We need another game like Alpha Protocol

[Lilura]

AP is so janky even Beamdog could do better.

 

[Carrion]

I have not played TOW, but with ME2 and DX:HR, absolutely not. Huge difference between baseline Shepard and Jensen and ones with points in things. ME2 deliberately addressed the fact that a single point in any given skill in ME had no discernible effect.

You'll become more effective, but it's unlikely to affect your playstyle in any meaningful way. In Deus Ex you can instantly tell whether your character is shit or good with a particular weapon, even if you've never played the game before. And yes, everyone knows that DX doesn't have greatest combat ever, but I think the general gunfeel is to blame more than the targeting system. It doesn't feel good even with all the skills maxed out.

A hybrid system that makes you both aim by yourself AND then calculates you hit chance, meaning you can aim correctly and not hit anything is simply frustrating.

Missing with a sword over and over again in Morrowind is frustrating. Failing repeatedly at lockpicking in Fallout is frustrating. That's why you put points in the respective skills, and that's why getting good at those things feels satisfying.

Also, most shooters have an accuracy stats for each weapon, so having perfect aim still doesn't always guarantee a hit there either. No one has a problem with that.

Just a few things that your weapon skills could (and should) affect in a first-person/third-person real-time RPG:

• accuracy, obviously, although not to the extent you usually see in games that implement this; a person with even basic knowledge of how weapon sights work should be able to hit a target the size of a human being quite easily at your typical RPG combat distances if provided with enough time and a stationary target
• reloading speed
• risk of user-based failure, e.g. weapon jams or dropped magazines, as well as the ability to quickly fix those failures
• weapon maintenance / modding (if applicable)
• recoil control
  
• general weapon handling, such as aiming (separate from accuracy); how quickly you can steady your weapon and take an accurate shot from different positions (stationary, crouching, prone) or when moving, rapidly changing direction or trying to hit a moving target
  
• possibly other factors related to general weapon handling, such as how quickly you can draw/equip your weapon or change between firing modes

Having just randomized accuracy is annoying and doesn't reflect reality, whereas having your damage numbers go up so that you can make a slightly bigger dent in your enemies' enormous health bars is equally horrendous and also total nonsense.

Similar things apply to melee combat as well. Gothic having different attacks for different skill levels was cool, and it's lame when devs just make your weapon skill affect your damage numbers and call it a day.

 

[Tigranes]

It was enjoyable to see if I could beat it on my only playthrough without using a gun.

Impossible, given tanks, helicopters, and Darcy in the locked tower.

I haven't seen any mod auto-resolving the minigames like in Mass Effect which is going to be my biggest mental block.

Use EMPs, it's what they're for.

?!?!?!?!?!?! hell no. Fists and stealth all the way is extremely OP (but then most of the character tree is OP). Maybe there were a couple isolated scenes that I forgot about, but you can fist everybody in this game very easily.

The minigames are quite easy and on par with other minigames of this type if your mouse acceleration isn't borked (like it was for many people at launch). That was just shocking incompetence.

Marburg will wreck you if you face him early on with a fist build (without point blank shot). Stealth becomes OP after shadow operative, which admittedly is really early on in the skill tree.

If there's one thing you can do in AP, that is to win pretty easily with any fucking build, or indeed win with no build without spending any points in combat skills. I know, because I did it. AP's clumsy AI just adds to the party.

H2H+Stealth is quite fun because, as I repeat every other year on this forum, AP combat can be quite fun in a disaster carnival way when you focus on mines & grenades & havoc. Nothing like setting one dude on fire from a balcony above, watching his friend rush up the stairs, then casually clicking a trip mine just as he enters the room, then jumping out from behind the smoke to slap the third one in the face with kung fu.

 

[RRRrrr]

A hybrid system that makes you both aim by yourself AND then calculates you hit chance, meaning you can aim correctly and not hit anything is simply frustrating. Once you give the player agency to aim, you have to respect it. And vice versa-if the player doesn't have to do the aiming himself, a skill check is the way to go.

