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General discussionWe certainly don’t pull any punches - interview with the creators of Wasteland 3(75 posts)(75 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 28, 2020
After years of development and listening attentively to gamers, the third part of the cult post-apocalyptic series is finally here. We’ve used this occasion to ask some questions to the game’s lead designer David Rogers and other developers from inXile Entertainment.

GOG.COM: What are your views on the future of mankind - should we be worried?

David Rogers, Lead Designer: I don't think we should be worried. Even if there's a nuclear apocalypse, it seems (according to Wasteland) like there'll still be plenty of drugs to go around. ;-)



What element of the Wasteland series have you always felt most drawn into, what kept you going through the years of games’ development?

I’ve really loved helping build Wasteland alongside my amazing team. It feels a heck of a lot like being a Dungeon Master. We’re really focused on telling the player’s story, trying to anticipate their every move, and make the game work no matter what they do. Something that’s really motivated all of us as we finish polishing Wasteland has been the fan feedback during the Alpha and Beta tests. I feel a lot of support from our community of Wasteland fans.

Who is your favorite character from the game and why? We would appreciate as many answers from the team as possible.

David Rogers, Lead Designer - Scotchmo. I just find him a joy to be around. He really lightens the mood of our often-bleak game. From a playstyle perspective, and for what he does to the story, I’d go with Ironclad Cordite. He’s got his own agenda and it’s pretty horrible, but if you entertain his plans he’ll take the game in a crazy direction.



Alex Kerr, Level Designer - Party Pal. When everyone else sees a frozen hellscape, it sees a potential party!

Thomas Beekers, Narrative Designer - Long John, a synth hiding in the Bizarre, disguised very poorly by wearing a Richard Nixon mask. Long John is a good combination of Wasteland 3's 80s roots and sense of humor, while also having a dark plotline. And his dialog is quite funny!

Eric Schwarz, Lead Systems Designer - The Prisoner. I love how you find him just hanging out in the prison of Ranger HQ when you move in, and the mystery of who he is, how he got there, and how you just can't figure out any answers no matter how many questions you ask. He is also written and voiced in a way that is absolutely hilarious and I remember laughing out loud for pretty much the entire conversation with him.

Kitty Lee, Producer - Servitor bots, their voices crack me up.



Will frozen Colorado prove to be more dangerous for the players than post-apocalyptic Arizona from the previous parts of the series?

They both have their own dangers for sure. We certainly don’t pull any punches. There is no shortage of ways to die in Colorado. When it comes to how we murder you on the world map, we have made some changes for the better. Our world map, first off, looks amazing! We’ve also made some changes to random encounters. Avoiding random encounters is no longer random.

Each encounter in each area has its own skill needed to avoid it. It gives you a much better feeling of control over the world and the experience you want. Other skills now, for the first time, come into play in random encounters. With certain skills, based on the encounter type, you can use them to gain an advantage in combat. For example, you can use your Sneaky Shit skill to ambush your ambushers.



Radiation has a fun twist on it now too. Radiation will kill you, make no mistake, but a quick dance in the radiation can now result in random mutations or tumors forming on your ranger. Maybe that 3rd eye you grew is worth the nausea you got from your radiation bath.

How does it feel to work with legendary game designer and producer, Brian Fargo? What kind of boss is he?

He’s fantastic. He really does play a huge role in driving the tone and feel of our games. He has a great sense of what players want from our games and how to make a game strike an emotional chord. A lot of the humor and drama in Wasteland 3 reflect Brian and Matt Findley’s (narrative director on this game) sensibilities. He really tries hard, particularly early in the project, to drill into the team the tone he wants to strike and the kind of game-feel he wants, and works to keep the game true to that vision, all while making sure to amplify the creativity that flows around inXile when we’re building a game.



What was the most difficult part of creating Wasteland 3?

I think if you ask every member of our team you’ll get fifty different answers. There were so many challenges to overcome in making this game and each was its own war story. Basically, every problem we solved was exacerbated by how massive this game turned out to be.

Optimizing the game was a huge effort from everyone. It was a huge challenge from the get-go just building what feels like 80+ hours of gameplay, recording all those voices, balancing all that content, building all the items, putting SFX and music everywhere, and then having to test the whole thing. Testing a game like this is such a challenge because there’s simply no replacement for just playing the game.

