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Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I really hope the character system changes throttle back on the need to have nothing but idiot savants in your group. Like maybe let characters pool skills a little or something? Maybe the guy with the highest level in a skill gets a bonus based on the number of points in the group total (25-50%). Wasteland Rangers who couldn't find water if they were standing in an oasis, for example, feels weird. The character system never felt right to me, so I never got very far. Regardless glad to see that they're continuing to patch and add to the game.

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Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

JawKnee posted:

being decently good at 3-4 things makes you an idiot savant?

Personally I like that you can't make everyone a loving god-king, I think it's great

I think having most characters made at int 3 or 4 and 3 luck and 3 charisma in order to not get double turns taken on them by later enemies is not cool. From what character build guides I've seen, that's pretty much the standard build other than your Leadership charisma mans, who usually doesn't take the social skills because he has other skills to be good at. I realize you've got 7 party slots to work with, but it just seems too hyper specialized. Shotguns and being mean, rifles and being nice, slightly different rifles and being flippant, and some other weapon and being good at keeping half the party from being retarded (Leadership) as your core characters doesn't really do it for me. I don't want god-kings of the wastes, but I want semi-competent wasteland peacekeepers who might live for more than five seconds on their own. The game rewards your rangers not being able to put a scope on some rails made to receive it except for that one guy who has points in the skill. At least let me mod the guns in different people's inventories so I don't have to shuffle items around to the one guy that knows something about firearms other than which end is dangerous. Maybe traits will add that little something in there for me. I will see.

The first time I played, my party got murdered in short order by a random encounter because I tried to build them in a balanced manner. The second time around I got far enough to get a second npc and restarted when they duplicated all of the skills of one of my characters. The third time around, I checked some guides, learned where the recruit npcs were and what skills they had and built accordingly because I was getting frustrated.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I just want a more sane stat and skill distribution. That's p much it. They could downgrade the graphics back to wasteland 1, which would be kinda cool, really.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
To be entirely honest, I'd like my rangers to shoot at random members of small clusters of different enemy types with no way to tell them to focus on wounded targets. It would feel more authentic.

Obviously joking, but I would like to see a modern take on the old Bard's Tale/Wasteland combat system.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

PC Master Race means I can use my 360 controller when I damned well please. I use my controller for PC games a lot. I wouldn't use it for WL2, but I'd be happy to have the option available for others. Sometimes it's nice to kick back on the couch, pipe your video to the tv and laze your way through a game. Many games designed for cross-platform release have mediocre keyboard and mouse controls as well.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I'm still not convinced that character creation isn't going to be a hyper-specialized dump stat ridden mess. Better character graphics and visible armor tickles my pretty princess dressup bone, though.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Wasteland 2: An Alan Smithee production

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Upmarket Mango posted:

Does the update fix up the attribute system at all?

Well, they added some cutesy traits and flaws, so maybe? I'm leaning towards not really. Not everyone thinks it's weird, bad and counterintuitive, apparently.

Without changing the mechanics at all, I'd say that I'd just prefer random stats.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
So how long until the all-clown LP where the OP delves deep into Juggalo lore and weaves it seamlessly into the world of Wasteland 2?

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
So, is there anything particularly terrible about a party with 4s across the board for stats and an even handed mix of ranged weapons? The only downside I can think of is that starts everyone at initiative 11, but meh.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
So far, I've got to say that psychopath on a sniper isn't too shabby.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

The Berzerker posted:

Yeah this is the only PS4 game I've ever played that crashes. It crashes at least once per session on me.

Well, obviously! The session is over once the game crashes!

