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JustJeff88 posted:I still wish that they would fix how the tranq crossbow works. It's funny, but not very tranquil. You mean how people run around screaming and then get sleepy? I actually like that mechanic. I've always enjoyed hiding in the shadows while hearing people run around yelling with "ugh ugh ugh" every 2 seconds interrupting them, then they pass out. Wait a bit longer and alarms stop and the other awake dudes are all "guess it was the wind" like nothing happened. It's weird, and not realistic, but I enjoy it. I like popping out of cover and taking people out of the fight before they even know what's happening.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:00
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Glagha posted:I'm glad I don't have the kind of brain where I'm literally incapable of understanding why it's a bad thing for a game to present you with two choices and one of them is worse in every conceivable way. The melee kills seem to be there for a kind of "going loud" approach but if you're going loud the non-lethal is exactly as effective. If you're not going loud this Actually doing lethal is fun, it has badass animations with cool sword arms and if you put in a modicum of effort you're always going to end the game with more Praxis kits than you know what to do with so letting a very small amount of bonus XP that is ultimately insignifcant actively sabotage your enjoyment because you care more about playing a game optimally than playing it to have fun is entirely your malfunction and not the game's. And in Shifter/Biomod it's just a bonus on top of the XP that the game is balanced around so you could miss every combat and stealth bonus in the game and not be screwed over or miss out in any way other than your own sense of completionism compelling you to feel like you missed out or are playing wrong.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:20
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A dude posted:I'm really glad I don't have the type of brain Another dude posted:I'm glad I don't have the kind of brain where Just like everything else in the world, you're both partly right. If bonking someone over the head gives 30 XP and chopping their head off gives 20, then bonking is the "right" choice. On the other hand, 10 XP really isn't a lot, so if you want to roleplay Psycho Jensen, go for it. It's a game, do whatever lets you escape the pain of your real life. Remember that the *only* thing XP does is give you Praxis. In HR, 25% of the augs are doodoo and another 25% are barely useful, so you'll have all the useful ones roughly around your second time in Detroit.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:25
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It's not a question of "the difference isn't huge so do what's fun," it's a question of it being bad game design because it wants to present both options as equally valid playstyles and then explicitly makes one mechanically worse than the other.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:27
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I think both play styles are equally fun and good and one having a slight discrepancy in experience earned doesn't change that. Maybe it's "bad design" on paper, but playing the game either all guns blazing or stealth is just as valid, both options have enough tools available, and they are rewarding to play.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:31
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jojoinnit posted:You're a good man and I've been appreciative for a long time now, but is it possible to unnerf the Dragon Tooth sword so it goes back to doing 1x100 per hour instead of 5x20? Iirc that was grandfathered in from Shifter but it's the only thing that makes me want to play vanilla still. The Dragon's Tooth seems to have gone through some kind of saga in the official patches where it started out not very good, was made broken as gently caress, and then was partially toned down to what it is now. That was all before I first played the game though, so it was always one shotting humans but not doors for me. Anyway, I think I made it so the damage reverts to 100 flat if you turn on cheats, in keeping with the way Shifter lets you re-activate the old inventory stacking exploit.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:57
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One-shotting doors with the DT is an experience everyone should have at least once, yeah. I have memories of using LAMs/GEP rockets/some other explosive as my lazy lockpicks until some point in the brooklyn shipyard where I ran out and then I somehow thought about hitting doors with the DT and it worked and it was magical.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:02
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Game design is solved! Devs just should make difficulty low enough so that players find some fun way of playing their game instead of obvious effective ones.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:07
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Lork posted:The behavior in Shifter is what I remember it being when I played vanilla, but you had me second guessing myself, so I checked. In the latest official version the UI says 100 damage, but the damage in the weapon's class file is set to 20, and I was unable to destroy a 50% locker with it. I think what Shifter did was just update the UI to show what's actually going on. I do get a kick out of the fact they never patched out the "go to menu when you start lockpicking/multitool hacking, wait an appropriate amount of time, and unlock anything with one tool" bug. As far as I know, at least.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:10
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JustJeff88 posted:I still wish that they would fix how the tranq crossbow works. It's funny, but not very tranquil. From experience, that's accurate to real-life, as far as the rest of the game goes. Remember Harambe? That Cincinnati zoo gorilla that was shot dead instead of tranq'd? https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/05/31/jack-hanna-zookeeper-knoxville-cincinnati-zoo-gorilla-killed/85181272/ quote:Hanna has no doubts, however: "They made the correct decision," he told CBS, adding that a shot from a tranquilizer gun might take 5 to 10 minutes to take effect, and it was clear to Hanna that Harambe was already alarmed by the situation and a tranquilizer shot would have aggravated him further. If anything, the game makes tranq shots a lot more efficient than they should be, in order to make non-lethal gameplay more viable.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:14