Everything’s just so interconnected. If you tweak one little thing it can have huge impacts on the economy, which impacts combat difficulty, which impacts how much ammo and health packs you use, which comes back to impact the economy again, etc etc. When a natural playthrough for us clocks in at around 80 hours you can only do huge balance passes so many times.



What feeling would you like to convey to the players that are waiting on the edge of their seats for Wasteland 3?

Personally, gratitude. Our community has felt supportive of what we’re doing so far. Each time we release a backer demo they come back to us with support for what we’re doing, as well as constructive criticism, letting us know what else they want from us. We polished our merchant interface, added a mini-map, added crouch, added alternate weapon fire modes, and a ton of other smaller bits of polish based on the feedback from our fans.

We built a huge game designed to let players tell their own stories, and we’re so excited to see what people do with our game. A huge thrill for me personally, and I know a lot of devs feel the same way, is watching people stream our games. Watching someone have fun with your game is about as rewarding as it gets for a game developer.
Posted August 31, 2020
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dtgreene: By the way, why do you prefer skill points, anyway? As I have mentioned before, they're really not a good system.
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Sarafan: First of all, there's fun in spending time in tables and statistics discovering how the system works and what to choose on level up. Second, this kind of system forces a specialization of characters, which makes a subsequent playthrough more fun. In the improve-by-use systems you can become a specialist in every skill with enough time investment. Third, I like classic approach to RPGs and this classic approach favors skill based systems.
I actually enjoy spending time in those tables and statistics, but I also enjoy experimenting with the game mechanics to see how things work. Experimentation is much easier if character builds are more fluid rather than rigid, or if there's at least some cheat to make them fluid.

For subsequent playthroughs, simply trying different setups at different parts of the game is enough to make later playthroughs interesting and fun.

Also, for the improve-by-use systems, the game developer doesn't expect players to take that much time investment, and I feel that, if the player does want to take the time, the player should be allowed the character to be a specialist in every skill. It helps make the game playable after the final boss has been conquered (without starting over), and it also provides a way for the player to fix their build mistakes.

As I mentioned, skill points are actually not the classic approach to RPGs; WRPGs didn't have any before the likes of Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and Might & Magic 6, and JRPGs didn't see them until the likes of Dragon Quest 8 (which was a PlayStation 2 game, so much later than for WRPGs).

(It's also worth noting that the ability to eventually become great at everything is irrelevant for speedruns. I'm not a speedrunner, but they can be quite fun to watch.)

(Side note: I wouldn't mind irreversible character customization in a game that's short, like the length of SaGa 1 (a game I recommend playing despite its bugs and rough edges; it was released in the US under the title "Final Fantasy Legend") or shorter. Unfortunately, I've seen skill points that are used in games that are way too long for them.)
Posted September 01, 2020
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dtgreene: Respec does make a huge difference, but in a sense it's really just a patch to fix the major issues of the skill point system. When playing Avadon 2, I used the "retrain" cheat all the time, as I found the game to be more fun that way. (I played up to the point in the game where you can respec for free without the cheat, but I just stopped then for whatever reason.)
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Sarafan: I don't treat respec as a form of cheating if the developers implemented this option as a part of gameplay. Using a bug or cheat code is a form of cheating. :) But I agree that there's a very thin line between two as the effect is quite similar.
In Regalia: Of men and monarchs, it was exactly that. You were expected to respec your characters rather often in order to adapt them to changing circumstances. It was not onlyl possible but encouraged.

Having the chance to respec might help a lot if you realize you made a choice that really did not suit your playstyle. It might be the difference from dropping a game or keep on playing. If anyone wants to abuse the system but tayloring the characters to the challenges, that might fall into the realm of cheating (unless the game actively expects you to do that, as in Regalia). In a world where there are many games to try, and many do not have time to play them all, a game that allows for respec-ing (even if disencouraging it, in ways like asking for in-game cash or whatever), might add to the fun.

With many players having little time and too many games, allowing the player to botch the character, without the chance to amends it, does not sound like a good idea. If the only option is going back to a savegame, and repeating a long section of the game, the odds are that possibly the players leaves the game for something shiny in the horizon.

