KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

[rusty_shackleford]

You need some finesse even when using stuff like references. You have your own story about ATOM agent, but you were thinking taking a reference from a completely different game as if it would be "fun". Why not work within your own writing? Game could have had people trying to undermine your secrecy, agents which would spy on you and find inconsistencies in what you say; so if you'd use one name at one place but real name at other, you could fuck up, get ambushed, put on lie detector, whatever, the story just writes itself from these dialogue options and you could use all the fun references suiting your own narrative.

But here we have a codexer who played the game and has this awesome bear thing from the skeleton latinx game on his userpic who says the same stuff while simultaneously saying really smart stuff I can agree with completely.

Cause game is inconsistent.

The beginning for example is quests like gather some corn, gather some mushrooms, and quest to find traitor is just clicking on correct person. Not very interesting.

Maybe people who are turned away by your presentation of the game (and writing/jokes) are not just all trolls.

You're twisting my words dude. Not only do I completely understand people who think Atom is a really shitty game, especially people who thought it was going to be an FPS or a modern style RPG, I don't idolize it myself. What's flawed is flawed. I smell a troll when an obviously smart dude starts saying things that I usually get from mama's little art critics. Some of the things Atom isn't are cashgrab, soulless ripoff, clone, and 99% of time I get that from uninformed people, not actual players! So do understand my position!

And yeah, we made a ton of mistakes in the beginning, that's very true. The corn thing was supposed to be a joke on paper, cuz we thought everyone would pick corn to later eat it because it's right there, and then the grandpa would be like - hey can you get my corn? And you'd be like - oh... I already have it... Sorry... But most folks don't get corn before talking to grandpa, which makes it into a shitty gathering quest. Same with the shrooms. The bunker robbery is really bad, the early combat, lots of things.

Any plans for a revamp of early game in an enhanced edition?

 

[Shadenuat]

You're twisting my words dude. Not only do I completely understand people who think Atom is a really shitty game, especially people who thought it was going to be an FPS or a modern style RPG, I don't idolize it myself. What's flawed is flawed. I smell a troll when an obviously smart dude starts saying things that I usually get from mama's little art critics. Some of the things Atom isn't are cashgrab, soulless ripoff, clone, and 99% of time I get that from uninformed people, not actual players! So do understand my position!

Isometric TB RPG as cashgrab is pretty silly, soul is not something easily measured, but it is hard to argue that ATOM is not a clone of Fallout so I don't know what's your problem there.

 

[Atomboy]

You need some finesse even when using stuff like references. You have your own story about ATOM agent, but you were thinking taking a reference from a completely different game as if it would be "fun". Why not work within your own writing? Game could have had people trying to undermine your secrecy, agents which would spy on you and find inconsistencies in what you say; so if you'd use one name at one place but real name at other, you could fuck up, get ambushed, put on lie detector, whatever, the story just writes itself from these dialogue options and you could use all the fun references suiting your own narrative.

But here we have a codexer who played the game and has this awesome bear thing from the skeleton latinx game on his userpic who says the same stuff while simultaneously saying really smart stuff I can agree with completely.

Cause game is inconsistent.

The beginning for example is quests like gather some corn, gather some mushrooms, and quest to find traitor is just clicking on correct person. Not very interesting.

Maybe people who are turned away by your presentation of the game (and writing/jokes) are not just all trolls.

You're twisting my words dude. Not only do I completely understand people who think Atom is a really shitty game, especially people who thought it was going to be an FPS or a modern style RPG, I don't idolize it myself. What's flawed is flawed. I smell a troll when an obviously smart dude starts saying things that I usually get from mama's little art critics. Some of the things Atom isn't are cashgrab, soulless ripoff, clone, and 99% of time I get that from uninformed people, not actual players! So do understand my position!

And yeah, we made a ton of mistakes in the beginning, that's very true. The corn thing was supposed to be a joke on paper, cuz we thought everyone would pick corn to later eat it because it's right there, and then the grandpa would be like - hey can you get my corn? And you'd be like - oh... I already have it... Sorry... But most folks don't get corn before talking to grandpa, which makes it into a shitty gathering quest. Same with the shrooms. The bunker robbery is really bad, the early combat, lots of things.

Any plans for a revamp of early game in an enhanced edition?

