GMDXv9.0 Release

[Made in China]

Random ideas:
Toggleable systems - such as stamina not recovering completely after swimming. An experience that is more customizable by the player is always a good thing, moreso when you have presets to select from if you are a player looking for simplicity.

Start of the game inventory randomization - while most of the items should remain as they are, JC could have a background, similar to rolling a history in DND. This may give him 20 credits, or a candy bar, or even a combat knife. The lower your difficulty is, the better you history could be - you could start with a medkit instead of a candy bar, or with 200 credits.

[Cybernetic pig]

Big news is imminent, so stay tuned!

Toggleable systems - such as stamina not recovering completely after swimming. An experience that is more customizable by the player is always a good thing, moreso when you have presets to select from if you are a player looking for simplicity.

Hardcore mode does that.

Start of the game inventory randomization - while most of the items should remain as they are, JC could have a background, similar to rolling a history in DND. This may give him 20 credits, or a candy bar, or even a combat knife. The lower your difficulty is, the better you history could be - you could start with a medkit instead of a candy bar, or with 200 credits.

Hmm. Well, history options demand substantial writing, and potentially conflict with the pre-defined backstory of JC. However, minor inventory differences based on what skills are chosen may be cool, although would not reward those that jump straight in the game without immediately assigning skill points. Still, I really like the idea and may look into it, although I'm not 100% confident in the idea as it may sway decisions on initial skill choices too much.

[medzernik]

Big news is imminent, so stay tuned!

Toggleable systems - such as stamina not recovering completely after swimming. An experience that is more customizable by the player is always a good thing, moreso when you have presets to select from if you are a player looking for simplicity.

Hardcore mode does that.

Start of the game inventory randomization - while most of the items should remain as they are, JC could have a background, similar to rolling a history in DND. This may give him 20 credits, or a candy bar, or even a combat knife. The lower your difficulty is, the better you history could be - you could start with a medkit instead of a candy bar, or with 200 credits.

Hmm. Well, history options demand substantial writing, and potentially conflict with the pre-defined backstory of JC. However, minor inventory differences based on what skills are chosen may be cool, although would not reward those that jump straight in the game without immediately assigning skill points. Still, I really like the idea and may look into it, although I'm not 100% confident in the idea as it may sway decisions on initial skill choices too much.

Waiting indeed! And fully excited too!

[Made in China]

Hmm. Well, history options demand substantial writing, and potentially conflict with the pre-defined backstory of JC. However, minor inventory differences based on what skills are chosen may be cool, although would not reward those that jump straight in the game without immediately assigning skill points. Still, I really like the idea and may look into it, although I'm not 100% confident in the idea as it may sway decisions on initial skill choices too much.

If going for bonuses for upgrading skills, here's my suggestion:
http://i.imgur.com/g0arcWu.jpg
Most of it is there to offset the issues with specializing early-on while still remaining true to the specialization. For instance, getting a health boost when specializing in athletics isn't true to the game, but it implies you are in peak form. It also means that you'll have more leeway to run away from enemies because you didn't put any points into any combat skills.

[Bogie]

I really like the idea of skills affecting what the player starts with. It makes more sense than randomized starting items, since the player has more control of there play style.

[RoSoDude]

Random starter items would either encourage rerolling until you get good stuff (pointlessly frustrating), or the items being relatively pointless in the first place.

Giving resources for initial skill investment is a kinda neat idea, but I think it'd be a mistake to give anything terribly valuable from the start. Ballistic Armor/Rebreather for Environmental or Thermoptic Camo for Stealth is pushing it, IMO. Same with GEP rockets for Heavy, as the GEP gun is already an insanely good starter choice. I think the best implementation would be to give small bonus stuff if you specialize heavily. It shouldn't strongly incentivize doing so, but help you out a bit if you really do want to max out athletics to start with, or whatever.

I also don't know if this is necessarily a positive addition overall, even if it sounds cool. Communicating it to the player, amidst the already somewhat overwhelming skill page at startup, is an issue.

[Made in China]

I agree with the random item argument - I've only considered it after playing some DND and rolling a history gave my character a bit more heart. It does take some pressure to make you enforce that history upon yourself, and so probably isn't a good thing for a singleplayer game with a short start-up time.

