Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it happens this week! Options

[Critias]

Wait, you get XP for kills in Human Revolution? Lame.

I'm confused. If you don't expect to get XP for doing things (things like removing threats), what do you expect to get XP for?

[Tanegar]

In DX1, you got XP (well, skill points, but Call a Hit Point a Smeerp) for achieving objectives. Wanton violence got you nothing, which was an excellent design point, IMO. The game didn't care how you did your job as long as the job got done. Rewarding a particular playstyle over another (violently confrontational over stealthily non-confrontational, in this case) runs contrary to the spirit of Deus Ex.

[Wounded Ronin]

In DX1, you got XP (well, skill points, but Call a Hit Point a Smeerp) for achieving objectives. Wanton violence got you nothing, which was an excellent design point, IMO. The game didn't care how you did your job as long as the job got done. Rewarding a particular playstyle over another (violently confrontational over stealthily non-confrontational, in this case) runs contrary to the spirit of Deus Ex.

In the Shifter mod, the modder gave points both for kills, but also for stealth. If you finished a level and nobody knew you were there, you got a big point bonus at the end of the level.

Likewise in HR, my understanding is that if no one sees you on a particular level, you get a big EXP bonus for stealth.

[silva]

If you pass a mission without triggerring the alarm, youre called "Smooth Operator" and gains 250 XP.
If you pass a mission withou being seen, youre called "Ghost" and gains 500 XP.
I dont know the names and bonuses for more fighter-approaches, as Im following a more stealthy one.

And I dont see problem if the game rewards XP for all playing styles. It would be a problem if it rewarded some in detriment of others.

[Critias]

In DX1, you got XP (well, skill points, but Call a Hit Point a Smeerp) for achieving objectives. Wanton violence got you nothing, which was an excellent design point, IMO. The game didn't care how you did your job as long as the job got done. Rewarding a particular playstyle over another (violently confrontational over stealthily non-confrontational, in this case) runs contrary to the spirit of Deus Ex.

You get more XP for stealthy and non-confrontational than you do for violent. Does that still run contrary to the spirit of Deus Ex?

[Tanegar]

You get more XP for stealthy and non-confrontational than you do for violent. Does that still run contrary to the spirit of Deus Ex?

Yes. What response were you expecting?

[Critias]

Yes. What response were you expecting?

So you're outraged when you get some small modicum of XP for killing guys and outraged that you get some XP when you sneak past guys, instead. So...uhh...I dunno. When is it okay for people to earn XP? I feel like I'm just kind of missing something, here.

[Tanegar]

Possibly I did not make myself clear. In the first place, I am not outraged. Not having played the game (yet), I am not sufficiently invested in it to be outraged. I am annoyed.

In the second place, the fact that one gets XP from killing is not what annoys me. Nor is the fact that one gets XP from sneaking. What annoys me is the fact that one gets more XP for following one playstyle over another. As I said, DX didn't care how you achieved your objectives, only that you achieved them. The conclusion I am drawing from this thread (possibly incorrect, but I go by the information I am given) is that Human Revolution does care, that it promotes one playstyle over another.

In another game, this would not be a problem. When one plays Splinter Cell, for example, one goes in with the knowledge that one is expected to play the game a certain way, to make use of a particular body of technique. In Deus Ex, this was not the case. In Human Revolution, this is (apparently) the case. That is what annoys me. The designers have moved away, however incrementally, from the openness and choice of Deus Ex toward the, if not mandatory, then at least strongly-encouraged stealth of Splinter Cell.

[Critias]

Well, outright stating that a game "runs counter to the spirit" of the games that came before it sounds kind of outraged. It's just the interwebz, so maybe you're not, but it's a pretty harsh criticism to level.

At any rate, in case we've been unclear, it really is a pretty small chunk of XP, either way. You can go about gameplay however you want to (with the exception of boss fights, which tend to, of course, favor those who fight well). I think the mandatory combat of boss fights counterbalances pretty nicely against the miniscule XP gain for playing the rest of the game sneakily -- six of one, half dozen of the other, y'know?

[KarmaInferno]

I have actually found the bosses follow the line-of-sight rules the other NPCs have.

The second and third bosses, at least, get flummoxed by you hiding and keeping out of their sight. I just kept shooting rockets at the first boss so I dunno if he's the same way.

