Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[Alfons]

If you're missing, there shouldn't be any animation - unless you're Neo, you can't dodge bullets.

You are missing the context.

visuals and animations (and often, voice acting) these days don't leave much at all to the imagination...

And by doing so they're moving towards realism. When you look for games with such characteristics, you're looking for realism in video games.

Not addressing me but since it started with my post I'll reply. Roguey was talking about statistics,how gunfights play out in real life.I said that I don't care.

The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive or inversely proportional. A game can leave little to the imagination while simultaneously being completely unrealistic.

So you did understand.

 

[Roguey]

SRR is actually far more lenient than real life though.

Also gonna lol some more about how Blaine thinks enemy munchkins who put most of their points into quickness/range/dodge are "cheating" but his crew and possibly his PC are neglecting those stats and paying the penalty.

You're only a trained commando or a sniper if you spec yourself that way.

 

[Alfons]

SRR is actually far more lenient than real life though.

Also gonna lol some more about how Blaine thinks enemy munchkins who put most of their points into quickness/range/dodge are "cheating" but his crew and possibly his PC are neglecting those stats and paying the penalty.

You're only a trained commando or a sniper if you spec yourself that way.

I have 6 or 7 points in quickness and ranged combat and I have about a 60% chance of hitting an orc who is standing in the open about 20 meters away

 

[Blaine]

I was accurate, to some extent. They actually decreased their quickness/dodge while increasing their body by 1 point.

In Roguey's world, "wrong" now means "accurate." Fascinating.

ITT I find out that Blaine doesn't value strategic considerations very much. Next he'll be a proponent for health regenerating to max after every battle; after all, who needs attrition?

This is a complete non sequitur, or perhaps a bizarre series of blundering assumptions, and I'm not sure where you're getting any of it from. Again, the difference between Hard and Very Hard is more tedious whiffing and fewer medkits left at the end of most missions... but the vast majority (and in most cases, all) of those medkits regenerate for free on Glory et al. as soon as the mission is over. I didn't even come close to running out of medkits on Hard, sometimes not using any. I still have quite few left at the end of Very Hard missions, plenty of spare Nuyen as well, and extra kits picked up in-mission in the stash.

The net result is that there's no practical difference in strategic considerations, either. The only practical difference is an obnoxious and unnecessarily long whiff-fest.

I'm all-ears.

Certainly. Give enemies in tough fights comparable or even somewhat superior stats, skills, and gear compared to the Shadowrunners (they often have comparable armor and weapons as-is, plus unlimited grenades et al.), slightly superior numbers (they often get this, too), and don't cheat hit rates for either side. That's all.

With proper encounter and resource design, the shadowrunners would then win based on proper tactical decisions, coupled with clever use of environment/plot devices, or even running away when necessary (this is something people might overlook, and can be done outside Billy's lab for example).

If you have accuracy rates for soldiers in combat, please share them with me.

It's safe to say that snipers and commandos have better "accuracy rates" than the average police officer, no sources required.

 

[Alfons]

It's safe to say that snipers and commandos have better "accuracy rates" than the average police officer, no sources required.

Snipers and commandos never have the same situations as cops.The comparison is flawed.

 

[Lujo]

bMeh, game out and we're debating what's basicaly tastes and expectations.

DC is severely underwhelming so far, tbh. The doctors mission is nice, wacky and all that, but starts out kinda lame and turns out appropriately weird and looks like a fun old school sci-fi story back when genres weren't so defined.

Blitzes mission is better - also starts out kinda mehy, but turns out to be quite fine.

Eiger's story is incredibly dissapointing, so underdone and slapped on that it's sorta criminal. And it's a shame too, because all it really lacks is proper buildup - if they actually tied in a bunch of otherwise useless characters and side missions into it (like simmy, the gang who steals your gear could've traded you info) and if Eiger didn't just blurt out that there's this random guy shes mad at... And then when she gets the gun and it turns out it's a completely mechanical choice to shore up her defficencies... I actually like the idea of ending up viciously interrogating a complete creep with Eiger along, but it's a very badly made mission.

Oh, the Lodge mission is actually kinda cool and interesting, and there's actual dialogue and more than one or two characters, and the location isn't an abandoned X and stuff.