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Has anyone actually tried making an armored juggernaut with Shoulder the Load (25% less move penalty for armor) and whatever perk gives you +1 AC with heavy armor? I figure with a 6ish Str, the perk that just gives you +1 AC for fun and those other two, you might have an ok walking wall.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I decided to try a Thick Skin (+2 AC -30% combat speed) 10 Str 10 Spd point man who I'm going to kit out with melee to start and then throw some heavy weapons on for thematic reasons. Giving him Mechanical Repair so he can grab Armor Maintenance for +1 AC in heavy armor, Shoulder the Load for -25% armor speed penalty, Toughness or whatever for +1 AC and I guess anything else that will improve his tanking or murdering. I'll let you guys know how far I get before I punch my computer in frustration. I assume Thick Skin works like Brittle Bones, so the 30% speed comes off after all other mods are figured in. Like a -0.4 combat speed item with Brittle Bones is subtracted before the halving.

E: The Armor Maintenance (Mechanical Repair) perk is for taking -20% damage from energy weapons. The +1 AC perk for heavy armor is on Weaponsmithing 8 I think? Regardless, it will still be part of my Robert Cop plan.

Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Oct 27, 2015

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I haven't even gotten to a point where the Ranger fucks will let me in the Citadel yet, but am I the only one who buys a rad suit first thing by selling a few of those painkillers and then goes off stash hunting? I'm sure if I knew which skills to take etc I could have a full party before even touching the drat tower to find the repeaters. I only know where a few stashes are, but even a couple pieces of non-poo poo equipment make the early game far less terrible and the rad suit is only $200 base.

E: plus a few encounters around the Rail Nomad area will usually net you some solid assault rifles

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

rocketrobot posted:

Honestly, that's the hard way of getting upgrades. The radio tower question is really well balanced and tends to give you useful upgrades right away. Enough to get further and not struggle while moving on to the next quest or scrounging in hard areas, like Rail Nomads.

I can't hear you over the sound of how hardcore I am am.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I was really hoping for a combat system refined from the original (as well as the other games using the system), where you targeted "groups" of enemies and damage got spread around like it would in a real fracas. They could have animated little dudes running around and fighting all cool like. Maybe add in some tactical moves and special actions or something, like seeking flanking positions on a group, etc. Tactical rpg take #9,000,000 is ok, too.

E: it just seems like the devs felt they needed to one-up Fallout which had long since left its isometric turn-based roots in the past. Doing something cool with a weird old-school system that hadn't been seen in action for a very long time might have been refreshing.

Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Oct 28, 2015

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Alchenar posted:

Where on earth does it display what radiation suit your party has equipped? I can't for the life of me find it anywhere.

On the character sheet tab listed with other stuff is radiation resistance. Don't worry, it took me a long time to find because I kept looking for a party slot. You just equip it and that's it.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Party Plane Jones posted:

Did somebody end up modding the game so you could complete both Highpool and Ag Center? I seem to recall somebody on here or ineXile wanting to do that.

In the long run, is Ag Center even worth saving? All they've really accomplished is loosing mutant horrors into the wastes and providing jobs to assholes. The research there can be reclaimed later, or do scientists not take notes in the grim darkness of the giant rabbit future?

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
^^^ yeah, what that guy said. I'm all happy for research or whatever, but that facility was kind of a bust either way.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

White Phosphorus posted:

Why is LA so green in this game? When I went there a few months ago and it was all brown. I played Fallouts way back when, I was impressed by the bleakness of American post nuclear future. But apparently that's just what it always looks like.

The original Fallout games were hilariously devoid of vegetation and truly represented a wasteland. In the area the games took place in there'd be plenty of trees and grass and scrub/brush, even if it was stunted and limited by mutation and poor climate. WHAT DID THE SCORPIONS AND GECKOS EVEN LIVE ON? I guess they ate all of the talking raccoon.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

popewiles posted:

Pages ago but I appreciate the usage of Robert Cop.

Sadly, I decided to put that run off in favor of a more orthodox party so I can actually get some experience with something other than the beginning of this game. Second playthrough though, Officer Murphy is bringin' the law.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Gort posted:

That said, there's no way the rangers would know that when deciding which to save first...

Well, Highpool asks for help first, is under attack by men with guns, is a larger population and sits on a working dam and your party is usually closer to Highpool when the call for help is received. The other is a dozen or so eggheads playing scientist in the sun being attacked by large flies and rabbits. I chose Ag Center the first time I played because Science! always works out and I happened o be directly next to Ag Center at the time. I do Highpool now.

