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

[Parabalus]

I limit my neuromod fabrication to the minimum in order not to break the game completely, only produce single ones when I'm at the recycler and see that I lack 1 to some ability unlock. I don't think I've produced more than 10, maybe 15 at max.

Similar here actually, only I make and sit on them, have about 30 unused so far. Can't decide on what to spend them so they're gathering dust heh.

How many Typhon powers can you take before the station hates you? If you hack turrets they will be yours regardless, right?

EMP is godlike, not only it stuns techopat it also stuns its lackeys (if its flying with turrets, turrets will fall down and even break if its high enough) Probably you missed the EMP.
Stun guns range is really short but it completely wrecks technos, you don't even need to fear reloads its stun is long enough without upgrades. Sneak attack with a fully upgraded stun gun is 180+ damage against that fuckers.

No, the EMP hit and did all that but I didn't notice the shotgun doing more damage like Darth Roxor said, that's why I asked if the stun gun is different and has an amplification effect, I'll take it from your post that it doesn't, but does have initial damage, thanks.

I had 30 psi hypos by the time I found a Psychoscope. On my alien power playthrough, I barely even found myself fabricating ammo anymore, finding supplies through exploration was already enough to sustain me. Though I mostly used wrench and magic, I did use the weapons time to time to output more damage against tougher enemies, and even then I had no scarcity problems with any of my supplies, even though I intentionally didn't spec into Hacking so I couldn't access locked loot caches for more supplies.

Right now I still have 50 psi hypos, though I don't use alien powers offensively that often. I already have the chipset which slowly regenerates mana, though it's not fast enough so I still have to use hypos mid-combat. I intentionally didn't equip the chipset which increases my chance to knockdown enemies with the wrench as the chance turned into 100% and let me stunlock every Phantom to death, aside from Electric ones. At times I wonder how the game would turn out without crafting, trash items, and recycling period, since I'm doing a fine job without it.

While we laugh about Nightmare difficulty on the Kodex, someone here linked an review where the journalist ragequit because the game was too hard on Normal, imagine if the game had more resource scarcity.

 

[Cyberarmy]

has an amplification effect,

Only kind of stun that amplifies damage is gloo guns "stun" I think.

 

[Luckmann]

I don't really care much for survival elements in these games, they can just up the difficulty with more and harder enemies, ie. the FPS element.

If what you want is a simple FPS, then you are literally the cancer that is devouring gaming. More enemy types would be appreciated, but simply having more of them and have them have higher numbers bloat would change literally nothing. It's like just wanting another Phantom, just with more HP and that does more damage. Utter shit.

To implement all of your suggestions you'd have to revamp the inventory with a weight system to prevent hoarding.

What? No, there's already a limitation in the size of the inventory, and you recycle the vast majority of everything anyway; and those Materials stacks can literally hold up to 10 000. Nothing I said would encourage hoarding; it would make hoarding practically impossible, as opposed to now, where you'll hoard not even as a choice, but because it's unavoidable. A lot of things have absolutely no value, including food and medkits.

That said, I wouldn't mind a weight system at all, but it wasn't relevant as to what I wanted to achieve with the suggested ideas.

What would food or O_2 consumption mean if I can stack 100s of food?

This makes no sense and raises so many questions.

• Why do you think the game has O_2 consumption?
• Why would you stack 100s of food when food would restore very little health?
• Why wouldn't you convert most food into materials for things you'd actually need, like medkits, ammo, anti-rads or similar?
  
• Why do you think you'll be able to stack 100s of food?
• Where would you even find 100s of food of the same type to stack?
• Why would you waste inventory for all these different kinds of food?

Even currently, practically all food gets recycled, and it's less because of the Materials extracted and more because you need the inventory space. In the extent that food is hoarded provided you still haven't recycled it or eaten it because you need the space, it is only used to casually top off your health pool. It has little to no value. What I suggest would actually make it valuable as general materials extraction/scrounging.

Also, again, I wouldn't mind having an O_2 system, but depending on how it works it could absolutely cause issues in certain sections of the game, so the considerations are completely different to what I was talking about.

