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Development Info Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #20: Attributes and Skills

Zed

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Codex USB, 2014
Tags: Chris Keenan; InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2

Wasteland 2 producer and designer Chris Keenan gives us an update on the game's attributes and skills. It's pretty cool because I don't think they've talked about that in-depth before.

Che-che-check it:

First, here is the list of attributes you can expect to find in Wasteland 2. Attributes are the starting values for your character traits. These are established when you create your character and can be different for each member of your party. Attributes are all passive, meaning that they won't be actively used in the world to solve issues.

Strength
Perception
Luck
Intelligence
Charisma
Expertise
Speed

You might immediately spot a few differences between this list and the original Wasteland. Perception has been turned into an attribute. We felt that perception tied into many other skills and played such an important role that it earned its position as an attribute. Also, there is this weird skill called Expertise on the list. Where the hell did that come from? Expertise is essentially agility and dexterity combined together into one package. We have defined it as the level of mastery of motions with your body and hands.

The following is the list of skills that can be used by the various party members.
tUPcO.png


When we began designing the skills, we started with the systems in Wasteland 1. We immediately removed any skills that we didn't feel were going to be represented well in the level designs. Each skill had to be something that was going to be used throughout the game. All skills that remained would need to be designed into multiple areas to make the cut. This in no way implies that all skills are used equally. Some skills are used in rare circumstances in Wasteland 2 and finding these uses brings an appropriate reward.​

Chris also gives us a heads up on upcoming Q&As.

On Friday of next week (December 14th), we will kick off Ask a Dev Week on our forums. Starting on the following Monday, our team will check out the posts and answer some of the top questions each day. We will have our internal team available and some of the outside writers and designers to answer questions.​

Click here to read the entire update on Kickstarter. It comes with a nice new portrait of a raider.
 

UnknownBro

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All good except for that eerie 'Expertise' attribute... Agility and Dexterity combined? mmm, I don't know, sounds like they were high or something.
 

jewboy

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Yeah. The expertise attribute is misleading. It sounds more like being generally good with mechanical stuff like repairing machines/weapons or just being good at difficult stuff in general. Here's what dictionary.com says about it:


Dexterity:
1. skill or adroitness in using the hands or body; agility.

Considering the fact that the word agility is actually mentioned in the first definition of dexterity I think it would be safe to just leave out agility and include dexterity. Since they seem to want one attribute for both.
 

UnknownBro

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Yeah. ...It sounds more like being generally good with mechanical stuff like repairing machines/weapons or just being good at difficult stuff in general....

My exact thought.

Also since there is no 'Endurance' in the attributes it would be interesting to see how they calculate the hit points.
Sorry if I'm missing something here but I'm myself a falloutfag, I don't know much about Wasteland's original rulesystem.
 

Murk

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How important are toasters in this game?

I mean... bread is already cooked, you don't need to cook it anymore.
 

Arkadin

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I was more excited about Expertise when I didn't know what it was. However, Coin-crafting makes me a little hard. Can anyone explain "Backer skill"?
 
Self-Ejected

Brayko

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I'm a bit jaded on indie RPG's after playing that pile of shit that is Eschalon Book 1. Shame on the Codex for saying that this 8 color game with shitty mechanics and a polarity of pain-in-the-ass/exploitable "Camping" grind system was decent enough. Good thing there's Pirate Bay!

I really do wish I could be excited for this but really he decided to Tweet this at the worst possible moment.
 

Kahlis

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I'm thinking of Expertise as something like "Finesse" or "Savvy" but whether that refers more to mental or physical finesse is beyond me, most likely it probably refers to the first and is like "Intuition" or "Ingenuity" or something.

I thought they were praising their fanbase a while ago when they asked about the backer skill and everybody said that they didn't want anybody to miss out on a part of the game's experience/mechanics due to exclusivity, so they removed it?
 

Major_Blackhart

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I'm a bit jaded on indie RPG's after playing that pile of shit that is Eschalon Book 1. Shame on the Codex for saying that this 8 color game with shitty mechanics and a polarity of pain-in-the-ass/exploitable "Camping" grind system was decent enough. Good thing there's Pirate Bay!

I really do wish I could be excited for this but really he decided to Tweet this at the worst possible moment.

Fuck you. Go back to your Oblivion boards, fucking scum.
 
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Brayko

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Yeah no thanks those fuckers are even worse, I remember one consolefag there said something along the lines of Bioshock being the definition of a perfect game. I'll stick with my strat games and FTL atm.
 

Moribund

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I'm thinking of Expertise as something like "Finesse" or "Savvy" but whether that refers more to mental or physical finesse is beyond me, most likely it probably refers to the first and is like "Intuition" or "Ingenuity" or something.

I thought they were praising their fanbase a while ago when they asked about the backer skill and everybody said that they didn't want anybody to miss out on a part of the game's experience/mechanics due to exclusivity, so they removed it?

I assumed it was related to sex.
 
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Project: Eternity
inXile said:
Animal Whisperer

Cuso9.jpg


"Yeah, I mean, Scary Spice was a nice lay and all, but the bitch just keeps on tuggin' my nuts; you know how it is. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent; you're a good listener."
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2010
Messages
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"Expertise" attribute seems bizarre but overall I'm suitably impressed. I'm also surprised that we have designers in this modern era perpetuating the idea that it's ok for some skills to be frequently used whilst others are useful only in a few obscure situations. It's a very old-school idea


The portrait is also very impressive. Minor technical issues aside, that's up there with some of the best I've seen in games
 

Seerix

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Mar 31, 2012
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Yay, more proper information. Expertise doesn't make sense but it's not a big problem, maybe if people bitch hard enough InXile makes a poll or something to let people choose something better.

Do not like the portrait, lacks sharpness of the others and feels like artist was adding random crap to the character. Also, the raider has three fingers, lol. You can argue that he's a mutant but there's no other visible deformation, so the effect is cartoonish.

A character’s skills can be increased by leveling up, using that skill, and through specific items equipped on the character.

Interesting.
 

Grunker

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Predicting that Demolitions, Outdoorsman and Animal Whisperer (especially this last one) will be nearly completely useless except for the solution of a few non-essential quests.
 

Emily

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yeah i am sure Toaster repair and coin crafting will be character defining skills
 

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