Jagged Alliance Don'ts

[Lucius]

I've been playing Jagged Alliance Back in Action as of late because I've heard the series mentioned so many times on these forums. I'm a few hours and I'm really enjoying my experience. I've never played the originals, so I can't compare to those, but there are a lot of features I don't want to see in Wasteland 2.

-No item repair. It's annoying. Jagged Alliance has shown me another game where item repair sucks. (no surprise)

-Too many items. JA requires items to heal, items to repair. Not only that, but three different variety of items depending on skill level. Ugh. How about just use skills to do these things? If we must have items then make them unlimited use items so you only need one. All of these limited use items are just inventory filler. (Elder Scrolls with 18 variety of healing potion, for example.) I know, instead of giving all these filler items, just reduce inventory space to 5 items or something.

-Inventory UI should make sense. It should be easy to navigate. To trade items I should be able to drag and drop items on another characters portrait. There should be a simple way to swap ammo to the right person and pool junk to a single person so selling it all is easy.

-Weight or limited item spaces. Pick one. We don't need two ways of managing inventory space.

-Make cover more intuitive. I hate how if I'm behind a tree, my guy doesn't pop out to shoot. I actually have to move him out of cover to shoot, leaving my merc exposed. Please have a cover mechanic.

-Simplify aiming and stances. I still like the idea of this stuff being character skill based as opposed to player option. It's great in Jagged Alliance but it also takes an hour to clear a building with 10 guys. In Wasteland, you could clear a room of 30 in about 10 minutes.

-Please have a clean/sleak ui. I would like for the user interface to look sharp and modern. I don't want a UI that looks like it was designed in 1992.

-No cheesy voice acting. Please for the love of God if those damn talking heads with terrible lip syncing would just go away and stop causing me nightmares...

I was orginally going to make a list of "Do's" as well but the list was really short. Jagged Alliance is clearly a different genre with some RPG elements. One thing I would like to say though is I strongly oppose the idea of a locked camera position that Brian Fargo has mentioned (i.e. no rotation) and wish they would reconsider having an option to rotate the camera. After playing JA:BiA I can't imagine playing a 3d isometric game without a rotatable camera. I also really enjoy the zoom feature. I can zoom out and see the entire battlefield and zoom in to individual characters and see exactly what's in their line of sight, almost into a 3rd person perspective. With that said one last don't...

-If there is a rotatable camera there MUST be a compass on the screen to know which way is North etc!

[cmagruder]

Barring the weight/limited item space bit, I agree with most of these.

[Bryce777]

Play Jagged Alliance 2 or the original, not that crap.

[Kodine]

If you're really enjoying Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, I have to say that it might be better to simply ignore your opinions. Either that or you need to play a squad-based tactical game that isn't shit as a point of comparison.

[Lucius]

If you're really enjoying Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, I have to say that it might be better to simply ignore your opinions. Either that or you need to play a squad-based tactical game that isn't shit as a point of comparison.

My understanding the largest difference between JA BiA and previous installments is the change to realtime with pause vs turn based. I wish the combat was turn based. Regarding everything I said in my original post though, it still applies. Are you saying the things I mentioned are not present in your ideal squad based game, such as stances, healing items, and weapon repair, etc?

I think many of these things I mentioned are fine for a strategy game (except weapon repair. That sucks in any genre apparently), mind you. Just not for an RPG.

[suz]

stuff

Most of your points stand with JA2 vanilla.

Weight or item spaces and simplifying aim/stances(though not sure how it's done in JA-BTB, JA2 vanilla aim/stances were simple enough) I don't agree with tbh...

[etix]

please just dont mention this abomination of a game in any positive way on any forum

[Rink]

Agree with the repair system! Or at least find a easier solution to repairs (like rightclick in inventory on weapon and then chose repair and who should do it or something else).

Items: less limited use items and consumables are ok, but please make weigth system and not "number of spaces", so we at least can take with us the light items we find on our path. Hate to leave everything behind because a pin needle takes same space in inventory as a Mg60.

Camera: I think to fully rotate would mean more work in graphical section and that's why that hasn't been added. If more work: not worth it.

Cover: fallout-style with points you could freely make what you want (so go out of cover, shoot, go back to cover) would be ok, but I guess for such a game that is already too much work to code and not stealing the system from fallout To actually "use" the cover would probably use even more effort to code, because the game has to know, what items are cover and what not, too much work to be worth it for a RPG.

[Imbunche]

Agree with the repair system! Or at least find a easier solution to repairs (like rightclick in inventory on weapon and then chose repair and who should do it or something else).

Items: less limited use items and consumables are ok, but please make weigth system and not "number of spaces", so we at least can take with us the light items we find on our path. Hate to leave everything behind because a pin needle takes same space in inventory as a Mg60.

Camera: I think to fully rotate would mean more work in graphical section and that's why that hasn't been added. If more work: not worth it.

Cover: fallout-style with points you could freely make what you want (so go out of cover, shoot, go back to cover) would be ok, but I guess for such a game that is already too much work to code and not stealing the system from fallout To actually "use" the cover would probably use even more effort to code, because the game has to know, what items are cover and what not, too much work to be worth it for a RPG.

That can be easily fixed by making lighter items stack to a certain amount, also large items could take up mutiple space units.

