Wasteland Wasteland 2 Thread - Director's Cut

[crawlkill]

I just encountered my most "uhhh" moment of the game so far. I went back and did the Prison (my first stop after Ag Center was Darwin, wasn't yours? that man was dying!) and took the back way into the prison, rather than the frontal assault. I murdered every hostile Red Skorpion in there and made it up to the farm, where for some reason the Skorpions were neutral, even though they'd been listening to the sound of gunshots from not half a mile away for the last half hour. I talked to the friendly in there, who told me that the man I'd have to kill to end the Skorpion dominance in the region was in the prison. "And I'd never get into the prison," he told me, "because of the automated turrets."

But the farm he was on was...on the prison level. I was already in the prison.

I left the prison and went back to the main map, exfiltrating through the prison's main entrance. The guards there were immediately hostile. I killed them all. Wandering out further into a section of the first map I hadn't explored, I ran into the Skorpions' tax collector. He seemed unaffected by the fact that I'd just killed everyone I could find wearing his colors, and played his normal cutscene of harassing some chick. I paid him his hundred scrap. Shortly thereafter, I turned around to look for the man I was supposed to kill in the prison again (I'd scoured the maps, he wasn't there). The tax collector was now standing at the gate I'd exfiltrated through--y'know, surrounded by the bodies of his comrades? I couldn't initiate conversation with him.

This has shaken my opinion of reactivity in this game to the core. I played this level in the -most intuitive way I could.- I wandered around, I took a back entrance--a deliberate back entrance that took a skillcheck to get into and had a whole animation associated with it. I wasn't trying to sequence break; they -gave- me a backdoor. Why were the people outside completely incapable of reacting to my having taken that backdoor? I got to the backdoor before I'd ever even seen the front door! I had to keep going before I saw the front door!

 

[Brother None]

Well. I pushed the button. Ranger Citadel.

Congrats on finishing the game!

 

[crawlkill]

Also, any time I open fire on someone non-hostile who is, for example, a slaver, or the ag center guy screaming DEATH TO RANGERS, my "good-aligned" companions tell me they'll quit if I keep acting this way. Like...hello? We just heard from, like, eight people that that ranch manager of the Skorpions' is a slaver. You yourself, Angela, just said 'these people are slaves.' Why are you angry that I'm picking a fight...? To say nothing of taking the first shot at the DEATH TO RANGERS NPC causing Angela to freak out. She had just heard him screaming about DEATH TO RANGERS. I guess death to him wasn't inside her alignment until he'd actually fired, though?

 

[Anthony Davis]

Not to mention the Night Terror and Jamie the Robot. His save files always have possibly the most ridiculous party of naked, gorilla-suited, sombrero-wearing Rangers...

I've got the gorilla suit and 1/3 of the three amigo suit.

I also have this weird dude, The Provost, following me around trying to get himself killed. I also have the pet rat that is a pet that actually fights... poorly, but he tries. Any long game for either one of those?

Feel free to spoil it.

 

[Toll]

Don't you think it's pretty dumb that a stat called 'Coordination' is a viable dump-stat. You would think it would be vital for .. well anything that uses skill. A combat character should be pretty useless with Coordination of 1, but they aren't..

 

[Blaine]

I'm really not seeing that the beginning of the game is as humdrum as people often say. I've played through a fair portion of Wasteland 2 before (though nowhere near as far as some who played the beta), and I think it's fairly engaging, especially if someone is in the process of familiarizing themselves with the game.

One peculiar thing that I don't remember from the beta: Clicking the text entry field on the dialog window is a bit glitchy. Sometimes the first letter I type doesn't register, sometimes I get a white text cursor and an orange-yellow one (clearly designed to fir the UI theme) at the same time, sometimes there's an extra space, sometimes there isn't. It's odd.

More importantly though, when I enter nonsensical custom keywords in the dialogue window while chatting with NPCs, they respond with something along the lines of, "Don't know much about that, sorry." When I enter a keyword that should make sense to people (but which hasn't been officially presented to me as clickable keyword), like "ace," the game just beeps at me and nothing happens. Anyone know what's up with that? This muddled feedback makes trying to find "secret" keywords pretty iffy from where I'm standing.