What else? I've still got Glory's mission to see, and all in all it's certainly an inprovement over regular dragonfall in many ways, but there's a crapload of mission related bugs, crapload of holes to fill, crapload of underutilized space (the dialogues seem a bit better overall though, even though I'm not sure how much work they've done on them - it might be that the dramatic parts are just better spread out), Glory and Blitz come to the forefront, but...

It's still quite a bit of an dilletante effort and a team of experienced profesionals could easily see that there's room for about as much added content before you could really call it a well rounded classic status-worthy game. It has the potential for it, though, but right now it still feels like a later beta of a really good RPG than somethign I'd release with a straight face.


The missions actually aren't what I was expecting they'd be at all - they don't resolve anything and most ofthem feel more like character upgrade fishing setups + buildup to an actuall mission than what's advertized. The search for Blitzes girlfriend could've been a mission, for example, would actually make a great mission. While his mission is a cool little side story, it feels like a complete asspull. Eiger's story IS a complete asspull.


And also - the game had much more of a German vibe before, it's kinda lost on me in the new content which is a shame because it was a big part of what was making stuff feel exotic.

 

[Alfons]

I saw that the combat is even more tedious than before so I played for about an hour and dropped it.

 

[Blaine]

Snipers and commandos never have the same situations as cops.The comparison is flawed.

They certainly spend far more time in weapons training and also in ground and urban combat training simulations, the sort with mockup buildings and rubber bullets.

This is comparable to SWAT team training, but obviously not to regular beat cops. Incidentally, corporate security is comparable to SWAT teams, while shadowrunners are comparable to mercenary commandos. That is in fact exactly what they are, just with fantasy RPG names instead.

Also gonna lol some more about how Blaine thinks enemy munchkins who put most of their points into quickness/range/dodge are "cheating" but his crew and possibly his PC are neglecting those stats and paying the penalty.

Penalties paid for something the player has next to no control over are a hallmark of unfair and badly-implemented difficulty, as opposed to hard but fair difficulty.

Besides which, if min-maxing is a necessity for harder difficulty levels, there's no shame in not min-maxing and choosing a lower difficulty level instead. That comes down to personal preference, not "skill." It doesn't take a genius to min-max in this game.

 

[Alfons]

They certainly spend far more time in weapons training and also in ground and urban combat training simulations, the sort with mockup buildings and rubber bullets.

They certainly do.They are also more alert because of the environment they operate in and they can fire more freely because of their SOP.Cops probably need to be alert,they probably aren't and they need to worry much more about the civilians around the scene.I have no doubt most soldiers can get more consistent hits on target than most cops but the comparison is unfair since they don't have the same restriction as cops.If placed in the same situation their results might be the same or worse.

This is comparable to SWAT team training, but obviously not to regular beat cops. Incidentally, corporate security is comparable to SWAT teams, while shadowrunners are comparable to mercenary commandos. That is in fact exactly what they are, just with fantasy RPG names instead.

I don't know what would be the real life equivalent of a shadowrunner,I don't really care.It's fine by me that blitz the computer geek can't shoot.It's ok that the mage can't shoot.It's even ok that Glory can't fucking shoot.
But the fact that A former military sniper,can't hit anything with either one of her weapons at the ideal range is fucked up to say the least.

 

[Blaine]

Well, for Eiger, I've found that moving her an extremely long distance away (and I mean extremely long, like 15+ squares) really ups the sniper rifle's accuracy.

Unfortunately, you quite often begin battles huddled in a tiny group surrounded by enemies in cover inside a little room with one or two doorways, in a cramped hallways with right-angled corners, etc.

 

[Gord]

Just finished the Loose Ends job. Difficulty seems definitely higher to me, since I had to reload a few times.
Not sure though if it's only a result of the DC, or a combination of the adjustments in the DC and my choice of character.
Either way, my melee/throwing-Adept has a hard time on Hard: he gets hit a lot, which hurts plenty when out in the open, and to-hit-rates are still relatively low (I think I should have mostly ignored chi-casting and put points into close-combat instead).
Also AI seems smarter than before - they use grenades and seem to focus more on chars that are already hurt.

