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

[Excidium]

-33% on a game that will be -50% upon release. The savings

Don't think the release price will be that low.

Kickstarter seemed to indicate that. First tier was THE SAVINGS $15, the second was $30

 

[Gord]

Has there been any reliable info how much it's going to cost on release?

 

[Infinitron]

Has there been any reliable info how much it's going to cost on release?

I have no hard information, but I suspect it'll be $40. That seems to be the accepted price for "premium" niche RPGs - Blackguards, D:OS. (Remember that D:OS gave their alpha/beta to all backers so they weren't obligated to set a higher-than-usual price.)

 

[Roguey]

From earlier in March:
http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6695

The price at release, for a copy of the game only (so without the extras in the Digital Deluxe edition now on Steam), will be lower than the $60 of Early Access on Steam but no lower than the $35 we are currently selling it at on the late backer store.

 

[Gord]

Ok, thanks for the info!

 

[Infinitron]

Pillars of Eternity backers with the WL2 add-on are now getting this too: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66345-wasteland-2-keys/

 

[sea]

Pillars of Eternity backers with the WL2 add-on are now getting this too: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66345-wasteland-2-keys/

Cool!

Quick note: Obsidian is handling support regarding Wasteland 2's distribution for Eternity backers. If you have any issues with getting your key you'll need to talk to Obsidian about it.

 

[jdinatale]

I just had a bit of a thought that I'm not sure has been brought up - Has anyone considered that perhaps Wasteland 2 is a guinea pig /trial run of sorts for ineXile? As in, they made Wasteland 2 first so that they could learn the ropes of the engine, and then use that experience and feedback to make what will hopefully be a truly worthy Planescape: Torment sequel?

 

[Excidium]

ITZ a conspiracy

 

[Angthoron]

I just had a bit of a thought that I'm not sure has been brought up - Has anyone considered that perhaps Wasteland 2 is a guinea pig /trial run of sorts for ineXile? As in, they made Wasteland 2 first so that they could learn the ropes of the engine, and then use that experience and feedback to make what will hopefully be a truly worthy Planescape: Torment sequel?

Well, that could be the case, but that approach would only end up biting them in the ass. Mass consumers are not as likely to say "Oh, they've learned", rather, "Oh, another piece of failed crap that didn't fulfill any of my expectations". Considering it's "Fargo's dream" and all that jazz, they should really try to make it as good as possible rather than trial running.

 

[felipepepe]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

 

[Athelas]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

I'm pretty sure it was the dev team behind such classics like Choplifter HD.

 

[Duraframe300]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

It's great to have veterans, but none of those veterans invested anywhere near their 100% into the game due to production reasons alone.

I know I'm boringly repeating the same thing every time, but its still what I see as the major problem with InXile's approach to development. And why whatever we get with pillars will at least be more *compact*. PS:T will be kind of a mess in that direction as well. Though, I imagine a better one.

 

[Rake]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

It's great to have veterans, but none of those veterans invested anywhere near their 100% into the game due to production reasons alone.

I know I'm boringly repeating the same thing every time, but its still what I see as the major problem with InXile's approach to development. And why whatever we get with pillars will at least be more *compact*. PS:T will be kind of a mess in that direction as well. Though, I imagine a better one.

Why? Torment has Colin, Kevin and Adam, all three giving their 100%. Plus Ziets. It has the potential to be cohesive and compact unlike W2.

 

[coffeetable]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

it might just be me, but i get the same kind of salesman vibe from fargo as i do from chris roberts and peter molyneux. grand ideas and great at bringing money in but they've got no damned idea about good software development

 

[Duraframe300]

I find that theory a bit botched considering InXile is over a decade old and had people like Fargo, MCA and other veterans working on W2...

It's great to have veterans, but none of those veterans invested anywhere near their 100% into the game due to production reasons alone.

I know I'm boringly repeating the same thing every time, but its still what I see as the major problem with InXile's approach to development. And why whatever we get with pillars will at least be more *compact*. PS:T will be kind of a mess in that direction as well. Though, I imagine a better one.