Toll
Up the to-hit per point of Coordination to 1.5% or even 2%, problem solved. People keep saying you can make up for lose Coordination with weapon mods and such, but losing out on twice as much hit chance would be nothing to sneeze at. Of course, you'd probably have to nerf default aim % (with everything) by a few percentage points to compensate somewhat.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Well, The Provost didn't make it. Too many landmines and giant toads for his super fast self. Rest in peace, brave mystery warrior.

 

[Toll]

Coordination should change the distance travel with 1 action point. An unco person carrying 70Kg's of junk around their body shouldn't be able to move just as far as a highly coordinated soldier. As far as I know 1 action point of movement covers the same distance for everyone?

 

[Volourn]

I think speed/armour effects movement speed per AP.

 

[Phage]

If only these various things that the attributes may or may not influence was documented somewhere within the game. I guess that wouldn't be OLDSK00LC00L enough though.

 

[Toll]

Amour does seem to have an impact, although it seems a prime opportunity to give coordination a real meaty substance to it.For example a high coordination character could wear that heavy armour, take that unwieldy sniper rifle and race across the battlefield to get into that prime sniper location. They would be excellent for that, and not too great at anything else, but that is what you want a computer game sniper to do.

edit: In fact, all weapons should have a 'pain in the arse to wield' attribute that is both reduced through weapon skill training and an underlining coordination stat. So your Riflemen really should have a decent level of coordination to move around with their weapon. The pistol user may get away with less coordination and just run on skill use, etc.

This all implies, of course, of a good usage of movement during combat.

 

[Volourn]

The manual tells you. The game tells you. Sure, a 1000 page book would be nice but most games don't do this. I hope you have bashed bascially every game for this.

Damn DOS fanbois.

 

[Phage]

What do you know, Volourn is full of shit. Not even remotely surprising. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3LlgONcNnMUUnVzRGxiUUJYb2M/view?sle=true Literally no mention of these things we're presuming attributes influence but aren't documented in the game.

Also what is a "DOS fanbois" ?

 

[Blaine]

Just like in beta, giant toads seem to have a strange ability to avoid shotgun blasts.

Speaking of shotguns, I wonder how many people complaining about shotguns ITT realize you can press CTRL to fine-tune the cone of fire's orientation?

Phage
He means Divinity: Original Sin fanboys. I think some people speculate that stats may have effects not actually described by derived statistics and the meter tooltip. For example, some people on the Steam Community Hub are confused about whether Strength aids in Brute Force.

 

[Phage]

Well, on the note of attributes potentially effecting things, I know some people on /vg/ are convinced that Luck effects weapon jamming (which would an explaination for a 3-5% weapon jamming every few shots) - this isn't documented anywhere in the game though.


Also, I haven't played DOS. Heard the writing was shit and it was only fun as a mindless co-op game. Could be wrong and it might actually be great - have no personal context on it either way.

 

[Blaine]

The writing in D:OS is zany, but the game is very enjoyable nonetheless and the combat is excellent. Bear in mind I have an EXTREMELY low tolerance for bad writing in dialog-heavy games, and I do mean an extremely low tolerance. In D:OS it's passable in the sense that it's not particularly off-putting, but with a properly-written, serious (for a given value of "serious") story and more compelling characterization, it could truly have been among the best cRPGs ever developed. As-is, it's just pretty good.

Divinity II had significantly worse tongue-in-cheek writing and the combat was also popamole as all fuck, and I only tolerated about an hour of it before uninstalling. Criticism of Divinity II has been the source of a few spats between myself and other Codexers in the past.

 

[Toll]

It is good for a game of this nature to hide certain aspects of the attributes from the player that can only be discovered through play (even some in-game dialog could hint). It gives the game a bit of mystery which doesn't hurt.
However, in game tool-tips should hint at what the attributes do at the least.

