Wasteland This combat is very annoying

[Gondolin]

So far, the only time I felt combat being remotely interesting was when fighting off the pod people in AG center -- and that's because there was a fence I could shoot through and they had to run around, and a tight chokepoint I could cover with my melee.

Pretty much. I tried setting up chockepoints and killing grounds, but it's not working. At the Wreckers' Camp, the sharpshooter and gunner charged my party and reached it BEFORE the brawlers.

 

[Darth Roxor]

OK, but are you also aware that it's supposed to be a thing that adds personality in general - not just a morale-based panic attack?

Some personality...

It happened to me yesterday that I was being approached by 5 pod people. I blew 4 of them up with a grenade.

Vulture's Cry, seeing this shamefur dispray, yelled some typical 'SCREW YOU GUYS I'M DOING IT MY WAY', and proceeded to run towards the pod man (with a sniper rifle, no less) finally stopping 3 steps away from him, crouching and ending turn.

What you guys are describing is almost exactly how combat worked in WL1.

Just saying..

1988

the year when mechanics were set in stone

 

[Infinitron]

WL2 doesn't have morale. I stated as much in my post. If the characters' battle cries are anything to go by, the going-rogue segments seem to be just that. And personality can be derived from many things. A nut like Angela running to her certain doom and a Doctor doing the exact same doesn't exactly tell me anything about their personalities other than they are both abnormally stupid. A Doctor who goes crazy at the sight of her own blood (irony) or a mercenary like Angela going crazy when her party is attacked (Ace death PTSD) - those would be personality traits.

Also, for the record, I have one character leveling Leadership. It is, from what I can tell, the most pointless of the skills. Melee enemies negate the %-bonus. Stopping allies from going rogue doesn't actually seem to be a thing. There is no defending these gameplay mechanics. They are poorly designed, flat out. A person going rogue should be governed by what is going on in the battle, and predicated on whether or not the player took steps to prevent it. It's called gameplay. A person going rogue should not be governed by their own existence, and the risk for it wholly predicated on the binary function of whether or not I have them in the party. That's just plain ol' RNG. Narrative-wise, it is stupid that all companions behave in this manner, and that any combat unit would ever hire such undependable people, or that such people would even survive in the wasteland to begin with.

I think you're being alarmingly dogmatic. In my opinion, one must be very careful before declaring some game mechanic "undefensable" or utterly inferior. There are very few game mechanics whose inclusion can't be justified by context or design goal. What's this "should" business?

By the way, ask Anthony Davis about his "Leadership party" idea.

 

[Lord Andre]

While it is not surprising to see some retards asking for more fake choices bells and whistles on the combat engine instead of enjoying the emergent gameplay the combat actually has, it is surprising to see Darth Roxor complain like a casual about stuff that are actually features and not flaws. Even more surprising to see Volourn fighting the good fight and with solid game mechanic related arguments to boot.

Volly is a better player than Darth Roxor !

 

[Darth Roxor]

choo choo, here comes the apologism train

 

[Kem0sabe]

Emergent gameplay? What emergent gameplay?

Some points about the combat:

• You have a simple cover mechanic that has a lot of problems with line of sight and how cover actually works. I can shoot people through a lot of the cover, including walls, but if they hug a barrel... oh noes, reduced damage;
• You have a headshot ability that only works half of the time, its incredibly unreliable and often does less damage;
• Weapon balance is off, you can easily get early weapon tier handguns with stupid range and 100% hit chance for relatively small AP, while the overpowered sniper rifle gets off one shot for less damage;
• Melee? It's a joke when compared to equipping your team with assault rifles;
• Energy weapons? Even the pulse rifle does worse damage and has less capacity than a simple m16;
• Grenades and rocket launchers? Why even use a skill like the other weapons when you can have 100% hit chance high damage explosives for giggles;
• Enemy detection range to trigger combat is very poorly done, you can walk right up to a lot of mobs and alpha strike them with your team before even triggering a fight;
• It's easy, HP bloat and constant jamming doesnt make things difficult, just makes them last longer.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I think some of you guys are not very far into game (or playing on easy)