Maybe, one day, but it's not healthy to get stuck on a single project, so if that happens, it's gonna be after Trudograd and maybe even after the next game. I think dusting off Atom and adding neat stuff to it with all the new experience we got with other games after it's nearly forgotten would be pretty cool.

You're twisting my words dude. Not only do I completely understand people who think Atom is a really shitty game, especially people who thought it was going to be an FPS or a modern style RPG, I don't idolize it myself. What's flawed is flawed. I smell a troll when an obviously smart dude starts saying things that I usually get from mama's little art critics. Some of the things Atom isn't are cashgrab, soulless ripoff, clone, and 99% of time I get that from uninformed people, not actual players! So do understand my position!

Isometric TB RPG as cashgrab is pretty silly, soul is not something easily measured, but it is hard to argue that ATOM is not a clone of Fallout so I don't know what's your problem there.

Not as hard if you go play Fallout right now while your memory of Atom is fresh. I'd call it an illegitimate bastard child or an obsessive Fallout cosplayer any day, but for better or for worse, it's not a clone.

 

[Shadenuat]

Not as hard if you go play Fallout right now while your memory of Atom is fresh.

Funny u say that

I'd call it an illegitimate bastard child or an obsessive Fallout cosplayer any day, but for better or for worse, it's not a clone.

That's a weird point to take a hard stance on, but whatever.

 

[Drowed]

A lot of people critique Atom for these walls of text, but we don't actually push the player to read them.

As a designer, that's a situation that should make you think. If a lot of people are critical of a specific point about your game, it probably means that there's something about this point that's worth looking at. Don't think that with this I'm saying that you need to create a game by voting, as if the presence or absence of certain characteristic should be determined by a democratic majority vote or something like that. Not at all, unless you're trying to make a game for the "general public," which is not your case.

But here, you are in RPGCodex. We're not part of the general public, we're part of a hardcore basement/vault-dwellers that continues to play games created 2 decades ago, and we eat walls of text for breakfast. It's people like that who are saying to you that your texts end up being too long. By the way, do you realize that even your answers end up being too long around here?

You're good if you only speak to important people.

And who, exactly, are the "important people" in your opinion? What you need to understand is that in a game, who defines who are the "important people" is something subjective and tenuous for the player. I won't know if any NPC is or isn't important before I click on it and see what it has to say. That's an obvious problem that has existed in game design for decades, and that different designers have found different ways to solve that. You are the one who created the game, so obviously you know who are the NPCs that are important and relevant to the story. The player has no way of knowing that because we're not psychics. Nothing guarantees that just because some character has talked about another NPC in another location, that this NPC is the relevant NPC of that location. How to know if there are others? How do I know if I don't need information from another NPC to solve some quest? Or how do I know if another NPC wouldn't have a quest for me? How do I know who has or doesn't have relevant information?

Maistream games have found a solution to that: floating yellow exclamations. The consensus for most of the hardcore fans of the genre is that this is a bad solution that makes the game even more linear and makes it dumb. Obviously, that's not a good solution. So what is the solution used by other designers? You'll probably notice it when playing classic games, but it's definitely not filling up several characters with dozens of paragraphs.

Design is nothing more than to use human nature and the basic impulses of the user in order to direct his experience. When you say that you "don't force players to read", you are committing a serious flaw as a designer. What you're trying to say is that you didn't create the text with the explicit intention that all players would stop to read it. But that's not design. Design is looking at human behavior patterns, genre conventions and player habits and thinking, "when I create the game in a certain way, what kind of behavior am I encouraging in the player?" It's important to realize that it has nothing to do with what behavior you have as a player, but what is the default and common response type for your target audience.

RPG players will want to discover new quests. They'll want to explore the places in the game to find out who the relevant people are and who they're not. They'll want to find alternative ways to find and solve quests, and overcome challenges. The question then is: how were the NPCs you created for your game thought to take into account these habits and the limitations of knowledge we have as players? And more importantly, how to do better in your next game?

Oh and the other part you remembered correctly, the system must be there, because if you can ask one NPC about the weather, but you can ask the other one about pine trees, it would be illogical. So we even wrote in that story about you being trained to ask these specific 4 questions unless you can't for some reason :D

Here I will say this: you know that you can have a perfectly valid and logical reason to do something and yet the result may not be satisfactory, correct? In this case, you can have a perfectly logical and rational explanation for using a "standard skeleton" for every beginning of interaction with any NPCs in your game. And even with this perfectly logical and reasonable reason, the feeling and final effect of it can be negative for most players. So here comes the designer's thinking: there's a problem that has arisen from that decision. What can you do to solve it?

