Deus Ex : Mankind Divided

[UnknownSouljer]

It's what happens when a game publisher sells its studios to an investment firm.

Workers are pesky and want to be paid.

Rights to IP don't.

They either need to make another game or sell off the IP, because otherwise it's just an asset that they paid money for that gives no ROI.

I think it's these very basic understandings that frustrate so many people - why'd they even bother to buy up all this stuff if they weren't even going to do anything with it? It's like ordinary people understand "waste of money" better than massive corporations do.

There isn't really any other applications for this IP. What, do they want to make anime, a live action film, or merch? I'd say all of those are worse applications and may not make them their money back.

 

[DWolvin]

No ROI, but also no cost of upkeep. And they will always hold because it gives leverage to sue later.

 

[KazeoHin]

They either need to make another game or sell off the IP, because otherwise it's just an asset that they paid money for that gives no ROI.

I think it's these very basic understandings that frustrate so many people - why'd they even bother to buy up all this stuff if they weren't even going to do anything with it? It's like ordinary people understand "waste of money" better than massive corporations do.

There isn't really any other applications for this IP. What, do they want to make anime, a live action film, or merch? I'd say all of those are worse applications and may not make them their money back.

Same reason why Gearbox owns Duke Nukem and hasn't done ANYTHING with it. IP is a fantastic asset. You can sell merchandise like shirts, hats, music, old games, etc. You can always produce a new product using that IP, and it costs nothing to hold onto, and you can 'estimate' it's value to whatever you want it to be for investment purposes.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Same reason why Gearbox owns Duke Nukem and hasn't done ANYTHING with it. IP is a fantastic asset. You can sell merchandise like shirts, hats, music, old games, etc. You can always produce a new product using that IP, and it costs nothing to hold onto, and you can 'estimate' it's value to whatever you want it to be for investment purposes.

They paid $300 million for DX and TR. It's going to be a long time before the narrow application of merchandise and selling games that most people already have ever gets close to that. If what you're describing is "the dream of having this IP", I would say again that's a bad investment. $300 million in liquid is much more useful.

Another way of saying this is that the big cost of buying this IP isn't just the money, it's the opportunity cost. They could've done anything else with $300 million and gotten much better ROI. Heck, it wouldn't be hard to get a 10% yield year over year by just letting the money sit and essentially do nothing.

They could've funded 3+ blockbuster games with that money or any number of different smaller projects. Each of which could've netted a 3-5x return on the money. And all of that would/could happen far sooner than buying an IP and then literally choosing to not develop another title with it.

 

[Hershy]

https://www.pcgamer.com/adam-jensen...ta-be-honest-i-gave-up-on-it-a-long-time-ago/

It seems that Eidos Montreal, one of my favourite studios, saw roughly one hundred of its people let go, and that the studio had already spent two years working on the new Deus Ex game.

Wow. Heartbreaking for them and for us.

 

[Flogger23m]

That's actually my biggest criticism of Human Revolution. Most maps were designed as a playground for the player,

I liked having the gameplay options. There was room for using different tactics and the game seldom forced any particular play style onto the player.

and not in a way that would make any logical sense.

That is true for most games though. Unless you want every door open-able, which would be a colossal waste of development time and end up with a bunch of pointless rooms which would waste player time games will always have certain inaccessible parts.

Like a vent leading from one side of a forcefield to the other and nowhere else.

Yeah there were a few odd vents like that.

Or the "secret" route into a building providing much more direct access than the main entrance.

I suppose they didn't design the building with heavily augmented people in mind.

If the options are clearly put there only for the player's benefit and not for any in-universe reason that is bad game design.

Hacking, turrets, augments used to jump high or break open a wall are all in universe reasons.

Options should not be presented by the game on a silver platter i.e go left for the stealth route, go right for the guns blazing approach and go straight for a skill check bypass.

And for what reason? The design and quality of each action needs to be well done. How the game delivers the information is up to the developer and there is no right or wrong there.

It should require some effort from the player to find viable solutions to problems, and there should be dead ends that do not offer a solution and only exist for in-universe reasons.

I call that time wasting. My time is valuable, and I don't want to play a game that is 50% empty and useless artwork. I find little value in running from point A to B. If I spent more time traveling or "exploring" emptiness than figuring out solutions for things that matter (like defeating enemies), then I consider that to be poor game design. With DE:HR you had options to mix different play styles, abilities and tactics. That is considerably more engaging than rolling the dice on 15 paths that take 5 minutes to walk through with no redeeming gameplay value.

And I'm surprisingly fine with that. Cyberpunk is a damn good game, far better than Human Revolution or Mankind Divided were. I doubt that under Embracer's scrutiny a DeusEx game would have turned out stellar. And dragging the name through the mud with a trend chasing abomination of a game is worse than cancelling it. I'm also worried what will happen with Tomb Raider.

I like Cyberpunk, but I always considered the combat gameplay to be less developed and thought out compared to DE:HR or MD. The stealth was not very good, the hacking was not very good, and the other combat options were also lacking. It did give you some options but most areas were designed poorly and did not facilitate using many of the more interesting gameplay options. But that is the difference between a massive game with dozens of generic areas compared to a smaller game with fine tuned mechanics and maps crafted to make use of your available tools.

Even the developers were not happy with it, and changed it three times. Some things got better, but I still consider it to be inferior to DE: HR/MD when it comes to utilizing interesting gameplay options.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

My 2c are that I agree that DX:HR/MD level design was incredibly contrived. Vents were definitely a trope of the series, because the reality is there isn't even that kind of construction today. It's an anachronism being featured as game design.

Mechanics wise, DX did offer better CQC and stealth mechanics than CP2077. However they still aren't anywhere close to the gold standard of the MGS series, which did far more. MGS2 as an example has greater flexibility on what you can do than the DX series. Hold on walls, peak, hold people up, use lethal/non-lethal, grab, drag, throw, and hide bodies, etc. Traversal methods like just over railings and hanging on ledges, etc were all done much better in MGS. And by the time MGS5 came around... even in an open world neither DX or CP2077 got close to the amount of mechanics available to the player.