Why? Torment has Colin, Kevin and Adam, all three giving their 100%. Plus Ziets. It has the potential to be cohesive and compact unlike W2.

Kevin Yes. (Which is a big part in me beliving that Torment is going to be better among other things.)

Others. No. (Though, I admit I don't know about Ziets current situation)

 

[Sensuki]

The development cycle on Torment doesn't seem *too* different from what we've seen from PE and I'll bet that's largely due to Kevin Saunders. They're up to the equivalent of the PE Vertical Slice. The outsourced "designers" are like Obsidian's narrative designers. PE had George Ziets working remotely, but inXile has LOTS of people working remotely.

The problem with Wasteland 2 IMO is they did all of the paper design first before doing anything else. All the areas and dialogues were done on paper, probably even including most encounters. At this stage they had no idea how half of the systems were going to work, they probably designed a lot of the systems based around the content created in the area designs (No doubt the outlines were created first, but that's probably about it). The in house area designers then went along and implemented the content. They probably treated the paper designs as a "storyboard" for the level and implemented it as closely as possible to the paper design (veering off where necessary). The end result being that the areas were quite barren. That's just my guess anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't too far off. To me the culprit of this seems to be the process. The Paper Designers had no idea how the game systems were going to work, what it was going to look like and all that kind of stuff, so they were essentially designing blind. The in house designers implemented the paper content, but the damage has already been done, and the only thing they can really do now is add in bandaids over bulletholes.

This is the opposite of how Obsidian did it for PE. Sure they did lots of high level design and whatnot along side their engine pre-production. They worked on the main story "outside of the game" for a fair amount of time, but once Eric came onto the team full time he's no doubt had the luxury of being able to play the game and get a feel for how to present it, a luxury that the outsourced inXile designers won't have (bar Adam Heine). Obsidian then created the majority of the game's content once their pipelines and systems were locked down.

The way that Wasteland 2 was developed, the "paper design" style and stuff was probably something Brian Fargo himself laid out, Chris Keenan was the producer at one stage and now I think Montgomery Markland has his role once Chris Keenan moved up to Lead Designer. Aside from what I would call "not the best project management", it also seems to lack a clear vision.

Torment seems to have a clear vision and has an experienced Project Director. Hopefully they have recognized the internal issues Wasteland 2 has had in development and are not making the same mistakes again.

 

[Infinitron]

PS:T, a mess?

We'll find out the specifics of how Wasteland 2 was developed when we do an interview after the game is released. My own personal theory is something along the lines of Sensuki's, but with the addition that it was planned that way due to budget concerns. Double Fine went over budget, inXile played it safe and went under budget.

But, we just don't know yet.

 

[Owlish]

I can't even play this game because I have a 32bit OS

 

[Kem0sabe]

I hope they learned their lesson with WL2, and setup a proper development team for Torment, the extensive pre-production can help with laying out the game, but the execution is where it's at...

Essential things like UI design, zone design, encounter design and combat mechanics were/are all problematic for WL2, and unless inxile puts some serious weight behind improving these, Torment will suffer from much of the same.

I can see the cooperation with Obsidian bearing some fruits here, inxile will probably try to maintain a lot of the groundwork from PoE.

 

[Infinitron]

I hope they learned their lesson with WL2, and setup a proper development team for Torment, the extensive pre-production can help with laying out the game, but the execution is where it's at...

Essential things like UI design, zone design, encounter design and combat mechanics were/are all problematic for WL2, and unless inxile puts some serious weight behind improving these, Torment will suffer from much of the same.

On the contrary, preproduction is where it's at. The groundwork for all of these things (to varying degrees, UI for example might change until the very end of development) is meant to be determined during preproduction. Preproduction doesn't mean "on paper". It (also) means prototyping systems in a working slice of the game, like what George Ziets is currently doing with The Bloom in Torment.

What Sensuki and are I saying is that Wasteland 2's preproduction appears to have been insufficient for this purpose.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I hope they learned their lesson with WL2, and setup a proper development team for Torment, the extensive pre-production can help with laying out the game, but the execution is where it's at...