It'd also encourage backtracking to a central stash so you never throw anything away, personally CBA for that.

Why? Why would you waste resources and time backtracking to never throw anything away? It makes no sense. Nevermind that the game already encourages you to never throw anything away until you run out of space and either consume or recycle it. Why would you consume even more resources in backtracking for the purpose of hoarding if resources were more valuable? Why would you even want to fucking hoard to begin with? You shouldn't even be able to.

Since all those items are finite you're also effectively setting up a soft time limit, meaning you are punished for every step in a non-optimal direction.

You just talked about the changes encouraging wasting time and resources, and now you say that it would punish you for wasting time and resources. You can't have it both ways. Nevermind that resources are already limited and materials finite (other than from respawning enemies), and that there would be infinite licenses. Also, you're literally complaining that people would be "punished" for sucking. Well no shit.

If you suck so much that you end up consuming all free materials, recycle and use all available licenses, spend more resources than you gain when fighting respawning enemies because you're running around the station aimlessly, and would manage to avoid all the infinite licenses, then you deserve to be standing there with the wrench and have to sneak and avoid confrontations until you recover. This is scarcely different from now, and if you don't care at all about these things and just want to killy-killy shoot-shoot, you might just as well cheat and be done with it.

What I propose I propose in order to incentivize and reinforce the aspects of the game that are already pre-existing, based on what it seemingly want to achieve but falls short of, resulting in game features that are unengaging and making you wonder why they exist. If you don't appreciate those aspects of the game at all, if you don't want to be rewarded for discovering valuable materials and if you don't want resources to matter, why even bother?

There will be mods to add that for sure though.

Unlikely. The "mods will fix it" mentality is cancerous, and it is uncommon that game features are actually added and balanced appropriately, because it often requires access to tools that are simply not available. While most of my suggestions seem like they would be rather easy to add, it would require playtesting, adding or changing certain areas, and going through almost the entirety of the game for the purpose of placements. Notably, licenses/unlimited licenses as well as major materials hauls would have to be (re-)considered, as to create a meta-resource pacing. AI behaviour and enemy numbers (and likely placement) would also have to be tweaked. What events results in what injuries would also have to be considered, as well as the pacing of survival features (food/drink).

It's not something you could reasonably expect from a mod, especially nothing polished that would fit seamlessly with the game.

You can't save people from themselves.

I thought faucets where a one-off thing, when I realised they have a 5sec timer I just knew there would be some degenerate out there sitting and drinking from faucets.

Bitch, you just complained about incentivizing hoarding and backtracking on far shakier (nonsensical, frankly) grounds. The point is that there's no reason for the 1hp/drink to even exist; it's far too little far too slow to even matter, and if you desperately need healing, it's a degenerate chore. All it does is reward something that practically no-one is going to find entertaining, and as people and gamers, we're practically hardwired for success and attempts at optimization whether we actually enjoy the behaviour ourselves or not.

Games that forces you to artificially hamper yourself and limit yourself outside of the intentions and presented options of the game are deeply flawed, because this isn't implied to be normal or reasonable within the game itself. This is incredibly minor, but with a further emphasis on the value of your existing health-pool and the regeneration of said health-pool, the incentive to engage in this behaviour increases, and since there's no logical or mechanical reason for faucet-healing to exist, it is easier to simply cut it and avoid the issue whatsoever. Cutting this would only be detrimental to those people who would be likely to actually engage in it or take advantage of it, while it literally wouldn't affect anyone else, meanwhile patching a potential abuse that cheapens the resource economy (the importance of which was the purpose of the suggestions).

The reasons to change it are small, but the reasons not to is non-existent.

I'm guilty of playing at 20 hp all the so I can use the automated regen from med kits and to make combat harder, but at waiting around next to faucets seems kms territory.

The automatic healing should also be cut, because it's more than enough to stay alive, especially with the game favouring the save-or-die approach to combat, incentivizing save-scumming in order to save resources, which in turn cheapens the resource economy. By relying on automated healing, you'll practically never use healing items, and if you die ("difficulty", lol) you'll just reload. Near-instant deaths are a poor measurement of functional difficulty level, and if players are actively choosing not to use the tools provided (let alone don't have to), there's something wrong with the related base mechanics.

