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View Full Version : Thoughts on the skill tree



denyeverything
06-07-2010, 09:14 PM
Stealth
- It's kind of overpowered/underpowered. Overpowered in that enemies are pretty much defenseless when you're invisible, underpowered because it sucks against bosses.
- Awareness should give you Batman vision not these arrows.
- I think making it cooldown based is makes it sort of slow, i.e. you spend a lot of times waiting for the cooldown to refresh.
- Instead I think it would have been more interesting if it was a usable item. This way you are forced to use it more strategically since it won't just refresh in a couple of minutes. You need to decide when to use it and when not to, rather than just wait for the cooldown. Additionally, it opens up the possibility to have special modifiers for being seen and staying hidden, i.e. difference devices working on different enemies/areas and intel instructing you on how to remain hidden.
- I think there should be modifiers on gear that impact your visibility/sound beyond your armor. Rather than being some vague modifier (which to my estimation was rarely relevant), I'd rather just have it effect the duration. If you have stealth gear, then your invisibility duration is increased, if you have assault gear it's decreased.
- Boss fights should more adequately accommodate stealth gameplay. My thoughts on how to do this is to mix hacking mini-games with minor puzzle solving. An example could be luring a boss into an area in range of an auto turrent, then swiftly moving to it's control panel, and then turning it on to kill the boss. The hacking games should be ridiculously hard though, but also they must be hacked and can't be EMPed. You can buy intel to make these easier though.
- Since the gunplay challenge is removed, the challenge to stealthing through the game would be the great deal of money to buy equipment and intel and also intelligent decisions regarding relationships.

Pistol/SMG/Shotgun/Rifle
- Didn't use Pistol/SMG so don't really know about them.
- Shotgun, I thought it worked well enough. The critical ability was pretty useful though it felt unreliable.
- Rifle, I also thought worked well enough. However, it's activated ability was rubbish and should be something more useful. My idea would be to allow the rifle to go full-auto.
- I think weapon passives should give a lower general bonus to all weapons. My thinking is the fact that each weapon is fairly narrow. There really isn't a good all-around weapon, the closest would either be the pistol or the rifle. I can't speak for the pistol, but the burst fire on the rifles make it not that well-rounded enough though. Giving general bonuses to weapons allows players to adapt rather than trying to force a certain weapon to always fit their needs. Plus, I think there is a bit of room to where the guns could be improved without making it too easy.

Gadgets
- Radio Mimic is too cheap. Sort of makes alarms irrelevant. Should be comparable in price to an EMP.
- That said EMP's are slightly expensive. They should be costly, but not that costly. Maybe a hundred or so cheaper.
- Overload seemed like it wasn't that good of an ability.
- I would have liked to have seen a passive here that reduced damage to grenades, but in general I liked the passives here.
- Grenades and traps should have visible countdowns and radi.
- I'm not really sure the Steroids were ever useful.

Tech
- Overall, I thought this was a great tree. Not much to say. Brilliance is a great end-game skill.

Toughness
- Didn't place any in here, but it looked good.

Hand to Hand
- I kind of don't like the blocking thing. It makes it too random and less reliable. I'd change it so that non-boss enemies can only block X number of hits. Once you lay a hit down, it's pretty much just mashing the button. You level it up to increase the speed, and to increase number of hits in the combo to exceed their blocking limitations.
- I'd change Fury to be more adapted to boss fights. Fury last indefinitely now, the timer on it begins to run after it has been at least X seconds since the last time you attacked or were physically attacked. (PS3 controls) Additionally the L2 and R2 buttons now do sways left and right, Triangle adds a lock-on feature, and Square is a now a block. Boss fights now require learning patterns and reactions to beat down while in Fury mode.

TK-855
06-08-2010, 07:32 AM
Re: Stealth as Batman/Detective-Mode ...
There were players who complained DM was too overpowered and that there was a tendency to remain in DM almost constantly (a shame, since the game world had some beautiful textures & lighting).

I think Alpha Protocol's approach is good, but it's also hard to get a read on enemies coming up behind you because of the perspective/Thorton's position.


Re: Stealth as gadget-based ...
Not sure I'm understanding your suggestion here, something like a 'chameleon suit' that would bestow limited invisibility (like the Predator, perhaps)? Or situational-type stealth plug-ins, like a chameleon mode for visual/camera, a heat-suppressive mode for IR, etc.?


