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[L00P]

Nope, normal difficulty.

I explore everything, hack everything and takedown everyone.

If you're playing too well then I'd say you deserve all those praxis points

I'm doing a second run right now and I have a lot more money than in my first run. Also putting points on augs that I've skipped previously

 

[rollingstart]

The Praxis thing seems to come from how at the beginning, everything seems like it'll take forever to get, and a lot of aug paths are "gated" at 2 Praxis points, and then each upgrade in that path usually costs only 1.

So early on, you're hurting by constantly saving up 2 points to unlock Legs or the CASIE or Cloaking or Dermal Armor or Smart Vision or Icarus and a bigger inventory would REEAAALLY HELP OH GOD I WANT IT ALL, but by the halfway point you've got most of what you really need, and you'll spend the rest of the game picking up all the neat bonus things you might want, and then by the endgame you're just putting points into the radar stuff and fortify and sprint time because fuck it why not.


So I suppose the solution would have been to either increase the amount of XP needed for more Praxis over the course of the game, or price more stuff at 2 or even 3 points.

that, and more useful augs.

I would have gladly spent 3 praxis points on "recharge two batteries" or "open doors silently" or something like that.

I finished the game with 6 praxis points to spare. I counted and would need at least 10 more to max everything out, but regardless, I didn't see a reason to.

 

[Effect]

Spoiler

3. Get anti-electricity dermal aug

This is key for that particular fight it seems. I'm glad I had gotten this ahead of time as I started to notice I was coming across traps or enemies that would be willing to attack me with things of this nature.

 

[Unicorn]

Just to demonstrate what I'm talking about here. This was my aug screen at the very end of the game:

Too many praxis points means you don't have to make any meaningful choices in how you develop your guy. You are a master of everything by the end.

fucking lame.

that's one thing I hated about Borderlands (especially with the upped level caps).

 

[TacticalFox88]

Nothing is more satisfying then not alerting any guards throughout an entire section. GODDAMN.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

fucking lame.

that's one thing I hated about Borderlands (especially with the upped level caps).

Really? He's missing 15 Praxis. The other Praxis depends on how well the player looks for it and what choices the player makes. How's that lame?

 

[MasterShotgun]

Just got to Hengsha. I'm loving it way more than Detroit. Already having the Icarus Landing System is a godsend. Makes traveling between levels much, much faster.

 

[Unicorn]

Really? He's missing 15 Praxis. The other Praxis depends on how well the player looks for it and what choices the player makes. How's that lame?

What's lame is the amount of skills he's missing isn't enough that if he were to play again, that he'd play much differently.

I like the idea of replayability through gameplay means. "Okay I did stealth the first time, now to put my points all into offense my second playthrough. Oh, for a 3rd play I think i'll go for some charming fuck who can also see through walls and punch through them."

With what his screen looks like is that he can do just about all of that, thus reducing replays to only seeing different dialogue (which, I hear, has little effect on outcomes).

 

[Jintor]

The worst thing I recall was me opening one from one side, cloaking through the laser field, and then the door automatically closing on me and re-opening it tripped the lasers and set everyone on the map to alarmed.

 

[GDJustin]

Bottom line is you end up getting access to too many skills in DE:HR. The gameplay has thee/four major pillars:

- Stealth
- Combat
- Hacking
- (maybe) social

There should be enough praxis points to max out ONE of these three paths, with maybe a couple left over for flavor. So if you wanna be a badass hacker that can turn turrets against their owners, fine. But your guns will be pea shooters, and you'll be about as stealthy as a rhino. Ditto for the other two paths. For a system like this to work there needs to be trade-off.

Instead, in HR by the end you can have max hacking, max health/armor, and max stealth.

Edit: With a Praxis setup like I've outlined above, New Game+ would become meaningful, too. Go through the game a second time as a God with all the skills, since you can never do it in a first play through.

 

[Sinatar]

Yea the only real reason I'd have to do a replay is for achievement whoring. Going to no alarms, non lethal and so forth. Since I don't give a rat's ass about achivements, that won't be happening.

