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

[Darth Roxor]

Hmm, that's the crop rotation thing, right? I always assumed that one used Science.

No Science in Wasteland.

UH-OOOOOH

That reminds me of the "God of the gaps".

Wat

 

[NotTale]

Each and every point at which it's only logical that a skill check should be applied because there's a narrow field of expertise presented, but can't be because there's no such skill present, should call for a check against the raw attribute.

That reminds me of the "God of the gaps".

wat

I don't think you and I can be friends anymore. That connection makes no fucking sense.

 

[Excidium]

So, I don't know how relevant that is.

It's relevant because things like defaulting to basic attributes and difficulty assignment guidelines are as old as RPG itself but seem new to you

 

[Infinitron]

BTW Vault Dweller your image is broken

No Science in Wasteland.

UH-OOOOOH

There's the backer skill.

Isn't Intelligence supposed to be a measure of a person's IQ? How sharp he is, not what knowledge he possesses.

It's relevant because things like defaulting to basic attributes and difficulty assignment guidelines are as old as RPGs itself but seem new to you

They're not new to me, I just don't know how relevant they are to the way these CRPGs are being designed. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Excidium]

Maybe everyone except you is wrong. I don't know mang

 

[felipepepe]

Rude? I'm not ashamed to admit I've never played PnP.

I didn't know, that explains a lot.... Well, here's an example of a global Difficulty table for D20:

To get past a skill check, you roll a D20 and add your skill + any relevant attribute/situation modifier. So even someone untrained in Spot can see someone in plain sight, but not even with a critical 20 roll a unstrained person can open a simple lock.

Then you have per-skill tables:

That way every designer knows that a DC 40 lock will be extremely hard to open, and should only be used on very special places.

You can even add variables to the skill checks, like this:

That's extremely easy for a person to do manually, so for a computer game it's nothing that will make the system crash out of sheer complexity, and adds a nice "life" to the whole system. All a designer needs to do is say that "Dialog option C has a DC 30 Diplomacy check".

Now, if we can't trust the developers with such basic RPG thing, if MCA and the others are going to lfight like little girls over this, them W2 is doomed to fail from the start.

 

[Infinitron]

felipepepe I'm not sure the designers of games like Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity would want to tie themselves to something like a static "Starting Attitude" table. It's too generic.

Again, I could be wrong. I don't know how they work.

Vault Dweller, did you use such tables to design AoD?

 

[NotTale]

I don't know anyone that used a starting attitutde table. Jesus fuck, what is that, 1st ed?

And why in the hell is it easier to get helpful than friendly, and hostile is outright hard?

 

[Excidium]

He's just giving an

example

Stop going on a tangent faggots

 

[NotTale]

He's just giving general examples you faggots, stop going on a tangent

You're not my real mom.

The difficulty/example chart is beautiful. The starting attitude one is just weird.

 

[Infinitron]

Each and every point at which it's only logical that a skill check should be applied because there's a narrow field of expertise presented, but can't be because there's no such skill present, should call for a check against the raw attribute.

That reminds me of the "God of the gaps".

Wat

Never mind.

I've thought about this some more, and I've decided that you're correct here. It seems to me that it would generally be in fitting with Wasteland 2's design philosophy, that in cases where it's clear that no skill applies, a stat check could/should be applied instead. The problem is the ambiguous cases, where it's not clear.

Who knows what they'll actually do, though. Hopefully Brother None or somebody else can answer our question. Or we can just wait patiently for the next Kickstarter update.

 

[felipepepe]

felipepepe I'm not sure the designers of games like Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity would want to tie themselves to something like a static "Starting Attitude" table. It's too generic.

My beatiful chart... static? Generic?

What wonderful reality do you live in bro, most RPGs out there only have a binary "Quest Giver/Guy That Shoots You" as attitude... having 5 levels, that even alter all the skill checks you do against then is a RPG dream that only Arcanum ever delivered... even on Fallout the NPCs reaction to you and your karma don't change a thing on Speech checks...

 

[NotTale]

felipepepe I'm not sure the designers of games like Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity would want to tie themselves to something like a static "Starting Attitude" table. It's too generic.

My beatiful chart... static? Generic?

What wonderful reality do you live in bro, most RPGs out there only have a binary "Quest Giver/Guy That Shoots You" as attitude... having 5 levels, that even alter all the skill checks you do against then is a RPG dream that only Arcanum ever delivered... even on Fallout the NPCs reaction to you and your karma don't change a thing on Speech checks...

Unless I'm misunderstanding, Morrowind had something akin to it. There are stories abound about people who got their personality depreciated by a particular encounter to such levels that everyone hated them, would refuse to talk to them, and would occasionally attack them on sight.

It was something of an extreme case, granted. And I have to confess to finding nostalgic wonder in the idea being seen again.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller, did you use such tables to design AoD?

Not sure what exactly you're asking. If the question is, did we use such tables internally for consistency, then the answer is no, because we didn't need to due to the small size of the team. If in the future we hire more designers and give them areas and full control over them, then yes, we'll definitely use such tables to make sure that everything is consistent and everyone's on the same page.

 

[Roguey]

So I see you guys are still sperging about Wasteland 2 checking a skill whose value is derived from an attribute instead of just the attribute itself. Lovely.

 

[Excidium]

Finally you posted on the right account

 

[Roguey]

Finally you posted on the right account

His understanding and arguments seem kinda weak and ill-informed tbh. Blind people feeling up an elephant.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Cool name]

First that clusterfuck about C&C requiring multiple replays to experience everything and now this stuff about skills and ability scores.

What the bleep is going on here?

 

[Roguey]

It's hard to reverse-engineer a path of intent when you don't have all the info but I'm getting the impression there's no active use of attributes because they didn't want to balance a skill (lockpicking) against an attribute (strength) especially since skills are increased by using them, but attributes are not. All this talk about inconsistency feels like overthinking it to me unless it's "let's keep this ad hoc shit out."

 

[Sensuki]

? I'm not ashamed to admit I've never played PnP.

That explains a lot actually.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

It's hard to reverse-engineer a path of intent when you don't have all the info but I'm getting the impression there's no active use of attributes because they didn't want to balance a skill (lockpicking) against an attribute (strength) especially since skills are increased by using them, but attributes are not. All this talk about inconsistency feels like overthinking it to me unless it's "let's keep this ad hoc shit out."

I think you're right. The reasoning is probably that as "lock strength" progresses from 1-100, you "can't" have bashing stuff open either underpowered (say, only working at max lock strength 20 for ST 10), and useful for only the beginning of the game (I think it was kind of like this for the BG's), or overpowered (i.e. working at max lock strength 100 for strength 10) and make lockpicking and demolition more or less useless. What an amusingly gamist problem and solution if this is true.

 

[Infinitron]

Jim the Dinosaur That assumes that the level of locks scales up as you progress through the game, which doesn't sound like inXile's style.

Roguey's point on active use and skill improvement is an interesting one, though I'm not sure if it's the correct explanation for what we're seeing.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Jim the Dinosaur That assumes that the level of locks scales up as you progress through the game, which doesn't sound like inXile's style.

I'm pretty sure you usually end up with some degree of this type of scaling unless you want the player backtracking constantly to unpicked locks, even if the game is very (but not totally) non-linear. At the very least in the beginning of the game, when the game still "knows" your likely progression (e.g. I'm fairly sure lock strength in Fallout 2 progresses quite evenly from Klamath-Den-Modoc).

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey A fine theory, but consider the Perception skill. Unlike Brute Force, it's not competing with any other more traditional skill.