I would say it’s “tedium” that sounds unappealing to me at higher encounter rates rather than “punishment”. And it’s not just my personal tastes but also what all of their peers were doing with encounter rates, including Wasteland 1 and 2, which I’m sure you know share a lineage with Fallout.
You call it “tedium”, the developers and many classic FO enjoyers called it “immersion”, “living world”, and “fun”.
Wasteland 2 came out 16 years after Fallout, so naturally they aren’t really peers and their design philosophy will be a lot closer than to modern games in that they’re more forgiving.
Wasteland was more of a predecessor to Fallout 1, as the developers were big fans of it and they thought of Fallout as a spiritual successor to Wasteland. Fallout was also designed to be far more punishing in its early game with a steeper power curve, and had a higher focus on the player being a singular, fish out of water character, rather than a capable party like in Wasteland. They also wanted to put more pressure on the player, hence other mechanics like the time limit.
I also faintly recall the creative director of Fallout 1 talking about replaying Wasteland more recently and mentioned needing some kind of limiter to play it because of some issue with movement and other calculations being tied to CPU and/ or FPS. So it’s possible Wasteland has a similar issue, though I wouldn’t know as I’ve never played it.
I would say it’s “tedium” that sounds unappealing to me at higher encounter rates rather than “punishment”. And it’s not just my personal tastes but also what all of their peers were doing with encounter rates, including Wasteland 1 and 2, which I’m sure you know share a lineage with Fallout.
You call it “tedium”, the developers and many classic FO enjoyers called it “immersion”, “living world”, and “fun”.
Wasteland 2 came out 16 years after Fallout, so naturally they aren’t really peers and their design philosophy will be a lot closer than to modern games in that they’re more forgiving.
Wasteland was more of a predecessor to Fallout 1, as the developers were big fans of it and they thought of Fallout as a spiritual successor to Wasteland. Fallout was also designed to be far more punishing in its early game with a steeper power curve, and had a higher focus on the player being a singular, fish out of water character, rather than a capable party like in Wasteland. They also wanted to put more pressure on the player, hence other mechanics like the time limit.
I also faintly recall the creative director of Fallout 1 talking about replaying Wasteland more recently and mentioned needing some kind of limiter to play it because of some issue with movement and other calculations being tied to CPU and/ or FPS. So it’s possible Wasteland has a similar issue, though I wouldn’t know as I’ve never played it.