Messages

1

General / Re: (Spoiler) Is killing everyone the normal pathway for DLC?

« on: September 22, 2019, 03:14:38 pm »

Alright I suppose that's something. But it still seems like you're meant to kill virtually everybody except the mutants, unless you don't care about the pirates. Kind of interesting to me, as I rarely see games designed where the two major factions are basically only meant to be destroyed. Kind of innovative I suppose

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General / (Spoiler) Is killing everyone the normal pathway for DLC?

« on: September 22, 2019, 03:30:34 am »

When I arrived at the expeditionary base, I had to defend against a native attack. I then learned that these attacks came on a regular basis - that they weren't scripted events. And moreover...it seemed like there were limited numbers of sec-troopers. So rather than hope that enough survived to repel the attacks during the endgame of the DLC, I decided to do something about it.

Namely, I grabbed my shotgun, assault rifle, and sniper rifle, found out where those dirty natives lived, and mowed down those savages in their homes - killing men, women, and old people alike (I also killed their livestock heheh). There was some weird chieftain who turned into a ghost. He didn't last long against my superior firepower, as expected.

I also found a group of shamans, which I casually murdered. But at the end...I found they were praying to a weird totem that seemed to be a gateway to another dimension. I have seen this totem again during the endgame, so I have an idea of what it does and how it affected the natives, but aside from that piece of lore, I couldn't interact with it in any way. I also found a bunch of symbols, but I could only look at them.

On the north-eastern part of the map, I found more of those dirty subhuman primitives so I naturally killed all of them. But then I discovered some kind of evil graveyard, and I am utterly confused as to why this was there. It doesn't seem to do anything. It just has these weird pulleys that you can't operate. Has anyone figured out what these do?

Lastly there was this one savage in a cave. But he was aggressive the moment I came upon him. All I wanted to do was talk, but he started advancing on me with his spear. Being the dirty, violent primitive that he is I was forced to kill him too...but I can't help but feel there could have been more to the interaction.

Has anyone found a way to converse with the natives? Can the dark shrine they pray to be used in any way? What happens in the graveyard? And do you get anything out of talking to the ferryman? He had some weird philosophy that I couldn't understand. Not that I cared too much as it sounded like woo anyway. If he actually had a semi-intelligent philosophy I might have bothered ingesting cerebrix so my character could coax more out of him.

Also...once I found out the pirates kidnapped a member of our expedition, I killed all of them. Is there some alternative solution to this? Are you supposed to just murder all the pirates? Or can you join forces with them, work with them to attack the natives, etc.? I just feel like there were probably a number of diplomatic options that I missed (or maybe  not?). The one bright exception to my massacre was mutie island. They seemed like a harmless bunch so I left them alone. They were at least more civilized than the natives

Finally, as maybe a final note about the endgame of the original. I was thinking there should be rewards for taking on more significant tasks. I managed to wipe out all the protectorate forces from their main base in upper underrail (fort apogee), their lieutenant who was trying to break in at the tchortist base, all protectorate forces in junkyard, as well as their port base in core city and their other small outlying port bases near the rig.

Yet the endgame credits don't really mention anything about these events. In fact the endgame says they survived in south underrail. What it should have said, is that someone mysteriously killed every protectorate soldier, and that the united stations decided to leave that area for good - ceding control to the free drones and a loose alliance of station-states which eventually grew to rival the power of the united stations, but without the militaristic ambitions. It should have been an option with the free drones too. Like - you come back and shock everyone by telling them you single handedly killed all the protectorate forces. Them maybe they'd give you some awesome loot or something. Instead I come back and guy just repeats "we've got to lay low, we can't fight them head on and our numbers are too small blah blah". Of course I understand that devs can't do everything, its just a suggestion in case they do want to make some updates.

PS: Hope not too many Native American gamers read my post lol

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General / Re: What actually is/are the Gray Army?

« on: September 22, 2019, 03:15:45 am »

You can learn a lot about that part of the world from Kokoshka in the free drones base. I was under the impression that they were actually located at the surface though. I think, in that part of the world, they were actually starting to rebuild on the surface. It was very interesting because it offered the tantalizing possibility of seeing what actually happened on the surface, as it was never really explained why they had to to underground.

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General / Re: So what improvements would benefit Underrail 2?

« on: August 22, 2019, 05:11:56 am »

Actually that is one thing that made Fallout 1 & 2 so good; they had good death animations. It doesn't take too much effort but it adds a lot to the game, if on a critical hit something spectacular happens to the enemy. It gives the game a bit more of a post-apocalyptic feel. Maybe they could even add some voice acting? It would have to be good though...Fallout 2 good.