-Distrupting enemy sharpshooters with your melee/shotgunner helps enormously. You can lure them out their covers(works wonders with "ambush") and deny their shots that turn mostly. Though your melee need high armor and speed to survive if shit happens. Shotgunners really helps when they clear some minor covers in one shot.
-Energy weapons are only meant to be used against high armored enemies. At least 5 armor needed them to become effective, they are useless against low armored enemies. You can hit some giant robots for absurd damage (like 100-120) with your "low level" energy weapons. Now thats a problem because powerfull energy weapons have higher thresholds!! and they deal less damage than older ones... They need to work on that threshold thing.
-Explosives are fun&games but they are pretty limited and expensive and heavy. Not every team member can be equipped with 5 granades and 3 LAWs.
-HP bloat (what HP bloat?) and jamming is really minor issues when enemies melt your group in seconds due to poor party replacement. 4-5 DBMs can kill 2-3 in your party with one lucky burst crit, 2 loobers blow your low HP sniper into pieces if you can't kill them before they act. Robots melt you. Even raiders starts to use heavy weaponary like HMGs(thank god this things jam like hell) or LAWs. Combat is only easy in ealy parts of Arizona. Edit: Be a good lad and use weaponsmithing to aviod jamming btw, its really easy to lower it to %0 with most weapons. They still got jammed but really rare
-Armor is good till you come across with energy weapon users. And powerfull armor really slow you down, they also want high STR.
-Headshot is pretty useless and highly situational. I only used it for 3 times when I had the higher ground advantage. But relying on normal shots and crits are much more effective. Now everything will be different if we can crit with it.
-Pistols have really short range, a few longer ranged ones consumes more AP. They outshine some SMGs and shotguns at start but after a while even the best ones become support weapons. I was underwhelmed about SMGs till I got my hands on some pretty stuff, now my party leader (who has 8 CHA and 8 İNT and abysmall other stats) taking most of the kills with 7 AP bursts. Leads to some bloody death animations
-Movement is the real problem here, they really need to drop movement per AP. Most enemy melee characters can run whole battle are in one turn...


Of course combat is below JAs with patches and mods or ye'olde X-com but you guys need to accept the ugly truth. There won't be similar games near future and they are mostly tactical games, not a RPG like Wasteland 2.
And even in those games we did similar things in battle over and over.

 

[Bitcher1]

Emergent gameplay? What emergent gameplay?

You see it's totally emergent gameplay when companions go rogue and fuck things up with their braindead AI.

Why u no liek emergent gameplay??? :\

 

[Kem0sabe]

I think some of you guys are not very far into game (or playing on easy)

-Distrupting enemy sharpshooters with your melee/shotgunner helps enormously. You can lure them out their covers(works wonders with "ambush") and deny their shots that turn mostly. Though your melee need high armor and speed to survive if shit happens. Shotgunners really helps when they clear some minor covers in one shot.
-Energy weapons are only meant to be used against high armored enemies. At least 5 armor needed them to become effective, they are useless against low armored enemies. You can hit some giant robots for absurd damage (like 100-120) with your "low level" energy weapons. Now thats a problem because powerfull energy weapons have higher thresholds!! and they deal less damage than older ones... They need to work on that threshold thing.
-Explosives are fun&games but they are pretty limited and expensive and heavy. Not every team member can be equipped with 5 granades and 3 LAWs.
-HP bloat (what HP bloat?) and jamming is really minor issues when enemies melt your group in seconds due to poor party replacement. 4-5 DBMs can kill 2-3 in your party with one lucky burst crit, 2 loobers blow your low HP sniper into pieces if you can't kill them before they act. Robots melt you. Even raiders starts to use heavy weaponary like HMGs(thank god this things jam like hell) or LAWs. Combat is only easy in ealy parts of Arizona. Edit: Be a good lad and use weaponsmithing to aviod jamming btw, its really easy to lower it to %0 with most weapons. They still got jammed but really rare
-Armor is good till you come across with energy weapon users. And powerfull armor really slow you down, they also want high STR.
-Headshot is pretty useless and highly situational. I only used it for 3 times when I had the higher ground advantage. But relying on normal shots and crits are much more effective. Now everything will be different if we can crit with it.
-Pistols have really short range, a few longer ranged ones consumes more AP. They outshine some SMGs and shotguns at start but after a while even the best ones become support weapons. I was underwhelmed about SMGs till I got my hands on some pretty stuff, now my party leader (who has 8 CHA and 8 İNT and abysmall other stats) taking most of the kills with 7 AP bursts. Leads to some bloody death animations
-Movement is the real problem here, they really need to drop movement per AP. Most enemy melee characters can run whole battle are in one turn...