The worst thing mechanically in DX:HR/MD is that all the game design and systems more or less push players to not use skill points and simply wait until they reach a point in the game they want to get around using said systems (punch through walls, hacking level, double height jump, stronger object pickup, Icarus landing system, etc). Meaning that most of the tools in the game didn't feel cohesive. You weren't building a character so much as trying to add keys to unlock problems. On subsequent play-throughs of course the player knows which tools are perhaps most useful. However that's the point, the player is just selecting the things based on the games demands of them, not because they are building a unique set of skills that the player is interested in.

It also required a player to "have to" really max out all hacking if they wanted everything the game(s) had to offer and play that mini game 100s of times a play-through.
Well that and the fact that stealth knock-out was tied to a battery system.

Combat was also brokenly good in DX:HR, which is why the game worked so hard to limit ammo that was available in the game. Either through pickups or at stores. Then it also used an inventory management system to make the most interesting weapons perhaps not viable due to size, while also limited ammo found in the world (they reaaaaaly don't want you to be using the rocket launcher all day).

There are some other nitpicks I have too specifically regarding DX:HR, which I played to death. Eventually even doing a kill all characters, stealth play-through on highest difficulty. And even with a maxed out, silenced sniper rifle it was impossible to kill heavies with a single shot to the head. Meaning alarms go off, etc, and if you want to maintain stealth you more or less must reload a save. Whereas the tranq gun will take down any character regardless, and do so 100% in stealth. A headshot will do so instantly. There are so many mechancis that specifically favor the stealth "no kill" character, this is just one of them and it annoyed me that the game definitely favors certain playstyles. You also gain more experience from being a stealth pacifist rather than any level of lethality. As each stealth and pacifist take down gives extra XP and bonuses at the end of sections for Ghost, etc also give even more XP that a "killer" character won't get.

Mechanically the way skills are driven in the modern games was a regression from the original.

While CP2077 had shallower gameplay when talking about something specific like stealth as there was just much less manipulation you can do, what it did do much better is utilize it's leveling system to give progression to skills that don't make the player feel like they're trying to "unlock another key" but rather feel like they're cohesively building a character in a certain type of playstyle. And then they made each of those playstyles viable.

It also didn't punish players for wanting to go in guns blazing. There is no limitation on ammo, no batteries preventing knockouts, or even a need for hacking.

CP really gave the sandbox that I think DX wishes it could've done. While certainly its game design focused all the way through, the segments that CP2077 also built for its story segments are equally if not more interesting. Phantom Liberty kind of pushed those nuances to the top of likely what they were going for the entire game, with Dogtown, the Meyers sequence, the Black Diamond Hotel sequence, etc. And the "dungeons" of CP2077, that is to say all other extended quests also similarly had more interesting sandboxes than most of DX:HR/MDs. Escaping Picus as an example feels like all you're doing is waiting and memorizing all enemy movements and trying to find out places to dump bodies if you're a stealth/no alarms/pacifist.

Anyway, I've played all of these games a lot. And despite all my critiques, DX:HR/MD gave me games in a big dry period in AAA gaming. And while I have tons of criticism I could lay at the feet of all of them, I certainly didn't want any of them to disappear. And not that it's a contest or a vote or anything because the games are really different, but overall as a package I think CP2077 is a better game. Definitely because of story, but also in the mechanics of its sandbox. DX just had too many things in it that felt contrived, and frankly its story never reached the dizzying heights of the original.

 

[M76]

I liked having the gameplay options. There was room for using different tactics and the game seldom forced any particular play style onto the player.

How can you misunderstand my meaning so bad? The problem is not the number of options, the more the merrier, the original DeusEx still has the most options for solving problems of any game I know.

The problem is making the options too obvious, requiring no thinking from the player, and making it seem like you are on a guided tour instead of immersed in a plausible virtual world.

That is true for most games though. Unless you want every door open-able, which would be a colossal waste of development time and end up with a bunch of pointless rooms which would waste player time games will always have certain inaccessible parts.

I mean do you go into every room when going somewhere in real life? Just because a door can be opened doesn't mean you have to go in, unless you want to, because you think you will find something of interest there.

This is the problem of expecting games to be designed as games, as in everything that is put in the game world must serve the main goal somehow. The game design version of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

This is where AI can be a great asset to build the world out beyond what is strictly necessary to achieve the goals in the game.

You call it a waste of time I call it full(er) immersion. But let's see if I can make you understand through an example. Take the conversation with Morpheus in the original DeusEx. Everyone loves that despite it serving no purpose, it does not give any useful information or help solve any quests, it's just a cool tidbit. Using AI it would be possible to have similar conversations with almost all NPCs in a game. Wouldn't that be revolutionary?

I suppose they didn't design the building with heavily augmented people in mind.

It's not about being augmented. It's about logic. They built a maze of buildings then drawn a straight alley through the middle and called it the secret route. IT makes zero sense, everyone would be taking that route IRL. A secret entrance should be hidden out of the way, needing effort to find and figure out, with dead ends and forks that lead to nowhere of consequence.

Hacking, turrets, augments used to jump high or break open a wall are all in universe reasons.

No, what I mean is putting a hackable turret to the exact location where you can make us of it, but not before or beyond that specific location. Or putting the only container you can jump on at the place where you need to climb up for some reason. These things eradicate any trace of immersion I could have had.

And for what reason? The design and quality of each action needs to be well done. How the game delivers the information is up to the developer and there is no right or wrong there.

For what reason? Are you trolling me now? So the player can feel like they actually achieved something and aren't just being led down a path by handholding. No right and wrong, it's about preference, and I really dislike games that take me on a guided tour and instantly slap my hand or force me back to the beaten path when I try to stray.

I call that time wasting. My time is valuable, and I don't want to play a game that is 50% empty and useless artwork. I find little value in running from point A to B. If I spent more time traveling or "exploring" emptiness than figuring out solutions for things that matter (like defeating enemies), then I consider that to be poor game design. With DE:HR you had options to mix different play styles, abilities and tactics. That is considerably more engaging than rolling the dice on 15 paths that take 5 minutes to walk through with no redeeming gameplay value.

