froghawk on 28/10/2011 at 01:12
Hmm... it seems I've completely lost all interest in this game after playing it once. Which is weird, because I was obsessed for the first play through and I even played IW twice... I guess I just felt like the final sequence was so weak and lazy that I don't feel compelled to pick it up again. The Darrow thing seemed so unconvincing, random, and irrelevant to the main plot that I almost feel like the game never reached a real conclusion and instead just lost all of its atmosphere and went into some random conclusion with zombies, an absurdly easy 'boss fight', and button-press endings.
I figured I would wait for all the DLC to come out and do it again, but now it turns out the DLC is quite expensive and isn't even integrated into the main game, so... meh
in short: more hubs plz
Emeloy on 3/11/2011 at 01:36
@Keeper Devron
I thought the whole biochip nightmare thing made a lot of sense. Sure he could have just broadcasted his confession and then what? Most of the people would have not seen it or ignored it and the Illuminati would have made it dissappear and discredit him really fast since they control the news. Having everyone you know who has implants getting insane and attacking you and everyone else on the other hand, is a lot longer lasting impression. Even if the Illuminati spin it as a faulty chip, it sends a clear signal (no pun intended), that this technology isn't save to use.
All in all I really liked the game, just because I had fun playing it. I think they got the spirit, the atmosphere and I thought it was a good choice to deal with the whole conspiracy thing a lot less overt compared to the first game.
It wasn't very innovative and that was kinda smart decision for reanimating a well known franchise by a new studio. You just have to see the fan reaction to the new Syndicate or UFO to see what I mean. They imo managed to walk the fine line to make it accessible and interesting enough to not alienate most of the old fans, but get the attention of new players. Although I was a bit disappointed in the music, not because it was bad, it was fitting and non obtrusive, but at least for me it lacked a certain .. just none of the music stood out for me. I still remember most of the melodies of DX1, so far none of the new ones was memorable enough for me to even recognize them on youtube.
There are two things I often see critizised that I think are more part of what gamers are trained to expect, than really a fault of the game.
First of all the bossfights, being a stealthy player I too didn't like them and felt they were rather artifical. But I think you can't fault them for not having much of a personallity or a backgroundstory for those chars, because it actually makes sense. You have group of highly trained, highly paid mercs from Belltower. Their mission is to protect the interest of Belltower and nothing else, they don't do it because they believe in something or they had a bad childhood whatever, they do it because they get paid. I wouldn't expect mercs in the real world, to have a special agenda something personal that would connect them to the secret plans of their bosses, why should they have it? Not everyone has to have a personal agenda to kill you or a philosophical reason, sometimes it's just a job.
The second one, the mixture between "I have to do all the tedious hacking and stealth playing to get max xp" and "the game doesn't make me decide between augs". So why not just play the game the way you like it? Kill when you want, knockout if you want, hack or use codes just get immersed and do it the way you feel any given moment and try to stop thinking about what the devs wanted or what brings you the most xp well stop treating it like a game you have to beat in a certain way. I actually applaud them for not only giving you the choice to play it like a shooter, like a hacker, like mr invisible, but to encourage you to decide every time how you want do do it and not punish you in the end for doing it. Tried it the third time i played it, no goal, no ghostrun, no berserker mode. I just did whatever felt right at any given moment. It worked like a charme I had fun, I missed a lot of the tedious parts and I felt more like Jensen was a person in the world and not a char I played a certain way to achieve sth. in a game.
DDL on 3/11/2011 at 09:26
Quote Posted by Emeloy
But I think you can't fault them for not having much of a personallity or a backgroundstory for those chars, because it actually makes sense.
The problem with that is that they set the whole thing up as a "by the numbers bossfight", right down to having a cutscene intro, sealed arena, and inexplicable ammo and weapon packs dotted around the periphery. If you're going to scream "THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT FIGHT" at the player that loudly, you would hope that the fight would also actually mean something. To paraphrase your words, if you're going to set things up exactly the way "gamers are trained to expect" bossfights to be, then they're going to call you on it if those bossfights end up feeling shallow and unconnected, and thus totally out of place.
Hell, compare this with the DX approach where the 'bossfights' as such weren't even signposted (and indeed, most of them could be resolved by simply running away), yet the involvement with the characters was far greater because you actually knew who they were. In HR, I didn't know yelena was called yelena until I highlighted her corpse, which is just silly for a bossfight.
As for your comments about playing the game the way you want to, sure yes fine good, BUT: the complaint is not that the game
forces you to play a certain way, it's that it actively
rewards you for playing a certain way, which is almost worse. 'Technically' you only have yourself to blame for playing that way, but because everyone prefers 'bigger reward' over 'lesser reward', it's really just a more insidious forcing method.
Thus removal of the rewards for particular playstyles would be a great encouragement to player freedom.
ilweran on 3/11/2011 at 12:02
Quote Posted by Emeloy
So why not just play the game the way you like it? Kill when you want, knockout if you want, hack or use codes just get immersed and do it the way you feel any given moment and try to stop thinking about what the devs wanted or what brings you the most xp well stop treating it like a game you have to beat in a certain way.
On the one hand I agree with this - although I prefer playing non-lethally generally, I killed every enemy in the Alice Garden Pods after they killed the civilians, xp be damned - on the other I'm playing DX1 with the Shifter mod at the moment and I'm flushing every unflushed toilet I find for the xp. Yup, all 2 points of it.
Emeloy on 3/11/2011 at 15:36
@DDL
I'll concentrate on the non fight parts, because I absolutely agree the fights itself were out of place and boring a fact even Eidos Montreal openly admits.
That said, they meant something imo just not the bosses themselves, but what they guarded.