Hide, and scoot to another position so when the boss moves to look at the last place you were visible, you're not there. He or she will start looking around, snipe 'em when he's visible. Move again. Snipe. Move. Repeat.

It's a bit tricky since the second and third bosses hide as well, but I was able to sneak-shoot-sneak those fights successfully, rather than run-n-gun like I did the first boss.




-k

[Critias]

Right, you can still semi-sneaky fight 'em -- but you're thrown into mano-y-mano combat, like it or not, locked in a fairly enclosed space with them, and you're not allowed out until they're dead (two men enter, one man leaves!). You can't, I dunno, CASIE your way past them, or out-hack them, or something. There're different ways to fight them, but you're fighting them, period.

[Faraday]

Right, you can still semi-sneaky fight 'em -- but you're thrown into mano-y-mano combat, like it or not, locked in a fairly enclosed space with them, and you're not allowed out until they're dead (two men enter, one man leaves!). You can't, I dunno, CASIE your way past them, or out-hack them, or something. There're different ways to fight them, but you're fighting them, period.

Yeah, the boss fights rubbed me wrong. They weren't *bad* in and of themselves, but it wasn't Deus Ex. Also, the first boss you can be sneaky. I ran out of rockets and resorted to my silenced combat rifle, emp grenades, and overhanging explosive barrels.

When I would have problems finding the console for a turret I'd use the "time out" method. Pick it up and set it in a corner where it will do no harm.

[Stahlseele]

Technically, you don' get MORE XP, if you sneak . . because usually, you can, if you are good, land about 50 headshots . . which would net you more XP than doing the complete sneaky bastart thing . .
But the truth is usually somewhere in between, so you don't get more XP from fighting, because you still circumvent some opposition usually . . But you don't get the XP bonus for no killing or no being seen either.
Also, there is still XP from finding out stuff for your missions and you get XP for Hacking stuff. And usually more than you get for fighting too . .

[LurkerOutThere]

Best option exp wise is to do sneaky non lethal take downs, especially in melee. Nets you like 50 exp per guy and if you do it right you can still get smooth operator and even ghost if your really good at it. Between that and rank 5 hacking + max stealth i was running out of things I wanted to buy I was roping in so much exp.

[Seriously Mike]

It's a bit tricky since the second and third bosses hide as well, but I was able to sneak-shoot-sneak those fights successfully, rather than run-n-gun like I did the first boss.

The "seeing through walls" aug allows you to see cloaked opponents too. Made the fight with Namir a piece of cake, dumbass tried to nail me with a plasma gun through a wall while I was frying him with MAH LAZOR. However, after the first boss you should get the EMP Shielding (well, you can get it before it too, protects you from electrified water as well, making some quests way easier).

Best option exp wise is to do sneaky non lethal take downs, especially in melee. Nets you like 50 exp per guy

Headshotting them with the tranq rifle or stungun also nets you 50 XP a pop, you just have to stuff the sleepers in closets and dark corners.

[KarmaInferno]

It amused me to stuff sleepers in a big pileup inside air ducts, and imagine the confusion on them waking up.




-k

[Wounded Ronin]

So, after the second boss fight, suddenly it's raining ammo. They literally give you like 300 rounds of MG ammo all at once. I guess what I said before is wrong, at least after the second boss fight.

Second boss fight was way easy with jump mod and MG. Just Million Dollar Man jump away from kamikazee run, and unload MG a few times.

[LurkerOutThere]

For the second boss fight I had full upgraded armor and immunity to emp and flash so she would run up to do her attack and it wasn't nearly as dangerous to me as her submachine guns. HR is the only game i've played where boss fights got easier as I went along. The third fight was cake as I just typhood him twice and watched him fall down once I'd learned to dodge his shots. Total time elapsed not counting cutscenes: 4 seconds. Total consumables: One candy bards, two typoon ammo, one hypostim (that gun of his HURTS) plus a gas grenade i threw as the fight started.

But to quell your concern Tangegar experience in the bulk is still dolled out for completing objectives, but you earn bonuses just as in the first game for finding secret locations and and going about things in a sneaky way. For example the traveler bonus is given to you for going to your objectsives in roud about paths such as airducts, whhile pathfinder is given to you for finding straight up secret locations.

