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[Infinitron]

I'm more with felipepepe, the "standard fare" just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Fair enough, but I hope you realize that the people who decided to ditch PC-style RPGs and go into consoles probably said the same thing!

Me, I'll be glad if there's a Wasteland 3, 4 and 5. I say, rehash that standard fare without shame! And make it bigger and better every time. If only Baldur's Gate and Fallout could have had the same opportunity instead of dying in their primes.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

FFS, just look at the W2 thread. The game has been out for weeks and all you see are people talking about concepts & mechanics or bugs. Now go to other game threads, from Dark Souls and Wizardry 8 to D:OS or Underrail, and you'll see people talking about how they "did X and it was fun", tried Y and Z, was cool", etc... there's none of that in W2, you're just going through the motions, doing "RPG stuff".

This. In D:OS, I keep reading how sweet some stuff is in the alpha.
In Wasteland 2, I keep reading how it is only beta, and stuff will Improve...

I can't help but feel that Fallout itself would have been treated by you as "mediocre, uninspired" if it had been released today. "Rat cave with trash combat. And look at all these boring binary choices! Kill all the scorpions...or just blow up the cave! Kill all the raiders...or just convince them with a skill check. SO DEEP!!"

How many doritios? Or are you gay for Fargo?
In any case, Requesting White Knight tag for Infinitron

 

[Grunker]

^ Pretty much. Doing "RPG stuff", as felipe said, doesn't do it for anymore either, which is why we tried to do something different with AoD. Obviously, we could have done more and we could have done better, but our team is way too small and our focus has been on quest design, combat, and reactivity.

Here's my take on this debate:

a) Criticizing Age of Decadence for something it does not try to do is complete idiocy. "Exploration sucks, waaaah!" is an odd claim to make since AoD doesn't have exploration in the sense the criticism wants it to have. It's like criticizing Duke Nukem 3D for not having turn-based combat or whatever. So all this "AoD doesn't do X, Y or Z in the manner which I would like it to" is stupid. You chose to make a game about A, B and C instead. Now the quality of how you do A, B and C is what you should be judged on.

b) This is where the legitimate criticism comes in. When the game arbitrarily ends for you because you didn't guess how the "correct" distribution of skill points should be, that's a legitimate criticism. Because it's something AoD tries to get right, and doesn't. Right now, for me at least, much of the difficulty in AoD isn't that fantastic. A vast part of the game's difficulty doesn't come from system mastery, but from guessing games and learning by rote. In my mind you should have had "soft" consequences for almost every text failure (that is, your "ending" is worse based on text failures, or you get less reward from the quest or whatever), but I'm not sure how much of that you can fix now.

So yeah. Criticizing AoD for not being another game = stupid, criticizing elements in the actual game for being bad in context = valid.

Personally, I think AoD is quite fun and inventive, but it's not going to make my list of top RPGs, due to the issues listed

Your pacing would be improved 1000-fold if most paths could handle a mix of fighting and text-puzzling, but as it is, it is too much of an either/or in my opinion.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I PMD MY MAIN COMPLAINT TO VINCE A WHILE AGO

BASICALLY I FELT THE NONCOMBAT CHARACTERS HAD NO SENSE OF PROGRESSION AND GAINING POWER

I AM AT A LOSS ON HOW TO DO IT WITHIN AODS FRAMEWORK

LIKE OTHERS I AM INTERESTED BECAUSE IT IS DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT

 

[Vault Dweller]

b) This is where the legitimate criticism comes in. When the game arbitrarily ends for you because you didn't guess how the "correct" distribution of skill points should be, that's a legitimate criticism. Because it's something AoD tries to get right, and doesn't.

Can you elaborate?

Unless I'm missing something, you can die in text-adventure only if you attempt something risky, like infiltrating the palace and killing guards left and right, not when doing something mundane. Infiltrating and attacking are your choices and death is a fitting consequence there, no?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Sure thing, but even those things (well, except the returned father solution) could be seen by a jaded RPG player as "tired tropes I've seen a million times before", etc.

Yeah, I get that but people (well here at Codex atleast) will almost always welcome multiple solutions to a given quest, expecting original/unexpected solutions all the time is unreasonable of course (though the game should still strive to have as much as those as possible, just not make it it's main goal).

Anyway, don't want to derail the thread further, but felipe's statement that "AoD will have more fans and more endorsement, while W2 will just be replaced by any other cRPG", when the Codex's biggest thread by far is about a spiritual successor to the ultimate "going through the motions" RPG is pretty silly.

