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

[SuicideBunny]

Would it not make sense that in a Post-Apocalyptic world, where a minor disease could easily blow out to a serious problem that first aid would be an essential skill that anyone alive would know, similar to opening a can of beans??? I know it would be one of the first things my kids would be learning, certainly before reading and writing....

you could argue the same for sailors and swimming, especially in war navies, yet most sailors could not swim until modern times when learning such skills became rather trivial if not outright expected.
on the other hand you'd have to find somebody to teach you first aid first or find a book describing it and the same usefulness that you think makes it a requirement would make it rather valuable and thus learning it rather expensive in turn making it rarer.

 

[AstroZombie]

Great guy, Just be sure to have some booze in your inventory.



Ill just leave thes epics here without any comments:

Turn-based dance-offs.

 

[Roguey]

I checked out the system on the wiki and I have complaints (of course)

Attributes are trash, as expected. Going down the list:

Coordination - you know my feelings about stats that give you more action points, and if you don't, well they're awful because there's nothing better in a RPG than something that allows you to do more things in a turn (unless it's giving you even more turns but we'll get to that soon). Apparently the weapon skills themselves determine your crit chance and the piddly 1% bonus here just affects your regular chance to hit which is worthless. A bonus that insiginificantly small is fine when you're dealing with crits, not regular hits.

Luck - For some reason the system doesn't track fractions even though it hypothetically could since this is a video game and not a P&P game where that could get messy. The wiki says

1 Luck point = -1% to Critical Failure on non-combat skill roll ; +1% to Critical Success on non-combat skill roll

which contradicts what I've seen described in the game (there are no non-combat crit failures and crit successes on a non-combat thing doesn't even make sense). Seems very superfluous no matter what it does.

Awareness - Even on paper, "a stat that gives you more turns before your opponent can act" sounds really fucking stupid so I'm amazed they actually put forth the effort into implementing it.

Strength - This one actually seems okay for what it is.

Speed - The numbers tell me nothing, I'd have to see the difference in game.

Intelligence - Hey guise check it, we've randomly decided this one particular skill will be capped by this stat for reasons. I also don't like this one because it's the one with the most redundant numbers. There should be some difference between having a 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 or 6 and 7. These stat points are supposed to be valuable, why waste them on numbers that do absolutely nothing?

Charisma - No systematic uses, has to be completely supported by scripted content (which doesn't exist in the beta to anyone's knowledge). Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

When it comes to weapon skills, I don't like how sometimes the bonus to hit is sometimes 10% and sometimes 5%, though I suppose that might be acceptable if that's explained in the UI in advance. The One and Only talks about it in http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-121-tunin-tips-and-tricks/ which is full of a bunch of other information inXile's "system designers" should have read before "designing" this RPG, in addition to watching The Evolution of RPG Mechanics: From Die Rolls to Hit Volumes.

SPECIAL was cobbled together in two weeks and it was terrible. inXile spent who-knows-how-many months designing CLASSIC and it's comparably terrible. Bravo.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Pretty sure if I was a Ranger in the wasteland, fuck if I was ANYONE in the WASTELAND I would know basic first aid.
A lot of people in our 1st world country with comforts all around know First Aid. Would it not make sense that in a Post-Apocalyptic world, where a minor disease could easily blow out to a serious problem that first aid would be an essential skill that anyone alive would know, similar to opening a can of beans??? I know it would be one of the first things my kids would be learning, certainly before reading and writing....

Although very much possible, and even likely, as an argument for or against mechanics in this game it isn't a very good.

Why?
Oh, many raisins, let me list mine.
1.Your individual ranger's backstory is not expanded upon, whether they had any access to medical supplies to even be taught that to begin with is unknown. Whether they were superstitious tribals are unwanted juvies is unknown.
2. The training that rangers recieve(Or do not recieve) is also unknown, not to mention you are hardly rangers at the beginning of the game. We can assume that because it's possible to make a ranger with no medicial skills that it is in fact not taught by the rangers.
3. The logic you're using can be applied to many skills.

What you just wrote is best to be used in your roleplay circumstances, when you're in character creation, you will think, wait, who the hell wouldn't know this? Then you can tag them all in medicine and they can all take care of themselves, thus giving you exactly what you want, yay~.

Strength - This one actually seems okay for what it is.

Definitely agree, strength was well done, in fact, melee in general is well done, at least so far. Armor is expensive enough to make the money saved on ammo(And gained by selling ammo) worth it. Encounter design and ammo scarcity in general makes melee viable as rangers can run out of ammo fairly easily. The damage is high enough to compensate for lack of range, the AP cost for reloading also adds to this balance. Strength being the primary attribute for increasing durability is also helpful, it means that your melee ranger is more durable than a ranged one while still having enough spare points to invest in initiative.