In DX 1 the reason to go against Gunther and Naverre were personal. They attacked you, wanted you dead and you retaliated/defended yourself.
In DXHR they attacked what you stand for (Sarif Industries) and you killed them to get what they guarded.. a bit like killing Naverre on the plane so she couldn't kill Lebedev.
The first one gave you the information of the gardens, number 2 and 3 guarded Eliza and Megan which had a lot to tell you.
Blaming the mercs for not being interesting is like blaming a door in front of a room of secret files
for not being fun.
I don't want to deny it's kind of a personal decision, what is important for bossfights, still I thought it made sense in the context given by the game.
Concerning the experience points.. you are right, but what really is the problem of giving different xp for different skills? Roleplaying games do it all the time, you get XP for killing everyone, try playing don't know Baldurs Gate with a solo thief and just stealth through most of the game.. you run into a brick very soon because ignoring enemies gives you no xp. Try being speech heavy in several RPGs and you get a lot of extra informaton and rewards a pure "I just kill em all" wouldn't get. It's a principal that's not so unusual and in DXHR it's better than most, because you don't actually need them that much.
My second playthrough (my first always beeing as stealthy as possible) was the killer mode. I just murdered everyone in my way. Sure I missed out on a lot of xp, but to be honest I didn't need them. Have a look at the augs and now ignore every aug that's not helpful in a fire fight (gee even some that would be helpful aren't necessary) you only need a fraction of the xp to get those. So what is the real problem?
That we as a player (and I'm sure no better) are so used to getting everything, to having everything, that we get annoyed if we don't even if it's of no real consequence for the game at hand?
I understand your points, but I still think my original thought of it not being bad design per se, but just going against the things we have become so used to, is a valid one.
DDL on 3/11/2011 at 16:18
Your arguments mostly serve to support my points, though.
Quote:
Blaming the mercs for not being interesting is like blaming a door in front of a room of secret files
for not being fun.
Right, so...what you're saying is they were
deliberately supposed to be poorly-introduced random dudes?
See what it's really like is blaming a door in front of a room of secret files for not being fun, when the door is surrounded by flashy lights and signs saying OMG OMG DOOR AMZING DOOR WAT HAPPEN WEN OPENNN???? And it turns out to just be a door.
If you're going to have bossfights AT ALL, then make them
mean something, that's the point. I'm not saying that having random mercs is
unrealistic, christ no: but then this is a
game, not a simulator.
So if the bosses had simply been placed at the end of the level, in the same map, possibly with some other dudes around, and you were able to handle them the same way you handle other people, then they'd stand out as "super" versions of troopers, but other than that you wouldn't worry so much about the fact you haven't got a clue who they are or why you should particularly need to kill them. And indeed, you wouldn't necessarily need to kill them.
If you're going to go the whole damn "locked arena + weapons + cutscene + forced fight" route, then you have to make the actual boss significant in some way, or it just seems massively incongruous.
Yes they're mercs who have information, great. But other than cutscenes, you don't actually interact with them in ANY WAY prior to going all quake deathmatch on them. For all the character development they have, they might as well actually
be fucking doors with files behind, really.
And as for your RPG argument, that's EXACTLY MY POINT. Stealth an RPG and you run into a brick wall, coz the game is set up to give experience for kills. If you're really really trying to support a variety of playthroughs, giving exp for kills is stupid, because it encourages you to make kills.
As you noted, killing everyone lost you some exp, but you didn't need it...so...why have it in the first place?
The problem is that it's
entirely unnecessary, and simply serves to encourage you to play as a stealthy non-lethal guy, because you get the most exp that way. If you were rewarded solely for progression, regardless of HOW you achieved that progression, you'd be entirely free to choose your path, rather than feeling like you're missing out on (unnecessary) exp.
And as for "going against the things we have become so used to"...that's not quite it. This isn't "HAH WE AM SO GROUNDBRAEKING WIT OUR INNOVATIVE BAED EXP SYSTEM" it's just poorly implemented versions of the usual stuff.
Emeloy on 3/11/2011 at 17:04
Hmm seems I somehow had another gaming experience concerning the bosses :).
I remember wanting to exit the fema installation, talking to Eliza rather badly and being directed in the last part of the research complex to find and free Megan. The whole "there is this super important merc you have to defeat" part must have passed me by completely. I wanted to reach something and a very tough enemy was in my way not more not less. So at least for me the door didn't blink, but just was in the way to the very alluring room I wanted to enter to find the super duper secret stuff :).
If the whole "xp based on actions" is a good system or should be replaced with a pure mission/objective based one like for example Vampire Bloodlines had, is a valid question and one that would see me in the mission/objective based crowd, but afaik most of the time the kill/skill based one is choosen, because it gives more immediate rewards and a sense of constant progression a lot of players seem to crave.
Still the solution they have choosen in DXHR is imo one of the better implementations. Different playstiles have differend praxis points needs and that is reflected in the way/amount they get xp.
Maybe the old RPG Systems did it a bit more subtle by granting everyone the same xp, so avoiding the "its unfair" feeling, but having different xp borders to get to the next level.
Players could even feel superior, because they played one of the "harder" classes.
While DXHR seems to create in some player more of the "damn I don't get everything possible" feeling, if you don't play a certain way. Which kinda begs the question, are we really that addicted to rewards, that we loose fun in a game, even if the rewards aren't necessary.
The only real problem I see there is a) with ourselves and what we seemingly need by now to have fun and b) why didn't DXHR make gunfights etc more of a challenge so they could implement more interesting augs for that certain type of playstile and so make a more balanced xp system for it to simply avoid the whole thing.