Of course combat is below JAs with patches and mods or ye'olde X-com but you guys need to accept the ugly truth. There won't be similar games near future and they are mostly tactical games, not a RPG like Wasteland 2.
And even in those games we did similar things in battle over and over.

-Distrupting enemy sharpshooters with your melee/shotgunner helps enormously. You can lure them out their covers(works wonders with "ambush") and deny their shots that turn mostly. Though your melee need high armor and speed to survive if shit happens. Shotgunners really helps when they clear some minor covers in one shot. Why do i need to disrupt them when i can just shoot most of them without any significant loss of hit%?

-Energy weapons are only meant to be used against high armored enemies. At least 5 armor needed them to become effective, they are useless against low armored enemies. You can hit some giant robots for absurd damage (like 100-120) with your "low level" energy weapons. Now thats a problem because powerfull energy weapons have higher thresholds!! and they deal less damage than older ones... They need to work on that threshold thing. I can hit robots with a standard assault rifle for more damage than my pulse rifle. Even for their intended purpose they are underpowered.

-Explosives are fun&games but they are pretty limited and expensive and heavy. Not every team member can be equipped with 5 granades and 3 LAWs. Explosive Weapons are overpowered, they are not trivial things just to keep the gamer happy. Especially when you have a skill line designed only to disarm a trap here or there, underused and that could have been easilly integrated with the explosive weapon type.

-HP bloat (what HP bloat?) and jamming is really minor issues when enemies melt your group in seconds due to poor party replacement. 4-5 DBMs can kill 2-3 in your party with one lucky burst crit, 2 loobers blow your low HP sniper into pieces if you can't kill them before they act. Robots melt you. Even raiders starts to use heavy weaponary like HMGs(thank god this things jam like hell) or LAWs. Combat is only easy in ealy parts of Arizona. Edit: Be a good lad and use weaponsmithing to aviod jamming btw, its really easy to lower it to %0 with most weapons. They still got jammed but really rare. HP bloat as in adding much more HP to mobs as you turn up the difficulty, with no redesigned encounters or new weapons/abilities to show for it. Weapons get jammed quite frequently in my playthrough and it seems to be a recurring thing in many playthroughs.

-Armor is good till you come across with energy weapon users. And powerfull armor really slow you down, they also want high STR. Armor should show up on your character, inxile went to all the trouble of modeling clothing and secondary weapons but armor? who wants to see power armor? no one i guess.

-Movement is the real problem here, they really need to drop movement per AP. Most enemy melee characters can run whole battle are in one turn... Agree, i often get rushed by very distant robots in the first turn.

Granted im only in Arizona, but having trivial difficulty in half of your game is bad design, leaving the "meat" of the combat to LA. Original Sin does everything better than WL2 in terms of turned based combat, despite also becoming trivial towards the end curve of the game, it shows you can have a deep rpg with good combat mechanics.

 

[Cyberarmy]

-Why do i need to disrupt them when i can just shoot most of them without any significant loss of hit%?
My sniper and riflemens acc.drops to %30-40 when enemies use cover and sharpshooters/rifle users use cover a lot, they even move between covers when intterupted.

-I can hit robots with a standard assault rifle for more damage than my pulse rifle. Even for their intended purpose they are underpowered.
Come back to me when you meet slicers&dicers or other "real" robot enemies or 8-9 armored human enemies.

-Explosive Weapons are overpowered, they are not trivial things just to keep the gamer happy. Especially when you have a skill line designed only to disarm a trap here or there, underused and that could have been easilly integrated with the explosive weapon type.
-Yes they are OP but they are rare, heavy and very situational. Not all enemies are snowballed together. And you won't be happy when enemies use them against you.
But I agree with they should have linked it with explosives skill. Maybe explosives start with 0 armor pierce and low area of effect which goes up with skill level.

-HP bloat as in adding much more HP to mobs as you turn up the difficulty, with no redesigned encounters or new weapons/abilities to show for it. Weapons get jammed quite frequently in my playthrough and it seems to be a recurring thing in many playthroughs.
-I'd like to see more enemies with better equipmenr instead of increased HP but they went the easy road, as usual. For jamming issuies use the freaking weaponsmith mate, you can get steady clips with only 2 levels of it, and it really gets better with higher levels.

