Any good games coming out?

[Slowtrain]

Well, suffice it to say then, that I am disappointed DX3 has gone the regen route. It immediately makes the game less appealing to me, so I can only hope that new and interesting gameplay elements will be added in to offset the loss of the health exploration. I also hope that combat is made much more difficult and less clunky and harder to avoid. One hit kills would be nice. That would at least give more of a purpose to the free health.

 

My fear of course is that its going to end up like Invisible War, where everything that made DX awesome was simply removed or dumbed down and nothing was added to replace what was lost.

 

TIme will tell. I'm curious, if nothing else.

 

 

I'm just curious what difficulty level you played Deus Ex on?

 

It was laced with one hit kills for me, especially later in the game.

 

 

Realistic.

 

One shot kills pretty much only happened with the sniper rifle. That was the only weapon that scared me anyway.

[Llyranor]

Well, the Gears 1/2 campaigns are a bit on the easy side, but it never really felt like it was due to hp regen. Having medpacks inserted randomly along the maps wouldn't have really added much to the gameplay. The balancing would have to be changed significantly, anyway. Having hp regen would mean that your maximum total hp would generally be a lot less than it would in a game where you need to rely on medpacks (as a general rule - there are still the games where hp doesn't regen, but where you also have very little hp to begin with - in which case, medpacks add little; a more 'realistic' approach).

 

In Gears, you take potshots and shrug them off, but if you take a good spray of good bullets, you'll usually be near death. You can rest a bit and recover, but you need to get yourself out of harm's way or you're dead very soon. If the game had medpacks, it wouldn't work in the same way. Either you'd have a lot more base hp, or there'd be a lot of medpacks lying around anyway. Of course, there are ways in which it could be designed differently; as a quick example, no medpacks, no usual health regen, and you only get your health back at every checkpoint. Thus, every battle becomes a struggle for survival. You don't recover by hiding, and you don't need to look around for medpacks. The designers can also design each battle to be as challenging as they want it to be, knowing that the player *starts* off the battle at full health. It's less about surviving the entire game and more about surviving individual battles; completely different approaches, though in this case the devs can probably afford to make individual battles *harder*. Different challenges and all.

 

Gears campaign is easy. The Gears system itself doesn't inherently make the game easy. In Gears2, there's a 5-player co-op mode where the team is put up against waves of increasingly difficulty enemy waves. It starts off easy enough, but as enemy types become harder, or their hp/damage output/accuracy increases as the wave number increases, things become pretty challenging pretty fast. Since you're often put against overwhelming odds, and your positions are often overran from multiple flanks, it quickly becomes a game of setting up defensive perimeters (deploying portable shields, proximity grenades, setting up mortars and heavy MG positions), coordinating flanking maneuvers, pulling off retreats when you need to. Essentially, the game overwhelms you with enemies; it's constant high action stuff. Would hp + medpacks really add to the challenge? Can't say it would. Sure, health could be treated as an additional resource that you'd need to keep an eye on (and medpack runs would be something else that'd be important). On the other hand, given the current balance of the system, they'd also have to give you significant more base hp (as in, actual balance, rather than 'lol I beat DX without upgrades or medkits or weapons'). The thing is, with hp regen, the devs can afford to put you in near death status whenever you're exposed for more than a split-second. They wouldn't be able to do that with a conventional hp system (without sucking the gameplay out of it, anyway). It's a completely different focus, and the game still remains extremely challenging.

 

But yeah, I beat DX without weapons or upgrades or medpacks anyway lol.

[Wrath of Dagon]

How well the health system works has to do with how well it works with the rest of the gameplay. There's no one approach that's best for every game.

[alanschu]

Well, suffice it to say then, that I am disappointed DX3 has gone the regen route. It immediately makes the game less appealing to me, so I can only hope that new and interesting gameplay elements will be added in to offset the loss of the health exploration. I also hope that combat is made much more difficult and less clunky and harder to avoid. One hit kills would be nice. That would at least give more of a purpose to the free health.

 

My fear of course is that its going to end up like Invisible War, where everything that made DX awesome was simply removed or dumbed down and nothing was added to replace what was lost.

 

TIme will tell. I'm curious, if nothing else.

 

 

I'm just curious what difficulty level you played Deus Ex on?

 

It was laced with one hit kills for me, especially later in the game.

 

 

Realistic.

 

One shot kills pretty much only happened with the sniper rifle. That was the only weapon that scared me anyway.

 

 

Yeah as I think about it I think you might be right.

 

I think the machine gun on the big mechs was bad news too.

[Llyranor]

How well the health system works has to do with how well it works with the rest of the gameplay. There's no one approach that's best for every game.

You're just saying that to defend Mass Effect's masterfully implemented system. Regenerating shields, and free medpacks! Genius!

[Slowtrain]

Yeah as I think about it I think you might be right.

 

I think the machine gun on the big mechs was bad news too.

 

 

IIRC, the damage multiplier on realistic was 4x base damage.

 

the sniper rifle had a base damage of 25, which meant that on realistic a torso hit without armor would result in your instant demise.

 

The 10 mm pistol only had enough base damage to do an instant kill if it hit you in the head and recieved the head shot damage multiplier on top of the realisitc multiplier. WHich happened occasionally, but it was rare enough that it wasn't too dangerous. Plus any active armor at all would attentuate even headshot damage to safe levels.

 

SOme of the other big hitters like the shotguns and plasma rifles did a lot of per shot damage, but the per shot damage was spread across multiple projectiles. SO they were only dangerous at point blank range, which was usually easy enough to avoid.

 

Missiles just seemed to slow to be a threat. I'm sure I got killed by them once or twice, but again it was a low risk thing.

 

That dang sniper rifle though. That was the tough one.

[alanschu]

Missiles were inconsequential because of active defenses that caused them to blow up the instant they were fired

[Slowtrain]

Missiles were inconsequential because of active defenses that caused them to blow up the instant they were fired

 

 

Actually, I don't think I ever took that aug, since I never considered missiles a threat and that aug was paired with something else I wanted more.

 

Can't remember what that other thing was though. Was that a chest aug or a head aug? Can't remember that either. I'm getting old.

[Slowtrain]

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Deus_Ex/Augmentations

 

It was a head aug and paired with spy drone.

 

SPy drone was awesome.

[Slowtrain]

Reading through the aug list brings a tear to the old eye , it does. *sniff*

 

 

My usual aug set up was:

 

Microfibral muscle

Speed Enhancement

Ballistic protection

Radar Transparency

Power recirculator

Energy Shield

Enevironemental Resistance

Vision Enhancement

Spy Drone

 

 

 

The cool thing was that by stacking a fully upgraded power recirc with a fully upgraded ballastic protection with a fully upgraded environmental resistance and then using ballstic armor, you were basically immune to bullet damage for a very long time. I could walk right in front of machine gun carrying bots and thumb my nose at them.

 

 

Good times.

[alanschu]

Watching MJ12 forces spontaneously explode as they fired their missiles at me was also awesome. I've used both.

[Gorth]

The thread is getting a bit long. Continued here