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

[felipepepe]

In Wasteland 2 the day/night cycle is a giant moral slider; Highpool is day-time when you save it, night-time when you let it burn.

 

[Excidium]

That's p. dumb.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Why is day and night cycle so hard to implement?

 

[felipepepe]

Why is day and night cycle so hard to implement?

The cycle per se is not hard, but for it to be of any use you should have NPC schedules, different content according to the time of the day, and all that... and that's hard.

 

[tuluse]

Game should always be challenging, otherwise it's just a waste of time. Assume we won and move on.

It should be more like a rollercoaster. The should be easier parts to let you showoff your new found abilities and feel a sense of accomplishment.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I think it's better to have cycle only as a flavor than to not have it at all. Maybe only changing shop clerks schedules but still not necessary if i takes too much work. Was it officially announced that this feature will be absent? I though i follow development updates very closely.

 

[tuluse]

There's no actual time in this game. "Time" only advances when you do things.

 

[Lhynn]

well, youve been talking about whats mediocre, lacking or bad about the game, anything positive?

 

[tuluse]

Also, I think "it's in beta" is a valid reason for encounters not to be up to snuff. Those are things that you want player feedback on and are really easy to change around.

 

[felipepepe]

Was thinking about the combat, one thing that W2 really needs are more attack types. In AoD, if you have an Axe you can do fast, normal, power, aimed: head, aimed: arms, aimed: legs, whirlwind and arterial strikes, all with different AP costs and effects. In W2, you can only bash for 4 AP. Dull as fuck.

I have no illusions of W2 reaching AoD's level, but at least a normal/power attack, so that I can better manage my APs is absolutely necessary. Maybe aimed shots that cost more AP and have higher % to hit/to critical, or overloading a energy gun to cause more/area damage.

 

[tuluse]

Was thinking about the combat, one thing that W2 really needs are more attack types. In AoD, if you have an Axe you can do fast, normal, power, aimed: head, aimed: arms, aimed: legs, whirlwind and arterial strikes, all with different AP costs and effects. In W2, you can only bash for 4 AP. Dull as fuck.

I have no illusions of W2 reaching AoD's level, but at least a normal/power attack, so that I can better manage my APs is absolutely necessary. Maybe aimed shots that cost more AP and have higher % to hit/to critical, or overloading a energy gun to cause more/area damage.

I was thinking about suggesting a method to let players spend extra AP to increase accuracy. Something like for every extra AP spend +5 chance to hit.

 

[felipepepe]

Alá Silent Storm? Not sure it would be interesting, hitting stuff is pretty easy anyway...the lack of damage types & effects seems more worrying to me.

 

[ColCol]

Well, this thread is breaking my heart.

 

[sea]

Day/Night cycle would be pointless, the game's areas are shallow and there is no reason to ever visit them again once they are "done". This is not Fallout, you won't be going through the same places dozens of time...

Also, they only had 3M, while Larian had barely 1M.

Actually interconnectedness between locations is one thing inXile is focusing on right now and was a key point in my feedback to them.

Also, Divinity: Original Sin has been in development for like 3+ years, it's mostly self-funded and the Kickstarter was largely just to help expand the game.

Alá Silent Storm? Not sure it would be interesting, hitting stuff is pretty easy anyway...the lack of damage types & effects seems more worrying to me.

There are damage types, as evidenced by different ammo with different armor penetration values etc. But I think that melee right now might just be one type of damage (or just blunt vs. bladed).

 

[Lhynn]

Well, this thread is breaking my heart.

Why? it really is a beta, most if not all that has been pointed can be fixed with relative ease. As long as the writing is good and the basic of the combat is engaging, everything else has room to evolve.

 

[DeepOcean]

After reading this thread, I think inXile rushed a little with this beta. While offering feedback is something important, it would be better if there was a set of stabilished mechanics to discuss the pros and cons, if everything is placeholder combat encounters, placeholder economy, placeholder skills and a very limited amount of reactivity provided. It's just become:
Worried and pessimist codexer:This is shit!
Worried but hopeful codexer:But it is a placeholder!
Smug codexer: I told you all along, everything is shit.

Betas are for when developers have some idea of what they want to do and want to know if that is right or wrong for their audience. While I'm in the worried but hopeful camp, shit like health regeneration shouldn't be something ever considered in first place and killed with fire.

 

[felipepepe]

There are damage types, as evidenced by different ammo with different armor penetration values etc. But I think that melee right now might just be one type of damage (or just blunt vs. bladed).

Problem is not the lack of damage types or effects in the game, but the lack of ways to use it in combat. That's why the system is under-utilized.

Stuff like secondary melee attacks, spending AP to increase damage/% to hit, using a shotgun or burst fire to hit various enemies... is all stuff that could be easily done with the system, but isn't. ESPECIALLY considering this is Wasteland, were disco-robots can make you dance, the lack of interesting ways to fight and spend your AP is frustrating.

 

[set]

Why is day and night cycle so hard to implement?

Well, for some games, they bake the shadows/lightning, so you can't exactly have day/night cycles if you don't allow some sort of light source to move in the heavens. They could bake multiple verisons of every level, but that could inflate the disk space to play the game? But then again, there's no exact evidence they do bake they levels, and it's simply a matter of Unity being too weak to support it along with everything else that's going on at once.