There is a third way: make it so that skills impact how much you sway (better weapon holding stance), how long you can hold breath (or even if you can hold breath) to stabilize aim, etc. That way you are still responsible for your accuracy, but it is going to be more difficult to be actually accurate with less points invested in a particular skill. But that's tricky to balance properly.

Please no. Mass Effect did this with snipers, and they were the only unusable weapon, making you dizzy.

Missing with a sword over and over again in Morrowind is frustrating

You don't aim with the sword, you swing it in the relevant direction, which is a different system. We are talking about ranged firearms.


This stuff only works on paper, but in practice you can't really get it right. This is why the few games that did it got criticized for it and the system was abandoned

 

[J1M]

A hybrid system that makes you both aim by yourself AND then calculates you hit chance, meaning you can aim correctly and not hit anything is simply frustrating. Once you give the player agency to aim, you have to respect it. And vice versa-if the player doesn't have to do the aiming himself, a skill check is the way to go.

There is a third way: make it so that skills impact how much you sway (better weapon holding stance), how long you can hold breath (or even if you can hold breath) to stabilize aim, etc. That way you are still responsible for your accuracy, but it is going to be more difficult to be actually accurate with less points invested in a particular skill. But that's tricky to balance properly.

Please no. Mass Effect did this with snipers, and they were the only unusable weapon, making you dizzy.

Incorrect. Mass Effect 1 is not a difficult game, but it is also more fun and highly effective to make an Infiltrator that ignores the sniper rifle and focuses on the AOE abilities and pistol.

 

[Roguey]

You'll become more effective, but it's unlikely to affect your playstyle in any meaningful way.

I played both twice with different builds, it did make a difference.

 

[True Ukrainian]

I can't play the game anymore. It keeps crashing at startup for some reason.

 

[Harthwain]

I can't play the game anymore. It keeps crashing at startup for some reason.

I had the same issue back when the game was released (I had a retail version). If I recall correctly you need to download a patch for that.

This should help:

This was due to the old missing PhysX dll issue.

I believe if you see the "launcher", something has gone wrong... that's a legacy feature that is supposed to be skipped now, since it deals with the old DRM too.

If you see the launcher and/or the game won't start, try copying PhysXLoader.dll (and possibly PhysXLoader64.dll just in case) from your C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common folder to the game's "Binaries" folder.

 

[DalekFlay]

It doesn't work as a ghost stealth game, it doesn't work as a panther stealth game, it doesn't work as a run-and-gun game.

I played it as a stealth predator pistol expert and remember it being decent. Far from great, not even good, but acceptably playable to get to the good stuff of the game.

And yeah I remember hating the mini-games. Like... fucking loathing them.

 

[Carrion]

You don't aim with the sword, you swing it in the relevant direction, which is a different system. We are talking about ranged firearms.

MW has ranged weapons too, which work on the same principle. The point is that if your character sucks at something, doing that particular thing will most likely be frustrating until you become good at it, and rightly so. Still, with firearms I still find it less frustrating to constantly miss (and occasionally get that one hit that does serious damage) than have firearms that can only kill a thing after ten headshots, for example. The same applies to pretty much all weapons in all combat systems (see: PoE with its "grazes" as a solution for the frustration caused by missed hits).

This stuff only works on paper, but in practice you can't really get it right. This is why the few games that did it got criticized for it and the system was abandoned

People have a tendency to complain about the good stuff until you no longer have it. Instead of building on those few games and improving on their systems, the whole idea was more or less scrapped. That's how decline works.

 

[RRRrrr]

MW has ranged weapons too, which work on the same principle.

Gameplay wise, bows do not work in the same way as firearms. You expect firearms to be generally accurate, while arrows always change trajectory from where you aim.

The point is moot, though, since the only games that did this with firearms that I know of are Bloodlines and Alpha Protocol, and both got criticised on their gunplay.

People have a tendency to complain about the good stuff until you no longer have it. Instead of building on those few games and improving on their systems, the whole idea was more or less scrapped. That's how decline works.

You know of a mainstream first/third person RPG that guns with the "doesn't matter where you aim, we only calculate chance" system, other than Bloodlines and Alpha Protocol? Of course the idea got scrapped, it was just bad.