---

PS: I want to make it clear that I liked (and still like) ATOM! I'm not at all saying that the game is bad, but rather saying that you can look critically at it to think about what you can do best in your next game.

 

[Atomboy]

Not as hard if you go play Fallout right now while your memory of Atom is fresh.

Funny u say that

I'd call it an illegitimate bastard child or an obsessive Fallout cosplayer any day, but for better or for worse, it's not a clone.

That's a weird point to take a hard stance on, but whatever.

It's a cool point! Atom takes a lot, but it goes it's own way in the stuff that really matters to us. Cloning produces much worse results.

A lot of people critique Atom for these walls of text, but we don't actually push the player to read them.

As a designer, that's a situation that should make you think. If a lot of people are critical of a specific point about your game, it probably means that there's something about this point that's worth looking at. Don't think that with this I'm saying that you need to create a game by voting, as if the presence or absence of certain characteristic should be determined by a democratic majority vote or something like that. Not at all, unless you're trying to make a game for the "general public," which is not your case.

But here, you are in RPGCodex. We're not part of the general public, we're part of a hardcore basement/vault-dwellers that continues to play games created 2 decades ago, and we eat walls of text for breakfast. It's people like that who are saying to you that your texts end up being too long. By the way, do you realize that even your answers end up being too long around here?

You're good if you only speak to important people.

And who, exactly, are the "important people" in your opinion? What you need to understand is that in a game, who defines who are the "important people" is something subjective and tenuous for the player. I won't know if any NPC is or isn't important before I click on it and see what it has to say. That's an obvious problem that has existed in game design for decades, and that different designers have found different ways to solve that. You are the one who created the game, so obviously you know who are the NPCs that are important and relevant to the story. The player has no way of knowing that because we're not psychics. Nothing guarantees that just because some character has talked about another NPC in another location, that this NPC is the relevant NPC of that location. How to know if there are others? How do I know if I don't need information from another NPC to solve some quest? Or how do I know if another NPC wouldn't have a quest for me? How do I know who has or doesn't have relevant information?

Maistream games have found a solution to that: floating yellow exclamations. The consensus for most of the hardcore fans of the genre is that this is a bad solution that makes the game even more linear and makes it dumb. Obviously, that's not a good solution. So what is the solution used by other designers? You'll probably notice it when playing classic games, but it's definitely not filling up several characters with dozens of paragraphs.

Design is nothing more than to use human nature and the basic impulses of the user in order to direct his experience. When you say that you "don't force players to read", you are committing a serious flaw as a designer. What you're trying to say is that you didn't create the text with the explicit intention that all players would stop to read it. But that's not design. Design is looking at human behavior patterns, genre conventions and player habits and thinking, "when I create the game in a certain way, what kind of behavior am I encouraging in the player?" It's important to realize that it has nothing to do with what behavior you have as a player, but what is the default and common response type for your target audience.

RPG players will want to discover new quests. They'll want to explore the places in the game to find out who the relevant people are and who they're not. They'll want to find alternative ways to find and solve quests, and overcome challenges. The question then is: how were the NPCs you created for your game thought to take into account these habits and the limitations of knowledge we have as players? And more importantly, how to do better in your next game?

Oh and the other part you remembered correctly, the system must be there, because if you can ask one NPC about the weather, but you can ask the other one about pine trees, it would be illogical. So we even wrote in that story about you being trained to ask these specific 4 questions unless you can't for some reason :D

Here I will say this: you know that you can have a perfectly valid and logical reason to do something and yet the result may not be satisfactory, correct? In this case, you can have a perfectly logical and rational explanation for using a "standard skeleton" for every beginning of interaction with any NPCs in your game. And even with this perfectly logical and reasonable reason, the feeling and final effect of it can be negative for most players. So here comes the designer's thinking: there's a problem that has arisen from that decision. What can you do to solve it?

---

PS: I want to make it clear that I liked (and still like) ATOM! I'm not at all saying that the game is bad, but rather saying that you can look critically at it to think about what you can do best in your next game.