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I remember reading a while ago, an essay about modern xp systems and what we had to thank D&D for. The scenario of a party walking past a group of camped orcs; the party can either attack, get xp and loot, or walk past and get nothing. So, murder it is! The atrocity commits itself. Modern day GMs now know to hand out xp otherwise, but the 80's where a different beast. Computer games where slow to pick up on it and we still have talk modern day about 'clearing out' areas for xp, whether its CRPGs or RLs or whatever. My point, which started this awful exchange, was that DX was full of good design and got the XP thing right. The only optional xp in the game is Exploration and Side missions, and there is no immediate-feedback positive reward for killing people. DX had some other issues, like a clunky xp-spend system, but nobody's perfect. It doesn't matter if if we agree that every playstyle is equally valid, and that there are plenty of XP rewards regardless of path chosen. Doesn't matter! With Pavlovian response XP-popups, that's you explicitly rewarding a certain action and asking it to be repeated over all others. If a mix of lethal, melee, stealth and squelching of alarms is to be considered valid, then why did half those kills give bigger rewards and why did I miss out on bonus' at the end of the segment? Feels bad. Now, totally aside, as a person who went full gun-toting in DX:MD quite early on (after I found out how the game misinterpreted my early actions as lethal, apparently knocking out a civ = killed everyone in room), I disagree strongly with the assertion that all playstyles where equally fun. They aren't; a simple automatic rifle could clear out huge areas effortlessly as all enemies are made of butter, and I feel very little consideration was given to that style when things where being made. The game I feel is very explicitly designed around Jensen sneaking around and using QTE takedowns, and everything on up is based around that. Especially the energy system! Whether you agree with this or not, it's an aside to the above original point that XP popups for combat and stealth rewards are terrible, amateurish game design.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:22
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Gynovore posted:Just like everything else in the world, you're both partly right. If bonking someone over the head gives 30 XP and chopping their head off gives 20, then bonking is the "right" choice. On the other hand, 10 XP really isn't a lot, so if you want to roleplay Psycho Jensen, go for it. It's a game, do whatever lets you escape the pain of your real life. I used that phrasing because it was a lovely dipshit way to talk to someone so I did it back, and if anyone actually paid any attention to what was being said , the argument is not "ugh you gotta get that 10xp anything else is SUBOPTIMAL" it's "We are presenting you two choices. One of these is meaninglessly penalized for stupid reasons and shouldn't exist because it does nothing useful. Edit: Note I never once complained about how going run n' gun is less XP than sneaking. I don't care about that. Shooting your problems is just a different solution and the XP is not that relevant. But it's different than a stealth takedown. The problem is that they offer you, in the same situation, a choice between two takedowns. A silent, stealthy knockout, and The Bad One. Glagha fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jan 8, 2020 |
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Jan 8, 2020 20:29
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If you're going to murder people in DXHR, the real reason to not do lethal melee is so you can avoid all those mini-cutscenes. Just get a suppressor if you want to maintain some stealth and shoot them in the head. Then non-lethal stealth takedown gets an XP bonus because you watched the cutscene again, and again, and again, etc.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:43
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chaosapiant posted:I think both play styles are equally fun and good and one having a slight discrepancy in experience earned doesn't change that. Maybe it's "bad design" on paper, but playing the game either all guns blazing or stealth is just as valid, both options have enough tools available, and they are rewarding to play. Yeah it kind of defeats the purpose of offering a variety of different options if all of them are equally valid and effective at all times and there's no trade-off or compromise. That's one of the things about old games and immersive sims that makes them special, they haven't had everything sanded down to the same smooth controlled difficulty curve in the name of balance and accessibility and making sure everyone who plays gets to experience all the content the first time around. It's cool if playing one way doesn't mean you get all the stuff you would another way, that's literally the point. ilitarist posted:Game design is solved! Devs just should make difficulty low enough so that players find some fun way of playing their game instead of obvious effective ones. I mean a lot of this is basically people re-litigating the argument about difficulty in games where you have to play them the "right" way, only in this case "right" means "getting as many points as possible in one playthrough even if it's less fun to play that way"
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Jan 8, 2020 21:59
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Sleeveless posted:It's cool if playing one way doesn't mean you get all the stuff you would another way, that's literally the point. I'm quoting for this for importance. Asymmetrical game design does not equal bad game design, and games like Deus Ex, System Shock 1/2, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, etc, kinda prove this. They all offer a good variety of options. Some are easier to use. Some are more rewarding. Some are harder to use and less rewarding because the reward is supposed to be in the challenge itself, and so on. This isn't bad design. Edit: As a caveat I will say that Dishonored 1 punishing you narrative-wise for using the more fun tools in gameplay is not good design, but even that's subjective.
