Wasteland Wasteland 2 Pre-Release Discussion Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[General Maxson]

Can't wait till this finishes. How long has passed since I last visited the Wastelands of PA USA. Too long. Time to immerse myself once again.

 

[Infinitron]

New Brian interview: http://www.edge-online.com/features...llout-a-reality-on-heading-back-to-wasteland/

 

[DeepOcean]

I have to admit my ignorance, there are old trucks/tanks to blow up? For some strange reason, blowing robots aren't as fun to me.

Blowing up a fucking armored robot scorpion is not fun???? What's wrong with you? :D

Played too much WW2 games and Command & Conquer, exploding tanks is something on the subconscious level now.

 

[Blaine]

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Blaine]

Jaesun, are you capable of forming an independent thought that isn't in complete agreement with whatever celebrity developers you happen to worship?

For the record, I feel that "damage per action point" was merely a concomitant turn of phrase used because it was a functional way to explain their design process, and don't believe that inXile want to Blizzard-ify the game's nomenclature. That said, you don't need to leap to support your heroes every time even the most subtle dissenting opinion appears. You can let people disagree occasionally. Not that I can stop you—I just want to do my part saving you from becoming a slightly less obvious version of Roguey.

 

[t]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong in measuring damage in "damage per action point"? It's kinda more relevant than the raw "damage" score.

 

[MicoSelva]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong in measuring damage in "damage per action point"? It's kinda more relevant than the raw "damage" score.

It stinks of overbalancing weapons and thus making them bland, instead of going the "realism" route and making actually better weapon being better in-game.

 

[Brayko]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong in measuring damage in "damage per action point"? It's kinda more relevant than the raw "damage" score.

It stinks of overbalancing weapons and thus making them bland, instead of going the "realism" route and making actually better weapon being better in-game.

We can only hope for the best of both worlds. Each weapon could have it's place on a "graph" at standard level, you can upgrade it progressively so it "slides" up the "graph" but it stops at some point, some weapons are higher on the "graph" than others at the starting point. Figuratively speaking. Where's Brother None when you need him?

 

[General Maxson]

Yeah, I don't like that Josh Sawyer approach. I like better weapons to be, well, better.

 

[Blaine]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong in measuring damage in "damage per action point"? It's kinda more relevant than the raw "damage" score.

DPS (which is what "damage per action point" functionally resembles) is symbolic of boiling down everything potentially interesting about a weapon into a simple, monolithic, obvious statistic that can be consumed at a glance. Seeing "50 DPS" or "200 DPS" headlining the tooltip of every single weapon, as is more-or-less the case in World of Warcraft, takes something away from what could instead be a more nuanced system of statistics. It's a sort of dumbing down. Better to eyeball the weapon in action, examine and consider its statistics, or do some rough math in your head to determine its efficacy.

I don't believe that "damage per action point" would be a good all-around measurement for use in the final game, either. If a 7 AP rocket launcher does less "DPAP" than a 4 AP SMG, but your character only has 7 AP anyway, then the usefulness of having a monolithic number value is greatly reduced. There's more to consider than that single DPAP number anyway, rendering it redundant and annoying.

And finally, fuck it, it's immersion, too. "DPS" makes me think I'm playing some casual fucking MMO, and DPAP would be its evil little cousin. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to use some brain power when evaluating a weapon rather than mindlessly equipping the one that the game immediately tells me is definitely better.

Again though, I think their use of the term was incidental rather than an announcement that DPAP is going to be a "thing" in WL2. And the developers do have to do semi-precise calculations for testing purposes, crunch the weapon numbers into spreadsheets, and so on.

 

[Infinitron]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong in measuring damage in "damage per action point"? It's kinda more relevant than the raw "damage" score.

It stinks of overbalancing weapons and thus making them bland, instead of going the "realism" route and making actually better weapon being better in-game.

How is having short swords be unequivocally worse than long swords in every way not "bland"?

Also what does this even have to do with DPS/DPAP?

Yeah, I don't like that Josh Sawyer approach. I like better weapons to be, well, better.

Well, good for you, because that's exactly what DPS helps you do! MOAR DPS = BETTER

 

[MicoSelva]

I'm generally not a fan of constructing mechanics first and then making up abilities to fit predefined slots. It always ends up as an artifical system. MMO mechanics are created this way, but not only them. Older JRPGs had, for example, spells such as Fire1, Fire2 and Fire3. Mechanically-wise, it's great and easy to balance because we have a weak fire spell, a medium one and a strong one, but You don't need to look deep to see that this is an artificial system.

The other (and IMO better) way is seeing (when it comes to RL stuff) or imagining (when it comes to fantastical stuff) how something works and then trying to make up mechanics for it. This is much harder to balance (or impossible even), but creates systems that are thematically sound and "make sense".

