Cantousent

Who the hell you calln' a snowflake, boney? Anyhow, I think throwing out the whole lock/trap thing is truly moronic. I mean, at some point, you have to wonder why they're going to include XP for every incidental type of activity *except* for combat. If I didn't know better, I'd think it's almost like they're giving a big middle finger to the folks who're really invested in it. I'd be grabbing a pitchfork and fiery brand and joining the rest of the villagers if I'd been in that camp.

I laughed out loud. It was ever thus in the world of online bulletin boards.

Today I determined that I've walked over 1,000 miles since Feb. According to MapMyWalk, 700 since June 27. For a walk to count it must: Be at least 1 mile Be calculable and confirmable Be for purpose of exercise. Waling to and from the grocery counts. Walking at the car show doesn't.

I will never go out of my way to include an animal NPC in a game since Dogmeat. In fact, I avoid them. Having people shoot my dog sent me into a mind-bending fit of nerd rage. ...And, while I don't go crazy on save/reloading, I got into a 'save Dogmeat at any price' mentality that became excruciating during Fallout. In my current restart (I think 5th time), I decided to save Highpool and I braved all manner of radiation to do it. Alas, the same result, no matter how fast I did it. Now, I'm finishing up the Ag Center. Already took care of those bastard Wreckers. Bunch of Blue Meanies, if you ask me. EDIT: I have to admit I got a huge kick out of the Magnum PI riff, Hiro.

The argument I dislike the most, almost despise with an unreasoning depth of feeling, is the 'freedom' argument. I mean, I'm pretty good about separating my view of the argument from the people making it, but... come on. I'll cite the specific arguments from Lephys, PJ, and our local Mayan god. Just take this post as supporting their base assertion about freedom in the game. I will just make two points. First, on one hand, denial of specific gameplay rewards for a particular action does nothing to prohibit it. (PJ & Q) Second, after we fight over that hill, it doesn't matter anyway because all meaningful freedom in CRPGs is illusory anyway. Even the biggest, broadest, baddest sandbox game has boundaries. (L jefe) When we play a game, we enter into a sort of contract the designer. Not with the publisher. Not with the development house. Certainly not with our friend who kept recommending the game that turned out to be a turd. With the designer, we agree that we'll suspend disbelief and allow for certain boundaries set by the guy who writes the dialogue and contrives the puzzles and figures out the motives, desires, and methods of the PC. In return, we ask that we are entertained by the experience. Sometimes even moved by the experience in the same way as a good book or a great movie. That's our arrangement, and we don't do ourselves any favors by insisting that the designer substitutes our vision for his own. Your artistic vision might be better, but not the watered down version that any dev who designs by committee would be able to create. There may be a great game in which a cat/baby hybrid plays some part, but certainly not one where the cat/baby hybrid is included solely for the purpose of placating an angry fan. (L jefe) If this is all incoherent, I'm blame my diminished state, which is to say myself.

I think we're violently agreeing on just about everything *except* that I don't think folks who don't like the feature (allowing people to abuse the save system) are at fault. They might or might not be wrong, but it's an argument about a feature, which means it is in the lap of the design team. The designers could have made it harder to take advantage of the save system, but they didn't. Frankly, I don't think it's really a problem. Sometimes I just leave the lock or whatever. Sometimes, I'll keep going after it. ...And that *is* my choice. ...But, then again, I think WL2 is a rockin' good game. EDIT: What a different one 'don't' makes.

Lock picking XP will become a huge backdoor argument for kill XP and will be the source of renewed and unending angst for players who were clamoring for kill XP if it ends up not being in the game. Have a few quests or sub-quest line that rewards people for using their leet lock picking skills. Have a lockiary that ends up doling some XP if it makes folks happy. Don't put in XP contrary to the rest of the entire XP system *just for one activity!*

I have never understood arguments that revolve around player restraint. If your argument is that players are at fault for using a glaring exploit and so the fault lies in the player rather than the design team, you're nuts. I *do* agree with Elrond that the save system is actually more of a feature. ...And I don't mean it in the Troika fanboy way of saying that an obvious bug is actually a feature. It seems pretty clear to me that the designers knew a hefty number of players would save before all manner of skill checks. I do it regularly myself on some games simply because it can be so easy, I don't care about bragging rights, and I can always play on ironman mode if I want to. At least, that's for games that have iron man mode. What I do think is sad is when folks use saving and reloading constantly and then complain the game is too easy. If you have to reload twenty times to do something, that's probably not so easy.

Oops. Thanks, angel. :Cant's sheepish grin icon:

I don't want to sound jaded, but I never trust release dates that aren't imminent anyway. However, and I figure this one will go out to the ether :wry grin: but are you focusing more on just squashing bugs, reworking combat mechanics, or including more content at this point? ...Or is the answer "yes?"

