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Same here, waiting for the balance patch.
I really dislike the camera (i dropped the game after 15min) so I'm not in hurry at all but i will still play the game eventually.
I guess it will take at least one more month, possibly 2 or even 3.
Sea/Brother None, I had some ideas that I think really would benefit Wasteland 2!
(Warning! Spoilers for the whole game!)
1. Make restoring peace to Rail Nomads.. actually do something. Add Radio Filler that involve the train driver talking on the radio to help make it seem.. well, like something happened. I'm not sure on this 100%, but add a benefit that involves the train and the player. I was thinking fast travel but that might be too out of the way for the player to consider.
2. Show the results of the Ag Center/Highpool debacle more. Starving/Dehydrated children, Raiders stealing water/food, small things like that! And remember, don't just make the player face these things, you have a radio. Use it.
3. Please, make towns more alive, Towns just feel like story feeders. The whole Arizona/California thing has caused this strange side effect in where you've only focused on making towns Shop and Quest hubs. The lack of a Day/Night cycle really also brings this to attention, but I know that is impossible to add at this moment of development. I get that the Player won't ever be able to return to Arizona so you've focused on only dealing the essential story, but world building is SO important!
4. In regard to Santa Fe, that area is terrible. It serves no real gameplay purpose other than acting as a rest stop and an occasional random Companion dump. You need to heavily emphasize the fact that the Desert Rangers have to establish themselves as their own separate faction, and that means recruitment. You don't need too much meta game for this as well, you just need to attach it to what the Player accomplish. The Player saves Rodia? Some of the citizens join the Rangers and go out on patrols, you can hear them later on the radio similar to how you can hear the other Ranger teams in Arizona. Also, getting people who can provide services to you who are spread out throughout the world and require a small quest completed before they join the Rangers. People, who say will do Weaponsmithing for you and such. To be fair, you could do anything to Santa Fe and make it better.
5. More Matthias! Seriously, it seems like all he did was send Synths to you. And at the end, he was just a trash mob, dead in one shot. You're painting him as a Jim Jones type, but how can you do that when he's a synth? The Jim Jones character archetype relies on Human Failure to power it, Humans get greedy, they start doing things to benefit themselves in the guise of helping others. But Matthias is a Synthetic, he's been alive for a long time too meaning that the Computer/Cochise would have had to have wiped most of his Humanity.
Now, he came from a pre-war era, so somehow, without destroying the fact that he's trying to kill you incorporate that. If you want him to have some humanity left, think about it: He's old! What do old people like to do? Reminisce! They like to take their lessons that they learned from the past, and apply it to the future/present. (Whether or not they work well.) And Matthias seems like the kinda guy who will bite your ear off! Plus it does connect to the theme that of History becoming shrouded due to different views and opinions.
6. Either kill or rebuild the Join Matthias option! That option felt weak and rushed, if you guys were running out of time, why did you even implement it?! Firstly, Matthias's task doesn't make sense, if he's trying to spread the message of the Children of The Citadel, why not augment the Rangers straight away?! Sure, he could be wanting to make the Rangers look like butchers and evil people, however, he also wants to spread fear through his name since he is well.. the bad guy. Secondly, why did Matthias betray the Rangers?! He just killed off 4-7 very strong people who could of helped against the siege of Ranger Citadel.. it makes no sense. It would be amazing to have to go back to the Citadel in your form, and kill all your old friends!
7. Make Dugan less forced! Dugan was obviously the "Super evil, no humanity, no good" antagonist of the game, but please, that ultimate reveal at the end was just.. weak. All we know of Dugan is that he send out workbots and tries to kill us multiple times! Oh, and he goes on and on about destroying humanity. He's essentially Frank Horrigan. And I get that he is a creation of Cochise, but why would Cochise bother with creating this fake war between Matthias and Dugan? To defeat the Rangers? Well, both Dugan and Matthias think their synths alone can destroy the Rangers, so why bother?
To spur more fear in the people? Well ok that could work, yet, still they think they could crush everyone! Why keep up this show?! I understand this is a huge story change, but Dugan would of made a much better lieutenant than just a Radio-Terrorist who you kill at the end in one battle.
8. Vargas should come over to California. I feel that Vargas should be there after the Rangers gain a certain foothold in California, he is the leader, he should be coordinating back at Santa Fe and dealing the situation himself. He did say at the beginning of the game he wanted to get back out into the world, and not stay behind the desk all the time. Hell, you could even do a cool sacrifice scene in Seal Beach. Plus, (Cut Content Spoiler)
It would be cool to see him see Angela in her Synth state, and to see his reaction with the Doctor.
that is another point that he should at least be there leading the charge at Seal Beach.