When You start to think about things like damage per second (or per actionpoints) and adjusting in-game weapons to be better balanced in that aspect, You're falling into the first cathegory.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm generally not a fan of constructing mechanics first and then making up abilities to fit predefined slots. It always ends up as an artifical system. MMO mechanics are created this way, but not only them. Older JRPGs had, for example, spells such as Fire1, Fire2 and Fire3. Mechanically-wise, it's great and easy to balance because we have a weak fire spell, a medium one and a strong one, but You don't need to look deep to see that this is an artificial system.

The other (and IMO better) way is seeing (when it comes to RL stuff) or imagining (when it comes to fantastical stuff) how something works and then trying to make up mechanics for it. This is much harder to balance (or impossible even), but creates systems that are thematically sound and "make sense".

When You start to think about things like damage per second (or per actionpoints) and adjusting in-game weapons to be better balanced in that aspect, You're falling into the first cathegory.

Have you read sea's article? http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-and-the-decline-of-complexity-in-rpgs.78767/

DPS is the ENEMY of the gamist approach of making various types of weapons useful. Because it funnels everything down into a single measure of weapon quality, which is precisely what you want - weapons that are unequivocally better than other weapons.

 

[MicoSelva]

I have read it and I agree. All the more reason to avoid DPS and DPAP approach in games. Your point?

 

[Infinitron]

I have read it and I agree. All the more reason to avoid DPS and DPAP approach in games. Your point?

Read my edited post. The DPS approach works FOR what you just argued for and AGAINST what Wasteland 2 and Josh Sawyer are doing.

 

[Brayko]

DPS is bullshit. It removes all sense of style.

 

[Infinitron]

DPS is bullshit. It removes all sense of style.

Yes, and in a simulationist type of game where long swords are ALWAYS better in every way than short swords, "because that's realistic", long swords have more DPS than short swords. A single measure of quality, rather than various weapons with various qualities.

People ITT are arguing against themselves and they don't even realize it.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I have read it and I agree. All the more reason to avoid DPS and DPAP approach in games. Your point?

Read my edited post. The DPS approach works FOR what you just argued for and AGAINST what Wasteland 2 and Josh Sawyer are doing.

Actually it's works for exactly the opposite: building the weapons based on numbers rather than the numbers based on weapons.

 

[Spectacle]

DPS has absolutely nothing to do with realism. Real combat is about hitting, not damage. One good hit is usually all it takes to remove an opponent from the fight.

 

[MicoSelva]

Some weapons ARE unequivocally better than other weapons. An assault rifle will usually have better range/accuracy than an SMG. An SMG is much easier to hide, but that is quite irrelevant once the combat is started.

You are however oversimplifying my point of view. I am very much against linear weapon progression and creating artificial weapon progress, where You find 3-5 damage pistols at the beginning of the game and 30-50 ones at the end. I just want a system that is coherent from the common sense point of view.

 

[Infinitron]

I have read it and I agree. All the more reason to avoid DPS and DPAP approach in games. Your point?

Read my edited post. The DPS approach works FOR what you just argued for and AGAINST what Wasteland 2 and Josh Sawyer are doing.

Actually it's works for exactly the opposite: building the weapons based on numbers rather than the numbers based on weapons.

I'm talking about the actual attributes of the weapons, not the philosophy behind how they're designed.

If DPS is everything then fuck speed, fuck range, fuck critical threat range, etc. "This weapon does more damage therefore it's better."

Don't you realize the contradiction in arguing both against DPS and for weapon types that are unequivocally better than other weapon types? What, you think you're smart because you can see that 1d8 is better than 1d6?

You are however oversimplifying my point of view. I am very much against linear weapon progression and creating artificial weapon progress, where You find 3-5 damage pistols at the beginning of the game and 30-50 ones at the end. I just want a system that is coherent from the common sense point of view.

Fair enough. We don't know whether Wasteland 2 will have that kind of damage inflation and HP bloat. It might be that all weapons of a given type have fairly similar damage ranges.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I'm talking about the actual attributes of the weapons, not the philosophy behind how they're designed.

If DPS is everything then fuck speed, fuck range, fuck critical threat range, etc. "This weapon does more damage therefore it's better."

Don't you realize the contradiction in arguing both against DPS and for weapon types that are unequivocally better than other weapon types? What, you think you're smart because you can see that 1d8 is better than 1d6?

What? How the hell does DPS do that? The difference could be minimal (ie. overbalancing, powerful capacitors that just happen to be made in the shape of books etc) and still use DPS as a measure. It doesn't fucking matter. It's not about how easy it's to tell what's good and what not. It's that DPS pretty much always means shit overbalancing.

 

[MicoSelva]

Infinitron
Some weapons were replaced by other weapons during the course of history. Why? Because the new weapons were better. Police all over the world is geting rid of revolvers in favour of pistols. Why?

Seeing the above is not arguing in favour of DPS.

 

[dunno lah]

inxile really riled you guys up good by using terms like"dmg per ap" as a harmless generalization instead of saying "smg can dish out more dmg up-close compared to a rifle". I'm pretty sure they're not gonna put a bloody stat like that in the game. It would look so fucking cheap...