Donos on 28/5/2002 at 05:38

---

Hello, all…

I’m using DX1 as an example for most of these, so I’m quite possibly hitting on a couple things that will be in DX2 anyway…

First off, more tangible benefits to skill increase.

This was done beautifully with the Rifle skill. At the lowest level, your view shakes all around when sniping, at the highest, it’s rock solid. This made it perfectly clear to everyone exactly why the Rifle skill was useful. No wonder it was mentioned in all the reviews. It’s a huge benefit when sniping, it's very obvious, and every skill should be like that.

I should preface this my saying that I’m a demolitionist at heart. I can’t think of a better way to unwind at the end of the day than by wiring Maggie Chow’s apartment to spread pieces of itself all over Hong Kong. But when I upgrade my demolitions skill, the only benefits I get are an increase in damage and time allowed to defuse. These bonuses have never seemed to be that necessary to me; if I’m a good enough player, it really doesn’t matter what level my demolitions skill is, since on unskilled I can defuse mines just fine and place them well enough to do an acceptable amount of damage. Demolitions is really a useless skill.

Here’s where we really get to my first suggestion: I think that when your skill with demolitions (or any other area, really) rises, you should gain new abilities (in other words, more tangible benefits to skill increase). Maybe something like:

UNTRAINED: A player can throw LAM’s, using them as grenades.
TRAINED: A player can attach LAM’s to walls, and detonate them by either setting a timer or just shooting them.
ADVANCED: A player can remote-detonate their LAM’s, from anywhere in the level. This could be done as a distraction, for example, and it doesn’t require line-of-sight so that you can shoot them.
MASTER: A player can set their LAM’s to a proximity fuse, and maybe do other cool things like change the sensitivity of the fuse (it’ll blow at 15 meters instead of 5, etc.), or shape the explosion (make them explode inward, to breach reinforced doors or something).

Sure, getting a little extra time to defuse a mine is a bonus. But I can imagine players doing everything they can to get those last few points and then be able to remote-detonate their LAM’s. And of course the other benefits would apply too, as the player’s level rose.

Onto my next suggestion: A slight modification in the inventory setup.

I love the current setup, for the most part. Each weapon takes up a certain amount of squares, and you only have so many squares. Simple and effective. But the problem is this.

If I’m playing a sneaky-thief type character, I always take along ten each of the four types of explosives. If I’m playing a brute-force shoot-em-up soldier guy, I always take along ten each of the four types of explosives. If I’m playing a sniper, I always take along ten each of the four types of explosives. If I’m playing a demolitionist, I always take along ten each of the four types of explosives. They’re so useful for the small amount of space they take up, there’s no point in not carrying them.

The problem here is that you can only ever carry a maximum of ten of each kind of explosive (or one each of each kind of weapon). I propose that that limit on items be abolished(you can carry any combination of weapons that you want, as long as you don’t surpass your total number of squares). This means you can carry 80 LAM’s, or three Sniper Rifles, or five Pistols, or whatever.

Of course, the extra items you carry will take up extra space. For example, although you can carry as many LAM’s as you want, each five LAM’s will take up an additional inventory square (this number is of course subject to change).

The reason for this is again character customization. A demolitionist character will carry as many LAM’s as they can. A sniper character will carry two or three Sniper Rifles, each modified to suit specific circumstances (I’ll get on to my suggestions for weapon modifications later). A pistol character will carry five pistols for the same reason.

I think this would be much better, because as it stands now, no matter what my character’s specialty is, I always end up carrying pretty much the same items. Ten of each explosive, 20 lockpicks and multitools, the two pistols, a knife, the GEP gun (all-purpose lockpick) and so on and so forth. But under this system, if I’m playing my favorite stealthy-infiltrator-pistol ninja, I can carry a load of multitools/lockpicks to subvert security systems, a couple silenced pistols, etc. rather than carrying a little bit of everything and trying to just use what would be in character.

Regarding Augmentations, I’m glad to hear that there will be three possible choices per augmentation slot rather than two. In DX1 there were 18 total augmentations, and 2 choices each for 9 slots. I would have much preferred 3 choices each for 6 slots. Sure, you don’t get as many total in the end, but I think it would’ve added a great deal to character customization and increased replayability. This system will (I hope) eliminate those situations where I have to choose, for example, between which arm augmentation to install, when neither of them really suits my character.

Anyway, like I promised, on to Weapon modifications.

