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

[Gord]

Pretty much as Lhynn said.

Definitely interested in hearing folks' thoughts on random encounter mix, frequency, etc.

Repeating Roguey's commonplace here: Keep the amount right. Example for how not to do it: Fallout Tactics (>5 random encounters per quadrant).
I'd rather go for too few than too many, because it's very annoying if you just want to reach some destination but get constantly interrupted by a random encounter.

Keep it in a range that you get on average maybe a little below one random encounter when travelling common distances.
Type should be chosen according to the region you are travelling in. Remote areas should have a higher chance of aggressive wildlife, between large settlements you might see more merchants, but also some bandits out to rob you. "Dangerous" areas will have a higher frequency, but give clues to the player what to expect. I've also no problems with wacky stuff, if the frequency is low (Fallout did it about right, I think).

 

[Zero Credibility]

Hey Brother None now that Wasteland 2 seems to be getting closer to completion, I wish to ask how are backers actually going to get a copy of the game? I don't see anything in the faq on the kickstarter page - did I miss the instructions in the email or something (my inbox is kind of a mess)? For Torment it does say that a survey will be send - did I miss that one as well or is that yet to happen?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Obviously too frequent is a bad thing. Fallout 2 with default fan patch settings? Too much. Without on modern machines? Too little.

Then put the former frequency in water rich zones and the latter in desert areas, with medium dry areas in the middle. Would be good if frequency of random encounters has an actual impact on your decision which route to take (depending of course on whether they manage to make water scarce enough as well).

 

[Lhynn]

Obviously too frequent is a bad thing. Fallout 2 with default fan patch settings? Too much. Without on modern machines? Too little.

Then put the former frequency in water rich zones and the latter in desert areas, with medium dry areas in the middle. Would be good if frequency of random encounters has an actual impact on your decision which route to take (depending of course on whether they manage to make water scarce enough as well).

This is irrelevant if there are no time based quests or with a time based reward. If there are they should take the form of randomly generated time senstivie missions like escorts, ambushes, etc. with little consecuences but the pay and a failure state that does not end on a game over.
Shouldnt be too hard to do either.

 

[Brother None]

Hey Brother None now that Wasteland 2 seems to be getting closer to completion, I wish to ask how are backers actually going to get a copy of the game? I don't see anything in the faq on the kickstarter page - did I miss the instructions in the email or something (my inbox is kind of a mess)? For Torment it does say that a survey will be send - did I miss that one as well or is that yet to happen?

Pretty much all such digital distribution will happen via your account on the Ranger Center.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Thanks, I completely missed that. What about Torment backers, I didn't miss that one as well, did I?

 

[Brother None]

Thanks, I completely missed that. What about Torment backers, I didn't miss that one as well, did I?

Same thing, but on https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/register

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/10/gaming-kickstarters/#slideid-81511

Wasteland 2

• Backers: 61,290
• Goal: $900,000
• Raised: $2.9 million
• Funded On: April 17, 2012
• Original Estimated Release:October 2013
• Current Estimated Release: TBD

Interplay's post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland doesn't seem like the most logical choice for a sequel. Sure it was critically acclaimed and the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout series, but it came out in 1988, more than 25 years ago. But for Brian Fargo, co-founder of Interplay and the creator of Wasteland, a sequel always had been part of the plan. After forming inXile Entertainment with several fellow ex-Interplay employees, he pursued the more traditional publisher route to little avail. There just wasn't much interest in the sort of classic PC role playing game that he had in mind.

When Double Fine Adventure hit it big, Fargo saw an opportunity to return to a project that had long eluded him. The day after Schafer's Kickstarter went live, Fargo sent a company-wide email. "This is our chance," it read. "This is our chance for Wasteland."

"I stopped everything I was doing," Fargo later told WIRED, "and threw 100 percent of my energy into getting a website up right away so we could get fan feedback about not only what was important to them in the game, but what was important to them in the Kickstarter, in terms of stretch goals and backer rewards." A month later, Wasteland 2's Kickstarter went live, raising nearly $3 million, three times its $900,000 goal.

"When you bring in extra money," Fargo said, "you have two choices. One is to make the small game that you pitched and pocket the money, or two, you make a bigger game."

