How much is or isn't is beside the point that, if you track GMDX's history, it's defined by adding silly things because the author wanted to, then deleting things all his beta testers complained about, then claiming he had an intentional direction the whole time. The dumb stuff is in there because he added it without caring, and the amount of problems symptomatic of that lack of care for the game's intentions is perhaps best topped off by the blatant violations of its philosophy of design.
Check out mission 08 some time without LAMS or a GEP gun in your pocket, and have the progression force you to go to smuggler's place before you can scuttle the freighter. You'll find that his 1 robot is replaced by 2, neither of which remember whether you've met smuggler, the lasers have been modified to be impossible to speed aug/stack over, and the electronics panel is now guarded by lasers in the doorway AND windows, lasers that are turned off only by hacking the panel.
There are multiple ways to solve this puzzle without combat, and while avoiding softlocks:
1. You can bypass the panel using the wireless range perk, which is extremely cheap.
2. You can press a button to close the door on the robots, locking them inside their starting area.
3. You can bypass the robots via stealth or thermoptic camo.
4. Use Spy Drone
5. Countless other options.
I don't see why you're so hung up on this particular case? You think it's bad because there's no naked solution requiring zero resource investment? The only way this could be a problem is if you're doing weird meme challenge runs, like "no items and no augs" runs, but they are irrelevant to the general design and balance of a gameplay mod, especially one focused on general play.
This change was not made with Deus Ex in mind. It was made with "me want spend resources it FPS, ooga booga" mindset, intentionally negating most means of solutions. Hope you got wireless range upgrades for the multitool, or else it's 100% time to either get shot by turrets or mauled by robots.
I honestly don't understand this take. You think resource investment negates solutions, while advocating for naked solutions that literally obsolete every other options? That's insane. Please read what you type before posting.
Lets say hypothetically this was "fixed" to allow using a box to jump over the lasers. Congrats, now the area has 1 solution. Even if there are other ways to solve it, they don't matter. There's already a perfect solution, so all the others are meaningless, doubly so if they require resource investment and are therefore objectively inferior options.
"Oh but you need to FIND the solution!" you say. Even if that was the case (lets be honest, jumping the lasers is beyond obvious to anyone with a brain, don't pretend like it's a legitimate puzzle the player has to discover), so what? All you've done is added an obstacle to a single playthrough. All the player needs to do is have a functional memory, and that puzzle is now permanently solved in all future runs.
There is no room for resource management, alternate solutions, or dare I say it, gameplay. There are no "builds" in this mindset, and all of the time and effort the developers put into making a skill system were all wasted.
If you sincerely think naked solutions are good design, you don't understand Deus Ex. One of the game's biggest accomplishments was offering a selection of skills, with the understanding that the player would not be able to obtain all of them, thus necessitating using alternate paths, missing out on various caches, and otherwise being limited in what they can do based on their skill choices. Naked solutions invalidate this design entirely. Why bother even putting points into lockpicking at all when I can just climb through or jump over everything? Resource management is at the core of Deus Ex's gameplay, and naked solutions are a detriment to that goal. There should be LESS, not MORE.
Sure, GMDX has a few areas where the solutions are heavy-handed, which could use some tweaking. But the fundamental design is solid, and is far better than both the original design and the design in Revision, which is probably why GMDX v9 was so popular. People understand the gameplay at the heart of Deus Ex, but apparently you don't.
Onto the actual meat of the matter: I can genuinely only think of 3 AI changes, two of which are dumb, and one of which is meaningless. Greasels now have a jump attack that, unlike a modern game would plan for, has no cooldown, and they will activate over and over and over again (depending on RNG, literally nonstop) when fighting you. In a hallway without speed aug on, even not running out of stamina, you WILL suffer damage from these guaranteed attacks, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Firstly, this is based on range, secondly I can't fathom how you could have played this game for years and yet don't seem to know what a hazmat suit is. Or maybe you don't bother putting any points into Environmental Training (on account of it being completely worthless in vanilla and having enough brainworms to prevent you from actually putting points into it, even in GMDX where it's actually useful to the point of being borderline overpowered). Their leap attack isn't even their most dangerous attack, their acid spit is far worse, because poison damage can kill you very quickly. With a hazmat suit, environmental training at trained, and the Environmental Resistance augmentation, you can negate 91% of their poison damage, allowing you to pretty much laugh in their face. Or take the Toxicologist perk and very easily heal from their poison, allowing you to focus on using Ballistic Armor against their leaping attacks, which again negates a significant amount of their potency. GMDX provides options and depth here, with multiple ways to handle greasles, all stemming from it's systemic design from items, augmentations, and perks. Vanilla offers.....barely anything. Your "solution" to this added depth is to remove/cut down on their leap attacks because you personally find them annoying or difficult to deal with?