First off, I think that weapon modifications should follow the same system as augmentations, for the most part. For example, your gun can have

a silencer to muffle gunshots -OR- an extended barrel to improve accuracy, but not both.

a 10X scope for long range shooting –OR- a shorter-range sonar scope that can see through walls

a laser sight to improve accuracy OR a mounted flashlight for combat in the dark

You can have multiple guns of the same type (as mentioned above) to fulfill different purposes, or a single gun modified just to suit your character.

For example, a sniper character might have one rifle designed for long-range sniping (bolt-action, extended barrel, bipod, long-range scope) and another one designed for close-range wetwork (semi-auto, silencer, laser sight, variable-zoom scope). And every decision has disadvantages too, like how a silencer will adversely affect your gun’s range and damage, or a long-range scope makes it harder to snipe things that are relatively close to you.

Also regarding weapon modifications, I think that they should be visible on the gun when you’re holding it. I.E. if my gun has a silencer attached to it, I want to be able to see it. The main reason for this is the immersion. When you can see your tricked-out personalized gun in front of your face, it helps you feel that you’re there, and in character. It’s weird to use the invisible scope on your plain-looking pistol, or to fire a gun that doesn’t look silenced, only to hear a “pfft”.

I realize the sheer impracticality of making a few thousand models to represent every possible weapon configuration, so the best way I think to accomplish this would be to model every part of the weapon individually (the gun itself, the silencer, the scope, and so on) and then get the game engine to put them all together on screen. I’m not exactly a programmer or anything, but that’s how the process would seem to be.

A short note on shells: In DX1 they seemed to be just a piece of eye candy, but I think that at least SOME sort of gameplay value should be attached to them. I have this really cool thought of sneaking across the roof of that cathedral in Paris, squeezing off one silent shot into the head of some sentry. Unfortunately, this flings the shell casing to my right… off the roof… all the way down… and *plink* lands right next to some other soldier. He reacts just like anyone else would do if, without warning, a smoking shell casing flies out of the sky and lands at his feet. He raises one hell of an alarm.

Which brings me to a short note on AI: I would love to see the AI take cover when returning fire. It just seems weird in DX1 to see them crouch there out in the open and shoot at you. They sometimes try to dodge, but that’s basically strafing back and forth wildly, and it makes me feel like I’m in a multiplayer deathmatch. I’m sure the AI team has this well in hand, though.

One other thing: In NOLF the enemies would not only knock over tables to use as cover, but they would also do suppression fire (staying hidden while firing blindly in your direction to make you hide). This would be an excellent behavior for DX2 soldiers to have, especially if one (or a few) of them do this while another one actually tries to aim at you.

I’m through for now…

By the way, (http://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/index.html) here's a good resource for information on all sorts of guns, particularly in the future.

Donos on 28/5/2002 at 07:19

---

I was just thinking about the cloak aug (was that going to be a black-market one? I forget...) and a possible drawback.

Suppose the cloak aug works by matching the player to their surroundings, sort of like a chameleon, and this makes them transparent. Now, constantly tracking the player's surroundings and trying to imitate them must require a lot of computing power, so whenever the player is moving too fast, the aug can't keep up and it's effectiveness starts to drag. If a player is sprinting, there will be nearly no transparency at all. If the player is walking or crouch-moving, they will be about half-transparent. If the player isn't moving at all, they will be very transparent.

Here's the downside to the aug. Since it tries to mimic the surroundings, what happens when the player fires a gun? A nice bright white muzzle flash. And what happens when the aug tries to mimic that muzzle flash? I'll tell you what: The player becomes a non-transparent, very visible beacon of white light. And since it takes a few seconds for the aug to shift back to normal, this means that the player has to spend about three to five seconds looking bright white, and that's not good when Mr. Cloaked Guy is trying to be stealthy.

Basically, the cloak aug is a godsend... until you shoot a gun, when you become a bright white target that practically shouts out "shoot me!". And it'd have to take a few seconds to fade, so there aren't any people trying to deactivate it momentarily while they fire.

I was thinking about the Speed Enhancement and Run Silent augs from DX1, and how the Speed Enhancement was always preferable, because you could run faster AND jump higher AND take falls better, but with Run Silent you could just, well, run silent. If these Augs are brought back in DX2, I think it'd be more balanced if the Speed Enhancement made you run faster and jump higher, and the Run Silent made you run silent and take falls better (and silently). The black market aug for the legs could let you climb up walls, with the drawback that you do so slowly, and since you also have to use your hands there's no way you can fight back if you're attacked.