Now, $2.4 million -- what Fargo says inXile had to work with after Kickstarter fees and taxes -- might seem like a lot, but it depends on what you're doing. "If you're a small indie developer, you look at $2.4 million and say, 'What are they going to do with all that money,' while a larger guy will look at it and say, 'Our audio budget is twice that much, how are they going to do it?' In reality, that kind of money doesn't go a long way, so you have to be very clever in how you approach development."

What's the status now?

Wasteland 2's original Kickstarter pitch named this month as an estimated delivery date. "It's funny, because you have to put your date down on Kickstarter not knowing the scope of the game," Fargo said. "So we put a date down, but that was a very small project. Once we triple fund, and everybody says, 'Make the game much bigger,' does that date really apply anymore?"

When Fargo realized an October ship date wasn't going to happen, he decided instead to push for having a beta ready by then, opting to get at least something into backers' hands on time. The beta will deliver roughly 90 percent of the game's feature set, he says, albeit with some missing skills, sound effects, and animations here and there. But Wasteland is a narrative game, and inXile doesn't intend to give away the entire experience before release. Players will be able to explore most, if not all, of post-apocalyptic Arizona, but a large portion of the game takes place in Los Angeles — none of which will be accessible until the final release.

"It's such a transparent process," Fargo said. "I think that people aren't worried about you being late as long as you're showing updates, and you're communicating, and you're letting them touch and see things — as long as it's moving along, everybody's happy."

 

[Roguey]

2.4 million is twice what Shadowrun Returns had after fees and rewards. So this will be twice the RPG that was?

 

[felipepepe]

I see that after Tim Schafer's horrid failure, Fargo is the current guru of crowdfunding... makes sense, his back story is much more interesting than Schafer's, and he knows his PR well enought to give that "mythic moment" impact to his actions.

 

[Infinitron]

I see that after Tim Schafer's horrid failure, Fargo is the current guru of crowdfunding... makes sense, his back story is much more interesting than Schafer's, and he knows his PR well enought to give that "mythic moment" impact to his actions.

FYI that article covers a number of Kickstarters, including Broken Age. It's not just about Wasteland 2.

 

[felipepepe]

I see that after Tim Schafer's horrid failure, Fargo is the current guru of crowdfunding... makes sense, his back story is much more interesting than Schafer's, and he knows his PR well enought to give that "mythic moment" impact to his actions.

FYI that article covers a number of Kickstarters, including Broken Age. It's not just about Wasteland 2.

Yeah, I read it, but I'm talking about how Fargo handles well this stuff in general. Just read all those stories, Fargo's is without a doubt the most interesting one, even with Star Citizen making like 10x what he did.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I see that after Tim Schafer's horrid failure, Fargo is the current guru of crowdfunding... makes sense, his back story is much more interesting than Schafer's, and he knows his PR well enought to give that "mythic moment" impact to his actions.

I would have to say that, for me, the "guru's" are Roberts, because he managed to get enough money to invade a small African country with his Star Citizen project, and Cook, because he manages to fund any nonsense he comes up with during his mushroom induced fever dreams.

 

[MicoSelva]

Definitely interested in hearing folks' thoughts on random encounter mix, frequency, etc.

It would be cool if meeting someone during travel was just one of the options and other things happened too*. I mean things like 'you've found a dead body with some stuff on it', 'a scorpion stung one of party members', 'Bob The Party Mule tumbled down a hill and some of your water supply spilled and sank into the sand'. Some of those could be fake/just flavour, like 'you feel like you are being watched for the past couple of hours'.

Such stuff makes the world feel more alive and interesting. If party's survival skills could affect this type of events, even better.

Spoiler

Such things happen in the board game Descent: Journeys in the Dark (with campaign rules), randomly drawn on the way to a quest.

 

[Blaine]

I don't care if the game gets pushed back to the end of next year, or the year after that—what I want from the developers is clear communication. There are four business days left in October, and not a peep about when the beta will be made available. Last I checked, official word was October.

If it's coming this month, we should know by now. If it's NOT coming this month, we should know that, too. Either is fine; it's not bothering to actually tell people that's aggravating.

And then there's the Ranger Center's "Latest News" section....

