|
Oh thank god a working DX thread! The ones in my bookmarks haven't updated in years and got archived, alas. I'll copy/paste what I wrote in the Prey thread:Serephina posted:So, I just bought & finished Mankind Divided over the thankgiving sale. Went in knowing that there was a lot of bad - the terrible DLC etc, so was able to ignore it. Everyone was right, Prague was very well done, but I gotta say, it probably would have served better in a different game. The open world was a treasure to poke around in and explore, with lots of small storytelling details, all lovely, but... Having such an open-world available really ruins the pacing of the game, not to mention the power progression of the player. You can lug over and sell random guns to vendors! This is bad! So by the time most of the player base gets off their arse and does the first mission, they've probably got 50% of the available xp in the entire game, and a several fully kitted out guns. Oops. Compare this to MD, which has the retroactively-funny moment where after yelling at the player for 15 minutes to show up, hostages die (oops). It's good world-building in a different way. Its a shame that I can't get DX:Revision working nicely in linux else I'd give biomod a whirl. Everything is so goddamn dark and the brightness dial doesn't work.
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2019 16:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:47 |
|
|
jojoinnit posted:Wait what? I'm too caught by you thinking the DLC is bad to even consider the rest of the post. Ugly In The Morning posted:There was some other stupid DLC stuff like the one-time use items that would forever lock themselves to a particular save game. Basically that. The cringe worthy triangle code app thingie, the cash and praxis boosts, the single-use items, the in-app purchases on the main menu, it's all spectacularly bad. Uh, there's some actual content stuff like Criminal Past, but I cbf honestly.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
IIRC all the chastising for body counts has zero to do with actual body counts (which are not tracked at all), but rather key conversations and other flags. The Quartermaster in UNATCO is based off of whether you told the troopers in NYC to keep their gas grenades or not, and the 'cowardice after NYC' barks random troopers give you is based off of participating on the huge firefight just beyond the 'ton hotel. That second one bugged me for ages, as I'd always just walk into the 'ton asap and never knew there was a scripted firefight just around the corner for years. Well, at least those two things are. There might be someone somewhere that had a body count trigger implemented for them. I think the cyborgs like you if you take the front entrance to the Clinton Park thingie.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2019 14:27
|
|
|
Lork posted:I don't like the idea of being graded based on how I solve any given problem and would prefer the game stick to rewarding you for exploration and completing objectives only. THANK YOU. Decades ago a friend of mine and I where talking about how nice it was to have xp handed out for exploration and plot advancement, rather than a cheerful +1 popup for killing people. It really left the morality of killing v stealth in a grey area to be decided by the player. He could never bring himself to hurt guard dogs, even nonlethally. Then, years later, I played a mod (probably an early shifter?) that gave xp popups for murdering people. I don't care if there was a net reward at the end for other playstyles, I was horrified at the instant positive feedback. Incidentally, the prequels have taken that and ran with it to its awful conclusion and it shows. edit: 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. Serephina fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jan 8, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2020 09:50
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:At least they give more XP for non-lethal takedown. That's entirely the point of what they did wrong - giving more xp for one takedown style than another, xp rewards at objectives for certain playstyles, and achievements at game end for the same. Run up to a guy and gun him down: 10pts. Headshot from afar: 20ish? Sword-blades to the face: 40. Punch to the face: 50. 2x 200 at objectives for being stealthy and no alarms. Two cheevos for Never Seen, Never killed. Notice a trend? That's hardly free-form at all, you're being explicitly told one approach is better than the others and has better rewards. Its also got a bonus awfulness in pushing for quickload spam. Then compare it to OG DX; if someone spots you, you shoot them, go all "mea culpa!" and continue on. Avoiding enemies was a decision the player made to save ammo and health -or, god forbid- be nonlethal out of personal preference due to immersion. ...Five times as much xp for not using your guns. ffs.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2020 13:44
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2020 20:22
|
|
|
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 |
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2020 03:11
|
|
|
That's... literally what we're talking about, how it was done in OG DX.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2020 01:38
|
|
|
Yea, xp rewards for objectives is obviously not a catch-all for every game system, but its certainly the best way to do things in DX. That PoE system sounds like a delight, allowing for a player to feel 'underlevelled' is a very bad thing for many reasons. 0451 games, otoh, have never really suffered that issue; even if the player has blinders on and skips all of the optional loot, they're generally up for whatever's been thrown at them. Notable exception exists in DX:HR for the first boss fight, where apparently half the player base walked into it with no firearms nor combat augs, necessitating devs to redesign the arena. (I blame the players!)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2020 10:56
|
|
|
You all seem to be agreeing with this sentiment: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02/self-improvement But at the same time, I built a 'computer geek' too, with literally zero combat skills, except I carried the automatic rifle on me in case I got in a pinch. For the fight, I went into it unspoilered, and all I did was walk to the first piece of cover 2 feet away, shoot at his head, and duck back in when he started shooting. He died after only a few salvos. I then immediately reloaded, tried to finish him with a takedown and got a funny surprise for it, then reloaded again and THIS time, he blew up the cover once or twice. All in all, a huge piece of cake. I then walked around the area thinking "Who the hell has time for all this poo poo, turrets, really?". Again, zero relevant augs, just the standard automatic rifle. So when I see the above comic, and other people complaining about how hard it was, I just think... did you not bring a gun? Like, at all? Or maybe just the tranq rifle? I don't get it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2020 09:08
