Wasteland 3 Beta now live

This is fucking disgusting.
I hate it. I absolutely fucking hate it so much.
God
Damn
Fucking
Tabs

What the hell is wrong with the gaming industry? Oh should we let the player be able to see their full character data so that they can get a proper overview of their character especially when it comes to leveling up so you will have an easier time to figure out what direction to grow the character in? Nah, let's just chop up every aspects into individual parts and let's waste screenspace by making the skill list FUCKING SCROLLABLE. Who's braindead fucking idea was this shit? Look at all of this space on the screen that is wasted for no good god damn reason. So now in order to go through the skill list you have to scroll when in WL2 you could see everything at once. (Completely blanked out on this, no, you could not see everything at once in WL2 and I remember in hindsight that I ranted about this back during WL2's development too, except the problem there was that it was a window within a window design so they couldn't fit everything in one screen. Now it is fullscreen and they still managed to fuck it up.) This is regression. Plain and simple. In the previous game you could see everything at once. In this one you have to scroll for no reason. It's regression.

Why are modern game design so perversely fixated on wasting as much screen space as possible for RPGs so that they have horrendous UI's?

Yeah I'm out. I'm not buying it. Fuck this bullshit design and any imbecile that thinks it is a good idea to divvy up the character screen so that we have to switch back and forth between tabs just to get a proper view of the character. And we're gonna end up having to switch back and forth with tabs AND SCROLLING ON THE SKILLS MENU... With 7 characters...

Fuck this. I'm not buying it. This is incompetence on a level I cannot even fathom. How you go from WL2 (which wasn't perfect but at the very least it showed most of the stuff on one screen) to this is incomprehensible to me. The only explanation I can possible think of is consolification.

Oh and this:



I do kinda like. I mean, if I want to know what perks affect skill X then being able to see what exactly is available and what is going to be available later and when is pretty neat. And it does still have freeform general perks. However, again, far too much screenspace is wasted. This time by the design being just... Bloated. We don't need the icons to be that massive and of there to be such space inbetween everything. Again, just means a lot of unnecessary scrolling.

Oh and here is Fallout tactics where we have to managed several team members.

Spoiler

 

How many of you have palyed the beta thus far?

 

Mr.Fish rant reminds of the time when Tim Cain said that fallout 1 had a really confusing and poor UI. Like how? Tim has gotten old.

 

Yeah that's the issue. It's a minor complaint when it's just one character. But when you get 3-7, it's an actual issue.

How is it otherwise?

I think Tim wants to appeal to more people. For some reason, most people see multiple things on one screen and panic. They are convinced it's information overload before they even have a chance to process whether or not it is or to visually section it apart themselves.

 

Now I could understand that when it comes to something like a 4X game or Arcanum (which has some skills and stats and derivative stats that are a bit like "what the hell does this do?") but Wasteland's only confusing part is the CLASSIC stat system and it is because the stats themselves are forced to form the acronym CLASSIC. Like, I understand what coordination is and all but when you say that it is a stat I have no idea what it will actually affect and same with Speed. Speed what? Running? Movement distance? Action point cost for various actions? Does it increase AP score? Still, it is pretty minor as anyone would understand the other stats just by looking at them. What does Strength do? Well... What do you think Strength would entail? Cause chances are that so long as you don't think too far outside the box you'll be on point.

Secondly we got skills. Which might be a bit much for a new player with so many of them but... I mean... Look it never changes regardless of the UI you use. It will always be overwhelming. I'd argue that for a new player having to scroll through a list of unknown skills is worse than having them all on screen at once. But ultimately it isn't all too confusing. Select the skills you want, they're fairly explanatory in their information box then just play the game and increase those skills.

Third is perks which is such a common form of leveling up nowadays that it wouldn't confuse anyone but newcomers to gaming and they'd be overwhelmed by anything.

And fourth is derivative stats. This is the only part that might be confusing and an information overload because you don't know the rules of the game so all of the sudden you will have to plan ahead with 4 characters and keep in mind little details outside of the prime stats and skills, details you might not have any idea how it works.

Initiative for example is something I know fully well what it is and what purpose it serves in any turn-based game.
I do not however know what the limit of Initiative is and so I have no idea if my initiative is ever really good or not as different enemies have their own initiative scores and I have to sort out when and why my different characters get their turn in combat and what that score means.

For a new gamer it could be extremely overwhelming depending on the derivative stats but Wasteland 2 didn't have an excessive amount nor do I expect WL3 to have it either.