Weeeelll I'm pretty wordy, there's that, and I'm not satisfied with my reply unless it says everything I have to say on the subject, but I think the subject was the existence of flavor conversations, not their lengths. Large texts are usually reserved for NPCs with bigger roles. We've loosely followed a simple rule in Atom. If it's a large quest, or a quest that's pretty good in our opinion, the NPC will not walk around, will sometimes have words above his head, and if possible will have a distinct appearance. I get that this turns out to not be enough for some, and it's a valid point we're already discussing, but making such NPCs distinct must not change the sudden hidden mini-quests one might stumble upon while getting some flavor from unimportant NPCs. There must always be balance between good design and vision. Example: negative feedback we get for this useless NPC forces people to click and read everyone thing is dwarfed by the negative feedback we get for the clunk in the interface. It would probably take our artist two days to make a sexy, sleek UI like all the cool games have, however having a huge, awkward UI is something we want, because we like it. Same with the text. Every word we write, I then have to translate into English, which is boring as hell, and then send it along with a chunk of my share of moneys to a corrector who will improve my translation. With less text and one line NPCs I would lose the most tedious, mentally challenging job I have on the team AND get more moneys. But then it will not be the game we risked a ton of stuff to make. Some things should be sacrificed for the vision, but we don't do these sacrifices unless we really have to. For example, we found a way to make dialogues more dynamic by changing our writing system, it will be visible in Trudograd. We're learning a lot and taking in every word. Cheers, man!

 

[RK47]

'You can't fight autism.' - Polish Philosopher

 

[Shadenuat]

Oh and the other part you remembered correctly, the system must be there, because if you can ask one NPC about the weather, but you can ask the other one about pine trees, it would be illogical.

It won't be illogical as long as first NPC is some old lady enjoying (or not) the weather and second one is a lumberjack.

clunk in the interface.

Oh right. Who was genius who made it so you can't see current hp when you hover over characters, but can if you press alt/aim with weapon, and can if you open inventory, but can't on character screen?

Every hp instance should be xx/yy ffs.

It would probably take our artist two days to make a sexy, sleek UI like all the cool games have, however having a huge, awkward UI is something we want, because we like it.

wait what

 

[Atomboy]

Oh and the other part you remembered correctly, the system must be there, because if you can ask one NPC about the weather, but you can ask the other one about pine trees, it would be illogical.

It won't be illogical as long as first NPC is some old lady enjoying (or not) the weather and second one is a lumberjack.

clunk in the interface.

Oh right. Who was genius who made it so you can't see current hp when you hover over characters, but can if you press alt/aim with weapon, and can if you open inventory, but can't on character screen?

Every hp instance should be xx/yy ffs.

It would probably take our artist two days to make a sexy, sleek UI like all the cool games have, however having a huge, awkward UI is something we want, because we like it.

wait what

Sure is, that's why a ton of NPCs have unique starters displaying either their interests, or their attitude! You get basic questions after going through that starter. You did play the game, right? :D Come on dude...
HP is how much fight is left in a character, why show it for those who are not fighting you? That's weird. HP is shown when weapons are pulled out and a fight begins. Agreed on the character screen though, tons of people asked us, so we patched it into 1.106, you'll be getting it in a few hours!

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The KRZ bribe situation was made to fulfill the want of some players to go snitch on the guard. You just paid a bribe to a cop, you go through the gate and there's another cop standing right there. It would be pretty silly if you didn't have the snitch option. Also, it was a meta-quest by it's own right. Your reward for it is finding out that militia is corrupt and dudn't do nothing to bad cops.

Ok, but players can’t understand what you are trying to say because you are ignoring the conventions of the genre. What is worse, you are making them passive in the process. Games are about surpassing obstacles, not about about satisfying your artistic vision in a passive manner. You could present the same moral lesson in a chain of quests related to the guard. Let’s take Age of Decadence for example. The game punishes the player for buying into stupid tropes of cRPGs. For instance, you might want to save the damsel in distress at Teron, but she as thief trying to con you. You can still get back at her, but you need to succeed with the proper skills. The player learns a valuable lesson in the process, but he is not powerless to do anything about it. He is the player after all, right? He is not a passive spectator of the writers vision.

The thing is that in the end of the day, the main reason they are how they are because me and the guys wanted them like that. For me, having an actual talk-on-at-least-4-subjects NPC as furniture instead of having a 1-liine NPC as furniture is like this cool thing!

