(Don't) Give me that old time RPG combat

Every time I hear someone refer to turn based as a technical limitation I can't help but wonder what their definition of tech is. It's a silly assertion that has no basis other than the games that used it are old. If that's the logic then pointing your cursor at an enemy and clicking is outdated tech too, hell they've been doing that since the early 90's.

 

formatted 3/31/2012

I think a few of you have jumped the gun on your deduction of what the article was actually about. Jabu seemed to get it.
The article was about the fact that Brian Fargo has SAID that;
1. Fallout was inspired heavily by Wasteland.(don't forget Fallout is one of Brian's games).
2. If you liked Wasteland and Fallout 1/2 you will probably like Wasteland 2.

This means that Brian is making a game that will appeal to this type of gamer audience. It means, even if you didn't play Wasteland, you'll still like Wasteland 2, because its not going to be Wasteland, it will be more similar in nature to Fallout. That is to say it won't be a menu turn based RPG. It will be a graphical turn based RPG. It will be party based, tactical and all the good things that Wasteland was, but it simply will not hold itself back by sticking to an older game-play formula.

The article is describing the dilemma facing Brian Fargo at the moment and that is. "How can I keep the appeal that games like Fallout had, while not alienating those that are apparently die-hard Wasteland turn based menu combat fans?"

Lets face it, you don't compare games like Wasteland and Fallout. Wasteland inspired Fallout, do you take a step backwards at this point and say to yourself. "Hey, you know we moved forward from technological limitations and innovated new, wildly popular styles? Lets forget about that, and make something very obscure and not user friendly. You know, lets make something super literary, without very many graphics. You know, a flashy border maybe, some Hi - Res combat face cards that show the enemy types. Yes, I've decided guys, lets make a HD 1980s Reboot game!"

Obviously I'm exaggerating to a great degree, but It seems like people are jumping to the conclusion that this guy is saying Brian should make Wasteland into a FPS, or Fallout Tactics. Nay. He is saying Brian Fargo is obviously making a game that must appeal to fans of both Wasteland and Fallout 1/2.Games like Fallout are still number crunching, dice rolling calculator machines. Maybe the only reason it might not have that exterior appearance is its trademark(literally) S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats that obviously must make the D&D formula a little different.

To be absolutely honest with all of you, I think we are about to see Fallout GURPS be born, only it won't be Fallout anymore, because Fallout has S.P.E.C.I.A.L. And wasteland doesn't need that, because It has its own rule set to use and expand upon, thereby freeing it of the restrictive quality. It lets the developers truly return to the basics of the origin of wildly popular games like Baldurs Gate, and Fallout, etc.Now you get, multiple characters, more customizations across the board and most likely easier to calculate dice rolls.There is absolutely no friggin' way it would be Menu based combat, I'm thinking people just be trolling the internet suggesting things like that.

Games like that could have potentially tiny tiny production budgets, requiring very few programmers and artists to complete. A game worth 1 million including rewards can't possibly be so limited in scale. I would find it very hard to believe that we'll hear some sort of update about "It's confirmed, Menu based combat! Totally poop rendered world, with no details to explore for yourself!".

Also, nothing beats Nostalgia. People can go back and sit down playing old school games because of the euphoria it gives them. It has nothing to do with the actual ability of that specific game type to draw an audience. In 1988 a game like Wasteland is LITERALLY revolutionary. Absolutely nothing similar exists, nothing. The idea of adventuring through a post nuclear world where World War 3 really did happen, and you'll see neat pictures of mutants on your super expensive, fancy old computer is really something to get excited about. Ask yourself, is there really a market for that type of simply represented game nowadays? No.

Graphics are important, they always have been, or Brian Fargo would have released an easy to make game years ago. He's obviously not interested, he wants a world that comes alive the way Fallout did for many people, but also in the way Wasteland did for many people. Expect something good is all I can say, he's had going on a quarter century to think about how to make this game, and he's made dozens of games in between. He's only grown as a developer or visionary in terms of how a game should represent itself.

Always remember though, Wasteland inspired Fallout, Its unlikely that the team that made Wasteland and Fallout 1/2 work so well for so many people, will make a game that doesn't live up to the monumental expectations it has. I'm sure both sides of the Aisle in terms of the hold "Wasteland vs Fallout" conflict will come together in the end, sedated on wasteland drugs and misery, I'm sure.

 

I agree with you, danielje.
All the article basically says is that it won't be menu based combat. And that one is pretty much given, so the the point in writing that article in the first place is probably just to educate people. Maybe.

But please - OMFG. PLEASE! - do format your postings.
Almost each sentence a different paragraph is incredibly painful to the eyes to read. Almost as bad as no line breaks at all

Or we should have some better forum styles to limit the width of postings in general...

 

Wow...someone in the comments section wants the combat to be like Dawn of War II. Wtf?

 

Upped it from $115 to $165, 'cause I have faith in Mr. Avellone.

And yeah, I want to sort of compensate somehow their recent layoffs...

 

The whole video is nice until the joypad control is spotted (hold X for pistol)?
Now I am worry for this game.

 

Basing a combat system on realtime means there's less time to react and think. Not enough time to check where all the enemies are at, no time to check your inventory for the various junk that might help you in winning the encounter, no time to monitor what your companions are doing.

