Curious how the SCP is coming along!

[67405b67c752evoodoo47]

I have played rtUNN FM for a bit last week, and (as its gamesys still handles the hybrid shotguns the old way) I had a nice chance to reassure myself just how incredibly annoying the original mechanics is. I've given up on the extra slug after 5 minutes.

[67405b67c76dbJoin2]

50/50 chance unloaded or not for perfection of it (imo)

[67405b67c782dZylonBane]

When the SCP alpha is released I am having this thread locked and burned to the ground.

[67405b67c7af1Olfred]

Why not start now?

[67405b67c7c00ZylonBane]

[67405b67c7ce1Join2]

Oh dear, ZylonBane's antipsychotic medication has ran out again, everybody take cover!

[67405b67c806aKolya]

Can I pass my mod as SS2's official sequel then?

Yes, you could do that. But it wouldn't be a good idea because you would invite all these expectations and feelings of entitlement. There would probably be endless discussions about whether your mod really fit the bill, regardless of it's actual quality. And you would have no one to blame for this but yourself, because you raised these expectations.

[67405b67c8361xdiesp_]

And if you read again you'll notice that "we are LGS" or "official mod" is never stated nor implied.

That is not completely true. Shock Community Patch sounds bigger and more official than John's Rebalance Mod. And since this is going into the newbie guides for must-have mods, it's careless to add inventions. It wouldn't be the first time it happens, i.e. ADaoB 0.3 had EMP rifles that stunlocked robots: to me, it was a reason not to use them. But don't take this personally, I would tell the same to you and to George Lucas about handling original products.

[67405b67c845fTricky]

Don't handle another man's original products!

..in public. 

It is unseemly.

[67405b67c8599voodoo47]

only SHTUP is referred to as "must have" (but not in the mod guide), the rest are just "recommended". what goes into "recommended" is based (mostly) upon user feedback, but the ultimate decision is up to the shock.org crew, like it or not. same goes for SCP - it will be (highly) recommended, just like the 2.3 official patch, but that's about it, those who do not like the fixes and improvements can keep playing 2.3, and those which do not like 2.3 can keep playing 1.15 (preferably on a win98 machine with a voodoo3, for that's the only way that is not a heresy for some people).

the choice is always yours.

[67405b67c87b5Dizzy]

When the SCP alpha is released I am having this thread locked and burned to the ground.

If anyone is gonna burn MY thread to the ground... IT WILL BE ME


  *Links hentai featuring Shodan*          

[67405b67c90e0Drone-Dragon]

If you retouch the difficulty, then it's no longer a patch: it's John's Difficulty and Balance Mod. When the project was still known as Straylight's ADaoB, the name gave away that it was both a patch and his point of view. Imho now it sounds all official and objective, it should be modeled as such.

And really, are we still debating how unbalanced is SS2? It's a...

Drone-Dragon's note-*insert the rest of the text here*('bout as long as something I'd post )

Can I pass my mod as SS2's official sequel then?

edit
I'm just messing with you, I have no problems with you guy's work. But it's true that it's either an official patch with objective fixes, or a personal mod with custuomized changes. Neither of us is LGS.

Not to derail the line of thought you're trying to make, but as an example, there were some great community patches that fixed a lot of things in Fallout 1&2 that were included in the not too long ago released pack with the original games because said comm. patches were so well done. I understand you don't want to alienate newcomers to SS2, nor do you want the game to be frankensteined. Basically though, some things have to be changed to better balance the game overall, that the original developer never got around to doing. If another company took over for LGS and did a good job of balancing, would there be any agitation after the fact, even if there was concern beforehand? Of course everyone working on the SCP is putting certain changes to scale per difficulty, given what the SCP is suppose to accomplish. The bottom line is that while in the end we may have to gimp ourselves to make it harder, we really shouldn't have to, and the game should be an equitable challenge per difficulty base on its own. For me, SS2's difficulties have always felt like this...

Easy=you can't die unless you let the enemy kill you(should be easy not pointless, although that term used here is open for debate)

Normal=easy(should be normal)

Hard=normal(should be hard)

Impossible=hard(should be more of a challenge than what it is, it isn't really hard...I give you my word I am NOT trying to sound badass )

To be honest I think at least one of the main factors in this is the amount of health available to you overall. There should be more of a call to conserve health per difficulty requirement, just as you would ammo or psi hypos. This is the same reason I also mentioned the rad hypos, even though that one really isn't too big of a concern, it could still be addressed. Just sayin'.

