Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

[RoSoDude]

Survival mode options are a joke in vanilla, except for the trauma system which is pretty well implemented. Weapon degradation can be completely circumvented by putting a single Neuromod into Repair I, which allows you to restore 25% condition per spare part. You'll find at least two dozen in the Talos 1 Lobby alone, and you can fire 200 shotgun shells or 500 pistol rounds from full condition before you get a jam (the degradation rate by itself is fine, though). Limited oxygen sounds great on paper, but Arkane decided to have it only activate if your suit is below 66% condition which... should literally never be the case as there are Suit Repair Kits stuffed in every cabinet.

*ahem*

Spoiler

-Decreased weapon repair rate per spare part from 25/35/50% to 5/10/20% with Repair I/II/III
-Weapon durabilities (all had 100% chance to jam at 1% durability, except the Huntress which could not degrade or jam):

-Shotgun durability loss of 0.5% per shot, 60% chance to jam below 5% durability
-Pistol durability loss of 0.2% per shot, 40% chance to jam below 5% durability
-GLOO durability loss of 0.2% per shot, 20% chance to jam below 5% durability
-Stun Gun durability loss of 0.5% per shot, 75% chance to jam below 5% durability
-Q-beam durability loss of 0.0125% per shot, 5% chance to jam below 5% durability
-Huntress durability loss of 0.4% per shot, 40% chance to jam below 5% durability (couldn't break before)
-Golden Pistol durability loss of 0.1% per shot, 40% chance to jam below 5% durability
-Golden Shotgun durability loss of 0.25% per shot, 60% chance to jam below 5% durability​

-Added a baseline oxygen decay at 100% suit condition. Now you have:

-11:04 between 66-100% (between 33-66% vanilla)
-8:18 between 33-66%
-5:32 between 0-33% (vanilla)
-2:46 at 0% (vanilla)​

-Loot tables rebalanced with the following priorities:

-Drastically reduce the number of Suit Repair Kits (76 slots with high probabilities -> 27 slots with low probabilities)
-Significantly reduce the number of Psi Hypos
-Moderately reduce the number of Spare Parts and Medkits, GLOO ammo (there's already a ton in the world), and amount of free food
-Slightly decrease the number of EMP grenades
-Slightly increase the number of trauma-clearing items (competing with medkits and psi hypos in medical containers)
-Slightly preference synthetic over mineral in junk distribution
-In vanilla, all container types have one slot of guaranteed loot. This is now limited to at most one guaranteed slot of only junk except for high-valued containers
-Destroyed Engineering Operators now have a 75% chance to carry Q-beam cells OR Stun Gun ammo, latter reduced elsewhere to compensate​

 

[DalekFlay]

27 medkits now. Don't think I've used one since the first area. To be fair, I am running back to medbots here and there.

 

[kangaxx]

Yes, the game is pretty easy and you become massively over-levelled if you use neuromods. The fun for me was in poking around the spaceship and being rewarded for doing so. I also thought they got the atmosphere spot on for the most part.

Had they balanced the difficulty properly and increased the enemy variety I think it would have been a classic. I'm biased toward the genre but it's one of my favourite games from the past few years.

 

[JDR13]

The difficulty modes in Prey were very lazily implemented. There is zero difference between them other than the amount of damage you do and receive. It's a very disappointing aspect of an otherwise great game.

 

[DalekFlay]

"Boss fight" in the GUTS tubes made me use a couple medkits. Had some kind of green shield that took a bunch of shotgun blasts to remove, while those annoying explodey guys fucked me in the ass. Still not hard perse, but I had to use medkits. Not a big fan of that whole section honestly.

 

[Zombra]

Turn off the crosshair.

 

[Zombra]

Just saying, y'all complaining about the game being too easy, yet you keep the training wheels on

 

[kangaxx]

To be honest I'm not even complaining that much about the difficulty. It's one of the few games where roflstomping everything was a blessing by the very endgame. And the main fun for me was exploring the nooks and crannies of Talos I.

I can see why people would level that criticism at it though.

 

[HansDampf]

Just saying, y'all complaining about the game being too easy, yet you keep the training wheels on

Just install RoSoDude's mod.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

We've had this discussion before and I really don't think increasing difficulty is a sound advice for making the game more enjoyable. As mentioned above, the difficulty levels are implemented in a very low effort manner, the game is easy anyway and in all likelihood it will just make the less than stellar combat more annoying. That said, I didn't have the chance to try the survival mode so don't know how legit that is, but with the ridiculous abundance of resources my guess would be it might be like New Vegas and its drink and eat "survival" mechanics, where there's no survival at all, just more clicking on collected garbage.

 

[Egosphere]

27 medkits now. Don't think I've used one since the first area. To be fair, I am running back to medbots here and there.

what difficulty are you on?

 

[DalekFlay]

We've had this discussion before and I really don't think increasing difficulty is a sound advice for making the game more enjoyable. As mentioned above, the difficulty levels are implemented in a very low effort manner, the game is easy anyway and in all likelihood it will just make the less than stellar combat more annoying. That said, I didn't have the chance to try the survival mode so don't know how legit that is, but with the ridiculous abundance of resources my guess would be it might be like New Vegas and its drink and eat "survival" mechanics, where there's no survival at all, just more clicking on collected garbage.