That's a significant factor in difficulty. Experienced players will know what the best option in a given time is when playing realtime. New players won't, will make the wrong choices and die. That's why realtime games are easier - to compensate for the added difficulty of not having unlimited time.

With turn-based the player has as much time as is needed - an inexperienced player will take more time per turn to think things over. An experienced player will spend more time per turn in difficult encounters.

So what I'm saying is that turn-based combat allows for more difficulty and more depth.

I really like action-based systems though. Action-based systems are great for when you don't need to pay a lot of attention aside from giving out general orders and see it play out. In Fallout Tactics I often switched between TB and realtime, depending on the difficulty of the encounter. However with realtime the AI has to do more of the micromanagement work and not be stupid.

 

Strange for me but I just listened sea's advice and have skipped that article entirely.

From what I noticed by reading OP's post, this is again that moot point about modernizing game by making it, or twitch based or console friendly or "more fun" by "streamlining it" for "wider funbase". All perfectly logical, but wrong answers for this particular case. imo

There is a boxing and there is a chess. They are both sports. But they have in common just one thing - breathing. Point is, RT is good, but this is not RT game, or at least it shouldn't be. At best, FOT gameplay could be good for me, if I have an option to choose which type of play I like at that moment, but that's more or less all that I would like to see as "improvement" over F1/F2 games. It's not a matter of conservatism vs technology or something like it - it's the way I would like to play this game. Period.

I don't have doubt that inxile will choose what is right. Frankly, I'm more worried about they slide from right approach by listening too many "fan" opinions. Insert here joke about fies and who know the best.

In this case, being firm in decision what should be done is a right approach.

 

I am the only one not to understand anything about this article ?
He says he wants a wizardry 8 combat system, but W8 is 100% menu driven, it's amost exactly the same as in Wasteland.
I really don't understand.
OoPs forgot W8 have kind of "RT option" but it was a bit like in Fallout tactics exccept even less people used it (i never used it and know nobody who used it, moreover it was still menu driven anyway).
An improved menu driven combat system for W2 would be very fine for me (you can still tweak it to take Action point into consideration)

 

Welcome to the twisted mind of Rowan Kaiser.

Every single article he has written is basically full of internal contradictions, logical fallacies, etc. He has this great habit of not actually having a thesis, instead simply rambling about irrelevant stuff until he tries to tie things together at the end. He litters his articles with bits and pieces about classic games but it becomes very clear that he has probably never played a single one of them more than a few minutes. The worst part is he won't listen to critique - he thinks that his shitty writing is a "stylistic choice" and, when I pressed him in an argument he accused me of personally attacking him and then stopped responding.

I mean, this is the man who claimed that Mass Effect changed his definition of RPG because a) "I had a shitty definition of RPGs in the first place" and b) "it has film grain." No, I'm fucking serious.

So basically, not only is he a shitty writer (who may have good ideas, granted, but has no idea how to express them coherently), he's also intellectually vacant and uninterested in actually interrogating his own ideas for the mutual pursuit of knowledge. In other words: a perfect candidate for the games journalism machine!

 

Re: formatted 3/31/2012

Why not?

I know what you mean and I somewhat agree. There is no reason NOT to use new technology.

But sometimes a design is a well that. Design. Replacing it is not "upgrading" it or improving it. That is what happend from Fallout 1/2 to Fallout 3 where they replaced one design with another one - and if you ask me a shittier one.

Magic the Gathering is still basically the same kind of "game" as it was years ago on the PC. Graphics changed. Visuals changed. The cards look better. The menues are more interesting. But the "design" is in its core still the same.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ktaczuxJg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wGURzneEi0[/youtube]

Honestly though? If they go with Fallout 1/2 design. I will not complain. I like Fallout enough.

But saying that a "design" like wasteland can no tbe upgraded is not right I think.

 

They aren't worrying about "driving people away". If you want RT option, you are going to be dissapointed

 

In Wasteland's case, the mechanics are so simple that you could call it phase based or turn based, though the interface suggests phase based.

 

people have completely warped senses of authority.
opinions are simply not for everybody. a formula 1 racer is entitled to opinions about racing, a molecular biologist is not.
why does this guy even get a say on the matter?

people do allocate authority in the wrong places tho, like politicians who ask fishermen about the status of codfish populations in the north atlantic, while marine biologists stand there w their mouths open "um... hello?"

 

Except people who funded this project don't want the "technological advances" of modern games. They want a proper RPG with strategic combat.

 

Real Time combat won't work, no chance. Real time with pause could work but Turn Based is still the best of the bunch in my opinion.

 

I personally prefer RTwP to TB, but when you are doing a sequel to Wasteland with a target audience explicitely being fans of the first game, it's beyond me why you would integrate anything else than phase or turn-based. More options doesn't mean said options will be well integrated. See Tactics, I found neither the real-time (too chaotic) or the turn-based (slooow) convincing. Ditching one to focus on the other would have been better imo.

 

yes. so if everyone who's interested in this game allready knows this, it would - in theory - have cost the author of that article very little effort to actually find this out, and have it clarified, before he wrote a whole article about it, making an ass of himself

my point was, you see this all the time, in all fascets of society - people who would very much like to have a say in a matter - without doing anywhere near the adequate research. these people not only get a word in - but they are granted authority on the issues they arent even familiarized with.