What PoE can learn from Wasteland 2 release? (faults and lessons to learn)

[AlperTheCaglar]

That was so weird.  :Can't confused shaking his head icon:

 

Anyhow, back to regularly scheduled programming.  Like M.MK up above, I find some of the WL2 material campy and funny.  It has a certain charm.  I don't think PoE is being built in quite the same way, and I don't want it to get too campy, but a little levity is good.  Also like W.MK, I didn't back WL2, although I *did* back ToN.  I have enjoyed playing the game so far.  I'm taking Grom and Walker's advice, however, and restarting with some minor tweaks.  I don't mind living with mistakes in my build, but I *do* get irritated with having a skill next to useless.  I'll keep toaster repair just for the camp value, but I'll narrow my skill focus to ditch ones with extremely limited use.

 

Even though I'd rate WL2 with a solid 9/10 (completed in 108 hours)-- one thing I thought was missing were redundant areas/moments. rather than campy ones

 

That's where Fallout 2 edges out. Areas or towns or cities which are wholly unrelated to the main quest, where you can dismantle or alter the status quo however you like, construct a sincere suspension of linearity. An investment like New Reno pays off big in the end. Areas which arent tied to the weave of the main plot quest are crucial for the breadth of immersion.

[Azrael Ultima]

I don't think high-end graphics are really necessary. The novelty of that tends to wear off quite quickly. Way to quickly for a long game like RPGs tend to be.

 

I find that games with well done lower end graphics tend to have much better staying power. You can't replace good art with a more powerfull engine.

[Jobby]

Please just release it finished. I played Wasteland 2 for about 10 hours and suddenly Steam starts installing a 1.5gb patch, seriously! If you had told me it wasn't finished I could have waited a friggen week before having to start again!

I'm now holding off until I'm convinced it's finished, otherwise a rather enjoyable game though.  

[gladestone]

Why because of his taate.Stop bashing people because the like resident evil 4.Give me a break.Same can be said about you and your taste and not liking re4.See what I did there.Come up with a more intelligent responce.

[samm]

gladestone: you haven't seen his absurdly racist and trolling content then, since it has been edited by the mods (thankfully!) He was not bashed just for liking RE4.

 

It's everyone's right to love RE4, but these two things about the RE4-arguments strike me as... not very carefully thought about:

1. To love and play that game because of its animations

2. To compare it to Pillars of Eternity, which has neither genre, rendering techniques, target audience, ... actually anything non-superficial in common with it.

Edited September 28, 2014 by samm

[Doppelschwert]

• Wasteland 2 is riddled with purely percentage-based skill-checks that literally ask player to reload the game over and over again. I'm not the kind of player who does that in almost any game at all, but Wasteland 2 pretty much forced me to do so (scarity of ammo combined with visible %, fully random loot, overleveled obstacles, critical failures and much more... there's an awful lot of things they designed in a way that's pushing people towards save&load cycle).

 

This a thousand times. I'm just some hours into the game, but oh god is this stupid. I read on the internet that the level cap is 50, so I gave everyone so many skills as to being able to learn them all to max somewhere before the end of the level cap. The result is exactly the described behaviour: save scumming to the extreme as to be able to use the skills at all succesfully, even although I dropped some of the more useless skills from my initial selection already.

That the success exp is denied on top of the benefit of the skill if you mess up is encouraging this even more.

 

I've got a character that is just supposed to learn the dialogue skills - the fact that she is several exp behind all of the other characters is just the icing on the cake and very telling ot the overall game design.

 

I'm really glad they separated non-combat and combat skills in PoE.

[Malignacious]

moderator spam:

edited out racist comments

 

 

Wait, since when did Islam become a person with a skin pigmentation?

 

You do realize that Islam is a fascistic, superstition-based ideology and not a race?

 

Political correctness really diminishes mental capacity.

 

[Gromnir]

moderator spam:

edited out racist comments

 

 

Wait, since when did Islam become a person with a skin pigmentation?

 

You do realize that Islam is a fascistic, superstition-based ideology and not a race?

 

Political correctness really diminishes mental capacity.

coming from a guy that has used the same abrasive board persona for +15 years, take this advice as serious: dump your malignacious account and try and get a fresh start.

[bonarbill]

 

moderator spam:

edited out racist comments

 

 

Wait, since when did Islam become a person with a skin pigmentation?

 

You do realize that Islam is a fascistic, superstition-based ideology and not a race?

 

Political correctness really diminishes mental capacity.

coming from a guy that has used the same abrasive board persona for +15 years, take this advice as serious: dump your malignacious account and try and get a fresh start.

 

 

Why should he?  I think it's refreshing to have someone like Malignacious on the forums.  If a bunch of SJWs get pissed off because of his opinions, then so be it.  It's not hard for them to use the ignore function.