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Jan 8, 2020 22:03
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chaosapiant posted:Edit: As a caveat I will say that Dishonored 1 punishing you narrative-wise for using the more fun tools in gameplay is not good design, but even that's subjective. I think Arkane probably agrees with you on that one though, because Dishonored's DLC added a lot of excellent, fun toys which were geared towards non-lethal play but worked with either style, as did Dishonored 2. Though even with those not murdering people is harder and less immediately gratifying, which I would assume is somewhat the point.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:16
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I think giving people the option to power-game and optimise is all good, as long as those unwilling to do so can still get through the game. Since DX:HR has a lot of lovely mods and lots of XP regardless of how you take people down, I think it achieves this nicely.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:43
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No one has ever said that asymmetrical game design is bad or that giving up something to do something else is bad game design. But the knockout/kill takedown choice is like a fighting game where you have two attack buttons. One does 3 damage, the other does 2. They are both the same speed and nothing else is different about them. Some people are saying "Why is button 2 just strictly worse than button 1?" Some other people are saying saying "Well I like games with choices that matter and maybe not all of us are such powergamers!" Like for real are you all illiterate? We're not talking about a situation where build A does 10% less DPS than build B. We're not talking about one sniper rifle being the one that fits the "meta". We're not talking about some weapon being better for speedrunning and clearing the game faster. We're talking about two moves that do the exact same loving thing except one alerts everyone and gives you less XP. This is like if Doom 2016 offered you a second type of glory kill where if you hold instead of press the button you get a different animation and the monster doesn't spit out health when you do it. Like I guess if you have a super hard-on for like, the one where you crush the demon's skull instead of breaking his spine but why the penalty? What is the loving point?
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Jan 9, 2020 00:49
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Glagha posted:No one has ever said that asymmetrical game design is bad or that giving up something to do something else is bad game design. But the knockout/kill takedown choice is like a fighting game where you have two attack buttons. One does 3 damage, the other does 2. They are both the same speed and nothing else is different about them. Some people are saying "Why is button 2 just strictly worse than button 1?" Some other people are saying saying "Well I like games with choices that matter and maybe not all of us are such powergamers!" Like for real are you all illiterate? We're not talking about a situation where build A does 10% less DPS than build B. We're not talking about one sniper rifle being the one that fits the "meta". We're not talking about some weapon being better for speedrunning and clearing the game faster. We're talking about two moves that do the exact same loving thing except one alerts everyone and gives you less XP. This is like if Doom 2016 offered you a second type of glory kill where if you hold instead of press the button you get a different animation and the monster doesn't spit out health when you do it. Like I guess if you have a super hard-on for like, the one where you crush the demon's skull instead of breaking his spine but why the penalty? What is the loving point? The point is that one kills people and the other is nonlethal.
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Jan 9, 2020 00:53
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Okay, then what is the difference between dead and unconscious other than the word displayed when you mouse over the body?
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Jan 9, 2020 00:57
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Xander77 posted:I hacked every computer and thought HR had the only fun and challenging hacking minigame in existence. Yeah, I loving love that minigame. I want them to release a game that's nothing but the hacking. Also, the idea behind lethal giving less exp is supposed to be that your reward is also not having to deal with that enemy anymore, because they're dead. The problem with this is that unlike a game like MGS, enemies you knock out only wake up by having someone wake them up. Since the routes they take don't overlap enough for this to happen very often, they're effectively dead if you knock them out. It's a good concept but ultimately there's no real benefit to killing people. Momomo fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 00:59
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Glagha posted:Okay, then what is the difference between dead and unconscious other than the word displayed when you mouse over the body? What is the difference between any two actions you take in the game, they just change pixels on the screen? When you get that pedantic about it, you expose the point: literally nothing you do in a video game matters, it's the story that the game evokes in your head that matters. In this case, the mental difference between dead and unconscious is pretty big.
