Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Fargus]

The catch is that "looks good" and "actually good" are different things.

But in less than a month we will find out.

 

[covr]

Last night I had a dream of this actually being damn good. No joke.

Then I woke up and remembered the -50% damage when burst firing BS.

Really -50% damage?

I am at work and cannot watch - what's the idea behind that? So... by burst you mean automatic fire like 10 bullets shot by 1 action. So possibly this could do 10 times more damage vs single shot. And they have decided that damage should be cut by half? How does it work in other tactical games? I assume that burst should be an action more expensive in AP's + less accurate + possibly damaging your weapon.

 

[Strange Fellow]

The reason? Goodness only knows. Some sort of modern brain rot that compels developers to design games where every fight is a perfectly balanced, just-about-challenging-enough pre-packaged happy meal that they can subject their players to again and again and again until they can no longer recognise the taste of real gameplay.

 

[ArchAngel]

Last night I had a dream of this actually being damn good. No joke.

Then I woke up and remembered the -50% damage when burst firing BS.

Really -50% damage?

I am at work and cannot watch - what's the idea behind that? So... by burst you mean automatic fire like 10 bullets shot by 1 action. So possibly this could do 10 times more damage vs single shot. And they have decided that damage should be cut by half? How does it work in other tactical games? I assume that burst should be an action more expensive in AP's + less accurate + possibly damaging your weapon.

They said they did that because they could not figure out how to balance people running next to enemy and burst firing enemies to death. Now it is more "balanced" where people get to do more

 

[Alienman]

It's very weird, and it's my main worry about the game. If they designed burst fire that way, what else might be screwy? Two other things worry me a bit. But they are of the lesser kind. It looks like you can't slow down, aka walk in towns. Combat running all way like the taxman is after you. Highly immersion-breaking for my gaming autism. And that explosions don't seem to knock people down. Find that pretty lame.

 

[udm]

How does it work in other tactical games? I assume that burst should be an action more expensive in AP's + less accurate + possibly damaging your weapon.

That's exactly how it worked in JA2. Furthermore, in 1.13, not only does that happen, but because you're frequently severely outnumbered, you tend to run out of ammo faster, and therefore have to weigh the risk of running out to scavenge for ammo from bodies while the goons have you pinned down.

As far as burst/auto fire are concerned, it's not a difficult thing to achieve balance. Lower encumbrance limits, increase enemy count, increase recoil. Tactics games have been doing this since the 90s, what's the problem?

 

[Togukawa]

And if you run out of cover to go stand next to one enemy to hose them down, why are you not getting lit up on the next enemy turn?

Hopefully modders can fix what professional game developers apparently can't anymore, in $currentyear...

 

[udm]

Yeah in this case it might actually be fixable by modders if the game can be modded. As long as the foundation of a Jagged Alliance game are there (and they seem to be for the most part), the writing isn't garbage (thank god for Ian Currie) and it only comes down to the little details like numbers, I think modders can push this to as close a worthy successor to JA2 as possible.

 

[Modron]

Have we seen many pictures of interiors or demolition? Closest thing I've noticed to either is an rpg blowing a hole in a wall.

 

[cpmartins]

Last night I had a dream of this actually being damn good. No joke.

Then I woke up and remembered the -50% damage when burst firing BS.

Really -50% damage?

I am at work and cannot watch - what's the idea behind that? So... by burst you mean automatic fire like 10 bullets shot by 1 action. So possibly this could do 10 times more damage vs single shot. And they have decided that damage should be cut by half? How does it work in other tactical games? I assume that burst should be an action more expensive in AP's + less accurate + possibly damaging your weapon.

It works by being inaccurate, wasteful and by giving the enemy the exact same availability to the ability. It does not need balancing, it is already balanced by default.

 

[Ghulgothas]

Have we seen many pictures of interiors or demolition? Closest thing I've noticed to either is an rpg blowing a hole in a wall.

I recall seeing some standout examples from the streamer footage, link link. On the second one you can see part of the second floor was blown out by the grenade in later minutes; dunno how universal the destruction is but it seems pretty thorough.

Yeah in this case it might actually be fixable by modders if the game can be modded. As long as the foundation of a Jagged Alliance game are there (and they seem to be for the most part), the writing isn't garbage (thank god for Ian Currie) and it only comes down to the little details like numbers, I think modders can push this to as close a worthy successor to JA2 as possible.

They themselves haven't made any official modding statements, but the news blitz awhile back yakked about how they intend to stagger their release of mod support tools with basic number-editing dropping first and advanced stuff like custom campaign tools coming later. YMMV, but big if true.