 

[Volourn]

"What do you know, Volourn is full of shit. Not even remotely surprising. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3LlgONcNnMUUnVzRGxiUUJYb2M/view?sle=true Literally no mention of these things we're presuming attributes influence but aren't documented in the game."

No, you are full of shit.


And, Blaine, DOS was never gonna be one 'of the best games ever'. It has too many weakness. Ity's a good game that is playable once. Combat is way too easy and since combat is the main reason for its existence. I died more from insta death traps than combat in DOS.


"However, in game tool-tips should hint at what the attributes do at the least."

It does. Just point your cursor over the attribute/click on it (not sure which right now). It tells you the basics. It even tells you exactly what each point of an attribute gives you.

 

[Phage]

This discussion has clearly gone right over your head. We're discussing that the attributes within the game might have undocumented effects on various aspects of things. Examples include:

Luck might effect gun jamming
You yourself saying "I think speed/armour effects movement speed per AP."
And Blaine mentioning the Steam Community being unsure of if Strength effects Brute Force.


I then said it would be nice if the game explained these things, and you claimed the manual did. Which it doesn't.

Do you even know what you're saying anymore?

WHAT ARE YOU FIGHTING FOR VOLOURN? WHO PROGRAMMED YOU AND WHY? WAS IT PROSPER?

 

[Volourn]

The manual does cover a lot of this stuff. I also said it doesn't cover everything either. Some of these things are shown in game though. The speed effecting movement per AP is shown when you click over the abilities. The armour effect on movement is shown on the armour. Luck is specifically described as 'random effect on random things' hence the term luck. It even gives an example of maybe gifting you bonus con/health when you level up. It also randomly gives you a chance at a bonus AP each round. It might also effect AP.

Some of this stuff is cool to discover while playing is. Isn't that one of things that make games fun? The sense of DISCOVERY. FFS


I love HUGE manuals. Love em to death.

I bet you get pissed because game manual don't give you every single stat for every siingle monster. LMAO

 

[Onholyservicebound]

It's pretty easy even in supreme jerk, even though my rangers shot their squad mates instead of the toad most of the time.

Is that so? I noticed ranger was a bit easy most of the time, but I haven't got far since I'm doing an LP and a regular at the same time, only around the rail nomads..
Hopefully there is difficulty to be found in ranger, didn't choose supreme jerk for shallow reasons: Basically it doesn't read as cool..

 

[Metal Hurlant]

Luck is like that prize spinning wheel that stops on anything. Where it lands, nobody knows. It's too random for me which is why I dump it.

 

[imweasel]

"Scotchmo" kicks ass. That whino just cracks me up.


The game also has a lot of neat little things to find. For example:

Spoiler

What's this...?

Ohhhhh. :D

 

[Phage]

The manual does cover a lot of this stuff. I also said it doesn't cover everything either. Some of these things are shown in game though. The speed effecting movement per AP is shown when you click over the abilities. The armour effect on movement is shown on the armour. Luck is specifically described as 'random effect on random things' hence the term luck. It even gives an example of maybe gifting you bonus con/health when you level up. It also randomly gives you a chance at a bonus AP each round. It might also effect AP.

Some of this stuff is cool to discover while playing is. Isn't that one of things that make games fun? The sense of DISCOVERY. FFS

You're right - I absolutely love discovering new locations, interesting characters and exploring new worlds. Hence some of my favorite games of all time being actually good cRPGs like Fallout and Planescape Torment.

What I hate 'discovering' is that attributes I irreversibly assigned at character creation have LOLRANDOM effects on various aspects of the game. I hate 'discovering' that maybe my weapon jamming is caused by luck, or maybe my speed stat is effecting armor but there's no way of actually empirically knowing without actually looking into the game's programming.

I bet you get pissed because game manual don't give you every single stat for every siingle monster. LMAO

No, I get pissed when the game doesn't explain or even hint at modifiers within its systems.

 

[Metal Hurlant]

I can see myself playing WL2 quite a bit with different parties. And maxing Luck with a character just to see what random stuff does happen in the game.