So you want games that hold your hand all the way, with zero side content, exploration and world building? Because that is what it sounds like. The best time I have in Cyberpunk 2077 is exploring areas and locations that don't have anything to do with the main job. Finding hidden secrets references and connections is the best. Finding a back or unintended route into a location even if it takes 30 minutes feels much more rewarding than waltzing in the front door. The more of these options a game has the better I like it.

I like Cyberpunk, but I always considered the combat gameplay to be less developed and thought out compared to DE:HR or MD. The stealth was not very good, the hacking was not very good, and the other combat options were also lacking. It did give you some options but most areas were designed poorly and did not facilitate using many of the more interesting gameplay options. But that is the difference between a massive game with dozens of generic areas compared to a smaller game with fine tuned mechanics and maps crafted to make use of your available tools.

There are plenty of options in Cyberpunk to tackle problems, but since the game doesn't present each option to you with a bow and ribbon you might have assumed they didn't exist. This is why we can't have nice things, like seamless choice and actions having consequences in games. I don't know what do you mean by combat stealth and hacking being not very good. They are as good as in any other game, combat is better than most other games. I haven't played MD since it came out, so please elaborate why is stealth so much better in it?

Even the developers were not happy with it, and changed it three times. Some things got better, but I still consider it to be inferior to DE: HR/MD when it comes to utilizing interesting gameplay options.

There are always improvements to be made, nothing is perfect, but CP2077 always had far more depth than HR or MD. You were only scratching the surface if you believe otherwise. Heck, I still feel I'm only scratching the surface despite having played it for over 250 hours. And none of that time felt wasted. The only disappointment I have is that some areas are cut from the game, not built out like they intended originally.

 

[Flogger23m]

Mechanics wise, DX did offer better CQC and stealth mechanics than CP2077.

I agree there.

However they still aren't anywhere close to the gold standard of the MGS series, which did far more. MGS2 as an example has greater flexibility on what you can do than the DX series. Hold on walls, peak, hold people up, use lethal/non-lethal, grab, drag, throw, and hide bodies, etc. Traversal methods like just over railings and hanging on ledges, etc were all done much better in MGS. And by the time MGS5 came around... even in an open world neither DX or CP2077 got close to the amount of mechanics available to the player.

I only played MGS5 and found the stealth to be underwhelming. Most of what you listed, except less lethal, were not things that could be done in it. The interrogation mechanic was kind of a joke. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was a lot better, although it was designed purely as a stealth game. DE:HR could be played like that and the ship level gave me a sense of deja vu with Choas Theory. DE: HR had a lot of less lethal options, gas grenades, stun guns, etc. It also had corner take downs and through wall take downs that worked quite well.

You weren't building a character so much as trying to add keys to unlock problems. On subsequent play-throughs of course the player knows which tools are perhaps most useful. However that's the point, the player is just selecting the things based on the games demands of them, not because they are building a unique set of skills that the player is interested in.

I don't have a problem with that. You can choose your approach and choice of tools. The game drips them, but so do all games. Even the most basic of shooters used to gradually give you new weapons over the course of the story rather than give them all at once. The game also takes you back to places where you can use your new abilities to do different things the second go around.

Well that and the fact that stealth knock-out was tied to a battery system.


There are some other nitpicks I have too specifically regarding DX:HR, which I played to death. Eventually even doing a kill all characters, stealth play-through on highest difficulty. And even with a maxed out, silenced sniper rifle it was impossible to kill heavies with a single shot to the head. Meaning alarms go off, etc, and if you want to maintain stealth you more or less must reload a save. Whereas the tranq gun will take down any character regardless, and do so 100% in stealth. A headshot will do so instantly. There are so many mechancis that specifically favor the stealth "no kill" character, this is just one of them and it annoyed me that the game definitely favors certain playstyles. You also gain more experience from being a stealth pacifist rather than any level of lethality. As each stealth and pacifist take down gives extra XP and bonuses at the end of sections for Ghost, etc also give even more XP that a "killer" character won't get.

Certainly there were some quirks.

While CP2077 had shallower gameplay when talking about something specific like stealth as there was just much less manipulation you can do, what it did do much better is utilize it's leveling system to give progression to skills that don't make the player feel like they're trying to "unlock another key" but rather feel like they're cohesively building a character in a certain type of playstyle. And then they made each of those playstyles viable.

It just felt like unnecessary gating to me. The progression system was a bit slow, and you could build a character a bit more specialized but that isn't necessarily fun. The fun is doing the action, and not looking at an unlock screen. Too much 3.2% better, less gameplay altering upgrades.

CP really gave the sandbox that I think DX wishes it could've done.

I don't think every game should be a sandbox. DE: HR had more refined gameplay, and that is more important. Games that try everything tend to do nothing well.

They are quite different, but I do think DE: HR was the better game. Cyberpunk is still a good game in its own ways.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I don't have a problem with that. You can choose your approach and choice of tools. The game drips them, but so do all games. Even the most basic of shooters used to gradually give you new weapons over the course of the story rather than give them all at once. The game also takes you back to places where you can use your new abilities to do different things the second go around.

I think you misunderstand. What I’m describing is bad game design. You may as well of had no choice in DX:HR. The skills any player smart enough to know these kinds of games isn’t even basing their picks off of what they “want” but rather what the game forces you down.

It just felt like unnecessary gating to me. The progression system was a bit slow, and you could build a character a bit more specialized but that isn't necessarily fun. The fun is doing the action, and not looking at an unlock screen. Too much 3.2% better, less gameplay altering upgrades.

Again with describing the above, DX:HR was worse. There wasn’t a point to the skill trees or picking anything period. It was a “have to” rather than a “get to”.
In CP2077 it’s closer to a standard RPG, where as you progress through the game you get greater skills. Contrasted with DX:HR, your skills aren’t really even relevant.

