Wasteland Wasteland 2 Thread - Director's Cut

For example because you're LARPing based on whatever arbitrary name the developers gave to skills. Perhaps if they had a German accent skill you'd think you should have that too because it's what you want to play?
If you want to play fantasy characters then deal with it, otherwise adapt to the system and the game world and make your character to win the game not to have cool clothes.

Of course, I'm not saying that the W2 system is great or good, but not telling you how to build your character is not part of its problems.

And that's not possible? I covered pretty much everything save maybe 1 or 2 and others that were not really maxed. Of course, without maxing two kinds of firearms for the same character, that seemed kinda pointless.

 

Now, guys, I want to ask an honest question. Is it viable to change your idea for a build, let's say, halfway through the game and not suffer miserably?

I find character development in RPGs to be fun when you can adapt to what the game offers, well, like a reasonably intelligent person would. There is absolutely no reason in Fallout to tag Energy Weapons at the start or invest in the skill. You can start doing that when you actually have access to the weapons and decide to go for it.

In W2, do I really need to start with a predetermined idea for builds for my chars and just unlock consecutive levels of the skills I had chosen at the beginning? I'd love to be mistaken, but that's a significant factor in the game felling quite boring to me.

 

Well I don't know. I started the game with wrong kind of build and too much reliance on Angela (not taking it to account that she would leave - and not knowing where). It took some work, but wasn't that hard to do the corrective moves to compensate. I mean, you really needed fuck up and not pay attention if you 'needed' to restart for a bad build; in my experience.

 

I've likely mentioned it before, but my learned behavior is to put everything into weapon skills while hoarding unused points until it's beneficial to put them into an ancillary skill. It's never let me down.

 

WL2 system certainly was broken and we probably all ended up with imperfect characters on first playthrough, but it was just frustrating I guess, it wasn't so broken that it'd to be detrimental to gameplay. If you can't cover all the important skills with 7 characters, you're doing something wrong, guv. The one great thing about that game is you have multiple approaches to everything. Failed to pick the lock, force the door open, blow it up, talk your way in. So even though you run with bunch of poorly developed characters, they're not shitty to such an extent that you'd get stuck. And it was actually fun, in a LARPy sort of way, although for obsessive minmaxers it was probably a nightmare.

 

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"I want my high STR and CHA, low INT Arnie-style commando to be good at Heavy Weapons AND Brute Force AND Hard Ass AND Leadership. Why shouldn't he be?

Perfectly doable with perk which will make all your hard ass attempts pass; so now you need only to raise 3 other skills... I went with assault riffle which is still the weapon to choose (and don't really think it should be balanced against back up weapons like pistols, crap you use when not able to afford ARs the SMGs or specialist weapons you don't really need more than one in entire team.... like shotguns and sniper riffles.) Leadership and Brute force with IRC INT at 4.

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Of course your smart ass and lick ass attempts will automatically fail then... but who want to RP a Cuck?

 

Tying the number of skillpoints you get to intelligence or any other single stat is one of the most retarded things you can possibly do. Not only does it make absolutely no sense, it also breaks your system instantly if these skills have any real relevance.

 

I disagree, if you play in normal difficulty you don't have to mixmax and besides there's no problem having some character get more skill points whereas some others will have to reserve most of their skill points for their weapon skill but in the other hand they have more combat stat bonuses.
I'm more concerned by the fact that skills are not linked with stats, I'd say that overall it's my only real complaint (or my biggest complaint anyway) about their system.

 

Wat? how does this address my point? Tying a base stat to skillpoints on level is retarded. Smarter people dont know more things than dumb people, they usually just have more specialized knowledge.

Thats another issue, but yeah i agree. If they were going to bother with % they should have had the relevant stats improve the chance of success.

 

... what?

 

I'm not saying it makes sense, I have no opinion about that.
However I think it doesn't break the system, it's fun to have characters with a different number of skillpoints per level and to use a few characters with low intelligence who are almost only good at fighting.

 

inb4 100 pages of "do dumb people know more things than smart people"

 

What? its the truth, ive known scientists that only know their own branch of expertise, they cant change a tire, dont know how to fish, or cook, or kick a football, they cant make a bed or even function well in every day life. Intelligence doesnt automatically make your knowledge broader, it just helps make some of it deeper.

 

Just like real life

 

In Wasteland 2 specifically? Sure, if you're not playing on masochist difficulty. Skills are cheap at the beginning of the game, but you'll soon learn you don't have enough points to specialize in everything. Once they get more expensive you'll naturally focus on just a few. Those "wasted" points to have low levels in other skills are an acceptable loss.

This also applies to companions. Don't worry about what skills they started with if you need them for something else. I turned Ralphy into an Assault Rifle/Animal Whisperer expert and Chisel was my Heavy Weapons specialist even though I don't think they start with any ranks in those skills. Maybe not "optimal" but it worked fine.

 

Depends on how many you've wasted. Over certain threshold it's better just to dump a character and take on a new one. Afaik there are quite a few that offer to join you in Cali and all of them are usable. (P.S. - forgot about the CHAR requirements tho, I think a few chars are behind a meaty CHAR wall).

 

All true, but the question wasn't what's better, but what's viable. Inefficient parties are completely viable.

 

And, like most people, you probably also know a few genius polymaths who are good at almost anything they try to do. What most games call "intelligence" is merely learning retention and logical reasoning. In real life, it's much more difficult to properly define it - which is why some people with otherwise high IQ's are very limited in their skills.

Besides, what you're talking about encompasses many different attributes - speed, hand-eye coordination, strength, etc. - here we're just talking about intelligence as the mental capacity to learn new skills, in a purely game-y, abstract, simulationist manner.

In that context, it means that if we put two persons with, apart from intelligence, identical attributes in a room with a manual about a skill they don't know anything about - the one with the higher intelligence would master it more quickly.

 

It's possible, of course. However, when getting to California there's a sudden stupid spike in difficulty, which wouldn't be a bad thing if the game wasn't developed by people who don't actually play games and interns recruited from forums and therefore the difficulty spike means HP bloat and suddenly every enemy has insane armor.
And I suspect that no matter how well you build your characters before, you'll still have some troubles or at least annoyances here until you get better gear that's designed especially to beat these new enemies with their high armor. Because like in every RPG with shit design (or modern RPG) the gear is about 10 times more important than how you built your character.

So, really, you're better off just not playing it at all. The game is shit on all fronts. There's nothing that makes it worth it... shit combat, shit writing, shit systems. The game is filled with turds, both literally and figuratively.

 

You didn't like burgling turds from an outhouse to sell to the turd merchant? That's quality gameplay right there.

 

Dude, I'm the biggest turd collector there is. I have collector's editions of both W2 and TTON.

 

Never met anyone like that. Never met a basketball player that was only good because of their intelligence, or a boxer, or a martial artist. Intelligence does make it easier to learn some shit, it does not make it easier for you to learn how to fire a rifle tho. If you take two soldiers, the smarter soldier is not any more likely to know how to handle several guns than the dumb soldier is.

I guess? i know dumb people that know how to do a plethora of things, and i know smart guys that have only read about that shit.

And it doesnt work in a purely abstracted simulationist manner. Its just gamey shit with no basis in real life, and it seems to exist to make an attribute much better than it has any right to be.

No, it means you think the smarter person would do better, i dont think that would always be the case, i think that it heavily depends on the skill they are learning. Intelligence could even be detrimental to the learning experience.

 

Intelligence is obviously abstracted as the ability to learn more things and learn them faster not the ability to produce deep thoughts or getting bored by menial tasks.