don't understand your problem with %-based skill checks. It's natural (but I'm not saying it's mandatory) to have things you can succeed or fail at.

 

[Trashos]

I don't understand your problem with %-based skill checks. It's natural (but I'm not saying it's mandatory) to have things you can succeed or fail at.

Unless one is ironmanning it, when we fail at combat we reload and retry the battle, right? Why would a player treat the skill checks differently? But it's bad for skill checks, because:

As Roxor famously said, with quicksave and percentage skill check every check is 100 percent.

So it is a really bad system, afaic, which undermines the whole effort that went into the skill system. It was dumb in the Fallouts with the %-based steal system, and it is dumb here.

To make matters even worse, with a team of 7 I can cover all skills, and I very rarely have serious trouble with a skill check. I just assign 3 skills to INT 4 characters, 4 skills to INT 8 characters, and 5 skills to INT 10 characters, and raise them evenly. This is boring, but unfortunately works, because of the % thing.

 

[CryptRat]

Just like for combat you can bruteforce and if you prefer always putting only enough points to get a not-null percentage then good for you, but you don't have to bruteforce, assign some more skill points or don't (if you want to be really good you need really many points and eventually to, even if only temporarily, possibly neglect some other skills or weapon skills, but you're not inevitably punished for not doing so), take the risk to try or come back later, accept a bad consequence, choose and alternative option when the first one failed or reload are normal dilemnas to face and solve depending on the (unimportant, critical, ...) situation, these are part of the game, these are not bad things.

Sure there are obvious differences with combat, in combat you can retry with different options, the combat will never resolves just exactly in the same way and besides bruteforcing combat with very low weapon skills or reloading each time you spent more resource than the needed minimum would take infinite time so it's a different scale, but the points above still stand.

Also if you want an illustration:

Give me cool failure moments, limited punishment, alternative solutions (like, for a very simple example, breakable lockpicks and having to use a dynamite when I fail too hard picking a lock and break the lock), not things that I can't fail at.

 

[Trashos]

Why can't you have those cool moments with deterministic skill checks? I do not mind alternative solutions like in your "fail at lockpicking, use dynamite instead" example. I like those, which is why I liked Darwin Village a lot.

I do mind that my very seriously unimaginative method of raising all skills evenly (more or less) works. Sure, there are other approaches too. Doesn't matter. As an example, it's like telling me that I should be using spells & abilities in a game where simply clicking on enemies kills them. Yeah, I can do that, but why the hell would I?

There is a point I made above and I want to stress it. In a combat-heavy game like W2, the player expects to fail sometimes in combat and retry the battle. I find it weird to suddenly be asked "not to reload/retry skill checks", in a game where I am supposed to fail and retry things. I have to come up with orthogonally different personal rules for different parts of the game?!

The % problem might have been less of a problem if I were not given information on my success chance. Then I 'd try a couple of times, and if I didn't succeed I 'd just move on and come back later. But the way things are, no way I am abandoning a 50% skill check, I am just going to reload until I succeed. And worse, I see no reason to change my approach of raising skills evenly in my next playthrough.

 

[undecaf]

There is a point I made above and I want to stress it. In a combat-heavy game like W2, the player expects to fail sometimes in combat and retry the battle. I find it weird to suddenly be asked "not to reload/retry skill checks"

Do you reload every time you miss a shot or when ever the enemy hits you?

Combat is a larger event that's compiled of several skill checks and other decisions. The logic in drawing a parallel between "a battle" and "picking a lock" is skewed at best.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

You're reloading skill checks because you're a weak minded faggot. The game is not responsible for your sexual orientation.

 

[Trashos]

I reload combat when I lose combat. That's what non-ironman playthroughs are like, surely?

Maybe the "Reload when you lose a battle AND do not reload when you lose a skill check" system works for your heads, but it sure does not work for mine. And no way that I am going to consider this as decent game design.

 

[undecaf]

Keep reloading then.

 

[Trashos]

If you dislike the reloading approach, why are you defending the system that allows it?