I don't think every game should be a sandbox. DE: HR had more refined gameplay, and that is more important. Games that try everything tend to do nothing well.

I perhaps didn’t describe this well.

However the commonality that the two games share is that they’re supposed to be immersive sims. Immersive sim by definition are supposed to give you many different options for gameplay and how you’d like to solve a problem. And the best will as a result have emergent gameplay that occurs that perhaps even the devs didn’t think of. (Which is another reason why DX:HR’s method was worse, because it gates all of your tools).

That is what I’m referring to as the sandbox. It’s a “sandbox of tools”.

It’s in this regard that I’m referring to CP2077 having a better sandbox of tools despite DX:HR supporting specifically better stealth mechanics.

 

[Flogger23m]

The problem is making the options too obvious, requiring no thinking from the player, and making it seem like you are on a guided tour instead of immersed in a plausible virtual world.

Outside of a few vent placements I did not find DE:HR to be that way. If you feel that way about DE:HR, you can safely extend that complaint to around 90% of games.

I mean do you go into every room when going somewhere in real life? Just because a door can be opened doesn't mean you have to go in, unless you want to, because you think you will find something of interest there.

And those should be limited. An empty room of 3D artwork or NPCs with generic animations adds nothing to the experience. If anything it takes away from urgency and purpose.

This is the problem of expecting games to be designed as games, as in everything that is put in the game world must serve the main goal somehow.

The more focused, the better. If it serves no purpose, it has little point being in the game. If it adds to world building that is good, but having dozens of empty paths doesn't do that. That is more or less a roll of the dice on whether you will progress or spent 5 minutes running back and fourth. "Trial and error" exploration with nothing interesting to see is not exploration. Seldom does a game create something worth looking at. It takes a lot of time, thought and effort. The more random pathways you have the more empty 3D artwork you'll see.

This is where AI can be a great asset to build the world out beyond what is strictly necessary to achieve the goals in the game.

If it isn't worth seeing or doing, it isn't worth seeing or doing. I don't really need another 20-30 more fetch quests or generic NPCs with dialogue to skip through. It makes it harder to find the interesting and fun things to do.

You call it a waste of time I call it full(er) immersion.

Yes, I do consider that a waste of time. Quests that have nothing very interesting to see, do or useful dialogue are pointless. For example, I don't want to play a quest about fixing someone's leaking sink. I don't want to listen for 3-4 minutes about some NPC I don't care about giving me details about their leaking sink, and then walk over and hold E to fix it. Those types of quests were rife in games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and they added nothing useful to the story, gameplay, and there was nothing useful to learn about the world and nothing interesting to see.

But let's see if I can make you understand through an example. Take the conversation with Morpheus in the original DeusEx. Everyone loves that despite it serving no purpose, it does not give any useful information or help solve any quests, it's just a cool tidbit. Using AI it would be possible to have similar conversations with almost all NPCs in a game. Wouldn't that be revolutionary?

It would be revolutionary, but often not worth it. I'm sure the AI can make an amazing on the spot conversation about how someone's toaster died. But I find that as fascinating as listing to some random person on the street talking about how their toaster died. Conversations need to be worthwhile, and add something useful. It can be used to advance character personality (giving us a reason to care about them), or have relevance to the plot. Too much random toaster talk makes people forget the important details. In more uninteresting games with lots of useless dialogue I tend to start ignoring the parts when the plot itself advances because I become conditioned to wander my thoughts when an NPC talks. And that isn't a good thing.

It's not about being augmented. It's about logic. They built a maze of buildings then drawn a straight alley through the middle and called it the secret route. IT makes zero sense, everyone would be taking that route IRL. A secret entrance should be hidden out of the way, needing effort to find and figure out, with dead ends and forks that lead to nowhere of consequence.

Can you give an example? I recall there being "secret" dealers and whatnot, but the secret wasn't where to find them, but rather that they sold black market goods in the first place.

No, what I mean is putting a hackable turret to the exact location where you can make us of it, but not before or beyond that specific location.

Why would you make a turret hackable if it could serve no benefit? If they only appeared in places where they could be of no utility it would be pointless to make them hackable in the first place. I carried one around a building after hacking it and let it mow people down. I would even do things like lure them out of their rooms and into the line of fire. That gives me enough flexibility to use it, or not use it (avoid it, destroy it, or leave it).

Or putting the only container you can jump on at the place where you need to climb up for some reason. These things eradicate any trace of immersion I could have had.

That is basic traversal. For example games like Tomb Raider or Assassin's Creed mark the parts of a wall or building you can climb up. I'm not seeing the problem. Container, stairs, it is irrelevant.

So the player can feel like they actually achieved something and aren't just being led down a path by handholding.

That is an artificial sense achievement. Again, I don't consider time wasting "difficulty" or better. Generally games give you cues about what can work. Deciding what to do an executing the plan is the fun part. DE:HR gives you some options after quickly surveilling. If there is an electronic system, you may be able to hack it. If there are people, you can go in guns blazing or stick to corners and do quiet take downs. Or pick them off from a distance. Or break through a wall and go around.

You can add 12 pathways, but if one of them is an instant death because you walk into an unbeatable armored turret, that isn't fun or challenging. It is rolling the dice.

No right and wrong, it's about preference, and I really dislike games that take me on a guided tour and instantly slap my hand or force me back to the beaten path when I try to stray.

I agree, but DE:HR is not one of those games. I played it twice and used different tactics in the same missions. I had options and the game did not punish me for mixing different abilities or tactics.

What you're describing is something like the Call of Duty campaigns. Which kill you if you run too quickly, or don't do something exactly as intended.

So you want games that hold your hand all the way, with zero side content, exploration and world building?

I don't consider endless, empty pathways "world building". It has to be interesting and useful to build up the world. Randomized AI talk and fetch quests take away from the interesting things. Side content should be limited, and be side content and truly optional. It should not be the priority or most of the game time. If most of your game is side content, it means you did something wrong. It almost always means the developer could not figure out how to make a good story or gameplay.

The other problem with side content is most games require it for progression/leveling. Most open world games punish the player for not playing the side quests.