Day/Night cycles do introduce a lot of overhead, as it's already been said, NPC schedules is something to think about. But rather, it's way better to think of it this way: If we allow day/night cycle, we now have 2 to 24 "states" our gameworld can be in. 24 if you really want to be detailed, having the world change by the hour, 2 if you just care if it's day/night. What I mean is, every scenario, be it a game event or a story event, needs to be considered in respect to day/night. Enemies and weapons and such probably need to function differely in high-light or low-light environments...? And maybe that's a bit much to ask of a $3M game - that's a tiny budget and perhaps they've decided to invest resources in better things. But a Wasteland successor without day/night cycles sounds kind of retarded - every survival game should probably have night in it, surviving through the night is a big theme about survival - night is darkness

The game looks sooooo rough right now. I've gotten up to the Ag Center and, well, I mean, it's about as good as Shadowrun Return so far - it's a lot more open, it seems at least, which probably elevates it above SRR at the moment, but I've not had a single interesting conversation with anybody yet - the conversation system they went into so much detail about hasn't drawn me in yet. And when I ran out of water and was walking around looking for my first oasis, I didn't seem to notice any penalty for dehydration. I guess that's just not implemented yet? How is that going to work anyway? Will I just have to reload from a new save because I'm stranded somewhere with no water? Or is it just going to be a tiny health penalty every step? Whatever it is, it doesn't seem like it's all that important.

And then there's... well, bartering so far has been underwhelming. None of the merchants sell anything interesting or seem to be effected by my merchant skill or charisma? I'm not getting much of a survival vibe, because, well... regenerating health. Also, one merchant appeared to be bugged or something, I was able to buy all his blood packs for free.

I do like a few elements. Like, the fungal infection during the Ag Center, and the overall (seemingly) openness of that area, as well as the flow of combat... but right now it's simply way too simple and they do need to rethink area design - chest high walls eveywhere is so dumb. Rengerating health and chest high walls - you'd think they hadn't heard any criticism of the latest FPS games...?

So far the game seems to be a solid 7/10, with potential to be a 7.5 if they strictly added the game's full content. To make it 10/10 they need to fix dialogue, make combat more interesting, and fix/implement survival elements.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

After reading this thread, I think inXile rushed a little with this beta. While offering feedback is something important, it would be better if there was a set of stabilished mechanics to discuss the pros and cons, if everything is placeholder combat encounters, placeholder economy, placeholder skills and a very limited amount of reactivity provided. It's just become:
Worried and pessimist codexer:This is shit!
Worried but hopeful codexer:But it is a placeholder!
Smug codexer: I told you all along, everything is shit.

Betas are for when developers have some idea of what they want to do and want to know if that is right or wrong for their audience. While I'm in the worried but hopeful camp, shit like health regeneration shouldn't be something ever considered in first place and killed with fire.

I see 2 possibilities:

1) In order to not waste time and resources on things that would have been changed later in beta, Fargo decided to collect feedback earlier.
2) KS money have been spend. Fargo decided he needed Steam EA money so he launched the beta early. It nicely explain why steam was introduced so fast- it just had to.

 

[set]

The beta is actually 3 months late, Radek. They delayed it to make it more polished than it currently is. It was originally set to come out in October.

It is on Steam because why would a company deny itself money to further the project? It is $60 because that's not less than much it would cost to buy beta access from kickstarter a year ago.

Not that I trust Brian Fargo, necessarily, but you cannot say these decisions are wrong.

Certain elements of Wasteland 2, like the character creation screen, the attribute/skills available, and the basic game systems, all seem to show a lot of promise. They just need a lot more development. Probably two years, though we'll be lucky if they get a solid year's worth of development. It will likely be up to modders to carry the game to any sort of greatness, unless the W2 team has a lot of features/improvements about to enter production soon.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yes, I know But maybe it should be 4 months late? I mean from what I heard 3 months earlier sounds like unplayable.

 

[tuluse]

It's playable. There are problems, but it is playable. I've had fun so far with it.

 

[set]

Yes, I agree, but also consider this - we were promised a beta to play. Delaying the beta further not only denies those who purchased access the thing they paid for, but it also puts a dark spin on the project - why is it constantly being delayed? Is it vapourware? It's just as bad to delay something and just a single month won't make that much of a difference.

This is the problem with 'pay to play' betas. They are fundamentally a dumb idea. But when you're doing a kickstarter, you have to have something to entice someone to spend triple their money. A beta doesn't cost nothing to release, but it's probably a lot cheaper than sending out a second t-shirt.

What they should have done, was in stead of plastering a stupid "THIS IS A PRODUCTION BETA" text tag on your screen while you play, they should have written up an extensive, "Hey, we know this sucks and this doesn't work, but why don't you look at our project tracker...?" Every game company I know of has some sort of ticket-based tracker thingie, where all the systems and things that are planned to be shipped and such are reported on. They should just post public access to that sort of thing, so that the backers can see what's entering QA, what's in production, what's still being developed, what bugs have been fixed/reported on, et cetera - I imagine publishers would usually get access to this sort of thing if they requested it, anyway. Give the consumers access to view that, and there's transparency. Nobody can be upset if we can point to a page on some tracker and say, "Oh look, feature X is planned, but not implemented or live yet." And when we see a feature that's not there we can be all up set and say, "Hey, can't you fit this in somewhere? Why is it missing?"

 

[tuluse]

Alá Silent Storm? Not sure it would be interesting, hitting stuff is pretty easy anyway...the lack of damage types & effects seems more worrying to me.

I never played Silent Storm actually.

To-hit chance would be one of the easiest things to adjust, so they could lower it across the board and let you spend more to increase it.

 

[set]

Yeah, I know. But it just means they can't really make it any bigger than it already is. Or, they need to compress things at a cost of loading times.