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

[archangel979]

Only 14% Steam reviews didn't like WL2. OE can decide if they want to be better then that and try to do thing better then WL2. If OE thinks 86% positive user reviews is good enough they can ignore the WL2 haters and their "suggestions".

Edited October 11, 2014 by archangel979

[Cantousent]

I gave WL2 quite a positive review, but I don't think Obsidz should try to make PoE a WL2 clone in a fantasy setting.  Just like I don't think inXile should make ToN a WL2 clone in a Planescape setting.  (which is good, since they don't have the PS license as I understand it.

 

...But I do agree that I love WL2.

[lightblade75]

Regarding the localization in German language in WL2: this is a mess. German playtesters from major magazines both paper and on-line suggest to play this game in English. But not everyone outside the english speaking world is able to play a game like WL2 with tons of text in English. Not to mention that in Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Belgium/Luxembourg rd. about 100 million people speak German.

 

As I did already before I just again want to point out that German translation / localization has to be really good as Germany is the biggest market for cRPGS outside USA and UK. (I would like to know how many backers of PoE are located in Germany).

 

As far as I could see in the PoE beta the transaltion seems to be quite good.

 

So Obsidian, please do not make the mistake to underestimate this point.

[archangel979]

Regarding the localization in German language in WL2: this is a mess. German playtesters from major magazines both paper and on-line suggest to play this game in English. But not everyone outside the english speaking world is able to play a game like WL2 with tons of text in English. Not to mention that in Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Belgium/Luxembourg rd. about 100 million people speak German.

 

As I did already before I just again want to point out that German translation / localization has to be really good as Germany is the biggest market for cRPGS outside USA and UK. (I would like to know how many backers of PoE are located in Germany).

 

As far as I could see in the PoE beta the transaltion seems to be quite good.

 

So Obsidian, please do not make the mistake to underestimate this point.

[selfish response] Well, if they spent lots of money on professional translations that would have meant less content overall for everyone. As a person that is not a native English speaker but only foreign language I know is English I am glad they did it this way lol. From what I heard they have employed professionals now to fix it (they got money from sales now to do this) and non-English versions will be improved with patches.

[Havelok]

First 5 hours of gameplay matter. 

 

This one is huge. One of the reasons Divinity: Original Sin was so well received is because the first section of the game was polished to a blinding degree, and introduced the game well to all players. The first zone was super rich with content and variety. 

 

Even if a game is a 60 hour + experience, the introduction needs to hook you, same as any novel.

 

One of the biggest challenges this game faces is the huge amount of weird names for things everywhere. Sure, welsh inspired language is neat and all, but it's going to leave alot of people scratching their heads. Every weird placename, conceptname, and lorefluff needs to be thoroughly explained in dialogue to overcome the "what the **** is that word supposed to be" factor.

 

What's the first thing the players will experience? Character creation. We need way, way more information if we want it during character creation. Especially considering things like "where we are from", there needs to be a way to find out the context of what the little text blurb is trying to tell you. 

 

Honestly, I'd recommend a game encyclopedia of some kind that is accessible from the moment a player presses "New Game". 

 

 

 

 

 

[H0RSE]

I really don't have the motivation to respond to every point you raised, but I will chime in on the issue of graphics. What you bring up in your post are 2 different elements - graphics and aesthetics. Extra Credits did a good episode on this. Basically, graphics are the technical side and aesthetics are the style. If you're talking about exotic cars, graphics are the engine and all the tech and tweaks under the hood, aesthetics are everything you see and hear, as well as how it "feels" to drive. (well, the "feeling" would also tie into gameplay)

 

Baldur's Gate has an excellent aesthetic and mediocre graphics. PoE looks to have a great aesthetics with okay graphics. Everything you describe below in the quote...

 

And graphics isn't just the amount of details game got, but also how "inspiring" locations are and how much "ave" do they bring, how good character animations are, how "alive" does the game world feel.
I have well over 20 hours on Wasteland 2 (no idea how much exactly, but still) and so far I haven't seen anything I would call "amazing", anything that would make me want to explore certain location. Everything feels static, dull, repetitive. There's almost no animation in the game world (trees are perfectly still, windmills don't move, none of the NPCs interact with anything around them) and character animations feel very unnatural, almost as if they'd be floating underwater.

