Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #23: Gameplay Video!

[Alex]

That, however, may be a bit too much detail for this game. Thing it, you don't get steadily better at breaking down things with your bare hands. Either ou have an idea of where to better hit it (which depnds on you knowing what you are dealing with), or you don't.

How many skills in RPGs would you actually get steadily better at in real life?

Look at repair in Fallout. It's amazingly abstracted and realism breaking. Either you know how a specific machine works or you don't. Maybe you have some additional knowledge about how to improvise parts, but that doesn't translate into how repair works at all in Fallout. I don't see people complaining about that.

Well, machines share basic principles among themselves. If you know your way around transistors, capacitors and what not, you can probably fix a huge variety of problems without knowing the specific machine, or even the specifics of how it works! But the real point here is that, even if you were to consider "brute force" a skill, it would be limited. It would, at best, give you a small boost to your innate ability. It is the opposite relationship between, say, machine repair and intelligence, where a high intelligence can give you a little boost understanding the basics, and maybe coming up with ideas, but still takes second place in determining what you can do and you can't. In those cases, the amount of training is most important.

 

[SuicideBunny]

I would much rather have only a few attributes useable in the gameworld, possibly breaking symmetry, than have a skill that makes no sense.

it's the skill of properly judging the structural weak points of a door, predict how it will break down and applying both your strength and body mass in a way that will achieve breaking the door down while not hurting or causing you enough pain so that you have to stop what you are doing. there, now it makes about as much sense as having differently scoped "skills" that only ever increase and function progressively better with rank increases (real world "skills" don't, people get worse at what they do after learning it, before they get better again despite steadily accumulating experience).

 

[hiver]

That, however, may be a bit too much detail for this game. Thing it, you don't get steadily better at breaking down things with your bare hands. Either ou have an idea of where to better hit it (which depnds on you knowing what you are dealing with), or you don't.

How many skills in RPGs would you actually get steadily better at in real life?

Look at repair in Fallout. It's amazingly abstracted and realism breaking. Either you know how a specific machine works or you don't. Maybe you have some additional knowledge about how to improvise parts, but that doesn't translate into how repair works at all in Fallout. I don't see people complaining about that.

What?
Thats not how things work.

Every machine is not a unique individual mysterious item. There is no "specific" machines. They come in groups. Diezel, internal combustion, electrical - etc.
Most mulfunctions come in their own "groups" relating to support systems of the machine in question.
And any sane technician usually has a good idea what went wrong just by looking over these things.
Having the right spare parts is and can be a problem but that can be sidestepped by pillaging parts from other such machines.
Or if thats not available, by "inventing hot water".
Improvising.

And yes - you do get better by doing. In fact it is required. - and completely and utterly unavoidable.
Especially for "repair" kinds of skills.

 

[Alex]

I would much rather have only a few attributes useable in the gameworld, possibly breaking symmetry, than have a skill that makes no sense.

it's the skill of properly judging the structural weak points of a door, predict how it will break down and applying both your strength and body mass in a way that will achieve breaking the door down while not hurting or causing you enough pain so that you have to stop what you are doing. there, now it makes about as much sense as having differently scoped "skills" that only ever increase and function progressively better with rank increases (real world "skills" don't, people get worse at what they do after learning it, before they get better again despite steadily accumulating experience).

I get this idea, but it still has two problems:

It doesn't matter how good you are at spotting weak points. A well built door won't give in if you don't have at least a certain amount of strength.

It doesn't matter if you know nothing about this. If you are a mountain of muscles, you can kick in even very hard stuff. Specially if you have a few simple tools like a hammer or a crowbar. So raw physical strength is still much more important than refinement.

You could work on making the skill respect that, but if you are going to make it that complicated, why not just allow the character to use his strength directly?

Also, if you are going down that route, don't call it brute force.

 

[tuluse]

That, however, may be a bit too much detail for this game. Thing it, you don't get steadily better at breaking down things with your bare hands. Either ou have an idea of where to better hit it (which depnds on you knowing what you are dealing with), or you don't.

How many skills in RPGs would you actually get steadily better at in real life?

Look at repair in Fallout. It's amazingly abstracted and realism breaking. Either you know how a specific machine works or you don't. Maybe you have some additional knowledge about how to improvise parts, but that doesn't translate into how repair works at all in Fallout. I don't see people complaining about that.