I do agree with you though. A bunch of newbies who wandered in from the wastes might not have a good idea of what to do. I want a dialog option to put a bullet in each kneecap of my boss for sending out the new kids, without gear on purpose, to do a thing. When the situation changed and got serious Vargas should have gotten off of his lazy rear end and sent some Rangers to go protect at the least one of the two sites. There are multiple squads that just materialize mysteriously after you complete the first choice and go around radio chatting all day about the unimportant poo poo they're doing. Where were they? Where were the assholes inside the citadel? I guess I might find out. I think I might actually get into the citadel today.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Lotish posted:

Also Kate is desperate for help but more reasonable than...Bergin? when Vargas explains that he has no help to dispatch. It's possible that he sent most of the squads beyond the map boundaries or something, but you're right that it makes no sense for us to be the fifth team he's assembled and none of the others are anywhere to be seen when one of most important locations under Ranger protection comes under fire. Even if he's die hard dedicated to only using Delta when squads go rogue, where would Able, Baker and Charlie even be?

Probably shooting children and their pets now that I think about it.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Does Junk Diver work for the whole party, or do I have to remember to select whatever random jackass has it every time I want to loot anything?

E:apparently it works for the whole party. It pops up with a message in the log when it happens.

Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Oct 31, 2015

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Alchenar posted:

So the problem from a game design point is that before, during, and after the player has no real understanding of which place is more important to save or what the long term effects will be of one being lost (hint: in game terms it's zero because The Show Must Go On).

So rather than being an interesting or meaningful choice it's just 'gently caress you player, decide now which map of content you don't get to experience'.

Right, it's that OLD SCHOOLTM experience!

E: doing a quest or two for each place and meeting a few of the characters before the attacks happen would make the choice more interesting.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

canada jezus posted:

I had no previous experience with the wasteland series and AG center made me quit the game. I'm going to play it what with the update and all, i just have to get around to it.

Yeah, doing Ag Center on my first attempt did nothing to endear the game to me. Piles of fast, hard to hit melee enemies, exploding pods hidden around corners and no halt command, backtracking, low ammo pickups for already ammo hungry novice characters with bad aim; just a poo poo show all around.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Pwnstar posted:

I like how people always complain about being able to do everything/solve every problem in a game and your choices should have consequences etc etc but then when you can't save both places through some special cleverness its annoying and dumb and people want a mod to change it.

I like it in theory, I just think the execution of the choice here sucks. I would suspect Vargas of sabotaging the Rangers, but I haven't seen anyone whining about him in spoilers. He just acts so incompetently. Vargas just so happens to boot the regular radio op right before the "mysterious" joint attack and can only raise a squad of unequipped neophytes (who he sent to do an investigation worthy of experienced field agents) to respond in time to one of them. That might have made that whole thing make sense. Who let that chucklefuck near the dispatch radio? Do I get a chance to shoot him in the dick as a dialog option?

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

FRINGE posted:

There arent that many Rangers. There arent that many people.

Tell that to the endless supply of bandits.

As for what the call said, yeah Vargas said there wasn't anyone else. It doesn't sell well when right after the crisis there's radio chatter from ranger squads just wandering around doing gently caress all. "Hey there elite hardasses in Alpha, how'd that cat in a tree call go? "
"p good, boss. Gonna go stare at a wall for a bit."

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

NESguerilla posted:

I really think the last 2 hours of playing this game was the stupidest experience I have ever had in a game in my entire life.

I went to the area with like 15 badgers and a vendor who won't sell to you until you kill them.