 

[Varna]

lol nobody is forcing you guys to use the praxis points you get. If you want more of a challenge just don't use them

Because having to handicap yourself is pretty lame. Would be better if the difficulty scaled for everything. Harder hacking which would pretty much require having high level hacking defense certain actions require two charges.

 

[L00P]

I don't know about you guys but I like to max out everything in my games

 

[Rickenslacker]

Yeah, in regards to Praxis point allocation and energy use, I would have preferred that there were stricter choices between one aug or another, and manual activation and energy use for all of them.

Right now I'm a jack of all trades and using energy almost exclusively to punch people. It feels a little off.

I don't know about you guys but I like to max out everything in my games

It depends on the type of game it is, in a traditional RPG where you're only playing it once, for instance, sure maxing things out through a grind could be satisfying on its own. But with a Deus Ex game, the idea of multiple ways through and having choice is a prime aspect to the design, and having different character builds helps support this.

 

[Unicorn]

I don't know about you guys but I like to max out everything in my games

New Game+ is to satisfy that.

The idea is that it's so liberating after you complete the first playthrough, that you would want to see what it would be like to handle every situation as a god in the second.

 

[Varna]

I don't know about you guys but I like to max out everything in my games

Perfectly fine. You probably play on normal too.

I just wish that if you picked hard things other then damage received/dealt would change. In Fallout 1/2 for example checks for everything go up.

 

[SirButterstick]

Just finished it tonight . . . What a ride. Great story, I liked the combat mechanics, as well as the RPG aspects.

I never played the original, but I really hope they remake it using this engine.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Perfectly fine. You probably play on normal too.

I just wish that if you picked hard things other then damage received/dealt would change. In Fallout 1/2 for example checks for everything go up.

Or awesome stuff like Perfect Dark, where entirely different objectives pop up.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Or awesome stuff like Perfect Dark, where entirely different objectives pop up.

Thief did that too. Something for Thi4f to resurrect? :O

 

[Castor Krieg]

The worst thing I recall was me opening one from one side, cloaking through the laser field, and then the door automatically closing on me and re-opening it tripped the lasers and set everyone on the map to alarmed.

I noticed that part at once, which is why I never closed that door.

 

[subversus]

My friend killed everybody at police station yesterday in his best Terminator fashion. I wish the game supported hub-awareness, not location awareness only because nobody in Detroit gave a fuck about that.

also I have to say that verbal battles and social aug are really awesome. I watched my friend coping out of pretty hairy situations yesterday and I start winning these battles after I installed social aug. What is awesome about this aug it doesn't give instant skill check win, it just gives you more information and options. I wish this mechanic was improved and included in other games because SKILL CHECKS SUCK DONKEY BALLS. Let me improve my stats and give me more options from that.

 

[1stStrike]

Thief did that too. Something for Thi4f to resurrect? :O

I hope they resurrect grappling hooks. I missed those in Thief 3. They can keep the haunted orphanages, though. I didn't sneak through there. I ran.

 

[L00P]

It depends on the type of game it is, in a traditional RPG where you're only playing it once, for instance, sure maxing things out through a grind could be satisfying on its own. But with a Deus Ex game, the idea of multiple ways through and having choice is a prime aspect to the design, and having different character builds helps support this.

Believe me, I expected this game to be like Deus Ex when it comes to spending points, but I felt relieved when I got to max out the skills I wanted. Maybe it's my OCD talking

 

[Zaptruder]

What's lame is the amount of skills he's missing isn't enough that if he were to play again, that he'd play much differently.

I like the idea of replayability through gameplay means. "Okay I did stealth the first time, now to put my points all into offense my second playthrough. Oh, for a 3rd play I think i'll go for some charming fuck who can also see through walls and punch through them."

With what his screen looks like is that he can do just about all of that, thus reducing replays to only seeing different dialogue (which, I hear, has little effect on outcomes).

The praxis system is balanced - if you're not an OCD player that backtracks, explores, opens, hacks, knocks every single guard out, etc.

If you do all those things, then you'll get enough praxis points to master all those areas.

