Pyrian on 16/12/2007 at 03:10
Quote Posted by Woggy
Not sure how its similar to IW? :confused:
Quote Posted by Papy
This look to me exactly like Invisible War.
Heh. :D
In Deus Ex you have active augs and passive skills.
In Invisible War you have active augs and passive augs.
In Wog-War you have active augs and passive augs, but... They're in different categories or something?
...Honestly, of all the things that bugged me about Invisible War, the augmentation system was probably the least problematic. I mean, I'd've certainly tweaked it a bit - okay a lot - but the basic idea worked.
Woggy on 16/12/2007 at 03:51
I don't want to MERGE the augmentation systems.
Was I completely misunderstood?
Its practically the exact same thing as the original Deus Ex 1 system. I'm just thinking, if its a prequel and you're a mech aug, whats a good way to tie the game world with skills and character development. Its got NOTHING to do with IW!! You still have your usual Deus Ex 1 augmentation system.
Instead of skill points, you invest in parts. Instead of a list, you have this interface where you upgrade sections of your body. Comon, playing with servos, actuators, electronics, how cool would that be? You'll be like a mechanic working on your own body. I mean it completely works out with the whole trans-humanism theme too. The passive augmentation thing was just trying to make a bit of an analogy, I guess. They wont give you special abilities or anything - they serve the exact same purpose as the the original skills in Deus Ex - you know, improve your aim, let you swim for longer, decreased damage from evironmental hazards, etc
Sure I removed demolitions (its useless!) and merged two or three skills, but do you really think they're going to keep all the skills from Deus Ex 1? No, lets be realistic. Regardless, they're just implementation details I quickly thought up.
Quote:
Skill points did not made the world less detailed, they did not made characters shallow, they did not made the story less engaging and they did not remove choices or emotional consequences.
Well ofcourse not. My point was that if we can make the game even more immersive, it'll be even better.
I was hoping for other ideas on how to improve immersion with regards to character development... not hostility to the fundamental idea of changing it around :confused: Honestly I'd be surprised if anything like the original Deus Ex 1 skill system will be found in Deus Ex 3.
Papy on 16/12/2007 at 06:58
Woggy : Yes, I misunderstood you. Sorry. I guess it's because I'm quite sensitive to "streamlining" games and when I read your post I had the (wrong) feeling your objective was really to simplify things. I certainly put too much emphasis on some specific parts of your post ("too many skills", "over complicated and not flexible enough", "over complicating", "player doesn't need to know"...) to a point where I put them out of context and completely missed what you were really saying. It was my fault.
I am not hostile to changing things in Deus Ex. In fact, I think a bit of innovations would be great (as long as these innovations are not about making the game more "accessible"). But to be honest, I'm more interested with the gameplay than with presentation issues. To me, presentation of gameplay elements is exactly like graphics : nice for a first contact, but after two or three hours, they become unimportant as long as they don't hinder the gameplay.
As for making the game more immersing, I won't really object, after all removing any abstract elements and "I'm a game" signs can only help, but from a practical point of view, it's only a very small detail among others that are far more important. In the end, I'm not sure I will notice it.
Pyrian : Invisible War biomods had several problems. First, passive and active biomods both used the same resources. Skill points, 9 different augmentation canisters and upgrade canisters where all merged into 2 generic biomods. In a sense, it was a bit like the flamethrower and the pistol using the same ammo from a gameplay point of view. It was of course not as bad as universal ammo, mainly because their was no presentation issues, but it was a step in the wrong direction nonetheless.
The second problem with biomods is they were swappable. Great for casual gamers, bad for depth.
Third, it was possible to max out everything. Worst, it was possible to be already max out even before the end of Cairo (part 1). So for the rest of the game, there is no more character development. I will certainly qualify this as game breaking. Of course it would have been possible to "tweak" this, but I guess it was a consequence of biomods being swappable. So it was a problem caused directly because of a basic idea... and could not really be tweaked after all!
Finally, the spy drone was simply too powerful. It was already a bit too powerful with Deus Ex, but with Invisible War it was almost the ultimate weapon. It's too a point where I would recommend not using it. (ok, this one is really in the "tweak" category)
Pyrian on 16/12/2007 at 10:07
All fair points, Papy. Certainly running out of possible upgrades halfway through a game is kind of jarring. Oddly, I think that sort of problem is a tweak so simple it should have been a difficulty level: make about half of the augs not appear in-game, and not be swappable, if the player selects a "hardcore" setting.
In contrast, the level size and unified ammo are core to the basics of the engine. :( Level size alone, man... Okay, that and the fact that virtually every side-quest is "do plot-meaningless favor, get money". I hated that. Although I liked having lots of quests in the hub areas.