Well, machines share basic principles among themselves. If you know your way around transistors, capacitors and what not, you can probably fix a huge variety of problems without knowing the specific machine, or even the specifics of how it works! But the real point here is that, even if you were to consider "brute force" a skill, it would be limited. It would, at best, give you a small boost to your innate ability. It is the opposite relationship between, say, machine repair and intelligence, where a high intelligence can give you a little boost understanding the basics, and maybe coming up with ideas, but still takes second place in determining what you can do and you can't. In those cases, the amount of training is most important.

This could still be represented in Wasteland. A 7 in brute force could mean only a minor improvement while a 7 in sniper rifles provides a big improvement.

It's probably not going to work like that, but it could.

 

[hiver]

This first level you will see is one of the first areas you will encounter in the game.
The agricultural center was also a part of Wasteland 1. It was an area that Chris Avellone had some affinity for and he did the design for the level.
Also thanks goes out to Nathan Long, who provided this area’s clever writing.

 

[Alex]

That, however, may be a bit too much detail for this game. Thing it, you don't get steadily better at breaking down things with your bare hands. Either ou have an idea of where to better hit it (which depnds on you knowing what you are dealing with), or you don't.

How many skills in RPGs would you actually get steadily better at in real life?

Look at repair in Fallout. It's amazingly abstracted and realism breaking. Either you know how a specific machine works or you don't. Maybe you have some additional knowledge about how to improvise parts, but that doesn't translate into how repair works at all in Fallout. I don't see people complaining about that.

Well, machines share basic principles among themselves. If you know your way around transistors, capacitors and what not, you can probably fix a huge variety of problems without knowing the specific machine, or even the specifics of how it works! But the real point here is that, even if you were to consider "brute force" a skill, it would be limited. It would, at best, give you a small boost to your innate ability. It is the opposite relationship between, say, machine repair and intelligence, where a high intelligence can give you a little boost understanding the basics, and maybe coming up with ideas, but still takes second place in determining what you can do and you can't. In those cases, the amount of training is most important.

This could still be represented in Wasteland. A 7 in brute force could mean only a minor improvement while a 7 in sniper rifles provides a big improvement.

It's probably not going to work like that, but it could.

Of course, and if that was the case, my only complaint would be "Why are we doing things so obscure?". Still, that would be a minor complaint...

 

[EG]

It doesn't make sense. You lack imagination if youa ctually think this is the best way to do dialogue. It isn't. It's the lazy way. Abstraction can be sueful when it makes sense. This don't make sense.

Makes more sense than putting words in my character's mouth.

Naturally, removing all words from the character's mouth is the most appropriate approach to incline. o_O

Half of what made Fallout a good game was NPC dialogs and the options provided for responses. Having responses broken down to . . .


"Preposterous! The FEV-2 virus doesn't destroy the reproductive organs of those it mutates."

>Changed!
>Ask Others!
>Radiation!

Fucking brilliant.

 

[hiver]

This isnt Fallout you know...

A hybrid approach could work fine.
Just have some sort of normal dialogue choices in specific situations and the rest can be keywords style.

 

[Alex]

After playing Neuromancer, I understood why the keyword based approach rocks. It allows you to challenge the player in ways you just can't with dialogue trees. And the trade-off for it is something purely cosmetic. It couldn't be more of a no-brainer. If we were talking about something like Planescape: Torment here, I could see how that wouldn't be so unimportant. But since it is Wasteland, I think they couldn't have chosen better.

 

[Gozma]

If they actually use the type-in keyword shit for something besides easter eggs and fan service they can tap into about 30 years of text parser adventure game design

 

[circ]

LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE MILLIONS OF RUSSIAN JA2/FALLOUT CLONES BOO.

I WISH THIS WAS A FLESHLIGHT SO I COULD STROKE IT TO THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL WITH GUNS.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Chris Keenan on skills and attributes:

Each starting skill has a formula that is derived from up to 3 attributes based on what would be necessary to be proficient in that skill. So initially, where you place your attribute points will determine the starting value of that skill. A character’s skills can be increased by leveling up, using that skill, and through specific items equipped on the character. For example, our current formula for Pick Lock is [10 + (1*Perception) + (2*Expertise)]. Depending on your starting attributes, your initial skill in Pick Lock can vary greatly.
In order to make something happen in the world, you will need to use the proper skill. Wasteland 1 allowed players to use strength and perception. We wanted to keep this functionality so we created skills for these; Brute Force and Examine. In future updates, we will go into more detail on many of these skills.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/361730

Brute Force is basically useable strength attribute. As for it being redundant with Lock Pick, I would guess that Brute Force will also be applicable in other situations, like lifting/pushing heavy objects, etc... actions that would typically require a strength check will be accomplished with the BF skill.