-Armor should show up on your character, inxile went to all the trouble of modeling clothing and secondary weapons but armor? who wants to see power armor? no one i guess.
That's some strange design I agree, I'm playing as 3 Amigos right now, in full metal jacket Since there are lots of customization in this part I can't complain, there are some heavy armor looks around.

Granted im only in Arizona, but having trivial difficulty in half of your game is bad design, leaving the "meat" of the combat to LA. Original Sin does everything better than WL2 in terms of turned based combat, despite also becoming trivial towards the end curve of the game, it shows you can have a deep rpg with good combat mechanics.
-Game really changes after Arizona, seems like different persons designed the second half (or last %60). enemies especially become stronger due to some equipment.

 

[Grunker]

Didn't see this thread, concur with the OP: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...d-2-release-thread.94233/page-49#post-3503002

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...d-2-release-thread.94233/page-35#post-3499969

wall of text wall of text

The same thing applies to losing control of party members. You should never just take the control away from a player without their input. That's a cutscene by another name. Nevermind that WL2's version of this fuck-y'all-I'm-out mechanic wherein the party member breaks formation and sprints toward enemy lines is less like "I'm my own man/woman!" and more like "I'm gonna go commit suicide."

wall of text wall of text

You seem inordinately upset about this point. Have you noticed that it only happens with recruited NPCs and not your Rangers?

It's pretty simple - risk is losing control, reward is larger party.

Anyway, that's a hell of a lot of blah blah blah just to say "I want more options to click on"

I agree with the fact that it's very weird to criticize the loss-of-control mechanic. It was one of Neu-XCOM's strengths, the panic thing. Should have played a larger role.

However, the lack of tactical variety remains a problem. The combat is simply way, way too basic.

 

[bonescraper]

I kinda agree with Roxor here. More status effects and AP spending to increase accuracy, good ideas. But i don't want this game to have SRR-style magical active skills. This kind of shit belongs to MMOs or XCOM.

On the other hand, Xenonauts also has a very basic combat system, and Roxor loves it... And unlike Wasteland, that game is ALL about combat.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Only melee combat needs some "active skills" like knockdown, harmstring or backstab. Or spitting to the face for agro managment
Adding different ammo types also should help, but not like AP bullet, hollow bullets. Ammo with fire, explosive, EMP, poison, radioactive effects should suit Wasteland.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Xenonauts also has a very basic combat system, and Roxor loves it...

"Loves it" is an exaggeration, but Xenonauts still has plenty of shit Wasteland2 doesn't - grenades AND missiles with various effects, terrain destruction, suppressive fire, aimed/snap/burst shot, shieldmaidens, morale, reaction fire etc. Not to mention it's a whole different deal altogether since it works with more characters in combat + they are all squishy as shit.

 

[sser]

Didn't see this thread, concur with the OP: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...d-2-release-thread.94233/page-49#post-3503002

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...d-2-release-thread.94233/page-35#post-3499969

wall of text wall of text

The same thing applies to losing control of party members. You should never just take the control away from a player without their input. That's a cutscene by another name. Nevermind that WL2's version of this fuck-y'all-I'm-out mechanic wherein the party member breaks formation and sprints toward enemy lines is less like "I'm my own man/woman!" and more like "I'm gonna go commit suicide."

wall of text wall of text

You seem inordinately upset about this point. Have you noticed that it only happens with recruited NPCs and not your Rangers?

It's pretty simple - risk is losing control, reward is larger party.

Anyway, that's a hell of a lot of blah blah blah just to say "I want more options to click on"

I agree with the fact that it's very weird to criticize the loss-of-control mechanic. It was one of Neu-XCOM's strengths, the panic thing. Should have played a larger role.

However, the lack of tactical variety remains a problem. The combat is simply way, way too basic.

It's not weird at all.