 

[Alfons]

Any mixed Chars were useless before I didn't read anything that indicated that would change.

 

[Roguey]

In Roguey's world, "wrong" now means "accurate." Fascinating.

They moved a point from one stat to another and possibly decreased one. So?

This is a complete non sequitur, or perhaps a bizarre series of blundering assumptions, and I'm not sure where you're getting any of it from. Again, the difference between Hard and Very Hard is more tedious whiffing and fewer medkits left at the end of most missions... but the vast majority (and in most cases, all) of those medkits regenerate for free on Glory et al. as soon as the mission is over. I didn't even come close to running out of medkits on Hard, sometimes not using any. I still have quite few left at the end of Very Hard missions, plenty of spare Nuyen as well, and extra kits picked up in-mission in the stash.

Resource management matters on the mission itself.

Assumingly and ideally. In original Dragonfall there was only one mission where I ended up using all my grenades. I didn't want it to be any easier though. If anything I wanted parts of the second act to be more difficult.

Certainly. Give enemies in tough fights comparable or even somewhat superior stats, skills, and gear compared to the Shadowrunners (they often have comparable armor and weapons as-is, plus unlimited grenades et al.), slightly superior numbers (they often get this, too), and don't cheat hit rates for either side. That's all.

Your advice to fix Shadowrun combat is for it to keep doing what it already does.

....

P.S. You can see the stats for any given enemy in the editor, so as far I can tell, there's no cheating. However, I can't be damned at the moment to create a test level myself to see how it would modify an enemy with a 1 in everything, whether or not it would try to subtract stats from very hard or add to them from easy. Maybe if it bothers me enough I will.

Penalties paid for something the player has next to no control over are a hallmark of unfair and badly-implemented difficulty, as opposed to hard but fair difficulty.

Good to know you're no fan of Baldur's Gate.

Like BG, the combat is balanced around your companions. You can also choose to hire runners with better stats than your free companions, at the expense of possibly missing out on some story content.

 

[Blaine]

I was going to reply to Roguey, but then realized I've been "goaded" into a stupid and pointless argument. Of course, I knew it was stupid and pointless when the exchange began, but I like to indulge myself from time to time.

Gord
If you're maining a melee character, it's perfectly manly and acceptable to play on Hard, at least for a while. With the exception of Eiger, your companions (including Blitz's default drone) have poor accuracy and also low damage that necessitates armor-stripping against many enemies, although in Dietrich's case, Nerve Bolt and Electro... whatever it's called pretty much make up for his hybridization.

I'm playing a Shaman, which is pretty fun. Those wall abilities are a lot more useful than I'd initially thought, though neither friendly nor unfriendly AI will path around them even when they can and will often bumble through, so care must be taken.

 

[Lujo]

Also, for anyone who's read my disdainful critique of DC a few posts above - Glory's mission is actually great, atmospheric and very nice (seemed somewhat easy compared to the others). However it benefits from the buildup and isn't a complete disconected asspull like the others. It's very well done, tbh, and I'll be glad if it turns out it has even more depth to it when I replay it as it seems to be a multiple coice thing when it comes to objectives.

It also explores interesting themes, tbh and fleshes out the magic/spiritism part of the universe, and, well, it felt really, really good.

Still, it just illustrates the bad qualities of the other jobs - disconectedness from the main plot and charactes, lack of content in them (comparatively speaking), sparseness of locations, reusing locations, lack of proper buildup, etc, etc. the Blitz job does do Blitz justice and paints him as an interesting character, but I expected much more out of the Eiger job.

This thing looks badly rushed, and why would anyone rush it to coincide with the release of Wasteland 2 is even more of a mistery.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

SRRDFDC™ is a perfect example of why HBS needs to make more Shadowrun games for us. Even though they come from a popamole mobile game background, each SRR module released has been 'k for what it was and a marked improvement over their previous iteration. Another 2-3 DLC modules to hit their stride and we're ready for SRR2 GOTY.

Game is currently 44th best seller on Steam, less than a day after release. In before bankruptcy.

Did they expect a slam dunk releasing the same game again with some polish? I'm hoping that wasn't a huge investment on their part. Maybe it's about time they kickstarted a sequel.