Re: Pistols/SMG/Shotgun/Rifles
At lower ranks, pistols appear to be ineffective outside of a close-range critical lock-on, then a silenced head shot works just fine. (Since my initial focus was stealth/martial arts, I never levelled up to Chain Shot.)

SMGs felt pretty much the same - you could chew through bullets and not do the damage you'd expect for a standard firearm for commando ops. Did not level up to Bullet Storm ... so the pattern is developing that if you aren't impressed with the basic weapon, you might not invest points in it.

Shotguns - didn't use at all.

Assault Rifle - finally switched to the Grizzly, happy with baseline performance except for the fixed burst fire (as opposed to 1-3-7 or single/full-auto modes). Player has to make sacrifices to carry sufficient ammo. Critical lock-on works nicely with rifles, used Focused Aim a couple of times (but it was against Brayko, so hard to judge its effectiveness against the average thug).

Re: Martial Arts
I think the issue with Fury is a balance thing; a longer duration would be nice in boss fights, but would make it ridiculously easy to mow through normal enemies. Perhaps something more like Bourne Identity's 'takedowns' to spice up fights, or just open up the movements with a light/heavy strike combo rather than a single-button strike.

Clumsyorchid
06-08-2010, 03:26 PM
Pistols are amazing if you take the time to level them up. Chain shot is highly useful for single or multi-target attacks. Best of all, there's a fantastic ability that allows you to line up and make critical hits from cover. The range is short, but it's perfect for quick kills / tranquilizers when you need a shot to hit without exposing yourself.

denyeverything
06-13-2010, 12:20 AM
Re: Stealth as Batman/Detective-Mode ...
There were players who complained DM was too overpowered and that there was a tendency to remain in DM almost constantly (a shame, since the game world had some beautiful textures & lighting).

I think Alpha Protocol's approach is good, but it's also hard to get a read on enemies coming up behind you because of the perspective/Thorton's position.


Re: Stealth as gadget-based ...
Not sure I'm understanding your suggestion here, something like a 'chameleon suit' that would bestow limited invisibility (like the Predator, perhaps)? Or situational-type stealth plug-ins, like a chameleon mode for visual/camera, a heat-suppressive mode for IR, etc.?


Re: Pistols/SMG/Shotgun/Rifles
At lower ranks, pistols appear to be ineffective outside of a close-range critical lock-on, then a silenced head shot works just fine. (Since my initial focus was stealth/martial arts, I never levelled up to Chain Shot.)

SMGs felt pretty much the same - you could chew through bullets and not do the damage you'd expect for a standard firearm for commando ops. Did not level up to Bullet Storm ... so the pattern is developing that if you aren't impressed with the basic weapon, you might not invest points in it.

Shotguns - didn't use at all.

Assault Rifle - finally switched to the Grizzly, happy with baseline performance except for the fixed burst fire (as opposed to 1-3-7 or single/full-auto modes). Player has to make sacrifices to carry sufficient ammo. Critical lock-on works nicely with rifles, used Focused Aim a couple of times (but it was against Brayko, so hard to judge its effectiveness against the average thug).

Re: Martial Arts
I think the issue with Fury is a balance thing; a longer duration would be nice in boss fights, but would make it ridiculously easy to mow through normal enemies. Perhaps something more like Bourne Identity's 'takedowns' to spice up fights, or just open up the movements with a light/heavy strike combo rather than a single-button strike.

And they might be right that DM was overpowered. My point is if you are going to do "something like DM" you might as well just go all out and do it. I don't see the point in these tiny arrows. You might as well just make it clear.

Something like that yes. More or less when you go ninja mode (forget the name of the skill), it is consuming an item rather than an ability on cooldown. This way stealth is more of an item maneagement thing then a cool down thing.

The way my suggestion would balance Fury is that there is a sorter duration between attacks. So basically, you attack in Fury and each attack re-sets the Fury timer. So if you are against a boss, it constantly is refreshing giving you a full Fury for the fight. However against mobs due to travel time between each enemy, the cooldown would be too short, i.e. the killing blow on an enemy bigs the Fury timer and you have that many seconds to melee another opponent before your Fury duration is over. This would improve it's usage against tightly packed mobs and bosses, but lessen it's strength against spaced out enemies.