As said, the items are basically boosts to enable certain playstyles:
GEP and WP rockets are given because there are is no heavy ammo until Battery Park, and even that is a flamethrower. Meaning that if you put all of your points in heavy weapons, you are essentially good for maybe 2 confrontations - and giving more ammo essentially enables that playstyle.

Stealth pistol is an enabler for Gunther's line, and gives you the distinction between UNATCO equipment and NSF equipment. It isn't a straight upgrade, but rather offers the ability to have more options.

Assault rifle (maybe with a spare magazine?) is given because, again, players will mostly be gimped in Liberty Island. There's only one guy (IIRC) with a sawed-off there. Also, again, distinction between UNATCO and NSF.

Knife is a world building element, while 5xTK is giving the player the means to tackle issues from a range even with specialization in what's essentially melee.

Ballistic ammo / rebreather - this is possibly the most difficult case. In Liberty Island, you are given only the HEV suit, and you don't get anything other than that until Hell's Kitchen (IIRC). Meaning that you're basically helpless, and Environmental Training doesn't give you any assault options - only stealth and defense. Since the stealth boost goes to stealth for obvious reasons, I think that having both the ability to protect yourself and run away is important - rebreathers in GMDX also work as stamina refillers outside of water.

Most of the other stuff is already explained by the same decisions I've described here.
--

Communicating this with the player is important, but I dunno. You don't see the perks in the skill list and you won't know they existed until you opened up the skill menu - so maybe those issues can be sorted out together.

[RoSoDude]

I like your reasoning, but my concern with offering unique/valuable equipment like GEP ammo or wearables is that you don't actually need to spec into anything to use it. So you might feel incentivized to pick up advanced in Heavy just for the extra rocket and then just rely on base level melee takedowns. Same with getting Thermoptic Camo from the getgo. In my first playthroughs of DX I'd always go for a mix of utility skills (lockpick/electronics/computer) to start, and I never had any problem with stealth or combat despite not investing into any of those skills. Hell, I don't think I ever invested in them until maybe the very end.

Obviously GMDX Hardcore favors more investment into combat/stealth, but unless this feature would be exclusive to that mode (which would be odd, because it's actually a boon), it has to be designed around all difficulty modes. My worry is that such a feature would be abused by people who aren't just deciding "Okay, I'm heavy weapons guy, that's all I do", thus throwing off the balance of the early game and skill point system. I know because that's how I'd probably have used it.

I'm making a fuss but it's because I actually like your idea. I think the player fantasy aspect of thinking "Oh yeah, my JC would definitely have brought an extra lockpick" or whatever is super cool. Another idea is to have a few slots (say, three or four) of inventory space at startup that you can drag a few items into from a predefined list. But then you might ask why Paul has to outfit the player with something at the start... and also why JC maintains that all he's got is a pistol and an electric prod if you can get an assault rifle or knives.

This is why I'd advocate for keeping it small. A packet of soy food here, a few extra credits there, and maybe some spare shotgun shells. But even then I'm not sure if it serves a purpose.

[Made in China]

The way I see it skills are a commodity as well - they aren't just means to get more items. If you're specializing in Heavy Weapons instead of Rifles just for the items you'll suffer for it - as your gameplay style doesn't enforce that. It matters mostly early on as skill points are more scarce then.
Of course, the more skillful the player actually is, their avatar doesn't need to have buffs - if you can stealth perfectly well without the skill investment, it might seem useless. This is true even in vanilla (the better you are at exploring, the more lockpicks/keys you have - the less value a single lockpick has), and having a clear item tradeoff doesn't really change that.

Customizing JC's inventory freely from the get-go raises the exact same issue you've described - players hoarding valuable items with no relation to their playstyle.

And having it as little-touches is cool, I guess - but ultimately, it will either go unnoticed or be noticed by mostly hardcore fans who don't see the need in changing it, as it's a very small change to vanilla behavior that's ultimately artistic expression rather than a fix or an improvement.

In any case, that's why I also support modular features - gameplay should be customizable, and while adding more character and generally adding more variety to Liberty Island with bigger character variety is a plus in my opinion, it might not be the way others see it.

[Shadowdancerxxl]

Good to see I'm not the only one who thinks that the start of the game is kina unbalanced for certain player types. I mentioned this to CyberP in the past and he definitely made some changes like Paul giving you more ammo to the crossbow or having 4 npcs with shotguns and extra ammo in the comm building, but it could definitely be taken to a new level.