A bunch of other suggestions:

Maintenance of weapons and gear serves more as an irritation than it does a joy. To the extent that people might argue its realistic, you could point out that there are many 'realistic' things that are not part of the game, like needing to sleep on a regular basis, go to the washroom, or eat food and drink water. No one enjoys this level of hyper-maintenance, which is why it is removed in most games. I don't really see any point to including it in this one. Repairing weapons isn't something that is difficult or hard to do, it just requires carrying around a few repair kits and buying/crafting them from time to time.

The same should go for lockpicks and hacking tools. It makes sense that they would require energy, and its not too much of a hassle to recharge so I don't really mind it as much. But I'm not sure what the benefit is gameplay wise.

On the economy: I don't think there is much point in making it overly difficult to sell items. For one thing, it doesn't really resolve the issue of players getting rich and hoarding hundreds of guns to sell at a later point. I found in my playthrough I would still end up with 20,000+ coins and a barrel filled with guns and high-quality armors ready to be sold on a periodic basis (on hard mode). The only place to sink that many coins in is A) Useless home decorations and B) Jet skis.

I actually think that, perhaps it would be better to simply allow players to buy and sell more goods in general to existing merchants (especially general traders), but to have each merchant sell a unique item that costs a small fortune. The remaining items that are sold shouldn't break the game if the player buys them; i.e. you can buy decent armor and weapons, but at a certain point the quality is limited so there is no point purchasing it. The exception could be for elite traders - but you can scale the cost of their items so that only those with the mercantile skill can really buy at their shops regularly. This makes the mercantile skill more useful, and its less irritating for players who may have a ton of great armors and weapons, but the weapons and armor merchant is only interested in buying one gun, a helmet and a pair of boots (which is weirdly specific and somewhat arbitrary).

On that note I think it might be helpful to let players know that a higher mercantile skill will actually expand trader inventory (it was in the dev logs, but its not stated when creating a new character in the skills menu); otherwise many might assume it only gets you a better price. If you don't realize this and build a character who excels at crafting but not mercantile, you will basically be screwed as you can't buy high quality components without a good mercantile skill. This actually happened to me lol. Thankfully I could use a trainer to move points around without feeling like I broke the game.

Compared to others I do not want a party-based mechanic. I think there is something a little more personal and in depth about being a single operative who can defeat significant enemies or crowds by him/herself, and who takes sole responsibility for certain actions. Squad-based combat can be fun if done properly (Fallout Tactics) but it also makes the game less personal.

Other than that, I like the atmospheric music, the locations, the artwork, and especially the story so far. I would love to see how it continues. Hopefully a brief sojourn to the surface is possible, as I am very curious what actually destroyed the surface and why it is uninhabitable. The characters are also fascinating. The many locations to explore makes it feel like a true open-world RPG.

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General / Re: (Spoiler) Stuck in Gray Army Base

« on: August 11, 2019, 05:20:30 am »

That was one of the coolest parts of the game for me. Just shocking that you could find a way to travel through some "in-between" spacetime reality and end up in another part of the world, maybe not devastated by whatever destroyed the surface. Its some very imaginative sci-fi right there. In most of these post-apocalyptic games, you only get a chance to explore one area. But at least here they give you a chance to see what other parts of the world are like. And the music is pretty amazing.

What's even better is there is a chance of finding more of these areas by imbibing more of the secret brew. Very interested to see if I can discover anything else

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Other Games / Re: Pillars of Eternity!

« on: May 02, 2018, 06:29:21 pm »

I don't know, I thought it was a pretty good game. I loved being a DPS glass cannon mage party that nuked everything to death. The evolution in the power of your spells is pretty good, and there are plenty of interesting quests with a variety of impactful decisions you can make. I don't understand how that's bad. The endless paths was one of the most fascinating areas I've ever seen.

I feel like most people here prefer different types of games. Comparing POE to Underrail, I honestly think POE was better just because of the richness of the locations and graphics, but its hard to compete when they have so many more employees. Underrail had really great atmosphere and gameplay, as well as good story, it just wasn't as pretty to look at.

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #57: The Rig

« on: May 02, 2018, 06:20:40 pm »

Is there any estimate on the expected release based on the work remaining? Since there is less left to do it seems like it might be easier to estimate.

Also the aesthetics are pretty good in my opinion. Anything that maintains the same flavour as what existed in the core underrail game is perfectly fine with me. I have to say overall this game turned out really well, in spite of my concerns. Really looking forward to the expansion. Can't wait to one-shot the boss with my sniper rifle again

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #25: Game Economy Changes

« on: February 01, 2014, 01:22:17 am »

Okay I haven't had the chance to play this game in a while due to school, but from what I see I am getting concerned. At first it was adding energy cells in order to use hacking devices and requiring the player to purchase and manage lockpicks - this really just made the game more of a chore but didn't limit anyone in any meaningful sense of player choice. Then you added weapon and armor degradation, which forced the player to deal with the irritating burden of constantly maintaining their gear, again without any meaningful consequences in terms of player choice/consequence. All of this was done for the sake of the economy, which at the time you said wasn't even working because the amount people could loot was still worth far more than what they lost in taking care of these menial tasks.