Anyhow, I applaud them for doing melee right, at least so far.

 

[Elthosian]

You can get AP from STR, Speed and even Intelligence too so in that seense it feels somewhat balanced, the really awful part is how overpowered Awareness is, you should be able to get Sequence via Coordination and Speed and not only with that single attribute.

 

[tuluse]

SPECIAL was cobbled together in two weeks and it was terrible. inXile spent who-knows-how-many months designing CLASSIC and it's comparably terrible. Bravo.

I would say CLASSIC is much worse than SPECIAL so far. Especially the Fallout 2 version.

No one at BiS was stupid enough to include a "have extra turns" attribute.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

No one at BiS was stupid enough to include a "have extra turns" attribute.

How does it work exactly, does anybody know?

edit: holy crap, initiative really is just a turn multiplier. Insane.

 

[Zombra]

She is, but I think she's like level 14 or 15, meaning you need to gain enough XP in toto to reach level 15 before she starts leveling up.

Nice, that sounds like a cool system.

Pretty sure if I was a Ranger in the wasteland, fuck if I was ANYONE in the WASTELAND I would know basic first aid.

The problem with automatic skills for everyone is that it can fuck with character concepts. If you think all your Rangers should have Field Medic, you can get them all Field Medic. Maybe I come up with a different concept. Let me make a character to fit that concept. I don't need you building my characters for me. Thanks.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

"Hiver's Turn"

Worst idea. Please mod.

 

[circ]

A shotgun doesn't take much skill to use proficiently, unlike an assault rifle. A sniper rifle takes more again, yet they are all treated the same. It is silly.

Other than having to set up the sights on the rifles, what's difficult about then specifically? They're probably treated the same because the stance is exactly the same, unlike handguns - which too often in games are treated as easier to use than rifles which hasn't been my experience.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Is the locked combat area still a thing? When will it be removed? Thx.

 

[Ravel myluv]

bad dad humour

This sums up both jokes.(Well.. all four jokes.) Although the red boots wasn't quite as bad as the other three.

It just hit me, the joke went over all of our heads. The joke was poking fun at Skyrim's repetitive shit dialogue and general unfuniness; the use of repetition was actually further mocking Skyrim for the sheer number of times you'll hear that awful line in the game.

It wasn't an intentional meme, or a joke from Bethesdas side. It became a meme because it was ridiculous that all of the guards apparently had had their adventuring days cut short by the same fate. Inexile doing the same, however this time with a meme, is not clever mocking, just lazy pop cultural referencing.

To be fair to Bethesda, i think getting an arrow to the knee means getting married in some nordic language... I think...

 

[felipepepe]

Roguey, you probably can't see from the wiki, but the attributes have weird thresholds. I.e., having 3 Int gives you 3 skills points per turn, and only at 6 Int you get 4 per turn, so 4 & 5 Int is pretty worthless.

All attribute bonuses work like this, so you're mostly juggling bonuses at character creation... You start with Luck 3, but Luck 2 also gives you 2 Evade, so you should either increase to 4 for 3 evade, or decrease to 2, with no Evade reduction.

That also work for Action Points, in a weird way... with 10 Coordination (everything else 3) you get 10 AP, but 10 Awareness, Speed, Strength or Intelligence gives you 7 AP only. And the progression makes no damn sense, especially since it's hard capped at 10 AP (even with 10 Coord & 10 Speed, you still get 10 AP).

 

[janjetina]

One of my grandfathers was a field medic in the military, he never went to school for anything, ever. I'd go into detail about the man but it's safe to say that he probably couldn't preform surgery, he wasn't a doctor after his military career, he went back on to welfare. I'm just throwing out possible solutions to make them make more sense. If field medic had the advantage of being able to operate under combat, but was limited in regards to preforming complex surgeries, it would make each a more viable option.

In any case I'm pretty sure surgeons can apply bandages and all that other shit, a field medic is just overall more focused on what could be considered mundane practices.
So, field medic: Can heal allies in combat, superior skill at mundane medical tasks
Surgeon: Can res/remove status effects(injuries) out of combat

My point is, a doctor should be able to do both, under the defined circumstances. However a non-doctor character should more often than not be able to be trained in field medic skill, while the same doesn't apply for the surgeon skill. So, I consider field medic skills a proper subset of surgeon skills in the Wasteland world.

