ZylonBane on 11/9/2003 at 03:53
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Originally posted by Chade Even if different ammo types were placed and balanced perfectly, you would still end up with a situation where you were rewarded (ammo-count wise) for straying from your chosen character, and penalised for playing a role. Only the most pathetic, pissant, watered-down excuse for an RPG implements roleplaying in such a way that there are no hard choices.
chris the cynic on 11/9/2003 at 04:52
In case my previous post wasn't clear: what he said.
An RPG is about choices, and sticking by those choices even when it might be easier to go another way. There is no successful RPG I have ever heard of where at some point in play you were not "penalized" for playing your role, if you think that Deus Ex didn't do it you clearly didn't pay attention. If you think that Deus Ex 2 won't do that you vastly underestimate Harvey Smith and Warren Spector.
How many times when you play a stealth character would it have been easier if you had brought a GEP gun? How many places was it easier to play as a killer than a pacifist? You are penalized left and right for whatever role you choose. You are rewarded with far easier gameplay if you just forget the role playing entirely and play like an MPD. At almost every point in the original game you could be “rewarded for straying from your chosen character.”
That's what made the game what it was. If you want a game that says, “Pick a character and we'll make it easy for you to stick to it the whole time, we'll never penalize you for the choices you make, or encourage you to change your mind,” then you should go and find a game far more shallow than Deus Ex.
They chose to not make the ammo a facet of that, but it will be there and in force.
psiberpunk on 11/9/2003 at 13:12
If I recall correctly the preview didn't actually say "unified" ammo for weapons, it said "generic" ammo for weapons. Perhaps what that means is that each weapon will only use one type of ammo now instead of the several choices we were given in DX, but I don't see it as meaning that all weapons will use the same type of ammo.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I still wouldn't see it as that much of a problem.
D'Juhn Keep on 11/9/2003 at 13:49
Yeah, the phrase itself is ambiguous, but it's still the equivalent of either being kicked in the shin or kicked in the groin. Others may see it differently, but if every gun has but one type of ammo, they're all specialised. In DX, the guns generally had secondary functions that could take care of different situations, which helped in the whole "limited inventory" thing. With only one function per gun, I can only see this as reinforcing the "unlimited inventory". And for my opinion on this, you can refer to what ZylonBane just said.
ZylonBane on 11/9/2003 at 14:30
Worst-case, I'd prefer if ammo were broken down into shareable types by energy requirement. So maybe you'd have standard cells, heavy cells, yadda yadda. This would make things a hell of a lot easier (and more plausible) from a level-design standpoint, as every conceivable bit of ammo wouldn't have to be scattered around the levels.
Weapons could still have special fire modes, with varying degrees of energy usage.
fatso the wombat on 11/9/2003 at 14:47
I personally like the idea of having all the same ammo type. There are many benifits to the idea of having many different ways of playing the game.
1. Choose the psycho killer way and you will always have enough ammo for your mowing down of baddies.
2. Choose the stealth assasin way and you never have to worry about not finding any ammo for the sniper rifle (or whatever the weapon may be in DX2) The amount of times this happend in the first game.....
3. Or choose the diplomat "im not going to kill anyone" and its not even an issue.
This eliminates wasting those lockpicks and multitools on chests and boxes only to find ammo that your not going to use.
At any rate the best way to impement this is to have varying degrees of ammo drain. Heavy weapons should drain lots (ie the LAW) while small pistols shouldnt drain hardly anything
The other benifit is that they can populate the environment with other goodies instead.
King Ronald on 11/9/2003 at 15:56
Aside from the question of ammo, what I wanna know is:
You guys - stick with the WTO or go see the rebels in their base?
Help the security guard or not?
(i.e. from the choices written about in the preview)
chris the cynic on 11/9/2003 at 15:57
But if you have the role made easy for you than it takes the cost/benefit decisions out of it. The whole idea is that there are different solutions to every problem and each solution has it's own ups and downs. If you chose the role of psychotic killer one of the downs is that you may quickly run out of your favorite types of ammo, the ups are obvious. If you chose to be a sniper than one of the downs is that it is a highly specialized skill (as in only one gun) and a highly specialized type of ammo.
To pick something because it makes it easy all around is contrary to the idea of the game. I highly doubt that they decided to do unified ammo because it would make many or all of the roles that could be played easier thus GOING AGAINST THEIR STATED GOALS.
Chade on 13/9/2003 at 00:43
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Originally posted by ZylonBane Only the most pathetic, pissant, watered-down excuse for an RPG implements roleplaying in such a way that there are no hard choices. Oh my god ... :rolleyes:
Look, it's really not all that complicated. And if you thought for a minute, rather then trying win an argument by making yourself appear cool, you would see that you completely missed the point.
The effects of one ammo type per gun (or something close to it) has nothing to do with hard choices. That is because it is a universal effect, that happens no matter what type of character you try to play with. When you have that model for ammo, it means that it is to your advantage to play in many different styles. There is no situational context, and there is no "style" context. But over the course of a sufficiently long period of gameplay (say, one where you might have run out ofa type of ammo), you will be in a better position if you used a wide variety of different tools, rather then mostly concentrating on just one.
As the period of gameplay is quite long, there is no pressure on you to make hard decision's at any stage. It is simply a matter of finding which situaitons you can best get away with by playing "out of your role". And as there is no "style" context, there is no oppurtunity (from separate ammo types) to make a statement about how important your style of play is. You will run into the same problems regardless of style.
The ONLY hard choice you could make (resulting from separate ammo types) is one where you chose the importance of playing a role at all. A somewhat pithy statement, to my mind, too obvious and too abstract. In any case, it is one that is easily supplied by other factors.
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Oh yes, and not having separate ammo types is not going to limit the number of tools you have at your disposal, they have secondary fire, and weapon mods that play the same role as different ammo types did in DX, so there is no reduction in the number of tools you can access,
ZylonBane on 13/9/2003 at 05:24
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Originally posted by Chade Look, it's really not all that complicated.Ironic that your "not all that complicated" explanation is a dozen times longer than mine.
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And if you thought for a minute, rather then trying win an argument by making yourself appear cool, you would see that you completely missed the point.Ah, an ad hominem attack right off the bat. Way to grab the high ground, champ.
Quote:
There is no situational context, and there is no "style" context. But over the course of a sufficiently long period of gameplay (say, one where you might have run out ofa type of ammo), you will be in a better position if you used a wide variety of different tools, rather then mostly concentrating on just one.Okay, you're using the word "context" here in some bizarre fashion that I've not previously encountered. As for it being advantageous to use a wide variety of weapons... have you actually played Deux Ex? The game
strongly encourages you to specialize. If you throw skill points at all your weapon skills, you'll be pathetically average at everything.
Everything else in your message after this came across as random gibberish to me. I must have read and re-read it ten times trying to make some sense of it, but failed.