But the issue here is more fundamental: Virtually every enemy in the game will damage you in ways that are difficult if not impossible to escape, unless you expend some resource to fight them. Your criticism is stupid. Imagine if I was complaining that "When I anger an MJ12 commando, based on random chance, they will rocket me in the face and I will die! The damage is UNAVOIDABLE!!!! Therefore the game is bad!". See how stupid that sounds?
Greasel dive attacks are easier to avoid than MJ12 command rockets. This honestly seems like a skill issue. But even if they were actually unavoidable, so what? Most of the attacks in the game are unavoidable. The gameplay of Deus Ex revolves around either sneaking past enemies, or taking them on and very likely taking damage. You seem to decry GMDX as being "like a small brained FPS", but you seem to want to make attacks dodgeable similar to a small brained FPS?
The greasel jump attacks could probably be toned down a bit. But again, minor tweaks. You're acting like this is some major issue with the mod when it's very much not. Overall, enemies (including greasels) are MUCH more fun to fight due to their added depth from new attacks and mechanics, and the core systems being tweaked to provide significant options for dealing with them in different ways. This isn't like Vanilla where you can get Pistols to Advanced and basically wipe the floor with the entire game.
Model improvements: Decent, but ultimately meaningless. It's got 2 custom models from a temp hired modeler, Clyzm (shotgun), 1 more from him using kitbashed CS grenade anims (the flare), and the rest are just ported from HDTP... Which is supposed to be configurable with an on/off switch globally, and in Revision, can be customized per each object (save for decos, which are still an all or none choice), but screw it, let's make the game incapable of launching without HDTP models by improperly referencing the assets. What could go wrong?Biggest problem is: HDTP never touched NPCs to any meaningful level, and when it did, it resulted in a number of (extra) questionable style choices and constant animation errors. It's great that now this crate has slight bevels in it and the desert eagle inspired, stamp sheet metal pistol is now just a polymer frame glock (more polys, I guess?), but every single NPC you will ever talk to has the same 256x256 pixel textures strewn across them and are under 1000 polygons. Mmm-mmm.. Sure glad those oven mitt hands weren't fixed.
... to go along with the edgier NV 1.X textures forcibly bundled (and unlike Revision, not toggleable in the options) that even the creator admits was a bad design direction, as NV 2.0a explicitly steered itself back towards not making everything shades of grey with all the color heavily reduced.
Why are you complaining about the HDTP character models? GMDX vRSD (and I believe v9) haven't had those models for years. Same with New Vision, which really isn't required at all to play the mod. I have done multiple successful GMDX runs without new vision and not noticed a single problem.
I'm sure NV2.0a works fine with GMDX.
vRSD has a model selector for first person weapon models, and it's fine.
Yes, the HDTP dependency is bad, and it's being worked on. Again, you're acting like this is some major gamebreaking problem. It's not.
Nobody from modern era gaming noticed those, I'm sure... And that's the point. Weapons and decos were arguably the least important thing to fix (being the last jarring in regard to fidelity), and they're all that's changed.
They are also the only models actually included. With vRSD even the weapon models are optional, so you only get the decos. The decos are the one part of HDTP that actually looks decent. Should they be optional? Of course. But it's hardly a big deal in it's current state. Again, stop pretending it's a bigger issue than it actually is.
Sound improvements: Horse crap claim. DXOGG is actually a new sound device used to play music in deus ex, allowing for actually playing higher quality music, despite standard format restrictions. It does not extent to non-music. GMDX does not use a new sound device or format for sounds. The sounds have the EXACT same restrictions on quality Deus Ex's sounds have, and are the same constraint of 44.1KHZ, 16 bit, PCM, mono channel WAV type of file used.The difference is, being a simulacrum, GMDX employs edgier sound design.
