Wasteland The Wasteland 2 Beta Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[hiver]

Save that stuff for the eventual mod man... they should know stuff like that themselves.

Except ... yeah... has anyone in Inxile team been involved in actual RPG design before this?


- edit-

Spoiler

Before anyone steps on my so inconspicuous infantry mine im leaving behind so indiscreetly... i gave 40 bucks through codex and 30 through kickstarter, taking only the 30 dollah reward. So i cant officially get to beta.
Damn... i cant even see some pirate ship on horizon with which i could not trade our inventories.
And its been two days already...

 

[Daedalos]

I'm at Nomad Railways... some nice new C&C there.. abit more polished and larger area now.. I like it.. Haven't even begun to go to the prison yet.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Since this is a party based game and all of the ones I played and loved made it possible to cover all the important skills with the different specialists in your party if you planned well enough I'm very much against making skill points too scarce. I'm with Lhynn on that, I don't see any benefit to locking content that way. Lock it with story C&C, not by forcing me to dump skills. I wanna try out all the toys the game has to offer in my first playthrough.

 

[hiver]

by the way... sea little DA:O mod has more reactivity and C&C then whole W2 so far. If only... but thats not going to happen.

 

[Excidium]

Personally, I would make the skills points only range from 1 to 5, with 2/3/4/5 points cost for upgrading, respectivly. And each upgrade you give you meaningful things besides the THC increase, like for Sniper Rifles: +10% THC when crouching/-1 AP for reloading/+5 damage on aimed shots/-1 AP for shooting or stuff like that.

Linear advancement like that is p. banal. I prefer when that kind of special bonus is handled through perks/talents/feats/whatever

 

[hiver]

Doesnt have to be linear at all. Good idea. of course.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Inventory getting on my nerves, for a myriad of reasons.
Lots of items don't stack, some you can stack yourself but I really can't be arsed to bother with something like that. Ammo for example, I loot three guys with 12, 3, 6 ammo, and I'll have 3 different stacks, same with all healing items.
No auto arrange, inventory seriously needs auto arrange, I don't enjoy manually moving my icons back up because my screen is stretched way too low.
Equipping items from inventory is a little bit more annoying than it was pre-patch, now you have to click equip instead of drag/drop, I'd prefer both to be options, not a huge deal but an annoyance.
equipped items take up space in your inventory, even worse, so do your costumization options. In my shared inventory screen I have about 40 items just from all of the equipped shit my rangers have, including their heads, hair, outfits, etc etc.

These are annoying pls fix

 

[agris]

The design of skills, the retarded splits didnt achieve anything positive, but several negative things - still ongoing - and most of it had to be melded back

I'm worried about the skill design / rollout and how it's going to affects C&C too. One of the clearest examples of what you're talking about is that they have not one or two but three speech-related skills you can invest in ('X' ass). To me this doesn't make sense, why dilute the skill pool so much? What is gained by having them be 3 skills rather than one, or *gasp* tying the success of these attitude response to your characters attributes (STR, INT, CHA) and chopping down the skill-bloat?

Except ... yeah... has anyone in Inxile team been involved in actual RPG design before this?

They've got MCA, Danforth and Stackpole listed as 'designers', but I think Stackpole is the only one doing real systems-level shit [link]. MCA was a consultant and designed the Ag Center, right? He's not going to be getting his elbows dirty in stat and skill balance and it's integration with the game. Liz Danforth came from the original WL1 team where she did map design (maybe more, can't tell).

Honestly, I don't think they have a lot of experience.

 

[hiver]

A novice... from 2004, heh.

Well, look... its clear they tried to create as much "skills" as they could so thats why the bloat. The problem is those are not different skills at all, but single ones split into nonsensical parts. That, for many reasons end up in most of them producing negative consequences, which most of us knew since Fallouts. That is always one of the biggest critiques of the old games.
Its not like its some new unexplored territory.
But since you have a whole party, seven characters no less... its pretty superfluous to try and force some kind of diversity in gameplay through such fake skills themselves.
Unless you can make 20 different skills - but then you have to create content for all of them (again, old Fallout ailment) - which is completely out of the scope and the budget of this game.

And since the situation is like it is, it would have been much better if they didnt even try and instead spent time creating more mutually exclusive content to create diversity in any single playthrough.
As for those different speech skills... i think that actually makes more sense, since its not just speech and dialogue but, rather a whole different personality approach to any situation.

The big additional problem i saw a lot in the previous beta wit that was that most of the time, if you dont have the needed speech skill the game handily gives you other easy ways to achieve the same thing with other means. Which pretty much defeats any sort of reactivity those different personality skills could have created.

And then on top of that, these first locations you can visit are all very linear and without any smaller differences and diversity inside their small stories, or gameplay.
Which, actually might have been incidental... created just by making them really, really big. AG center insides are huge. So a player naturally expects there will be more to it all then simply going in straight line to the villain and the ending faux binary choices - that didnt make any sense.

