What do you want/not want in Wasteland 2

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There's not much point to look forward to game with combat system as good as Fallouts, cause Fallout combat was really mediocre.

Worse than that. It was terrible. Even Wasteland itself had a better combat.

it lacked fully controllable party members, encounters tailored for such and just better balance overall. sure add in stances, tweak guns, that is simple enough. but more than that will just take development time that is better used somewhere else. we are talking about a rpg here, not a tactical squad game.

I'm not saying Fallout was all THAT bad. What I don't like about it is that it lacks realism in favor of balancing character builds. Take Fallout's system, add stances and cover, plus interrupts, none of that "firing a pistol takes as much time as kicking someone in the head" bullshit, and that's fine by me. I'd like to see some more exotic combat tactics in the later game (ie something that would allow you to use energy melee weapons like the proton axe on a large armored opponent) but I don't what the combat system built from the ground up to make this viable versus people with guns.

This is Wasteland 2, not some fancy 'the new shit' RPG. I would want to see them attempt to stay as true to the original as possible by analyzing a set of updates that would be most easily rolled into a new version of the game(Such as dialogue trees). For example they COULD have kept the same combat system and saved themselves a bunch of work, but the interview reveals otherwise. Obviously they would at least update the graphics, audio, and UI, but I get the feeling they will be starting from scratch and WL2 will not play anything like WL1.

Since they're going with a new proprietary engine they probably won't use any original code -- although they should! With modern code design tools they could extract much of the original code(I assume it is written in C) into a base preliminary software design. This could work on the inventory/equipment system for example.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

JA2 is probably the best example of a squad-based RPG. They are not mutually exclusive concepts.

I guess I misread his post, I thought he was saying we're asking for the moon because JA2s combat system is superior to just about anything "in its own genre", but 10+ years later developers still aren't using it. The question is why not?

In MOO2 the player can choose between tactical or quick combat. If you're in a hurry, and you know you are going to win without taking casualties then use the fast version. If you're a big combatfag (like me) or are facing difficult odds, choose tactical. Designing a combat engine like the original Wasteland's would be trivial, so it's not as if adding that option would be much on the budget. I think the winning formula would be:

The original Wasteland (2d top-down exploration, MisterStone 's "Use Skill/Stat on Object mechanic", same setting and style like the stuff MisterStone and Grim Monk mentioned) + JA2 squad-based combat and equipment options + brilliant writing (Brian Fargo is no longer the man for the job).

That would be the a good start in the right direction.

Game needs some 3 Dawg.

I was about to write a long ass post on what I would want in a wasteland sequel, but then I realized I could sum it up in a word. Fallout

What I want in Wasteland 2:

No more consulting the paragraph book.

Keep the Bard's Tale style combat (it's not perfect, I know), but add visual depictions of every combat encounter.

It sucks in some ways that we have to state shit like 'no romances' to avoid Bio-horror-ware slashfiction style of writing, because romances can be part of a good plot, including good game plots. They were used well in PS:T, because they were about the game's theme, with the 'I choose to shag X or Y' part minimised - all of your followers have suffered the curse of Torment BECAUSE of their loyalty to you, and Annah's curse is that she's in the worst of all possible relationships (in love with a doomed immortal who brings misery to all who accompany him?...great boyfriend material there...). In case the player has missed the obvious, Ravel points it out painfully to each of them, leading to the one time in the game that Morte actually loses his shit and gets angry rather than deflecting comments about his bodiless state with counter-jibes and jokes, with the odd one out being Fall-from-Grace, who has only recently joined your party in the overall timeline (noting that Vhalior and Ignus copped their Torments a loooonggg time ago, and Nordrom copped his as soon as you open the box). Then in the best-possible-ending finale, you resurrect everyone, giving them all the opportunity to live free from your curse, only for FFG to vow (in a dimension where vows of that kind are binding) to return to the hells and never stop looking for you - when it's made very clear that's an impossible task and she's just been led by 'love'/curse-induced-idiocy to suffer her version of the curse of Torment.

Now that was fine because the romances came second to the plot and themes. None of this 'design me a few romance options, one slutty, one virginial'- instead it's 'here's a character, here's the theme, just happens that one way of implementing the theme in that case was through a romance plot.

What Bioware doesn't realise is that for some time now, they've been writing porn. Lame censored non-graphical porn, but porn nonetheless. Imagine Bladerunner written by Bioware. You'd have Decker as THE Bladerunner, the badass who EVERY motherfucking girl, guy, cyborg and alien AI on the planet wants to get it on with. IT'S A FUCKING PORN MOVIE!!!! One of those 70s ones, with plots and all, but still - a motherfucking porn film!!! Because everywhere he goes, he's getting in with folk for reasons that have nothing to do with the plot.