Well short term he's wrong but in the long term AOD might end up being this cool little cult hit that will many long lasting fans that replay it annually while Wasteland 2 will be seen as a solid game that was even crucial in "back to the roots" RPG renaissance/reviving the niche genre but felt short of its expectations/promises, the game from which people will move on once the novelty wears out and go back to replaying their Fallout 1/2, Wasteland and JA2.

Of course, this is just one possibility, beta is only one small part of the game (I like Fallout 2 even more than the first and is one of the games I replay the most but I would certainly not be blown away by demo/beta featuring Temple of Trials, Arroyo and Klamath) and from what I understand they plan to add a lot of C&C and reactivity to the game (I know shit about game designing process so I'll take their word for it).

People do fondly remember those games that checked all the boxes and did it competently, even if they weren't super-original.

People have different standards for competence.

 

[sea]

b) This is where the legitimate criticism comes in. When the game arbitrarily ends for you because you didn't guess how the "correct" distribution of skill points should be, that's a legitimate criticism. Because it's something AoD tries to get right, and doesn't.

Can you elaborate?

Unless I'm missing something, you can die in text-adventure only if you attempt something risky, like infiltrating the palace and killing guards left and right, not when doing something mundane. Infiltrating and attacking are your choices and death is a fitting consequence there, no?

Except in many quest-lines you are pretty much forced to do risky things. "Instant death" also applies in situations where you have only one possible choice that you could conceivably finish but end up failing or don't have enough points to ever win at for one reason or the other - it's the same thing in effect, game over. Now, sometimes other options exist, like "sell out my guild in exchange for my life", but that is a pretty harsh punishment for picking the "wrong" skills that you couldn't possibly know in advance.

 

[Grunker]

b) This is where the legitimate criticism comes in. When the game arbitrarily ends for you because you didn't guess how the "correct" distribution of skill points should be, that's a legitimate criticism. Because it's something AoD tries to get right, and doesn't.

Can you elaborate?

Unless I'm missing something, you can die in text-adventure only if you attempt something risky, like infiltrating the palace and killing guards left and right, not when doing something mundane. Infiltrating and attacking are your choices and death is a fitting consequence there, no?

Beyond what sea just said, I didn't mean die only. It's been a while since I played. I think the last time I played a Praetor, and it would quickly become evident whether you had "correctly" placed skill points or not, and if not, you'd start a downward spiral of ill fortune.

Regarding pacing, it also really felt like that background should be able to handle himself in a fight and in a political conversation or whatever, but splitting skill points fucks you, obviously. Again, that's the pacing issue. I wish that instead of such high bars for participation in one part of your game, your choice was more complex than choosing between two very linear styles of play.

 

[sea]

Beyond what sea just said, I didn't mean die only. It's been a while since I played. I think the last time I played a Praetor, and it would quickly become evident whether you had "correctly" placed skill points or not, and if not, you'd start a downward spiral of ill fortune.

Regarding pacing, it also really felt like that background should be able to handle himself in a fight and in a political conversation or whatever, but splitting skill points fucks you, obviously. Again, that's the pacing issue. I wish that instead of such high bars for participation in one part of your game, your choice was more complex than choosing between two very linear styles of play.

Exact same issue I had with Praetor. I was never sure whether I should be putting my points into combat skills or social ones, and the game never made it clear whether my path would lead to fighting or diplomacy. Any time it did, it was usually too late to change my point allocation (not that I would know what skill checks would be used in a given dialogue, anyway). Pretty much every time I did get into combat, I was basically screwed because my character was never a strong enough fighter to manage. You basically just have to save-scum, hoard all your points, strategically avoid certain checks so you have enough points for later ones, etc.

I find this kind of "gameplay" the ultimate in tedium and I certainly don't find it challenging in any way, except perhaps to my patience.

 

[Dr Schultz]

no Fallout-style skill-based system,

Sure it did. It didn't have as much granularity (and had attribute caps like Arcanum), but Fallout's level of granularity is awful. Wasteland 2's not that granular, and even AoD eventually moved away from it.

Unless you're referring to how every skill except decking is a combat skill.

and no environmental interaction using that system (it was a lot like AoD in that respect!),

Decking was sometimes used as a lockpick and for hacking computers without entering the Matrix. You could also send drones into vents, and there was at least one non-combat situation where that was beneficial. During combat, you could summon monsters from objects in the environment and place your casters on marked squares to boost their abilities.

and no full party creation,

Not necessarily a "right" thing.

