So as promised, here some impressions and questions. Bear in mind, I've only played through Deus Ex twice - once in vanilla, and once with GMDX. My vanilla playthrough was a sneaky combat character (sniper rifle/baton/cloak to avoid many of the late-game enemies) so I can't really talk much about the differences for a pure combat character in vanilla vs. GMDX other than the obvious new additions (Microfibral Muscle throwing etc.).
The most obvious great change has to be Enviromental Training, or rather, the suits governed by the skill. The way they worked in vanilla was incredibly clumsy and the way they work now is logical and makes putting points in the skill more rewarding.
The new skill requirements for hacking is great. Because I didn't master the Computer skill, I was unable to hack all computers, which makes perfect sense. In vanilla you could hack anything IIRC, wasn't the only reason to go master to be able to read long e-mails?
I dumped Lockpicking and Electronics and it worked out, I could get into almost every container using other tricks although I obviously couldn't do it stealthily. I destroyed locks with the sniper rifle and although I had dumped the skill, I always saved enough multitools to crack open the containers with nano-augmentation canisters by hacking security cameras through computers instead of multitools, murdering goons before they could touch alarm panels and evading laser triggers like Catwoman (which became trivial once I got the Thermo-optic Cloak aug). I couldn't access the pool in Everett's lab and not the Echelon AI either because I lacked the 18 or so multitools needed to hack the control panel, which was good since I had dumped the skill.
I love mantling, vanilla JC feels handicapped in comparison. The non-augmented jump height is really fucking low in Deus Ex. One side-effect is that you can accidently get outside the map borders easier, for example on Liberty Island. Only a problem for a first-time player starting with GMDX and not educated in the school of quicksaving, though.
I absolutely love the idea of the Stealth skill, although I can't talk much about it yet since I never put any points in it on my combat character. But the idea of spending skill points to increase crouch speed, make landing silent and increase the detection time for security cameras - the stealth player's bane! - looks great.
I can talk about the increased enemy vision and hearing though. I played on Realistic and it was great to meet enemies that aren't completely blind and deaf. And the change to hitboxes that make headshots with the baton deal the most damage is such a logical change. Instead of hitting them in the lower back, you sneak towards them, stand up and hold the walk key, whack them across the skull before crouching down and hoping no one saw anything. And the double-click [use key] to carry bodies that are still holding items, man, that's another great addition. It actually took me half the game until I realized the option was there. It really speeds up the process of hiding knocked out enemies, which alert enemies now, another logical change.
Ammo distribution worked well. I never had enough to spray around recklessly, but as long as I aimed for the head and varied my weaponry I was fine. Maybe it's a little too sparse in the early levels where you can barely get a full magazine for any of your 2-3 weapons and is forced to avoid enemies/use melee weapons, but perhaps it's like that in vanilla too.
The weapon mod menu is another logical addition. Right off the bat you know what kind of upgrades you will be able to fit into your weapon. And it's visually clear what kind of and how many you've put into a weapon.
I love the perks, there are some rewarding ones there. Like the master-level perk for Heavy Weapons. It's actually ridiculous how small they become in the inventory, but since ammo for them were really sparse (except for maybe the Plasma Rifle in the endgame) it didn't feel overpowered.
However, some perks are less valuable.
For example, the master-level perk for Environmental Training increases the max number of medkits and biocells in your inventory from 20 to 25. Thing is, I never even had that many of either at any one time. If it had been from 10 to 15 I would have seen the appeal (the numbers are just an example without taking balance with the rest of the game into account).
The master-level perk for Environmental Training adds x-ray vision to Tech Goggles, but in my experience the goggles drain so quickly even on high skill levels, that I don't see it worth the bother especially when the Vision aug is so much more reliable. (I see you're adding thermo-optic camo effects to the perk in the latest patch though, which is good.)
Then there's the master-level perk for stealth that makes stamina regenerate while crouched which is just laughable (changed in your patch notes as well), more on stamina down below.
The raid on Paul's hotel room never happened until I initiated combat/alerted the enemies. If you've entered from the hallway the door is stuck open and the strike team have to close the door before blowing it up and rushing in. I think I read you addressing this on another forum when I was googling up info on your changes to Paul in that sequence.
Some questions, big and small:
The master level for Demolitions says that it makes gas grenades knock out organic targets, and there is also a master-level perk that does this. I assume that only the perk adds the knock-out function, and the master level only adds more grenade damage and longer disarming time?
I didn't fully understand the Synthetic Heart so I picked Recirculator for its obvious bonus, thinking the Synthetic Heart could be detrimental to my build. From what I understand the aug improves other augs, including active ones at the cost of increased power drain, but not above aug level 4. So when you have an active aug at level 4, say Targeting, does the Synthetic Heart add increased power drain but no increased effect?
I don't see the worth of the Athletics skill. Or rather, the stamina system. On my last character, the only time I even noticed the stamina bar was at the site of the Walton Simons boss fight in the Ocean Lab. I was running and jumping backwards over the rail track with the Speed Aug, shooting transgenics with the Plasma Rifle like I was playing an arena shooter. I ran out of stamina and a karkian took a bite out of JC's leg before I was able to put him down. It took an extraordinary amount of exaggerated jumping in order to bring the stamina bar down, and that was on Untrained. You have so much stamina that it's actually a challenge to bring it down to zero. On the other hand, if you were to lower the stamina pool the experience would be handicapped, with JC running out of breath every other corridor like it's Far Cry 2. The idea to make Swimming less useless is a good one, but I think the stamina system is rather pointless. Or maybe it's just trivial on my playstyle and a concern on others'. Can you talk a little about the stamina system? Is there some obvious use of it that I've missed?
As for the microfibral muscle, It's fun being able to throw corpses around like that but a bit cartoonish. Hardcore mode outright disables high-powered corpse throwing and there's also the "realistic corpses" option you unlock, so players can choose whether they prefer the gory fun or realistic consistency, which do conflict very strongly in this instance.
It is indeed cartoonish and disabling it in hardcore mode makes sense. However it is absurdly fun to throw corpses at walls and cover them with blood and over-the-top gore effects, that was my first course of action after I'd cleared an area of enemies. And when I realized that I could knock out an MIB and then use his body as an improvised throwable explosive on his MJ12 pals, that was amazing.
Anyway, will probably do a "quick" video showing some of the new stuff soon.
Great, looking forward to it.
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