Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #28: Progress Report, Weapon Design

[Infinitron]

Wasteland 2 does have a dedicated energy weapons skill. And I imagine, like the first one, they'lll be completely superior to their regular gun counterparts. However, an important distinction to make between Fallout and Wasteland is that in Wasteland you could not put points into energy weapons during character creation. It was a skill you unlocked in the world itself. I hope they have enough cognizance to preserve this aspect instead of copying the mistakes of Fallout.

OMG WASTELAND IS DUMBED DOWN CONSOLE SHIT

 

[Jestai]

Obviously, if you have to tag skills before you even enter the game universe and you have no clue what challenges lie ahead, it's gonna suck. I mean, we could foresee that Energy Guns and Big Guns were probably stronger than Small Guns, but not that they were nowhere to be found until mid (laser guns, which suck) to late game ("I'm gonna turn you into ashes" real shit).
A progressive tagging of skills would have been better. You can tag one skill that makes sense in the Arroyo setting at the character creation screen (ie : not fucking energy weapon), and the other ones at the 3rd or 4th level, when you've already seen melee and guns. Or maybe get a new tag every 5 levels, I don't know. You can chose everything as long as you've already used the skill once... Something like that.

I'm not saying that making a gunslinger or whatever is trivial, I'm saying that challenges revolving around unbalanced skills (or "skill tiers", if you will) can be something interesting. X is good early game, Y is shit early game. X is slowly declining while Y is now sitting at the top. If I want to keep on using X, I need to make my way of playing evolve to maximize on my supreme mastery of X, if I want to start using Y, I need to find the good balance between X and Y for a while, which is making my way of playing evolve too!

The other way is: X is good because A B C, but D., Y is good because B C D, but A. It's gonna stay this way. No surprise. Somewhat one dimensional. Every time I level up, I'm gonna max my skill, all game long. By the way, if you like this kind of balance, you can also have it with unbalanced skills : melee or guns? Big guns or energy guns? Throwing or... nah, just kidding.
The game can obviously still be very interesting thanks to good and challenging combat encounters, but I think that we're losing something from the "character evolution" point of view without actually gaining anything.

But can we forget about Fallout for a moment now? It's a pretty bad herald for the point we're trying to make.

 

[Infinitron]

Jestai Good post - you've explained your point of view well. But:

I'm not saying that making a gunslinger or whatever is trivial, I'm saying that challenges revolving around unbalanced skills (or "skill tiers", if you will) can be something interesting. X is good early game, Y is shit early game. X is slowly declining while Y is now sitting at the top. If I want to keep on using X, I need to make my way of playing evolve to maximize on my supreme mastery of X, if I want to start using Y, I need to find the good balance between X and Y for a while, which is making my way of playing evolve too!

This is the kind of thing that sounds much more interesting than it actually is, IMO.

I would however consider that to be an acceptable design, as long as the game makes it clear ahead of time that the required skillset is "evolving" and that the player should strongly consider switching to improving the new skill. In terms of content, the game should not immediately start throwing encounters at you that require the new skill.

You can't make intelligent plans if you have no idea what's coming up.

The other way is: X is good because A B C, but D., Y is good because B C D, but A. It's gonna stay this way. No surprise. Somewhat one dimensional. Every time I level up, I'm gonna max my skill, all game long. By the way, if you like this kind of balance, you can also have it with unbalanced skills : melee or guns? Big guns or energy guns? Throwing or... nah, just kidding.

I don't see how that's any more "one dimensional" than one skill becoming unequivocally superior to another skill over the course of the game.

The game can obviously still be very interesting thanks to good and challenging combat encounters

And that's pretty much it, isn't it? It seems to me that having to "evolve" your skills is kind of like a band-aid for bad encounter design. "Our game doesn't have interesting combat, so we'll make life difficult for you by throwing an unexpected skillset change at you instead."

 

[dunno lah]

Well, that depends on how "simulationist" you want your system to be. If you're going to realistic at all, then you can't do some of the stuff you mention. For example, AKSU-47 is as quick to aim as a pistol, as quick to reload as any weapon with a magazine, has 30 round clips and could be modified to accept 50 round drums and does excellent damage. It is a superior weapon to a handgun in every situation - yes, even in close-quarters, since it's entirely possible to fire it from the hip and it's short stature make it very difficult for an opponent to grab the barrel.

I'm not an expert and it's been a while (never) since I've fired a few rounds from my trusty AKSU-47, so I'll take your word for it.

Design-wise, you can either exclude stereotype-breaking weapons or allow skills or items' crossover when using them.