9. Turn Seal Beach into a proper battle! This would be really cool, get all the Rangers you've built up during the California Story Arc and stage some epic Seal Beach battle with Vargas leading the charge. You can even do build up missions to it that involve preparing for the battle, these would however be optional. In order to avoid what Bioware does though, give the player a choice between two Tactical options that lead into their own mission, and some while looking like a positive change, actually have a negative effect on the battle. I get you did try to make the ending battle at the Citadel feel like this, but those were really just moments to show off Reactivity, all those npcs were essentially useless and by the end since most were dead, you felt like you just fucked up the world.
10. Change up the Nuke Situation a bit, I liked the whole having to blow up Ranger Citadel and you should keep that! However, say when the player fails to stop Cochice in time, the Rangers should of set up a Plan C. Which would revolve around nuking most of Arizona, I feel that this would be an amazing consequence. Since, it would show how brutal the Rangers are. It would make the players wonder what Matthias's future was really going to be. It would show that The Rangers were no better than the pre-war government, a military force dedicated in domination to the point of destroying everything. Of course, there are the questions of where the nukes came from, I'm assuming that there weren't too many "infected" in California as well I'm not sure if my memory has failed me though.
11. Change Cochise's monologue. Cochise's final, "This is why everything happened" monologue doesn't make all that much sense. It's an AI, it thinks in 0's and 1's, it's also supposed to be super intelligent and analytic of human behaviour. If it believes that the Rangers are going to die, why should spend so much processing power on explaining the past? Give it to Matthias, or, even better just put it into the background, make the player investigate and put it together in their own head!
12. Make the idea of the Ranger's colonization have its downsides too. As well as making the colonization effort more.. obvious. Colonization is a loose term here, however, in examples of Rodia and other small settlements that the Player has to save, the Rangers should make those people sign Protection Contracts, which guarantees Desert Ranger Protection as long as they follow through with certain laws and pledge say a certain amount of supplies to the "Desert Ranger Effort". Some would agree out of fear, and some might need some convincing, which is where the interesting part comes in. The Rangers can.. scare the people into signing the Act, this would really be awesome in every way! I mean, I can't help but feel that it would make sense for the Desert Rangers to lean more towards becoming a Government type of situation rather than purely military. People who are neutral should also protest to this strategy of Colonization and this would really circle the Rangers as Matthias said, "Just one top dog looking to destroy the other top dogs." (Paraphrase).
13. Make the Rangers more of a Government-situation. This will have to be subtle, but start painting the Rangers in more of a.. controller than a protector. Obviously, they're more Nationalist and Militaristic based in terms of values, yet since Vargas goes on about making a "perfect world" (At least in the way of the Rangers.) Vargas would have to have attempted at making the Desert Rangers into that type of Empire. You can show this by say making npcs talk about Desert Ranger Taxes, or having a Political-type Advisor in Ranger Citadel who also coordinates a lot of the California Colonization effort. I do not imagine the Rangers as Democratic however, I feel that Vargas is a power-hungry individual and that it would more lean towards to Communism/Socialism. I have noticed that "The American Dream" hasn't been touched on so that political background stuff isn't as important as it would of been in say, Fallout.
Ok, that turned out to be a LOT more than I expected. I'll also post this on the Wasteland forums. Feel free to tear it apart or make it better, just note, this is sort of a late night though session so ignore the Grammatical/Spelling errors I made. (My Fingers were quite literally darting across the keyboard.) Also, I'm aware that it is impossible for all these ideas to be implemented, but hey just a few of these would in my opinion make the game much better!
Hehe, I'm taking that as a compliment! But yeah, they are huge, however this is part of my theory that inXile are working on a huge "Enhanced Edition" type of thing. Mainly due to the large amount of end game content that they cut. This is also me trying to build up any game design skills I had, I tried to focus on connecting these suggestions to themes I found while playing the game. (The Theme part may not be exact since I haven't talked to the Writers or the Designers about what exact themes they were working with.)
Happy holidays to all our fans! With thanks to the awesome Wasteland fan John Joseph Adams, we have a holiday gift for all our backers: log into the Ranger Center and you will find a digital copy of the apocalyptic anthology book The End is Nigh under the rewards tab. The first part of a series of three, this book features 20 short stories focusing on the pre-apocalypse. Enjoy and have a good holiday season!
