Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #23: Gameplay Video!

[hiver]

It is still there and shown in the bloody video.

 

[hiver]

:facepalm:

Dont go MCA on me.

more writing less visuals! man!

 

[imweasel]

*chuckles*

 

[Carrion]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/237846437897974391

Jesus fucking Christ. Who are these metagamers and where do they come from (and why should you even care in a single-player game)? Has Sawyer somehow got an access to Ray Muzyka's telemetry and does he use it now to design games?

If you want to get a bunch of important documents from a locked safe, you don't want to blow it up. If you bump into a three-foot thick blast door, you're probably not even able to open it with dynamite (although you might be able to blow a hole into the wall next to it). You don't want to open the door with explosives when sneaking into Papa Khan's bedroom or when trying to rescue deputy Beagle without alerting every single bandit to your presence. You don't want to use explosives inside a New Vegas casino unless you're prepared to massacre everyone there. In general, if you play a stealthy character, being able to pick a lock silently is infinitely more useful than only being able to blow it up. What the hell is so complicated about that?

If I was a metagamer, I wouldn't even bother saving my explosives for the situations that Sawyer describes. I'd just carry a few skill magazines and some well-selected drugs and it'd probably give me everything I need. After all, if there's only one way to open a lock, it's safe to assume that there's nothing critically important behind a door that requires a maxed-out lockpick skill. And if there is, there's always a key somewhere.

 

[Gozma]

Sawyer can't really cop to FNV having worthless legacy skill design from FO3 (idiotic shit like +5 lockpick clothing for example), he'd get in trouble. If you want to get points on him via Formspring or twitter abusing him about things he has to remain silent about is probably a good line of attack however

I personally think the argument for using explosives to open locks isn't any dumber than having lockpickable locks at all (What's the purpose? To stay true to some cliches basically) or having all lockpickable locks be opened with a perk instead of a skill, etc and the sim vs. game dichotomy is subtly wrong and bad criticsm, but eh.

 

[imweasel]

Every time Sawyer talks about low level design I want to smack that popamole. Biggest 'tard in the business.

 

[Infinitron]

(and why should you even care in a single-player game)?

But that's essentially what this boils down to: allowing characters specialized in a weapon skill set to use the weapons or ammo they carry around with them to break open what would normally only be available to characters who specialize in Lockpick. What does a character who specializes in the Lockpick skill get out of this? Why would a player be motivated to invest in Lockpick if they could cherry-pick the best locks for demolition with an Explosives build or some shotgun rounds?

It's pretty simple. Gamists think that if you put something in a game, there should be a reason for somebody to play with it. Saying "it's there because it should be there in a plausible universe" isn't good enough.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Angthoron

Your attention is needed.

 

[hiver]

Infinitron

That's not what I meant by "limited".
There's no limit on the amount of times you can bash a door.

How about you explain to me what does how many times you bash a door, has to do with anything?
Seeing how some doors wont be breakable at all, or will require different levels of strength.

Do you think you will be able to bash the doors little by little? As if they have HP you can whittle down?

 

[Angthoron]

Angthoron

Your attention is needed.

So uh. I looked at Sawyer's games list and what can I say? From his bell tower, he sees his thing. Specializing in lockpick was only ever useful in like zero of the games he's credited for in the Wiki list.

However, this doesn't exactly mean that the design approach that the teams he'd worked with is the paramount design. I can see the problem, though, yes - you create a character that invests heavily into non-combat stats and ends up crippled for the combat itself, but there are ways to circumvent this - make a system that grants combat and non-combat skills, or add ways in which combat can be avoided or rigged in player's favour via non-combat skills (sabotage, subterfuge, camouflage etc), or by adopting a "learn-by-doing" approach a-la TES/Dungeon Siege. Mix and match as you like. Giving a universal lockpick in a shape of a laser gun is fucking retarded, because then, you might as well let the player heal with the laser gun, mine with the laser gun, cook with the laser gun and let laser gun pick the juiciest sex scenes, in which, too, it could play a prominent role. Screw that noise.

Also, even if we actually accept the unnecessary new faux -ism divisions, how is the approach above against either of them? It doesn't fit the "narrative"? It's not "gamey"? It fails as a simulator? Will it be more "gamey" if player is allowed to use their gun for everything in the game, or is it more narrativist? Or maybe it's just lazy and stupid? Who can tell.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron

That's not what I meant by "limited".
There's no limit on the amount of times you can bash a door.

How about you explain to me what does how many times you bash a door, has to do with anything?
Seeing how some doors wont be breakable at all, or will require different levels of strength.

Do you think you will be able to bash the doors little by little? As if they have HP you can whittle down?

For fuck's sake man.

To blow up a door, you need explosives. There's a limit on how many explosives you have. Hence a limit on how many times you can blow up doors with explosives. That's the kind of limit I'm talking about. No such limit exists for bashing. You don't need to replace your fists and feet each time you bash.

ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

 

[Alex]

I would love to see an evolved version of this:

Fuck storyfags.

I agree, tone + keywords is pretty much the perfect system in my view, too.

Of course, re: Excidium's point, it should be less of an information kiosk and more of a system where your tone and the keywords you choose actually matter, quest design- and gameplay-wise, and are also tied to your character(s)'s statistics and whatnot. Where choosing the right tone would matter as much as choosing the right option in combat. That would really be an "evolved" version of that kind of system.

I think that if they had made the rumors system something more important to the game(maybe if they had managed to implement the dynamic gameworld they had intended, with battles and wars around the map), this could have worked a lot better already. Another way to make the dialog more relevant is if you could get actual useful information out of the topics you ask. Stuff that you could actually use to your advantage. I mean, getting setting bits and pieces from NPCs is a lot of fun,of course. But most of the NPCs would just repeat the samethings, and it was mostly backdrop information you couldn't use to, say, discover a quest or a new dungeon, or something like that. But yeah, the system could work really well. It really needed unique keywords for certain NPCs, though.

You won't be happy until it looks like this:

and is published in 1989,right?

Well, the screenshot does look nice. The publishing date in unimportant though.

Also, everyone complaining about using keywords to represent whole replies. Have you guys never played Ultima? I don't even mean Ultima 4. Ultima 7 still had the dialog like this, and it was a lot of fun.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

Well, yeah. But dude...hiver.

 

[hiver]

Infinitron

That's not what I meant by "limited".
There's no limit on the amount of times you can bash a door.

How about you explain to me what does how many times you bash a door, has to do with anything?
Seeing how some doors wont be breakable at all, or will require different levels of strength.

Do you think you will be able to bash the doors little by little? As if they have HP you can whittle down?

For fuck's sake man.
To blow up a door, you need explosives. There's a limit on how many explosives you have. Hence a limit on how many times you can blow up doors with explosives. That's the kind of limit I'm talking about. No such limit exists for bashing. You don't need to replace your fists and feet each time you bash.

ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

No it is not.

Is it rocket science to understand that you will not be ABLE to bash every fucking door?
That the video literally says that some doors will be only opened by lockipicking, some only by bashing and some only by explosives?
Depending on your stats and skills and amount of explosives or RPGs you have?

Can you imagine a door that cannot be bashed but could be lockpicked? A door that cannot be opened by explosives or bashing but can be lockpicked?
And so on?

 

[Brother None]

This is just gold right here. Will hiver ever understand what Infinitron means (which is indeed pretty clear and simple to everyone else), or will this keep going for a while?

Where's my emoticon?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

The truly hilarious part is that I could actually see hiver attempting this:

You don't need to replace your fists and feet each time you bash.

 

[hiver]

Is it really possible that you guys cannot understand that you cannot open every door with fucking bashing?
And if you cannot - then it doesnt fucking matter that bashing cannot be spent as explosives can.

And that in the end it makes perfect sense.


Are you really that fucking dumb?

 

[Wizfall]

Also, everyone complaining about using keywords to represent whole replies. Have you guys never played Ultima? I don't even mean Ultima 4. Ultima 7 still had the dialog like this, and it was a lot of fun.

I read so many wrong things about keywords system that i believe some dislike it because they don't know it or have only the Bethesda/Bioware experience of it.
And not everyone complains using keywords, far from it. Quite a lot of people like it better than dialog trees too.
I would be very curious about a pool result on this topic.
I would enjoy such a pool being made both on the Codex and on the official W2 forum.
Just curious as i don't expect (and hope) it to impact game development.
I absolutely don't understand people complaining about W2 graphics. I was very disappointed W2 not going the fallout/baldur graphic implementation way because i have never seem before 3D that look so good.
That someone who enjoy fallout/baldur graphics don't enjoy W2 graphics is beyond me (except for the moving camera, i dislike it but that not really graphics).
That or my screen is too small to notice such thing as the supposed low quality texture or i'm getting too old...

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

or will this keep going for a while?

Confirmed.

 

[nihil]

What's the problem with bashing not consuming a resource when used?

 

[Rake]

Angthoron

Your attention is needed.

So uh. I looked at Sawyer's games list and what can I say? From his bell tower, he sees his thing. Specializing in lockpick was only ever useful in like zero of the games he's credited for in the Wiki list.

However, this doesn't exactly mean that the design approach that the teams he'd worked with is the paramount design. I can see the problem, though, yes - you create a character that invests heavily into non-combat stats and ends up crippled for the combat itself, but there are ways to circumvent this - make a system that grants combat and non-combat skills, or add ways in which combat can be avoided or rigged in player's favour via non-combat skills (sabotage, subterfuge, camouflage etc), or by adopting a "learn-by-doing" approach a-la TES/Dungeon Siege. Mix and match as you like. Giving a universal lockpick in a shape of a laser gun is fucking retarded, because then, you might as well let the player heal with the laser gun, mine with the laser gun, cook with the laser gun and let laser gun pick the juiciest sex scenes, in which, too, it could play a prominent role. Screw that noise.