To an extent, I agree but there must be a point where that stops making sense. Good example is the introduction of power armour in Fallout. It doesn't matter where you're aiming, if your opponent is wearing a T-61b suit, you need to have a powerful enough weapon to kill him and it should be something that's at least somewhat realistic. And not every choice must be equally viable and rewarding, why are you claiming otherwise?

I'm not claiming that EVERY choice must be equally viable and rewarding, I'm saying that telling the player that his skill has suddenly stopped working tends to be a bad design choice. I certainly didn't like when my suave and persuasive Toreador discovered that he can't talk his way through Bloodlines.

I'm not saying that the player should be able to drop robots and heavy armor dudes with a starting gun. Again, not an expert, but surely guns like Colt Python and Anaconda are good enough to get the job done?

I believe the 14mm Pistol, .223 Pistol were viable options against a BoS Paladin. Perhaps even more so than using a Laser Pistol with a measly 50% EW skill.
ALso, why use Colt Pythons when you can use a Magnum 500. It's so big that it's a five-shooter...

 

[GarfunkeL]

GarfunkeL
For the last time: Stop telling us why having a late game skill like Energy Weapons isn't that bad. Start telling us why it's good.

It's not good. I already said that it should not have existed in the first place and energy weapons should have instead used either Small Guns or Big Guns. But to claim that putting a tag on it and investing it in character creation cripples your character is hyperbole.

Not in his opinion.

When I started at Black Isle, I designed a bunch of fights in IWD that only a handful of veteran BG testers could get through. Memorably, I saw a QA tester blow a fuse because a fight in Lower Dorn's Deep was "impossible". When I showed him how I got through it, I started off by having my casters go through six rounds of buffs. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Uh... buffing my party?" This seemed normal to me. DUH YEAH BUFF YOUR PARTY TO HELL AND BACK LOCK AND LOAD PAY ATTENTION FFFFFFFFFF. Despite his high experience with RPGs and Baldur's Gate, he just... never thought of it. The problem was that the entire fight was balanced around a party that was optimally built and lit up like a Christmas tree from stacked buffs.

Why is a simpleton like that working as QA-tester in the first place? The mind boggles. Even if you've never played tabletop D&D, just reading the spell descriptions should light up a lamp in your head about the importance of buffing.

I'm not any sort of super-player - I can't ironman Gold Box games or even BG and I don't remember every spell by heart or have a Clevesque IQ of 140+ - so it really freaks me out that compared to Sawyer's examples, I'm apparently some super-knowledgeable RPG-guru.

 

[Jasede]

Shouldn't Q&A testers represent the average? If the average can't enjoy your game you won't be selling many copies.
(I am not siding with them, I am just feeling the need to point out the obvious. You don't make games for us. You make games for the majority of the market so you can make a living.)

If you dig you can find all these videos of people failing to Q&A Half-Life because they couldn't figure out how to crouch-jump (nevermind it's mentioned in the tutorial).

 

[Infinitron]

Shouldn't Q&A testers represent the average? If the average can't enjoy your game you won't be selling many copies.
(I am not siding with them, I am just feeling the need to point out the obvious. You don't make games for us. You make games for the majority of the market so you can make a living.)

If you dig you can find all these videos of people failing to Q&A Half-Life because they couldn't figure out how to crouch-jump (nevermind it's mentioned in the tutorial).

It's called "QA". There is no "and" between "Quality" and "Assurance".

My impression is that AAA devs often end up hiring playtesters who are dumber than the average player of their game. This is probably because they are overly optimistic about the size of the audience that will end up buying the game. The more people who buy your game, the dumber they'll be on average.

However, I'm not sure that this was the case back in the late 90s/early 2000s.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The funny thing is that Roguey/Sawyer is arguing for dumbing down for the most retarded of the retards while at the same time claiming that the game will be better.

2) Warn them. Although it should not be necessary to understand that a Laser pistol is better than a gun, for the ultimate idiots, make it explicit in the manual.

How about premade characters? Oh wait, Fallout has them. And that's why there are premade characters. For people who think reading is teh hard, for people who don't want to bother with actually thinking or simply for people who just want to be sure that what they choose is viable.

But hey, why not ruin the fun for everybody and make all games for the lowest common denominator. That's why we have all these great games today because this is a good thing.

 

[Jasede]

Infinitron

I know a friend who worked as a Q&A tester.

Basically, the good ones won't get their input heard (fixing bugs and design issues is too expensive) and the bad ones are contracted by giant game-testing firms where idiotic kids with no prospects play games and eat Doritos, sometimes reporting irrelevant issues, but mostly not.