1.went in. killed all of the badgers and found the best weapons mod I have seen in the game just to have Rose go down due to some random status effect (afaik there is no way to actually check what any of the status effects actually do in this game. It's just some worthless colored icon.) Menus lag out, but the timer keeps going. Rose dies before the menu decides to work. reload.
2. Killed all of the badgers. The box now has a couple of useless early game ammo rounds. 3 people in the party go down due to random rear end status effects. I go to revive them but the game absolutely refuses to target them because I didn't loot the badgers yet. Everyone dies as I frantically try to collect badger poop or whatever so I can get rid of that prompt and revive my squad. reload.
3. repeat similar scenarios 4 or 5 more time.
4. annihilate badgers. get kitty litter. Go back to vendor. He's selling complete garbage.
5. I just want to get the gently caress out of here I don't even care anymore.
6. Robots show up. kill Robots.
7. go to wasteland. game crashes
8. Game deleted every save I made in the area except the autosave when I first entered it. Back to the beginning.

Also this game crashes every 30 minutes or so on PS4 at this point in the campaign. It's pretty loving cool .

Ouch. I'm being harsh to the game while enjoying a nearly bug/hiccup free experience. That sounds absolutely terrible. All of the status icons have mouse-over tool tips, not that that really helps on PS4. For dying, it's when the Rangers reach a certain negative hp based on their normal alive hp. Which is why a guy at 2 hp who gets crit and dropped might die instantly or only last a couple turns, while bleeding and poison and stabilization are three separate conditions that would need to be addressed, and quickly, to keep someone from dying.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Ok so I restarted because I could not in good conscience not run a group of Robocop, Officer Lewis, Crockett and Tubbs, Arizona Vice. Finally got in the Citadel and everyone tells me how their strength is at an all time high because they've spent fifteen years rebuilding the Ranger's strength. Remind me why Able One was rousting hobos instead of responding to critical threats? Vargas. Hang the bastard.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
So honey badgers apparently have anti-tank claws as they seems to have AP of at least 7. Almost lost Robocop. Who the gently caress thought 25+ raw damage per hit and insane armor penetration was a good idea?

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

EricFate posted:

They certainly did a good job of making me fear those little bastards whenever I run across them. Having the 'Big Game Hunter' perk on the sniper and at least one Assault Rifle character helped, as well as the perk which made my explosives expert have a bigger AoE. I just bunch up the party a ways back, lure them into charging at me with my ranged shooters, and then hurl grenades into the pack until they close to melee range. After that, the attack speed for my brawler and my stabby-guy make short work of them.

Anyone know which specific events trigger an always hostile Danforth in the Prison area? I paid off his man this time around so he'd leave that Ranger's sister alone, so I don't think that was the issue. I may have set him off by sending a robot on a suicide mission into his turrets, but I noticed a couple other things were off this run. Jim Auwerter was missing, and Brown's pigs were already dead. This leads me to believe I triggered a new flag somewhere.

I dealt with them appropriately at range with some judicious use of explosives and torso shots to make them less tanky, I just wasn't expecting them to deal full damage to the character I've set up to be an actual tin can. Naked, he has AC three right now. I didn't know badger claws had the armor piercing power of light anti-material rifles, is all, so the first fight went poorly for Robocop.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Party Plane Jones posted:

The changes to Energy Weapons make them an absolute joke; they're pretty much irrelevant in Arizona because nothing outside Damonta is conductive and by the time you get to California you've already sunk way more points into more useful weapon skills (like sniper rifles). It's such a strange change versus the original version.

I just made one of my guys start as an energy weapons specialist and I'm dealing with it ok so far. He's got great accuracy is is good for picking off nearly dead dudes, uses his own ammo, and absolutely shreds anything in conducive armor, like beefy melee raiders. Now that I've gotten him an ok energy weapon and the second perk to do more damage against fleshies, he's a pretty solid member of the team and will be ready to murder all of the godless commie robots when they show up. The level curve in this game is weird. Before level eight or so levels just seem to drip in some times, but then the game turned a corner and now my squad is tripping over promotions. Usually it's the other way around. I guess It's just the stronger opponents and the linear xp?