I can think of nothing more degenerate or less interesting.

max upgraded shotgun firepower, both security weapon damage upgrade skills = everything dies in 2-3 point blank shotgun blasts, lmao

[...] and got limited by mineral materials after making only 40 neuromods while having others left over, so the cost is there IMO.

First of all, you're retarded. There's no way to say this nicely. You've wasted your resources on making 40 neuromods, claim that "the cost is there", yet also assert that this is while "having others left over".

So you've made neuromods and claim to be low on metal, yet have more neuromods than you need at present, yet somehow come to the conclusion that this is not the fault of you wasting resources and that "the cost is there". I swear, this is abbo-level reasoning skills.

 

[Luckmann]

[...]

No, the EMP hit and did all that but I didn't notice the shotgun doing more damage like Darth Roxor said, that's why I asked if the stun gun is different and has an amplification effect, I'll take it from your post that it doesn't, but does have initial damage, thanks.

The Stun Gun does not have initial damage against most opponents. It only really does damage against mechanical enemies and Technopaths (which likely count as mechanical).

While we laugh about Nightmare difficulty on the Kodex, someone here linked an review where the journalist ragequit because the game was too hard on Normal, imagine if the game had more resource scarcity.

The difference between difficulties in terms of resource scarcity is near-irrelevant. The goal is not to increase deathrates or deadlyness, but to enforce a feeling of increased difficulty and reward clever use of resources.

If all you want is to make things artificially "harder", all you need is numbers inflation, but it wouldn't actually make the game more difficult either, just more tedious or pigeon-holed in terms of relevant options in how to approach it.

 

[Parabalus]

What? No, there's already a limitation in the size of the inventory, and you recycle the vast majority of everything anyway; and those Materials stacks can literally hold up to 10 000. Nothing I said would encourage hoarding; it would make hoarding practically impossible, as opposed to now, where you'll hoard not even as a choice, but because it's unavoidable. A lot of things have absolutely no value, including food and medkits.

That said, I wouldn't mind a weight system at all, but it wasn't relevant as to what I wanted to achieve with the suggested ideas.

This makes no sense and raises so many questions.

• Why do you think the game has O_2 consumption?
• Why would you stack 100s of food when food would restore very little health?
• Why wouldn't you convert most food into materials for things you'd actually need, like medkits, ammo, anti-rads or similar?
  
• Why do you think you'll be able to stack 100s of food?
• Where would you even find 100s of food of the same type to stack?
• Why would you waste inventory for all these different kinds of food?

Because you proposed a starvation bar where you would die if you didn't eat?

Think about what you wrote. You want there to be a resource scarcity but you don't want players to hoard resources or backtrack. Effectively, there have to be enough resources in an area for you to progress through it while feeling scarcity pressure - resource spawning has to depend on difficulty (since you added a time-based drain).

The problem is the game is non-linear, so either you have to make resources respawn (nonsensical, boring and stupid, equiv. of running between battery recharging stations) or you are forced to spend resources (your list of proposed changes is equivalent to an O_2 system, even worse since there would be less straightforward fabrication) from one area to visit a previous one.

Since everything in Prey is fabricated, think in $$ terms, the station has a total, finite $$ value. You'd add a $$/second cost, giving you a fixed playtime which is lowered by your lack of gunplay skills because of fabrication transmutation, while extremely penalizing backtracking and exploration - a balancing/fun nightmare.

STALKER over it's 3 games and various mods has those thing's you'd want in one form or another, but it crucially also has a functioning economy (traders, factions, wars, respawns) as the backbone of its system, which Prey doesn't have in any form.

Bitch, you just complained about incentivizing hoarding and backtracking on far shakier (nonsensical, frankly) grounds. The point is that there's no reason for the 1hp/drink to even exist; it's far too little far too slow to even matter, and if you desperately need healing, it's a degenerate chore. All it does is reward something that practically no-one is going to find entertaining, and as people and gamers, we're practically hardwired for success and attempts at optimization whether we actually enjoy the behaviour ourselves or not.