 

[Infinitron]

But hey, why not ruin the fun for everybody and make all games for the lowest common denominator. That's why we have all these great games today because this is a good thing.

The thing is that sometimes what you call the "lowest common denominator" is also the "non-aspie denominator".

Like I said, in the early 90s, hardcore CRPG players probably thought it was really important to have to regularly feed your party in an RPG. Removing that feature would be "dumbing down". Lo and behold, game designers eventually figured out that it wasn't really very important. And most players seem to have come to agree with that.

 

[belated]

What I wouldn't give for a greasemonkey script that automatically removed all quotes from Sawyer. This is getting tedious.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The thing is that sometimes what you call the "lowest common denominator" is also the "non-aspie denominator".

And what you sometimes call "aspie" is someone who doesn't need hand-holding and warnings every step and wants to play the game by himself.

Game designers eventually figured out that it wasn't really very important.

Just like that, huh? No matter the game, it's not important. Good reasoning there. Great game designers. Want to play a game like that? Tough luck, "it's not important", you shouldn't want it.

 

[Irenaeus]

What I wouldn't give for a greasemonkey script that automatically removed all quotes from Sawyer. This is getting tedious.

It's fun and instructive to read the defense of popamole.

 

[St. Toxic]

There is no "and" between "Quality" and "Assurance".

I'm really itching to jump into this argument again, but redefining the term RPG would probably yield more constructive results at this point. Apparently, it's bad design if your game makes people disheartened by providing the player with strategically bad choices, unless the player is made fully aware of what all the good choices are well in advance, in which case fuck them. And no, despite all appearances, somehow, this is not an argument for hand-holding.

 

[Infinitron]

There is no "and" between "Quality" and "Assurance".

I'm really itching to jump into this argument again, but redefining the term RPG would probably yield more constructive results at this point. Apparently, it's bad design if your game makes people disheartened by strategically bad choices that they themselves make, unless they are made fully aware of what all the good choices are beforehand, in which case fuck them. And no, despite all appearances, somehow, this is not an argument for hand-holding.

I don't think this really has anything to do with strategy.

Again, think of one of the old Sierra adventure games. You missed that item in an area you can no longer go back to, so now you're stuck. I guess you made a "strategically bad choice", LOLOLOLO

I realize that there's a certain degree of satisfaction in replaying a game several times and mapping out its pitfalls and dead ends, but I don't consider that gameplay loop to be a critical feature of RPGs.

 

[St. Toxic]

Again, think of one of the old Sierra adventure games. You missed that item in an area you can no longer go back to, so now you're stuck. I guess you made a "strategically bad choice", LOLOLOLO

It quickly became an established norm of the genre that you grab everything that isn't nailed down. We are still talking strategy here; making imperfect decisions using imperfect knowledge, to the best of your ability, in order to overcome the challenges presented to you by the developers. The only 'bad design' that I can see in your example lies not in the fact that negligence has consequences, but that the game doesn't end with a 'loss' once the player has passed a 'point of no return', the ponr being a core element in these types of games. Suppose, that if a particular mission in an rts practically requires you to build defensively in order to counter a rush, it should by the same logic be considered bad design unless the game either tells you exactly what you need to do beforehand or makes every challenge play out in a way that allows for every possible tactic to be an equally effective counter. In Sierra adventure game terms, not having an item to solve a puzzle would be countered by a persistent tutorial telling you what needs to be done to achieve success or simply removing the need for the item, the puzzle and the solution entirely -- i.e it wouldn't be much of a game anymore.

I've been involved in these discussions before, and the most common counter-argument to brick-wall surprises is the time constraint; that making a bad strategical decision at the start of an hour long session is acceptable, while a bad strategical decision at the start of a 30-5000 hour long session is unacceptable. It's a bogus argument, because any real consequence of a combat encounter where the opponent uses surprise tactics in order to gain the upper hand, like simply hiding out of plain sight, might just as well cost you the use of valuable resources such as party members, unique items and stats necessary for survival in upcoming combat encounters, from that point onward. Of course, most of the time you can reload and try your luck until the outcome is just the one you want and any element of surprise is gone, but then again the same holds true for character creation. So if you replay the same combat encounter long enough you'll eventually match the time it takes to restart the game, but both these approaches are merely ways of trading what the player is willing to sacrifice. Are sacrifices then bad design?

