Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong Pre-Release Discussion [GO TO NEW THREAD]

Probably not. They'll want the editor to be able to use assets from DMS/DF for their own and users modules.

 

Of course not, they build upon the already existing ressources, just like the NWN expansion packs provided new tilesets.

 

I'll put money on Bard's Tale 4 doing worse.

 

Main thing I pray for is AI casting buffs before attacking, using cover more often and attacking more than once. Just saying. Pretty confident their writing will be great, as long as it isn't rushed at the end.

I also kinda wish there was some sort of injury system to manage, but that ain't gonna happen so w/e.

 

Fuck AI. AI was never good in any RPG. Want to make battles more challenging? Make more enemies and give them more dakka. You have to plan strategically when encountering overwhelming force even if said force is somewhat stupid.

 

There's a limit though. If the AI does shit like cast a one turn buff to aim AFTER it has attacked, that's a problem. Seriously how hard can it be to set those types of actions to happen before movement and before attack actions, surely each ability can have some sort of basic flag on it so the AI doesn't just do random stuff each turn.

Non great AI I can handle, i.e. melee guys running at me full steam with no careful, cover to cover, creeping. That's fine, like you said just bring in more enemies and it will probably be fine. Still, have to be careful because too much of that and you end up with popamole decline. It can work in limited amounts, at the very least it's better than HP bloat. On the other hand, why add more enemies when you can just make the enemies you do have attack more than once a turn, keeping your encounters relatively realistic in scope and adding to the challenge. Make them stay behind good cover instead of moving around every single turn for no good reason, script at least a little bit so that the combat makes sense and doesn't feel completely random and detached from the game.

I mean I get the idea of every encounter having a slightly different outcome every time, it adds to the replayability. Great. Except I would never, ever replay SR DF for the combat, I replay it for the skill checks and branching paths. The combat isn't much fun to begin with, the shitty AI makes it much much worse.

 

I'm glad I pledged for this one. Returns had some issues, Dragonfall was better, Director's Cut I havn't tried, but it seems it had some UI fixes, among onther things which is good. I'm guessing Hong Kong's going to continue the incline. And the stretchgoals were pretty realistic.

 

The spell fuckups are bad I give you that but programming AI is hard tedious and rarely works. Even the big guys who specialize in strategy games like The Creative Assembly can't handle that. Even Jagged Alliance 2 had enemies fucking-up terribly more often than not. Making encounters more interesting is cheaper and works more often. The game had one Orc with minigun that you could beat in the first mission if you did everything right. Why not put more of orcs with miniguns in the game? Why do Wizards with fireballs appear so late? Why can you get support from unstoppable troll-cyborg but never encounter one? Why do your enemies always use weak-ass grenades instead of something packing more punch? Strong, numerous enemies has always been the way of the RPGs. Nocturne has interesting encounters and enemies in that shit attack almost at random.

 

And at the end of the day, Kickstarter once again refuses to accept my card...

Good that I pledged through the dex

EDIT: Lolwut, after re-entering the card 3 times, it finally worked. This is some weird shit.

 

Shit happens. Have the same issue both with KS or Steam sometimes. Most likely they don't handle cards from some regions well.

 

KotC had good AI.

 

Ok, point for you.

 

Any update on the release date? Heard it was scheduled for summer 2015.

 

Considering that 40% of the voters in the poll thought they were gonna get more than 1.5 million (didn't even come close) and the fact they got less than a half of million dollars than the first campaign, I'd say there is some obvious decline in interest. I mean, 5k less backers AFTER they released 2 games on Steam and GoG and proved themselves? Maybe fatigue is too strong of a word but certainly there's a certain stagnation and a small fall downwards in interest.


I mean, it works for them because the engine is all good to go and everyone is eager for at least one more campaign. But what if they wanted to make a new game from scratch or something like that?




I dunno, I think this would've got several millions easily if it was released during the kickstarter craze.

 

Rpgcodex voters are not savvy business people. News at 11.

We're going to do a new "more of the same" campaign is significantly less exciting that a brand new game. If there is fatigue here, it's on the part of companies pitching things.

 

I also thought it would beat the first kickstarter, assuming the people that learned about those games after the first kickstarted would join the crowd.
I guess we aren't that many.

Also, doing a Kickstarter after chrismas might not be the wisest choice. And the lack of localization put some cold in some non-english countries communities.

 

Looks like they will atleast - hopefully - change some of the body types, Duncan Wu looks nothing like the cartoon orks in previous installments.

 

I think they could have reached easily to what they got the first time with a more ambitious kickstarter/strecht goals. They didn't want though, this is a well planned slam dunk.

 

Basically diminishing returns

 

I agree with serch, they could have got more if they had wanted. They just didn't make the extra effort. The first campaign had a lot of wild promises and this one was more about getting some additional funding and keeping their audience informed than trying to make as much as possible. Can't compare the two campaigns they're just apples and oranges. In fact, I haven't seen any other KS campaign like this one - even Larian over-promised and hyped things during their KS.

 

...Im replaying it right now and just remembered another advantage of siding with the Mafia: Lone Star stop bothering you permanently. Funny how I always thought Yakuza was clearly the best option but as Im playing a sneaky and charismatic Shaman in this playthrough, I think the Mafia will be a better choice.

 

Anyone who liked Dragonfall enough to back this should definitely play the DC. The new missions alone are reason enough.

 

A lot of it would also be done with stupid feelie bullshit that would cost them ninety cents for every dollar they made on it too.

 

Both those options are "who cares" to me. Lone Star bother you? Kill 'em. Can't afford things? Grind until you do. Best armor is best armor.