Drinking once from every faucet for 1HP is flavour, being able to reuse them is cancer. I thought I made them clear.

Games that forces you to artificially hamper yourself and limit yourself outside of the intentions and presented options of the game are deeply flawed, because this isn't implied to be normal or reasonable within the game itself. This is incredibly minor, but with a further emphasis on the value of your existing health-pool and the regeneration of said health-pool, the incentive to engage in this behaviour increases, and since there's no logical or mechanical reason for faucet-healing to exist, it is easier to simply cut it and avoid the issue whatsoever. Cutting this would only be detrimental to those people who would be likely to actually engage in it or take advantage of it, while it literally wouldn't affect anyone else, meanwhile patching a potential abuse that cheapens the resource economy (the importance of which was the purpose of the suggestions).

The reasons to change it are small, but the reasons not to is non-existent.

Jesus Christ anyone I don't give a fuck if a mongoloid has to camp a faucet to play through the game on Easy, let him do it. If anyone is autistic enough to turn a faucet 100 times (more with upgrades) they it would be easier for them to kill themselves and avoid the issue altogether.

The automatic healing should also be cut, because it's more than enough to stay alive, especially with the game favouring the save-or-die approach to combat, incentivizing save-scumming in order to save resources, which in turn cheapens the resource economy. By relying on automated healing, you'll practically never use healing items, and if you die ("difficulty", lol) you'll just reload. Near-instant deaths are a poor measurement of functional difficulty level, and if players are actively choosing not to use the tools provided (let alone don't have to), there's something wrong with the related base mechanics.

I can think of nothing more degenerate or less interesting.

You don't seem to get that there is no economy in this game, you have a finite stack of resources to push through to the end.

I (and others in this thread) don't have to use them because we're very good at playing games. People at a lower skill level, ie. the majority of the player base, do have to. I'm not being deluded about my prowess here, most of the reviews for Prey state that they don't like how powerless the character feels throughout the game.

The auto healing is a safety feature, I'm surprised it's there on nightmare myself. It could easily vary on difficulty and be cut on NM.

First of all, you're retarded. There's no way to say this nicely. You've wasted your resources on making 40 neuromods, claim that "the cost is there", yet also assert that this is while "having others left over".

So you've made neuromods and claim to be low on metal, yet have more neuromods than you need at present, yet somehow come to the conclusion that this is not the fault of you wasting resources and that "the cost is there". I swear, this is abbo-level reasoning skills.

I didn't spend them because I can - I want to see how many I can end up making. It's the equivalent of your changes upping $$ for everything, I'm effectively doing for myself. If the was difficulty harder, I couldn't. Only in this way I'm not penalized for enjoying the scenery.

I'm not complaining about anything, I'm having fun and enjoying the game playing on NM, if I had to track 4 different life-sign bars I'd be much more annoyed, even though I'd certainly have the resources.

The difference between difficulties in terms of resource scarcity is near-irrelevant. The goal is not to increase deathrates or deadlyness, but to enforce a feeling of increased difficulty and reward clever use of resources.

If all you want is to make things artificially "harder", all you need is numbers inflation, but it wouldn't actually make the game more difficult either, just more tedious or pigeon-holed in terms of relevant options in how to approach it.

Dunno, I only played on nightmare. If you have to spend 2-3 shotgun shells(or equiv.) less per enemy per lower difficulty that's a very big difference.

Your suggestions would just make playing the game more annoying. I'm certain Arkane tried out different variants of what you're proposing (the O_2 system is in the game files and somebody here linked a mod that restored it + food) but ended up cutting it. Can't blame them really, the recycler+fabricator system isn't really conductive to scarcity tension.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I think game had much more enemies and weapon degreation along with O_2 management in zero grav.situations. Somehow these got deleted/nerfed during late development, probably because "survival mode DLC" reasons.

First - maps/rooms are large but most have 1-2 enemies. Also shit load of consumables even without crafting.
Second- weapon fabrication don't make sense at all, I facepalmed pretty hard when I found wrench plan in mid game...
Third- Lots of "carefully" placed small O_2 tanks, especially inside the first hull breach we encountered.