This, unless the game proposition makes absolutely no sense with respec-ing, as with perma-death: some games lose a lot without it, while others can happily allow it to be optional.
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Sarafan: If it brings someone fun, I don't see any contraindications. Everyone should play games in the way they like it. :) But it's a form of cheat and we have to keep that in mind.
The problem with cheating for single user games: Some players might want to try cheats, only to lose interest in the game fast, as it becames too easy. There are degrees of cheating, though, and removing a single annoyance of the game, or savescumming, goes a long way from god mode.
Post edited September 01, 2020 by Carradice
Posted September 01, 2020
Another word about Regalia: Of men and monarchs.

Respec-ing was fully in theme with the game. The two main tenets were: 1) It is important to put yourself in the shoes of other people in order to empathize with them. 2) People can learn and evolve over time.
Posted September 01, 2020
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dtgreene: Except that Dungeons and Dragons iss not based off skill points. You roll stats, choose a class, and then level up by earning experience points; no choices really to be made. It's only when thieves were added (a class that doesn't really translate well to CRPGs, particularly earlier iterations) that you have something like skill points, and only for that one class.
A guess you're right. The first edition of D&D wasn't based on skill points. But it wasn't based on improve-by-use as well. In fact the first D&D was closer to the system with skill points than to the system with improve-by-use. Although you'll probably argue with that. :)

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dtgreene: You should play it; it has an interesting system that's a lot sloppier than what you find in more modern games, but still works well.

Other games to look into are:
* Dragon Wars (early example of a classless skill point system)
* Ultima 3 (class system, but stat increases aren't through levels, but rather use a different method)
* Ultima 1 (comes before so many genre conventions; for example, HP is more like a currency, as you have to buy or earn new HP to replace what's lost to damage (no "healing" in the usual sense, though leaving a dungeon might give you back more HP than you lost).
I have a problem with very old games. Often the mechanics are very outdated and they provide a quite harsh experience. But sometimes I try to get back to those classics. Right now W1 is quite high on my list and I intend to finally play it. As for other games we'll see. :) Early Ultima games were never on my list, but you got me interested in them...
Post edited September 01, 2020 by Sarafan
Posted September 01, 2020
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dtgreene: I actually enjoy spending time in those tables and statistics, but I also enjoy experimenting with the game mechanics to see how things work. Experimentation is much easier if character builds are more fluid rather than rigid, or if there's at least some cheat to make them fluid.
I agree that experimentation is quite hard in the skill based systems. I mean, you can experiment, but if you do, you have to be prepared to repeat a quite big portion of the game. But again, there's a much bigger potential for a subsequent playthrough in this kind of systems. You can play once again with a completely different character. It's a lot harder in the improve-by-use system.

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dtgreene: Also, for the improve-by-use systems, the game developer doesn't expect players to take that much time investment, and I feel that, if the player does want to take the time, the player should be allowed the character to be a specialist in every skill. It helps make the game playable after the final boss has been conquered (without starting over), and it also provides a way for the player to fix their build mistakes.
We have to also remember that both of these systems have a little different target. I think that skill points system favors veterans of the genre, who know what to do (which skills to pick etc.). A good example is Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I'm playing right now. A newbie, that didn't have any contact with D&D before, will have a very hard time to go through all of the statistics and tables. Skyrim for example however is very accessible even for people who didn't have too much contact with the genre.

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dtgreene: As I mentioned, skill points are actually not the classic approach to RPGs; WRPGs didn't have any before the likes of Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and Might & Magic 6, and JRPGs didn't see them until the likes of Dragon Quest 8 (which was a PlayStation 2 game, so much later than for WRPGs).
We had some old RPGs based on the AD&D system (Eye of the Beholder series for example) in which you rolled stats, but could rebalance them on your own on the character creation screen. This reminds me of skill point based systems. But I won't argue because you're clearly more familiar with very old RPGs than I am. :)

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dtgreene: (Side note: I wouldn't mind irreversible character customization in a game that's short, like the length of SaGa 1 (a game I recommend playing despite its bugs and rough edges; it was released in the US under the title "Final Fantasy Legend") or shorter. Unfortunately, I've seen skill points that are used in games that are way too long for them.)
That's why I also like games in which you can respec skill points. I might not use it, but it's good to have such an option.
Post edited September 01, 2020 by Sarafan
Posted September 01, 2020
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Carradice: In Regalia: Of men and monarchs, it was exactly that. You were expected to respec your characters rather often in order to adapt them to changing circumstances. It was not onlyl possible but encouraged.
Such an option allows for more experimenting. It's a good thing to have it, even if you don't use it. I won't argue that it gives a huge potential within a single playthrough.