So its ind of a... a cascade of various smaller and bigger bad features that play off each other in bad ways and create ever more negative ripples.
(at least according to few people here, im pretty sure that the "fans" are creaming all over themselves... just dont ask me what for, exactly)




MCA was just a guest for some over arching things in AG center. I think he just came up with those characters and general plot, or something... or just came up with the design of the area - and then the rest of the team took over.
Frankly im not sure what exactly did he do there.

Stackpole ... didnt he only do the overall story? The main plot? And that long before the kickstarter. I dont think he was ever employed by InXile in this.
I dont think he was actually involved in actual design of anything.
and miss Danfort... i have no idea at all. Cant remember any specifics myself at the moment.

but it doesnt look like any of them were actually involved in design of the mechanics, systems or gameplay.
And then again... a single game designer cant really just decide for himself and do whatever he wants.

As usual, the captain gets all the praise and all the blame.



Anyway, if they have all the systems and assets up and running (bar some adjustments of Ui and inventory etc) they should be able to fill the game with enough content in three months, and a few more that will surely follow. (who the hell am i kidding... -ninja edit)
And even in the worst case...we can mod the stuff in later.
(help me god im turning into an optimist)

One other positive consequence of this all is being a good school for Torment.
(yeah right)

 

[Lhynn]

I wanna try out all the toys the game has to offer in my first playthrough.

I didnt really meant that, i have nothing against content not being available in every playtrough, just that reward should go hand in hand with skill investment, the pay off from high specialization should be good, maybe in the way of items, character interaction, eastern eggs, etc.
Even luck should play a factor into this, as it will add to re-playability and keep each game somewhat fresh and new.

It shouldnt even be tied to the game progress, some/all the cool stuff should be theoretically accessible from the beginning, if you have foreknowledge or the necessary skills.

 

[Zombra]

I wanna try out all the toys the game has to offer in my first playthrough.

-1

No thank you!

 

[Daedalos]

I wanna try out all the toys the game has to offer in my first playthrough.

-1

No thank you!

-2


The higher number of more unique playthroughs you can have, the fucking better.

A good cRPG should NEVER make the player experience everything in 1 playthrough.. choices should limit and prevent other stuff from happening through C&C and reactivity.

Skill points should be limited, so that you have to choose wisely, instead of trying to get EVERYTHING at once

 

[NotAGolfer]

I wanna try out all the toys the game has to offer in my first playthrough.

I didnt really meant that, i have nothing against content not being available in every playtrough...

And I didn't mean what you think either:

Lock it with story C&C, not by forcing me to dump skills.

You see, my favorite games (look at my avatar) didn't have many real C&C so maybe I don't care that much for your favorite buzzword anyway but again, this is a party based game, so all your character specializations together should be enough to handle all the different situations you can get into. If you don't want to, sure, feel free to take your 4 diplomats on a suicide trip, it'll be fun! But let me cover all bases and give me enough skill points to do so because that shit isn't fun C&C in a fucking party based game for me.

A good cRPG should NEVER make the player experience everything in 1 playthrough..

You guys cannot into reading.
:picard facepalm:

Skill points should be limited, so that you have to choose wisely, instead of trying to get EVERYTHING at once

Single character game: yes, definitely.
Party based game: nooooooo!

 

[Daedalos]

The design of skills, the retarded splits didnt achieve anything positive, but several negative things - still ongoing - and most of it had to be melded back

I'm worried about the skill design / rollout and how it's going to affects C&C too. One of the clearest examples of what you're talking about is that they have not one or two but three speech-related skills you can invest in ('X' ass). To me this doesn't make sense, why dilute the skill pool so much? What is gained by having them be 3 skills rather than one, or *gasp* tying the success of these attitude response to your characters attributes (STR, INT, CHA) and chopping down the skill-bloat?

Except ... yeah... has anyone in Inxile team been involved in actual RPG design before this?

They've got MCA, Danforth and Stackpole listed as 'designers', but I think Stackpole is the only one doing real systems-level shit [link]. MCA was a consultant and designed the Ag Center, right? He's not going to be getting his elbows dirty in stat and skill balance and it's integration with the game. Liz Danforth came from the original WL1 team where she did map design (maybe more, can't tell).

Honestly, I don't think they have a lot of experience.

It makes sense, because strength (Big guy) induced intimidation through being a HARD ASS would invoke some reponses in some people, others not. Not everybody can be bullied.

Same thing with Kissing ass or talking smart... it works on SOME people, but not all.. And charisma and intelligence has to do with this... kissing ass. and sounding smart...

General Vargas explains this also, when he gives his introductionary speech to the recruits.

So it makes perfect sense to have 3 branches of speech skillchecks in the game, if the game can cater around that and implement interesting C&C and reactivity based on the speech skills... (which im sure it will)

Perhaps one could imagine having an intimidation/brute speechcheck that requires both strength 5 AND hard ass level 3 or 4.. for a highlevel check on a baddie..

Or a high charisma and kiss ass check to sleep with the queen of neverland.. or who the fuck knows.