I understand, but your preferences as developers don’t exist in a vacuum. They should be grounded on cRPG conventions under the penalty of being arbitrary and misguided. Your artistic vision should be satisfied in a way that is conducing to roleplaying, not at the expenses of it just because you fells like it. The developer is like a teacher. He has the power to do as he damn well pleases, but he shouldn’t abuse his power with arbitrary preferences because he has a work to do.

There's a kernel of truth to what some of the folks above are saying but you've got a relatively successful game on your hands and it's probably worth keeping in mind that the people who like it and the things it does probably aren't sending you walls of text.

People who enjoyed the game were able to appreciate it despite the aforementioned problems, not because of them.

I want them to be optional, and to like signal the player "Hi, I won't give you quests and maybe I'll give you some XP if you mind rape me with a CHA check but nothing more" without actually saying this. Making helpful, useful NPCs distinct as fuck might work I guess. What do you think? I want them to seem like optional timewasters for people like me who love this stuff, not scummy hidden timewasters.

But loving X is not a sufficient reason to include X in a given game, because this game is meant to be played by other people. The reading and the narrative aspects of cRPGs are there to serve the roleplaying aspect. They are not ends in themselves. You are weird guy. You enjoy reading narrative for the narrative sake inside a cRPG. I bet that most people are not like that. I also find weird that you feel very passionate about this aspect when it is crystal clear that serves no purpose in roleplaying terms. It’s an indefensible position. Flavour text dissociated from gameplay serves no purpose other than to be an outlet for the writer’s creativity. They certainly are irrelevant to the player, who is supposed to be the main focus of the game designers. Creativity, artistic vision and narrative are important when they are properly understood, i.e., when they are conducing to roleplaying opportunities. Any suggestions to the contrary are either misinformed or suffer from the disease of storyfagism.

 

[Shadenuat]

HP is how much fight is left in a character, why show it for those who are not fighting you?

It means to check companions HP you need to either talk to them or open inventory, or point a weapon at them.

The other thing which seems like a downgrade is the lack of formulas for what affects what in the character sheet; they provided some needed clarity in Fallout.

 

[Atomboy]

The KRZ bribe situation was made to fulfill the want of some players to go snitch on the guard. You just paid a bribe to a cop, you go through the gate and there's another cop standing right there. It would be pretty silly if you didn't have the snitch option. Also, it was a meta-quest by it's own right. Your reward for it is finding out that militia is corrupt and dudn't do nothing to bad cops.

Ok, but players can’t understand what you are trying to say because you are ignoring the conventions of the genre. What is worse, you are making them passive in the process. Games are about surpassing obstacles, not about about satisfying your artistic vision in a passive manner. You could present the same moral lesson in a chain of quests related to the guard. Let’s take Age of Decadence for example. The game punishes the player for buying into stupid tropes of cRPGs. For instance, you might want to save the damsel in distress at Teron, but she as thief trying to con you. You can still get back at her, but you need to succeed with the proper skills. The player learns a valuable lesson in the process, but he is not powerless to do anything about it. He is the player after all, right? He is not a passive spectator of the writers vision.

The thing is that in the end of the day, the main reason they are how they are because me and the guys wanted them like that. For me, having an actual talk-on-at-least-4-subjects NPC as furniture instead of having a 1-liine NPC as furniture is like this cool thing!

I understand, but your preferences as developers don’t exist in a vacuum. They should be grounded on cRPG conventions under the penalty of being arbitrary and misguided. Your artistic vision should be satisfied in a way that is conducing to roleplaying, not at the expenses of it just because you fells like it. The developer is like a teacher. He has the power to do as he damn well pleases, but he shouldn’t abuse his power with arbitrary preferences because he has a work to do.

There's a kernel of truth to what some of the folks above are saying but you've got a relatively successful game on your hands and it's probably worth keeping in mind that the people who like it and the things it does probably aren't sending you walls of text.

People who enjoyed the game were able to appreciate it despite the aforementioned problems, not because of them.

I want them to be optional, and to like signal the player "Hi, I won't give you quests and maybe I'll give you some XP if you mind rape me with a CHA check but nothing more" without actually saying this. Making helpful, useful NPCs distinct as fuck might work I guess. What do you think? I want them to seem like optional timewasters for people like me who love this stuff, not scummy hidden timewasters.

