Wasteland 2

I have finished uploading pictures from the CA portion of my game to my WL2 album.

It probably goes without saying, but as there are a whole lot of pictures, with some from almost every major area in the game... there is definitely spoiler potential here. Best to view the album starting from the "end", which where it actually starts from a chronological perspective.

http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/album.php?albumid=311

 

The 3 ass skills? That sounds dubious.

 

Hard Ass - bully your way to getting what you want
Kiss Ass - use diplomacy to get what you want
Smart Ass - use logic to get what you want

 

That's actually pretty funny.

Seems like you'd get a lot of skills that do more or less the same if you spread the skills that way, though.

 

They are similar, but I can understand why they are broken up.

A geeky smart guy, a charmer with honeyed words, and an intimidating d***head all bring different things to the table, and have their own ways of solving problems.

WL2 is also unabashed about having a large number of skills. Instead of just "infiltration" you have lockpicking, safecracking, alarm disarming, computer science, demolitions and mechanical repair all as separate skills, all useful for getting past obstacles that prevent you from getting where you want to go. Many of them have other uses as well, but you get my point.

Personally, I feel it's one of the game's many strengths. There are plenty who would rather see this all streamlined a bit (or even a lot), though. To them I say, wait for Pillars of Eternity, with its whopping 5 skills.

 

Haven't played the game for two weeks. I hope I will finish it but it didn't really grab me which is sad.

 

Out of curiousity, what were the main aspects that didn't meet your expectations?

It seems like a lot of Fallout fans were turned off by the lack of traits, perks and/or stealth.

 

Down into the sewers under the water town. I think what put me off was the perceived weakness of my characters in combat. I really don't like the high miss rates. It is a small thing but I think that is almost a deal breaker for me. Combat wasn't fun. You walk right into it, the enemy always starts, you miss half the time, it is slow but not overly difficult just bothersome I think. Oh and no abilities! It is all just auto-attacks. It is notoriously difficult for me to get into games though but I am afraid Wasteland missed the oppurtunity.

 

Enemies shouldn't always go first. In fact, they way I play they rarely go first. I tend to get my team into position and initiate the first attack. I also tend to have a lot of guys with high Combat Initiative, so they get to attack a lot more frequently than the enemy does.

As for hit chance, once you've increased your primary combat skills a bit, you shouldn't have problems hitting at all. Make sure you're using weapons that you are skilled with, of course. And when you take cover or go into crouching stance you get +10% bonus to your hit chance. You also need to keep in mind that weapons like sniper rifles and assault rifles are best used from range. If you right next to a foe with a sniper rifle, move back and then fire.

Weapons like pistols, SMGs and shotguns work better at close range, so move up to improve your hit chance.

Most of the stuff you mention should be addressable by learning the game mechanics better and pumping up your relevant weapon skills a bit. Also, you start with crappy weapons. With better weapons your team will really start to come into their own.

By the late game you can do burst fire AND headshots and still have 100% chance to hit in many cases.

 

Definitely, a character with 8 - 10 CHA will have a HUGE radius of influence for leadership, giving everyone else in your team a boost to hit chance, and lowering the chance for pNPCs (e.g. Angela Deth, Vulture's Cry) to go rogue.

 

I know I can start first but setting up for two minutes for every bug fight seems like too much micro. Don't mind carefully setting up for big boss fights and stuff but I don't want to do it for every group of roaches. Even so the enemies tend to often just rush you making the long range weapons useless or forcing you to move and then the enemy just moving after you. It is not like I hate it, I just don't get the urge to play it. Half of the play time I have is after forcing myself to play because I want to give it a proper chance and I because I know it takes a long time for me to get into new games. Will my characters get abilities later on or is it just shooting and bashing throughout the entire game?

I spent a fair amount of time researching before starting so I know most of the stuff you guys are telling me. Even copied my character builds from some site that seemed to know what they were doing (think it was a link from here). I never played the original fallout games either partly because I got to them late and partly because I really didn't like the combat system. Original Sin is the first real game I have properly played with action point based combat but it felt quite dynamic there and it always felt like my characters were doing something with their action points. In Wasteland I just tell them to attack and either they hit or they miss.

 

You don't have to go through a detailed set up to start the fight. Just have your sniper and/or assault gunners (i.e. your longer range guys) open with a few shots. There's next to no set up required for that.

This is why you open with your long range guys, so even when the enemy runs in, they can't make it into melee range. Move your short range guys up and keep your long range team members behind, behind cover if available. This works much better in the current release, since a bug was corrected that was giving enemies massive AP to run in close at the beginning of fights.

Not everyone is going to love the game. I personally think it's on its way to becoming one of my all time favorites, but that's just me. If you give it its proper chance and it still doesn't grab you, than I guess it just doesn't grab you.

It won't ever compare to DOS in terms of abilities. You won't be casting spells and turning water into ice or anything. But neither would you expect these sorts of things.

There's certainly more than shooting and bashing. There is a cover mechanic that adds a tactical layer, along with a crouching mechanic. Each weapon works a little differently, so if your squad has a nice mix, you should be using each squad member in a different manner. With many weapons you have to decide if it makes sense to burst fire or fire single shots. With shotguns you do AoE damage, so you have to be careful about your tactical positioning -- these can be your best friends or worst enemies, depending on how you use them.

There is also the ambush mechanic to think about, where you attempt to draw enemies to you, and fire upon them when they are in range. Headshots are an interesting trade off, where you fire for higher AP and reduced accuracy, but do more damage.

You can even use skills like animal whisperer and computer science in combat to turn animals and robots to your side, respectively.

There are considerations like when to get out your energy weapons vs. when to use more conventional weapons.

A game like Fallout Tactics admittedly has more going on in this regard, but it doesn't have the deep story and roleplaying options. There are always trade offs.

Maybe it's just not your game, especially if you didn't like Fallout. I tried Fallout Tactics for the first time a few days ago, and immediately thought it was awesome, in spite of being an old game.

So, different stroke for different folks I guess.

Hopefully you'll manage to "get grabbed". Once you do, I'm pretty sure you'll love it. Question is whether or not it's worth it to you to take the time to get there.

 

There is a theory going around that the Night Terror is a hallucination. In WL1 I guess the Night Terror was encountered in a dream sequence, or something. It wasn't a real creature.

There is that weird noxious liquid just outside his room that isn't explained. It might have induced the hallucination. That would also explain why no one else seems to notice him.

It doesn't perhaps explain why he can be targeted and attacked by enemies, but those attacks could well be part of the hallucination also.

To my knowledge, inXile has been completely silent on this matter to date.

 

You can feed the Night Terror. I love the little guy.

Finished WL2 last night, 100 hours of play. Loved it, bugs and all. Definitely one of the better RPGs in recent times.