|
|
|
Possible/probable. I'm part of a small forum that's been around since '98, and only in the past year has started to stagnate. Probably about 30-50 users it used to have.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2020 08:53
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:Most big sites gave it 8/10 and metacritic sits on lower score mostly thanks to Tom Chick's 20/100. Big sites giving AAA turds an 8/10 has been a given for decades. It's been lampooned well enough. There's no keen insight in seeing that Civ5/BE/6 had serious issues, the community saw it fast enough. And my grandma who's been dead since the 80's was repulsed by Stellaris. But uh, Patreon the guy if you want, I have no idea who he is, no skin off of my nose.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2020 13:23
|
|
|
Yea. Nowadays, when a mook shoots at you for five minutes solid and yet his body miraculously only holds 5 rounds left I get a bit salty. Back then I didn't give a hoot, it's just what the game is. fake edit: not even 5 rounds, like TWO. maybe even one. I only played Last of Us for an hour or two, but that really leapt out at me, especially since they keep harping on about how rare ammo is.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2020 09:29
|
|
|
The comment being that things where still more rusty back then, nowadays that poo poo won't fly. I forgive DX1 for having corpses with tiny amounts of ammo on them, even if it really makes no sense. Twenty years later, I have higher expectations for new entries into the genre. I played the more recent DX games, and while enemies obviously don't have realistic amounts ammo on them (you'd expect several magazines on a soldier), it wasn't something insulting either, usually a full mag and ammo scarcity was never an issue especially when fighting guys with the same gun type. edit:vvvv Am I writing these posts wrong? Am I being unclear? Serephina fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Mar 13, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2020 15:00
|
|
|
Some games have done realistic ammo. X-com series and Jagged Alliance 2 come off the top of my head. I guess it's a matter of how the game's been built up from foundations.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2020 04:02
|
|
|
Knowing Thief, it'll be realtime. It's one of those touches appropriate to the game and era. You're not supposed to that patient, the entire mission is trying to open it during the night shift, it's an easter egg.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2020 04:58
|
|
|
I think you totally misread what he's asking for and are recommending the opposite things?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2020 05:24
|
|
|
aniviron posted:I love Vandenberg; but I think the issue is that you are so powerful by that point. If you play that map as though you're a starting character, it'd be a long and difficult challenge. Instead the map becomes "How am I going to show these silly intruders what a big mistake they made?" I always seem to do both whenever I arrive at Vandenber. I just can't shake the habit of sneaking about, so I spend far too much time avoiding aggro, then usually sometime around when I go outside the penny drops and I just start turning on all the augs and go ham. Those poor poor warbots =(
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2020 07:44
|
|
|
I pick swimming and will defend that decision.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2020 14:33
|
|
|
I honestly couldn't be hosed with the DX mods when I hear poo poo like that. So there's one really huge mod that changes everything, but it's bad. So there's another mod that builds on the first [?] that also changes everything. And there's a third mod that changes everything but it compatible with the first two I think? And I swear I must be dylexic cause I keep mixing up which is which; but as you can tell I no longer care about what some random nerd's interpretation of the "Intended Experience" from a professional studio is. Stuff like that has made me wary of mods for a very long time, and only in the past year or so have I discovered the joy of tiny, modular, well-supported mods that do pleasant things like change a tiny UI element and nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2020 11:19
|
|
|
Sleeveless posted:Good thing nobody has ever claimed that ever, weird that that would be your takeaway from the idea of fixing bugs. Which mod exactly added xp popup for shooting people in the face? I tried that one maybe 15 years ago and laughed. Well, I laughed after I rage-vented at my uni friend who also played DX. How badly does someone have to miss the point to look at DX and think "There should be explicit positive feedback rewards for murder, THIS is what the game is missing!" Someone really thought that the dev's intentionally leaving no commentary on player lethality was an explicit mistake, that needed to be remedied via mods. Was that Shifter? Looking at these recent replies (and the timeline of when I played it), it looks like it just might be. "Removing the suck from DX", indeed. When I see such grievous errors of judgement, I have no respect for that creator's judgement and taste and couldn't be hosed seeing what else they put in. This lead to me having a decade-long opinion of "All mods are poo poo, there is a reason it takes paid professionals ages to make something good". So maybe my phrasing was sloppy; I certainly don't think that random nerds know the true artistic intent of the creators better than the creators themselves (as what I typed & you quoted would imply), but rather; that any random nerd who sees a complete product and proudly proclaims "What would make this game *really* great is-- " and I just tune out, because they're invariably wrong and I don't want to see their horse vagina mod.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2020 15:21
|
|
|
Yea the first level of the game is a great stand-alone demo, where every mechanic is at play in a self-contained world (think Fallout's Scrapheap demo). As a first level of a video game, however, it has pretty serious flaws.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2020 08:21
|
|
|
goatsestretchgoals posted:I did ask for this. Oh shut up, I laughed.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2020 16:35
|
|
|
Who cares?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2020 17:30
|
|
|
Butterfly Valley posted:Deus Ex Go is free to download this weekend on apple and android devices I was confusing this for Deus Ex the Fall for a moment so I had to look it up. Is Dx Go a Dx game in any meaningful way, it just looks like a puzzle game that's been skinned?