The best time I have in Cyberpunk 2077 is exploring areas and locations that don't have anything to do with the main job.

I always find the well crafted story, missions and detailed areas with a purpose more interesting than some random NPC banter or overpass graffiti. Thankfully Cyberpunk had some decent side quest and gig design.

Finding hidden secrets references and connections is the best. Finding a back or unintended route into a location even if it takes 30 minutes feels much more rewarding than waltzing in the front door. The more of these options a game has the better I like it.

Cyberpunk seldom had those. It did have good lore (TV, radio, advertisements, side gigs). But the amount of approaches you had were similar to DE:HR. The main difference is the execution tended to be more sloppy, due to the mechanics and character upgrading system. The last area I visited in Cyberpunk had the option of going upstairs, downstairs (made little difference when the enemies detect you), and you could either shoot/stab someone and use the cameras to view/hack damage people. That was it. Essentially, the same options of DE:HR. Just a bit less fun. No stealth take downs, no carrying a turret to a new location and luring in enemies, no ability to punch a hole through a wall to make a new route.

There are plenty of options in Cyberpunk to tackle problems, but since the game doesn't present each option to you with a bow and ribbon you might have assumed they didn't exist. This is why we can't have nice things, like seamless choice and actions having consequences in games.

It gave options, just like most games. They were just not as refined as the recent DE games.

I don't know what do you mean by combat stealth and hacking being not very good. They are as good as in any other game, combat is better than most other games.

I found it to be vastly inferior to DE:HR/MD Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. I would also put it below Dishonored.

I haven't played MD since it came out, so please elaborate why is stealth so much better in it?

Traversing, take downs, better weapon mechanics, better NPC hit points (Cyberpunk has a lot of bullet sponge enemies), better designed map flow. Exceptions of course, for the odd vent placement in some parts. Stealth in Cyberpunk was doable, just less fun and interesting.

There are always improvements to be made, nothing is perfect, but CP2077 always had far more depth than HR or MD.

I disagree. The gameplay is not as fine tuned. It is an open world game that tries to offer a bit of everything, and ends up doing an okay job at it. But the stealth and whatnot just don't live up to it. There isn't a whole lot of depth in Cyberpunk. Even the world building can't seem to decide if it wants to be cartoonish humor like Borderlands, or serious. And it does a poor job of taking similar concepts and building the game/story around them. It essentially boils down to "corpos are evil man".

It isn't like a linear CoD campaign, and it does give enough options to change it up. But great depth? Certainly not. It isn't much different than any other non-linear game I've played over the past decade or more.

You were only scratching the surface if you believe otherwise.

I've played it enough to come to my conclusions. I've done every quest, side quest, and side gig.

The only disappointment I have is that some areas are cut from the game, not built out like they intended originally.

Some is an understatement. A whole lot of interesting areas got cut. Entire portions of the map are unusable. Lots of purpose built and interesting areas that missions were supposed to be built around ended up being props. Which is too bad. Despite the main story being lackluster and the characters lame, Phantom Liberty was a good expansion and I would have liked to see what the casnio section of the map would have contained.

 

[M76]

Outside of a few vent placements I did not find DE:HR to be that way. If you feel that way about DE:HR, you can safely extend that complaint to around 90% of games.

That's no excuse, just because other games also do the bad thing doesn't make it less bad. But it is especially egregious in a game that is supposed to be an immersive sim.

And those should be limited. An empty room of 3D artwork or NPCs with generic animations adds nothing to the experience. If anything it takes away from urgency and purpose.

99% of NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 are generic characters, you need them to exist to populate the game world. I couldn't even imagine a game where all the NPCs are either quest givers or key to some quest.
And why shouldn't we make these 99% more realistic by using AI? You could even make them remember their prior encounters with the player, and react accordingly. The possibility of using AI for NPC interactions could be the biggest leap forward in game design since havok physics.

The more focused, the better. If it serves no purpose, it has little point being in the game. If it adds to world building that is good, but having dozens of empty paths doesn't do that.

The world being more realistic and traversable is world building, instead of only being able to reach your destination on one path chosen by the level designer, you would be able to take any route that makes logical sense. It's giving agency to the player instead of dumbly following a quest marker. I can already predict that you will say that you don't want to waste time finding your way. But then maybe, just maybe the immersive sim genre is not for you. There are plenty of linear hand holding "focused" games. I want more freedom, much more.

That is more or less a roll of the dice on whether you will progress or spent 5 minutes running back and fourth. "Trial and error" exploration with nothing interesting to see is not exploration.

Every exploration is trial and error, either you find something interesting or you don't. If you were guaranteed a reward for every room you go into then it isn't exploration anymore. It is a chore, there is no suspense, just a robotic repetitive task, to smash all the pots in all the rooms like in a Zelda game. Which is game design that has no place in a modern immersive RPG. When I explore in games like Starfield or CP2077, I don't need to find a carrot everywhere to make the exploration worth it. Merely finding some trivia or even just an area with cool architecture is a reward in of itself. Just yesterday I spent two hours taking the metro and walkways in CP2077, to find areas I never before seen, despite having finished the game with all side quests completed 3 times already.

Seldom does a game create something worth looking at. It takes a lot of time, thought and effort. The more random pathways you have the more empty 3D artwork you'll see.

The journey often matters more than the destination. It seems that you really want games to be nothing else but jumping from action bubble to action bubble, with nothing in between.

If it isn't worth seeing or doing, it isn't worth seeing or doing. I don't really need another 20-30 more fetch quests or generic NPCs with dialogue to skip through. It makes it harder to find the interesting and fun things to do.

IDK why is it so hard for some to ignore quests that they think is irrelevant. I always do that in my first playthrough of story driven games. I only do what feels relevant and I would do in the same situation IRL.

Yes, I do consider that a waste of time. Quests that have nothing very interesting to see, do or useful dialogue are pointless. For example, I don't want to play a quest about fixing someone's leaking sink. I don't want to listen for 3-4 minutes about some NPC I don't care about giving me details about their leaking sink, and then walk over and hold E to fix it. Those types of quests were rife in games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and they added nothing useful to the story, gameplay, and there was nothing useful to learn about the world and nothing interesting to see.