Edited September 28, 2014 by bonarbill

[Gromnir]

 

 

moderator spam:

edited out racist comments

 

 

Wait, since when did Islam become a person with a skin pigmentation?

 

You do realize that Islam is a fascistic, superstition-based ideology and not a race?

 

Political correctness really diminishes mental capacity.

coming from a guy that has used the same abrasive board persona for +15 years, take this advice as serious: dump your malignacious account and try and get a fresh start.

 

 

Why should he?  I think it's refreshing to have someone like Malignacious on the forums.  If a bunch of SJWs get pissed off because of his opinions, then so be it.

 

is not his views on the game that inspire our advice. the censored meltdown were irrational and complete unprovoked. the mods actual helped him by removing the evidence of his little rage spiral, but he doesn't realize or appreciate that fact. am doubting he gets a fair shot from the mods or from numerous posters henceforth. 

 

this is off-topic and will be killed by the mods in any event.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[AlperTheCaglar]

Why should he?  I think it's refreshing to have someone like Malignacious on the forums.  If a bunch of SJWs get pissed off because of his opinions, then so be it.  It's not hard for them to use the ignore function.

 

 

The juvie started cussing out and flaming me because of my location in Istanbul, and told me to join ISIS, called my nation and race some pretty insane and hilariously angry stuff.

 

Which, setting aside his permanent irrelevancy in anyone's life, cultural ignorance regarding Turkey, or my own staunchly secular views, should not be tolerated on a forum where supposedly smart people are commenting on a very specialized form of game-- trying to improve it via discourse and analysis.

 

/pol/ boarders from 4chan keep thinking the the real world is like their sheltered little threads where they act, cuss, and troll their way to attention.

Edited September 28, 2014 by AlperTheCaglar

[NegativeEdge]

I think one important lesson from Wasteland 2 is that extended early access not only severely blunts release sales but also doesn't appear to have a significant effect on the final quality of the game. I've been playing WL2 and am pretty amazed at how low budget and amateurish it all feels, looks and plays and this is after 8 months of EA? PoE beta is already leagues ahead combat funkiness notwithstanding.

So don't put the game on early access and related to this; meet the Winter release deadline. I see a lot of people arguing for the need to delay the game as if giving a game a longer gestation period automatically results in a better game. It doesn't. Missing the often and emphatically (by Feargus) stated release date means the project has gone awry in a way that an extra 3 or 6 months development time probably won't remedy. It also dilutes the hard earned convention and press attention they have built in the last few months and makes the studio look unprofessional.

[Gromnir]

gotta disagree regarding wl2 and extended early access. whatever shortcomings you see in wl2, and we see many, the game is much improved from the initial beta. Gromnir would not have purchased wl2 based on the early beta.  is only 'cause of extended beta that the game is playable. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[PrimeJunta]

 

[Gorgon]

moderator spam:

edited out racist comments

 

 

Wait, since when did Islam become a person with a skin pigmentation?

 

You do realize that Islam is a fascistic, superstition-based ideology and not a race?

 

Political correctness really diminishes mental capacity.

If you don't know what was wrong with your post you are clearly too far gone for any reasoning to have an effect. Just as a reminder, we work on a three strikes you're out rule. 

 

Any further discussion should be via PM. It doesn't serve any purpose for a moderator to get embroiled in flame wars with forum members.. Don't feed the trolls, and don't give them an audience either etc.

[LeBurns]

So ... do we not even talk about DOS on this forum?  Just seems odd that no comparisons have been made there.  They just that different.

[AlperTheCaglar]

So ... do we not even talk about DOS on this forum?  Just seems odd that no comparisons have been made there.  They just that different.

 

I'm a long time admirer and supporter of Larian, I used to love Divine Divinity (dat name)-- but Divinity Original sin was not my cup of tea.

 

It was embarrassingly linear and had an abysmal puzzle system, the towns (for it had no cities) were (although designed with great love and diligence) too small, and the number of merchants could be counted by one hand.

 

Their engine and combat accomplishments however did deserve praise, even though it dragged on at times just because of how slow animations were.

Edited September 28, 2014 by AlperTheCaglar

[ManifestedISO]

Time with Wasteland 2 made me feel below average as a strategist, and that an ideal character build takes a lot of trial and error. Maybe it's supposed to be that way, and I'm definitely at a deficit intellectually ... but after the umpteenth gun jam, I thought, maybe I'll wait until someone else comes up with a character rope line across the game's stumbly bits. Or not, and just wait until Numenera and Pillars of Eternity do one of two things, reinforce my average joe gamer deficiencies, or let me have fun in spite of them.  