And yes, if someone's already played Fallout, a game with the same level of quality is no longer good enough.

What about exploration, non linear progression and C&Cs. Does Shadowrun have them too :D?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Definitely more playable at this stage than D:OS, which is all sorts of clunky.

Speak for yourself, pal. While I can't even save and load games in WL2, both AoD and D:OS have been fine for me. AoD has had some funky shit here and there, but I've noticed nothing wrong with D:OS yet (other than it's obviously incomplete).

 

[DeepOcean]

I'm really amused will all this discussion of WL 2 mediocrity and how the codex darlings are so wonderful and perfect. Fallout 1 starts with you killing rats on a cave, then killing more rats on an abandoned vault, then going to Shady sands where you can kill radscorpions or blow up the cave (until this point the combat has really zero challenge or interesting things going on) and rescue Tandy. There are a few ways to rescue Tandy but it boils down to kill all the raiders or not and it doesn't make much difference. You go to Junktown, the only big quest in the whole town is to kill Gizmo or help him become the mayor of the town and you really are only going to see any consequence on a slide at the end of the game.

If there was a Fallout 1 beta (and it was 20% of the game), it would end more or less at the end of Junktown, really a shinning beacon of RPG awesomeness that beta would be, a really definitive proof of how a by the numbers RPG it was (assuming it wasn't a complete mess) . I think it is a problem of codexlandia jumping the gun. Jesus Christ, it will be awesome to read the butthurt on Torment and P:E beta/alpha/pre-alpha/zeta or delta.

 

[J_C]

Beyond what sea just said, I didn't mean die only. It's been a while since I played. I think the last time I played a Praetor, and it would quickly become evident whether you had "correctly" placed skill points or not, and if not, you'd start a downward spiral of ill fortune.

Regarding pacing, it also really felt like that background should be able to handle himself in a fight and in a political conversation or whatever, but splitting skill points fucks you, obviously. Again, that's the pacing issue. I wish that instead of such high bars for participation in one part of your game, your choice was more complex than choosing between two very linear styles of play.

Exact same issue I had with Praetor. I was never sure whether I should be putting my points into combat skills or social ones, and the game never made it clear whether my path would lead to fighting or diplomacy. Any time it did, it was usually too late to change my point allocation (not that I would know what skill checks would be used in a given dialogue, anyway). Pretty much every time I did get into combat, I was basically screwed because my character was never a strong enough fighter to manage. You basically just have to save-scum, hoard all your points, strategically avoid certain checks so you have enough points for later ones, etc.

I find this kind of "gameplay" the ultimate in tedium and I certainly don't find it challenging in any way, except perhaps to my patience.

To be honest the only big thing I hate about the game is that if yo a are a non-combat character you have to hoard skillpoints, and spend it according to the challange before you. I just don't see as good design. You have your character, hoarding 20 skill points> You run into a diplomacy problem, you put some skill points into persuasion/streetwise etc>you fail>reload>you spend some more skillpoints to diplomacy>repeat at every skillcheck. I've never seen this in any RPG, and since I don't like savescumming, I don't like to be forced to save scumm.

I'm really amused will all this discussion of WL 2 mediocrity and how the codex darlings are so wonderful and perfect. Fallout 1 starts with you killing rats on a cave, then killing more rats on an abandoned vault, then going to Shady sands where you can kill radscorpions or blow up the cave (until this point the combat has really zero challenge or interesting things going on) and rescue Tandy. There are a few ways to rescue Tandy but it boils down to kill all the raiders or not and it doesn't make much difference. You go to Junktown, the only big quest in the whole town is to kill Gizmo or help him become the mayor of the town and you really are only going to see any consequence on a slide at the end of the game.

If there was a Fallout 1 beta (and it was 20% of the game), it would end more or less at the end of Junktown, really a shinning beacon of RPG awesomeness that beta would be, a really definitive proof of how a by the numbers RPG it was (assuming it wasn't a complete mess) . I think it is a problem of codexlandia jumping the gun. Jesus Christ, it will be awesome to read the butthurt on Torment and P:E beta/alpha/pre-alpha/zeta or delta.

Yeah it pretty strange. 2 years ago the Codex would have killed anyone for an RPG like W2. But now that we have it, it is not good enough, we want more. Unbelievable that the Codex can never be satisfied.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Except in many quest-lines you are pretty much forced to do risky things.

Like?