*Links hentai featuring Shodan*          

LIES! WHERE IS THE LINK!!

Err, I mean...*whistle*

[67405b67c91e6ZylonBane]

You guys do realize that SS2 is generally considered to be a really freaking hard game, yes? It only seems easy now because we've had a decade to master it.

[67405b67c92cfvoodoo47]

yeah. but I also have to agree that the amount of hitpoints the player has on easy is ridiculous. guess it's not called "easy" for nothing.

[67405b67c9710Drone-Dragon]

You guys do realize that SS2 is generally considered to be a really freaking hard game, yes? It only seems easy now because we've had a decade to master it.

To be honest, I never found it to be "really freaking hard". Granted we didn't know what to expect back in the day when we first played it, but any game you play will of course lose a small amount of difficulty after the first run through, first run through on hardest difficulty, etc.

We still shouldn't be swimming in med hypos and med kits.

Even after knowing what to expect in a game, it should still present a challenge. This is part of what makes a game fun. If after playing through it and knowing it well enough you have no more real challenge it detracts from feeling the adversity in the story and the immersion of the game's universe. This is one of the reasons that the 'pure' adventure genre of games is basically dead now, at least from what I've seen(for example: Myst, The Longest Journey, Gabriel Knight, etc)even though there are still some here and there. Myst for instance, may be a beautiful game even today, and well loved for what it gave people, but honestly, would you play it even a handful of times over...even over the course of several months or even a year? Once you know all the puzzles it is just eye candy, for the most part, even though the story immersion might help keep you afloat in it a while, it would get boring rather quickly.

The great thing about games that keep their challenge factor and fun long after you have put them down, is that when you pick them back up again, they are still awesome.

The X-COM games(both the old series and new series) are a really good example of this, though I know the randomization factor helps a lot, the X-COM games are VERY replayable overall, and still challenging.

I was going to use Quake 1 as an example, but I cannot really vouch for it, since I've actually never played it. I've heard it is really difficult though, even after you know it by heart.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X I found to still be challenging even after you know it all. Sweepers...yeesh.

Basically, I'm not being, "I'm too l33t for this noob crap." Rather I'm trying to be more like, "Hmm, when did this game become like watching a movie instead of playing an interactive novel or interactive movie?"

Nothing else I can really think of at the moment, so I'll...

"Zylon, what are you doing in my...HUUURRK!"

*dies*

[67405b67c9b34ZylonBane]

To be honest, I never found it to be "really freaking hard".

Well then hooray for you being just so hardcore. Meanwhile, try typing "system shock 2 is" into the Google search box. The very first suggestion is "system shock 2 is too hard". You will find many, many discussion threads about how damn difficult SS2 is.

[67405b67c9e58Drone-Dragon]

Well then hooray for you being just so hardcore. Meanwhile, try typing "system shock 2 is" into the Google search box. The very first suggestion is "system shock 2 is too hard". You will find many, many discussion threads about how damn difficult SS2 is.

HOORAY! I attracted Zylon's wrath! (Zylon=Cylon? ) Actually, I basically said in my post I wasn't trying to be hardcore, it just isn't that hard unless you gimp yourself, due to all the health stuff everywhere. You just read that one sentence you didn't like, didn't you.

In this age of casual games, your point about those people who play said casual games typing this in Google a lot is.... Then again, I hope that they start playing more games like System Shock 2 and X-COM. Maybe the gaming industry will stop making their games too easy. As it stands, it is more profitable to sell to the 'casual' market.

Actually the first thing in the Google search box is 'system shock 2 iso' .

[67405b67c9f6fKolya]

There may be different things involved than just a lack of health hypos when people think it's too hard, like the upgrade system etc. It may be more complex than "hard".

[67405b67ca25fDrone-Dragon]

There may be different things involved than just a lack of health hypos when people think it's too hard, like the upgrade system etc. It may be more complex than "hard".