I REALLY should get to bed.

ICEBreaker on 28/5/2002 at 07:42

---

I like the idea about how the speed of movement will compromise the cloak. But your suggestion about a cloaked agent giving away his location upon firing his weapon is already incorporated into DX. Also the silent run augmentation does let you fall silently as well, although not better (which was your main point). The problem is that if you can jump higher but cannot take longer falls, then every time your jump, you could be damaged. The climbing augmentation is nice, and one cannot fire in mid climb in DX anyway.

King Ronald on 28/5/2002 at 18:03

---

Okay. Mr. Spector, I hope to golly goodness that you are reading this. It's probably too late anyway, what with your lightning speed at games development. But here goes:

THE FIRST ACTUALLY DECENT IDEA KING RONALD HAS POSTED:

In real life, terrorists, such as Al-Quaeda (or however you spell it) do not wear uniforms. Ever. This is the principal difference between a regular army and a guerilla force. The reason why guerilla action has been so succesfull, in circumstances like Vietnam, the Japanese occupation of the Pacific islands and Osama's gang, is that they blend in effortlessly with the civilian population, and do not fight warfare in conventional terms - i.e they take a few shots and/or blow something big up, then hide. It would greatly improve gameplay in DX2 if the "Invisible Enemy" of terrorists you hunt for are without uniform, are not obviously labelled as "Odd Mechanic" (ie. act in a suspicious manner) or change your cross-hair to red, as this gives the game away. The most realistic bad guy in the original, in my humble opinion, was when you confront Joe Green, the hack who rights for the Midnight Sun newspaper, but is actually an MJ12 mole, influencing civillian thought with his propaganda and spying on UNATCO activities, getting them into trouble if they breach any guidelines. Now, I know he's working for MJ12, but bear with me here (anyway, MJ12 were sort of terrorists). He does not wear a bondage style balaclava and matching suit. He does not wear a scary black suit, riot gear, or some revolting cybernetic facial modification. He is the malso used in an equally good situation with the dud-engineer in Everetts home. By having the enemy running around with assault rifles in broad daylight is a more simplistic and childish view of things. The Deus Ex series has so far been astonishingly accurate in events (Chinese interest in space travel, terrorist attacks on U.S monuments, global war on terrorism, anthrax attacks, nuclear-war (or getting there) between Pakistan and India, so on and so forth), and it would be immensely satisfying to have a sophisticated, adult world of realistic characters, locations and interaction, where it's very difficult to spot the assassins, and villians lurking outside.
Please don't have such rampant, obvious bad guys, as the most fun I got in the original game was with the "grey area" of Everett exploiting Lucius DeBeers, Everetts intentions for Area 51, Toby Attanwe's mysterious disappearance after you expose (blow the face off) the helicopter bomb planter, trying to work out Unatco's purporse politically, seeing Simons black-list you to the worlds media when you wouldn't act the servant to MJ12, Pauls turncoating, and talking to that Russian guy in the plane whose name i forget right now - he gets shot by Navarre. Don't make it a game of black and white. Life never is, and it's harder, more immersive and damn scary to be in a world of grey.

So in conclusion:

No uniforms on Terrorists.
No regular military tactics used by Terrorists. (i.e running around Hells Kitchen with pistols)
No obviously bad people - and no obviously good people.
No "right way" in any given situation.

By doing this, it makes the whole shebang better. Or at least that's what I think.

(awaits derision)

Cyborg Vampire on 29/5/2002 at 00:40

---

Here's a little idea I had. Ever knock out a soldier with your riot prod, then try to pick up his body to move to a more discreet location, only to be confronted with the message, "You do not have enough space in your inventory to pick up the flamethrower." Don't you hate it when that happens? Also, when you search a body, only to pick up a pistol which you don't want because you like the stealth pistol you have better - why should you be forced to pick up things you don't want? Here's my idea: have a subscreen with "loot options." Basically, you can configure what you want to pick up and what you want to leave when looting bodies. So you could for example, set it to not pick up swords or knives because you have the vastly superior Dragon Tooth. Also, when you want to pick up a body that's carrying prohibited stuff, you get a list of the stuff you don't like in red plus: "You found a body." I suppose you could go even further and set it so that you pick up the secondary ammo when searching a body (as if you had that weapon with its secondary ammo loaded.)