Wasteland 2 - Video Preview @ Eurogamer

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Eurogamer has new video preview of the final build of Wasteland 2.



Playing the final release version of Wasteland 2, due out 19th September 2014. How is it different from the beta? Eurogamer writers Wesley Yin-Poole and Bertie Purchese talk you through it.
More information.
 
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Does anyone remember, was this the game that wanted to include perks, but didn't have time to get them in before release, or was that Pillars of Eternity? Thanks.
 
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I believe it was this game as they promised they might be added later.
Traits/perks as well as aimed shots are two more features we have been strongly considering, but won't be in the final game. We love both systems and agree with the feedback that it would add a lot, however we also believe that badly balanced or overly simple versions would not be in the best interest of the game. Take aimed shots: to do it right means it would have a real tactical impact, AI reactions to its usage, and a carefully balanced pro-cons system, rather than just "decrease to-hit chance to increase critical chance".
 
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Yeah right now I'm thinking that, at a minimum, I'll be waiting till around Easter to even think about playing this one. I cannot even imagine the sheer number of patches that will be incoming.
 
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We purposely decided on decoupling armor and clothing appearance because many players didn't want their characters to all look the same by game's end when stomping around in high-level power armor. You will be able to change their appearance throughout the game by finding/buying clothing items in the world.

That sounds like a pretty lame reasoning, sorry. Also, if you've balanced the end-game in such a way that there's only one armor that makes sense for your characters, you've made a big mistake there.

Did you do a poll on this? Because I certainly miss my guess if the majority doesn't actually want their items reflected accurately on their characters. It's a significant aspect of loot appeal.

It's been the norm for ages, though I realise it's not a trivial feature to implement. But it would probably be easier to say it's the workload rather than what fans actually want - as that sounds like bullshit to me.

A lot about this game smells off to me, and I'm speaking as someone who already bought it.
 
Yeah right now I'm thinking that, at a minimum, I'll be waiting till around Easter to even think about playing this one. I cannot even imagine the sheer number of patches that will be incoming.

Indeed, it's obvious that they will keep adding stuff to it and patching many bugs for a while.
 
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We paid attention to feedback on our official forums as well as the Steam forums, as there was a lot of discussion on this probably 5+ months ago. The response from most players at the time was to decouple them, and we like it because it gives you more flexibility in appearance (important for telling your large party apart).

Well, I'll have to take your word for it :)

You could have armors in different colors - and you could have had light/heavy armors give a variety of advantages, so the players would have an incentive to mix it up. I'm not talking about movement penalties and cost alone, but stuff like action points and bonuses to certain skills for wearing light armor.

Lots of ways to inspire diversity, just like the vast majority of modern CRPGs.

It's hard to please everyone when it's sort of a "one or the other" decision. ;)

You don't really need to worry about pleasing me, as I've already invested in the game.

I'm not asking for the game to be for me, I'm just pointing out what I don't like about it. I have a hard time swallowing that "most" players really prefer pre-defined looks for characters, but it's no big deal.

By the way, for armor, we have a variety of light and heavy armors which are influenced by your Strength attribute in terms of their movement penalties during combat. Typically higher-tier armors are better but there could be gameplay reasons you want to stick with a lower-tier one (armor is quite expensive for a full party, you may want to eat some movement penalty but not as much as a higher-tier armor provides, etc.).

Which would suggest not everyone would necessarily look the same? Another solution would be to simply make "decoupling" optional - and let players decide for themselves.

This loot aspect is relatively trivial, but the omission of perks/traits and aimed shots is very unfortunate, considering the entertainment value of those features.

Skill bloat is another sign that you've sort of missed the boat when it comes to the character system. It should have been refined and skills like safecracking, lockpicking and alarm disarming definitely need to be combined. Just needless clutter as it is, if you ask me. Even in the latest UI iterations, just looking at the character sheet would make even hardcore gamer eyes ache a little.

Anyway, I wish you well with the game - but I can't help but think you've made a lot of unfortunate decisions in terms of design.
 
I am actually one of those who don't care about visible appearance in Single Player Party Based RPGs. ^^

But I got another question as you are in the mood of answering as it seems :D

Previews of the latest version (including the trailer) show that Coordination is a requirement for some weapons. In the Beta it's not and the tooltip wasn't correct. Was this changed now?

Will there be more than like 4 portaits/gender at release?

Will Luck increase Constitution? In the forums I was told that this was taken out at some point. The tooltip in the release version still states it increases con if you are lucky (resulting in nice load/save orgies for minmaxers)
 
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That's a non-trivial thing to implement, especially at this stage. Such features are not always easy depending on how the underlying code works (sometimes weeks of work for something "simple").

I know it's not trivial ;) That's the workload I was talking about.

We've said that we'd definitely want to consider those ideas for patches/expansions, but we don't have firm plans at this time. But that said, "because Fallout did it" has never been our MO, and we would definitely want to do our own spin on those ideas that really add something important to the game, rather than just copying them.

Fallout isn't the only RPG in the world with perks, traits or aimed shots.

X-Com made it very clear years before Fallout why aimed shots are great fun.

Personally, I would add these features because they've been proven as good entertainment - and providing more entertainment should be the focus of any good designer.

Well, that's my opinion.

Avoiding great features because you don't want to risk emulating another great game would seem to be rather unfortunate.

You're also using stuff like hitpoints and skill checks, both of which I can give you my personal guarentee were NOT invented with Wasteland.

So, you're already copying other games. No shame in that.

We cut down the number of skills from Wasteland 1 significantly as well as from back when the beta launched, due to redundancy. Right now we are at a good place where all skills and attributes have an important function - some more important than others, but all with good opportunities to use them throughout the game. The team made sure to do skill passes across each map leading up to release (you can see some of these substantial improvements in the existing beta release).

Thanks for the feedback. :)

It's important to trust in your own vision, so that's good.

Personally, I think it's bloated - but I've only played around with the Early Access.

Anyway, it's all just my opinion.

Thanks for the feedback. We most definitely do pay attention to as much as possible (during the last 7-8 months or so of development, one of my jobs was collecting community feedback on how to improve the game and prioritizing it), and even if we don't make a decision on X or Y that you agree with we absolutely review and discuss everything.

As I said, I hope it all works out for you, and you don't take it to heart that I'm not in love with your design.

If I'm the only one with these concerns, it's probably a safe bet to ignore what I'm saying.

I would rather have a game from people who had faith in their own vision and did things they believed were right for the game, than follow the feedback of the disgruntled few.

Not that I'm disgruntled, I just know what I like and don't like :)
 
There's no aimed shots? :( Despite being a backer, I'll be waiting on this feature to get added; hopefully it does indeed get added.
 
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Well, there are headshots, which are a really good addition to bring some diversity into character builds (otherwise it wouldn't make sense to have more than 8 AP on a sniper).
 
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… but regardless, custom portrait functionality is still definitely in.

Sounds good. I'm still pondering whether to download a Three Stooges or a Ghostbusters set. Or both. And mix them. Opinions?
 
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Does anyone remember, was this the game that wanted to include perks, but didn't have time to get them in before release, or was that Pillars of Eternity? Thanks.

I think that was project eternity, it was never planned for WL 2 which is a shame.
 
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