Torment - On Wasteland 2: A Torment Wishlist

At Cliqist Dylan Cunningham criqitues Wasteland 2 as he eyes up what he wants from Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Wasteland 2 is a game I would consider a success, delivering on its nostalgic promise of old-school roleplaying with a complex character system and classic turn-based combat. I also don't find it very fun. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what it does and have a lot of admiration for its style and depth, but there are a lot of flaws as well that I hope to see cleared up for the release of Tides of Numenera.

First off, even after Wasteland 2 got its updated director's cut edition, it lacks greatly for polish. The UI is clunky and fairly ugly, and the combat flows somewhat awkwardly. It's not terrible by any stretch, but it's slower than it needs to be and just has an odd way of doing things that irritates more with repetition. If Numenera is going to pull off its proposed "Crisis" system it's going to have to be a step above inXile's previous effort.

Secondly, the balance in Wasteland 2 is just plain wacky. Several skills feel useless, a few weapons are either incredibly weak in the early game or late game, and the stat system encourages ridiculous min-maxing. This could be mistaken for the complexity I admire about this game, but the obstacles in your way will frequently make certain party compositions fail miserably and many of the skills and stats work in counter-intuitive ways. While I enjoy complex character building, Wasteland 2 makes it too easy to create an utterly useless party member.

Lastly, while the writing in Wasteland 2 is good, and what I've seen from Numenera so far has also been strong without being overdone, Planescape: Torment is, more than anything else, celebrated for its huge, branching storyline. Much more than for its combat mechanics, for certain. Even if inXile nails the gameplay balance and polish with their new title, none of it is going to matter much if the plot doesn't live up to its predecessor.

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First off, even after Wasteland 2 got its updated director's cut edition, it lacks greatly for polish. The UI is clunky and fairly ugly, and the combat flows somewhat awkwardly

I'm reading these lines like: "I'm a graphics whore and am proud of it".

That goes for me too actually, I'm definetly a graphics whore and love when a game has awsome graphics and am proud of it.
But… In my case it's only because I'm playing games on a platform that can and should be used to put inferior hardware to shame.

Neither Wasteland2 nor Torment2 were supposed to be tripleA games. Sure, I would be happy to see better graphics anywhere not just in those two, but we're talking about games where graphics is the least priority, games that excel in other areas and don't need eyecandy to sell just because there is nothing else worth inside.

I won't comment other points where I'll also (probably) disagree with the article author.
IMO he should sell his PC, buy a nice and shiny console then concentrate on games that have no real game just shiny graphics like Order1886.

I agree Joxer but I linked because his views are somewhat interesting. Author sounds like he doesn't have the tenacity or patience to enjoy working out good character builds. If the character build system was a little more intuitive and explained better to the player I'm sure this would not be an issue. Old fallout character system was pretty intuitive; mind you was based on a proven system (gurps)

The first thing he said was that WL2 wasn't very fun. I agree with that, and it goes WAY beyond the graphics. It's nice that people liked it, but if everyone just gives all the shortcuts, bugs, shallow combat, half-assed story, crap UI, and especially the heavily-trumped but mostly absent C&C a pass we're going to keep getting more of the same.

I have never seen a game so completely carried by nostalgia as WL2.

I disagree with his critique of the skills / stats. I like complexity in character progression in RPGs, and I felt this game had that. I cared about leveling and the choices I made, and felt I had to think about where I should allocate points, with risk of doing it poorly making the game more challenging. This was a contrast to Pillars (release similar time) where I sadly felt that character progression and stat allocation became almost irrelevant after the 1st act.

Originally Posted by bizorker
I disagree with his critique of the skills / stats. I like complexity in character progression in RPGs, and I felt this game had that. I cared about leveling and the choices I made, and felt I had to think about where I should allocate points, with risk of doing it poorly making the game more challenging. This was a contrast to Pillars (release similar time) where I sadly felt that character progression and stat allocation became almost irrelevant after the 1st act.

Speaking as probably the only guy who like both games, I am a little puzzled. WL2 is a ridiculous game, but I love it. All your stats "matter" but to the extent that they are ridiculous. And really WL2 is about getting the higher level weapons. Once that is accomplished, you can probably make it through the game with a '4' in the weapon skill of your choice.

PoE suffers only from the mechanics of combat (well that and the final chapter). If PoE was turned based, you would see the differences in the choices you make in terms of character building more clearly than you can when it is done in real time. The variances would still appear more subtle than WL2 but WAY more balanced. To me, the person who prefers WL2 likes creating a better character based on mathematics, and the PoE players chooses simply on role play.