So now to actually fix the economy (while keeping all of the other menial tasks above for a reason I don't understand), you've simply made it impossible to sell the vast majority of the things you pick up so that only key items can be sold. Not only that but you added severe weight penalties. I understand some hardcore players really love this, but this is becoming unbearable. Now I have to deal with the headache of waiting *an hour* before I have *a chance* of selling something to a dealer (and from that only from a small subset of items), and I also have to deal with making multiple trips back to the same place if there were some key items there that I missed. You make it sound so easy; instead of the boring drudgery of going back to the same place, why not go on a new adventure? As if this game had easy combat and cheap items - this is one of the hardest RPGs I've played, and the reason why it is doable is because I scour every area to make sure I have enough resources to buy all-important ammunition and repair kits, as well as some left over money to save up for better weapons and armor and other key consumables.

Other games clearly have limitations as well. I played New Vegas in hardcore mode because I thought it would be a fun challenge. What I realized is that the vast majority of the 'small' things you have to worry about (hydration, food, sleep, weight limits, armor/weapon condition) added up to simply being nothing more than a menial chore that I had to deal with - they didn't add any meaningful challenge to the game besides making sure you bought a few meals at the local store where you did your trading. It seems your goal here is to amplify these difficulties to the point where it actually becomes a key game mechanic to only operate with the bare essentials, selling only the most expensive items, and only in limited quantities, to certain traders, at certain times.

The whole joy I derive from RPGs is the prospect that my character gets better; over time he has more disposable wealth, he finds a steady way of making income, it becomes easier to carry goods to and fro (perhaps by travelling with companions or even having a car like in Fallout 2), and of course his overall skills increase. What I observe is the focus in this game is not to make this game about getting better but about constantly making rough choices so that you always feel like you just have enough to make it in the next area. But to me its anti-fun...the greatest part of every game I've played was when you finally get a great spell, an amazing weapon, a new car (Fallout 2), or steal an incredibly expensive item and end up with lots of money.  Yes, in these moments the game feels unbalanced. That is part of the fun.

There are supposed to be great parts to the game where you really feel more powerful or capable in some way, but it seems like your gaming philosophy is to repress this as much as possible.  The game economy is not supposed to be perfectly balanced; people should be able to get rich because there is joy in getting rich...but with your system you have to probably wait days before you are able to sell the requisite items...I just don't understand where the fun is in this.

Maybe it gets better as I'm just at the start of the game, but I'm already frustrated because I don't even know if its worth purchasing traps for collecting cave hoppers anymore, because the guy who sells them only wants to buy 7 units of cave fungi or flowers, meaning I can't really sell my cave hoppers to anyone unless I have the patience to wait an hour for him to hopefully want something besides flowers. And even then he'd probably only want 5 when I have 15 cages. Its just maddening to be honest...when I look at the inventory screens of every other trader I know I'm basically going to be severely crippled in my cash flow and most of my scavenging fun will be useless as no one really wants to buy anything anymore.

I wish I could make my own game...it would be so great lol. In any case it seems you really love the economy as it is barring a few minor tweaks. So I guess I'll be dropping the game, but I wish you all the best in the release. I had some fun during the earlier stages (pre-alpha) at least, so thank you for that .

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Suggestions / Re: Have intelligence affect number of skill points?

« on: September 05, 2013, 02:18:36 pm »

I guess that's fair. I think I need to experiment more with tech skills to understand their true potential and the value of increasing intelligence, as it seems like most of the really valuable items become available later in the game in terms of finding raw components, having the money to buy those components, and the ability to combine them.

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Suggestions / Have intelligence affect number of skill points?

« on: September 04, 2013, 09:22:31 pm »

I was just trying out a tech-centric character, and maybe I missed something but it seems like intelligence doesn't really add that much value to a character.

It just seems like the trade-off of spending a precious stat point on intelligence is tied to very few feats (actually I don't think there are any), and the gains that you do make in advancing your tech skills a bit faster are limited by the fact that you get a significantly reduced number of skill points in total now, meaning that at most you can really only choose one or two tech skills (because you may need other more crucial skills for combat).

I was just thinking again about Fallout, and how the system they used made a good deal of sense. I think that as your intelligence increases there should be a small bonus to your starting skill points as well as the number of skill points you get per turn. Besides that there should be a few feats devoted to intelligence (if that's not enough).