 

...is virtually all aesthetics, or lack of.

Edited October 14, 2014 by H0RSE

[Hiro Protagonist II]

The boring thing about wastelands 2 art outside of character animations its all static and nothing was animated. Having simple **** like trees swaying in the wind makes a game more visually alluring.

 

We must be playing a different game because I'm seeing trees sway side to side in WL2.

[gruia]

my point is general. Games need to put emphasis on characters, their personality, and how inspiring they are. Every character should be memorable. I loved Diablo1, because each npc had personality, even the ones you met on the battlefield, and each had more than one story to tell, and they didn't throw it at you right away.

 

I don't want to get lost in a sea of names, I want to get up close and personal with all of them. And no cliche ones please. All humans are complex and capable of contradictory behavior given circumstances. Just paint them gray

 

oh and yeah. remove redundant ****. I'm ok for complexity, but most RPGs go for overcomplexity. And the nonredundant **** you do keep, make it euquivalent. each choice = and rewarding. track it down, and buff them 

 

PS: i would much rather an episodic approach or Path of Exile approach, where they release, and admit to working and delivering content. all games need rebalancing and refreshes. Better to have simple sound implementation first and deepen it later, than throw a huge pile of stuff and try to make sense of it

[archangel979]

Lol, you put two aRPGs as your examples. Both of them don't have complex characters.

[CaptainMace]

 

Combat - Wasteland 2 combat is simple to grasp

 

 

Baldur's Gate combat system was indeed really elaborate.

 

 

each choice = and rewarding

 

 

Nice, now let's try to find the point of making choices.

Edited October 14, 2014 by CaptainMace

[constantine]

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

 

 

My feelings exactly!

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

[archangel979]

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

 

My feelings exactly!

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

 

I can try.

Although there are no targeted body shots like in F1 and F2, due to game being party based the combat as a whole is more fun and more complex than in Fallout. 

It has similar feeling of freedom of movement and letting you chose the outcome of events. Since you are part of a organization and not a lone figure, the freedom is a bit less than in Fallout. 

Overland map travel is like in Fallout although there is no really special random encounters. This is one of the parts that are worse. 

There is no low intelligence dialogue and there are no traits and perks(although they said they would like to have some and implemented a trinket system instead). 

Everything else is similar to Fallout or better. 

[Didier2]

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

 

My feelings exactly!

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

 

I can try.

Although there are no targeted body shots like in F1 and F2, due to game being party based the combat as a whole is more fun and more complex than in Fallout. 

It has similar feeling of freedom of movement and letting you chose the outcome of events. Since you are part of a organization and not a lone figure, the freedom is a bit less than in Fallout. 

Overland map travel is like in Fallout although there is no really special random encounters. This is one of the parts that are worse. 

There is no low intelligence dialogue and there are no traits and perks(although they said they would like to have some and implemented a trinket system instead). 

Everything else is similar to Fallout or better. 

 

Besides there being no low intelligence dialogue it also has no real dialogue options in general, it's more like the npcs  you can talk to in game are information vendors.

And the combat isn't better because you can't shoot a guy in the **** and you can't shoot a guy in the eye.

 

I really love the concept of wasteland 2 but the execution is pretty horrible really, I'm surprised it has gotten such high ratings in reviews.

 

That's good news for PoE though I bet it will also get good reviews just for it's concept, but I'm hoping of course the execution will be better in PoE's case.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Didier2

[archangel979]

 

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

My feelings exactly!

 

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

 

I can try.

Although there are no targeted body shots like in F1 and F2, due to game being party based the combat as a whole is more fun and more complex than in Fallout. 

It has similar feeling of freedom of movement and letting you chose the outcome of events. Since you are part of a organization and not a lone figure, the freedom is a bit less than in Fallout. 

Overland map travel is like in Fallout although there is no really special random encounters. This is one of the parts that are worse. 

