toblix

Wasteland 2

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The speech bubble is a bit much, but in theory I agree. White text (with a subtle black drop shadow) would stand out against the generally low-saturated game even without the speech bubble.

 

The reason this won't fly is because the window was how it was done Back In The Day, so that's how it'll be done now. :/

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I think part of my problem with the box in the corner is that I believe it's essential. As in, turning it off would make the game pretty unplayable...?

I got the impression that the box was mostly flavor text, so you can play the game without looking at it. Notice that breaching and lockpicking doors does happen onscreen and not in the box. In Fallout even this text was in the box.

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Well I'm someone who likes to experience everything the game has to offer, and I'm pretty sure these clues lead to areas that you wouldn't necessarily see.

 

Playing the video fullscreen, I really found it distracting having to switch my eyes between the two. Has anyone else tried watching it fullscreen to see if they felt the same?

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Yeah, I got an inkling of this back when Fargo announced social features for Wasteland 2 and abandoned them when the response was mostly negative. He didn't even really try to pitch to anyone, he just gauged the gut reaction of the internet and then wrote off what seemed like pretty cool Dark Souls-style multiplayer.

 

I mean, at the end of the day, I don't know how to make a game, so my opinion means fuck all next to a design doc from a group of experienced developers, but if Fargo and company have decided that the vox populi is playing the role of the publisher, they might find it a harsher master than the AAA game companies.

 

Seriously, their solution to the keywords outcry seems to combine the worst of both systems (extra work for full dialogue, plus less usability for keywords).

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This might be doing a bit too much shoot-from-the-hip psychoanalysis, but it seems like Fargo is really anxious to have this game championed as a true sequel to the first Wasteland and has decided that validation lies in the crustiest forum denizens, who have their memories of the game pickled in glass jars with formaldehyde. It'll be interesting in its own way, like Fallout 3 designed by No Mutants Allowed.

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Well, I didn't back Wasteland 2, but this is kind of what I've been worried might start happening more often - developers caving into the people who funded their game. I'm kind of interested to see if it'll result in the first high-profile Kickstarter disaster, or if the game will be good despite that.

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Playing the video fullscreen, I really found it distracting having to switch my eyes between the two. Has anyone else tried watching it fullscreen to see if they felt the same?

 

I missed most of the instructions (e.g. how the duels work) in Red Dead Redemption because the developers decided that the tutorial stuff should appear in the upper corner only.

 

I'm currently replaying the Witcher 2 and I find the tiny battle log in the lower right corner completely rubbish. When I'm focused on the action at the center of the screen my mind doesn't even register the new lines. Fortunately, the information is completely useless too, except for the occasional reminder that you are using a wrong type of sword.

 

So yeah, I think I would miss most of that glues if the developers decide to stick with that stupid 90s UI.

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That's a little harsh, guys.  If you have an issue with a design choice, that's totally legitimate to bring up, but it's equally legitimate for "the fans," as you say, to bring them up.  Assuming that any decision made with "fan" input is a bad one is frankly an obnoxious kind of elitism.

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That's a little harsh, guys.  If you have an issue with a design choice, that's totally legitimate to bring up, but it's equally legitimate for "the fans," as you say, to bring them up.  Assuming that any decision made with "fan" input is a bad one is frankly an obnoxious kind of elitism.

 

I don't have a problem with developers listening to fans. My problem is with how Fargo has twice now ditched a perfectly reasonable design choice at the slightest whiff of outcry and without a fight. It doesn't mean anything yet, but it hints at a lack of conviction, which I feel okay being a little worried about.

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He added some hover-text to the keyword system -- I don't think this counts as ditching the keyword system.  It does add a bunch of writing workload, but otherwise it seems like a reasonable compromise.  He also sent out a pretty long kickstarter update detailing and implicitly defending the keyword system.

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He added some hover-text to the keyword system -- I don't think this counts as ditching the keyword system.  It does add a bunch of writing workload, but otherwise it seems like a reasonable compromise.  He also sent out a pretty long kickstarter update detailing and implicitly defending the keyword system.

 

I don't mean to be a pedant, but saying, "We're using a keyword system to halve our dialogue workload," then adding full dialogue to the hover text, does kinda count as ditching the keyword system. And his Kickstarter update was two-plus screens of text explaining how their keyword system isn't really a keyword system, thanks to fan suggestions.

 

I don't know, it seems to me like buying a space heater to save energy and then running the central heating anyway.

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That's a little harsh, guys. If you have an issue with a design choice, that's totally legitimate to bring up, but it's equally legitimate for "the fans," as you say, to bring them up. Assuming that any decision made with "fan" input is a bad one is frankly an obnoxious kind of elitism.

No, you've got the wrong end of the stick. I don't want them to be guided by ANYONE. Not me, not you, not them. I backed a game by the *developers* -- not the most vocal members of their forum. It's nothing to do with elitism, or issues with the fans, per se, just that the developers seem to be lacking a strong voice of their own, and only seem to be following what loud people are telling them to do. Even if I agreed with the loud members of their forum I'd still be very concerned for the quality of the game.

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Well put, TP. There's a world of difference between me expressing reservations and me demanding change, so it bugs me that the Wasteland 2 devs in general and Brian Fargo in particular haven't displayed much awareness of it. Maybe it doesn't even exist for other people, but there's just too much in games that I bitched and moaned and then totally fell in love with for me to think that my opinion deserves that much credence in the game design process.

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I've been playing the Soft (Backer Only?) Release version of Wasteland 2.  I'm overwhelmed!  The tooltips have told me that it's possible to change rate of fire and other weapons modes, but I have not been able to figure it out at all.

 

I did figure out that your party does not automatically reload between fights, so that was fun.

 

There are plenty of options to use skills on objects all over the map (safes, traps, gates, etc.), but surprisingly few dialogue skill checks so far.

 

The version I'm playing is the "shipping" version for people that will soon get physical discs.  I have no idea if there will be any substantial updates to the game (aka ones that will break my saves).  We'll see!

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I have that, but the game hasn't pulled me in at all. I played like half an hour and got bored.

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I saw that all backers could now download the current version, but I was still going to hold out until release and the called it complete (since it sounds like they are still doing bug patches and some balance stuff). 

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Boy, I miss specific directions in my RPGs.  Wasteland 2 has a logbook that describes quests, but doesn't have quest markers or specific instructions on how to complete the listed quests.

 

I saved the town of Highpool from bandits and then received a quest to do good deeds around the town in order to make sure a Rangers-friendly candidate won the election.  However, there are no hints about how many people you have to influence or what your good deeds might be.  The candidate refuses to hold the vote until you complete every single good deed.

 

I had to break down and Google the last one: successfully operating on all six wounded people in the infirmary.  There is no in-game indication that you should do this.  Neither the doctor nor the injured suggest you should barge in and use your Surgeon skill on them.  Critically failing this skill check kills the patient—you have to successfully heal all patients for the doctor to like you.  If you don't have the Surgeon skill there is no indication that you can do anything to the patients other than talk to them (or attack them, I guess?).  

 

Basically, I guess I'm saying that old school RPGs are too hard and I need baby RPGs.

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That just sounds like bad quest design. Is the successful completion of the scenario described above mandatory?

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That just sounds like bad quest design. Is the successful completion of the scenario described above mandatory?

 

Luckily, it's a sidequest, though it directly results from a main quest path.  It's also unclear how the town's sympathies will affect the game overall.  Do we run out of water if they don't like us?

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It's out!  I'll probably try to get some time in with it this weekend, I've mostly ignored the updates, beta, videos, everything.  So I have no idea really what the game is like. 

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