I find it extremely ironic that you criticise GMDX for not using DXOGG, yet we both know perfectly well that if GMDX did use DXOGG you would be criticising it for "stealing code" and "using code without permission". You can't have it both ways. As far as I am aware DXOGG is not available on github or any other code hosting space neither, meaning modders have to trust you (a bad move) and the other lowlifes at offtopicproductions with a random DLL file. No thanks.
Not to mention that this requires modifying your system folder, which is a pretty big ask, especially for people who have had a stable Deus Ex install in place for decades at this point.
Sure, TNM and other mods includuing DXOGG have technically better sound support. This is completely wasted on TNM since the mod is nothing but a series of badly-made memes and in-jokes loosely cobbled together into a game, and in the case of Revision I don't see anyone playing it for the sound support.
Yes, GMDX has some crusty sounds in it. Again, this is being worked on. But talking up DXOGG like it's some kind of solution is disingenuous at best.
As for "edgier" sound design. What exactly are you referring to, specifically. The vast majority of extra sounds added in GMDX are basic foley and interaction sounds. Mantling/breathing sounds, a few weapon reloads, etc. There's nothing "edgy" in there at all. Probably the only questionable sound is the rubber shells sound and it's already been changed in the latest fork version.
The edgier sounds would be a matter of preference, regardless, except that the sounds are explicitly stolen from a variety of sources. the 2027 mod (Earlier versions of GMDX literally bundled 2027 music and overrode the soundtrack on certain levels. Modern GMDX still bundles model and texture assets from it as well). Wolfenstein enemy territory. Half life. SWAT 4.
Okay, and?
Notice how the pain noises and squeaks that come out of people when hit aren't even the same voice actors that voice the same NPC's actual dialogue. That is factually wrong to do.
There is no sound design direction, and in fact, if you have an ear for it, it's a frankenstein's monster, and paying mind to the sounds will 100% pull you out immersion every single gunshot or pain grunt you hear from an enemy. My playthrough of GMDX made me completely incapable of being immersed because of this royal shitshow of design. Calling it "improvement" is certifiably incorrect, as the actual consistency and style with which sounds were used is now a complete, scattered mess. Most people don't know sound design, though, so I guess it works out for many people purely by the nature of being ignorant. Don't believe me? Loadmap to the 747 and shoot anna a couple times and listen to her pain sounds. Then load up UNATCO HQ and shoot her again. Notice the complete disagreement in what sounds are even used, let alone their style.
"Mod is bad because bad sound design" is an oddly specific take, especially for a Deus Ex mod. Especially given the extremely questionable additions made in Revision, which had a soundtrack so awful it was nearly universally hated.
This is not deus ex. This is what people expect when they hear "cyberpunk", and there's even Q&A's with the dev team about how Deus Ex wasn't intended to even be cyberpunk, but ended up being it at day's end due to how categories are decided. It's not from the mind of William Gibson. It's from Eidos.
The vast majority of your criticism has amounted to graphics, sound and technical issues, the sound engine used, and other minor annoyances. If you think that a game is "Not deus ex" because it bundles HDTP, you don't understand Deus Ex. Deus Ex is a game people play DESPITE it's uglyness. Because the gameplay is what matters. Something you clearly don't understand, judging by your support of giving everything a naked solution.
Bonus round: The author is not a programmer, and spent literal months of extra time applying things to every instance of an actor in the map editor, instead of changing 1 or 2 variables on the backend and saving himself time, effort, and all those many, many times where variables don't line up. Here's another one, and one I'm 100% positive is in vRSD, as I saw a stream of it coming up: Start doing large amounts of damage to riot cops in front of the Ton hotel in M08. Not enough to kill. One of them has "MaleLaugh" his large pain noise, because it was right next to "MalePainLarge" in UED's sound browser. I shit you not. There's a guy that laughs from taking a 10mm to the chest. I know these come out as cherry picked examples, but I'd be hear for ages describing every single thing wrong. It's a brutal death by 10,000 cuts and 20 punches to the face. I rated it poorly because I have eye for these things and it was an endless horror show of every other little thing being done wrong, with some big, objectively counterintuitive changes topping it off.
Okay so GMDX has a few rough edges. Yes, some of the sound and graphics work is scuffed. Much of it is also being worked on. What's your point? It still remains the gold standard for gameplay in any DX mod, and that's what matters. You would rather play a vastly inferior version of Deus Ex that looks and sounds a little better?