If you only do some of those things, then you'll only get enough praxis points to specialize in the area that you specialize in.

 

[syllogism]

I finished the game with only 5 praxis points away from maxing everything.

 

[L00P]

Maybe they should have raised the cap on some aug. Say, a maximum of 20 seconds for a fully-upgraded invisibility cloak?

No wait, that shit would be so broken even if it costs a lot of points

 

[Jintor]

Verbal battles are awesome.

Spoiler

I wish that it wasn't just 'choose this conversation path in every stage of the battle to win' though. It's good that there's a few 'this works on this stage and not on others', but they're not nearly enough.

 

[Rickenslacker]

The praxis system is balanced - if you're not an OCD player that backtracks, explores, opens, hacks, knocks every single guard out, etc.

That's not OCD, it's pretty natural to try and check out everything when the game encourages it.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Verbal battles are awesome.

Spoiler

I wish that it wasn't just 'choose this conversation path in every stage of the battle to win' though. It's good that there's a few 'this works on this stage and not on others', but they're not nearly enough.

I don't think I chose the same option twice in a row ever, and I won all my encounters. Shit was tense.

 

[Swifty]

This game probably has the best hacking minigame out of all games with a hack mechanic.

However, I really think putting keypads and computers together under the same hacking mechanic was a bad decision. Locked doors just don't feel like huge impediments like they were in the original Deus Ex, just minor inconveniences. It's starts to fall under the Bioshock mindset where you go "HACK EVERYTHING!" It's devolved into a routine chore rather than a cost-benefit analysis like it was in the original Deus Ex. Locked doors and keypads in the original Deus Ex made you think hard if you really wanted the rewards behind them since the player had to spend lock picks or multitools.

However, the hacking mechanics do a real good job as a time delay mechanism if the door or computer you're hacking is underneath a security camera or along a traveled patrol route. At those moments, you're really left to decide if you want to spend your nuke virii to accelerate the hacking process, look for a vent, or do a Kool Aid man run through a wall. I really wish the game had much more of those cost-benefit analysis situations.

 

[Wallach]

What's lame is the amount of skills he's missing isn't enough that if he were to play again, that he'd play much differently.

I like the idea of replayability through gameplay means. "Okay I did stealth the first time, now to put my points all into offense my second playthrough. Oh, for a 3rd play I think i'll go for some charming fuck who can also see through walls and punch through them."

With what his screen looks like is that he can do just about all of that, thus reducing replays to only seeing different dialogue (which, I hear, has little effect on outcomes).

You have to take into account how many Praxis points he had at the time of his doing the content, not the number he had just at the end. Unfortunately I think the XP cost per Praxis is a little too low, so for the most part I think it only has a significant impact in the first hub and maybe parts of the second depending on how you're playing.

I think one thing maybe they should have done was require Praxis points to level up weapon skill "software" so there was another significant Praxis sink.

Unfortunately it's kind of a theme with these games that if you don't gimp yourself you'll ruin the game balance. Not an easy target to hit with how much they want to squeeze in here.

 

[subversus]

That's not OCD, it's pretty natural to try and check out everything when the game encourages it.

no, it's not pretty natural for most people. A lot of them miss stuff and clues.

 

[The Quiet Man]

With regards to Praxis points, I actually became overly paranoid after a while that spending too many of them would affect the plot in some way, in keeping with the theme of augmented vs non-augmented people. So I ended up with 20+ Praxis Points at the end of the game, only to find that I was worried for nothing.

I felt really silly afterwards, but it made for an interesting challenge for a first playthrough. Next time: spend Praxis Points to check out some of the interesting augs I missed out on.

 

[Rickenslacker]

no, it's not pretty natural for most people. A lot of them miss stuff and clues.

One thing I've come to find with people that play games it's that if there's something to see in the environment, people will try it. They don't have to go through everything with a fine toothed comb, but checking out every terminal, going through every door that's possible, checking drawers, that kind of thing.

 

[Jintor]

I don't think I chose the same option twice in a row ever, and I won all my encounters. Shit was tense.