But loving X is not a sufficient reason to include X in a given game, because this game is meant to be played by other people. The reading and the narrative aspects of cRPGs are there to serve the roleplaying aspect. They are not ends in themselves. You are weird guy. You enjoy reading narrative for the narrative sake inside a cRPG. I bet that most people are not like that. I also find weird that you feel very passionate about this aspect when it is crystal clear that serves no purpose in roleplaying terms. It’s an indefensible position. Flavour text dissociated from gameplay serves no purpose other than to be an outlet for the writer’s creativity. They certainly are irrelevant to the player, who is supposed to be the main focus of the game designers. Creativity, artistic vision and narrative are important when they are properly understood, i.e., when they are conducing to roleplaying opportunities. Any suggestions to the contrary are either misinformed or suffer from the disease of storyfagism.

I dunno dude, it's pretty strict the way you put it. The only artist on the team is the dude who draws stuff, the rest of us are RPG players who love RPGs. I doubt anyone would argue the fact that Atom is an RPG and you move through the world by conquering obstacles and passing constant checks. The fact that you have some side stuff to get lost in if you wish just doesn't seem bad or artistic to me. The only quest I still remember from Arcanum, even though I gave it a playthrough ages ago, was the one where you stumble upon that creepy ogre breeding conspiracy, and your informant is just gone. Getting into that office and finding out that the guy is gone wasn't an obstacle, but it was awesome, mysterious, scary and thought provoking. So was finding the whale or the knights or the Star Trek thingy in Fallout. So was meeting O, or that Planescape lore dude in the Smoldering Corpse bar, so was a ton of stuff in Morrowind, BG and all the other games that inspired us. We got a gazillion of classic quests, but we also have side stuff. And I'd argue that our side stuff serves roleplaying much, much more than side stuff that inspired us. You get to summon Shog after you get a billion hints about the weird eldritch religion rural folk had in the region since long ago and read a book about it. We have a book that contains a gay short story about a group of VERY friendly kolkhoz workers, but then you meet the author and he becomes a party member. Is this book there because I wanna express my inner Artistique side, my wish to write short gay fiction, or is it there to give the one who chooses to read it an insight about Hexogen? Non-quest-giving people you choose to speak to offer lore, hints that usually turn into quests from other NPCs later on, or tell you about your own deeds as rumors, give insight on life and social structure in the area you visited, hint you to visit places, etc. You played Atom a lot, dude! Was there really an NPC who did not do anything and was just there to push some kind of a narrative which we barely even have?? I don't think the game is liked DESPITE these things. These things make this RPG rich and serve to deepen the immersion of those who choose to interact with it. I agree that the game should not deceive the player who thinks talking to non-quest-givers is a waste of time, but apart from that, I don't see a problem or anything that insults the classic RPG conventions. It all comes from love for RPGs that have total freedom and unobtrusive, optional, but enriching aspects.

HP is how much fight is left in a character, why show it for those who are not fighting you?

It means to check companions HP you need to either talk to them or open inventory, or point a weapon at them.

The other thing which seems like a downgrade is the lack of formulas for what affects what in the character sheet; they provided some needed clarity in Fallout.

Well, the aim to see HP of friends is actually an exploit we can't do anything about. We wanted to make checking HP a human, interactive moment. You have your pal here, so you come to him and say - how's the health, buddy? You okay? And he's like - no, my arm is torn off. It's cool for roleplaying, even though it is a bit of a hassle. It's no trouble to make numbers always appear over everyone whom you point your mouse to, I bet our programmer can do it in an afternoon, but we don't like the idea. What we like though is showing formulas, but now THAT is pretty hard, because they are weird and would look strange and messy. But this, we'll one day probably do.

 

[Shadenuat]

If you don't like numerical values you can use text, like "Lightly wounded", "Near dead" etc.; the Awareness perk could change them into numerical if player has one.

 

[Atomboy]

If you don't like numerical values you can use text, like "Lightly wounded", "Near dead" etc.; the Awareness perk could change them into numerical if player has one.