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Jan 9, 2020 01:04
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aniviron posted:What is the difference between any two actions you take in the game, they just change pixels on the screen? When you get that pedantic about it, you expose the point: literally nothing you do in a video game matters, it's the story that the game evokes in your head that matters. In this case, the mental difference between dead and unconscious is pretty big. Big enough edit that I'm putting it at the top of my post: I forgot/didn't realize people could be woken up from unconsciousness in that game. Disregard the rest of this post. Let me take a different approach then. Explain to me why it makes sense that killing someone costs so much more than not killing someone. Using my big cyber arms to carefully render someone unconscious should be more difficult than just fuckin stabbing them shouldn't it? Maybe it should cost something, or take a little longer to do because you're carefully taking them down quietly so no one notices. Instead it's exactly as efficient as murder, and better even. And realistically, the benefit to killing someone is that they won't get up again right? But no one gets up again, they're just down for good. gently caress, Metal Gear figured this out ages ago where killing people was more expedient and permanent and nonlethal was generally quieter and safer but they might get woken up. In Human Revolution they just have the dipshit button that you can hit and then feel morally superior about and huff your own farts in public about because roleplaying. It doesn't even work as a roleplaying exercise because taking someone alive should cost you something, but it doesn't. In fact, it costs you less. It's easy. Why would you ever kill anyone? What's even the point? It doesn't even work in flavor. The game trips over its own feet to offer you two alternatives and present it as a choice but gives you constant negative feedback for picking one option. I mean I guess if they were going for an Undertale thing and they were going to make you feel bad about killing anyone and giving you constant incentives to find an alternative solution, but this isn't that type of game. Glagha fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 01:20
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Glagha posted:Okay, then what is the difference between dead and unconscious other than the word displayed when you mouse over the body? Well, if they're dead and another guard comes along, all that happens is the guard is like, "They're dead!" (Or, alternatively, feels nothing and briefly considers if that deal with the devil stole his capacity for human emotion) If they're just KO'd, then the other guy taps them on the shoulder and they get back to work. It's not an issue once you've knocked everyone out, but it is a difference.
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Jan 9, 2020 01:21
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Do lethal takedowns really alert everybody or are they just slightly louder and a little more likely to alert nearby dudes than non-lethal? Cause I recall it as the later. Or are you just talking about finding a dead body = alert whereas unconscious body is just hey wake up buddy no big deal?
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Jan 9, 2020 01:36
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Look Sir Droids posted:Cause I recall it as the later. Latter
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Jan 9, 2020 01:54
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Butterfly Valley posted:Latter Is that the answer or are you correcting my error?
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Jan 9, 2020 02:01
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Mooks being woken up after a nonlethal takedown is so uncommon that you might as well call it an edge case. Practically speaking, the lethal takedowns are objectively inferior due to the noise they make. If you want the guy dead, knock him out then shoot him in the head with a silenced pistol. Or, you know, knock him out and drag him into a vent so he'll never be found in a million years and is effectively dead. The prequel's mechanics have really poorly thought out consequences regarding emergent gameplay. (the regenerating energy bar! arghh!) edit: I just realized how negative this all is. The prequels also did a few really good things, notably the hacking minigame and the way enemies reset into a patrol after being alerted. They're just a diamonds buried in a lot of rough. Serephina fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 03:11
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jojoinnit posted:I assumed he meant the augment in MD where you shoot blades at people. I never saw a reason to do it on any playthrough since it's expensive and slower than any of the guns I'm surrounded by constantly. Is it fun? It's quite satisfying to skewer a guy and pin him to the wall. Still it's basically another gun, so buy it only if you have no better options. The upgraded version explodes on impact, making it a good choice if you want an explosion to occur at a particular spot right now.
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Jan 9, 2020 06:16
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aniviron posted:I think Arkane probably agrees with you on that one though, because Dishonored's DLC added a lot of excellent, fun toys which were geared towards non-lethal play but worked with either style, as did Dishonored 2. Though even with those not murdering people is harder and less immediately gratifying, which I would assume is somewhat the point. Another interesting thing Arkane did is that lethality/non-lethality is not directly tied to stealth/glorious. In D1 and even the expansions once you're spotted it's hard to keep enemies alive. You have to spend sleeping darts and other precious resources for that. In Dishonored 2 you can still take out enemies non-lethally in a swordfight even though it requires some finesse.