Yeah, in my experience it's rare for the highest difficulty to be a fun mode. Often it's just HP bloat or trial and error cover peeking, neither of which are fun. In Dishonored 2 though the harder modes let enemies see you much faster than any setting in the first game did though, which was nice.

what difficulty are you on?

One up from normal, whatever that's called. When there are 4 difficulties I usually pick the third.

 

[Zombra]

Shrug. Crosshair off doesn't necessarily make combat super hard, but it does make it more involved. I saw everyone complaining about how the fighting is a lame chore you can get through with your eyes closed - maybe it would be more fun if you couldn't land a headshot with every single pull of the trigger.

But what do I know, I'm just the only person who actually has had the guts to try it

 

[Average Manatee]

What would be the point of turning off crosshairs in a game without iron sights? Like, sure, make ranged weapons ineffective beyond 10 feet. That makes sense. Meanwhile psi powers still have their aiming modes and become the only way to fight from long distance.

 

[Zombra]

What would be the point of turning off crosshairs in a game without iron sights? Like, sure, make ranged weapons ineffective beyond 10 feet.

Do you really suck that bad?

The point is to make combat less of a chore, less of a sure thing, and more involved and interesting, and it works.

But whatever you do, make sure not to try it even once. You might actually like it and then where would you be?

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes I tried it and it took 10 shots to take out a mimic across an office space.

It's basically punishing you for having a big screen or using a wide FOV. What's the point? I could switch the game over to my much smaller secondary monitor and set the FOV to minimum rather than maximum. It'd probably triple my effective range, but that's a shit way to play the game.

The aiming point isn't even in the center of the screen. It's a fucking wreck. My monitor has a centered reticule as an option and the Prey crosshair is about 2 inches below that.

 

[HansDampf]

The challenge in Prey should come from resource management and creative problem solving, not from bulletsponges or having your hands tied behind your back (no crosshair).

 

[Average Manatee]

The challenge in Prey should come from resource management and creative problem solving, not from bulletsponges or having your hands tied behind your back (no crosshair).

Some bulletsponginess is fine though to suck up resources. Or rather, there should not be such powerful anti-bullet sponginess in the form of massive damage multipliers like sneak attack that will take effect at zero cost for almost every fight, or combat focus that is cheap enough to be spammable for every tough enemy.

 

[Zombra]

Yes I tried it and it took 10 shots to take out a mimic across an office space.
It's basically punishing you for having a big screen or using a wide FOV. What's the point? I could switch the game over to my much smaller secondary monitor and set the FOV to minimum rather than maximum. It'd probably triple my effective range, but that's a shit way to play the game.
The aiming point isn't even in the center of the screen. It's a fucking wreck. My monitor has a centered reticule as an option and the Prey crosshair is about 2 inches below that.

You sound like you're trying as hard as you can to maximize your efficiency in finishing the game so it can be over with. If that is your goal, please have fun with that, and we have nothing more to talk about.

P.S. Thank you for actually trying it at least.

 

[Average Manatee]

You don't play with a controller at sensitivity 0.001 using your feet while having your audio channels swapped and limiting your gameplay to cinematic 15 FPS? What a tryhard!

It makes no sense. Even relatively untraited people IRL can shoot accurately at any distance relevant to Prey except for outside the station. You can use psi powers with perfect accuracy along with slomo, and psi powers are somewhat overpowered. What's the point of arbitrarily nerfing one specific tool of the player? Especially when the shotgun is the best weapon anyway and is basically unaffected?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Oh god BALANCEfags in this thread too?

Just amputate all fingers except one and play with a car parked on your foot if you want to make the game REALLY challenging. Retards.

 

[Zombra]

What's the point of arbitrarily nerfing one specific tool of the player?

That's at least the third time you've said "What's the point?" Yo dawg, I already told you the point.

You tried it and instantly started thinking of ways to circumvent it, which means you weren't really serious about trying it. "But I could play this on a smaller monitor and it would be less challenging!" OK, so you want to be as efficient as possible, I get it. Please please leave the training wheels on, you will finish quicker that way.

 

[Average Manatee]

Arbitrarily nerfing 1 or 2 weapons that aren't overpowered through immersion-breaking limitations (why wouldn't Yu know how to aim a pistol?) that also involve tedious workarounds that have massively different effects depending on your literal PC hardware setup is completely retarded. If you think the pistol is overpowered then go actually nerf pistol accuracy. Its not and the pistol is among the least of Prey's balance issues.

 

[DalekFlay]

I find the idea of removing the crosshair in a game with ironsights or scopes kinda weird. Also one where you're constantly picking stuff up and pressing buttons. I've done that in games more focused on realism and scopes, but something like Prey? Meh.

 

[Multidirectional]

Crosshairs shmosshairs. Real men play with monitor turned off.