And if Tim said that then expect simplification. I said it in an InXile thread and I'll say it here, history will repeat itself. This is why I never wanted these new cRPG's to focus so much on being pretty and I never liked Wasteland 23's first person dialogue for that reason . I can't imagine how much of the budget is sunk into making these games desperately try to stand next to AAA games as equals but they're not. The genre isn't big enough. And as they found out that hey you could make these games work on Consoles too it is only a matter of time before the need to make more profit outweighs the principles of them being computerRPGs. Studio gets hit, makes lots of money, grows studio, next game needs to make more money, next game makes a lot of money, studio can grow, it needs next game to make more money, it makes more money but not as much anymore, question of whether this is sustainable with the current playerbase arises, need to make more money means making concessions to the gameplay to appeal to a wider audience and we get an equivalent of TES Oblivion. Hasn't steered too far off course yet but it is clearly designed for a controller support and parts of the "confusing aspects" has been eroding away to make it slightly simpler and streamlined. So when do we get the equivalent to TES Skyrim?

Maybe I'm too much of a cynic but I don't like where this is all heading. Isn't Brain Fargo retiring after WL3 too? Like, if the people in charge who kept the studio on track git gone then whoever replace them might not be as strict on being PC focused. Wasn't that what happened with Interplay?

Know your place, basically. They're all reaching for the moon, climbing up that hill not knowing at at the top is a fall off a cliff.



At least we'll get another Underrail and Age Of Decadence and possibly other smaller studio cRPG's like ATOM.

 

I enjoyed it. Kind of like the way they went with this. Definitely going to be fun.

 

Retcon Raider is making a through let's play for those who are not in the beta and would like to take a peek.

 

So we went from 29 skills to 22 skills.
I had an easy time to spread skills around on characters in WL2 to cover pretty much all aspects of the game and now we get even less skills.

Smart Ass has been removed, Doctor and Field Medic merged into one skill same with Shotguns and Handguns, Blade and Blunt, SMG and Assault oh and Energy Weapons is gone... I'm guessing Safecracking got put into Lockpicking, Perception and Brute Force probably got removed as skills and merged into Attributes. If there ever was a skill that was stupid and should be removed because all it is is a joke is Toaster Repair. Keep it as a learned skill in the game or something but a main skill? Stupid. Let's merge other skills that make sense but Toaster Repair totes isn't like Mechanics at all.

Even more signs of history repeating itself.

Also, "Nerd Stuff" is a stupid name for a skill that could be called "Hacking" or "Computers" or even "Robotics something something".

I don't get why some skills are merged but armor modding and weapon modding are kept as separate skills. Shouldn't Mechanics, Weird Science or Nerd Stuff cover this already? (this skill list is stupid)

And I hated that the baseline for "average" in WL2's attribute system was 3 with 7 points to spare. Now it is 2 +7. I don't... I don't get this. Like, the good thing about Fallout's stat system was that with 5 being the average you could use the stat system for roleplaying purposes and ask yourself "what would this character's strength realistically be?" and then you'd try to use the points to fit the character in mind as best as you could. But in WL2 what did 3 mean? I have 3 Strength, well what does that mean? Is 3 healthy normal adult strength? Is it below? What does that make 10 then? And what does that make 1? Fallout made more sense as 1 would mean total weakling and 10 meant strongman. But now it is 2. What the fuck does 2 mean? Why use Fallout's stat system (and don't anyone tell me that they aren't because they went out of their way to get a "acronym" 7 stat system to ape Fallout) if you're not going to properly copy it? I barely like the stat systems in most RPG's because they're usually designed around a gamey design of what it means to level it up over time rather than a roleplaying design of what realistically makes sense for the accurate portrayal of a defined character but when we have stat systems that clearly ape Fallout then I want proper Fallout. If you're not going to ape Fallout then don't lie by making it superficially similar. Especially when it is 7 stats and forced into an acronym.

How come we can't see our current derivative statistics in Attributes' part of the character creation menu? Was it really more important to have the character gawking at us from the far right than a derivative stats box there?

Man, the more I see of this game the less I want it. It's more and more of a step back from WL2 and WL2 wasn't even one of the best cRPG's out there.

 

I watched Retcon's Beta Let's Play video and Wasteland 3 looks like a lot of fun! I'm not a kickstarter kind of guy, but I'll buy Wasteland 3 on release day.

To brush up on the story line I've picked up Wasteland 2 again. I never finished the California Campaign the first time around.

Ready yourselves, Desert Rangers!

 

I like the beta. I have had more fun with it than with WL2. My main, but small, concern would be the rotating camera (again). It feels unnecessary. The only time I *want* to rotate is when I can't properly point at something or can't read the terrain (such as height diff). Unfortunately the game makes you rotate a lot more as you will otherwise miss out on doors/passages and other stuff. Does not add to the fun factor one bit to be frank. Should have been removed.

 

I don't like any of it.

I don't know how in the office they designed any of this.

I'd look at this and start over again.

Jesus Christ we should have been far more critical of Wasteland 2. Instead we let it slide because it was the first TTcRPG from the original developers for decades.

Give me a tactical diagram on the character sheet please.























I know you want to simplify micromanagement with this title, however the key thing here when trying to copy XCOM is to have EVERYTHING ON ONE PAGE so the player can see how to play a complicated game instead of just rerolling and dying over and over again. Hm?!