There is no low intelligence dialogue and there are no traits and perks(although they said they would like to have some and implemented a trinket system instead). 

Everything else is similar to Fallout or better.

 

Besides there being no low intelligence dialogue it also has no real dialogue options in general, it's more like the npcs  you can talk to in game are information vendors.

And the combat isn't better because you can't shoot a guy in the **** and you can't shoot a guy in the eye.

 

I really love the concept of wasteland 2 but the execution is pretty horrible really, I'm surprised it has gotten such high ratings in reviews.

 

That's good news for PoE though I bet it will also get good reviews just for it's concept, but I'm hoping of course the execution will be better in PoE's case.

 

We got a 14percenter here.

Or course it is a real dialogue. You cannot blame the game that Ranger NPCs like to tell their Ranger recruit their history. The raiders you talk to don't have huge conversations. And it is not like you are forced to read it all or ask all the questions. If you are not interested in reading or don't care about the backstory you can not ask about it. Just because the game does not have dialogue trees like you are used to, it does not mean dialogue is bad.

 

Combat is better because you got a full squad to control and fight with vs one guy you control in Fallout. Same like IE games had better combat than NWN1 for same reason. The team based combat is way more complex then choosing which part of body to shoot.

 

It got high ratings because not everyone is a 14percenter.

[constantine]

 

 

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

My feelings exactly!

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

I can try.

Although there are no targeted body shots like in F1 and F2, due to game being party based the combat as a whole is more fun and more complex than in Fallout.

It has similar feeling of freedom of movement and letting you chose the outcome of events. Since you are part of a organization and not a lone figure, the freedom is a bit less than in Fallout.

Overland map travel is like in Fallout although there is no really special random encounters. This is one of the parts that are worse.

There is no low intelligence dialogue and there are no traits and perks(although they said they would like to have some and implemented a trinket system instead).

Everything else is similar to Fallout or better.

Besides there being no low intelligence dialogue it also has no real dialogue options in general, it's more like the npcs you can talk to in game are information vendors.

And the combat isn't better because you can't shoot a guy in the **** and you can't shoot a guy in the eye.

 

I really love the concept of wasteland 2 but the execution is pretty horrible really, I'm surprised it has gotten such high ratings in reviews.

 

That's good news for PoE though I bet it will also get good reviews just for it's concept, but I'm hoping of course the execution will be better in PoE's case.

We got a 14percenter here.

Or course it is a real dialogue. You cannot blame the game that Ranger NPCs like to tell their Ranger recruit their history. The raiders you talk to don't have huge conversations. And it is not like you are forced to read it all or ask all the questions. If you are not interested in reading or don't care about the backstory you can not ask about it. Just because the game does not have dialogue trees like you are used to, it does not mean dialogue is bad.

 

Combat is better because you got a full squad to control and fight with vs one guy you control in Fallout. Same like IE games had better combat than NWN1 for same reason. The team based combat is way more complex then choosing which part of body to shoot.

 

It got high ratings because not everyone is a 14percenter.

 

OK, so far so good.

 

What about character development, is it deep enough ? Are there non-combat skills & does it matter to have one ?

 

And I guess there r multiple resolutions to quests, some not involving combat.

[Cantousent]

The most important feature is its 'funness' rating. The are individual things I don't like, but I enjoy the whole package immensely. Dialogue skills have been disappointing to me personally, but the other non combat skill opportunities have been plentiful and rewarding.

[prodigydancer]

One of the reasons Divinity: Original Sin was so well received is because the first section of the game was polished to a blinding degree, and introduced the game well to all players. The first zone was super rich with content and variety. 

Too bad the rest doesn't live up to the standard set by Cyseal.

 

Choosing between sloppy introduction to a great game and great introduction to a game that gets progressively worse after the first zone I'll pick the former and that's why I rate WL2 higher than D:OS.

Edited October 15, 2014 by prodigydancer

[archangel979]

OK, so far so good.

 

What about character development, is it deep enough ? Are there non-combat skills & does it matter to have one ?

 

And I guess there r multiple resolutions to quests, some not involving combat.