 

[Daedalos]

Inventory getting on my nerves, for a myriad of reasons.
Lots of items don't stack, some you can stack yourself but I really can't be arsed to bother with something like that. Ammo for example, I loot three guys with 12, 3, 6 ammo, and I'll have 3 different stacks, same with all healing items.
No auto arrange, inventory seriously needs auto arrange, I don't enjoy manually moving my icons back up because my screen is stretched way too low.
Equipping items from inventory is a little bit more annoying than it was pre-patch, now you have to click equip instead of drag/drop, I'd prefer both to be options, not a huge deal but an annoyance.
equipped items take up space in your inventory, even worse, so do your costumization options. In my shared inventory screen I have about 40 items just from all of the equipped shit my rangers have, including their heads, hair, outfits, etc etc.

These are annoying pls fix

+1 Agree with dis. Needs to be severely looked at. Manageing items is abit of a hassle at the moment.

 

[Infinitron]

People complaining that there are too many skills? People saying they deserve to be able to have all skills "because it's a party-based game"? (Wtf?)

Purge the popamole.

 

[Zombra]

People complaining that there are too many skills? People saying they deserve to be able to have all skills "because it's a party-based game"? (Wtf?)

Purge the popamole.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Hey, how dare you to question my swiss army knife party approach?!
Sitting there at character creation thinking long and hard what char to specialize in what skillset only to later discover that my level up skillpoints are stretching thin because I gave all of them too many different things to specialize in so now I have to restart because they suck at everything? And then I have to guess which skills are save to dump because I want to avoid the situation where they stand in front of a device and can't repair it and I hate this C&C because I want to know what that device does right now!!!
... Sounds like a lot of fun, sure.
And stop pretending to be that hardcore, guys, you all think that way when you stop babbling about CRPG design on a theoretical basis and start actually playing one.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Btw, it just occured to me that maybe this whole skill C&C discussion might be completely pointless anyway.
Aren't there highly specialized NPCs for you to recruit out in the gameworld so if you come across a skillcheck you can't pass you could just pick up one of them and try it again? I didn't play the alpha extensively and I can't remember most of the stuff they announced in the kickstarter so I would appreciate it if someone could shed light on this.

If this was the case I would still prefer my party being able to cover all the bases though, so the NPCs are only there for people who planned their party composition poorly or want to try out a fighting technique they don't have in their party (or if a party member dies obviously). Too much pointless walking back and forth otherwise.

 

[Daedalos]

Btw, it just occured to me that maybe this whole skill C&C discussion might be completely pointless anyway.
Aren't there highly specialized NPCs for you to recruit out in the gameworld so if you come across a skillcheck you can't pass you could just pick up one of them and try it again? I didn't play the alpha extensively and I can't remember most of the stuff they announced in the kickstarter so I would appreciate it if someone could shed light on this.

If this was the case I would still prefer my party being able to cover all the bases though, so the NPCs are only there for people who planned their party composition poorly or want to try out a fighting technique they don't have in their party (or if a party member dies obviously). Too much pointless walking back and forth otherwise.

They could tweak it so that NPC's dont have higher skill levels needed to just pass a check.. they could tweak alot of stuff like that..

Also if you try and fail too many times, the skillcheck will critically fail, and you won't be able to do it again.

You could also implement a no-save (other than auto-save) feature to prevent save-scumming.

 

[Ulminati]

Best idea Dildolos ever had. The butthurt would be glorious, seeing how people reacted when SRR did that. At least there'd be some second-hand entertainment value in WL2 then.

 

[Infinitron]

New interview: http://www.edge-online.com/features...eating-wasteland-2s-player-shaped-apocalypse/

Not much new here.

 

[hiver]

player-shaped apocalypse

whhhaat?

If players express frustrations in response to Wasteland 2, then the game will change.

When starting the game, the conversation that sets you off changes depending on the characters you’ve selected for your starting party.

Blatant lie.
- oh, excuse me, the conversation changes, right, right... depending on *ass lines, right...

Although the beta is short to complete, you’ll quickly realise how much you’re missing out on with every decision you make. InXile is building an almost absurd amount of content that only a few people will ever see.

WWwhhhaat?

“We’re perfectly fine with you not seeing a huge part of the content, because if you don’t have that as a variable, you’re not getting choice and consequence,” Fargo says. “We have to build it in and build it in and build it in. Whether it’s gags, one-offs, items, quests, NPCs, you name it, it’s just chock full of stuff you’re not going to see.” That last line could be the marketing department’s poster quote.

Lying though your teeth is good PR aint it?

no matter how often people ask, he says, “we’re not going to put vampires in the game”

Does anyone know has there been any retard that actually asked that? Even once?

For Fargo to do his job, all he needs to know is what you desire.

Is this some sort of dark comedy of absurd?

The information gathered via metrics and social media is doing more than fixing bugs or rebalancing combat: it’s letting Fargo and his team at InXile know where players want to go.

 

[felipepepe]

To be honest, the original game had all that wacky 80's stuff going on, while the sequel feels more serious than Fallout... I wouldn't mind vampire, killer tomatoes, pod-people party members, werewolves and all that kind of things, if done right.

 

[Lhynn]

To be honest, the original game had all that wacky 80's stuff going on, while the sequel feels more serious than Fallout... I wouldn't mind vampire, killer tomatoes, pod-people party members, werewolves and all that kind of things, if done right.

^ This. They would make the game so much more interesting.