Tigranes

I like eternal love. At work, but will do this one in a few hours Lannen.

Cool. At work, will have a look in a few hours.

The game automatically deactivates if you uninstall while online, so that should be fine. botlite, I just reproduced your error by using a computer that's registered as 'Australian' - the stupid redirection at work. Try setting your locale to the US or elsewhere.

For gameplay balances, I'd suggest that a significant increase in cooldown times for abilities, and an increase in AP required for skills, is probably the best way. Decreasing XP gained doesn't really work too well because the game is designed to have you reach Level 18-20 at endgame. I think if its possible, certain skills in the same tree should cost more AP than others (e.g. chain shot might cost 7 AP, other 'normal' pistol skills 5 AP), so that you can't max out 3 skill trees by endgame, like you can now. Shadow oeprative and Chain shot might also benefit from a significantly reduced duration - they're meant to simulate Mike's ability to sneak and shoot, so it's kind of ridiculous when you get 20 seconds, effectively letting you clear a room full of baddies. If it were reduced you mighta ctually have to hurry with CS, and use SO to run away and hide. Alternatively, perhaps taking down an enemy with SO should make SO end: it makes no sense you can knock someone out and the other guy is right next to you and doesn't notice. In the same sense, maybe Evasion can be changed so you don't turn 'invisible', but simply that the guard doesn't change to alerted status immediately (though this woudl be much harder to do).

Tip: when you start, quickly move the mouse to where the right side code is, so that the mouse is hovering directly over the code that it is moving. This way, it's much easier to make it go where you want it to go. If you are moving it like the lockpicks, with the cursor at the edges of the screen, then it'll feel a lot more clunky.

I'll try that engine ini and see how it does, though I doubt my laptop can handle it.

I used to pick up the mouse to do the long locks, but I realised you don't really have to - it keeps going for a good while even if your mouse is at the top of the screen. Unless you're already starting with the cursor up quite high.

Minchi.minchi.zip

I can ask for this to be done, there's a decent chance.

Ah, I was misled by the picture. Alright, I'll try and fix minchi's in a couple of hours, I'm at work.

I'll get on this one in a little bit. Hrm, can you give me the .dat file in MetaData as well? I don't know how winklebottom's doing it without them...

That mission, if I remember right, has a dossier that reduces infiltration difficulty. You seem to get that for most of the missions with difficult minigames.

The airfield mission seems to be the most common place by far. Some people have never had it happen past that.

Therein lies the problem Akka. I'm not saying it's your fault or your complaints aren't justified - the checkpoint system does have its disadvantages, big ones. The issue is that you happen to be the type of player who is most bothered by the checkpoint system, but there will be other players who benefit from it (i.e. encouragement to roleplay and run with their mistakes). If Obsidian went with your suggestion there will be players who find the game equally 'unplayable' because the way they play is compromised by the save system. Any save system will impact the way you play and will have ups and downs. To be frank, I struggle to understand how it makes the game 'unplayable', and why you can't just say to yourself "meh, I'll pretend there are no saves" and just play on. I guess it's just too different from me.

Two things - firstly, the controls are clunky, which adds to the difficulty. This is a flaw. Secondly, each minigame requires different kinds of mental skills on the part of the player - although it seems like everyone is complaining about hacking, there are also a lot of people who find it easy. I actually think higher difficulty lockpicking (10 seconds, 5 pins) is harder than higher difficulty hacking, because of the way the pins move.

Manually reloading takes sooo long? Just select Load Checkpoint, not Reload Checkpoint when you die. 2 extra seconds. We'll do the same deal as the Al-Bara bug - if anyone is really stuck at this point and can't get past no matter what they do, upload the save here and I can have a look and see if I can get past that point.

There's another topic on this, have a search. Some suspect it's related to the DRM throwing a hissy fit, and can be solved with a simple deactivation / reactivation (see Known Issues thread for how). Good part is, it won't lose you any activations and should be relatively simple to 'fix'. Bad part is, it may or may not work, as a 'suspected' fix... let us know.

Why can't you disable AA/AF for that card? What's different about it?

But clearly, the variables are defined elsewhere - if they could be found we could make totally new perks, or edit existing perks to totally new things.

Volourn is pointless as usual. *hug* It is pretty damn hard on Hard, invest points into sabotage as you see fit - Spy's Luck, EMPs and decreased difficulty help.

Sure, there are clunky controls for hacking, checkpoint bug, etc, which are annoying. But they'd be annoying no matter what, anyway. At the core of the issue, I think it's stupid not to have 3 previous checkpoints if the saves are going to be so small. In fact, this becomes a problem because checkpoints are *too* frequent. 15 minutes - that's what you might feel but that's a massive exaggeration. I'm playing on Hard as a stealth/gadgets man, and even taking the time to look at enemies' patrol movements, setting bombs, sneaking up on them and such, you rarely lose more than 5 minutes when you die. Hell, if you do well, you can finish some of the smaller missions in 15 minutes. Anyway, my point isn't that the checkpoint system is great. It's not. My point is that now we're stuck with it, the best way to live with it is stop metagaming and thinking so much about the save system. Honestly, from your descriptions, it seemst o me like you want to have 'perfect' games and are inclined to reload when you make a mistake, when Alpha Protocol is *built* to react to your mistakes and give you consequences.

There's the first DS3 DLC then.

I think there is a difference, but I'm not 100% sure. Some guards have more health, and sometimes your dossier info gives you bonuses against certaine nemies. With perks introducing damage +/- as well, it's hard to keep up with exact calculations.

Our games are not affected by the bug, so even if we load your saves, we can ID van der Graaf just fine. No special trick.

Gadgets are really really fun, and yes, quite good if you invest upgrades and skills. There is nothing more fun than watching a marburg man run towards you, then the remote mine explodes and he catapults sideways into the air. Incendiary grenades next to trucks and other flammable objects is also a great way to cause large scale explosions.