That may be true, I remember when I first started playing it, I tried to get everything . That didn't work out well. Also I seriously overestimated the usefulness of the repair skill and still to this day wonder why it just wasn't part of the maintenance skill(I think I wondered that back then, been a while, don't remember). But I digress...yeah, compared to most RPG style interfaces, even back then, the SS2 one could be intimidating.

I had to look over it a bit when I was first learning it, and I didn't even know what those already filled slots in the inventory were for, which was probably the easiest thing to figure out...when I finally figured out they were there to block space unless you got more strength, I had a herp derp moment.

[67405b67ca58cRocketMan]

I almost always play on "normal" and I still die quite a few times.  I also enjoy "normal" the most because the cost of upgrades permits me the right amount of flexibility that I'm looking for.  I know it kind of defeats the purpose but I don't seem to enjoy the game as much when I can't upgrade enough of the branches I want.

[67405b67cab2bDrone-Dragon]

I almost always play on "normal" and I still die quite a few times.  I also enjoy "normal" the most because the cost of upgrades permits me the right amount of flexibility that I'm looking for.  I know it kind of defeats the purpose but I don't seem to enjoy the game as much when I can't upgrade enough of the branches I want.

Pretty much that is a fear of not having all the stuff you want your 'hero character' to have in your mind. I've had that before too, it is a symptom of RPG's . You have to learn to let go of what you want the character to be sometimes, and just be what the character can be. Also, with restrictions of cyber-modules that harder difficulties place on you there is more incentive to play again with a different setup or build. It adds more to the fun of replayability. Also it is more satisfying to play the game on harder difficulties, as you feel you have accomplished more and 'beat the enemy'...or at least survived .

I have a possible solution to your conundrum. Play on hard or impossible as one character build. Then do the same with another character build. In your mind, say it is your 'hero character' that you are seeing fighting different enemies during those events during the game, with those different abilities, and you are seeing new aspects to the events, or something like that.

Example:

• Hacker with energy weapons and exotic weapons fighting rumblers on the Rickenbacker.
• Psionic using pyrokinesis during the same

The same 'hero character' but you're seeing 2 different things that happened during that same event. Something like that. There are things when thinking this way that may be hard to reconcile, but you can work something out. It even helps when playing different characters entirely on another game's playthrough(like an elf or orc or human, etc.), if you can work something out. Whenever I played games like Mass Effect or Legend of Dragoon, I'd pretend every party member was performing SOME role during an event, quest, mission, etc. even though you could only have a limited number in your squad for ME and battle for LoD.

As far as difficulty goes, I think if you worked on it you would enjoy harder difficulties more. My mother uses cheats when playing games mostly(singleplayer only), but the few games she has beaten without cheats she has felt great about it, and had fun .

Basically, most games should always have lesser difficulty for newcomers and casuals who want to mostly watch or have a hard time surviving until they improve, and greater difficulty for gamers who like to get the most out of the games challenges while still seeing all the stuff happening. That is why most games have different difficulties, but sadly the actual difficulty can be skewed quite often. Some games have normal difficulties that are too hard, and most games have hard difficulties that are too easy.

I could never play the hardest difficulty of the original Red Faction, even to this day. It's like the enemies all had psychic powers and could spawn right next to you or something . A masochist's dream.

Yes, anyone who says Red Faction 1's hardest difficulty was fun is a masochist, I'm calling it now.

[67405b67cac7fSalk]

Just don't choose the Easy level. End of problem.

[67405b67cb0c4ZylonBane]

Yes, anyone who says Red Faction 1's hardest difficulty was fun is a masochist, I'm calling it now.

Anyone who says Red Faction is fun on any difficulty level is a masochist.

[67405b67cb365Join2]

Anyone who says Red Faction is fun on any difficulty level is a masochist.

Noob. Beat it on hard no real problems on meh PS2    Tried it on the next difficulty up (hardest one) and got quite far, required a ton of quicksave abuse though, but when I got to ULTOR executive levels I gave up iirc. Was pretty damn hard and stressful. Hard was just about right in challenge level and didn't force you to spam quicksave every successful couple if kills with little health lost 
Impossible was for masochists, yes, but the other difficulties were standard for FPS so I'm not sure what you think it's ridiculously challenging.

Fun game, shame it's forgotten as far as the masses are concerned despite having mod tools released for it iirc.