Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #53: Beta Released

[Excidium II]

It's p. sad that combat sucks since they had good ideas on paper about enviroment interaction and such.

 

[Roguey]

Eh, I remember when the sky was falling with Wasteland 2. Then it turned out all right.

After about five months of patching.

 

[Excidium II]

Then it turned out all right.

lol not sure by which definition.

 

[Daedalos]

Then it turned out all right.

lol not sure by which definition.

Everybody elses besides yours and a few other select edgelords?

 

[Excidium II]

Then it turned out all right.

lol not sure by which definition.

Everybody elses besides yours and a few other select edgelords?

I thought you hated it and TToN was your last hope for InXile.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I thought you hated it and TToN was your last hope for InXile.

Dildolos couldn't stop talking about how wonderful the game was. At least the degenerate is consistent in his inexplicable fascination of inxile.

 

[Morality Games]

Then it turned out all right.

lol not sure by which definition.

Few people are going to ever say that it is a super amazing game, but the Director's cut greatly improved the overall game feel and added feats. People that still cared enough to invest effort and emotion into it walked away feeling mostly contented.

 

[Excidium II]

The feats are p. meaningless. Specially because of the way their requirements are locked on the skill tracks (which nobody but the 10 int skill monkey has more than 3) you never have any actual choice in which to pick as there's always a no-brainer. The way character "builds" play out just doesn't change. Compare to Underrail feats for example.

As for the game content, it didn't change in any spectacular way at least for the 30 or so hours i dedicated to the DC.

 

[Roguey]

Then it turned out all right.

lol not sure by which definition.

By the Roguey definition

(mostly-comprehensive impressions of Wasteland 2 for easier searching in the future)

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-129#post-4019823
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-129#post-4031073
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-130#post-4033218
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-134#post-4066181
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-135#post-4084760
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-directors-cut.94233/page-136#post-4122091

 

[Excidium II]

Isn't your tl;dr that the game picks up after Arizona? I mean in the time it takes for WL2 to supposedly get good you could finish an actually good game.

 

[Morality Games]

The feats are p. meaningless. Specially because of the way their requirements are locked on the skill tracks (which nobody but the 10 int skill monkey has more than 3) you never have any actual choice in which to pick as there's always a no-brainer. The way character "builds" play out just doesn't change. Compare to Underrail feats for example.

As for the game content, it didn't change in any spectacular way at least for the 30 or so hours i dedicated to the DC.

Well, consider the superficial flavor of skills in Dragon Age: Origins and compare to how that made the game feel "better" than subsequent entries Dragon Age franchise. Even if it doesn't play like a real RPG simply having the menu present with funny descriptions makes it feel more like one.

Content in Wasteland II was always pretty good, there was a decent amount of reactivity and fairly interactive combat. It suffers from the usual over emphasis on balance that (as one example among many potential strategies) makes it impossible to engineer a party of canon fodder around one laser mega canon death tank character, which also means you never get the excitement of discovering a laser mega canon death tank weapon that makes your build come together, at least for a couple character levels. Instead they went for the idea you need to build a party (4 rangers, recruit 3 henchmen) with the most number of unlocking skills so you can overcome the access denial-driven environments, which was their idea of simulating what it would be like to be a party of desert warriors scavenging for equipment in a resource scarce post-apocalyptic world in combination with a dungeon crawling, Icewind Dale inspired looting system.

It what it is. The fundamental impediment to enjoying "what it is" is that the game felt like crap to play in so many ways.

 

[Excidium II]

Even if it doesn't play like a real RPG simply having the menu present with funny descriptions makes it more feel like one.

Ok I now understand the standards in place.

 

[Morality Games]

Even if it doesn't play like a real RPG simply having the menu present with funny descriptions makes it more feel like one.

Ok I now understand the standards in place.

It's an important difference. Playing and especially beating a game takes a lot of emotional investment on the part of the player, so making them feel comfortable with their investment goes a long way toward allowing them to find enjoyment in what they are doing.

Small things like that are the cornerstone difference between being angry and offended at the service during a nine hour flight and sort of enduring it to sort of enjoying it.

 

[Roguey]

Isn't your tl;dr that the game picks up after Arizona? I mean in the time it takes for WL2 to supposedly get good you could finish an actually good game.

Overall, Arizona was all right. Worse level design than Fallout Tactics, about the same when it comes to attrition-based-difficulty, but better in nearly every other category. The takeaway here is that it pays to go in with extraordinarily low expectations instead of expecting an instant classic on the first try (though tbh I don't consider this to be all that worse than those 90s RPGs).