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Carradice: With many players having little time and too many games, allowing the player to botch the character, without the chance to amends it, does not sound like a good idea. If the only option is going back to a savegame, and repeating a long section of the game, the odds are that possibly the players leaves the game for something shiny in the horizon.
The games with respec option are more accessible without any doubts. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer which always knows what to do. I only expect it to be quite lore friendly, so no built-in cheats please. :)

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Carradice: The problem with cheating for single user games: Some players might want to try cheats, only to lose interest in the game fast, as it becames too easy. There are degrees of cheating, though, and removing a single annoyance of the game, or savescumming, goes a long way from god mode.
That's why cheating does not equal respec. Respecing is quite far from cheating because it's limited to already gained skill points.
Posted September 01, 2020
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Carradice: This, unless the game proposition makes absolutely no sense with respec-ing, as with perma-death: some games lose a lot without it, while others can happily allow it to be optional.
If a game has permadeath and no respecs, such a game had better be short; the problems with both of these become magnified as the game gets longer. (These mechanics are perhaps fine for a 30 minute game, but I would not want them in a 30 hour game.)

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dtgreene: Except that Dungeons and Dragons iss not based off skill points. You roll stats, choose a class, and then level up by earning experience points; no choices really to be made. It's only when thieves were added (a class that doesn't really translate well to CRPGs, particularly earlier iterations) that you have something like skill points, and only for that one class.
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Sarafan: A guess you're right. The first edition of D&D wasn't based on skill points. But it wasn't based on improve-by-use as well. In fact the first D&D was closer to the system with skill points than to the system with improve-by-use. Although you'll probably argue with that. :)
Early D&D was basically "roll stats, choose your race and class, and those are all the choices you ever make for character development".

You can also see that in early RPGs.

Incidentally, when you look at early JRPGs (when the genre first splintered off), you don't always get even that choice. Dragon Quest 1 has your stats determined only by name and level, Dragon Quest 2 has just level with each of the 3 characters having a different stat table, and Dragon Quest 4 has fixed classes. (Final Fantasy 1 has you choose classes like in older WRPGs, Dragon Quest 3 has this with expensive class changing (going back to level 1), and Final Fantasy 2 and 3 do their own things, making them less typical of RPGs of the era in this respect.)

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dtgreene: I actually enjoy spending time in those tables and statistics, but I also enjoy experimenting with the game mechanics to see how things work. Experimentation is much easier if character builds are more fluid rather than rigid, or if there's at least some cheat to make them fluid.
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Sarafan: I agree that experimentation is quite hard in the skill based systems. I mean, you can experiment, but if you do, you have to be prepared to repeat a quite big portion of the game. But again, there's a much bigger potential for a subsequent playthrough in this kind of systems. You can play once again with a completely different character. It's a lot harder in the improve-by-use system.
It's not too hard in improve-by-use systems, as which equipment and abilities you give a character will affect the stats and abilities you get during the game.

In SaGa 2, a human mage (which is actually a viable set-up once you can realistically afford basic spellbooks) is a quite different character than a human fighter, or you might even try martial arts (which I've come to really like in the early game; stats aren't important when using them, as their power increases as remaining uses decreases). Then again, the game does offer you a choice of races, and an esper mage gets abilities that a human mage does not, at the cost of fewer item slots. (Human mage gets higher magic power growth, and spellbooks are stronger than the corresponding spells, but in the early game spellbooks are too expensive, while espers start with a spell that hits all enemies.)