Essential things like UI design, zone design, encounter design and combat mechanics were/are all problematic for WL2, and unless inxile puts some serious weight behind improving these, Torment will suffer from much of the same.

On the contrary, preproduction is where it's at. The groundwork for all of these things (to varying degrees, UI for example might change until the very end of development) is meant to be determined during preproduction. Preproduction doesn't mean "on paper". It (also) means prototyping systems in a working slice of the game, like what George Ziets is currently doing with The Bloom in Torment.

What Sensuki and are I saying is that Wasteland 2's preproduction appears to have been insufficient for this purpose.

I dont think WL2's problems were down to lack of planning, but on the execution itself, it just feels to me like sloppy work. They either need more hands on deck as to not burden every designer with work on multiple fronts, or restructure their workflow into an albeit slower development cycle, a better one.

 

[Infinitron]

I dont think WL2's problems were down to lack of planning, but on the execution itself, it just feels to me like sloppy work.

What's sloppy about it? They put together a gameplay video that even people on the Codex were impressed by, by February 2013. A mere 10 months of development. That's not sloppy. Fargo's boys are obviously talented enough.

Weird UI? Could have been avoided if they had the right vision for UI from the beginning (ie, NOT MINIMALIST). By now that's all been iterated away, but still.

Zone design? Could have been avoided if they knew what Fallout (and Wasteland) fans were expecting from their areas, but somehow this was overlooked.

Combat mechanics? Obviously a matter of planning.

Insufficient preproduction accounts for most of Wasteland 2's issues; it seems to me that inXile spent much of 2012 building themselves up as a company and weren't really fully hooked into the realities of what the players on the ground were interested in until around the time the Torment Kickstarter began.

But of course, we'll only know for sure when we get that post-mortem interview.

 

[Athelas]

Didn't they say they had to go with a square grid because they created the levels before designing the systems? They'd have been a lot better off enlisting Obsidian's assistance in a general capacity rather than hiring 'celebrity' cRPG designers to craft a dungeon or two. Or just read an interview with one of them:

http://anonofholland.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/chris-avellone-interview/

Also, we have invested a lot of energy in systems, and I feel it’s the right call. All the mechanisms for how the player communicates and interacts with the environment should be established first, including how the player talks with characters, how they move, how they fight… this may seem common sense, but launching into production without a finalized design on how the character’s movement set works and the interface components can be problematic, so we want to make sure we do this right.

As a simple example of the importance of this, if you attempted to design 30 levels in Super Mario Bros without knowing how high and long Mario can jump, it’s almost impossible to do correctly – and more importantly, you want to make sure the basic act of jumping in a Mario game is polished and fun naturally from a second to second experience. For us, comparable examples would be how fast a party can move, how fast to swing a sword, what the player’s camera view on the world will be, and more. From there, you want to go into systems that define the character and then systems that allow them to affect the world – like spells.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I dont think WL2's problems were down to lack of planning, but on the execution itself, it just feels to me like sloppy work.

What's sloppy about it? They put together a gameplay video that even people on the Codex were impressed by, by February 2013. A mere 10 months of development. That's not sloppy. Fargo's boys are obviously talented enough.

Weird UI? Could have been avoided if they had the right vision for UI from the beginning (ie, NOT MINIMALIST). By now that's all been iterated away, but still.

Zone design? Could have been avoided if they knew what Fallout (and Wasteland) fans were expecting from their areas, but somehow this was overlooked.

Combat mechanics? Obviously a matter of planning.

Insufficient preproduction accounts for most of Wasteland 2's issues; it seems to me that they spent much of 2012 building themselves up as a company and weren't really fully hooked into the realities of what the players on the ground were interested in until around the time the Torment Kickstarter began.

But of course, we'll only know for sure when we get that post-mortem interview.

They had the money and the time to work things out slowly but good, even if that meant downscaling the scope of the game somewhat. Inxile just played fast and loose with the game as they went, and the result shows.

Your right that the extended pre-production might help, they will have a lot of the ground work done, but wen it gets down to it, whomever gets to "drive the wagon" on this project, needs to take a very different approach to their production, more hands on, less error prone.