That Stasis looks pretty snappy. The wife will actually play the odd adventure game with me and, surprise surprise surprise, she actually likes horror games. I might have to look into purchasing that one also.

I have personally never told people not to give opinions and post about the game. I've always encouraged folks to advocate for what they want. I was just saying that I don't think that soliciting our input means that they will or even should take it. Personally, Hiro, you never know what idea you have might have an effect. It"s like cooking. You might not like onions, but that spaghetti sauce sure tastes good. It's about the flavors combining into something wonderful. So you may never know when your input led to something good. They may never know. That's why Indira convinced me I was wrong about the devs prioritizing input for us.

I think the game is pretty overall, but I agree with something Strangecat said in another thread about making some locations spookier. The spider cave was the example. Overall, I'm pleased with the look, sound, and feel. But it will take a while before I stop trying to change the camera. Of course, although I love WL2, I hate the camera rotation. Just can't win! :Cant's wry grin icom:

When I read this, I thought the point was that people who have done a lot of work on the game haven't seen a lot of it implemented. Yes, Obsidz asked for feedback. Yes, people should give it. No, folks shouldn't act like Obsidian is wrong not to act on the feedback. They should act on feedback they find most useful. I also owned that I had a different view of reading Hiro's later post. However, while I might edit for clarity or to change a confusing typo, I'm not going to pretend I didn't say what I said, so I left my original post and edited a comment showing where I misunderstood. *shrug* So, if complaining about my post help with feedback, I'd say go for it. For the record, I still believe in what I said in my original post. I think I misunderstood what Hiro was saying.

Completely concur. I even stopped playing the beta except to check very specific things in the latest patch.

I don't want this to come off as nasty. Sensuki has done a lot of work. Matt has also. In fact, a lot of people have. I'm guess I'm responding to Hiro, and I agree with much that he posts. However, I didn't pony for a game made by Sensuki, Matt, or Hiro. I think their feedback is valuable and I hope they keep giving it, but I would be incredibly discouraged if Obsidz fawned over posts in the forums. I think everyone should keep pushing for things they want to see in the game. If they can articulate their desires convincingly, even better. If they can provide a design framework like Sensuki or crunch the numbers like Matt, that's best. However, Obsidz should forge ahead with the team's creative vision. ...And, if they take even a tiny portion of what any of you suggest and make it part of the game, that's still quite impressive. I figure that some folks will take this personally, but it's not meant to be. If those who have done yeoman's work want to forge ahead with a viable game design, they can create their own startup. With low cost retail options, increased ability to spread the word, and even opportunity for creative funding, indy games are in a golden age. EDIT: And reading further into the thread, I see what Hiro really wants is for Obsidian to give us an idea of what kind of feedback would be useful for them, in which case I *completely* agree.

For my sins, I started a new game again. I've logged about 52 hours, but for some of that I have to admit that I start the game and then do other stuff I have to do. So I've probably only played about 30 hours, but that's still significant. I did the Ag center, Highpool, all of the infected areas, the Wrecker's joint, and at least one place I can't recall straight away, and I had just gotten to the Rail Nomad place and saved some kid. I'm going to do Highpool first this run I think, so I won't have Rose unless she survives. I'm not counting on it, so I have a techie and a surgeon in this run. I going for Ranger level because I've putz around enough on normal. Usually I do the full run on normal, but I also usually don't restart the game four or five times before I finish it, so WL2 will have to be the exception. Wish me luck in the wasteland!

Is WL2 doing well? Wasteland is one of the best games I've played in a long time. I hope it's selling well enough to make it worth it. And I never really go out of my way to recommend games on STEAM, but reading the page you posted, Leferd, I recommended it. I'll probably write a three or four sentence review to praise it also.

I think one of the descriptions mentioned surgery, but I'm not sure. I think I saved everyone at the Ag Center. In one of the infected farms, I missed a pod person and ended up killing a cow. I thought to myself, "self, at least you don't have to kill the rest of them." Then it seemed like the pod people were intentionally either hiding behind cows or getting killed right next to them. I went through like five or six cows, and I most certainly wasn't trying to gun them down. It just happened that way. Hell, it was almost a mini-game. One pod person got the chop and exploded literally standing *between* two cows. I couldn't even pretend my people would eat the meat because it was covered by exploding pod folk. BTW: Does anyone know what the hell I'm supposed to do with exploding pod fragments?

Why do I get the impression *I'm* the guy choosing poorly in that video? :rueful grin: Anyhow, to paraphrase Niles, the only thing better than a great game is a great game with some small flaw you can pick at all evening.

