Wasteland The Wasteland 2 Beta Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[hiver]

Ive just checked a few of the trailers they put up on steam page.

Endless enemy variations? ... Endless?
Ive seen more enemy types and variations in first hour of OS then in whole W2 beta.

Plus all the other assorted hype keywords - that dont have anything to do with the actual gameplay and quite a few are actual lies.

I mean, hype and marketing, ok - fine. But outright lying? I was a bit surprised.
I guess i need to copy paste my review there.

 

[Athelas]

I think the drowning kid scenario is also featured in one of the trailers, with the totem killing him.

 

[Lhynn]

Review and bad press on an early access game. is it me or hiver levels of retardation and butthurt are reaching new heights?

 

[hiver]

I think the drowning kid scenario is also featured in one of the trailers, with the totem killing him.

yeah, camera in maximum forced close up as the totem falls - dark humor, they call it.

 

[felipepepe]

I mean, hype and marketing, ok - fine. But outright lying? I was a bit surprised.

I pointed that months ago, but Brother None just shrugged. Fargo & inXile seem to think it's perfectly ok to lie and make impossible promises about W2, because "everyone does it!!", but there's a HUGE difference from using subjective terms and hype-words like "Majestic/Mind-Blowing/Citizen Kane of Gaming/Insane amount of X" and objective and measurable features like "Endless Enemies". Buzzwords are just that, but "Endless Enemies" describes a feature the game clearly doesn't have; enemies aren't even randomly or procedurally generated, they are quite limited in fact.

But of course, I'm nitpicking. And when someone buys this, then opens a thread on the Steam forums asking for a refund based on false information, he will also be nitpicking/trolling. Promises & features are just words you write to sell more.

 

[agris]

I'd sadfist that post if I could

 

[veryalien]

There are only two possibilities:

(1) Wasteland 2 was rushed. They need more time to do it right.

(2) Wasteland 2 is doomed because the project has been mismanaged. Big names wrote a bunch of documents and had a vision, and a production team is not able to deliver on that.

We'll find out this summer.

It's a red flag when combat is given an overhaul in the last 3 months. No way this gets balanced without a statistician on the team. I don't need to be a game developer to realize that.

 

[shihonage]

Brenda Romero managed to create leveling, inventory and quest systems in 3 months before shipping a game on 3 console platforms.

Of course, the end result lacked balance and was too easy.

 

[Gord]

If it gives you any hope, the D:OS alpha/beta is doing just this all the time.
It has been said before, but combat balancing stuff seems to generally come quite late in development (which explains some things...).

 

[Infinitron]

Here's the trailer hiver and felipe were talking about:



I must say, some of those maps look reasonably open. And they're all zoomed really far out too.

 

[veryalien]

Brenda Romero managed to create leveling, inventory and quest systems in 3 months before shipping a game on 3 console platforms.

Of course, the end result lacked balance and was too easy.

Yes for an action RPG where you controlled one character.

The Banner Saga built combat before they built the campaign. Torment is already having its combat designed before production.

Not sure WTF happened to WL2 that combat has to revamped so late.

 

[felipepepe]

I must say, some of those maps look reasonably open. And they're all zoomed really far out too.

They are all maps from the beta, you can try them out now. They look open because what they show are the "pockets" of event, that are large, but in fact are connected to other similar areas only by linear paths.

 

[MicoSelva]

Yes, the game does have some open spaces, but they are not that big and are connected to each other by corridors. But that alone would be perfectly fine.
What is worse, there are very few interesting things to find while exploring these places. Combined with serviceable but not amazing writing, the game does not 'hook' the player enough to draw him/her to play some more.

I had a very similar feeling while playing Fallout 3 - (most of) the content was ok, nothing amazing, but not atrocious either, but I did not feel the need to play some more between sessions and I got bored with it when playing longer than an hour at a time. In shorter sessions, the game was entertaining enough.

Of course, F3 also contained a bunch of annoying & retarded stuff that eventually made me quit the game, so there's that.

The most entertainment I had with W2 so far was roaming around the wasteland, seeking hidden caches and random encounters. Some of the latter were pretty deadly, which was only a bonus.

Anyway, this is exactly the reason why I usually do not touch unfinished games. The difference between a final version and WIP can be heaven and earth and I feel like many people here are doing themselves a disservice by playing this beta. You get only one shot at first impression. Wasteland 2 had sky-high expectations built around to the level where even a finished and polished game could be a disappointment - and seeing it half-done is just depressing for many people.

 

[Bluewave256]

From what I can see from that video and can read from the mail updates I remain cautiously optimist.. We had some pretty big crap lately but I will take any game that is at least good rather that another popamole turd..

 

[Kem0sabe]

The game still looks horribly unoptimized in that video, slow, janky, unwieldy gameplay. Will they ever manage to make it play well performance wise?

 

[cvv]

Anyway, this is exactly the reason why I usually do not touch unfinished games. The difference between a final version and WIP can be heaven and earth and I feel like many people here are doing themselves a disservice by playing this beta. You get only one shot at first impression.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

I haven't been following this for a while, care to tell what's making people go banal shit boring with this game? or is the codex just being the codex?