 

[Israfael]

I distinctly remember oxygen cans back in the enginarium and some other parts of the station that were not as exposed to space as GUTS or the actual outside, probably you just did not see them while exploring 'safe' parts. And I would not be so sure that you could 'consume' them while in EVA, probably you'd have to refill it when you get inside.

There's two things the game really should've done harder; maintain an intense feeling of abject poverty and force prioritization, and reward resource discovery/searching.

I actually wonder if the amount of resources is different on easy/nightmare, I was playing on hard and there was a lot of trash lying around (I used rec grenades only to clear up space / kill my first nightmare / kill some voltaics when I had no food left). Could be like the original xcom where difficulty selection was broken.

 

[Darth Roxor]

If what you want is a simple FPS, then you are literally the cancer that is devouring gaming. More enemy types would be appreciated, but simply having more of them and have them have higher numbers bloat would change literally nothing. It's like just wanting another Phantom, just with more HP and that does more damage. Utter shit.

Ur rong and gay.

Having more enemies to face at once in the later game would have gone a long way to making Prey much better and much more difficult. As it is now, most of the enemies may pose a threat (on nightmare most of them can just about two-hit-kill you), but that threat is irrelevant because every enemy also has an awesome button weakness that renders him harmless, whether it's EMP, the tazer or the psi nullifier, and because these enemies almost always appear alone, maybe with 1-2 mimics as support at best.

If the game provided some more mixing and matching of enemies with different weaknesses (like say pairing voltaic and thermal phantoms), fighting these groups would have been MUCH more dangerous, challenging and resource-demanding from the player. If there were more of them at once, emerging unscathed from fights would be impossible. Or, at the very least, you'd be much more pressed to killing them fast with your actual weapons than going "eh, why bother" and smacking them to death with the wrench.

 

[Cyberarmy]

There are pairs like that but sadly too few. And most of the time they are in large areas so you still kill them 1 by 1 when they seperate.

About the last fight.

Spoiler

Only 2 phantoms and some mimics guarding the shuttles entrance?!? Yay for epic battle...

 

[baturinsky]

When there is many of them, you can Q-Beam or Recycle Grenade them.

 

[Blaine]

Game seems p. gud so far, but I've only played for two hours, because I keep trying to play at night while alone in an otherwise completely dark and near-silent computer room. It ends up being 2spooky4me. Same thing happened with Outlast.

I don't boot them up during the day, because the best time to play is in the middle of the night to maximize spookiness.

I enjoy being spooked, but a lot of the time I'm not in the mood for it. No telling when I'll finish this one.

 

[Durandal]

This game isn't spooky at all

 

[Jaedar]

I think one really good fix for making the game more challenging would be to double or triple size of all weapons. Would make you have to choose a reasonable loadout of nades, disablers and shooty guns, and leave less room for all the crap lying around. I don't think neuromods are that criminally abundant, and I believe it would be fine if other resources were more scarce so you could not dedicate 90% of all your crafting materials towards them.

I guess if you decide to skip psi entirely you're completely rolling in neuromods, but that's really some kind of challenge run...

 

[baturinsky]

Any effective/interesting PSI abilities? I finished the game with only lvl1 kinetic blast (hoped to compensate lack of object moving skill with it, but nope), and was not really impressed.

 

[Shackleton]

I maxxed out the Electric shock one for the technopaths and it surely came in handy both to stun organics as well as clear clumps of cystoids. Both the mindjack and the machine mind were very useful in the run up to the end. I was a bit dull in my power use, I just took stuff that either blew stuff up or incapacitated it, rather than turning into things or lifting stuff with the power of my mind.

Reading through the comments, I think one of Prey's strongest points is the different styles of play it allows. I did some 'shotgun to the face' sure, but I used my psi powers more to blast the enemies into bits.

Thinking about the difficulty more after finishing, I think what the game did more than actually challenge me was create the illusion of challenge by starting me off vulnerable and then through the odd heavy hitting attack or fast-moving Typhon, maintain the picture that I was still fragile even after I'd become a walking death machine. I was still wary going into rooms, despite being able to annihilate most mobs before they'd knocked off a few HP. I was drowning in Medkits and Psy Boosters and regen between fights was never a problem, but the odd death from shock panels mid-fight, sneaky cystoid nest or an unseen enemy laser zapping me encouraged me to think I could still die if I was too gung-ho about combat.