[Gromnir]

Time with Wasteland 2 made me feel below average as a strategist, and that an ideal character build takes a lot of trial and error. Maybe it's supposed to be that way, and I'm definitely at a deficit intellectually ... but after the umpteenth gun jam, I thought, maybe I'll wait until someone else comes up with a character rope line across the game's stumbly bits. Or not, and just wait until Numenera and Pillars of Eternity do one of two things, reinforce my average joe gamer deficiencies, or let me have fun in spite of them.  

yeah, initial character creation choices for abilities is extreme important and a couple points put into the wrong ability can result in your ranger being a handicap. discover that after 15 hours of gameplay you irreparably screwed yourself in the first five minutes is what the fallout fans call old skool, but Gromnir refers to as bad design. choose wrong skills is also frustrating, particularly when you won't know til many hours into the game that a particular skill is relative useless. 

 

nevertheless, wl2 can be fun, and perhaps the rp will make up for some o' the combat shortcomings. am gonna wait for the next patch before giving it another try. nevertheless, it is a bit shocking to be seeing just how much the developers did to improve wl2 after the initial beta release.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Pray]

I'm having a real hard time enjoying Wasteland. It feels like they were so close to a masterpiece of a game, but so many little things nag at you that the process becomes more tedious than enjoyable.

 

If my sniper with min/maxed skills shoots his friend in the back one more time, or his 3% chance to jam weapon jams MULTIPLE times in the same fight, and my team for some reason cannot make a formation in which to not shoot each other in the back, this game could be so much better.

 

The Camera is so awful, literally your window into the game, that it makes doing everything hard.

 

There are so many skills in the game that seem useless, (toaster repair... I know it has it's uses in the game but I just find it annoying). It also feels like the diplomacy skills are mostly useless. I almost rarely get a chance to use them, and even though I level them up fairly consistantly, I never seem to have the specific one I need at the time I need them.

 

The game is not polished. It needed another month or two to become the great game it could be.

[Zeckul]

I'm just not a fan of post-apocalyptic settings. It's bleak, depressing, it's not a world I'm eager to discover. I'm fine with very strange settings (i.e. Torment), but Fallout/Wasteland has never been my cup of tea.

[ManifestedISO]

I thought my game was laughing at me, because I couldn't figure out how to pan the camera down. Edge-scrolling only works top and sides, until I used the down arrow key. Pressing the center mouse wheel and rotating only works partially. None of this matters for PoE, though, I believe, which is another reason I'll be happy to wait.  

[AlperTheCaglar]

I'm having a real hard time enjoying Wasteland. It feels like they were so close to a masterpiece of a game, but so many little things nag at you that the process becomes more tedious than enjoyable.

 

If my sniper with min/maxed skills shoots his friend in the back one more time, or his 3% chance to jam weapon jams MULTIPLE times in the same fight, and my team for some reason cannot make a formation in which to not shoot each other in the back, this game could be so much better.

 

The Camera is so awful, literally your window into the game, that it makes doing everything hard.

 

There are so many skills in the game that seem useless, (toaster repair... I know it has it's uses in the game but I just find it annoying). It also feels like the diplomacy skills are mostly useless. I almost rarely get a chance to use them, and even though I level them up fairly consistantly, I never seem to have the specific one I need at the time I need them.

 

The game is not polished. It needed another month or two to become the great game it could be.

hold z for item and container highlights if you're not already doing it

[Valmy]

Glad this turned out ok after the minor flap during the early release.  Bodes well for PoE and the new Torment game.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Valmy

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I'm having a real hard time enjoying Wasteland. It feels like they were so close to a masterpiece of a game, but so many little things nag at you that the process becomes more tedious than enjoyable.

 

If my sniper with min/maxed skills shoots his friend in the back one more time, or his 3% chance to jam weapon jams MULTIPLE times in the same fight, and my team for some reason cannot make a formation in which to not shoot each other in the back, this game could be so much better.

 

The Camera is so awful, literally your window into the game, that it makes doing everything hard.

 

There are so many skills in the game that seem useless, (toaster repair... I know it has it's uses in the game but I just find it annoying). It also feels like the diplomacy skills are mostly useless. I almost rarely get a chance to use them, and even though I level them up fairly consistantly, I never seem to have the specific one I need at the time I need them.

 

The game is not polished. It needed another month or two to become the great game it could be.

 

I've put in 40+ hours so far and the only times I shot people in the back when I was starting off. I haven't shot a companion in the back for quite some time. Placement is really important and knowing how your weapons will fire is also important. And it's pretty easy to place your companions so they're not shooting each other. It's turn based, it's really easy to make a formation with your party when everyone is taking a turn.

 

Camera doesn't bother me. Once you get used to it, it's pretty easy to use.

 

The only skill I found to be fairly useless is Barter. But it would be easy to make that a good skill. Everything else I'm using and I've managed to unlock a lot of dialogue options with the 3 ass options. So many options that I've been rewarded additional xp and items.

 

If there's one thing I don't like, it's the random loot. It should have fixed loot drops. One upside is it can make your party OP with reloading.