 

[Kz3r0]

I get this idea, but it still has two problems:

It doesn't matter how good you are at spotting weak points. A well built door won't give in if you don't have at least a certain amount of strength.

Not so much as you believe.

It doesn't matter if you know nothing about this. If you are a mountain of muscles, you can kick in even very hard stuff. Specially if you have a few simple tools like a hammer or a crowbar. So raw physical strength is still much more important than refinement.

Trust a Karateka, it's a different set of skills, besides, experienced people in breaking things are better that mountain of muscles that never did it before.

Also, if you are going down that route, don't call it brute force.

True.

 

[Severian Silk]

The game looks glorious.

 

[Stinger]

Like a few others, my only issue is the dialogue not being full sentences. Entering keywords is fine but imo the selectable dialogue options would be better in full sentences, similar to Fallout.

Everything else looks great. I wasn't that impressed with the screenshots but seeing it in action looks fantastic.

EDIT: VV What the fuck is this dice bullshit?

 

[Captain Shrek]

You know guys?

Probably Brute force is a universal ability (as opposed to a skill) that is DIRECTLY tied to Strength attribute. Thus it is a strength check. If it is NOT that, then it should be.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

The game looks like it's shaping up well, I wasn't very optimistic about the project but they are proving me wrong. I really dig that they aren't doing all voice overs for the dialog so now we can get some longer and more reactive responses.

 

[Bluebottle]

Gameplay framework looks like the shit from that. Perception cones, while a little small at the moment, will hopefully open up some Commandos style sneaking round a base shit and some nice variations between opponents (robots with 360 degree perception, blind creatures that are super sensitive to sounds, for the obvious). Everything else looks pretty much how I assumed/hoped it would. Now they've just got to build a compelling game around that framework. Still, at worst it looks like we'll at least get an interesting tactical squad style affair, at best something fucking glorious.

 

[Carrion]

You know guys?

Probably Brute force is a universal ability (as opposed to a skill) that is DIRECTLY tied to Strength attribute. Thus it is a strength check. If it is NOT that, then it should be.

It was listed as a skill in a previous update. Then again, attributes were supposed to be passive (I think) but in the video they still use Perception the same way they use lockpicking, so maybe they've changed things since then. Maybe Brute Force has other uses aside from breaking stuff, and bashing locks is a 50/50 check between the skill and the character's strenght, or something. Maybe Infinitron knows more?

 

[Suchy]

Honestly I didn't like the dialogue system. I mean, I don't mind keyword system, but not implemented this way. I want to see my guy speak a full line. Not just "Rangers", followed by 3 pages of monologue from an NPC. Betrayal at Krondor did it right, also Gabriel Knight. Dialogues should be dialogues, not monolgues.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I wish they'd gone the route of longer PC questioning too but honestly most RPG questioning amounts to:

1) So, what the heck is the deal with these Ranger guys anyway?
2) Who the hell are the Rangers and why should I care?
3) Tell me again about the Rangers.
4) I bet the Rangers love hockey, right? <-- crappy attempt at humor for charismatic dump skill

So I'm not that broken-hearted about it anyway.

 

[EG]

I wish they'd gone the route of longer PC questioning too but honestly most RPG questioning amounts to:

1) So, what the heck is the deal with these Ranger guys anyway?
2) Who the hell are the Rangers and why should I care?
3) Tell me again about the Rangers.
4) I bet the Rangers love hockey, right? <-- crappy attempt at humor for charismatic dump skill

So I'm not that broken-hearted about it anyway.

No, RPG questioning amounts to the above when a writer gives up. But I forget that it's the norm today.

This isnt Fallout you know...

Right, right . . . It isn't Fallout. So, it uh.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Most modern games look like that yes. But it's even present in the best games with the best writing, man. I'm exaggerating, of course, for effect...but add a little flavor to those options and you have most RPGs anyway. Which is cool, when the writers are actually good (i.e. Planescape, Fallout, Arcanum) but usually pretty meh. Seeing my PC say something witty is fine and all, but I can live without it.

 

[Grunker]

You know guys?

Probably Brute force is a universal ability (as opposed to a skill) that is DIRECTLY tied to Strength attribute. Thus it is a strength check. If it is NOT that, then it should be.

It's a skill.