Junction Point Studios -more info

[Musopticon?]

Well, it was hell of a lot easier to just kill everything with an axe, compared to the low damage spells Tremes first got. Bloodsheild was a big meh. Blood boil is a different matter entirely.

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I understand the idea behind vents (it's a quick and easy way to add sneaker elements to a map) but they definitely reek of artifice.

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But even the tutorial (Deus Ex) had a better example of sneaking that using the cop-out baby vents.

The vents exist because they want to try to stay true to their promise of having some sort of open ended story.

 

If they made it so that everyone would have to go through some bottleneck, then they would have failed in their project goal.

 

Even Spector was disappointed that there were 3 people that you had to kill in the original Deus Ex.

 

Personally, I think it's neat that designers are trying to vary the gameplay a little.

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Vide ut supra; although there were lots of areas where there was an open area that the PC could move through according to their own whim, the vents were just a bit too obvious. Also, inside MJ12, it was easy to snipe and hide in the underfloor vents, such that it was obvious how short the attention span of the AI was ...

The basic plan for my module is to have a series of branching nodes, where the story eventually comes together at certain parts, so that things don't get TOO out of control for me

 

That way you can play through various parts of the game in a variety of distinct ways.

 

I'm also planning on getting as much attribute and skill based choices in dialogue, as well as environmental interaction.

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(Two big thumbs up from me.)

[Lord Tingeling]

Well, it was hell of a lot easier to just kill everything with an axe, compared to the low damage spells Tremes first got. Bloodsheild was  a big meh. Blood boil is a different matter entirely.

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Bloodshield is very useful, especially at earlier levels. Blood boil is also useful, and some other skill I can't remember the name of also restores blood to the caster.

 

If you want an underpowered, clan, Nosferatu or Gangrel is the way to go.

 

And my tremeres are usually casters AND talkers AND melee/ranged specialists. Any clan should have put five points into either firearms/pe or melee and so on.

[Calax]

I'm playing a female tremere (or rather that's the char i'm in the middle of) and i've played a gangrel. What I never did was use a weapon with my gangrel because it actaully removes power from protean. My Termere is horrible with her spell (I wish to have Mage The Awakening majic rather than This stuff) but I've designed her to rock with her gunz. Out of the world of Darkness the most unbalaced chars are warewolves. They be 6 feet tall and full of nasty. plus they get all sorts of bonus's. Fortunatly they literally rebuilt the world of darkness. (They had Gehenna happen and made an entirely new world to play in)

[Diogo Ribeiro]

The vents exist because they want to try to stay true to their promise of having some sort of open ended story.

 

If they made it so that everyone would have to go through some bottleneck, then they would have failed in their project goal.

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Except there's more ways to achieve this than by excessive use of vent crawling. Multiple path and associated level progression doesn't need to be confined to the same one trick pony.

[213374U]

Bloodshield is very useful, especially at earlier levels.  Blood boil is also useful, and some other skill I can't remember the name of also restores blood to the caster.

 

If you want an underpowered, clan, Nosferatu or Gangrel is the way to go.

 

And my tremeres are usually casters AND talkers AND melee/ranged specialists. Any clan should have put five points into either firearms/pe or melee and so on.

Um?

 

Nosferatu are awesome. Obfuscation lets you sneak OR kill your way past anything with little effort.

 

And five points into firearms/pe or melee/st will make ANY clan somewhat dangerous. But the Tremere are underpowered in BL.

Which is sad, because the Tremere Antitribu you meet is really powerful and shows what could be done with Thaumaturgy. <_<

[Musopticon?]

The one who released the monsties to the sewers?

[213374U]

No,

that's a Tzimisce. I mean that guy inside the Sabbat hotel that is behind what appears to be a fire shield that protects him from any damage and can summon random explosions to smack you around.

 

 

Now THAT was cool. :cool:

[Musopticon?]

Oh, I always pictured Tzimisc

[metadigital]

The vents exist because they want to try to stay true to their promise of having some sort of open ended story.

 

If they made it so that everyone would have to go through some bottleneck, then they would have failed in their project goal.

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Except there's more ways to achieve this than by excessive use of vent crawling. Multiple path and associated level progression doesn't need to be confined to the same one trick pony.

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Exactly. As I said earlier, the demo in Deus Ex is a better example than almost everywhere else in the game ...

[213374U]

Demo?

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

No,

that's a Tzimisce. I mean that guy inside the Sabbat hotel that is behind what appears to be a fire shield that protects him from any damage and can summon random explosions to smack you around.

 

 

Now THAT was cool.  :cool:

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Are those the ones with fleshsculpt ?

[metadigital]

Demo? 

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Sorry, I meant the practice area before you start at Liberty Island.

 

(I was also thinking about the demo of IW, which I thought was better than the actual game, at the same time as writing the above.)

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Are those the ones with fleshsculpt ?

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Yes.

[213374U]

Are those the ones with fleshsculpt ?

Yeah, Vicissitude is the Tzimisce's trademark discipline. That's how he created the monsties and practiced er... plastic surgery... on himself.

 

 

Sorry, I meant the practice area before you start at Liberty Island.

Yeah, that was a tough one. But DX had a lot of those. It wasn't always a matter of crawling through vents to avoid detection. I think it would be difficult to implement in any other game that didn't feature some kind of invisibility, and even in DX, your ability to remain undetected relied greatly in the severe sensory impairment of the enemy.

[Guest Fishboot]

I think it would be difficult to implement in any other game that didn't feature some kind of invisibility, and even in DX, your ability to remain undetected relied greatly in the severe sensory impairment of the enemy.