It would be revolutionary, but often not worth it. I'm sure the AI can make an amazing on the spot conversation about how someone's toaster died. But I find that as fascinating as listing to some random person on the street talking about how their toaster died. Conversations need to be worthwhile, and add something useful. It can be used to advance character personality (giving us a reason to care about them), or have relevance to the plot. Too much random toaster talk makes people forget the important details. In more uninteresting games with lots of useless dialogue I tend to start ignoring the parts when the plot itself advances because I become conditioned to wander my thoughts when an NPC talks. And that isn't a good thing.

So does this mean that you find the Morpheus or Lucius Debeers conversations completely worthless in DeusEx?

Can you give an example? I recall there being "secret" dealers and whatnot, but the secret wasn't where to find them, but rather that they sold black market goods in the first place.

In the main hub area you need to travel a lot back and forth between two locations, I don't remember what the two locations were. The point is that the main road takes many times more to traverse, than the "hidden" route which gives you a traversal XP bonus. And is an opening on a wall and an alley behind it that cuts off 90% of the distance.

Why would you make a turret hackable if it could serve no benefit? If they only appeared in places where they could be of no utility it would be pointless to make them hackable in the first place. I carried one around a building after hacking it and let it mow people down. I would even do things like lure them out of their rooms and into the line of fire. That gives me enough flexibility to use it, or not use it (avoid it, destroy it, or leave it).

So the one turret that you actually need to hack doesn't seem like it was put there specifically for you. This is game design 101. Or at least should be. It feels much more natural if you can hack several turrets to turn on enemies or turn them off, before it is necessary to do it to progress in the mission. If an ability is only usable once to progress the main story that is BS.

That is basic traversal. For example games like Tomb Raider or Assassin's Creed mark the parts of a wall or building you can climb up.

And I absolutely fucking hated that. Whether a rock face is traversable should be determined by nothing else but its geometry. If it looks climbable it should be. If it doesn't then it should not be. And not decided by an arbitrary marking. The Tomb Raider games take this to extremes, where even the distance Lara can jump alternates depending on the level design. Some jumps are 1.5 -2.0X longer than what you can normally make across in the game, but in those specific locations Lara will jump longer because the level designer decided that gap will be crossable. But the next time you try to jump a gap of similar size you won't make it halfway. It is horrible, turning the game into a bunch of trial and error scenarios, or as I like to call it "let's guess what the level designer was thinking" instead of just being able to read the environment and decide on a logical route.

I'm not seeing the problem. Container, stairs, it is irrelevant.

That is a problem, that you don't see that as overly convenient, that you always happen to find the thing you need just when and where you need it to be?

That is an artificial sense achievement. Again, I don't consider time wasting "difficulty" or better. Generally games give you cues about what can work. Deciding what to do an executing the plan is the fun part. DE:HR gives you some options after quickly surveilling. If there is an electronic system, you may be able to hack it. If there are people, you can go in guns blazing or stick to corners and do quiet take downs. Or pick them off from a distance. Or break through a wall and go around.

Everything should work that makes sense in that situation, not just what the level designer determined as the solution(s). This is what being an immersive sim is all about. The game only gives you tools and not pre-determined solutions.

You can add 12 pathways, but if one of them is an instant death because you walk into an unbeatable armored turret, that isn't fun or challenging. It is rolling the dice.

Nobody said anything about instant death. For example if a building has human sized vents they should go to multiple locations, not just convinently where you specifically need to go to complete your mission.

I agree, but DE:HR is not one of those games. I played it twice and used different tactics in the same missions. I had options and the game did not punish me for mixing different abilities or tactics.

No, I never said it was that type of game. DX:HR is on the other end of the spectrum, making the available options too obvious and on the nose.

What you're describing is something like the Call of Duty campaigns. Which kill you if you run too quickly, or don't do something exactly as intended.

Or even more so the Tomb Raider games.

I don't consider endless, empty pathways "world building". It has to be interesting and useful to build up the world. Randomized AI talk and fetch quests take away from the interesting things. Side content should be limited, and be side content and truly optional. It should not be the priority or most of the game time. If most of your game is side content, it means you did something wrong. It almost always means the developer could not figure out how to make a good story or gameplay.

Side content is always optional that's kind of the definition. I think you can never have enough good side content. I want so much side content that it never runs out, or at least not before I get bored with it and move on to do something else. You don't need AI to procedurally generate fetch quests, AI should be capable of much better than that.

The other problem with side content is most games require it for progression/leveling. Most open world games punish the player for not playing the side quests.

There should be a balance, if you can max out your level by only doing main story quests, that's not very good. either The more side content you do, the more power you should have in main missions, I think that is fair. Assassin's Creed odyssey is an example of how not to do it. As you virtually need to do all side content in it to match the level requirements for progressing.

I always find the well crafted story, missions and detailed areas with a purpose more interesting than some random NPC banter or overpass graffiti. Thankfully Cyberpunk had some decent side quest and gig design.

And I think within a few years AI will be able to create gigs similar to the dogtown gigs in Phantom Liberty.

Cyberpunk seldom had those. It did have good lore (TV, radio, advertisements, side gigs). But the amount of approaches you had were similar to DE:HR. The main difference is the execution tended to be more sloppy, due to the mechanics and character upgrading system. The last area I visited in Cyberpunk had the option of going upstairs, downstairs (made little difference when the enemies detect you), and you could either shoot/stab someone and use the cameras to view/hack damage people. That was it. Essentially, the same options of DE:HR. Just a bit less fun. No stealth take downs, no carrying a turret to a new location and luring in enemies, no ability to punch a hole through a wall to make a new route.

Most side gigs had multiple approaches, the main story missions were always more limited. This is exactly why I enjoy doing gigs in it more than just the main storyline. I would not enjoy the game that much if I had to do just the main story missions all the time.
IDK what do you mean by last area in CP2077? You definitely had stealth takedowns or the ability to control turrets, or turn against enemies, so I have no idea what do you mean that the only option is to shoot everyone or use quickhacks through cameras.