Also, even if we actually accept the unnecessary new faux -ism divisions, how is the approach above against either of them? It doesn't fit the "narrative"? It's not "gamey"? It fails as a simulator? Will it be more "gamey" if player is allowed to use their gun for everything in the game, or is it more narrativist? Or maybe it's just lazy and stupid? Who can tell.

What angers me the most, is that all the classics of games we expound here do exactly that. Do Sex, Thief, Arcanum, Morrowind and VMTB were about giving players a box of tools and letting them design their own gameplay. This entire discussion about 'let's cut stuff off because it was not useful earlier' simply missed the point that what made is useless earlier was not their inherent superfluousness but rather lazy and dumb design.

Funny how not a single IE game is on your list.
I don't say you are wrong per se, but you should be focused more on what the IE games did than Morrowind or Arcanum, because Sawyer does exactly that. For example, the split pools for combat/non combat skills, he said that it was how BG 2 worked, so they did it that way.
giving players a box of tools and letting them design their own gameplay That is the sandbox approach. Not a single one of the IE games was a sandbox,so i don't thing people should expect sandbox design. I'm not even convinced that the skills will be as importand in the game as some people here think they will be. Dialog won't have skills, and probably other aspects of the game too.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Is it rocket science to understand that you will not be ABLE to bash every fucking door?

You should be able to attempt bashing every door, because all that requires is to tackle said door, or hitting it with an axe or hammer. If you will succeed with every door or not is another matter.

 

[Kosmonaut]

People dumb as brick ITT.

 

[Mrowak]

(and why should you even care in a single-player game)?

But that's essentially what this boils down to: allowing characters specialized in a weapon skill set to use the weapons or ammo they carry around with them to break open what would normally only be available to characters who specialize in Lockpick. What does a character who specializes in the Lockpick skill get out of this? Why would a player be motivated to invest in Lockpick if they could cherry-pick the best locks for demolition with an Explosives build or some shotgun rounds?

It's pretty simple. Gamists think that if you put something in a game, there should be a reason for somebody to play with it. Saying "it's there because it should be there in a plausible universe" isn't good enough.

I think it goes in opposite way. If you add an abstract skill, such as Lockpicking, there should be a good enough reason to use so that the most common sense solution (breaking the lock, or the container) will be suboptimal by comparison. In other words game should make a distinction between situations where those solutions are used with appropriate rewards e.g. I break the lock when I have to act quickly; I pick the lock when I don't want anyone to notice what I am doying.

 

[Carrion]

It's pretty simple. Gamists think that if you put something in a game, there should be a reason for somebody to play with it.

But there already are plenty of reasons, and if Sawyer was actually trying to create a plausible universe, he'd probably see that too.

I don't want to go too far into a gamism vs. simulationism argument (at least not in a WL2 thread, because WL2 seems to be on the right track), but I think Sawyer's going the wrong way if he tries to "fix" RPGs by tweaking mechanics because in this (and almost every other) case the actual problem is a static game world with little reactivity. Why don't the NPCs do anything if you blow up a door with dynamite in the middle of a town? Why does no one say anything if you murder the guard who comes to investigate the noise that comes from you bashing doors and containers? It's pretty obvious why someone would choose to pick a lock instead of blowing up the whole door, so why doesn't this translate into any game properly? How about trying to fix some of those things instead of limiting the player's options even further? Give the NPCs eyes and ears, don't come up with nonsensical shit and call it a system. I don't think cRPG's should necessarily try to emulate tabletop games, but one of the best things about RPGs is the amount of freedom and environmental interaction that allows players to come up with their own solutions using the tools at their disposal. Wasteland, Fallout, Arcanum, older TES games, Deus Ex and a few others (including some parts of the IE games, although to a lesser extent) tried to follow this philosophy and it was great, but it has all been downhill from since. We still get piss-poor AI, wooden doors that can take a nuclear blast without breaking, immortal NPCs, linear levels and even more linear quests that have one or two built-in solutions with no room for creativity. I can't think of a genre that would've regressed as much and suffered from a greater lack of innovation in the past one and a half decades or so. Well, maybe first-person shooters, but even they have introduced AI improvements, destructible environments and so on.

I'm not expecting WL2 or P:E to revolutionize the genre, and they're definitely not even trying to do that, but I feel that out of these two games WL2 really looks like it might capture the good things about those classic games. As for P:E, it definitely doesn't look as good, although I still have some faith in Sawyer considering how good certain aspects of New Vegas were, and P:E's going to be a different type of game anyway. Maybe I should just steer clear of Formspring and hope for the best.