Now, sometimes other options exist, like "sell out my guild in exchange for my life", but that is a pretty harsh punishment for picking the "wrong" skills that you couldn't possibly know in advance.

Like?

I'm just trying to understand. Obviously, when we designed the game, we didn't roll a dice to pick the next skill required to complete quests but used a more or less logical approach, yet some people, including you, feel that we feel short. Can you provide some examples showing where and how?

For example, some guy on Steam was upset that he used Sneaking to get into the outpost but he had no way of knowing that he will run into a locked chest and will need a skill he didn't have. If you like sneaking, odds are you'll come across a locked door/chest sooner or later. The way I see it, it should hardly come as an unexpected surprise. Similarly, it's logical to expect that at some point you'll run into guards and then you'll need either critical strike to take them out quickly or disguise/streetwise to pretend to be someone you are not and/or talk your way in or out.

Again, you basically just have to save-scum, hoard all your points, strategically avoid certain checks so you have enough points for later ones, etc. I find this kind of "gameplay" the ultimate in tedium.

How about making a logical character and taking him through the game without worrying about checks? I can assure you that save-scumming and hoarding aren't the only way to play the game.

 

[Vault Dweller]

To be honest the only big thing I hate about the game is that if yo a are a non-combat character you have to hoard skillpoints, and spend it according to the challange before you. I just don't see as good design. You have your character, hoarding 20 skill points> You run into a diplomacy problem, you put some skill points into persuasion/streetwise etc>you fail>reload>you spend some more skillpoints to diplomacy>repeat at every skillcheck. I've never seen this in any RPG, and since I don't like savescumming, I don't like to be forced to save scumm.

Then don't. Simple solution for simple problems.

 

[Grunker]

How about making a logical character and taking him through the game without worrying about checks?

My "logical Praetor" was one balanced between speech and combat, the way the whole concept was presented to me. It was exactly the sort of "gish" type I thought AoD would be great at handling. Unfortunately, the even spending of skill points made him pretty bad at fighting.

AoD has the same problem that Dishonored has, in my opinion. Deus Ex is great because it hands us a lot of tools, and asks, for each obstacle: "Which tool would you like to use now?" Mastery comes from proper tool selection. Dishonored instead tells you, at the beginning of the game: "Select one tool. Go complete the game with that."

AoD is similar in the way that to excel at the game, you have to specialize to an incredible degree, and play the game in a very linear fashion. You don't get to play around with the game's systems, making choices as you go. You're asked: "Hammer or Sickle?" and whichever you choose you better dedicate yourself to that shit.

 

[Stompa]

To be honest the only big thing I hate about the game is that if yo a are a non-combat character you have to hoard skillpoints, and spend it according to the challange before you. I just don't see as good design. You have your character, hoarding 20 skill points> You run into a diplomacy problem, you put some skill points into persuasion/streetwise etc>you fail>reload>you spend some more skillpoints to diplomacy>repeat at every skillcheck. I've never seen this in any RPG, and since I don't like savescumming, I don't like to be forced to save scumm.

It depends on the background very much. Merchants can roll through everything with persuasion and maybe a bit of lore, whereas thieves will be spreading really-really thin if they want to go non-combat way. It wouldn't be much of a problem if the reward was bigger for going that way with thief, but all you get is money, which are basically useless to you.

 

[Vault Dweller]

My "logical Praetor" was one balanced between speech and combat, the way the whole concept was presented to me.

The text says "some favor combat, others favor diplomacy", so not sure what you're referring to. Like any other class, you can start adding more skills later, but at first you have to specialize.

AoD is similar in the way that to excel at the game, you have to specialize to an incredible degree, and play the game in a very linear fashion. You don't get to play around with the game's systems, making choices as you go. You're asked: "Hammer or Sickle?" and whichever you choose you better dedicate yourself to that shit.

A choice between killing some bandits or talking your way past them isn't really a choice when you can easily do both.

 

[Grunker]

Let's take the Thief who only invested in Sneak, from your example. He is presented with a "oops, you can't go further, you have no lockpicking." In my mind, the great (as opposed to just OK) version of AoD would tell this Thief:

"You can't get this reward with lockpicking. As you have high Sneak, you can instead attempt to get out before being discovered, saying no to loot. If you have REALLY high Sneak AND Strength, you can try to make it off with the actual chest. If you invested in combat instead of lockpicking, then you can fight if you get caught."

In that example, you have multiple courses of action to make up for the lack of lockpicking. So lockpicking would have made the challenge less difficult, instead of being mandatory.