There's a reason why nobody plays V10. Because when you throw the baby out with the bathwater and remove most if not all of the good gameplay along with the technical issues you're left with nothing. Just a bland modification with gameplay almost as broken as the vanilla experience.
GMDX v9 would have benefited greatly from a community port that fixed all of these issues you believe are so important, without making balance and gameplay changes and removing gameplay elements from previous versions, because the authors of the community edition clearly suck at making gameplay additions. As a result we instead got what we got, and it sucks.
I find it insane how you're complaining endlessly about technical issues, but when the community was actually given the opportunity to fix most of them, opted to instead completely fuck the entire mod to the point of dooming it to perpetual obscurity.
Quality of life is cool on paper, but some of it is improperly produced. Protip: Eat a candy bar by left clicking on it in-world with an empty hand. It'll heal you for 3 points vs 2, because apparently calling the actual activation function was too hard. Moreover, everyone and their grandmother has QOL options available for modern playing of deus ex. Factor in the intentionally anti-newbie difficulty changes, naked solution deletions, and other design choices, and QOL is best gotten elsewhere if you're a new player.
So firstly, the candybar issue has been fixed for literally years now, and it's clear you're just looking for things to complain about given how minor this is. Secondly, congrats on cherry picking one negative example in an otherwise extremely beloved, useful and extremely high-quality left-frobbing system (which has only gotten better and better with more forks, read the changelog above for examples). Thirdly, confusing gameplay decisions for QoL is baffling to me, and Fourthly, it doesn't matter how much QoL mods like Revision etc provide if the gameplay sucks. People aren't playing DX for the quality of life additions. But at least the one mod with good gameplay (ie GMDX) actually has wortwhile QoL as well: Secondary-assignable items, left-frobbing, inventory rotation, IW toolbelt, and much more. This criticism isn't just bad, it's demonstrably untrue. GMDX is very, very good at providing QoL and still has a significant number of features that either aren't available elsewhere, or are worse elsewhere.
Major mods? There's a handful of options with various tradeoffs. For just getting QOL and assloads of bugfixes, Deus Ex: Transcended does a really good job sticking to the base game while getting lots of the must-have features.
You're implying good gameplay is not a must-have feature. There's literally no point playing Vanilla DX anymore, no matter how many bugfixes and QoL additions are stacked on top of it. The very core of the game is utterly broken in significant ways, and without a major gameplay overhaul like GMDX, it will remain completely broken, making it not worth playing. Transcended is literally lipstick on a pig.
Funny enough, the new solution for character appearances is starting to become one of the 3 variants of Helios overhaul, and those can be dropped into any mod, and as they are not canonically supported by any, are just as hard to put in any mod (or even vanilla) vs another, making it net no points to anyone in particular... Berzerker has done a good job encouraging harmony in how his mod is distributing with respect to other ways to play the game, just in general, in fact.
Okay, I don't see how this is relevant? Use it if you want, or don't. How does this relate to GMDX exactly?
Revision is, much like GMDX, a remix mod with QOL, graphics, etc sprinkled in, but Revision is more a map geometry remix while GMDX is more of a functional remix, changing how you move through levels by changing actor positions and actor stat blocks rather than geometry shape.
Yes, and it's so woefully done they had to include a "vanilla maps" option in the launcher so people would actually play their sorry excuse for a remix mod. Again, lipstick on a pig.
It's widely regarded in the DX community that the Revision map changes are atrocious. If you're going to praise that mod, stick to other aspects.
I would caution going into both Revision and GMDX with a big grain of salt, and would recommend the base experience (possibly DXT, given its extreme focus on not deviating from the game's original direction) for a first playthrough, then get around to trying prettymuch every mod at least once, and seeing what does or doesn't float your fancy based on tastes. To use a crude metaphor,don't have your first time be in a gangbang or a BDSM club, let it happen organically in a bedroom with someone you care about, and whatever you get into down the road is all up to you.
If you're playing vanilla (or some variant mod of vanilla) in your first PT, I don't expect you to ever want to do a second. The game is that busted.
Also that analogy is terrible.
Enemies do NOT use thermoptic camo. He used the exact same variables used on Anna, Paul, and Simons for cloaking and just applied them on MJ12 troops.