What they've added are you now get bonus experience for hacking devices (typically 10Xthe rating of the device if memory serves) capturing optional objectives in the hacking mini game (which can also reward you with credits or hacking game special abilities) and a bonus delivered for eliminating opponents. Now what I personally liked about Deus Ex is that they didn't dictate a course of action to you, and they still don't. If they hadn't put in a bonus for taking down guys, then the optimal way to play the game (albeit slow and in my opinion boring, because I hate purely stealth games) would be to sneak through the levels to the objectives, because the ghost and smooth operator benefits are fairly substantial.

What they have produced is a sort of informal morality filter, because non lethal takedowns pay out nearly double exp wise what lethal ones do. But I can understand this because one of the points in the main characters backstory is he is an ex-cop who was kicked off the force essentially for his refusal to shoot someone and the complications that arose from that.

Also one thing people seemed to forget about the first deus ex is it did have a few mandatory boss fights of it's own. If you didn't shoot Ana on the plane you HAD to fight her later. Similar to Gunther. Now both could be gotten around with some creative hacking/story choices that led you to having their kill phrase but other then that you had to kill them to advance the story. Walton Simons was a boss that to my knowledge was completely unavoidable and indeed gave me quite a bit of fits as he seemed to be too closely matched for me. Then I realized that once he stopped talking I could immediately hit him with a rocket launcher with the right ammo loaded and he'd spend the rest of the fight running from me semi cloaked. Hacking him down with a sword was very satisfying.

And that brings me to my one really sticking complaint with DE:HR even if I understand why they did it. There were several points where I really wanted to go lethal on the opposition, their despicable people doing despicable things who are unlikely to see justice outside of my ability to deliver it but it not only screws up an achievment but pays out less exp. I did it anyway because isn't that the point of a roleplaying game?

My only other complaint was there were times when i was getting killed way too much by guys with pistols, when having gone through the first game with max regenration and nothing that didn't put me down in two shots able to kill me kind of left me miffed, but that's why it's a prequel I guess.

[Tanegar]

If you didn't shoot Ana on the plane you HAD to fight her later. Similar to Gunther.

For a given value of "fight." If you knew their killphrases, those were real short fights.

[KarmaInferno]

A bit of hilarity: I got the "ghost" achievement on one mission despite me hacking a turret and repeatedly tossing it into rooms with bad guys, despite every alarm going off. Because they never actually saw ME, just a hostile turret suddenly landing in front of them.



-k

[Wounded Ronin]

So I just found out about picking up turrets. I think it's a little silly because it makes them a lot easier to deal with than if you can't. Not to mention it saves me a lot of ammo since now I don't have to shoot them all to death.

[Critias]

Some people say silly, some people say awesome.

[Rastus]

Walton Simons was a boss that to my knowledge was completely unavoidable and indeed gave me quite a bit of fits as he seemed to be too closely matched for me. Then I realized that once he stopped talking I could immediately hit him with a rocket launcher...

You'd think that in a videogame that allows you access to rocket launchers, that'd be the first answer to every 'boss' fight (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) . The GEP Gun always killed them all in one shot for me, maybe two if the game felt like being a bitch. Anna, Gunther, Simons; all of them went down. Fights basically boiled down to BEEPBEEPBEEP-BOOM! Pity that doesn't quite work as well in HR. Guess they don't make mech-aug cyborgs like they used to by the time 2052 rolls by.

And yeah, picking up hacked turrets is indeed awesome. Wonder how well that'd work on drones with fixed turrets in SR?

[LurkerOutThere]

Was anyone else pretty underwhelmed by the ending and then the secret after the credits scene? This is what I was afraid of with a prequel, ultimately your choices and actions had to line up with what happens in the first game. Thinking about it I kind of wish the whole final showdown had taken place at the statue of liberty or something.

[KarmaInferno]

It would have been epic if seeing the Statue of Liberty getting partially destroyed was part of the end-game. Would have tied it to the original game much nicer.

Hearing the original game theme at the very end was nifty.

[ Spoiler ]

It's possible Adam Jensen's story isn't done. The game doesn't really explore the details of his mysterious birth, for example, which is presumably the reason why he has perfect acceptance of his implants without need of neuropazine to maintain the bond. We know that his real parents were part of some genetics project, and they killed themselves trying to prevent the project from going forward, but beyond that, not much.

-k