Happy holidays to all our fans! With thanks to the awesome Wasteland fan John Joseph Adams, we have a holiday gift for all our backers: log into the Ranger Center and you will find a digital copy of the apocalyptic anthology book The End is Nigh under the rewards tab. The first part of a series of three, this book features 20 short stories focusing on the pre-apocalypse. Enjoy and have a good holiday season!
Game of the Year: Wasteland 2 Hayden: Here's basically how our Game of the Year conversation went: "So Wasteland 2 takes it, right?" "Yup."
Wasteland 2 isn't perfect. This post-apocalyptic follow-up to a 25-year-old game has its share of weird quirks. However, both Brad and I agree it's the game we had the best time with this year, and it's a lot of time too—I'm rocking 50+ hours, and Brad isn't far behind. It's a great showing for what's possible with Kickstarter—the resurrection of the dead CRPG genre!—and a great showing for PC gaming in general.
Brad: The writing shines in WL2, but it's the sheer flexibility of the game that wows me: Every obstacle can be conquered in multiple ways, and you're held accountable for every decision. The cries from burning Highpool still haunt me.
received my lunchbox after half a year of waiting thx inxile
i just wanted a normal box to put in my shelf. what the fuck am i gonna do with this?
Previous reward + COLLECTOR'S EDITION PREMIUM BOXED VERSION which of course contains map and instruction book. But additionally comes with Wasteland miniature, Wasteland 2 faction badge. Also get your name in the credits in a special thanks section. The premium box replaces the standard box but also comes with a digital copy of the game. (Please add $15 for international shipping)
I finished the game earlier today and I liked it a lot. Despite its many issues, I reckon it's the best game I've played all year. Given the sort of games InXile was making prior to the Kickstarter pitch, I was highly skeptical of how Wasteland 2 would turn out, despite all the talent they had recruited for making the game. Wasteland 2 eventually turning out to be a well-written CRPG with lots of non-linear quest design with abundant C&C is one of the best gaming surprises I've had all year.
The game's biggest strengths are its quest design and accompanying C&C, arguably the best since New Vegas. I really appreciated the various ways the consequences were implemented; not only were there mutually exclusive consequences that changed the sort of quests one could get from the quest hubs (Highpool and AG Center), but there were also gameplay ramifications as they affected the potential recruits (each with different skill sets) and the difficulty level of the final encounters.
The complexity surrounding the quest structure is also worth commending. I appreciated how nearly every single quest hub gave the player the choice of aligning with one faction or the other, or even sabotaging the efforts of both. The Mad Monks Vs DBM conflict in the canyon was particularly great since there was a lot of moral ambiguity surrounding the underlying factional conflict. The intricate quest design of Hollywood and The Bastion also deserves a special mention owing to how deftly the quest designers meld the main quests of two quest hubs together while offering numerous alternative paths.
I also appreciated the character progression system. I haven't theory-crafted min-max builds so I cannot partake in a detailed discussion that analyzes the pros and cons of how useful each attribute is, but I did enjoy the amount of planning I did while designing my party. Despite recruiting 3 additional companions and spreading the various skills around, I still had nowhere near enough skill points to pass all the skill checks I came across, which is a plus in my book: I had to live with the choices I had made.
All this said, there are many issues with the game that I hope InXile rectifies in future Wasteland entries:
Combat: I haven't mentioned the combat yet since there is not much going for it except for the fact that it is turn-based. The combat is tediously simplistic to the point that the Outdoorsman skill that skips a lot of the random combat is almost a necessity to enjoy the game. The AI almost always bumrushes the player so most encounters play out the same way. There is also very little decision making while in actual combat: most of it boils down to choosing between burst or single fire modes, and whether to take a headshot or not. Adding aimed shots would be welcome, but I hope they just don't stop there. I'd like them to not just copy Fallout 1/2's combat and call it a day; as they did with the cover system, I'd like them to brainstorm further additions that enhance the range of tactics available.
Gameplay balance: Their armour system needs work to put it mildly, as does the weapon balancing. The game gave me strong Dead Man's Switch vibes owing to how Assault Rifles dominate the other weapon skills more often than not.
Imbalanced number of skill checks: Certain skills such as bartering, animal whisperer and mechanical repair rarely see much use compared to overused stuff such as demolitions, safecracking and lockpicking. Speaking of demolitions, it's ridiculous that there were literally hundreds of trapped containers and mines in the game (I'm actually mighty curious if anyone has kept track of this number). At least we now know that if there is a shortage of metal scraps for trade in the future, traps and bombs would be the next form of currency owing to how plentiful they apparently are in the world of Wasteland 2.