I don't want to spoil anything, but people who've not finished might find the difficulty spikes slightly later in the game if you're finding it too easy right now. Nothing massive, but I had to change tactics a bit and I liked that.

 

[Mynon]

This game isn't spooky at all

True dat.
It is actually one of few somewhat disappointing things about the game. Both because some previews hyped up the horror element, and because SS2 (once you did the smart thing and turned off that pumping soundtrack) could produce some frights.

 

[ciox]

Any effective/interesting PSI abilities? I finished the game with only lvl1 kinetic blast (hoped to compensate lack of object moving skill with it, but nope), and was not really impressed.

You can compensate a lack of Leverage with Kinetic Blast, from what I saw I believe there's a perfect mapping between objects that need Leverage I/II/III and how they can get moved out of the way by Kinetic Blast I/II/III, though I've only tested this as far as II since I didn't really want to upgrade my Kinetic Blast to max.

Other than that Psychoshock is the most useful, its only drawback is that it has a very low range for balance and that a UI fail prevents you from seeing what that range is, other than that it's great for both debuffing bigger enemies and safely instakilling weaker enemies like mimics without hurting yourself with splash damage.

 

[Jasede]

Or you can be cheap like me and throw recycler grenades at anything that needs lifting - ...
Sadly they ended up eating some dead crewmembers in the process. Whoops. (Choices and consequences?)

 

[Makabb]

This game is shit! The action is not fast paced enough! there are not enough explosions per second ! what is this reading stuff you have to do ?! Do developers seriously expect me to read in 2017 ? I press awesome button and nothing happens ! I'm fucking dying on normal because some shit phantom is shooting goddamn plasma at me and i have onyl a wrench! A FUCKING WRENCH COME ON REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[Lyric Suite]

This game isn't spooky at all

It was obvious when i saw that retarded hipster Groundhog Day intro this game's atmosphere was going to suck, but to be fair, the game is called Prey, not System Shock. I don't know whether it says anywhere that it is supposed to be a dark horror.

About the hoarding: is it really that bad? Because that shit happens in almost every game i've ever played.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I think the game has some reasonably spooky moments, but overall it's not really scary. Unfortunate, because it had the potential to be really scary.

 

[Luckmann]

Going into the game completely blind, I initially found it extremely spooky too, but it started to quickly wear off about 1/3 into the game or so, and quickly transition towards Bioshock territory.

 

[baturinsky]

To be scary it need

1. Get rid of free healing at operators and any form of regeneration.
2. Limit saves.
3. Make mimic surprise attacks really hurtful.
4. Make it easier to sneak around stronger enemies than just kill them.
etc etc

Early REs did it all right - limiting not just the places of saves, but number of saves too.

 

[ciox]

Or you can be cheap like me and throw recycler grenades at anything that needs lifting - ...
Sadly they ended up eating some dead crewmembers in the process. Whoops. (Choices and consequences?)

That has always felt cheap to me, like it wasn't balanced properly at all, just one grenade to clear any path AND get some resources back, when you're already being fed enough grenades and even grenade traps that you can disarm with just Repair I. Needs some obstructions that have too much stacked garbage in a row to clear with just one grenade IMO.
Also this has bothered me immensely but I never wrote it down, devs, seriously, grenades aren't supposed to land at your own feet if you tap Fire without "powering up the throw" first, they are supposed to fly a decent distance like in any other game, and if you really want to drop a grenade at your feet you do what you do in any other game and hit Fire after looking straight down.

In other news I finally found a use for the Q-Beam, it's alright to use it from maximum range in levels like the reactor and power plant, the small advantage that it has infinite(?) range and perfect accuracy is actually relevant in wide spaces like that. It's still mostly a backup "throw that shit out there" weapon though.

 

[Wulfstand]

The soundtrack +sound effectsmakes it feel breetty spooky. Playing with a good headset during the night makes it really work. I'm enjoying this more than Alien Isolation, and I loved that game.