 

[felipepepe]

I haven't been following this for a while, care to tell what's making people go banal shit boring with this game? or is the codex just being the codex?

In short, it's a game that lacks a vision. It wastes all the opportunities the setting and lack of publisher offered, making it a soulless and boring game that feels like someone is just pasting systems from other RPGs together. Maps are linear corridors, combat is simplistic, quests are cookie-cutter shit and nothing in the game is remotely interesting or exciting. It's pure mediocrity, a game that you play because is in front of you, without ever giving much thought, and forgetting about it the moment that you exit the game.

 

[Infinitron]

I haven't been following this for a while, care to tell what's making people go banal shit boring with this game? or is the codex just being the codex?

felipepepe finds the premise of the game boring. A bunch of edgy people who mostly haven't played the game brofist all of his posts. A bunch of optimistic people who also mostly haven't played the game argue with him. This is what we've been doing for the past 100 pages or so

 

[felipepepe]

I haven't been following this for a while, care to tell what's making people go banal shit boring with this game? or is the codex just being the codex?

felipepepe finds the premise of the game boring. A bunch of edgy people who mostly haven't played the game brofist all of his posts. A bunch of optimistic people who also mostly haven't played the game argue with him. This is what we've been doing for the past 100 pages or so

The execution is boring, not the premise. But yeah, the rest is about right.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Fargo & inXile seem to think it's perfectly ok to lie and make impossible promises about W2, because "everyone does it!!", but there's a HUGE difference from using subjective terms and hype-words like "Majestic/Mind-Blowing/Citizen Kane of Gaming/Insane amount of X" and objective and measurable features like "Endless Enemies". Buzzwords are just that, but "Endless Enemies" describes a feature the game clearly doesn't have; enemies aren't even randomly or procedurally generated, they are quite limited in fact.

Well, "endless" in this case is obviously hypespeak for "a lot" (Borderlands 2 doesn't really have a billion guns either). I think it's silly but not an outright lie (yes, maybe there are nor "a lot" of enemies either but you can't measure that anyway)

 

[MicoSelva]

The funniest thing is this will still be inXile's best game (not that much of a feat, I know) and a quite nice RPG, but since it was the first Kickstarter Incline Game(TM) which The Codex supported from the start and expectations are/were through the roof, many will be disappointed by the end result.

People need to realise that inXile =/= Black Isle. Their hearts may be in the right places, but their past releases have shown that their gamecrafting skills are somewhat lacking. They might improve in time, obviously, as their designers/writers gain experience, or they hire better ones.

 

[felipepepe]

Well, "endless" in this case is obviously hypespeak for "a lot" (Borderlands 2 doesn't really have a billion guns either). I think it's silly but not an outright lie.

Indeed, Borderlands 2 doesn't have a billion guns, that's why they never said that it has:

Bazillions of Guns

87 Bazillion...Everything

Bazillion is a fake number, billion and endless aren't. There's a good reason for this.

 

[undecaf]

felipepepe finds the premise of the game boring. A bunch of edgy people who mostly haven't played the game brofist all of his posts. A bunch of optimistic people who also mostly haven't played the game argue with him. This is what we've been doing for the past 100 pages or so

He does have a point, though. The gameplay so far (and especially combat) feels somewhat cluttered and overthought - kinda like trying to do too much with too little. And further - though this may just be me - there seems to be this odd imbalance between different gameplay elements; meaning, there's about 20 or so skills dedicated for noncombat activities, three of which are dialog only, and there was this talk about "heavy literary focus" during the KS, but all of that feels kinda marginalized and overshadowed by the various combat events and tweaks, there's little sense of intrigue or drive for discovery of the world and it's inhabitants (and it doesn't help that the wireframe skeleton of a dialog interface screams "GET AWAY FROM ME!" everytime there's some talking to do - though that may be fixed soonish since they're asking about opinions on it). I've only played around 20 hours and not explored everything there is to explore; but the overarcing feel the game emits is that there is still a boatload of work to do to get it somewhere close to "right" (however people interpret that) and 3 months before polishing phase might not be enough.

 

[cvv]

The funniest thing is this will still be inXile's best game (not that much of a feat, I know) and a quite nice RPG, but since it was the first Kickstarter Incline Game(TM) which The Codex supported from the start and expectations are/were through the roof, many will be disappointed by the end result.

Tbh I'd be quite ok if W2 ends up being "quite nice". I've never played the first one and never expected anything, really.

I think the real touchstone of inXile's ability to make good on promises will be the new Torment. Whereas the old Wasteland is a cute little jewell a handful of grognards rave about, the PST is considered the best videogame ever created by an armada of loyal fans and not only by them. Whereas the W2 had only Fargo's name to "boast" about, TToN is parading around the biggest and most respected names in the genre. Whereas the expectation for W2 was high, for TToN it's through the roof. If inXile fucks up this one its fortunes and the careers of all involved will be poisoned for years to come.