I like your idea of the player getting inventory based on his starting skillpoints, but then the game should demand the player to spend a certain amount of skill points before starting the game. Like if you click on Start game it should say "You need to spend at least 4000 skill points before starting the game" or something like that. Of course the starting trained pistol skill should be reverted and those skillpoints given back, because I'd like to fully decide on which skills I want to invest my points.
Personally I wouldn't mind this because for example Fallout New Vegas did this too. I had to pick 3 tag skills, traits and so on, but it didn't feel forced or that I've been robbed from some kind of game experience or anything.

Giving the player plus starting equipment from the start would kinda contradict JC's comment about his inventory, even though it would make more sense for a super augmented agent to carry a decent equipment from the get go, but reading your suggestion brought me to an idea:
So basically instead of putting the skill-relevant equipment into your inventory right away they could appear on the first map scattered around. There are a lot of dead bodies on the map for example so based on your chosen skills their inventory would change to give you equipment that fits your build. Like if you go for rifles only than dead bodies could have rifle ammo on them or maybe even weapons such as an assault rifle or a shotgun. I would even go as far to give a flamethrower with ammo to one of the bodies, because I really feel like going for heavy weapons from the start you're really handicapping yourself and are forced to use other means to complete the first mission because there's simply nothing to work with.

[Cybernetic pig]

Giving the player plus starting equipment from the start would kinda contradict JC's comment about his inventory

...oh yeah. well that's that then.

I was thinking of just giving the player a list of inconsequential items to pick one from, just because choices are fun and I wasn't too keen on inventory choices influencing skills and the balancing of it all, but JC's dialogue wins. Although it doesn't mention the medkit you start with either, but still. Furthermore testing is about to begin, so any new stuff henceforth should be very minor.

[Made in China]

/r/ThereWasAnAttempt

Edit: GMDX site - There's a new banner now! Unfortunately in mobile view it reveals that it's just overlaid on top of the old one, because they both still appear.
Good job on merging the news and home pages!

[Salk]

I do not like the idea of forcing the player to invest a single point in skills at the beginning of the game anyway.

[Cybernetic pig]

Deus Ex's control layout was just plain weird or was designed by old school keyboard-only warriors. You had WASD and then bunged right next to it was look up/down etc assigned to Z and other surrounding keys. I cannot comprehend the logic there, but since keyboard-only days are long gone I've made some changes:

Note: everything not in this list is vanilla default

X=Crouch Toggle (now toggle by default as opposed to hold)
R=Reload (Was look up)
F=Secondary Weapon (Was Center Screen)
C=Change Ammo Type (was look Right)
V=Unassigned/None (Was Look Down)
Z=Toggle Scope (Was Look Left)
\=Toggle Laser (Was None)

Default bindings of some of these functions also remain. e.g reload is still semicolon (as well as R).

So as you can see, keyboard looking is no more in favor of all actually useful functions centered around the WASD area. I doubt anyone will have any issue with these changes except keyboard-lookers, which should be of lesser priority and they can reassign the keys if they insist on their old archaic ways.

However...

Toggle walk/run is now unassigned (Was Caps Lock).
Caps lock is now 'Show Inventory Screen'.
Reasoning: toggle run/walk does nothing but piss me off in every game, as accidentally pressing it puts you in the walking state which can be consequential often. It still has use to toggle the two states but I find it gets in my way more than anything as generally 99% of the game you want to be running. Shift key remains if people want to walk/change movement state (On hold), as does the settings option "always run true/false", or worst comes to worst people can reassign the key.

I'm aware everyone has their preferences, but try to keep in mind when giving feedback on this that the idea is to make the layout as general as possible when applied to everyone. WASD to move is standard, for instance, and changing that is a big no-go. Thus, everything of vital importance should be centered around the WASD area within wrist's reach and take priority over things that are less important, like 'take screenshot' or 'toggle walk/run'.

So, let's find a happy medium on default keybinds.

[RoSoDude]

...

Having functional default keybinds is an obvious positive move. I wonder if the toggle laser button could be assigned to something closer (you said 'V' is currently unused), because it ends up being pretty important for those weapons its applied to. I use 'ALT' personally, and the old bind for that is a strafe key (???).

Was going to argue against removing toggled walk/run but you reminded me that 'SHIFT' is hold to walk/run by default, so there's not much loss there. There have only been a few games ever where I have consistently used a toggled walk.

Not that I'll use these binds anyway haha.