Nature of skill checks: I far prefer threshold skill checks to these chance-based ones, especially given the suspiciously high frequencies of failures (oddly, the conversation skill checks are based on a threshold). More importantly, the skill checks amount to a big time sink as the game is needlessly littered with hundreds upon hundreds of containers on which to use these skill checks. Even worse is that a lot of the loot is randomized (an increasingly frequent trend that I dislike greatly). Sure, I can elect not to open all the containers, but old habits are hard to break, especially when all the exp they give begins to add up. In the future, I sincerely wish they elect for a quality over quantity approach, where there is maybe a tenth of such skill checks pertaining to loot containers, and the containers themselves all have hand-placed loot. Also the ability to use non-conversation skill checks in dialogues with NPCs would be a good addition that further improves the already impressive quest design.
Conversations: The NPC dialogues are well written for the most, apart from a few jarring examples, but the conversations do not resemble a normal conversation at all. Your Rangers' responses exhibit very little personality apart from the Hard Ass/Smart Ass/Kiss Ass dialogue options. The rest of the time they just interrogate NPCs for information with dialogue that goes, "What can you tell me about XYZ?". There is ample room for improvement as far as conversations are concerned.
Storytelling and content of the main quest: Surely there's a better way to tell a story than to have a massive info dump in the final 30 minutes of the game? In all the hours before the final missions, the main plot/conflict has very little presence. During the course of the game, there were hardly any interactions with Matthias' faction or any foreshadowing of his reasons for his actions. Instead, the player wanders around the wasteland for 60+ hours dealing with issues not pertaining to Matthias and his faction at all. If not for the arbitrary rad suits requirement, the main quest could have logically been completed right after landing in LA.
Even the content of the main quest left a lot to be desired. It borrowed so heavily from Wasteland 1 and the Fallouts that I felt a serious case of deja vu. The other faction conflicts, such as the already mentioned Mad Monks/DBM conflict were far more interesting and inventive that it raised my expectations for the main quest that the game didn't come close to matching. A weak main quest doesn't harm the game much though because the best parts of the game involve interacting with nearly a dozen different factions, and these interactions are not retroactively ruined by the rushed finale.
All in all, it was a good effort from InXile for their first proper CRPG attempt. There is a lot to improve mechanically, but they get the quest design, writing and C&C mostly right -- which is encouraging since these three elements are not so easily improved from one game to the next. I'll be keenly watching their future projects, hoping they improve upon the solid foundation they have here.
Game desperately needs some synergy between attributes and skills. Demolitions working on explosive items being the most obvious, it makes you think "this obviously wasn't an oversight because its so blatantly commonsense.... so why didn't they do it?"
loot system
unbalanced skill system and filler skills
the ending
game pacing
map design
some voice acting (way better if they used text only)
non-cohesive art style
too many bugs at release
combat gets stale easily
camera positioning
abysmal portrait re-usage
How is this like Skyrim?
I don't know if this is intentional, but when they say it's like fallout, they basically clearly imply it's like the Skyrim series, yet this is point and click top view like in 1992 when PCs couldn't make real graphics and it's not even open world...
Game does not have a language filter
I was thinking about getting it, but then checked out the ESRB rating which indicated even the F word is used. Devs said they were considering a language filter, but then based on another thread, they decided to cut it since it was not a trivial addition. Just a message to the Devs - I, for one, have decided to not buy the game due to the lack of the filter.
Note To Others: Yes, I am mature enough (43 years old). No, the violence probably wouldn't bother me, but the profanity does
I finished the game earlier today and I liked it a lot. Despite its many issues, I reckon it's the best game I've played all year. Given the sort of games InXile was making prior to the Kickstarter pitch, I was highly skeptical of how Wasteland 2 would turn out, despite all the talent they had recruited for making the game. Wasteland 2 eventually turning out to be a well-written CRPG with lots of non-linear quest design with abundant C&C is one of the best gaming surprises I've had all year.
All in all, it was a good effort from InXile for their first proper CRPG attempt. There is a lot to improve mechanically, but they get the quest design, writing and C&C mostly right -- which is encouraging since these three elements are not so easily improved from one game to the next. I'll be keenly watching their future projects, hoping they improve upon the solid foundation they have here.
on youtube I can see headshots, mass executions, limbs flying on theatres of war but I can't see a nipple. God forbid that!
and then that dumbfuck wants a language filter...
I think Fallout 1 and 2 had an option to filter, that was set to off by default. Don't know if its a vanilla feature or a mod tho since I only played Fallout games modded.