It could be deeper, InXile is not against patching in more options. Most skills are non-combat ones (and some of those can be used in combat like Animal Whisperer or Computer use), and there are often opportunities to use them. Often it is to open different loot containers but you can use them to finish quests in different ways or access additional info or help people.

 

You cannot finish the game without combat like in Fallout, but many quests have ways to do them without killing everything that moves (including a Frog you run into early).

[Volourn]

"and some of those can be used in combat like Animal Whisperer or Computer use"

 

I wager most people aren't even aware of those options.

 

WL2 quests have tons of multiple solutions.

 

 

"You cannot finish the game without combat like in Fallout"

 

Eh. Only way you do that in FO is if you run from every encounter but, in fact, that is combat. Once combat  starts it's combat. And, you surely can't finish it without killing anyone. Still, two things to note: 1) FO is the outlier.  No RPG let's you avoid combat as much as FO1 so the fact that a game doesn't live up to FO1 in that way isn't horrible. 2) Your typica FO1 playthrough is gonna involve combat because a) it's enjoyable and the game rewards combat a lot.

 

 

AS for DOS. it's good. WL2 is better.

 

 

"What about character development, is it deep enough ? Are there non-combat skills & does it matter to have one ?"

 

Yes. You won't be able to solve quests the 'best' way without non combat skills. You also mess out on LOTS of stuff.
 

"And I guess there r multiple resolutions to quests, some not involving combat."

 

Hell to the yeah.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Volourn

[Didier2]

 

 

 

 

 

I plan to give it another month until I'm convinced the "final-ish" post release patch comes out, otherwise the game is very good though, people seem to be horrendously critical and perhaps it is the rose-tinted glasses that others have alluded to, I personally try to evaluate games objectively and for me WL2 does most of the things that FO1&2 do and in some cases better.

My feelings exactly!

 

Can you elaborate on that mates ? FO1&2 are among my most favourite rpgs of all time, and if you re saying W2 is so worthy I may as well try it out.

 

I can try.

Although there are no targeted body shots like in F1 and F2, due to game being party based the combat as a whole is more fun and more complex than in Fallout. 

It has similar feeling of freedom of movement and letting you chose the outcome of events. Since you are part of a organization and not a lone figure, the freedom is a bit less than in Fallout. 

Overland map travel is like in Fallout although there is no really special random encounters. This is one of the parts that are worse. 

There is no low intelligence dialogue and there are no traits and perks(although they said they would like to have some and implemented a trinket system instead). 

Everything else is similar to Fallout or better.

 

Besides there being no low intelligence dialogue it also has no real dialogue options in general, it's more like the npcs  you can talk to in game are information vendors.

And the combat isn't better because you can't shoot a guy in the **** and you can't shoot a guy in the eye.

 

I really love the concept of wasteland 2 but the execution is pretty horrible really, I'm surprised it has gotten such high ratings in reviews.

 

That's good news for PoE though I bet it will also get good reviews just for it's concept, but I'm hoping of course the execution will be better in PoE's case.

 

We got a 14percenter here.

Or course it is a real dialogue. You cannot blame the game that Ranger NPCs like to tell their Ranger recruit their history. The raiders you talk to don't have huge conversations. And it is not like you are forced to read it all or ask all the questions. If you are not interested in reading or don't care about the backstory you can not ask about it. Just because the game does not have dialogue trees like you are used to, it does not mean dialogue is bad.

 

Combat is better because you got a full squad to control and fight with vs one guy you control in Fallout. Same like IE games had better combat than NWN1 for same reason. The team based combat is way more complex then choosing which part of body to shoot.

 

It got high ratings because not everyone is a 14percenter.

 

 

I love how u immedieately resort to name calling in defense of what I am guessing is a game you personally invested in.

 

First of all, I can cerainly dislike the dialogue because of the UI because it's horrible.

But the fact is that I think the ui actually hides how lacking the dialogue is by gving you the illusion of having options, you could convert Wasteland 2's dialogue into the UI most  of us are used to from Fallout 1 and 2 and then it would more be obvious there are almost no options, but simply a lot of subjects u can ask about.