It gave options, just like most games. They were just not as refined as the recent DE games.

If by refined you mean not presented on a silver platter, then true. In CP2077 you are more on your own and stealth is often much more difficult than guns blazing, but this only makes it more rewarding when you are able to stealth through an entire mission.

I found it to be vastly inferior to DE:HR/MD Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. I would also put it below Dishonored.

How is it inferior? Is it too easy, too hard, or what?

Traversing, take downs, better weapon mechanics, better NPC hit points (Cyberpunk has a lot of bullet sponge enemies),

Outside of bosses I don't recall having bullet sponge enemies. Normal enemies die fairly quickly even on very hard. And if we are talking bullet sponge HR was so bad in that department that they even patched it to so bosses are less bullet sponge if I remember correctly.

I disagree. The gameplay is not as fine tuned. It is an open world game that tries to offer a bit of everything, and ends up doing an okay job at it. But the stealth and whatnot just don't live up to it. There isn't a whole lot of depth in Cyberpunk. Even the world building can't seem to decide if it wants to be cartoonish humor like Borderlands, or serious. And it does a poor job of taking similar concepts and building the game/story around them. It essentially boils down to "corpos are evil man".

Cartoonish? I've definitely never heard anyone say that about it before. If all you derived from CP2077 is that corpos are evil, then you wasn't paying much attention to the story or the lore, which doesn't exacttly surprises me based on this discussion so far. As it seems you want an interactive guided tour instead of an immersive open world.

It isn't like a linear CoD campaign, and it does give enough options to change it up. But great depth? Certainly not. It isn't much different than any other non-linear game I've played over the past decade or more.

Start listing the games then that offer a similar experience, with better or the same depth, because I must have missed them somehow.

I've played it enough to come to my conclusions. I've done every quest, side quest, and side gig.

So you scratched the surface

Some is an understatement. A whole lot of interesting areas got cut. Entire portions of the map are unusable. Lots of purpose built and interesting areas that missions were supposed to be built around ended up being props. Which is too bad.

Wait you were saying up until now that it is pointless to have areas built out if it is not part of the main story.So you shouldn't care that the Arasaka waterfront is inaccessible, or that megabuildings only have a few rooms implemented.

Despite the main story being lackluster and the characters lame, Phantom Liberty was a good expansion and I would have liked to see what the casnio section of the map would have contained.

I couldn't disagree more, the main story of Phantom Liberty is far more interesting than of the base game. My only complaint of it that it is too rushed. It needed more missions where you interact with the new characters.

 

[Flogger23m]

That's no excuse

Of course, but it was only in a few spots. They could have been designed better.

99% of NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 are generic characters, you need them to exist to populate the game world. I couldn't even imagine a game where all the NPCs are either quest givers or key to some quest.
And why shouldn't we make these 99% more realistic by using AI? You could even make them remember their prior encounters with the player, and react accordingly. The possibility of using AI for NPC interactions could be the biggest leap forward in game design since havok physics.

And that isn't really a problem. Small and short interactions are nice. Otherwise I am trying to do something in the game. Story/plot, main missions, or whatever gameplay element I am partaking in at the moment. As neat as auto generating generic conversations are most people will do it once or twice and then move onto something more interesting. For reoccurring conversations placement will still need to be logical and in a place a player expects it. Which means standardized placement. In which case, randomly generation conversations are kind of pointless.

The world being more realistic and traversable is world building, instead of only being able to reach your destination on one path chosen by the level designer, you would be able to take any route that makes logical sense.

You were referring to pathways with deliberate dead ends. That is what I am commenting on. I think going down a path that leads to emptiness is pointless. It doesn't add much world building. There would need to be something else there, like a unique object, player/NPC commentary, or something that catches someone's interest. Even if you have those interesting things present, why run down an otherwise pointless corridor? That is essentially just a time waster when the map can be designed in a better way.

Every exploration is trial and error, either you find something interesting or you don't.

Which is why exploration is often boring. Likewise for crafting. There needs to be something of use there, be it a conversation, something to see, or something that tells us more about the world. A repetitive and similarity created spot that has nothing of interest gets boring quickly.

The journey often matters more than the destination.

An excellent game needs to do both right. ME3 kind of fumbled the ending, but the journey has some of the best moments in the trilogy.

IDK why is it so hard for some to ignore quests that they think is irrelevant.

Leveling and difficulty scaling often requires side quests to be completed. Once the main story is done I loose almost all interest in side quests, because they are meaningless without some overarching goal.

So the one turret that you actually need to hack doesn't seem like it was put there specifically for you. This is game design 101. Or at least should be.

That is what I liked about it. And why I disagree that DE:HR was linear without different playing styles or approaches.

And I absolutely fucking hated that. Whether a rock face is traversable should be determined by nothing else but its geometry. If it looks climbable it should be. The Tomb Raider games take this to extremes, where even the distance Lara can jump alternates depending on the level design. Some jumps are 1.5 -2.0X longer than what you can normally make across in the game, but in those specific locations Lara will jump longer because the level designer decided that gap will be crossable. But the next time you try to jump a gap of similar size you won't make it halfway. It is horrible, turning the game into a bunch of trial and error scenarios, or as I like to call it "let's guess what the level designer was thinking" instead of just being able to read the environment and decide on a logical route.

I don't mind that. Makes it easy to tell what works and what doesn't. Because nothing is realistic nor sensible about the parkour in parkour games. You need some indication about what will work.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider had the issue with jumping. It wasn't too bad in the prior two. Shadow was outright confusing with jump distances. I often had no idea I could make a jump. This is well noted by most that played it.

That is a problem, that you don't see that as overly convenient, that you always happen to find the thing you need just when and where you need it to be?

It is like a stairs. Convenient. A game may replace a stairs with a container or other debris to climb over. It wasn't designed as a puzzle.

The game only gives you tools and not pre-determined solutions.