 

[dryan]

Does anyone know if that Luca Duerr character was modeled after a developer/backer/family/friend? His face looks a bit more detailed than most of the generic portrait. Also, his weak jaw and that soft baby fat makes him stick out in the dark cyberpunk setting.

 

[Blaine]

You forgot the tam o' shanter, hipster glasses and possibly also a scarf, IIRC.

It's the 21st-century uniform of completely unique, vegan, free-spirited, extreme leftist, anarcha-feminist, socialist indie band members/Apple enthusiasts.

 

[dryan]

You forgot the tam o' shanter, hipster glasses and possibly also a scarf, IIRC.

It's the 21st-century uniform of completely unique, vegan, free-spirited, extreme leftist, anarcha-feminist, socialist indie band members/Apple enthusiasts.

Totally. He looks more like a victim, instead of the seasoned underworld contractor that he is.

 

[Jaesun]

Holy shit, that mission where you "just" need to sneak in to that Penthouse and install the videos.....

That gigantic clusterfuck of stuff that happens. That is a rather nasty mission to go by yourself, and have to work with those other people. Very interesting.

I'm just wondering if there IS a way to keep that other person...... "alive".

 

[dryan]

Holy shit, that mission where you "just" need to sneak in to that Penthouse and install the videos.....

That gigantic clusterfuck of stuff that happens. That is a rather nasty mission to go by yourself, and have to work with those other people. Very interesting.

I'm just wondering if there IS a way to keep that other person...... "alive".

I think not. I did that mission over and over, tried pretty much all dialogue combinations. I think one of them is supposed to die every time. The other one may or may not die, depending on how patient you are.

 

[Blaine]

I expected the inevitable series of combats on the way out of that mission to be difficult, but actually found them surprisingly easy as a Shaman (Great Mother I think it's called, AoE heal) while making constant use of the stun gun and the mage's abilities often combined with ley lines.

Then again, I took the shortcut out, which is possible to miss if you don't do a certain thing.

 

[Lujo]

The combats actually aren't inevitable, but the way of avoiding them seems pretty obscure if it's the only one.

Spoiler

With etiquette security you can get rid of both guards downstairs and disable the alarm, so you just have to kill the elf (which IS inevitable), and afterwards you get out through either of the 2 secret exits.

However, there might be another way if you have money to buy the suit, possibly since it seems like the mission doensn't follow the main game rules of letting you know of dialogue options regardless of whether you have the required items or not. And the incriminating footage and the encephalon purchase vaucher are mission items and I think you're supposed to be able to bribe the guy who bursts in on you if you're wearing the suit an pass yourself off as the guy in charge of maintenance.

Or at least that would make sense, maybe it was planned but they dropped it. The game is distinctly buggy and half-done tbh.

 

[Blaine]

Nope, the suit doesn't change dialog with that guy. My main is a Shaman, so I snapped the suit up immediately and am still using it as my primary combat gear.

Of course in this game every munchkin-ed enemy (Roguey was right on that count) seems to have some armor-stripping ability or piece of equipment, but at least they have to use up one of their turns stripping all the armor off your team (right before they all also start throwing grenades if you ever try to use Shaman totem abilities at all, naturally), so that's something.

 

[xrm1]

The combats actually aren't inevitable, but the way of avoiding them seems pretty obscure if it's the only one.

Spoiler

With etiquette security you can get rid of both guards downstairs and disable the alarm, so you just have to kill the elf (which IS inevitable), and afterwards you get out through either of the 2 secret exits.

However, there might be another way if you have money to buy the suit, possibly since it seems like the mission doensn't follow the main game rules of letting you know of dialogue options regardless of whether you have the required items or not. And the incriminating footage and the encephalon purchase vaucher are mission items and I think you're supposed to be able to bribe the guy who bursts in on you if you're wearing the suit an pass yourself off as the guy in charge of maintenance.

Or at least that would make sense, maybe it was planned but they dropped it. The game is distinctly buggy and half-done tbh.

The suit lets you

Spoiler

talk to the stressed out ork. There's a vendor outside that sells some drug that might help the ork endure his presentation. I did not get the option to give it to him but I did not have etiquette corporate.