 

DARK....


SOULS....


IS.....


A....


FUCKING....


JAPANESE....


CONSOLE....


GAME....

EAT....


MY....


FECES...

DEVELOPERS.


With love and shining light from the depths, I honor you.

 

But it's good

 

Ok, maybe I'm just over-contextualizing here, but compared to Oblivion with guns this is already awesome, and to think some people started complaining about Bethesda only after 76. If anything I should be complaining there is no post apocalyptic single character non combat based isometric RPG coming out, you know the kind you can complete without killing anyone (well, actually there is Trudograd for ATOM, so hooray!).

 

It's no ones fault.

We as a community are responsible for letting shareholders know what we will buy or not.

 

So after watching another video where we can turn a character into basically a child with weapons that scale down, a frozen ferret launcher and a slicer dicer pokemon ball I'm liking it even less and I think I know why. (Oh and right after this there was a heat thingie which is so powerful it could set snow on fire and after a fight they found a pit full of bodies of adults and children and a companion has a moment where she's staring into it and you can ask if she can see her family. That's pretty jarring.)

Now, granted it's been maybe 2 years since I last played Wasteland but Wasteland from what I remember was basically an aesthetical clownworld with a bleak tone. It had ridiculous stuff but the tone of the setting didn't go out of its way to be "wacky" when it came to the actual tone. Wasteland 2 went a bit too far on the bleak side with both looks and tone which is why it felt off and in Wasteland 3 it continues the bleak atmosphere and aesthetic but it has turned up its wackiness factor up to a stupid degree.

I mean, we'd have to accept that this is now canon. This is part of the Wasteland mythos. Slicer Dicers, one of the most intimidating foes throughout the series, can now be used as pokemon balls and there is a weapon specifically designed for shooting frozen ferrets. Wasteland 1 might have had some clownworld moments like the blood cult with the blood staff and Darwin but... They were just aesthetically clowny. The actual story for those places is grim.

What I'm saying is that I think the Fatman in Fallout 3 was a stupid weapon that didn't make any sense and was put in for the sake of teh coolz and lulz. Wasteland is no different. I think I'm gonna call this the Saints Row cycle. In that series the first game was fairly straight forward action game but the second one introduced a lot more wacky stuff but it still remained somewhat rooted in reality but in the third one we got zombies and in the fourth one we got aliens and the matrix and super powers and in Gat Outta Hell we go to hell, because why not?

It's not understanding tone and slipping further and further into being silly for the sake of being silly. So how long until the sillyness starts breaking the rules? How long until the rules no longer matter as they're getting in the way of the "fun stuff"? This is what I've seen by skimming through 15 minutes of a gameplay video. So what else is there in WL3? Didya know that Deadpool is teh funny wacky dude? He does teh random lulz which funny. And look at where it landed it. He became popularized as being random oh so funny teh lulz guy and it's practically rare to see him treated as serious as he was in his first proper volume. Since they want it to sell well they'll cater to whatever is the most popular. So guess what happens if Wasteland 3 becomes REALLY popular?

I don't like this. I don't like any of this. I get a way bad feeling about it. Like Resident Evil 4 when people told me that it isn't that big of a deal bla bla bla and then we get REvil 5 followed by REvil 6 and I saw it coming from a mile away. (on that note, since REvil 3 is far more action focused than REvil 2 (and that goes both for the old versions and the new) guess what might happen if REvil 3 way outperforms REvil 2?)

Oh it's not the end of the world. It is not 100% casualized yet. It's not Way-era Deadpool level of random lulz. Oh it's not that console focused in its design. Right. And REvil 4 wasn't a total action game but it was followed up 5 and 6.

And finally, keep in mind these changes and add to it that Fargo is going to retire (from what I've heard, maybe I'm wrong) and InXile got acquired by Microsoft.

I hate that I'll have to wait until Waseland 4 or whatever to say I called it but I swear if that happens I'll have to look up this thread (if NMA is still operational at that point, hopefully it is, I like my den of misery) just to prove it. Because I'm getting mad vibes of history repeating itself here.

- - - - - - - - - -

And here is the ferret launcher, slicer dicer pokemon, random heat ray capable of burning snow and jarring moment that follows:



[EDIT 2]

Actually now that I think about it, Ag Center was pretty ridiculous in Wasteland 1. That was when the clownworld was too much to take all too seriously and it did indeed become wacky. (though I would argue that it is only Harry that is wacky, the rest is just what happens. Rodent infestation. Not a whole lot else to it.)
But I dunno, I don't remember Needles or Las Vegas or Guardian Citadel or Highpool or Rail Nomads being particularly wacky. Bizarre at times but that's not wacky. Nothing on the same Way-era Deadpool lulz as "ferret launcher" and turning one of the most intimidating foes of the series into a pokemon.