 

Seeing how there's 2 times in the beginning of the game where you do get options in the form of choosing one of the 3 speeech skills, it seem obivous to me that inXile decided to scratch normal dialogue options because the game was just too big to add that much dialogue and instead converted the options they did have to 3 different speech skills in order to increase skill diversity.

 

All in all the game's development was way too focussed on it's size and the number of skills, resulting in shallow dialogue, shallow character progression and shallow combat.

 

I still enjoyed playing the game for a while though simply because of it's setting, untill I also found out that the game was poorly balanced as well. I've now decided to wait for it to get some  updates before I try to finish it.

 

 

On the subject of D:OS btw, I did finish that and enjoyed  it simply because of the combat and character system, despite not caring for it's setting and story at all.

[archangel979]

Name calling? Where?

[Didier2]

Name calling? Where?

 

U called me a 14percenter, twice .

But forget about it , I don't want to derail the discussion.

Edited October 17, 2014 by Didier2

[Hiro Protagonist II]

WL2 is a fun game. The combat is tactical and often sitting on the edge of my seat. I love the randomness, the crits, the misses, the gun jams (although I haven't had any for a while due to upgrades), and the overall unpredictability of it. There's no everything hits or grazes. It's randomness like the old games I enjoyed. And it's great to see that come back. I love the setting and the pop culture references. Some of the 'junk' items I've kept is just plain fun and great to see in a game. The humour and writing is great. Good to see some politically incorrect writing and jokes. While it might have some flaws and what game doesn't have flaws, they're easily forgotten when I realise it's 2am in the morning and I need to get some sleep.

 

I actually like the things that I see some people complain about. The Camera? It's great that I can have a top down view and look at where everyone is, and then I can rotate around and see different views of the combat and zoom in and see it at a different angle. It's pretty easy to navigate the camera. The graphics? I think it looks good for the setting. Trees not moving? lol wut? I do see trees moving. I even see grass moving in the AG centre when I went back to the shrine. I also enjoy the dialogue and have three characters who have pumped the 3 ass skills so I'm selecting different dialogue options which is also great. And this can have an effect on outcomes with quests if you choose some of those dialogue options but you don't need to pump these skills because not having them isn't critical. I also like that a character with the Smart Ass skill who uses it in dialogue is rewarded for being a Smart Ass with xp and no other character in my party. It's an individual reward and my Smart Ass is becoming a better smart ass. I like the individual reward system of having my animal whisperer be rewarded for using their skill and no one else. My demolitions expert is being rewarded with xp for disarming explosives and no one else. And so on. I like the individual reward system, as well as the combat and quest system. There's a great meld there and it works.

 

Overall, for me it's a fun game and I'm enjoying it immensely. I can see myself playing this a lot and coming back to it years later.

Edited October 17, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[archangel979]

 

Name calling? Where?

 

U called me a 14percenter, twice .

But forget about it , I don't want to derail the discussion.

 

That is not namecalling, that is a fact. 14 percent of Steam users gave WL2 negative score. So you can be a 14 percenter or 86 percenter.

 

Why is this number important? Because by Steam forums you would thing it is the other way around including people that scream that "everyone" things WL2 is bad. So 14 percenters need to be put into their place with facts.

Edited October 17, 2014 by archangel979

[Didier2]

 

 

Name calling? Where?

 

U called me a 14percenter, twice .

But forget about it , I don't want to derail the discussion.

 

That is not namecalling, that is a fact. 14 percent of Steam users gave WL2 negative score. So you can be a 14 percenter or 86 percenter.

 

Why is this number important? Because by Steam forums you would thing it is the other way around including people that scream that "everyone" things WL2 is bad. So 14 percenters need to be put into their place with facts.

 

 

Well, I personally didn't bother to give Wasteland 2 a score  so the fact actually is  that I am in neither of the percentages.

If I did score it I also would not give it a negative score but certainly not as high as 86 out of a 100  because it just has too many faults to score that high.

Edited October 17, 2014 by Didier2