The conclusion then becomes that AoD's doom isn't poor game design as such, but rather too ambitious game design. I sympathize with the fact that you simply don't have the resources to make every scenario as complex as the one above, but in the end, that's the kind of complexity that your design needs to work perfectly, IMO. As is, I view your game a bit like I view Arcanum. It's a beautiful design document that isn't very rewarding to play except in a very few, select instances during which it is VERY rewarding to play. But those are few and far between.

(actually, I detest playing Arcanum and somewhat like playing AoD, but I'm sure you'll get the gist of it)

A choice between killing some bandits or talking your way past them isn't really a choice when you can easily do both.

1) Take my Sneak example. Who said you could "easily" do both?

2) Actually, the exact opposite of what you're saying here is true. Let's reword your quote a bit:

"A choice between killing some bandits and talking your way past them isn't really a choice when you're forced to do one."

But I get what you're saying: different tools should solve problems differently. That's not always the case in AoD though. Often, you need a specific tool to do a specific job. And since AoD is so heavily designed around extreme specialization, your character build decides WHICH obstacles you can approach, not HOW you approach obstacles.

 

[hiver]

a) Criticizing Age of Decadence for something it does not try to do is complete idiocy. "Exploration sucks, waaaah!" is an odd claim to make since AoD doesn't have exploration in the sense the criticism wants it to have. It's like criticizing Duke Nukem 3D for not having turn-based combat or whatever. So all this "AoD doesn't do X, Y or Z in the manner which I would like it to" is stupid. You chose to make a game about A, B and C instead. Now the quality of how you do A, B and C is what you should be judged on.

yup.

b) This is where the legitimate criticism comes in.

No its not.

When the game arbitrarily ends for you because you didn't guess how the "correct" distribution of skill points should be, that's a legitimate criticism. Because it's something AoD tries to get right, and doesn't. Right now, for me at least, much of the difficulty in AoD isn't that fantastic. A vast part of the game's difficulty doesn't come from system mastery, but from guessing games and learning by rote. In my mind you should have had "soft" consequences for almost every text failure (that is, your "ending" is worse based on text failures, or you get less reward from the quest or whatever), but I'm not sure how much of that you can fix now.

Thats not really true. At worst it may happen in few places - and most of all because players just want to play that hybrid character setup and spread skill points too much. usually.
All other such instances have a very good reason for turning out like that in the narrative of the quest setup, etc.

Your pacing would be improved 1000-fold if most paths could handle a mix of fighting and text-puzzling, but as it is, it is too much of an either/or in my opinion.

Funny thing, thats exactly how my Boatman of Styx assassin plays, even though its heavily combat build with just some points spent into few basic civil skills.[/quote]

 

[Grunker]

Plus, you're being reductionist about your own system, VD. You have a whole bunch of non-combat skills. No one is saying they want to max out everything, people are simply leery about why the question of "combat vs. non-combat" is so linear and polarizing.

Someone suggested splitting skill point pools so you got one pool for combat and one for non-combat. I once suggested something similar. Perhaps that is way to extreme, but at least it's the perfect example of what the issue people have is.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Let's take the Thief who only invested in Sneak, from your example. He is presented with a "oops, you can't go further, you have no lockpicking." In my mind, the great (as opposed to just OK) version of AoD would tell this Thief:

"You can't get this reward with lockpicking. As you have high Sneak, you can instead attempt to get out before being discovered, saying no to loot. If you have REALLY high Sneak AND Strength, you can try to make it off with the actual chest. If you invested in combat instead of lockpicking, then you can fight if you get caught."

Sneaking with a heavy chest through a camp full of guards is kinda silly. The game doesn't end there. You can go back and try another way later (or a different quest, since the outpost is an optional quest). My point was that lockpicking and sneaking go well together and running into a lockpicking check should hardly be an unexpected surprise.

The conclusion then becomes that AoD's doom isn't poor game design as such, but rather too ambitious game design. I sympathize with the fact that you simply don't have the resources to make every scenario as complex as the one above, but in the end, that's the kind of complexity that your design needs to work perfectly, IMO.

That particular quest has 5 or 6 different solutions. What you suggest is that each solution should have 2-3 branches to make sure that literally any character can succeed there, regardless of his skills.

 

[Grunker]

That particular quest has 5 or 6 different solutions. What you suggest is that each solution should have 2-3 branches to make sure that literally any character can succeed there, regardless of his skills.