Compare that to the ACTUAL film. There's a romance and it's central to the plot AND themes, but to my memory there isn't even a sex scene. Decker falling in love with (forget her name - the replicant...ahem, the 'other' replicant, who doesn't know it is a replicant) reflects the moral ambiguity of any distinction between genuine intelligence, whether artificial or natural, and the 3 main characters - Decker, Rutger Hauer's lead rebel replicant and the love interest - all becoming ambivalent about the whole distinction, until Decker doesn't care that she's a replicant, doesn't care about knowing whether or not he's a replicant, and where Hauer accepts his mortality and lets Decker go as a fellow (and morally equal) living being. To take the romance out of that plot would trash the film. But to do Bioware-romances to it would be even worse.

You'd think that game developers would 'get' that. That they'd understand that sure there's money to be made in a dating sim, just like any other type of porn, but that doesn't mean that you throw it in your story-driven games as a fucking feature!. That romances can be used as wonderful story techniques (though I have to agree that the best ones have always been 'hatemances', just look at the classics - Hamlet driving Ophelia to insanity and suicide, Edmund playing Lear's daughters against each other having backstabbed his way from messenger boy to one step from the throne, Othello's jealousy being preyed on by Iago...). How did we come to this, where a legitimate story technique must be ruled out, because we can't trust game studios not to just dive headfirst into the porn market instead.

Best way of balancing melee, to my view, would be to take advantage of the NY Police's gun v knife tests from a few years back. An experienced officer with regular firearm practice, approaching normally (so weapon loaded, but with safety on and in holster), is at a disadvantage to an average knife-wielder at 30 feet or less (knife-wielder also has to draw from his pocket or belt). Commonly cited in defence of police shootings - that even with a gun, you're still in danger when the guy starts waving a knife around. That's a fucking huge distance - and let's not pretend that our characters walk around with their safety off and their weapons shoulder-mounted all day. Okay, maybe you can have a slower-moving 'readied' approach, provoking warnings and hostile reactions in populated areas (like if you went around waving a gun in a public place), but this is a crpg - so we aren't talking about the AVERAGE knife wielder. We're talking about a guy who seems like he's been custom-designed to kill people with knives (because he has been...um...custom designed to kill people with knives). Big point investment in speed and knives, and our guy is cutting off folks' trigger fingers before they can fire. In party-based tactical games, I like builds that give a character the option of being extremely useful in some circumstances, while weak in others, and I can think of 2 was that this kind of knife thinking could make for entertaining builds. The obvious one would be the speed/knife/stealth (slitting throats and trigger fingers before folks know where he is), and less obvious is the massive-investment-in-speed approach where he's a specialist in taking out heavy weaponry. He's the guy you send to rush the enemy's rocket launcher, fast enough to beat the reactions of the enemy squad's scouts and able to take out the heavy weapons guy before he can one-shot-kill most of your team. Both builds would have dominance over guns in enclosed environments and towns, due to the aforementioned 30 foot rule, but would have to switch to a backup pistol that they're pretty shit at using whenever the group is caught in a standard fire-fight (so helping the team greatly in some circumstances, but being a liability in others).

Except knifes are pretty fucking lethal.

I'd prefer to copy JA2 exactly. Knifes are a lethal silent weapon that becomes useless if they are aware of you from enough far away to get a interrupt, and are inferior in most ways to a silenced handgun (can be totally silent when attacking as a bonus, but you need high stealth anyway to approach) so are mostly used as a challenge in indoor fighting. Or they can be thrown but with severely limited range and only lethal on certain body positions of the target body position; back of the head, throat (harder)

Would actually be quite pleased if it was 3D. Not Oblivion with Guns nonsense, but let us swivel the camera, zoom in, pan out, etc.

Want to see funny/nonsensical stuff: talking mutant animals, STOP signs as shields, mutant prostitutes with 3 tits.

Fallout2 qualities plus FalloutTactics combat.

Sounds like you're describing Oblivion with Guns nonsense to me, in which case just play Fallout 3.

Screw you guys. There was nothing wrong with it except those fucking slow melcars everywhere that at worst slowed everything into a crawl.

JA2 combat > Fallout combat

That wasn't the issue, but whatever.

And yeah, JA2-like combat would be great.

JA2-style combat is fine if it includes meson cannons and blood sausages.

The main thing I want is for Wasteland 3 to be an excellent turn-based hardcore rpg that sells absolute bundles and makes publishers decide that there is a decent, untapped market for quality games.

What I'd want for Wasteland 2 ?
Well, they should hire Mark Morgan for the soundtrack.
...
...
Wait, they've already hired him.

(cum in my pants)

In what way? I didn't play Oblivion but it seemed to be a pretty bland and generic world. And we already had VISA sign carrying monks in Wasteland, talking deathclaws in FO2, prostitutes in FO though # of tits was not mentioned.

Or if it's about the camera... It will most likely be 3D, deal with it. Is that a problem somehow?

Honestly yeah, I want a 3D Wasteland as much as I want a 3D X-Com (I don't.) Sadly, they are making the latter.

Ideally it should be 2D top-down exploration with JA2 style isometric squad-based combat, with a MOO2 'fast combat' (non-tactical) option that plays similar to combat from Wasteland 1.

But you are right, they would never do something like that...sadly. I wish KoTC caught on with more people than just gamers. That game could have started a 2D renaissance/revival.

So, is AoD just Oblivion with spears to you then?