There's also the possibility of dialog options leading up to consequences that are hours of play-time removed from the choice at hand, and yet I've heard no argument in favor of consequences being shallow and always following within minutes of the choice. If a brutal murder of a sleeping innocent committed by the PC might provoke a likely lethal encounter with law enforcement 40 hours later into the game, are we bound by the rules of great design to stress this fact to the player in way of discouragement? Do we spawn warning tool-tips of information, or have immortal guards spawn the second after the crime has been committed? A mere hint of danger would be little more than encouragement to a cold-blooded killer. Maybe consequences are a bad thing overall?

I say, let people find things out for themselves. If they paint themselves into corners, they can either swallow their pride and try again with what they've learned so far or make holes in the walls by hacking the game if patience runs thin. But part of the challenge of a game stems from the player's ability to react to unknown situations. Not having read the manual and having only a fair guess as to what challenges lie in wait ahead, you are confronted with ability points that need to be distributed in such a way as to aid you in your success. By making this process safe and boring, the choice becomes a cosmetic one, no more in the realm of game-play than selecting the character's appearance.

 

[tuluse]

RTS games have transparent mechanics, so yes the game does "tell" you what your choices will do. You know what the tech/build tree is and exactly how many resources it will take to reach every single unit.

 

[Infinitron]

It quickly became an established norm of the genre that you grab everything that isn't nailed down.

It's not always as simple as picking up items. It could be an entire puzzle that you didn't notice, or an item that you used in the wrong way and lost, or a timed event that you missed.

It's interesting that you bring up strategy games. I prefer the model of "RPG as strategy game" over the model of "RPG as adventure game" that Fallout fans seem to like.

Strategy games give the player a multitude of options and layers of strategic depth. In a strategy game, one single mistake (Oops! I missed that item in the previous area! Oops! I didn't improve my energy weapons skill!) will not sink you. In a strategy game, you always have lots of ways of doing things, as opposed to adventure games where puzzles usually have one single solution.

There's also the possibility of dialog options leading up to consequences that are hours of play-time removed from the choice at hand, and yet I've heard no argument in favor of consequences being shallow and always following within minutes of the choice. If a brutal murder of a sleeping innocent committed by the PC might provoke a likely lethal encounter with law enforcement 40 hours later into the game, are we bound by the rules of great design to stress this fact to the player in way of discouragement? Do we spawn warning tool-tips of information, or have immortal guards spawn the second after the crime has been committed? A mere hint of danger would be little more than encouragement to a cold-blooded killer. Maybe consequences are a bad thing overall?

Dialogue is content. Skills are systems. Content is supposed to surprise you. Systems are supposed to be immediately comprehensible.

By making this process safe and boring, the choice becomes a cosmetic one, no more in the realm of game-play than selecting the character's appearance.

Systems aren't supposed to be risky and exciting. Content is supposed to be risky and exciting.

What is content? In the words of the Project Eternity pitch video - "the story, the setting and the tactical combat". If you want to make a good RPG, make those things difficult, not your fucking skill system.

 

[St. Toxic]

Look, I'm not getting dragged into this. I will say, however, that if you want to treat game content and systems as separate, as I do and DraQ doesn't, then naturally the mechanics are to be judged separately from the content which they are used to represent. Nobody gets surprised about the function of the skills and abilities, unless their actual use is counter-intuitive to what they are. Obviously the discussion here relates specifically to content only, albeit seeking to solve natural gaps in content in a way that pertains to the mechanics, for whatever transcendent reason. If you're upset about Energy Weapons being scarce until a certain point of the game, you're complaining about a nasty surprise on the part of content and not mechanics.

Also, my experience prohibits me from agreeing with the following statement:

In a strategy game, one single mistake (Oops! I missed that item in the previous area! Oops! I didn't improve my energy weapons skill!) will not sink you. In a strategy game, you always have lots of ways of doing things, as opposed to adventure games where puzzles usually have one single solution.

Nah.

RTS games have transparent mechanics, so yes the game does "tell" you what your choices will do. You know what the tech/build tree is and exactly how many resources it will take to reach every single unit.

How is this relevant? Having intimate knowledge of the game's mechanics tells you nothing of what goes on behind that fog of war.

 

[Infinitron]

Look, I'm not getting dragged into this. I will say, however, that if you want to treat game content and systems as separate, as I do and DraQ doesn't, then naturally the mechanics are to be judged separately from the content which they are used to represent. Nobody gets surprised about the function of the skills and abilities, unless their actual use is counter-intuitive to what they are. Obviously the discussion here relates specifically to content only, albeit seeking to solve natural gaps in content in a way that pertains to the mechanics, for whatever transcendent reason. If you're upset about Energy Weapons being scarce until a certain point of the game, you're complaining about a nasty surprise on the part of content and not mechanics.