I am suggesting that outcomes are more versatile than simple "failure/success". And no, I did not say "literally any character." But whatevs. Marsal once tried the reasoning way, and it's pretty evident you're set in your ways. Like him, I don't get why you keep asking people for this kind of feedback if you're so sure you disagree with them in principal. There's nothing wrong with you fundamentally disagreeing, just don't insist on the discussion then, and accept the criticism for what it is.

Now I'm off to my family christmas. Merry christmas VD

 

[Vault Dweller]

Merry Christmas, Grunker.

 

[Pope Amole II]

It's all because AoD lacks non-combat mechanics (except for the skill checks, but bare skill checks barely count as mechanics nowadays - it's like saying that you can still call Pong a "game"). No mechanics at all. And that explains everything. Honestly, I myself get pretty annoyed when people compare this game with fallout (because, in reality, it should be compared to Darklands), but let's look at F2's mechanics (hardly brilliant, mind you - the game was developed quickly and by immature designers) and their implementation. So we have this Metzger-Vic-Slavers situation and we want to solve that early and violently. Since you can't beat them honestly at early levels, what can you do mechanically wise?

1. You can steal from people, so you can steal all of guards' ammo & consumables.

1.a. You can also plant explosives (and, at this point, you can have at least 1 dynamite), so you deal some initial burst damage that way.

2. You can lock doors, so you can lock all doors in the guilds, separating its defenders into smaller chunks.

3. You can stealth out of combat, meaning that you can lure one guard, kill him then cut the chase down by vanishing into a thin air. Rinse and repeat.

4. You can befriend gang at the old church, so you can lure slavers there.

5. You can attack at night so their to-hit chance will be lower.

6. You can use consumables on NPCs and there's lots of alcohol to be found in early game, so you can just get the whole guild drunk, then attack. Even better is the jet withdrawal.

See? Game has some mechanics and allows the free usage of them, suddenly, tons of different approaches is present. And mind you, I don't give a fuck that some of those approaches (most, actually) are on the level of Skyrim's buckethead retardation - we're talking about a fucking RPG, not some kind of simulation. What really annoys me about AoD's defendors is that they always use this "realism" schtick to cover all of the game flaws (when it's anything but realistic).

Anyhow, all of that is the beauty of actually working mechanics and that's why Deus Ex was so good - once again, you just had a lots of actually working stuff. Got that "great physical strength" implant? Cool, now you can open an extra path to that NSF-held building. Got that high-jumping implant? Great, lots of extra paths are open for ya. Know how to use your gear well? Enjoy sneaking past the unsneakable situations with those thermo-optics. etc., etc., etc. Whereas in AoD it's always "put your points into skill and pray that developers actually bothered to implement a check for it". Or, more realistically, "spend - fail - reload - redistribute - succeed". What a fucking game!

And mind you, Darklands actually avoided the same pitfall by not being stingy with both skills and skillchecks - you have a party of four (meaning more skills in arsenal), you have saints (which cover different situations), potions (ditto) and, in most cases, you can actually survive the failure (if you wish to). Like, in Darklands, you lose to the robbers - well, they rob you and beat you and that's it, they let you go. In AoD, obviously they kill you because that's what robbers usually do. Of course, losing all of your stuff merits a reload anyway, but that's because this "just don't reload" is pointless - AoD is harsh and your character is almost always skill-starved. Also, there are no opportunities to grind up and catch up. Therefore, skipping/missing each quest makes your character weaker, making that each following quest also becomes harder and failure prone and, well, it's a fucking slippery slope. So sure, you don't lose instantly - but you lose later, it's just that it's dragged out and your time is wasted. Cool.

That's pretty much it. AoD is still kinda cool because it has lots of content (and, as games like Morrowind show, lots of decent content may compensate for shitty mechanics), but it has zero ways to make that content work and, more importantly, it doesn't have nearly as much content as it needs to flow smoothly. And it never will, it seems.

I'm really amused will all this discussion of WL 2 mediocrity and how the codex darlings are so wonderful and perfect. Fallout 1 starts with you killing rats on a cave, then killing more rats on an abandoned vault, then going to Shady sands where you can kill radscorpions or blow up the cave (until this point the combat has really zero challenge or interesting things going on) and rescue Tandy.

So much this, TBH. Fallout 1 is a cute game, but really, the only strong parts of it are the Abbey and the Military Base. Rest is rather mediocre filler (with some occasional gems) which is somehow terribly overhyped (like the glow - one of the best dungeons evah, atmospheric, etc., whereas in reality there's little to do there).