(Of course, in the SaGa 2 case, I don't even mention robots and monsters, whose growth systems don't resemble any of the other systems I mention in the topic, and which result in playthroughs that feel very different; parties containing only robots and monsters are quite fun, as you need only good equipment and the occasional meat drop to get through the game.)
Post edited September 01, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted September 01, 2020
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dtgreene: As I mentioned, skill points are actually not the classic approach to RPGs; WRPGs didn't have any before the likes of Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and Might & Magic 6, and JRPGs didn't see them until the likes of Dragon Quest 8 (which was a PlayStation 2 game, so much later than for WRPGs).
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Sarafan: We had some old RPGs based on the AD&D system (Eye of the Beholder series for example) in which you rolled stats, but could rebalance them on your own on the character creation screen. This reminds me of skill point based systems. But I won't argue because you're clearly more familiar with very old RPGs than I am. :)
Actually, in the SSI games it wasn't just rebalancing; you could give your characters whatever stats you wanted within the ranges allowed by the game, which means that, yes, you can indeed give your human all 18s. (Unfortunately, in the Gold Box games this still doesn't let you make female characters as strong as male characters can be, but that's another issue, and happens not to apply to the games you mention.)

By the way, it appears that Pool of Radiance, Wasteland, and Final Fantasy 2 all came out the same year. (Final Fantasy 2 is the outlier here when it comes to gameplay, but that can be explained by the fact that it was developed in a completely different part of the world.)

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dtgreene: I actually enjoy spending time in those tables and statistics, but I also enjoy experimenting with the game mechanics to see how things work. Experimentation is much easier if character builds are more fluid rather than rigid, or if there's at least some cheat to make them fluid.
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Sarafan: I agree that experimentation is quite hard in the skill based systems. I mean, you can experiment, but if you do, you have to be prepared to repeat a quite big portion of the game. But again, there's a much bigger potential for a subsequent playthrough in this kind of systems. You can play once again with a completely different character. It's a lot harder in the improve-by-use system.
I could mention two ways I've found to get some nice experimentation done in these systems, provided that the game doesn't restrict saving and reloading:
1. Don't spend all my skill points. Then, when I want to experiment, save, spend them, play around a bit, then reload the save. (This assumes the game allows me to do this; Dragon Quest 8 (PS2) is one game where this isn't an option, and Wizardry 6/7 also have the same issue.)
2. Use a respec option, even if it's limited or pricey (as long as the cost doesn't prevent me from doing the experiment I want; going down all the way to level 1 usually won't work). Even if this requires a one-of-a-kind consumable item, I can just reload from before I use it after I do my experiment.
Post edited September 01, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted September 10, 2020
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Sarafan: That's why a respec option is very useful. […]
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dtgreene: Respec does make a huge difference, but in a sense it's really just a patch to fix the major issues of the skill point system. […]

Similar patches can be done through improve-by-use systems, like being able to pay for training (Morrowind), or earning something after battle that can be used to improve other skills. Alternatively, having skills that are used infrequently improve faster could work, or even making them binary (either you have the skill or you don't, so no reason to worry about improving it could work).
[…]
That is an elegant solution.

What about losing skills that aren't practiced? Professional athletes train upwards of six hours a day to excel at their sport, for instance. Excepting for the purposes of diegesis, skills attained are almost never lost, much less reduced when left to atrophy. I suppose the latter editions of D&D had something akin to this with the subtraction of XP from the character when manufacturing potions, scrolls and magical items. (It's not really relevant in most game settings, since they are set within strictly defined limits of time and location, so it is perfectly legitimate to only improve, but this ignores the complication that occurs when improving one skill may interfere with the maintenance of another.)

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dtgreene: […] Casters did have to choose which spells to memorize (a term that I don't like; 3.x's "prepare" term works much better here), but that choice could change each day. Fighters didn't have any choices until weapon proficiencies showed up, and I maintain that weapon proficiencies are a bad mechanic for CRPGs due to the issue of requiring players to make blind permanent (or not so permanent in its FF2 incarnation, but still a pain to deal with weapon droughts for your main weapon) choices without any information to help the player decide. (Remember that the player does not know what weapons will be available on their first playthrough.)