I think the "two resource" problem is... Well, I don't mind it at all, though I'd've probably made a third, basically a different "white market" category, and maybe a fourth, something special that's required to upgrade augs a la DX (the shiny gold!). Most RPG's equivalent is a single resource, XP (or cyber modules). Virtually every other beloved FPS/RPG has a single equivalent resource: VtM:Bloodlines, Dark Messiah, SS2 (Bioshock centers on Adam but also has a wide variety of "augs" that are acquired without spending Adam, so, hard to categorize precisely). In fact, overall I think I preferred IW in this regard:
In Deus Ex, you start with no serious augs (flashlight doesn't count), and the aug choices trickle in pretty slowly. You do get a wide selection of skills from the start, but the gameplay effects aren't that dramatic. In effect, your capabilities while playing the first few levels of Deus Ex aren't very different game to game. In contrast, in Invisible War, you can max out any of two-thirds of the aug choices before the game really even begins (or spread them out). In Invisible War, your character and effectively your gameplay options are substantially different right from the start.
I didn't use the Spy Drone much. Was it good for more than disabling bots? I used bot dom a lot, which seemed better to me: it's always fun running amok.
A lot of the IW augs were very powerful, perhaps even brokenly powerful. In Deus Ex, there were a lot of augs that never seemed worth the bother; I never felt that way in IW. ...Is this where we traditionally get into an argument over whether a "meaningful choice" is one where both choices are good but different versus a "meaningful choice" is one where you can substantially err and screw yourself over?
Jashin on 16/12/2007 at 10:45
The mechs in DX had some cool augs, so I'm game.
Papy on 17/12/2007 at 05:01
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Oddly, I think that sort of problem is a tweak so simple it should have been a difficulty level: make about half of the augs not appear in-game, and not be swappable, if the player selects a "hardcore" setting.
I completely agree, but now the question is : why wasn't this included? And the same question can be asked for most mainstream games. Publishers spend millions in a game, and they don't spend just a few thousands more to include some obvious options.
As I refuse to believe publishers and developers are that incompetent, the only answer I can come up with is that they believe a "hardcore" option would hurt sales. I met several people who were proud to be able to beat games at the most difficult setting. And when they couldn't beat the game at the most difficult setting, they didn't play at a lower setting, they just stop playing, saying the _game_ was not good. I don't have access to any market research on video games, but I wonder how many people are like that. Anyway, that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Back to Invisible War...
My problem with side quests was not that they were "do meaningless favor, get money", but rather that they were... in your face. Instead of having an NPC talking about his needs or wishes, and then you find a way to fulfil their needs so they give you a reward for your help, they directly say "do this, exactly like that, and you'll get a reward". That's dumb. To say something cliché, that unrealistic behavior is immersion breaking.
For example, the coffee shop owner in lower Seattle wanted to get an opening in upper Seattle. So he tells you something like "go hack their computer and I'll give you a reward". I think a much better presentation would be to simply make the NPC say that he wishes to open a branch in upper Seattle, without saying anything else. Then, while searching, you could stumble over his application in a rejected bin. You then put it in the "approved" bin, go talk to him again, tell him what you did, and then he gives you a reward out of gratitude. Not only it's not immersion breaking, but it's also more rewarding since it can make the player feels he found a solution instead of just obeying orders.
As for the resource problem, it's difficult to compare that to other games. CRPG have only XP, but they also have a lot more special items, spells, and other resources that can be useful. A magical ring or an armor may not be a character attribute, but it does belong in the broad category of character management. Invisible War had biomods, a few weapons, a few items and that's it. Even Deus Ex was simplistic compared to a real RPG.
BTW, the Spy Drone was able to disable bots, permanently disable beams and camera (if I remember correctly, it was only temporary with Deus Ex), and was also able to render people unconscious. Basically, it was : hide in a corner, and eliminate every threat without even being in any kind of danger. I wonder how come I couldn't use it to open locks too. It would have made the game so much better.
ZylonBane on 17/12/2007 at 05:58
Electrostatic Discharge is even better. One-punch instant bot domination!
Papy on 17/12/2007 at 06:15
Now, do you really want to play : "my biomod is stronger than yours" ? :joke:
ZylonBane on 17/12/2007 at 15:40
Why would you want to play a game that you'd lose?
Electrostatic Discharge is equivalent to having infinite Scrambler and EMP grenades in your fist. It lets you take out any beams just by punching the emitters, all bots and turrets can immediately be turned to your side, and there's zero energy cost. A side effect of all this is that it really cuts down on multitool usage.
I just finished an all-black-market-biomod (except for strength) runthrough, and it was actually kind of fun resolving almost every conflict with my fists. Hey, if IW doesn't even take itself seriously, I'm certainly not going to.
Barbach on 17/12/2007 at 16:52
After the "Deus Ex 2 : Shit Happens" trauma, I'm quite errr... ...worried ?