I discussed the loss of control in the first post. X-Com, XCOM, and Wasteland 2 all handle it differently, with Gollop's interpretation being the best, and WL2's being the worst (or if you want to be subjective, least complicated). XCOM took the idea of it into its own game. The problem with XCOM was that it took the panic, but not the randomization of what that panic entailed. So when a recruit goes 'crazy' and just turns and shoots the guy next to him, it looks less like panic and more like retarded behavior. By comparison, X-Com's panic could harm anyone and anything in the area. Another issue was that XCOM employed fewer, and far more important, troops. So you have a poor implementation of panic and it wastes precious resources, crippling the player. X-Com, by comparison, had many disposable troops, and a rookie going insane amongst rookies was usually part and parcel of the game's opening threshers/missions. Furthermore, if you brought rookies onto newer missions with experienced veterans, you had the option to limit the damage output of those recruits. You also had the option of forking over a grenade launcher to them, too, but it was at your own peril. You can sorta limit your troops in XCOM, but at some point the firepower you're missing out on is a necessity, and you can't exchange it all for a bunch of utility (like giving a grunt in X-Com a bunch of smoke grenades, for example).

WL2's loss of control implementation doesn't have a system. Its implementation is RNG. That's it.

 

[Grunker]

I was refering to this:

You should never just take the control away from a player without their input

I don't disagree particularly with anything in your reply to me.

 

[tindrli]

does anyone beside me have a problem that 89% of random encounters happens on the same area??? the one wich starts.ahh hell with it i will take a photo right now

that is the area... i just finnished exploring radio tower and i could give an arm that 11 of 16 random encounters happened on this particular area... and that is fucking SAD!!!!

 

[sser]

I was refering to this:

You should never just take the control away from a player without their input

I don't disagree particularly with anything in your reply to me.

Right. XCOM and X-Com do have player input and there are measurements you can look at to see why it happened to you. As mentioned earlier, there is no input for WL2's other than the moment you hire the person. The mechanic is not combat-based, but ... organization-based? Recruit-based? The reason for it happening (you hired the person, your risk) is way too divorced from the punishment (RNG says this person breaks rank, hours later, in another land, with a person who is no longer anything like the one you hired). The game should have a reason for taking control away that is - at the very least - somewhat relevant to the context it's happening in.

 

[felipepepe]

Fuck weapon jam. Just had to reload because my weapons failed not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES IN A ROW. Battle for Wesnoth has less RNG issues than this.

Think about it for a second, Luck causes you to sometimes get +1 AP. But Weapon jam causes you to frequently lose a shot and then lose a lot more APs to unjam it, potentially losing almost two rounds depending on the weapon and how many APs you have.

Not to mention that it competently inverts the difficulty curve, since at the start of the game you have low HP, no armor, shit aim, shit weapons and no money to buy sturdy magazines and the likes.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I also believe that, overall, there is something wonky about the jamming RNG, but honestly, after playing the Dark Heresy pnp for 5 years and seeing my share of 3 jams in a row happening (5% chance), this really can't surprise and/or piss me off anymore.

 

[Dickie]

Are followers more likely to go rogue on higher difficulties? I'm a pansy, so I'm only playing on the second difficulty for my first game. You can see the going rogue chance on the character screen and just keep your leadership high enough to keep it at zero, but I dunno if that's a difficulty thing or based on charisma or what.

 

[bonescraper]

Xenonauts also has a very basic combat system, and Roxor loves it...

"Loves it" is an exaggeration, but Xenonauts still has plenty of shit Wasteland2 doesn't - grenades AND missiles with various effects, terrain destruction, suppressive fire, aimed/snap/burst shot, shieldmaidens, morale, reaction fire etc. Not to mention it's a whole different deal altogether since it works with more characters in combat + they are all squishy as shit.

Wait till you fight some robots. You can hack them in combat <3

 

[Volourn]

"Does anyone beside me have a problem that 89% of random encounters happens on the same area???"

It depends on where on the world map you are. I've had maps where I'm actually fighting roofs. Others where I'm basically in the desert.

 

[tindrli]

"Does anyone beside me have a problem that 89% of random encounters happens on the same area???"

It depends on where on the world map you are. I've had maps where I'm actually fighting roofs. Others where I'm basically in the desert.

that's all ok.. but i just don't understand that they didnt had time or money or whatever to make more of those random encounters areas.. on the end its not that important but god damn, i had like 11 of 16 random where all in the same map.. they didn't even bother to change an entering starting position... nothing..

 

[Volourn]

yeah, I was annoyed byt hat at first too but when you move along the map you get different battle maps and sometimes even different starting spots on the same map.

Of course, it be nice if theyw ere all unqiue maps but that just isn't feasible. I don't think any game has ever managed to pull that off.