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This reminds me that I really need to play the Thief series so I can understand the grammar and evolution of PC sneakers. But as far as Deus Ex goes, the gamism of enemies with extreme vision problems didn't take me out of immersion as I recall. A sneaker with pure "if you can see them, they can see you" rules, where a guard could trivially spot you 100 meters away in moonlight (quite realistic) would need some brilliant design work to keep it fun.

[metadigital]

Or just a lot of "convenient" dark passages. Such contrivances would detract from the immersion, because there is no way an army base is going to have a nice dark alley next to a manhole cover from a drain that neatly tunnels under all the perimeter fencing ...

 

But there is no reason why the PC can't have some sort of cloaking abilities / properties; especially if they are circumvented as soon as the PC attempts offensive action. That's a fair balance, IMO.

[Lord Tingeling]

Nosferatu are awesome. Obfuscation lets you sneak OR kill your way past anything with little effort.

 

Malkavians have the same discipline, with the added bonus of Dementation and that they can actually talk their way through all quests.

 

Obfusecate is worthless in the combat situations that count. Especially seeing as some vampires, werewolves and most supernatural creatures can see through obfusecate, by the way. So it won't be useful in Hotel hell or whatever that level was named- which is coincidentially one of the most combat-heavy levels in the game.

 

It's useful for avoiding combat- but it isn't useful *in* combat. And when fighting (some) vampires, it doesn't do jack squat.

 

And five points into firearms/pe or melee/st will make ANY clan somewhat dangerous. But the Tremere are underpowered in BL.

 

No, they're not. Blood shield *will* and *does* absord quite a lot of damage in HtH combat. Blood Boil is somewhat useful, and the blood drain ability is quite useful in a pinch.

 

The underpowered clans are Gangrel (where animalism is the only viable discipline, really) and, to some extent, Malkavians and Nosferatu. Even so, I still prefer Malkavians simply due to the fact that they own.

 

Wheter a clan is underpowered or not depends SOLELY on disciplines. And Blood Magic is MILES ahead of Protean, for example.

 

Which is sad, because the Tremere Antitribu you meet is really powerful and shows what could be done with Thaumaturgy. <_<

 

He's not powerful. He dies like a little ninny, and you really have to be either blind or incapacitated to not manage to avoid those trash-can fires he arranges. Just shoot his lackeys, sneak up the stairs, and then lay a hit or two on him and he's gone.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

One thing Deus Ex could stand to use much more instead of vent crawling was the same aspect of extinguishing light sources as seen in Thief. There just wasn't a whole lot of it, and most light sources that I recall were indestructible.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

One thing Deus Ex could stand to use much more instead of vent crawling was the same aspect of extinguishing light sources as seen in Thief. There just wasn't a whole lot of it, and most light sources that I recall were indestructible.

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People should get really suspicious if lightbulbs keep popping all over the place.

[Musopticon?]

But some sort of focused emp would be a plausible method of taking out lights temporarily.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

But some sort of focused emp would be a plausible method of taking out lights temporarily.

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Yep , it's still the sort of thing people tend to notice though.

 

Medivel is pretty easy in comparison.

[Musopticon?]

It is(Medieval, I mean), especially with the guards in Thief being bored and in work.

[213374U]

But there is no reason why the PC can't have some sort of cloaking abilities / properties; especially if they are circumvented as soon as the PC attempts offensive action. That's a fair balance, IMO.

I found that one of the most lame things in DX2 (alongside the ten square meter military bases). As soon as you fired a shot, your cloak magically went off. It's probably one of the worst introduced game balance gimmicks in a game, ever. Talk about detracting from immersion.

 

In Deus Ex it was perfectly balanced, because you could not have both Cloak and Radar Transparency simultaneously. But since they allowed that in IW, they had to introduce that cheap mechanism to prevent the game from becoming a cakewalk (even more).

 

 

Malkavians have the same discipline, with the added bonus of Dementation and that they can actually talk their way through all quests.

In exchange, Nossies get Potence. Potence + Obfuscation + Katana = InstaGIB.

 

 

Obfusecate is worthless in the combat situations that count. Especially seeing as some vampires, werewolves and most supernatural creatures can see through obfusecate, by the way. So it won't be useful in Hotel hell or whatever that level was named- which is coincidentially one of the most combat-heavy levels in the game.

In those situations, any Clan (except for the horribly overpowered Brujah) will be in trouble.

 

Apparently, the only Discipline that isn't crap for you is Celerity (and the laughably underpowered Thaumaturgy).

 

 

No, they're not. Blood shield *will* and *does* absord quite a lot of damage in HtH combat.  Blood Boil is somewhat useful, and the blood drain ability is quite useful in a pinch.

The idea is to *not* get hit, so you don't have to rely on Blood Shield and Fortitude. Being a FPS, it has to have some advantages.

As for blood, that's what blood packs, elder vitae and mortals are for.

 

 

The underpowered clans are Gangrel (where animalism is the only viable discipline, really) and, to some extent, Malkavians and Nosferatu. Even so, I still prefer Malkavians simply due to the fact that they own.

The Malks, underpowered? That's pretty rich. Bedlam lets you kill any enemy instantly, barring bosses, and it will deal huge damage to those. Yes, instant kills protected by invisibility is the exact definition of underpowered.

 

Have you really played a Malk?

 

 

Wheter a clan is underpowered or not depends SOLELY on disciplines. And Blood Magic is MILES ahead of Protean, for example.

Sure, Protean sucks, in the game at least. But in the game, so does Thaumaturgy.

 

 

He's not powerful. He dies like a little ninny, and you really have to be either blind or incapacitated to not manage to avoid those trash-can fires he arranges. Just shoot his lackeys, sneak up the stairs, and then lay a hit or two on him and he's gone.

Right. I forgot you're uber 1337. My bad.

 

But following your reasoning, there isn't a single powerful enemy in BL.

[Musopticon?]

We seem to have a severe case of owning here.