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Jan 9, 2020 09:13
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Lork posted:The behavior in Shifter is what I remember it being when I played vanilla, but you had me second guessing myself, so I checked. In the latest official version the UI says 100 damage, but the damage in the weapon's class file is set to 20, and I was unable to destroy a 50% locker with it. I think what Shifter did was just update the UI to show what's actually going on. Gotcha. I thought it was implemented by mods and forgot about the initial patches. Sounds like it's time for a cheats run with DT as my only weapon/lockpick!
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Jan 9, 2020 12:04
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Look Sir Droids posted:Is that the answer or are you correcting my error? Yes I realised that because I tend to play super stealthy I'm not too bothered that a loud play through results in less XP but then I realised I'm also the guy who knocks people I want dead out then shoots them in the head just to get the max XP so yeah that's a pretty lame habit to encourage in your game design Butterfly Valley fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 14:06
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ilitarist posted:Another interesting thing Arkane did is that lethality/non-lethality is not directly tied to stealth/glorious. In D1 and even the expansions once you're spotted it's hard to keep enemies alive. You have to spend sleeping darts and other precious resources for that. In Dishonored 2 you can still take out enemies non-lethally in a swordfight even though it requires some finesse. You're just making me sad about Colantonio leaving/getting forced out of Arkane all over again. They still haven't done their take on DX.
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Jan 9, 2020 21:39
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I feel Vampire:Bloodlines, really hit that sweet spot where you gain XP for your experiences and choices instead of having to slowly grind every baddie into dust with takedowns or avoid them all together in order to get the opposite bonus like many modern ARPGs do. I also think mission based XP/Praxis would thematically fit Deus Ex better because you're not really learning anything new by executing/sleeping every bad guy you come across.
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Jan 10, 2020 00:40
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That's... literally what we're talking about, how it was done in OG DX.
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Jan 10, 2020 01:38
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aniviron posted:You're just making me sad about Colantonio leaving/getting forced out of Arkane all over again. They still haven't done their take on DX. I don't know if I can even picture what an Arkane game set in a comparatively grounded near-future Earth like Deus Ex does would look like, all their games have such out-there settings. Prey is probably the closest and even then it has that totally bonkers alternate history that split off from ours half a century ago. 
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Jan 10, 2020 01:55
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Sleeveless posted:I don't know if I can even picture what an Arkane game set in a comparatively grounded near-future Earth like Deus Ex does would look like, all their games have such out-there settings. Prey is probably the closest and even then it has that totally bonkers alternate history that split off from ours half a century ago. Deus Ex's setting is very grounded though, what with the aliens and all.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:38
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aniviron posted:Deus Ex's setting is very grounded though, what with the aliens and all. DX is a totally different kind of “out there”, though. It took every giant 90’s Xfiles style fun conspiracy theory and mashed them all together with the recent militia movement stuff to create something that was familiar and out-there at the same time. Prey went full alternate history.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:45
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Just noticed that this thread is almost 10 years old. Pretty good achievement in my books!
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Jan 10, 2020 05:58
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Serephina posted:That's... literally what we're talking about, how it was done in OG DX. It doesn't always work though. Pillars of Eternity 2 is a good example of how this pattern might not work well for certain games. It's a big open-world game. You don't get XP for killing monsters or rather you get some XP for that indirectly for filling out bestiary. So first 5 wolves give you info on wolves and grant some negligible XP but later you only kill them for fangs or something. This system is clearly designed to discourage grinding and make it so that you don't feel obliged to murder every pack of monsters out there, you can often stealth or just walk around the enemies. You're supposed to gain XP for doing quests. The problem is this turns the open-world game into a linear one. Quite soon after the start, you arrive at a big city hub with a lot of quests you can do with no fighting. It might not be a huge problem for the first time that you get half of your levels in that one big town. However, it lowers replayability cause going out in the wild is only viable on a lower difficulty setting; most of this open-world has fights and treasure but very little in terms of XP. Meanwhile, most open-world RPG give out XP for doing anything in the world specifically so that you don't feel obliged to follow main quest lines to become stronger. In DX experience rewards are more about psychology, of course, it doesn't have level system making level 10 boss unbeatable for level 5 mook. You are incentivized to explore everything on your first try and then when you know what you're doing you can crank the difficulty up and try a very specific build with a very specific route.
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Jan 10, 2020 09:08
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