Wasteland 2 - Update #6

Dhruin

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Brian Fargo has posted Update #6 for Wasteland 2, explaining the "social" aspect in a little more depth and offering this as the additional inclusion for exceeding $2M:
The most common question now is what happens when we hit 2 million and above. First and foremost we hang our hat on the density of the experience the gamers get with a great RPG, and these monies continue to insure that happens. At 2 million we will increase the staff to make the game more social so that it can become a more shared experience. We like the concepts of dropping notes into the world for your friends who are playing the game, or perhaps we may allow you to send an item their way from Ranger center to help them out. We are fleshing out the ideas but intend to increase the social aspects of the game without diverting it from being an old school RPG and without hurting the balance.
There's also a new humorous video and a list of interviews, though I think we've covered them all.
More information.
 
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It's a bit ironic…the more money they receive, the more AAA/modern/mainstream the project seems to become.
 
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Don't panic ...
***** Update for the update*******

Everyone remain calm....

There has been a lot of panic that any kind of element of sharing will ruin the classic old school RPG. I think some people are overreacting to the word "social" which I can kind of understand. But here is the bottom line. We will post a description of our thoughts in the forums and if YOU the fans still don't want it then we will not fight the majority. We can now get back to our normal shouting.
 
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This update seems to be written by Richard Garriott, not Brian Fargo. :)

Edit:

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.
 
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I hope he knows what he's doing when he keeps promising to comply to people's wishes. I expect that everyone loves hearing such promises and what I'm suggesting might sound insane, but I'm personally in it to offer a way for creative people to fullfil their own visions when they can't do it through conventional channels. I'm convinced that art is not a democratic process and design by committee is always a very bad idea.
 
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I'm convinced that art is not a democratic process and design by committee is always a very bad idea.

Very true.. "…then we will not fight the majority." A bit worrying maybe. Lots of people on the WL2 forums seems to be Bioware fans, i hope he doesnt give in to their wishes just because they're whining the loudest.

I also dont really see the point on focusing even the least on such a trivial thing for the game right now.
 
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I think not listening to the people is the wrong way to go but making their decisions based on what the people want is also the wrong way to go.
 
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I just hope too much money will not make the game "new-school" by adding 3d cut scenes , voiceacting , first person perspective ... i mean they will try to be like mass effect and stuff
 
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I would have to concur with one of the posters from the Kickstarter site: NO social, NO MP, and NO mod tools. Here's why: focus on developing some sort of modding kit for the players ends up with less emphasis on the main campaign (remember, the campaign for NWN? It was utter crap. Ooh, but I can make my own crappy mods— hurrah!). The notion of user mods does not make this title any more compelling to buy. In fact, I would be less inclined to buy simply because most (there are rare exceptions I'm sure) user made content is just bad.

I really am not so desperate for attention and validation that I need a friend to leave me some kind of stupid note in game or any items to make the game easier. The idea they would somehow, assuming the "majority" doesn't object, focus on implementing features to allow the latter seems a waste of time.

Unfortunately I think the moniker of "old school" is not the old school we gamers that played the original at it's release in the 80's are familiar with. I think it's simply "more old school than anything out now." Baldur's Gate is considered "old school" which is not accurate. I will remain as optimistic as I can. If they limit party size to less than 5 or 6, or eliminate parties altogether, that will be a clear indicator all this from Fargo has been lip-service.
 
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As I posted in the other thread, Fargo has to (on his own) have some sense of what he wants Wasteland 2 to be. Listening to 1,000 dissonant voices is all well and good when it comes to minor details, but you need to have key designs you stick to for a project... else it becomes a sloppy dissonant mess as well.
 
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I agree that first and foremost, funding should go towards making the game content rich. I also don't like the idea of dropping notes for friends in the game world - seems like an unnecessary way to spend money. I can talk to my friends about the game on the phone if I want to. However, I don't think allowing multiplayer in the form of having another player join your party to replace a NPC would be that costly, and could add to the fun. I would also like to see it be mod-friendly. If the game ends up being great, but far too short or small, mod tools would allow community members to improve its size. I can't imagine it is that expensive to release developer tools, is it?

I like the idea of keeping it old-school, but we should also stay open to some of the positive new trends too (not that modding and multiplayer is that new anyway).
 
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I think having mod tools could be a good thing since they can focus on making good and easy to use tools which can pave the way for future games. Also mods keep a game popular and in the minds of people so that future games may end up even more successful.

PS. Twotricks: Actually all of that was in old-school games also and except for first person perspective were in moderation unlike modern games. (which is the problem) Some of my most favorite old-school games were either entirely in a first person perspective or partially.
 
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As much as I love modding games, I would vote for not doing mod tools at this point. Please just do the original pitched project first with extra content. I would prefer they work on core design and getting data structures pinned down and logical and robust. Release the data structure format as a document and modders will fill in the holes if there is a market. Games like the Infinity engine games had a reasonably well crafted file format that modders could update and we got a fair number of content mods as a result without having official editors.

Fallout 1/2, Jagged Alliance 2, Witcher … put out editors and there really were not many mods from those that I recall. JA2 admittedly has quite a few mods now but much of that came with source code being released (and some really dedicated russians before that).
 
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Here's to hoping they don't reach $2M...
 
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Here's hoping they reach 5 million - well above any difference in focus that the marginal cost of limited optional social features would mean. Rather than wish them ill because I disagree with what sounds to be a very minor feature they want to experiment with in a way that would be entirely optional feature, I hope they succeed so much that the success or failure of that feature will not matter next to the enormity and complexity of the game itself.
 
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The word social made me want to vomit in my mouth but what he described didn't sound to horrible. Waste(land) of effort if you ask me though. Spend it on making the world bigger, more quests, more unique hand placed loot, more npc's, less fetch quests, more different types of enemies, more varied terrain, more c&c, more everything.
 
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Well, I don't see the social plan they have as bad as some of you do....

Mod tools would be great, making fun of NWN tools shows you have a distinct lack of any knowledge of what came from that. Look at the mod tools for the elder scrolls games have done, as well as the fallout games. Silly to hinder that.
 
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Please just do the original pitched project first with extra content.

Exactly; add another designer or two.. more quests.. larger game-world… spend our money where it counts. Give us a game we'll be playing for months not weeks. And stick to the original idea of a true-blue Wasteland game.
 
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Well, I don't see the social plan they have as bad as some of you do….

shocking…;) these ideas would fit in perfectly on an ipad, however.

Mod tools would be great, making fun of NWN tools shows you have a distinct lack of any knowledge of what came from that.

What came from that? You mean by far the worst single-player campaign in an RPG that Bioware has ever released? Not really the best example to use for defending mod-tools.

Look at the mod tools for the elder scrolls games have done, as well as the fallout games. Silly to hinder that.

Now here's a better example :). The key is not to build a game that requires mods to be half-way enjoyable, or to half-ass the regular campaign as an afterthought in order to encourage amateur modules like NWN. If mod-tools are just a method to customize or expand on the solid base of the game ala Elder Scrolls/Fallout, then mod tools are great, and they don't require too much effort to implement. This would be a much better way to create a "social, community-shared" aspect than the silly ideas being tossed around by Fargo.
 
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No mods, no mulitplayer, nothing of that nature. If I wanna be with people I have EQ2 for that, a home solo game is just that, I don't want people. Somehow games in the 80's didn't have it, and we all survived. This was sounding great in the beginning but I see disaster potential looming!


-Carn
 
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