Jim Cojones said:
praetor said:
Black said:
I forgot- Desu and Dark Messiah are, I think, games which represent THE BEST experience system.
You gain exp/skill points for completing objectives, exploration and advancing the story. No bullshit exp from killing goblins or something like that.
Just playing through DE and DM and then switching to Arcanum with its retarded exp system makes me cringe.
i disagree. they're both shitty because, as some other codexer put it in another thread some time ago (iirc, it was draq), both systems suffer from the same "i did some fetch quests and now i'm better with the sword" problem. the best exp system would be a non-retarded, abuse-impervious implementation of the TES system
TES system (or any use based system that has been used in RPGs) sucks almost as much experience based at simulating how learning works in real life. Both are extremely abstractive and from two abstractive, I'll always choose one that is more fun and rewarding, not the one that is only marginally more realistic.
TES system is broken by the virtue of being made by Bethesda, and Bethesda, even old-Bethesda and mid-Bethesda that made good games, has always sucked at thinking their implementations through. As a result, you're not rewarded according to the difficulty of the task, but can just keep stabbing mudcrabs all the way up to the 100 instead. Having time cost the character in some way and making more challenging tasks less accessible and not fully dictated by player's discretion is also important in building a good use based mechanics.
Still, use based system has distinct advantage of tying the way character improves to the character's behaviour, which is just fap-worthy when you leave the gameworld and the player alone with each other, without GM's supervision.
DX system is hardly a system - since it rewards arbitrarily defined exploration and progression checkpoints, it has to be scripted by hand entirely. It only works because the game is limited in scope. The only system-like part is point-buy, which suffers from the same problems as traditional XP-based systems, and, given DX's sequential, level based progression through gameworld, it could be easily replaced by just a static build system, with pool of points allocable during chargen only, and augmentations being the only part of the character's abilities customizable during the game proper.
Black said:
Draq is wrong all the time.
Burning Bridges said:
Wut.
In SS2 contrast everything was sparse and had to be conserved
SS2 strived to be a survival horror, which included stuff like extremely limited ammo and excessive weapon degradation. I liked it, but Deus Ex is not a survival horror, nor it attempts to be one.
Additionally, SS2 featured some of the most glaring examples of abuse and misimplementation of RPG mechanics known to mankind. I'm speaking of weapon skills, of course. If a fucking cyborgized grunt, with ample military training is unable to point and click a pistol or shotgun at the enemy without expensive cybernetic upgrades, then something is horribly wrong with your game.
Accuracy, recoil, reload time, rate of fire (for non-automatic weapons), even maintenance of specific weapon types are fair game. Usability is not.
Burning Bridges said:
What I meant was cleverly hidden solutions as in Ultima Underworld, Wizardry 8 etc.
Wizardry 8 (we all know and love) had cleverly hidden solutions? :/
Perhaps I just missed those in the short time I played DE. What I do remember is messages popping up how much skill points were needed for this and for that
What game have you played.
It wasn't Deus Ex.
Radisshu said:
You've got a point, but a useful party NPC is a much larger part of the overall game (gameplay-wise)
Party NPC is usually merely an extension of the PC in the same way an item is. NPC tags along, being always at hand and removing them usually involves merely disabling part of the game, rather than adding something new (you could very well be fapping over oblivious at this point, because if you kill Lucien when he visits you in your sleep, you cut off entire DB querstline omg C&C
). PArty NPCs rarely have much impact on the story when they are in the party. A presence or absence of an independent NPC, OTOH can require different dialogue or may trigger events from outside of PC's vicinity - even if the changes are ultimately cosmetic, they have far more impact on the feel of the storyline than losing a useful party member (or a useful +5 sword).
Vibalist said:
I prefer the DX/Bloodlines experience system because if allows people to play the game however they want. That's all an XP system needs to do. Allow the player to gain XP regardless of his playstyle.
Use Based not only does that, but it adapts the character to the way you're playing.
S_Verner said:
DX, was representative of a theoretical nerd-rapture wherein increasingly advanced technology allows for increasingly more complicated games to be made with more features, less bugs, C&C, better atmosphere and and and.
Agreed.
Gord said:
I know that calling Deus Ex an RPG is probably stretching it a bit, but thinking about it, it did handle at least one important aspect of RPGs much better than e.g. Mass Effect (which I pick here, because it has been mentioned a couple of times now).
That aspect is character building.
In Mass Effect, all characters basically play the same. Whether you are playing a soldier, bionic, technician or any combination thereof, your basic experience wont change much.
In Deus Ex there are not even classes you get to choose from, yet it makes a huge difference for gameplay how you skill your char and what augs you pick.
This.
One of the main assets of DX is that it is the kind of game you want it to be.
The story is pretty linear but it's a good one, a giant blend of clichès that nevertheless creates a pretty good plot with some philosophical tendencies even.
One of the good points about Deus Ex was that it was extremely well researched - while it was technically a kitchensink of conspiracies it didn't feel tinfoil-hat-y, the fluff was mostly devoid of technobabble (I came when I read about synthetic calcium pumps building themselves into sarcoplasmic reticulum to affect the muscle contraction dynamics - aka "combat strength aug" - compare and contrast with derp subatomic nanites from SS2), and the world was layered, there was not just the gameplay, but stuff was constantly happening behind the scenes - remember lunar mine?
The point is that despite being conspiracy theorist's wet dream (or rather nightmare), Deus Ex felt startlingly authentic (unlike claims of most conspiracy buffs IRL).