Maybe social aug made it too easy, since you can see the monitor rise at every turn, but I was never disappointed.

I haven't looked at the thing in detail yet but I think there's one 'always-wrong' approach, one 'always-right' approach, and one 'this will vary depending on the stage of the conversation' approach. Can't confirm yet though.

According to my friend there's actually a small variety of responses to each line, though the overall effect will still be positive, negative etc.

 

[Sinatar]

I am kind of interesting in trying a playthrough with 0 points in hacking, just to see how different it would play without having that easy crutch to get past every obstacle.

 

[Coxswain]

There should be enough praxis points to max out ONE of these three paths, with maybe a couple left over for flavor. So if you wanna be a badass hacker that can turn turrets against their owners, fine. But your guns will be pea shooters, and you'll be about as stealthy as a rhino. Ditto for the other two paths.

That's just reintroducing the same problem, but in the opposite direction. It's lame to kill off individuality by giving the player enough points to do everything that they could possibly want to, but it's just as lame to be given the choice between being able to be good at one thing and a gimp at everything else and being kind-of-shitty at two different things. Remember we are talking about the very, very end of the game - you should be a pretty multifaceted badass by that point, since the bulk of the game is spent being much weaker than that.


I think the problem here is basically twofold:
1) Putting points in Hacking is not an investment. Every point you put into Hacking: Capture will earn you enough experience to make back probably two or three Praxis Points - enough to cover all of Hacking: Stealth, the turret and robot enhancements, and then some. The only reason to not max out Hacking is if you're purposely playing suboptimally.

2) There are very few good combat augs. Dermal Armor will not let you change your playstyle; with or without it, you're stuck firing from cover. Aim Stabilizer is in every way worse than slapping a laser sight on your weapon. Recoil Stabilizer is okay but in a pretty limited capacity, as sticking your head out of cover and firing long enough for it to be useful will usually just get you killed. Typhoon is good against bosses, but comparatively useless otherwise unless you also use Cloaking to get in position for it. Reflex Booster is good, but it's as much a Stealth skill as a Combat skill - similarly, Icarus Landing, the Rebreather, and Dermal Armor's EMP Shielding are all far more useful as Exploration skills than Combat.



So in the end, Hacking is free, Combat is useless and/or comprised of augs that serve more purpose for Stealth and Exploration builds, and Stealth and Exploration go hand-in-hand for what are probably some pretty obvious reasons. If you got rid of Datastore XP rewards and introduced a proper suite of Combat-oriented augs, I think the game would pretty much sort itself out.

 

[Wallach]

So in the end, Hacking is free, Combat is useless and/or comprised of augs that serve more purpose for Stealth and Exploration builds, and Stealth and Exploration go hand-in-hand for what are probably some pretty obvious reasons. If you got rid of Datastore XP rewards and introduced a proper suite of Combat-oriented augs, I think the game would pretty much sort itself out.

Yeah, I would agree. I would also probably just lower hacking experience in general (by around half per difficulty) but I'd also give a small bonus (maybe worth half the standard) for using a passcode to breach a system. Players need to be more encouraged to find and use passcodes instead of feeling so pushed towards hacking.

Edit - Actually I might even bump passcode experience further than 50% to like 75%.

 

[subversus]

One thing I've come to find with people that play games it's that if there's something to see in the environment, people will try it. They don't have to go through everything with a fine toothed comb, but checking out every terminal, going through every door that's possible, checking drawers, that kind of thing.

I don't know but I saw most people doing exactly the opposite - ramming objectives in a straight path. Only experienced gamers with a lot of time on their hands are doing the opposite.

Most times people just don't see any clues in environment.

 

[Sinatar]

Yeah, I would agree. I would also probably just lower hacking experience in general (by around half per difficulty) but I'd also give a small bonus (maybe worth half the standard) for using a passcode to breach a system. Players need to be more encouraged to find and use passcodes instead of feeling so pushed towards hacking.

Edit - Actually I might even bump passcode experience further than 50% to like 75%.

This big time. I never ever used a passcode cause there was XP/Cash in hacking.