I think it also makes sense for intelligence to have positive affects on persuasion and dialogue options.  I'm not actually sure if dialogue options are added for increased intelligence or not, it would be quite time consuming to go through the game (and very difficult) without any of the feats you can gain with the other character stats. Thinking more broadly, it may be a major change but if it seems like a good idea, I feel like it could allow someone to specialize as a pacifist-type, and maybe earn experience by persuading enemies to do certain things that could lead to quest completion.

Perhaps in the GMS compound you could persuade your enemies to go to the top level through some 'intellectual trickery', and maybe have a trap set up beforehand by talking to Gorsky about it. And for completing the task this way there should be some experience bonus so that this play style is feasible long-term. Just throwing ideas out there!

- - -

Incidentally for the first time in a video game I feel like I'm really missing out based on my character build; you're really squeezing my choices with the limited number of stat points . Its good because I like the challenge, but I had to skip persuasion in order to get another crucial tech skill and now I can't gain access to the secret area in Omega's GMS compound - plus I'm worried a future quest may be impossible without persuasion.  Its just so frustrating to know I'm never going to get in there! I hope you didn't add anything major to that area.

I'm always used to finding a way to make it work somehow. I guess this time it just isn't going to work.  On the plus side I've crafted a nice gun and some armor, so I feel a little better. Prices are still hard to deal with at the start, but 5 levels from now I might finally reach the point where I can buy components, fabricate something, and sell for a profit. Then I'll probably become outrageously wealthy as usual

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General / Re: Just bought the game. Blown away. My ideas in what to add. Congrats Styg!

« on: September 01, 2013, 10:22:57 pm »

Yeah exploring those deep areas where you had advanced pre-war tech was one of the most fascinating parts of Fallout.  I loved all of those exploration missions, plus the lore you learned when going into the S.A.D. was pretty interesting (i.e. what led up to the war)

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Other Games / Re: Wasteland 2

« on: September 01, 2013, 10:16:11 pm »

I'm also following, I guess I assumed most people here already knew about the project as dedicated RPG gamers but maybe that's unwarranted .

I backed the project for a great deal on the final game. So far I'm excited about a few things: They've got Mark Morgan composing again, I love the witty, humorous descriptions and dialogue in the game as shown so far on their youtube reveals, and I like the variety of paths you can choose and skillsets.

After playing Fallout: Tactics a while back I really started to appreciate team-based RTS games more.  So I'm no longer too off-put by managing a squad of players in an RPG setting. I grew up playing solitary RPGs only, and didn't play some of the classics where you commanded a small squad like Baldur's Gate. Now I don't know if I can find the time to go back to the classics though I would like to.

Anyway I'm rambling. I'm looking forward to what they come up with, so far its looking like a nice game. Certainly wouldn't mind playing another game as least as good as Underrail!

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #21: Version 0.1.9.0 released; also Greenlit!

« on: August 31, 2013, 08:35:45 pm »

Hurray its ready

I'm scared to fight the new enemies, but I guess I'll manage.  This time I'm finally going to try a character who can *make* things. What sorts of things I'm still not sure about

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #19: New Armor Type

« on: July 15, 2013, 10:25:55 pm »

I kept coming back waiting for the next update, happy that things are still progressing!  Once you release the new version I'll definitely enjoy a new playthrough to see how things are shaping up. I think I'll probably focus on crafting this time.

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Other Games / Re: What games are you playing?

« on: June 13, 2013, 02:02:22 pm »

Homeworld 2 (frequently)
Planescape Torment (just started)
Morrowind (haven't progressed very far, am getting bored)
X-Wing Alliance (stuck on a tough mission)
Jagged Alliance 2 (progressing very slowly since I've played this game a thousand times already)
Geneforge 2 (about to start)
Euro Truck Simulator 2 (demo)
Crysis (demo, just started)
Wing Commander Saga (just started)

haha are you still playing morrowind? I remember when I started that, the walking speed is *maddeningly* slow. I don't know what the developers were thinking with that.  If you play as a breton, and find the boots of blinding speed, then you can dramatically increase speed but resist the blinding effect by 50%. I just turned up the brightness on my monitor a bit to compensate .

To be honest it isn't really that great of an RPG, Bethesda knows how to make big open game worlds, but it lacks any real depth or quality (except for a few quests).  Still a heck of a lot better than Oblivion, and slightly better than Skyrim IMO.

- - -

Anyway Team Fortress 2 is always fun for me. I finished the Witcher: Enhanced Edition (which was a fairly decent game), and if my computer doesn't crash on me due to its crapiness, I will play a little Planetside 2 or Natural Selection 2 (on Steam). Also just finished Metro 2033 which was pretty good, and a fair challenge on the "hardest" difficulty - although some say it can be a bit easier for certain players so I'm not sure anymore.