You can tell because unlike the short lived thermo camo, their cloak is bottomless in supply.
You say this like it's a bad thing?
Giving MJ12 elites actual thermoptic camo is a terrible idea. It would very likely run out long before they can make any tangible use of it, and tracking it doesn't really add anything to gameplay.
MJ12 Elites were made harder because from the midpoint onwards the game is an absolute cakewalk. Giving them invisibility is a good idea to make them unique and to improve their gameplay. Making it actual real thermoptic camo vs just giving them cloaking really doesn't affect and is very likely to make the gameplay significantly worse, at least without a way for the AI to use the thermoptic camo intelligently, which would be virtually impossible without a significant amount of work.
I admit I fucking laughed rereading " Improved Gunther, Anna & Simons bossfights, and plenty more fine tuning. " Which is code talk for: "I deleted the ability for stealth players to handle these encounters", as Anna has troops with her that make a killswitch not the whole encounter after you strive to get it. Gunther is literally locked in a room with you by a gate that can't be lockpicked or blocked with invincible decorations, and whose switch sits directly behind him so there's no cheeky way to get access without going through him, and now he has more HP and his flamethrower has double range. Very epic. Walton simons is no longer off to one side for a cinematic approach so you can run if you hurry and take some plasma splash damage in the process. He is now crammed point blank against the door out to see him, so it's extremely impractical to try and slip past him, if even consistently possible given his beefed up stats and way higher damage plasma rifle.
The straight up downgrades are the part that really gets me about handling these things.
Again, skill issue. Try actually playing a game for once.
An example might be how gunshot noise is scaled way up in terms of volume and radius, so AI can hear from farther away, but is done in maps that are not scaled for this level of gunshot volume... The cons of refusing to change core geometry.
Umm....no?
Weapon sound radius is quite well balanced in GMDX. You can use loud weapons with a reasonable degree of consistency without alerting everyone on the map, but they still aren't practical for use in a stealth context (unlike vanilla), which is about perfect.
The sawed off shotgun, consequently, is the best weapon for one shotting everything around a corner, and simultaneously the best way to bait people to coming around that corner from 50 miles away. Just take one shot and start picking people off one at a time.
Okay, now I know you're full of shit. The sawed-off shotgun is, hands down, the worst weapon in the entirety of GMDX. It's so bad that it's been consistently buffed in forks and STILL fails to reliably kill even low-level enemies at Advanced with multiple damage and accuracy mods.
This take is literally ludicrous. I'm convinced we aren't playing the same mod. Hell we're not even from the same universe. This is frankly insane.
As BS as strafing making insta-reactions is, it's a broken mechanic that makes the AI get 1 or 2 shots in, regardless of whether you have supreme tactical advantage by doing cheesy shit like this. Two wrongs make 1 and 1/2 wrongs, I guess.
Again, skill issue. I can consistently play through the game on Hardcore without getting shot repeatedly like this. Because I'm not a swamp creature and can actually play videogames.
That being said, I'm trying to avoid getting too deep into this one, but I admit you've brought up plenty I've forgotten, so I'll toss the rest to you and just re-iterate my select gripes and how it broke the parts of the experience for me that I actually value the most.
You're avoiding going deep because your criticism is largely surface-level. You don't like the sounds, the graphics, and feel the mod author wasn't a very skilled editor. Wow, that's certainly hard-hitting criticism that goes to the heart of the mod....
While some of your sound, graphics and overall technical quality arguments are sound, every single gameplay criticism you made is either a very minor issue that can be solved with some tweaking, a skill issue on your part, or a positive design change made in GMDX that you simply don't like and somehow think "isn't DX" despite all of them playing to the game's strengths or enhancing it's weaknesses.
Funny enough, I was previously accused of giving a bad review to GMDX because I the creator is an idiot.
Ironic...
coming this april, I'll have my own mod coming in the ACTUAL same category of Vanilla Overhaul. So, as a show of integrity, I'll be stopping my GMDX rants (and will avoid making comparisons with any works in the genre or violently cramming my work down people's throats) indefinitely come tomorrow
I have no doubt you'll start up again when nobody plays your mod. People like you have been following GMDX around for years, constantly shitting on it everywhere it's mentioned. I see no reason to believe any of you people are going to stop, it's in your DNA to be petty and confrontational.