 

[Castor Krieg]

Remember we are talking about the very, very end of the game - you should be a pretty multifaceted badass by that point, since the bulk of the game is spent being much weaker than that.

No, we are not. By the time you reach

Spoiler

Zhao's Penthouse

I had Hacking maxed, all Exploration augs, and I was able to buy full Cloak augmentation, making the game EZ mode, since Cloaking is massively overpowered in this game.

Players need to be more encouraged to find and use passcodes instead of feeling so pushed towards hacking.

Edit - Actually I might even bump passcode experience further than 50% to like 75%.

Passcodes need to be hidden better then, or you need to figure out the pass yourself, without it appearing when interacting with proper terminal.

 

[Wallach]

This big time. I never ever used a passcode cause there was XP/Cash in hacking.

I think cash, virus copies and the convenience of being able to access any system without having to search for a code should be mostly enough. They give out far too much experience on top of that.

 

[JWong]

Is the after credit thing the same no matter what choice?

 

[Rei_Toei]

Deus Ex here is staring me in the face. Had it pre-ordered to get the bonus stuff, then found out you'd get it anyway here in this country. But I have to hand in the final version of my Master's thesis in two days, so haven't started yet :|. Can't wait till tuesday evening. I'm going to hit this game with the passionate fury of a thousand gods!

 

[Rickenslacker]

I don't know but I saw most people doing exactly the opposite - ramming objectives in a straight path. Only experienced gamers with a lot of time on their hands are doing the opposite.

Hmm, rather I think it's something that RPG players do. In any case I don't think it's OCD behaviour to see what's hidden in the left path when the objective marker is pointing you to the right path. The game encourages exploration.

Is the after credit thing the same no matter what choice?

Yep.

 

[Sinatar]

Is the after credit thing the same no matter what choice?

Yep.

 

[JWong]

Yep.

Good, dun wanna sit through the credits again.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

What's lame is the amount of skills he's missing isn't enough that if he were to play again, that he'd play much differently.

I like the idea of replayability through gameplay means. "Okay I did stealth the first time, now to put my points all into offense my second playthrough. Oh, for a 3rd play I think i'll go for some charming fuck who can also see through walls and punch through them."

With what his screen looks like is that he can do just about all of that, thus reducing replays to only seeing different dialogue (which, I hear, has little effect on outcomes).

You don't get to do that till the closing stretches of the game. The first two hubs you visit (not so much when you come back to them later) you really do get limited a fair bit, then you become more powerful should you choose to unlock the augs that act as "keys". Hacking capture, gas resistance, EMP resistence, throw/move heavy objects and Icarus landing system are metroid style upgrades that let you access new areas. Punch through walls is too but you can use explosives or even your regular guns to achieve the same effect if you're desperate enough to get through one of the doors. Cloak might be depending on how you play with lasers.

The rest of the augs are essentially optional extras - aim stabilizer / recoil compensation, see-through-walls, all of the stealth enhancers, extra inventory space, hacking fortify/stealth, the whole battery tree etc are all upgrades you can shirk if you want, while still being able to go anywhere and do anything.

I think it's fine, because, as I said, it's not till later that this happens usually, and feeling like a badass jack of all trades in the last 90 minutes of playtime is a good thing.

 

[Swifty]

Yeah, I would agree. I would also probably just lower hacking experience in general (by around half per difficulty) but I'd also give a small bonus (maybe worth half the standard) for using a passcode to breach a system. Players need to be more encouraged to find and use passcodes instead of feeling so pushed towards hacking.

Edit - Actually I might even bump passcode experience further than 50% to like 75%.

Hell, if you really wanted players to agonize with what to do with locked terminals and keypads, I would have passcodes give you experience while the benefits for hacking would be limited to what you can get in the datastores. >

 

[Auto_aim1]

I hope they resurrect grappling hooks. I missed those in Thief 3. They can keep the haunted orphanages, though. I didn't sneak through there. I ran.

Shalebridge Cradle, right? God, that was scary as hell. Terrific level design and atmosphere, but the rest of the game wasn't as good as Thief 1 and 2.