 

[aris]

bad dad humour

This sums up both jokes.(Well.. all four jokes.) Although the red boots wasn't quite as bad as the other three.

It just hit me, the joke went over all of our heads. The joke was poking fun at Skyrim's repetitive shit dialogue and general unfuniness; the use of repetition was actually further mocking Skyrim for the sheer number of times you'll hear that awful line in the game.

It wasn't an intentional meme, or a joke from Bethesdas side. It became a meme because it was ridiculous that all of the guards apparently had had their adventuring days cut short by the same fate. Inexile doing the same, however this time with a meme, is not clever mocking, just lazy pop cultural referencing.

To be fair to Bethesda, i think getting an arrow to the knee means getting married in some nordic language... I think...

I speak a nordic language, never heard of the sorts. But yeah, it might actually be a metaphor.

 

[Ravel myluv]

bad dad humour

This sums up both jokes.(Well.. all four jokes.) Although the red boots wasn't quite as bad as the other three.

It just hit me, the joke went over all of our heads. The joke was poking fun at Skyrim's repetitive shit dialogue and general unfuniness; the use of repetition was actually further mocking Skyrim for the sheer number of times you'll hear that awful line in the game.

It wasn't an intentional meme, or a joke from Bethesdas side. It became a meme because it was ridiculous that all of the guards apparently had had their adventuring days cut short by the same fate. Inexile doing the same, however this time with a meme, is not clever mocking, just lazy pop cultural referencing.

To be fair to Bethesda, i think getting an arrow to the knee means getting married in some nordic language... I think...

I speak a nordic language, never heard of the sorts. But yeah, it might actually be a metaphor.

Yes, or maybe an old obsolte expression. Either way it doesn't excuse Bethesda from shitty writting!

 

[SuicideBunny]

To be fair to Bethesda, i think getting an arrow to the knee means getting married in some nordic language... I think...

it doesn't. that's just a shameless lie promoted by skyrim/bethesda apologists.
it has no meaning beyond what it outright states and it's just one of the barks included to make guards seem deeper than they are, which totally backfired.

 

[Jick Magger]

That and it having a second meaning doesn't make it any less of a dead horse.

 

[Ravel myluv]

To be fair to Bethesda, i think getting an arrow to the knee means getting married in some nordic language... I think...

it doesn't. that's just a shameless lie promoted by skyrim/bethesda apologists.
it has no meaning beyond what it outright states and it's just one of the barks included to make guards seem deeper than they are, which totally backfired.

Damn I'm already discovered!

 

[Onholyservicebound]

My point is, a doctor should be able to do both, under the defined circumstances. However a non-doctor character should more often than not be able to be trained in field medic skill, while the same doesn't apply for the surgeon skill. So, I consider field medic skills a proper subset of surgeon skills in the Wasteland world.

That comment is outdated at this point, I pretty much agree with you; I'm all for the skill dependency idea.

Earlier in this thread people were referencing some statistics on steam that showed the highest number of players, and average number of players on Wasteland 2, how do I navigate to that page?

 

[Brother None]

Earlier in this thread people were referencing some statistics on steam that showed the highest number of players, and average number of players on Wasteland 2, how do I navigate to that page?

You mean this one?

 

[aris]

Arrow in the knee was actually unintentionally funny in the beginning, because it was exactly that, a stock line that absolutely can't be used as a stock line because it becomes ridicolus when every guard says it ("hello" or "good evening" is acceptable as a stock line). Inexile trying to be intentionally funny with skyrim-meme pop cultural reference however, falls completely on its face.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Earlier in this thread people were referencing some statistics on steam that showed the highest number of players, and average number of players on Wasteland 2, how do I navigate to that page?

You mean this one?

That's the one yeah, peak number seems pretty low, although they're apparently higher than all of the fallout titles save New Vegas.

Is there somewhere on Steam where you can just see the straight up number of copies sold? In any case, I hope Inxile is open with it's sales number, still curious how well SRRs actually did. I imagine they won't bother reporting them unless they sell a lot.

 

[Ravel myluv]

Anyone wishes to comment on the writting?

Haven't played the beta, and these skyrim memes have worried me about quality of writting.

 

[valcik]

Arrow to the knee has become such a profanity due to voice acting, IMO. There are some generic floats repeated very frequently even in the BIS Fallouts, any street junkie tossed the same lines at you, just voiceless. The same goes for "wish for a nuclear winter" line in FNV, for instance.

tl;dr:
Making a frequently repeated lines of text fully voiced is a serious fuck-up!