 

[MLMarkland]

Is there a possibility that the random encounter can be seen roaming on the map? Or it trying to chase us or run away from us?

Works more like Fallout in this regard.

How will special random encounters be handled? A short description of the unusual situation, the inability to avoid it (Fallout Tactic for example) or will the player simply have to engage the random encounter to see if its just a combat encounter or a "special" encounter.

Right now you can tell if it is a combat or non-combat encounter upfront, but you have to “engage” the encounter to see what the exact thing is (you get a brief description of what you see up ahead). We’ve discussed possibly making it more opaque.

Obviously too frequent is a bad thing. Fallout 2 with default fan patch settings? Too much. Without on modern machines? Too little.

Definitely something we will balance based on feedback from the Early Beta. Also, Players will have some control over this by where they choose to navigate (won’t elaborate on that, but will rather let folks figure it out).

Type should be chosen according to the region you are travelling in. Remote areas should have a higher chance of aggressive wildlife, between large settlements you might see more merchants, but also some bandits out to rob you. "Dangerous" areas will have a higher frequency, but give clues to the player what to expect. I've also no problems with wacky stuff, if the frequency is low (Fallout did it about right, I think).

All cool ideas. Would like to hear your thoughts after playing the Early Beta.

I don't care if the game gets pushed back to the end of next year, or the year after that—what I want from the developers is clear communication. There are four business days left in October, and not a peep about when the beta will be made available. Last I checked, official word was October. If it's coming this month, we should know by now. If it's NOT coming this month, we should know that, too. Either is fine; it's not bothering to actually tell people that's aggravating. And then there's the Ranger Center's "Latest News" section....

We appreciate and understand the desire for clear communication. More soon.

Then put the former frequency in water rich zones and the latter in desert areas, with medium dry areas in the middle. Would be good if frequency of random encounters has an actual impact on your decision which route to take (depending of course on whether they manage to make water scarce enough as well).

There are at least two such terrain/geographic variables that effect random encounter frequency and it is possible we’ll be using a third. Random encounters definitely impact your decision on which route to take (though we don’t telegraphic this to the Player – you have to figure it out on your own).

It would be cool if meeting someone during travel was just one of the options and other things happened too*. I mean things like 'you've found a dead body with some stuff on it', 'a scorpion stung one of party members', 'Bob The Party Mule tumbled down a hill and some of your water supply spilled and sank into the sand'. Some of those could be fake/just flavour, like 'you feel like you are being watched for the past couple of hours'.

This would definitely be cool.

 

[hiver]

Letting folks figure out some things for themselves is a very welcome feature.

 

[Gord]

All cool ideas. Would like to hear your thoughts after playing the Early Beta.

I'd love to, just pm me the beta key!

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

I don't care if the game gets pushed back to the end of next year, or the year after that—what I want from the developers is clear communication. There are four business days left in October, and not a peep about when the beta will be made available. Last I checked, official word was October.

If it's coming this month, we should know by now. If it's NOT coming this month, we should know that, too. Either is fine; it's not bothering to actually tell people that's aggravating.

And then there's the Ranger Center's "Latest News" section....

They'll wait until the last day of October to announce that the Early Access/Beta is going to be pushed back for a few weeks/months. That's the typical and expected corporate bullshit. They should take a page from shitComposer and make the announcements with more ambiguous phrasing to avoid these situations.

 

[Roguey]

I don't care if the game gets pushed back to the end of next year, or the year after that—what I want from the developers is clear communication. There are four business days left in October, and not a peep about when the beta will be made available. Last I checked, official word was October.

If it's coming this month, we should know by now. If it's NOT coming this month, we should know that, too. Either is fine; it's not bothering to actually tell people that's aggravating.

From last Friday's update:

We’re now in the stage where we have distributed standalone copies of the Early Beta to a small group of external individuals as a test run. This is the final stage where we ensure it is up to our standards and runs on a variety of machines, and we’ll then be ready to get it to you.
Early Beta will only be distributed through Steam, as called out in the original Kickstarter reward tiers. The final release will – of course – be available through a wide variety of channels; but running the Early Beta through Steam is the optimal option. Any other solution would require a non-trivial investment of resources into Early Beta distribution; we feel those resources are better spent on the general quality, stability and scope of the game.