Not that WL2 is short on role play. Quite the opposite. I love the 4 character party creation system with 3 NPCS. This allows you to create real "characters" who mathematically support a successful party. You divide the skills and the attributes as you see fit to create the kind of characters you really want. And also you get enough NPC interaction for me.

People that don't like PoE are upset that they can't tell a huge difference between wildly different stated characters, but I think that is more realistic. While real people have wildly different stats, take any group of six athletes, and send them into archaic combat, and i doubt you can pick out that much difference between them, unless they were all weak, which can be done in PoE.

I know your specific statement was regarding the first act and that perhaps the talents (i still call then feats) and abilities have a greater impact than the stats as your character progresses. And I personally don't have a problem with that. It makes sense that the longer you train as a fighter (or whatnot) the more your training gives you the edge in battles. Your athletic potential (your stats) augment that, but at this point in your life, you are closer to reaching your potential, and focusing your abilities for a specific function.

I just think the beauty of the PoE system gets lost in the pause-squad mechanic where everybody is trying to "gather round the monster."

WL2 was one of the first KS incline RPGs that delivered

Unfortunately, I found his comments about WL2 were on the mark. I have trouble sticking with it. It's a decent effort and the game has its moments, but it's flawed and gets a bit tedious as well.

While I enjoy complex character building, Wasteland 2 makes it too easy to create an utterly useless party member.

Even useless party members can launch rockets and chuck 'nades.

I found that the problem with WL2 was that the best content was available a bit too late in the game. There are plenty of C&C, but also lots of MMO type filler maps where all you do is kill everything in sight. Arizona probably has 70-80% filler while California is rather better, but one might be bored by the other crap before getting to the interesting parts.

And the UI is not good, even in the director's cut. I'm replaying Skyrim atm, and while it has an objectively horrible console interface the interface at least is consistent in how you interact with the environment. WL2's isn't.

My interest in WL2 kind of petered out… I just grew bored with how the game plodded along from A-->B-->C-->D with little that really stood out as exciting. Considering I pledged $150 towards it, I should really at least try to finish the story, but it's so boring…

I had no problem with the NPCs or UI; however, I will say that filling out your quota of necessary skills can be problematic and frustrating if you don't consult a wiki ahead of time for information on the skills that recruitable NPCs bring to the table. Skill points can be too few and far between to contend with the inevitable overlap and holes if one is expected to go in blind.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Skill points can be too few and far between to contend with the inevitable overlap and holes if one is expected to go in blind.

I saw just the opposite during my play-through. Always had way more skill points than I needed to cover everything, and by the end of the game I had literally dozens of skill points on every character that I had no real use for, even after fully maxxing 2 gun skills on every single character and having every non-combat skill covered across my party. At that point I started grabbing skills I didn't even need, just to trigger pre-reqs for interesting perks that I could pick up (eg: Weaponsmithing 2 = Tinkerer, Perception 3 = Tactical Positioning, Hard Ass 7 = Bloodthirsty, etc).

It really depends on how you build your characters though, this is with 8 or 10 int on characters to get more skill points, as well as the "Delayed Gratification" quirk. If you want the skill points, you have to build your characters correctly to get the skill points.

Anyway, good game IMO, but didn't quite live up to the (probably unrealistic) hype or expectations. Was a lot more fun than Fallout 4 that had probably 20X the budget.

Originally Posted by Drithius
I had no problem with the NPCs or UI; however, I will say that filling out your quota of necessary skills can be problematic and frustrating if you don't consult a wiki ahead of time for information on the skills that recruitable NPCs bring to the table.

This is one of the first things I do in this kind of game and I never feel bad about it

Originally Posted by Stingray
Anyway, good game IMO, but didn't quite live up to the (probably unrealistic) hype or expectations. Was a lot more fun than Fallout 4 that had probably 20X the budget.

The expectations I had that weren't fulfilled was 1) better balancing of attributes and equipment and 2) a deeper skill system than "have one of each of these in the party for maximum success" and skills not even being tied to attributes. Neither of these is a budget issue, it's just bad design.

True enough, the whole character system just felt a bit off. As if they'd tried to replicate the more-complicated systems of old, but missed some key components.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
The expectations I had that weren't fulfilled was 1) better balancing of attributes and equipment and 2) a deeper skill system than "have one of each of these in the party for maximum success" and skills not even being tied to attributes. Neither of these is a budget issue, it's just bad design.

This I would agree with… i think skills tied to attributes ought to be a given, and i do believe in balancing, in which WL2 is a great example of not doing it at all.