 

[Modron]

Thanks you would think they would have showed off the destruction as a selling point and I was beginning to worry that most buildings were just things you climb over/use the corners for cover and not structures you could enter outside of a handful of them from the all the published screenshots and previews.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Have we seen many pictures of interiors or demolition? Closest thing I've noticed to either is an rpg blowing a hole in a wall.

Not to derail the thread, but vaguely related to the topic of destructible environment I was still thinking just yesterday: "WHY THE HELL no one ever took and updated the Silent Storm engine?"
I mean, Jesus Christ, even now that it's dated as hell it can bitchslap across the room pretty much any other competitor in the genre.

Too bad it was tied to what's essentially a mediocre game that falls apart after the first bunch of missions.

 

[catchaser]

Fucking fantasy bullshit, hand grenades can't destroy concrete structures.

 

[agris]

It's very weird, and it's my main worry about the game. If they designed burst fire that way, what else might be screwy? Two other things worry me a bit. But they are of the lesser kind. It looks like you can't slow down, aka walk in towns. Combat running all way like the taxman is after you. Highly immersion-breaking for my gaming autism. And that explosions don't seem to knock people down. Find that pretty lame.

Exactly. It's a bandaid fix to a symptom of a greater problem.

They also said in another stream that they originally modeled recoil of each bullet in auto-fire, such that each successive bullet is less accurate due to recoil. They went on to say they removed it because it created a "cartoon-like" scenario where enemies would, essentially, have their outline painted by misses.

So the ballistic simulation was changed to not capture recoil for auto-fire, making auto-fire more accurate. This lead to the new problem of degenerate tactics wherein their play testers would just run up to an enemy and burst fire them to death. So, they implemented the -50% damage.

Reminds me of the children's nursery rhyme: "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..."

Reading between the lines, I think the devs were constrained on time to iterate on systems that the publisher/funder would find superfluous, yet JA2 fans feel are an absolute minimum requirement for any game to be called JA3. Systems like ballistic simulation in any form. They ran out of rope to iterate, and so you get bandaids like -50% burst damage.

 

[raeven]

Ballistic simulation is actually present in JA3, a relative rarity among CRPGs and tactical games generally.

 

[ropetight]

As I understood from one of the previous posts, developers reduced damage reduction to discourage rush'n'spray playstyle.
Which is lazy way to balance things, as is also mentioned above.

If someone manages to rush you with SMG in their hands, you deserve massive damage from close up.
Getting close should be penalized, as it usually is - if you are not flanking or sneaking, when someone catches you outside the cover it will be deadly.
Long bursts also should take a lot of APs, making hiding in cover after such action almost impossible.
This higly discourages such tactics if more enemies are able to shoot you.
That was the case in JA2 and it functioned great, if I remember correctly.

I guess they tinkered with combat system a lot to "design" some preferred way to play the game.
Of course, all their planning and tinkering will fall into the water when people start playing JA3 in their own way.

Another reason damage reduction is introduced could be to make "AI" use rush'n'spray less; if AI is deciding at that level at all.
I hope it does - good combat AI is a make-or-break ingredient for this type of games.

 

[zapotec]

HMm i could be wrong but "rushing and spraying" was risky in JA2 because of interrupts? There are interrupts in this title?

 

[Modron]

HMm i could be wrong but "rushing and spraying" was risky in JA2 because of interrupts? There are interrupts in this title?

They have an overwatch instead, enemies can probably use it I am guessing.

 

[Harthwain]

HMm i could be wrong but "rushing and spraying" was risky in JA2 because of interrupts? There are interrupts in this title?

They have an overwatch instead, enemies can probably use it I am guessing.

Overwatch is a poor substitute for interrupts.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

isn't making it -50% damage the same as just making it less accurate? How is it any different?

 

[Togukawa]

The way they programmed it, point blank everything is hitting regardless of accuracy.

 

[oasis789]

It works by being inaccurate, wasteful and by giving the enemy the exact same availability to the ability. It does not need balancing, it is already balanced by default.

presumably, the AI doesn't need to care about wasting ammo just like it doesn't need to care about wounds. its the player that has to keep his mercs alive mission after mission.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

The way they programmed it, point blank everything is hitting regardless of accuracy.

okay, but then lowering the damage is essentially the same as it would be to lower the accuracy, or am I missing something?

 

[Harthwain]

okay, but then lowering the damage is essentially the same as it would be to lower the accuracy, or am I missing something?

Damage output. With lower accuracy you can still hit, however unlikely it may be. With lower damage you will have lower damage no matter what.

Let's say you fire 10 bullets in a burst. With 100% damage, and assuming all bullets hit, you will deal between 100 damage (10 damage per bullet, for clarity purposes) and 0 damage, depending on how lucky you are. With 50% damage you will deal 50 damage at most.