If you have tools, then those have pre-determined solutions. If an axe breaks walls, that is a pre-determined solution. You have a rope to climb over a wall, that is also a pre-determined solution.

Nobody said anything about instant death. For example if a building has human sized vents they should go to multiple locations, not just convinently where you specifically need to go to complete your mission.

Not always. It is noted that DE:HR had some bad vent placement/design.

No, I never said it was that type of game. DX:HR is on the other end of the spectrum, making the available options too obvious and on the nose.

Not much more so than most games. I don't have a problem, a game should be somewhat readable and you should be able to tell what tools or options you have. I recall you complained about Witcher 2 for its odd and hard to figure out concoction/potion system. The mechanic was hard to interpret what the developers wanted you to do.

Side content is always optional that's kind of the definition.

Most side content in modern games is similar to the relationship between a car and its tires. You can certainly drive a car without tires, but it isn't going to be a smooth experience.

I think you can never have enough good side content. I want so much side content that it never runs out, or at least not before I get bored with it and move on to do something else. You don't need AI to procedurally generate fetch quests, AI should be capable of much better than that.

The problem is repetition in the world, game, tasks and sense of meaning. Even if the side quests are decent they will go old eventually. That is why having well written and well designed side quests in limited number is better.

There should be a balance, if you can max out your level by only doing main story quests, that's not very good. either The more side content you do, the more power you should have in main missions

Also a reason why levels are often not very useful and hurt more games than they help.

Most side gigs had multiple approaches, the main story missions were always more limited. This is exactly why I enjoy doing gigs in it more than just the main storyline.

The side gigs in PL were quite good and more in line with proper side quests.

How is it inferior? Is it too easy, too hard, or what?

Less interesting take down options. Poorer NPC movement and less detailed reaction to distractions. Less interesting things to distract NPCs with. For example, in Chaos Theory you could make noise by turning on a TV. Or people would be distracted because they were watching said TV. A plausible, realistic activity that would distract someone. In Cyberpunk most people stood around with weapons in hand once you crossed into a hostile area. Stealth options and distractions were more generic, like the same camera systems found throughout the entire game. Less manipulation with the environment.

Outside of bosses I don't recall having bullet sponge enemies.

Most heavily augmented enemies are bullet sponges. Last enemies I killed in game were bullet sponges. Required dozens of rounds, multiple hacks, and some explosives to bring down. Then there are also Cyberpsychos. Some are okay and somewhat unique but most of them are just bullet sponges.

And if we are talking bullet sponge HR was so bad in that department that they even patched it to so bosses are less bullet sponge if I remember correctly.

The boss design in DE:HR was a weak point, but they did have some different abilities (for some of them) than regular NPCs.

Cartoonish? I've definitely never heard anyone say that about it before. If all you derived from CP2077 is that corpos are evil, then you wasn't paying much attention to the story or the lore

That is all it amounts to. It doesn't have much intelligent to say. It does not question how technology is changing people. It does not bother to explain why or how corporations became so powerful, and why people ignored commonsense. The commentary is very similar to that of The Outer Worlds. Very cartoonish and so outlandish. The difference is Cyberpunk has a less sarcastic tone overall, which makes it feel odd.

The cartoonish lore is very evident throughout the game. The begining of the game, when you exit your aparment throws it right in your face.

Start listing the games then that offer a similar experience, with better or the same depth, because I must have missed them somehow.

Most open world games I've played are quite similiar. Cyberpunk is more or less a GTA clone in a different setting.

So you scratched the surface

Hardly, I finished everything in the game. There is nothing else to see or do.

Wait you were saying up until now that it is pointless to have areas built out if it is not part of the main story.So you shouldn't care that the Arasaka waterfront is inaccessible, or that megabuildings only have a few rooms implemented.

There were obviously missions planned around them. A lot of it got cut, which is why the areas are not accessible. The whole casino section of the map got cut. It was speculated that was going to be for a DLC.

I couldn't disagree more, the main story of Phantom Liberty is far more interesting than of the base game. My only complaint of it that it is too rushed. It needed more missions where you interact with the new characters.

The characters were boring. They have too little time to know or care about them. PL did something that many games do, and that is fail to give the player a reason to care. Song So Mi is an excellent example. The game really forces you to try and care about her, when there is little reason to.

 

[Comixbooks]

Free on Epic tomorrow too bad about the sequel.

 

[Absalom]

Game's been out 7 years now and Eidos still hasn't fixed a major bug for me. I'm near the end stealthing with non-lethal takedowns at the convention center mission and the game softlocks if at any point I save and reload. I'd gitgud but I'm on the hardest difficulty and stealthing with the AI in the game is janky enough. Risking an hour of progress to RNG just isn't to my liking. Eidos knows about the bug but clearly doesn't care. So in my stubbornness, I never beat Mankind Divided. It's a shame too, because I've beaten Human Revolution twice doing maximum stealth and nonlethal takedowns.

I gave up on Eidos caring about this franchise long ago.

 

[TangledThornz]

Game's been out 7 years now and Eidos still hasn't fixed a major bug for me. I'm near the end stealthing with non-lethal takedowns at the convention center mission and the game softlocks if at any point I save and reload. I'd gitgud but I'm on the hardest difficulty and stealthing with the AI in the game is janky enough. Risking an hour of progress to RNG just isn't to my liking. Eidos knows about the bug but clearly doesn't care. So in my stubbornness, I never beat Mankind Divided. It's a shame too, because I've beaten Human Revolution twice doing maximum stealth and nonlethal takedowns.

I gave up on Eidos caring about this franchise long ago.

That sucks. Is your OS and hardware the same from 7 years ago? I've finished the game twice, last played in 2017, with no issues.

 

[Hershy]

That sucks. Is your OS and hardware the same from 7 years ago? I've finished the game twice, last played in 2017, with no issues.

You’ve finished the game twice… with no issues? I’m skeptical of that. No issues? You don’t have a drinking problem, your relationships are all perfect, you’re mentally stable at all times, your health is good? Really?