[UniversalWolf]

I've never played the originals, so I can't compare to those...

This is the point where you lost all your credibility. No offense.

[Lucius]

I've never played the originals, so I can't compare to those...

This is the point where you lost all your credibility. No offense.

JA BiA is a video game with game mechanics. It has mechanics of squad based tactical combat that can be compared to. It has a 3d isometric view which I expect will be similar to what we see in Wasteland 2. It has an inventory system that can be compared to other games. To say my post has no credibility is retarded. Is the game superb? Nope, which is an even better reason to compare to it for things not to include in the original.

I stand by my original opinions. Later I will play the original JA and I bet my opinions won't change one bit regarding the things I brought up in the original post.

[cane]

I've never played the originals, so I can't compare to those...

This is the point where you lost all your credibility. No offense.

Agreed. Back in action is crap and even mentioning it on these forums is almost offensive. Come back when you have played the original games. Also many of the things you complain about are things I would like in this game, things that fits in any serious deep tactical game

[Lucius]

Agreed. Back in action is crap and even mentioning it on these forums is almost offensive. Come back when you have played the original games. Also many of the things you complain about are things I would like in this game, things that fits in any serious deep tactical game

Wasteland 2 will be an RPG, not a deep tactical game. Which is the entire point of the post. Brian Fargo has mentioned the Jagged Alliance series specifically to take cues from and there are a lot of things that just don't need to be carried over.

[Fuzi0n]

I haven't played the game, but I watched a few videos.

Here, look at the HUD. It is HUGE and absolutely horrible.

FULL SIZE IMAGE

[CookieEatingHuskarl]

Agreed. Back in action is crap and even mentioning it on these forums is almost offensive. Come back when you have played the original games. Also many of the things you complain about are things I would like in this game, things that fits in any serious deep tactical game

Wasteland 2 will be an RPG, not a deep tactical game. Which is the entire point of the post. Brian Fargo has mentioned the Jagged Alliance series specifically to take cues from and there are a lot of things that just don't need to be carried over.

Nope he's right. You lost credibility to comment on the issue when you use a rushed system with a lot of implementations that were not well thought out in an attempt to fix what is not broken from JA2.

In before other people say it, in JA 2, there is only 1 type of repair kit. It degrades, but slowly and the rate is repair skill dependent IIRC. One. You have a repair kit, and the person's speed of repairing the items depends on his repair skills (The best kevlar do not get shot up to pieces by some 9mm ala JABIA. Then again, repairing kevlar weave was unrealistic to start with. In that aspect it was realistic for JABIA to make kevlar not worth repairing over buying a new one.)

[Driscoll]

Heh, nobody should complain about JA2's inventory management until they play it with the 1.13 and AIMNAS mods.

That said, W2's inventory should probably only be limited by weight. The game isn't supposed to be a turn based combat simulator like JA2 is.

[Shady314]

Heh, nobody should complain about JA2's inventory management until they play it with the 1.13 and AIMNAS mods.

That said, W2's inventory should probably only be limited by weight. The game isn't supposed to be a turn based combat simulator like JA2 is.

I prefer it be limited by space. I prefer a hard point system where specific items go in specific areas of the paper doll.

[suz]

I prefer it be limited by space. I prefer a hard point system where specific items go in specific areas of the paper doll.

Those aren't exclusive, you can have both if you don't limit by- hardpoints in backpacks.

I'd also like hardpoints for the small stuff

[Independent George]

I've never played the originals, so I can't compare to those...

This is the point where you lost all your credibility. No offense.

JA BiA is a video game with game mechanics. It has mechanics of squad based tactical combat that can be compared to. It has a 3d isometric view which I expect will be similar to what we see in Wasteland 2. It has an inventory system that can be compared to other games. To say my post has no credibility is retarded. Is the game superb? Nope, which is an even better reason to compare to it for things not to include in the original.

I stand by my original opinions. Later I will play the original JA and I bet my opinions won't change one bit regarding the things I brought up in the original post.

The point was made rather rudely, but the idea is that to fans of the game, BIA is to JA what the Phantom Menace was to The Empire Strikes Back. When we talk about lessons from JA, we're generally referring to either the original JA2, or the fan-created mod, JA2 v1.13.

That said, while our very different frames of reference make it harder to communicate our ideas easily, I get the impression that we'd still disagree on many points. For me, the best thing about JA2 v1.13 is the incredible level of detail paid to the gun modelling (to the point where separate accuracy penalties were assessed for automatic fire on both the vertical and horizontal axis), and the intricate, customizable inventory system.

While I definitely don't want that level in an RPG like Wasteland, I absolutely loved the customization and logistics management aspects of JA2, and would welcome many of those elements. I get the impression you lean in the opposite direction. That's a perfectly legitimate opinion, and we'll have to agree to disagree on that, but as long as you're using BIA as a reference, I can't actually be certain that we'd disagree. The two games are just that different.

[Aldereth]

-No cheesy voice acting. Please for the love of God if those damn talking heads with terrible lip syncing would just go away and stop causing me nightmares...

Ummm, some of us happen to like them.

Okay, make it non cheesy then. Most of us enjoy clicking on those warcraft unit until they lose their temper. Personally, my favorite is when you try to do with certain inventory management actions with Fall from Grace in Planescape Torment.