I disagree. Neo-X-COM had excellent level design for the most part. The leveled terrain levels where some of the most solid small-stage level design I've seen in a turn-based game. The problem was the maps were re-used ad infinitum, not varied enough and there were very few of them.
You're not disagreeing with me. The levels were boring because they were re-used. If the levels weren't boring (regardless of the reason why), the game would have been better.
What I'm saying is that Wasteland 2
needs good levels, as much as it needs good enemies.
Alright, agreed, but we're still discussing the system.
Don't all games need good levels and good enemies?
OK, true. What I meant was that the system, from what we know, seems shallow and uninteresting from a tactical viewpoint and only slightly interesting from a strategic one, on its own, like X-COM's, so encounter design goes from being key to being all-or-nothing.
I am curious, you keep comparing it to X-Com, but I'm curious what cRPG systems you're comparing it to that "can create depth on its own"?
Eh... I hope you realize that "OK, true" meant "OK, you're right that "can create depth on its own" is exagerrated", buuuuut:
If that doesn't answer your question, then this might: as far as I know so far, there will be little tactical variety. You have a very limited range of actions during combat. Here's a combat system that creates tactical variety before you even begin to discuss encounters:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3613210/Combat Cards.pdf
That's a list of GURPS combat maneuvers. Every time it's your turn, you declare which maneuver to use, and within that maneuver, what you'd like to do. There's variety, and when you're fighting, the different maneuvers play off of each other to create interesting and dynamic situations that are new and exciting constantly because of the interplay between your choice between the multitude presented to you and the specifics of the encounter. And that's with a very simple set of basic maneuvers but with deep tactical variety nontheless because 1) the maneuvers are so different from each other and 2) each maneuver decides how you can move and how you can defend.
With Wasteland, you're repeating the same basic actions. Fewer actions and those actions are basic = little room for tactics to play off of eacher = almost all tactical decision-making will have to be enforced by level and encounter-design.
As for strategic depth, the part of the character system that relates to strategic decisions with regards to combat is spending points on your main combat skills, perhaps a single secondary one. Compare this to systems where you choose abilities/spells/feats/whatever that relates to combat; you're constantly making strategic choices that affect combat. That creates strategic variety regardless of encounter design.
(obviously, both layers need excellence in encounter design to truely excel, but Wasteland 2 so far doesn't have either and relies very much on encounter and level design)
As @
tuluse points out, I don't know anything about itemization which might create both tactical and strategic depth, but then again, I do not expect JA2-levels of variety there.