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2020 08:37
|
|
|
The entire Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has and will continue to give away the *dramatic majority* of their wealth. Billions and Billions of it. Even their kids are only getting a tiny slice of dad's pocket. For a geek who's worst crime is cornering the Personal Computer OS market and being a wholesome nerd otherwise, that's an awful lot of good. edit:vvvv Jesus you dingbat can you just take like ten seconds to google the topic at hand, the foundation has been handing out cash like a lollipop machine for over a decade now. Wikipedia casually throws out twenty-one Billion, with over double that remaining. That's not "feel-good" money to purchase a better public image like Bezos does, that's Alfred Nobel levels of commitment. Serephina fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jun 4, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2020 09:08
|
|
|
Oh for sure, Bob Page is totally a Bill Gates reference don't get me wrong. Don't think anyone would argue otherwise. The convo just got a bit sidetracked as times have moved on and we where talking of modern day equivalents.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2020 10:27
|
|
|
Wealth is not a zero-sum game; it can be spun from thin air and is an important part of it's definition. Microsoft did a lot of bad things to other companies and has generally not been the good guy, ever. But we're not talking about Gates gutting public infrastructure or creating institutionalized poverty here, it's a goddamn computer OS and white-collar jobs. Netscape getting buried doesn't mean orphans went without foodstamps or whatever. And I'll still maintain that Alfred Nobel has done more good than evil by a long mile; after all we don't hold Hiroshima Deaths over Feynman's head do we? And what do you mean this is just a bar and what do I want to drink? What good of a loving bartender are you anyways?!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2020 11:49
|
|
|
BitcoinRockefeller posted:I just deleted everything and re-installed, then GMDX worked fine. I'm glad this game has a 20 year strong tradition of being buggy as poo poo. What a shame.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2020 15:30
|
|
|
"Not worth your time as Deus Ex games" is a pretty rough thing to say, what else are we gonna play, Invisible War?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2020 07:30
|
|
|
Prague may have been a great rendition of an open-world hub, but I still feel that it was wasted - even actively harmful - for a DX game. There's so much loot and exp in there that it ruins any story mission difficulties, nevermind the whole "Why the gently caress am I able grind loot back into a vendor, edit: better explanation below. Serephina fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Sep 6, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2020 06:34
|
|
|
Beg your pardon, let me rephrase that - the xp for praxis thing really bothered me, and having xp rewards being doled out for combat instead of on finite triggers encourages decadent gameplay. HR had the whole 'punch everyone then hide their corpses' thing, which is fortunately toned down in HR, but Prague is weird in that you can get a buttload of money & xp for just being a catburgler right out of the gate, and it really did feel 'ground out', compared to xp bundles in plot areas being handed out as you advance . Imagine finishing Liberty Island with a few extra augs and maxed out rifles/computers/lockpicking/multitools, because you where so dang thorough.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2020 07:03
|
|
|
You'd think they'd also mention the change in how the energy bar works, seeing how it was such a fundamental and controversial feature from HR. But nope! Everyone went through MD thinking it was the same old, and griefing themselves with degenerate/wrong gameplay. Whoops!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 05:10
|
|
|
You mean you *don't* recall being perpetually stuck on the last energy bar, and having that lovely dilemma of 'takedown, literally any other ability, or if you dare to want both you better start cramming down protein bars' that MD pioneered so bravely? The newer games really dropped the ball on augments in general, which is tragic as they did a lot of other good things.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 06:39
|
|
|
HR's mechanics: Energy meter is divided up into little 'bars'. Energy regenerates, but only to to the top of the current bar, so there's discrete thresholds. If you drop to empty, only the last bar will regen. Using the new heavily-emphasized takedowns use an entire bar, which means their use automatically docks you down a knotch, in addition to needing to be not at the bottom bar in the first place if you wanted to do something actually fun, eg cloak before takedown. Other than major level transitions between chapters, the only way to top up the meter again is consumables, which come in various sizes/names, don't stack if they're not the name, and are bulky + not very efficient. You basically have to eat the big ones as you find them and only carry a few small ones due to inventory pressure. MD: The meter is now