You're kidding me! I can repair broken locks? I thought that critical failures on broken locks meant you could never get the stuff! I'm not going to hunt down broken locks behind me at this point, but that's damned good info for future. ...And it means that repair actually has some use.

I cleared out the wreckers' place, but the place was actually small. I should probably go back and scour it because there has to be something I'm missing. There were a lot of bad guys, and I had to fight them all at the same time, but that was it. I'm sure surgery is something that I will use much more in higher levels, but medic is what I use now. Maybe there's something wrong with how I'm using it, but I can't use surgery for anything other than reviving someone who's bleeding out. Every time I try to use surgery on someone, I get the message that none of the items in my inventory will do anything, and I have sutures, pain relievers, antibiotics, etc etc etc. Rose doesn't even have medic. In fact, because I was so close to it already, and because my tech expert has a 10 intelligence, there's nothing other than surgery that Rose does better than anyone in my party. I still have her strictly for RP reasons, but when I play Ranger and Supreme Jerk, I'll either have to leave surgery and tech specifically for her, or I'll have to skip her. I just wish I could find out what the deal is with surgery, and what I could use to remove Rose's concussion. Maybe I'll have someone get diseased with a non quest related condition and it'll be useful then? Then again, apart from alarm disarming being virtually useless, I have *never* used repair. There has been no situation where something else hasn't even come in just as handy or moreso. As far as I can tell, dialogue options haven't done that much either, although I did get a kickass weapon almost immediately in the game due to smart ass. The king of the non-combat skills has been lockpicking, safe cracking, tech, and explosives. I've had to batter down a few doors, and I've used outdoorsman once I think. I've wasted points in things that have turned out to be useless thus far, but I'm almost not all that far into the game yet. I've cleared about seven locations right now I think. ...And I never know when to use spoiler tags, but I try to be cautious. <.< EDIT: Oh, that's right, Rose did have to cut out the plant trapped folks, so surgery was useful there. Makes it imminently more useful than repair thus far.

That's fair enough, but I just think that the stats should be more or less intuitive. I think that the average gamer should read the name of the stat and have a basic understanding of what it might govern. I think a lot of gamers will see "Might" and not understand that it governs spell damage. Maybe I'm wrong, and that's fair enough, but I still think that the names mean something. ...And I think it's silly to argue that intelligence makes someone a better fighter when the real attribute that makes someone a great fighter is willingness to fight. The idea that all great fighters (or soldiers) are simply knuckle dragging imbeciles that don't think for themselves is idiotic, but I'd also like to think that no one here really meant to say that smart people couldn't be great fighters but only that their skill at fighting didn't derive from smarts. Street smarts, maybe, but not necessarily smarts. ...And street smarts has a lot more to do with surviving which means a lot less fighting and a lot more of figuring out bad situations before they play out. Of course, I would never call myself a great fighter. Probably one of the few people in this forum that has literally been homeless and one of the few that has lived below the poverty line and one of the few that has lived in government subsidized housing. I know how to cross the street to avoid a lot of ugly coming my way, and that is the definition of street smarts. EDIT: Unclear, and so I added a period and an ellipses.

It's funny. I've cleared a bunch of infected places, both the Ag center and Highpool. I went back to the Ag center after clearing the last infected place and discovered a safe I had overlooked for a long time. Anyhow, searching for ways to get rid of concussion, I discovered I'm ****ed. No way to get rid of the effect without an NPC doctor? I've got a doctor in my party who is totally awesome at doctoring, which appears to be a more or less useless skill at normal level. I always play games on normal first, then hard, and then bragging rights. (For the record, I do not use 'bragging rights' as a pejorative.) So, next run, I'll be like Grom and not build a good medic and instead use Doctor whatsherface... Rose I think... as my doctor. Maybe I'll need to use doctorin' more than three times at the same point in *that* game. I also did a search for exploding pod fragments. They're white in the WoW manner and so they cannot be junk, but I have found no use for them yet. I will say that I chew the hell out of everything so far on normal level, but I don't mind. I figure this is my basic fun run where I enjoy the story. I'll get into harder mode after I'm done. This game is really kick-ass. I've enjoyed it immensely and it gives me a lot of confidence in Numenera. I'm really looking forward to that one. I'm also looking forward PoE. I think of PoE as being a little less campy and... schizophrenic? ...But I've enjoyed the retro culture references in WL2. Great game! EDIT: I forgot that it's spoiler not just spoil to use the tag right.

Okay, two favorite moments, and I'm not going over everything in this thread before I post, but the floating text speculating on rolling up a corpse and smoking it like a joint was laugh out loud funny. Also, I got a real kick out of Honeydew Lewis telling the rangers "bravisimo[sic]." I actually say that all the time, and, even misspelled, it was a great moment. He's crazier than a loon, but I *like* 'im!