False. Since Fallout has an Energy Weapons skill, it also becomes a systems problem. It's true that it is a problem that could be resolved by altering the game content (by adding energy weapons to the early game) but the wiser approach would be to craft game mechanics that are more content-agnostic. Which is, by the way, what Obsidian is doing with Project Eternity.

By the way, I edited my previous post.

 

[tuluse]

How is this relevant? Having intimate knowledge of the game's mechanics tells you nothing of what goes on behind that fog of war.

Because you'll never have a point in an RTS where you research a technology that doesn't affect any units you can build, or find a resource that doesn't allow you to be build any units or research anything.

In Age of Empires you would never mine gold in the first age because it has no use, but if the game didn't tell you that it would be bad design. Fallout doesn't tell you there is nothing you can spend "energy weapon skill" on for the first 1/4 of the game.

 

[St. Toxic]

False. Since Fallout has an Energy Weapons skill, it also becomes a systems problem.

Whatever man. You want to have your cake and eat it too? That's fine by me. "Wiser", now that's some funny shit right there.

Because you'll never have a point in an RTS where you research a technology that doesn't affect any units you can build, or find a resource that doesn't allow you to be build any units or research anything.

But you could have a point where you can research or build something that does absolutely nothing for you in that particular situation. Like building a bunch of transports for an attack and suddenly you're forced to take the defensive route. Again it's a matter of content. You want to adjust your tactics to counteract those of your opponent, but if you read the situation wrong it doesn't matter how well familiarized you are with the mechanics if you've screwed yourself over. Doesn't mean you can't save the situation, but that's not a function unique to any single genre.

 

[Azrael the cat]

From the sound of things, they're moving beyond DPS as the sole determinant of a weapon's worth. That's traditionally been the problem with balancing all weapon classes equally - if the handguns and heavy weapons at the same stage of the game deal similar dps (with some variation for armour) then it almost negates the purpose of weapon variety. The more factors you bring in to it, in terms of AP usage, ammo scarcity, risk of blowback, reloading time, non-gunskill aspects (like movement AP for smgs or perception for snipers) forcing you to choose weapons that sync with your character's non-combat aspects, the more it allows for creative differentiation and balance to co-exist. This is almost certainly expecting too much, but I'd love a scenario where someone with the stats to be an effective doctor/healer (high perception for surgery, high intelligence) would be well-suited to being a sniper (perception for long-distance aim, intellect to give you the options to snipe non-obvious targets like the guy's weapon or a rocket-launcher wielding enemy's explosive ammo supply), but couldn't get the movement AP to effectively use SMGs, nor the strength for heavy weapons. Or that a science guy might be more likely to be able to use heavy weapons left over from before the war, as he'd be more capable of working out how the weapons' complex internal machinery needs to be maintained. Or a 2 pistol gun-slinger might need a quick-draw trait, at least average speed, but would then have a lot of left over points to put into non-combat skills due to his relatively simple choice of weaponry (at the cost of really only being able to attack one guy at a time, and from a range that leaves him vulnerable to counter-attack).

 

[Jestai]

Or you can play any recent game and be all these guys at once! HurrAAAh!

 

[Azrael the cat]

How is this relevant? Having intimate knowledge of the game's mechanics tells you nothing of what goes on behind that fog of war.

Because you'll never have a point in an RTS where you research a technology that doesn't affect any units you can build, or find a resource that doesn't allow you to be build any units or research anything.

In Age of Empires you would never mine gold in the first age because it has no use, but if the game didn't tell you that it would be bad design. Fallout doesn't tell you there is nothing you can spend "energy weapon skill" on for the first 1/4 of the game.

RTS is an not an RPG bro. RTS tends to be way more "competitive". That is why in most scenario for SP portions of the game, the tree is not fully open.

In fairness, it would have been VERY easy for Fallout to solve the energy weapon problem. Torment was a game where the most enjoyable way of playing it was as a mage maxing wisdom, int then charisma first - you got all the important special bits and memories, and you had the awesome in-keeping-with story aspect of starting off relying heavily on Morte and Dakkon to protect you, only to become the near-god/centre-piece of the party around the same part of the game that you find out just how powerful you really are lorewise. Yet PS:T makes a special mention of the fact that despite the benefits of non-combat skills, you WILL need to do a lot of combat, Sigil and the planes being what they are, and you might want to think about preparing for it.

A similar warning in the FO manual that energy weapons are incredibly rare-to-unheard of in smaller settlements, and it might be a wise idea to invest in a secondary weapon skill to get you through until you can find a source of energy weapons, would solve the issue.