It's not the question of numbers. Seeing health when not in a fight on rando NPCs is just weird to me. It's like going around the block irl, taking a nice ol stroll, looking at people and thinking like "Hmm I wonder how easy will it be to kill this kindly grandpa... Hmmm yes... I can see he's limping and has a cold... He might go in 10 hits with a pipe in case I attack him..." Plus we have people who are described as sick or hurt in the dialogues. So for example the sick dude in the Moonshine place would have "Completely healthy" above his head, because we didn't hurt him yet. But he's sick. Same with Papa Death and some more I don't remember. So we'll need to hunt for everyone who is described as sick or frail or wounded and lower their HP prior to attacking them because they can't have Healthy over their heads. Stuff like that.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'm talking about companions, not random NPCs. Checking their HP after combat quickly would be good.

For random NPCs I don't see a problem either though, sounds like pure designers superstition to me; Fallout did it and used information window for things like this and even used different comments for different NPCs I think.

 

[Efe]

might as well also add a perk that shows x/10 showing their attractiveness.
hell, theres could be a new achievement "would bang" that you get if you only speak to 7/10 or above whole game?

 

[Atomboy]

I'm talking about companions, not random NPCs. Checking their HP after combat quickly would be good.

For random NPCs I don't see a problem either though, sounds like pure designers superstition to me; Fallout did it and used information window for things like this and even used different comments for different NPCs I think.

We have that thingy on the left too, sometimes! Idk, I think talking to them to get info is more cozy and sweet. But now you'll be able to do that through char screen too!

BECAUSE
1.106 hit and here's the change log:

==============================

- Optimized game to work on low end systems better and on more linuxes;
- Fixed random encounters in Dead City, now you can be attacked while resting;
- Fixed exit zone in the Institute location;
- Fixed doubling of characters in Red Fighter;
- Sveklana bug pack fixed;
- Inventory screen getting stuck is fixed;
- Kovalev's Car quest fixed;
- Electra's quest fixed;
- Three brothers quest location fixed;
- Added more save game slots;
- Random encounters that were not available before fixed and added properly;
- Lots of spelling errors removed, writing edited;
- Many minor fixes including thing that should now show HP on Charater screen;

 

[Sykar]

Comrade Sykar finally bought the game. Will there be much Cheeki Breeki on the long road ahead to the next vodka bottle?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

linuxes

It's linuces.

 

[Sykar]

What level can I expect to reach roughly if I do all possible side quests but no extensive farming?

 

[RK47]

What level can I expect to reach roughly if I do all possible side quests but no extensive farming?

13-15

 

[Lord_Potato]

13-15?

I am already 18 and I did not even visit Dead City. Finished most of the sidequests on the first two global maps, only have main story quests to do now.

Granted, I play a very intelligent character with lots of experience/skill points increasing perks, but still...

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, one thing I agree with is the fact that the conversations are overwhelmingly generic. Atomboy commented somewhere that there was a reason why all interactions follow exactly the same pattern: "work", "how's life", "talk about yourself", "rumors"; and that's it. Sometimes a new option or two depending on some quest or context. I do understand the logic of "why I could ask this question to certain people and not to others" (that ended up leading to this), but the final effect really didn't turn out to be very organic, precisely because the characters end up stuck to that same basic skeleton of interaction. I think I liked the motivation behind their existence more than the final outcome, I guess.

Yeah I like the NPC dialogues in this game but they start to feel generic after a while because every NPC gets the exact same dialogue options (Name, Job, Rumors) so it feels like you're just going through the motions instead of interacting with individuals.

 

[RK47]

I agree. Ultima 7 sucks.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

You played Atom a lot, dude! Was there really an NPC who did not do anything and was just there to push some kind of a narrative which we barely even have?? I don't think the game is liked DESPITE these things. These things make this RPG rich and serve to deepen the immersion of those who choose to interact with it. I agree that the game should not deceive the player who thinks talking to non-quest-givers is a waste of time, but apart from that, I don't see a problem or anything that insults the classic RPG conventions.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that NPCs packed with lore that are non-quest-givers are a part of the canon, which would establish them as a convention of the genre. Is this a good convention to have or it should be abandoned for something different? You talk as if all NPCs dialogues would lead to some quest or another down the line. This is not the case. What is worse. Since the player is bombarded by information which is there just to enrich the gameworld, it becomes a masochist hobby trying to figure it out what would lead to what down the road. It is easy to dismiss an important piece of information because it is indistinguishable from just another NPC personal story. Thus, this just reinforces my point: in a game where bits of information can lead to unexpected events, NPCs that don’t provide new content will only make things more confusing.