BioMod - A new gameplay mod building on Shifter

[Jonas]

And in general, where there's water, there's a rebreather somewhere close by, kind of rendering the swimming skill redundant.

[DDL]

SWIMMING SPEEEEEED

...which is why augAqualung (by comparison) really, really is utterly stupid.

(but granted, you have a good point)

[Jaedar]

I never have room in my inventory for a rebreather, so I like the swimming skill

[Lork]

And therein lies the reason why I have to be careful about removing stuff from the game. No matter how worthless you think something is, there's always somebody who can find a use for it.

I'm thinking of turning swimming into a more general athletics skill and tying it into my mantling system. That should give everybody a reason to consider putting points into it.

As for the pickpocketing thing, it's not going to be a flat chance of failure. It'll be more like a "suspicion level" on each NPC that accumulates as you pickpocket them, and slowly decreases over time. The first time would always be successful, and you'd have to be extremely unlucky to get caught the second time, but any tries after that would put you more and more at risk unless you waited a while for their suspicion to go down.

[Babeuf97]

Sounds interesting...will you be implementing fist skill into your mod?

[Hassat Hunter]

Also in laguardia, also paris catacombs, also sub base, also A51....there are quite a few places where swimming is useful, but nowhere it's essential. It's just ...less generally useful than the other skills.

How about Hong Kong?

The points you spend on swimming get recouperated by all the bonus skill points you get by swimming to such locations.
The skill I think personally is useless is Environmental Training. I rarely got space to carry those items around, so why spend skillpoints improving them?

[ggrotz]

And therein lies the reason why I have to be careful about removing stuff from the game. No matter how worthless you think something is, there's always somebody who can find a use for it.

The skill I think personally is useless is Environmental Training. I rarely got space to carry those items around, so why spend skillpoints improving them?

Case in point. One of the things I always enjoyed about Deus Ex is that it is obvious that they spent a lot of effort in seeking balance when it comes to the skill points, augs, powerups, and weapons with the goal of playing the game in about any way you want (or in other words, the game doesn't make it impossible or penalize you to play a certain way). Unfortunately, this hasn't carried over to any of the DX mods, which all require a specific methodology to play.

From what I can tell on people describing their perceptions of said skill points, powerups, and weapons, their personal playing preferences always enter into things. This tends to even enter into the work of the mod developers. I can look at every mod I've played and see the general play style of the developers come out, sometimes in a very detailed way. To point to what Hassat Hunter writes, this is one of the reflections I get of TNM. There are so few "environmental skills" items (less than 10 if I had to guess, and 5-7 of them being gas masks which have limited use anyway given other options) that exist in TNM that the skill is useless - again I am sure this reflects the preferences of the developers more than it does anything else (though I should say an artificial skills requirement for using the gas masks is enforced).

A good rule for DX is that not everyone plays the same way as you do, and the same person may not even play the same way each time - and it's always good to stretch things. This is why I always suggested "stip" games with DX on the PDX board - not just as a stump challenge, but to stretch the player to try and learn the game outside one specific way of doing things. DX plays a number of ways depending on your choices, and certain things become more or less valuable in that regard. In that way, environmental skills are supremely valuable. I've also found items I thought to be useless to be very useful in doing things like this.

It does pay to not be prejudiced when it comes to items. I find it better for DX if one learns how to use the items instead of think that they would be useless - especially when it comes to a patching effort and the opportunity to rip these things out.

[ggrotz]

Seeing this topic made me think of an old screen shot I made at the end of a low-tech run of DX - thought it might be fun for some to see here (and illustrate the point of my last post)

[Angel-A]

Merge swimming with enviromental training? They are both equal in uselessness.

Swimming, I upgrade for the speed; enviro, I never use it. Ever.

[DDL]

Actually, TNM is packed full of enviro-related items, mostly because they were one of the few things Jonas and co. could hide in "stupid hidden spots hardly anyone ever finds" with relative impunity, as they have little impact on game balance. "Oh look I have five pairs of tech goggles" is not really going to alter your playthrough massively, whereas "Oh look I have five accuracy mods" is quite a bit more significant. Using charged pickups means you at least feel rewarded with something for exploration, without penalizing people who don't give a fuck about crate stacking or whatever.

However, as with almost everything in DX, whether you choose to use them or not is entirely up to you. As I've mentioned before, with full enviro skill, ballistic armour becomes GODLY. Combine that with augBallistic and you're near enough using godmode (until some flamethrower-wielding cocksucker turns up, at least).

Often I find I have enough skillpoints to boost the two main weaponskills I might care about for a given playthrough, a bit in lockpick and electronics, computers for fucking SURE, and am left with not enough for a decent investment in another weapon or a higher level of lock/electro, but probably enough for some enviro (it's piss cheap).

And when I actually remember to use ballistic armour, it's fucking ace.

[ggrotz]

Actually, TNM is packed full of enviro-related items, mostly because they were one of the few things Jonas and co. could hide in "stupid hidden spots hardly anyone ever finds" with relative impunity...

Ok so they're all in places you have to ghost to get to?

as they have little impact on game balance.

"Oh look I have five pairs of tech goggles" is not really going to alter your playthrough massively, whereas "Oh look I have five accuracy mods" is quite a bit more significant.

Now actually I disagree with that. I would say the accuracy mods are marginal, but the environmental pickups do have considerable value when used in the right spots, especially if you're looking to do things a bit differently. As you can see in the inventory loadout I posted, what is there in quantity is directly proportionate to the value I found in using it. "I have five ballistic armours" is incredibly significant compared to "I have five tech googles", especially if you know when to use them.

As I've mentioned before, with full enviro skill, ballistic armour becomes GODLY.

Near god mode, actually. What distinguishes the enviro skill objects from the augs (as you well know) is that there are little bonuses for using them compared to the augs. Like with the ballistic armour, it's useful against explosions while the ballistic aug is not - in fact it's the only way to survive (well anyway) blowing up a milbot with a DTS. Though it still doesn't help you if you're point blank on a LAM or GEP round. (The description of the hazmat suit I think indicated the bonus there, as it stands in DX, there's negligible benefit of the hazmat over the enviro aug).

[Jonas]

Ok so they're all in places you have to ghost to get to?

No. You don't have to ghost anywhere. In fact doing so often breaks the game, so rewarding it would be a really bad move.

As you can see in the inventory loadout I posted, what is there in quantity is directly proportionate to the value I found in using it. "I have five ballistic armours" is incredibly significant compared to "I have five tech googles", especially if you know when to use them.

Yeah but look at how much damn inventory space you're spending on that. Do you really think a couple of ballistic armours would be more useful in general than a GEP gun?

[Jaedar]

Yeah but look at how much damn inventory space you're spending on that. Do you really think a couple of ballistic armours would be more useful in general than a GEP gun?

Maybe its about Roleplaying rather than usefulness?

[ggrotz]

Yeah but look at how much damn inventory space you're spending on that. Do you really think a couple of ballistic armours would be more useful in general than a GEP gun?

Is a GEP gun a low-tech weapon?

Maybe its about Roleplaying rather than usefulness?

Indeed. Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, which was the point of the post before the picture (and what the picture was posted to illustrate).

[Jonas]

I'm sorry I assumed we'd moved on to discuss the general usefulness of various items compared to charged pickups, I didn't realise we were still talking about your self-imposed play style limitations.