 

[Carrion]

You know of a mainstream first/third person RPG that guns with the "doesn't matter where you aim, we only calculate chance" system, other than Bloodlines and Alpha Protocol? Of course the idea got scrapped, it was just bad.

I don't think I've been advocating randomized accuracy but a more comprehensive system. Approaching firearms combat from the perspective of just accuracy and/or damage is simplistic and unimaginative, and removing the importance of character skill shouldn't even be an option in an RPG.

 

[Harthwain]

You know of a mainstream first/third person RPG that guns with the "doesn't matter where you aim, we only calculate chance" system, other than Bloodlines and Alpha Protocol? Of course the idea got scrapped, it was just bad.

Deus Ex (2000).

 

[Nano]

If I recall correctly you need to download a patch for that.

Which is available here, btw: https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1589-alpha-protocol-activation-patch/

 

[RRRrrr]

Deus Ex (2000).

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. It never felt like the game did not respect my aim due to a skill check. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

 

[Carrion]

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Because it had a more developed system. You could fire accurately at low levels, but it was slow. Taking shots quickly would cause them to go all over the place. Again, a much better system than in Alpha Protocol.

 

[RRRrrr]

Approaching firearms combat from the perspective of just accuracy and/or damage is simplistic and unimaginative, and removing the importance of character skill shouldn't even be an option in an RPG

I don't disagree, but t

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Because it had a more developed system. You could fire accurately at low levels, but it was slow. Taking shots quickly would cause them to go all over the place. Again, a much better system than in Alpha Protocol.

Recoil control is a system much more suited to being affect by skill level than accuracy itself. I am all for recoil control being affected by skill, this is a good system. Aiming correctly, shooting once at a time and never hitting anything due to a skill check is what I am against.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Deus Ex (2000).

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. It never felt like the game did not respect my aim due to a skill check. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Your skill determines how quickly the targeting recticle tightens. Skill also modifies the damage guns do.

 

[Lilura]

RRRrrr shut up, fool

 

[RRRrrr]

RRRrrr shut up, fool

Where is the tranny rating when you need it...

 

[Roguey]

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. It never felt like the game did not respect my aim due to a skill check. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Because it had a more developed system. You could fire accurately at low levels, but it was slow. Taking shots quickly would cause them to go all over the place. Again, a much better system than in Alpha Protocol.

Deus Ex and Alpha Protocol are practically the same. Wait for reticule to shrink to get perfect aim. Bloodlines had garbage accuracy as an inherent part of Santa Monica and Downtown guns which makes it worse than both.

However, liberty island has a laser modification you can put on your pistol to take advantage of permanent-precision aiming as long as you keep that gun.

 

[Lilura]

Toreador can do ok early on with Auspex + Perception. then Celerity on top for easy wins.

 

[True Ukrainian]

I haven't played the original Deus Ex in 7-8 years, but I don't remember any inaccuracy such as the one in Alpha Protocol and on low levels in Bloodlines. It never felt like the game did not respect my aim due to a skill check. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Because it had a more developed system. You could fire accurately at low levels, but it was slow. Taking shots quickly would cause them to go all over the place. Again, a much better system than in Alpha Protocol.

Deus Ex and Alpha Protocol are practically the same. Wait for reticule to shrink to get perfect aim. Bloodlines had garbage accuracy as an inherent part of Santa Monica and Downtown guns which makes it worse than both.

However, liberty island has a laser modification you can put on your pistol to take advantage of permanent-precision aiming as long as you keep that gun.

The Glock you can buy from the black man and his van is not bad. I used it throughout the game as a Tremere.

 

[Roguey]

The Glock you can buy from the black man and his van is not bad. I used it throughout the game as a Tremere.

Still pretty terrible, I took screens a while ago https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...steam-early-access.87845/page-29#post-2973019

 

[True Ukrainian]

The Glock you can buy from the black man and his van is not bad. I used it throughout the game as a Tremere.

Still pretty terrible, I took screens a while ago https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...steam-early-access.87845/page-29#post-2973019

Its good enough to strike an opponent's torso reliably.