My time spent playing Arcanum lately has been pretty short for these two days, but I've found that a lot of the map is pretty empty.  When I compare it to Fallout, I liked that Fallout had different types of terrain that were obvious on the map, and that you could sort of get hints where the cities were.  What Arcanum does well is that it doesn't have a Luck stat.  Luck, if you remember, in Fallout 1 and 2 allowed you to run into special, often humorous, encounters while traveling.  This was cool in itself, but it's a bit annoying to have to dump points into a stat just to see interesting things. In Arcanum, there's just interesting things out there to bump into, regardless of stats (though influenced by your perception level, maybe).  I just wish there were more.
 
Since I'm a wanderer I like to check out the nooks of a place before I exhaust them and have to move the story forward, but here I feel it's sparse enough that at times that it more feels like I'm searching for a good time rather than getting one. The random encounters don't vary quite enough (with one notable exception), although having an extra party member, the lovable drunk Sogg, means I get more badguys and the occasional huge one.  The terrain, other than a few random bits to pick up, doesn't lend to exploring so much, making actually walking from place to place in real-time something just for masochists. 
 
Now that I understand the system better thanks to some comments in prior blogs I'm more apt at understanding the system, but I still think it thwarts the engine's own potential to do what it does, since a magic/tech combo, while weaker than all-magic or all-tech, would still be cool as a character choice, purely from a design perspective. I think they could still manage some sort of thematic balance to it, though, like risking really bad results on critical failures. As it is, I'm decent with a pistol now in most circumstances, but Virgil doesn't heal me voluntarily anymore except in the most dire of circumstances because the failure percentage is way too high. I've also substantially increased lockpick, so I've been finding all kinds of crazy things in places that were inaccessible before.
 
Right now I'm trying to search for a guy who I may not have met yet, but am pretty sure I have. My contact and my notes tell me nothing, so I'm left to wander the cities I've found and try to come up with him.  I'm holding off on the main quest for a spell so I can unlock a few more of the things that interest me, and tie up a few loose ends. This means a lot of searching and not always finding anything, but I've managed to get some cool encounters, including a wild shootout in a barn.

I got one catastrophic error that may have been due to an external program, so I won't go into details on that, but it had all kinds of visual errors and killed my attempt to save the game. The waypoint system worked well at the start but now it barely works at all, so I'll set up some waypoints in a town and MAYBE it'll follow them.  If there's a way to turn off my hireling's auto-equip, please tell me, but I have to wrestle with them in order to give them the equipment I think is sensible, and heaven forbid I actually drop anything. It's great when they pick up stuff that I miss, it's not so cool when they pick up a thing I'm trying to get rid of, or worse yet an NPC walks over and picks something up that I meant to pick up.
 
Finally, since newspaper headlines are all that's considered important, maybe a single-page broadsheet would be better; it would certainly weigh less.  Better yet, after reading the paper, you could rip out the front page and store it in your logbook, so you could pick it up and read it later and have it actually be in there.  I know it's a bit late to add this feature, but I thought I'd share.
 
Next time I play, if this search for random dude and search for more things to run into on the map fails to entertain me, I may push the main quest forward a notch. Hopefully I'll get a chance to pass by some sea, river and mountain barriers that'll let me explore places afresh.  If not, I'll live.

My time spent playing Arcanum lately has been pretty short for these two days, but I've found that a lot of the map is pretty empty.  When I compare it to Fallout, I liked that Fallout had different types of terrain that were obvious on the map, and that you could sort of get hints where the cities were.  What Arcanum does well is that it doesn't have a Luck stat.  Luck, if you remember, in Fallout 1 and 2 allowed you to run into special, often humorous, encounters while traveling.  This was cool in itself, but it's a bit annoying to have to dump points into a stat just to see interesting things. In Arcanum, there's just interesting things out there to bump into, regardless of stats (though influenced by your perception level, maybe).  I just wish there were more.
 
Since I'm a wanderer I like to check out the nooks of a place before I exhaust them and have to move the story forward, but here I feel it's sparse enough that at times that it more feels like I'm searching for a good time rather than getting one. The random encounters don't vary quite enough (with one notable exception), although having an extra party member, the lovable drunk Sogg, means I get more badguys and the occasional huge one.  The terrain, other than a few random bits to pick up, doesn't lend to exploring so much, making actually walking from place to place in real-time something just for masochists. 
 
Now that I understand the system better thanks to some comments in prior blogs I'm more apt at understanding the system, but I still think it thwarts the engine's own potential to do what it does, since a magic/tech combo, while weaker than all-magic or all-tech, would still be cool as a character choice, purely from a design perspective. I think they could still manage some sort of thematic balance to it, though, like risking really bad results on critical failures. As it is, I'm decent with a pistol now in most circumstances, but Virgil doesn't heal me voluntarily anymore except in the most dire of circumstances because the failure percentage is way too high. I've also substantially increased lockpick, so I've been finding all kinds of crazy things in places that were inaccessible before.
 
Right now I'm trying to search for a guy who I may not have met yet, but am pretty sure I have. My contact and my notes tell me nothing, so I'm left to wander the cities I've found and try to come up with him.  I'm holding off on the main quest for a spell so I can unlock a few more of the things that interest me, and tie up a few loose ends. This means a lot of searching and not always finding anything, but I've managed to get some cool encounters, including a wild shootout in a barn.

I got one catastrophic error that may have been due to an external program, so I won't go into details on that, but it had all kinds of visual errors and killed my attempt to save the game. The waypoint system worked well at the start but now it barely works at all, so I'll set up some waypoints in a town and MAYBE it'll follow them.  If there's a way to turn off my hireling's auto-equip, please tell me, but I have to wrestle with them in order to give them the equipment I think is sensible, and heaven forbid I actually drop anything. It's great when they pick up stuff that I miss, it's not so cool when they pick up a thing I'm trying to get rid of, or worse yet an NPC walks over and picks something up that I meant to pick up.
 
Finally, since newspaper headlines are all that's considered important, maybe a single-page broadsheet would be better; it would certainly weigh less.  Better yet, after reading the paper, you could rip out the front page and store it in your logbook, so you could pick it up and read it later and have it actually be in there.  I know it's a bit late to add this feature, but I thought I'd share.
 
Next time I play, if this search for random dude and search for more things to run into on the map fails to entertain me, I may push the main quest forward a notch. Hopefully I'll get a chance to pass by some sea, river and mountain barriers that'll let me explore places afresh.  If not, I'll live.