Wasteland 2 - Update #5 and More

Brian Fargo has whipped up a new Kickstarter update, focused on Kicking it Forward:

Once a project in this program has become profitable, the developer is going to spend this 5% profit, which is their own money, on whatever Kickstarter projects they want to support. They can determine unilaterally who they want to give it to and when. Neither myself nor a committee is going to tell successful developers what projects to invest in. Ultimately, this is an honor system at the end of the day. No one is going to audit their books to make sure they complied. In many ways Kickstarter is an honor system too, so this is no different. Of course some unscrupulous developer may not follow through with their promise but I believe the development community sticks together.

Back to Wasteland 2 itself, NMA has some answers on multiplayer, Day-1 DLC and quest compasses. The answers are as you would expect - except the MP one. I'm a bit perplexed that social features are on their radar - even with the expanded budget, I'd have thought there were other priorities:

Will the game contain any form of multiplayer?

We are looking into how to make the game more social as we speak. I'm just not sure such a narrative game is going to lend itself to a strong multi-player but we have not ruled it out. One thing I do find interesting is the way Demon Souls handled things like leaving notes for others in game. There are some very interesting ideas along those lines that would be more powerful if controlled to your social group rather than strangers. Perhaps your buddy can drop things into the world for you to aid you along with the notes. Again just ideas but we are exploring that.

Lastly, team member Liz Danforth writes on her blog about her work on the original game and working on Wasteland 2:

I wasn’t a big part of the original project, but Highpool was one of the areas I wrote that appears early in the game. People still make sour faces when I grin evilly and say I was responsible for the tragedy with the kid and the rabid dog. I did other bits elsewhere in the game too, but that’s the piece I hear the most feedback about.
Still, the remarks aren’t always kind! I recall a forum comment I read just a year or two ago, saying something like “What kind of sick mind thinks up a situation where you have to kill a kid’s dog? And the kid too?”

More information.

Ugh, please no multiplayer. Then next thing you know it becomes MASSIVELY multiplayer and a shadow of its former self.

Everything was going just about perfect. Then he has to drop the MP thing. Just leave MP out of it please.

Wait, hold up guys - do include multiplayer! Make it multiplayer LAN like Baldur's Gate was! That should be pretty easy to do.

While I have nothing against the "social" element as it's being described specifically by Fargo in the post, it's slightly puzzling that he chose to bring up the subject of something as potentially divisive in old school RPG circles as multiplayer at this early stage. Also, any design discussions which come off as "modern" (rather than being callbacks to the original Wasteland) will likely remind us that this is the guy who most recently made Hunted: The Demon's Forge…and we don't want that.

He pretty much had to answer to the MP question as they are likely getting inundated with it from newcomer folk as opposed to the older audience that "gets it" a bit better.

Not a thing to worry about anytime soon, much of these next updates will likely contain answers to other questions—-will be surprised if some folk don't now start beating a drum about asking the game to go open source or some such if it gets to X amount or some other flame fanning, but still relevant to people's pledging decisions.

I'll say that I very vividly recall the Highpool event with Rex. I think that set the tone for the game for me since it was basically the first location. A little bit extra grit to make sure you didn't think it was going to be a happy game. I seem to recall something else regarding a clerk that would attack you if you trespassed into the back area or something from that map.

Anyway hopefully she still has a twisted mind and it looks like she does and can put that to good use here.

Edit: Oh yeah and about the MP thing. They already have enough to work on without having to waste time on MP. If they want to design something so its easier to port to MP then I dont have a problem with that but please finish the promised project before tackling more.

Makes me glad I [repeatedly]held myself back from upping my pledge to $100. Too many unknowns when it comes to a modern-day developer "revisiting" an old RPG.

The following is from Update #6:

We have received many questions about multi-player, and my feeling is that we do not think it would be the right decision for such a heavy narrative RPG. Even in an open sandbox world there are sequences and clues that need to happen in order for things to flow and make sense. This is not an MMO where we create instances of one-off events and scenarios, but it is a deep fluid world in which your actions do matter later. I don't want a game where my buddy triggered an event I didn't know and causes a repercussion for me, and at the same time I don't want to see every little event that my buddy sees to insure I didn't miss it. Multi-player is a design issue and not a technical one in this case. However, we will introduce social elements like I hinted at above so there can be a communal type experience.

So, it would seem that Fargo backed off a bit on his "we have not ruled [multiplayer] out" comment @NMA. I'm glad he's listening to people… but at the same time, I'm a bit worried that he was unsure on something such as MP that would have changed the entire design of the game. Customer feedback is great and all, but you need to have a strong design vision to begin with.

Sorry, but I find this social aspects unnecessary and waste of time&money. PC community has forums, text and video walkthroughs for this. Extra money should be spend to make the world content rich (I'm not saying bigger and empty world). More NPC reactions to our actions, more choices & consequences. And maybe, just maybe finding decent voice actors for the main NPCs (I'm not talking about full voice acting don't get me wrong) like the one in IE games.

Multiplayer? Come on! What kind of person interested in this type of game want multiplayer. There are enough MMOs out there. Leave that mmo taint out of this.

Multiplayer. Sigh. This is what I feared. So much for the money I wasted on it.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
Multiplayer. Sigh. This is what I feared. So much for the money I wasted on it.

Hrmm? From Brian Fargo - several days ago:

We have received many questions about multi-player, and my feeling is that we do not think it would be the right decision for such a heavy narrative RPG. Even in an open sandbox world there are sequences and clues that need to happen in order for things to flow and make sense. This is not an MMO where we create instances of one-off events and scenarios, but it is a deep fluid world in which your actions do matter later. I don't want a game where my buddy triggered an event I didn't know and causes a repercussion for me, and at the same time I don't want to see every little event that my buddy sees to insure I didn't miss it. Multi-player is a design issue and not a technical one in this case

They're in the very early stages of the high-level design and they're treating the process as a collaborative one with the backers. When people respond negatively to an idea - just like when a bad idea is bounced around inside a normal dev meeting and recognized as such by the other staff members - the idea ends up being rejected.