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I love CharOp guides written by spreglords for this game. If you have to have a guy for Charisma because of Leadership, you have to go all the way 10 Charisma and all the way 10 Int because Cha is useless, ergo any points spent there make the character useless, so you might as well go all the way. The 10 Int follows that theme, to "exploit" the only other use of Cha, the xp bonus, by putting as many xp gaining skills on that guy as possible. loving brilliant. Now you have a lovely brick of a character hoovering up all of the xp and gaining levels all over the place, but still not actually being useful because he probably only goes once for every two or three enemy turns in the average combat and moves so slow that his team regularly outpaces his 10 Cha leadership bubble. I think that gem is in one of the Steam guides.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Even an extra 2% miss chance for enemies is significant in the long run, considering the number of attacks flying your direction, including burst fire where each shot rolls separately to hit at an already reduced chance. That Leadership bonus is stacking on top of the evade chance from stats/perks/traits/cover/etc. A point of luck is what, .5% evade? So there's 4 points of effective luck to any party member being attacked by an affected enemy for that perk point, meaning those two perk points you've spent are worth 10 Luck in evasion. Not a bad investment for a whole party buff, IMO.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Haroshia posted:

I went with the 10int 10cha minmax build on my team. It worked really well. He was explosives, lockpicking, safecracking, first aid, and leadership. The radius on his stuff was huge, he was rolling in skill points, the new leadership accuracy debuff perks were great. If he needed to deal damage he always had a fuckload of grenades due to improvised explosives from mines. Being able to stack a ton of skills on him helped a lot because it freed me up to put other stats on my killer characters.

It may seem very :games: but it does work. He contributes a lot just by standing there.

It would be better if I could see the loving Leadership aura like in "classic". Then I'd know how aggressive I could be with my flanking and advancement while still keeping the slow bastard close enough to debuff the next pack of enemies by shuffling him forwards on his turn. I guess giving him Twitchy would help a lot.

E: A dude with 5-6 Charisma (+a trinket and a point or two from levels) and better all around stats can still work in Leadership and keep up with the pack better while providing way more robust tactical options and action economy for the whole squad.

Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 3, 2015

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Because I was interested, I decided to make two Leadership characters, one with Int/Cha 10 and another with different stat layout.

code:
Coordination 2 Luck 1 Awareness 1 Strength 1 Speed 3  Intelligence 10 Charisma 10  Action Points 7 Combat Initiative 7 

Evasion 3% Con 29 Combat Speed 2.0 Carry Weight 57 Con/Level 7  Trait: Twitchy (raises Combat Speed to 2.4, -10% accuracy though)

Coordination 4 Luck 1 Awareness 4 Strength 2 Speed 8  Intelligence   4 Charisma   5  Action Points 8 Combat Initiative 13 

Evasion 10% Con 32 Combat Speed 2.6 Carry Weight 69 Con/Level 8  Trait: Delayed Gratification 
The second option gets you a much better team member right from the start who will continue to contribute in combat all game long. Finding a dog collar for loot isn't very hard, so that boosts the Ranger's Cha to 6. Delayed Gratification effectively gives our soldier 8 int to the other's 10 for the vast majority of the game. Apparently the level cap was raised so that trait is a better deal than if it existed in the vanilla version. I think it might be overkill, but I thought I'd try to get the characters as close to function as possible. Still, give this guy a few xp grinding skills to expedite his journey to 10 (and another point of CHA!) and then just enjoy the ride from there. Keep raising Cha or raise combat stats to taste. Probably not "optimized" for weapon AP or whatever horseshit I glanced over in a couple guides, but I know which soldier I'd take.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
Even then, I'd imagine Smart and Kiss rear end would cover most of the important "good ending" outcomes. You can get by for a good while on Angela if you give her an extra point or two in Hard rear end. If you don't care, just take one guy with the rear end in a top hat trait that maxes Hard rear end and locks out the other two. That's a pile of points saved from three skills right there.

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Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Quarex posted:

Disparnumerophobia nooooooooooooooooo

Eh, just edit in 14 unspent stat points for each ranger and skip the level tapdancing act.

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