[…]

* Ultima 1 (comes before so many genre conventions; for example, HP is more like a currency, as you have to buy or earn new HP to replace what's lost to damage (no "healing" in the usual sense, though leaving a dungeon might give you back more HP than you lost).
The mechanism to limit power is an interesting study. Your example of a fighter profession, methinks, approaches the game from the wrong perspective; I would suggest that, absent other reasons, a game should have equal opportunities for any weapon (whether they are classified by the damage, like blunt / piercing / slashing or the skills needed to wield them, like one-handed / two-handed and mêlée / ranged, or whatever) so that a choice leads to richer encounters. A "weapon drought" is poor planning by the developers, not the player (who, as you point out, cannot know what is in store for them when they begin).

As for the observation about the original Ultima, that might be an interesting mechanic for skills if it dealt with losing and gaining skills, and how they might interfere inter se.

Bad choices help determine better ones for a particular profession or role. I always save before a level-up in order to provide a clean save point before committing whatever upgrades give my character, since (inevitably) experimentation reveals poor choices. With Shadowrun, for instance, I will not commit karma (which improve abilities) until after the mission begins, since the "Restart level" rewind will begin with those points ready for redistribution, should I have made a calamitous mistake with the allocation.
Posted September 10, 2020
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dtgreene: Respec does make a huge difference, but in a sense it's really just a patch to fix the major issues of the skill point system. […]

Similar patches can be done through improve-by-use systems, like being able to pay for training (Morrowind), or earning something after battle that can be used to improve other skills. Alternatively, having skills that are used infrequently improve faster could work, or even making them binary (either you have the skill or you don't, so no reason to worry about improving it could work).
[…]
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scientiae: That is an elegant solution.

What about losing skills that aren't practiced? Professional athletes train upwards of six hours a day to excel at their sport, for instance. Excepting for the purposes of diegesis, skills attained are almost never lost, much less reduced when left to atrophy. I suppose the latter editions of D&D had something akin to this with the subtraction of XP from the character when manufacturing potions, scrolls and magical items. (It's not really relevant in most game settings, since they are set within strictly defined limits of time and location, so it is perfectly legitimate to only improve, but this ignores the complication that occurs when improving one skill may interfere with the maintenance of another.)
Losing skills that aren't practiced is not a mechanic that I would see being well-liked by the player base; it's also an issue when there's a cost to practicing certain skills. Final Fantasy 2 does this with attributes; if you keep using regular attacks, your strength would sometimes increase, but each time that happens, there's a chance that you will lose intelligence. The problem is that you can't choose to just not use a regulat attack; the alternatives are spellcasting (limited by MP; at 0 MP you can't cast any more spells), using items (not sustainable unless you happen to find an item with infinite uses, but you aren't handed any early on (except as a drop from an enemy you should not be fighting that early)), or running away (ending the battle with no reward if it happens to succeed).

Interestingly enough, Wasteland 1 has a mechanic where actions that use ammo are more likely to raise your skill than those that don't. Brawling is more likely to increase if you throw a spear than if you just fight in melee. Anti-tank weapons are expensive and annoying to use (you have to spend a turn equipping a new one after each attack), but the skill at least increases quickly (and the weapons ignore defense).

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scientiae: As for the observation about the original Ultima, that might be an interesting mechanic for skills if it dealt with losing and gaining skills, and how they might interfere inter se.
I could look at SaGa 1 (and 2) as an interesting example here.

Each weapon has a certain number of uses, and when it reaches 0, the weapon disappears. This also applies to spellbooks. A human character has 8 slots for equipment, which are shared between weapons, spellbooks, and armor, so you have to choose which you want to equip.

Martial arts skills (like Punch) also have a number of uses, but there's another rather interesting mechanic in play here; the power of a martial art attack increases as the remaining uses decrease. This makes the attack stronger the more you use it, but after a certain point, you lose the martial art and can no longer use it. (You can, of course, get another one, but the uses of one copy of the skill don't carry over to the new copy (barring a certain well-known bug in SaGa 1, of course).) There's an additional mechanic where the final use of a martial art skill will do triple damage; in SaGa 1 this is one of the few ways to reach 999 displayed damage (the actual damage is higher).