Looks pretty clear to me.

 

[Blaine]

Looks pretty clear to me.

You have an interesting definition of the word "clear." Here's how I read those first two lines:

"We distributed the Early Beta to certain persons at an undivulged time, and at some unspecified point in the future when we're satisfied, then we'll be ready to give it to you sooner or later."

It's clear, though, that it'll be released on October 31st. Well, they didn't specify a day, so perhaps we can count on the month—October, or perhaps November—but they didn't specify that, either. For all we know, it could be December. It's probably this year, though. Could it be this week? Next Week? This month? Next month? Probably this year, though.

 

[Roguey]

Looks pretty clear to me.

You have an interesting definition of the word "clear." Here's how I read those first two lines:

"We distributed the Early Beta to certain persons at an undivulged time, and at some unspecified point in the future when we're satisfied, then we'll be ready to give it to you sooner or later."

It's clear, though, that it'll be released on October 31st. Well, they didn't specify a day, so perhaps we can count on the month—October, or perhaps November—but they didn't specify that, either. For all we know, it could be December. It's probably this year, though. Could it be this week? Next Week? This month? Next month? Probably this year, though.

From the update on October 3:

The short-term plan is to continue iterating and fixing bugs found by our internal QA until the game is stable and playable through the sections we are opening up for early beta. This process will take a few more weeks. Once we get there, we will have a very small group jump in to get a feel for if it’s ready to release to our patiently waiting beta backers. The plan is to distribute the beta for Windows PC, as we know we can get standalone builds to work in Windows.

Everything seems to be going right on schedule. I doubt the small group of external testers are going to run into extreme forever-to-fix bugs that didn't show up at all during the weeks of internal beta testing.

 

[Blaine]

Everything seems to be going right on schedule.

Such as it is, yes (I hesitate to call that a "schedule"), but what I want is clear communication, not ambiguous language and the unvetted implication of "soon." Even in defending their handling of the timetable, you can't commit to a day, or even a week—nor a month, for that matter, since this one will be over soon, and we both know it might not be released this month.

I realize they aren't quite sure, and I know they don't want to commit to a specific date publicly, but as I've said, I'd like to at least know if we can expect the beta release this month or the next. Surely someone at InXile knows that. Either their external test is progressing nicely and is wrapping up as we speak (it's Friday night), and they know they can get the beta up on Steam within a day or two... or it's not going to be this month.

In other words, they have a better internal timetable than they're giving us. They're just not giving it to us.

 

[sea]

(snip)

Thanks for taking the time to respond in a thorough, straightforward and respectful manner. Looking forward to more!

2.4 million is twice what Shadowrun Returns had after fees and rewards. So this will be twice the RPG that was?

I know you're being facetious, but even ignoring "twice the money equals twice the game" I think I trust Wasteland 2 to be the game for me more than I do Shadowrun. Shadowrun's origins were very different development-wise and while the time is certainly talented and the game turned out well for what it was, I also don't think there was ever an intention of it being a truly "classic" CRPG.

It would be cool if meeting someone during travel was just one of the options and other things happened too*. I mean things like 'you've found a dead body with some stuff on it', 'a scorpion stung one of party members', 'Bob The Party Mule tumbled down a hill and some of your water supply spilled and sank into the sand'. Some of those could be fake/just flavour, like 'you feel like you are being watched for the past couple of hours'.

Such stuff makes the world feel more alive and interesting. If party's survival skills could affect this type of events, even better.

I am reminded of something Spoony said. To paraphrase,

"Never tell your players 'you search the darkness and there is nothing there.' Instead, tell them 'you find nothing.'"

In other words, these little details, whether they mean anything or not in the grand scheme, inject the world with perceived depth and meaning which is just as important. Another good example is Deus Ex as a whole; you feel the world reacts to you because it does so with a few key decisions. Even if most choices don't matter much/at all, the ones that do make you consider every action and make you believe the world is watching more closely than it is.

 

[mindx2]

Everything seems to be going right on schedule. I doubt the small group of external testers are going to run into extreme forever-to-fix bugs that didn't show up at all during the weeks of internal beta testing.

Roguey, your last few post here seem almost... positive in nature. You feeling alright?