smooth, apart from a 'bar' at the bottom that works exactly like HR; ie you can go hog wild when emtpy using one takedown at a time. Energy regens up to a threshold somewhere on the smooth meter, which isn't apparent to the player how it decreases: every time you flick on an aug, your 'new max' drops a tiny bit, but once you turn everything off it will regen up all the way to the new max, even if you drained it. Eating protein snacks (now much smaller and less varied) pushes the new max back up to 100%, and again, the new max can never go below a certain point which is similar to a single 'bar' from HR. The HR system encourged players to quickly flick on+off their augs when above the bottom bar, to quickly cloak (or w/e) and do your poo poo before dropping into the next bar. The MD system encourages long drains of a few skills, as you get all that energy back sans a tiny bit after you run dry. But! People are being conscious of their energy bars now, so they're flicking things on and off rapidly, unwittingly ruining their 'new max' since the MD system isn't intuitive at all. Compare all this crap to how things where in DX; no costs for activation, just an intuitive drain and no regen. Almost like a battery, even?! No mechanics use energy other than the augs themselves (gently caress you, takedowns). Little top-up stations *everywhere*, so you can go hold wild at will. Consumables are also money-fied, ie take no inventory slots and you can carry a gargantuan amount thereof. Oh. I just remembered when writing this huge thing out that the MD regen mechanics where patched to be less onerous if you played on the lower difficulty settings: you'd get at least two bars of regenerating energy instead of one, which is a HUGE difference since it lets you do things like cloak + punch, instead of either/or (or eat a snack while sprinting at them, awkward). You may have been playing on those settings, chaosapiant.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 13:11
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:I think the issue with Dishonored/NuDX energy is that we have several game design decisions working against each other. The designer wants to encourage active gameplay and aggressive ability use. But give the player too many tools and they trivialize everything, but gate their tool use behind finding collectibles in the world/purchasing uses from NPC vendors, and you simply run into a hoarding problem. The player simply does not know the length of the gameplay loop the first time they play, and first impressions matter. Because the designer also wants to design big open elaborate maps with lots of content and nooks and crannies to poke through. A good post. Honestly, I might sound like a broken record but Jensen's takedowns where a mistake. It's cool as heck to see him use his swordblades (but you'll probably just see him punch people instead), but the gameplay loop of sneaking around pressing E behind everyone isn't very gratifying. You don't actually feel like a cyborg! All the really fun upgrades come way later in the game, at you're spending cybernetic upgrade points on hacking minigames (which are done well tbh) and QoL upgrades instead of skull-mounted missile defense systems. OG DX's experience system seems really clunky, but in hindsight at least it was firmly segregated from your cybernetics so that every upgrade canister represented a major step forward in robot-fu. Also the xp popups for how you performed your kill are a gameplay abomination. If I get 20% more xp for using a non-lethal takedown instead of a lethal one (and it's now silent too!), why exactly would I ever use those swordblades again? Sigh.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2020 00:27
|
|
|
Eh, the first actual mission I recall being solid enough. HR and MD's strengths are when they're off doing their own thing, especially aesthetically. They're at their weakest when they're trying to fumble a plot/ending, and anything to do with console-itis/takedowns. Now that I think of it, I wonder how interesting/fun a zero-takedown run would be, hrm.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2020 22:00
|
|
|
That's the 'good' ending for sure, but the trouble with it is you need to know it's coming so you can pick up a new pistol and hand it to him, otherwise you'll give him your modded 9mm - and that's just unacceptable.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2020 19:49
|
|
|
Sandra's an idiot who likes strong men? Or something I don't know. She doesn't believe that her dad will go to any length for her until he actually kills a man. She actually throws a tantrum if dad fights but fails to win, geez.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2020 22:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:47 |
|
|
Basic Chunnel posted:I haven't played that sequence in awhile but you could probably stun or pepper spray Jojo after combat starts, then get him to a point where he takes enough damage to panic and Dad will mop him up Nope! IIRC Dad chickens out and runs away after firing a few shots. You actually need to pop jojo mostly yourself. It's such a fickle fight that it really does need a quicksave directly beforehand.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2020 03:21
|
|