(By the way, I find Punch to be quite useful in SaGa 2's early game; human/esper stat growth is very slow, and Punch gains power much faster; the durability tends to run out close to the time that the monsters get too strong to be 1-hit killed by the attack.)
Post edited September 10, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted September 10, 2020
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scientiae: Bad choices help determine better ones for a particular profession or role. I always save before a level-up in order to provide a clean save point before committing whatever upgrades give my character, since (inevitably) experimentation reveals poor choices. With Shadowrun, for instance, I will not commit karma (which improve abilities) until after the mission begins, since the "Restart level" rewind will begin with those points ready for redistribution, should I have made a calamitous mistake with the allocation.
I don't like game design that makes it necessary to save before a level-up. Also, not all games are this nice; for example, Wizardry 6 and 7 force level ups immediately after battle, so reloading would require winning the battle, and Dragon Quest 8 (PS2) is even worse; you can't save mid-dungeon, level ups must be taken right away, and the skill points must be spent before the game can continue.

Personally, I like systems where skill learning and growth isn't tied to level advancement, and the points you get to improve them (if there's such a mechanic) don't get harder to get as you get stronger. In fact, I could see an AP system similar to what you find in some Final Fantasy games (5 being the first one to do this), where you get AP separately from XP, working nicely with a Wasteland 1 style distribution of weapons; weak weapon skils (like Clip Pistol) would cost very little AP to improve, while stronger weapon skills (Assault Rifle) would take more AP; stronger enemies would then give significantly more AP. (Also, since Doctor > Medic, Doctor would have higher AP requirements in this system.)
Posted September 10, 2020
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scientiae: The mechanism to limit power is an interesting study. Your example of a fighter profession, methinks, approaches the game from the wrong perspective; I would suggest that, absent other reasons, a game should have equal opportunities for any weapon (whether they are classified by the damage, like blunt / piercing / slashing or the skills needed to wield them, like one-handed / two-handed and mêlée / ranged, or whatever) so that a choice leads to richer encounters. A "weapon drought" is poor planning by the developers, not the player (who, as you point out, cannot know what is in store for them when they begin).
If a game is going to have separate weapon skills for each weapon type, there should be a clear difference between them that is strategically significant and is obvious from the beginning. Otherwise, the player is expected to make a blind choice. A similar issue comes up with elemental magic skills; if a game is going to have elemental symmetry, the magic skills shouldn't be divided up per element. Either put them in the same skill, or give the elemental attack skills to skills that get other abilities that differ in strategically significant ways.

By the way, Wasteland 1 is an interesting example of the opposite situation to what you have mentioned. When it comes to firearms, there is a clear hierarchy of weapon skills: Clip Pistol < Rifle < SMG < Assault Rifle. Early on, Clip Pistols are all you get, but they become obsolete when you get better weapon types, which need different skills. Essentially, each weapon type has a point in the game where it shines; before then, the weapon type is simply not available at all, and after that point, you don't get any better weapons of that type. That sort of system would not work well for a strict skill point system, but works well with Wasteland 1's improve-by-use system and would work with an FF-style AP system (as I mentioned above).

With that said, firearm weapon skills actually aren't that important in Wasteland 1; single-shot weapons aren't worth using over melee combat, and going full-auto with a semi-automatic weapon (there's *plenty* of ammo despite what the
manual would make you believe) gives you an accuracy bonus so big that it dwarfs the bonus from your skill level. I might learn Assault Rifle simply because the skill has a chance to increase rather high, and Energy Weapon (when these start to appear) is worth learning, but other weapon skills can be skipped; SMG (and AR) work well enough without the skill.

Honsetly, I think I might prefer a system where the only permanent irreversible choice is the character's class (or species) at the start of the game, and all other choices made can be changed or fixed later on. (I'm liking Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark DLC's monster variant system; each monster has a species that never changes, but the monsters can acquire variants that can be leveled up through AP and which can be changed as much as you want on the world map.)
Posted August 25, 2021
Wasteland 3: Cult of the Holy Detonation Announcement Teaser
Posted October 05, 2021
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Swedrami: Wasteland 3: Cult of the Holy Detonation Announcement Teaser
Should drop later today.
Posted October 06, 2021
Cult of the Holy Detonation is not showing up for expansion pack users. :(
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General discussionWe certainly don’t pull any punches - interview with the creators of Wasteland 3(75 posts)(75 posts)
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