 

[Excidium II]

I honestly have no memory of experiencing any content nearly as bad as Rail Nomads to this day.

 

[Morality Games]

I honestly have no memory of experiencing any content nearly as bad as Rail Nomads to this day.

I admit that that stretch of content that ought to have been the high point of Arizona was torturous to play. Nothing worked right. The dialogue trees were buggy, the distances between objectives were too huge and empty and required excessive amounts of backtracking. Worst of all, the C&C was counter intuitive.

But, that's what I meant when I said improving the game feel helped alleviate the distress caused by such environments.

 

[Excidium II]

Also all the combat encounters on that area are really samey.

 

[Roguey]

I honestly have no memory of experiencing any content nearly as bad as Rail Nomads to this day.

I didn't like the way the level was designed, otherwise nothing about it particularly bothered me.

Of course it helps that I went through conversations exactly as the designers intended and didn't have to do any backtracking.

 

[Septaryeth]

The feats are p. meaningless. Specially because of the way their requirements are locked on the skill tracks (which nobody but the 10 int skill monkey has more than 3) you never have any actual choice in which to pick as there's always a no-brainer. The way character "builds" play out just doesn't change. Compare to Underrail feats for example.

As for the game content, it didn't change in any spectacular way at least for the 30 or so hours i dedicated to the DC.

Well, not sure about Underrail, since I haven't play it yet, but I'm very certain my characters have so many feats and so many skills it's disgusting.

My int 10 monkey got 7 skills with 5 of them maxed out.
Sniper, int 4, max three skills with two skills at level 7.
Brawler, int 4, max three skills with two skills at level 6.
Tech, int 9, max 6 skills with one at 9.
Scotchmo, int 4, max three skills with one skill at level 7.
Ralphy, int 4, max four skills.
Mutant, int 5, max five skills.

Feats and skillbooks make it super easy to max out, even without the accessories.
Feats for conversational skills save up dozens of the SP easily. Since my int 10 monkey covered so many skills, there really is no point of having others learning new skills.
I mainly max them out of pure laziness so I don't have to switch accessories between combat and exploration.
Most of the non-maxed-out skills I have are repeated and I never use them anyway.

One thing I like about feats is how they managed to pump up my tech, making her a fast runner, an awesome damage dealer for enemies in cover or the bane of robots and synthetics.
And sniper with feats is just making all combats prior to the final one too easy. You get one extra AP for wearing light armor, and another one for not moving, and reduced AP cost for crouching.
Now give him a wedding ring that adds initiative to compensate for the slowness...that's two 100% criting headshots from .50 at the start of every combat.

Now, quirks, that's another story...I only ever use them for my int 10 monkey since he's never going to do anything other than healing.

 

[almondblight]

I can't say any of those stories have left me dumbfounded, and they unfold in a rather characteristic manner.

Morte's was particularly disappointing to me. "Don't trust the skull" - no wait, you can pretty much entirely trust him. A game like that could have lent itself well to Memento like twists and turns, but pretty much everyone who joins up with you is on the level (the only real "twist" being the "Hey, 'sup, can you kill the guy you've been following around loyally?" " 'K, no prob" thing with one character at the end).

 

[Prime Junta]

It's p. sad that combat sucks since they had good ideas on paper about enviroment interaction and such.

The environment interaction works (when present) and is pretty cool. It's the rest of it that's a bit meh. As I said in the other thread, I don't know how much payoff there would be to play a combat-focus character, as a social/lore focused character will (1) get more options to resolve things and avoid combat and (2) more options to resolve the combat in interesting ways through environment interactions.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

It's p. sad that combat sucks since they had good ideas on paper about enviroment interaction and such.

How interesting could it be even on paper when it was always going to be entirely non-systemic, limiting it in scope and possible player creativity from the get-go?

 

[Caconym]

Cleve might know who is behind this.

Some wonderful Chilean insane people.

Spoiler

Sorry for the OFF, but... also:

 

[DosBuster]

Fun fact: Rail Nomads initial paper design was done by Brian Fargo.

But yeah, Rail Nomads is by far the most boring part of any game I've ever played.

 

[Jarpie]

Fun fact: Rail Nomads initial paper design was done by Brian Fargo.

But yeah, Rail Nomads is by far the most boring part of any game I've ever played.

I take it you didn't play Pillars of Eternity?