2721

Gus is right as well, it’s funny because I thought the recharge thing was kind of dumb, but if you could reliably have 4 or especially 5 bars of full energy, NOTHING could stop you. I’d rather the resources were more scarece, but the augments were more powerful, in this case, and the designers tend to agree, seems like.

2722

I’m really enjoying Deus Ex, boss fights aside. But there was a GREAT moment in my game last night, which clearly came about as the consequence of an earlier decision. I won’t spoil anything, but basically somebody came up and threatened Jensen, and totally without thinking I walked up to him and slammed the B button, making Jensen slap this fool to the ground like he was swatting a fly. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that bad-ass in a game ever.

2723

We have spoiler tags, you know. Not sure what part that is.

2724

Your energy not refilling past the first bar seems like a bad design compromise to me, like they realized that having more power bars was overpowered but couldn’t find a fun way to balance that and just punted. I wonder how late into the dev cycle this design feature was added.

My advice is to get the recharge powers and at most one extra bar (sometimes 3 bars is nice but anything beyond that is overkill). The recharge is really nice as it makes it much easier to quickly do a 2nd takedown if needed or to restealth if you get in trouble.

Other than this one gameplay hiccup, though, I’m really liking the game and the augment system in particular. I agree with complaints about reloading a lot due to stealth mechanics but I feel like the game is pretty fair there. When I get discovered it’s usually my fault and so I feel like I have control over how often that happens – if I play smart I reload a lot less often and my reloads tend to be when I get rushed and start busting through doors. The game definitely has an addictive quality to it: I keep finding myself want to play through just one more building level, etc.

2725

But they did find a way to balance it. You can spend points to increase your burst capacity, but you need to use consumables to take advantage of it. If anything, I wouldn’t be too surprised to find out that early iterations only had a regular bar and a candy-powered “overdrive” bar.

2726

I believe instead of augments that improve recharge rate, instead those 3 augments should LET you recharge first the second, third, and finally 4th bar (never more than that) and they should do so always at the slow default rate, making bars still important. Just my two cents.

2727

I sort of half-intuited the “don’t use more than one battery” energy management - which makes even more sense when presented as cut and dried logic - but I found I was using a lot of smart vision before I had my recharge upgraded. The takedown delay was so irritating that I got to maintaining 2 bars a lot of the time - which of course was probably why I started hemorrhaging nutrigrains. I should’ve just saved them for instances where I got behind someone and had insufficient power, but my stealth-fu is bad enough that I often bungled things even without worrying about juggling inventory items while exposed.

EDIT: BtF, that was actually what I thought, and then I thought, “Hmm, maybe they found in testing that people were standing in a corner for 3 minutes to recharge 100% energy and it was killing flow.” At any rate, the system in-game worked adequately, if quirkily.

2728

Yeah, your probably right - and also your correct that the system as is does indeed work okay, once you sort of feel it out a little. I’m nearly done with the game, and I should have probably NOT invested 5 points into Recharge 3 and 4 bars of Energy… :)

2729

3 for the DE professionals:

  1. Is there a way to mod the yellow outline? I’d like to change it to grey so it doens’t stick out so much. I find it distracting.

  2. WASD movement is really poor with the mouse right now. When I try to shoot between panles, the character moves too much to each side. Any way to adjust this?

  3. The skin on all the characters looks like shiny wax. Anything I can do to change this? It looks pretty bad to me at the moment.

Thanks! :)

2730

I spend most of my time waiting for recharge to get back up, since I’m all out of bubble gum.

Think there is an option setting to disable highlight?

2731

Yeah, it’s intentional. Recall the energy sword was cutting edge tech in the original Deus Ex.

2732

Well shit, that’s the only one I found in Heng Sha.

2733

I think I took naturally to the “one bar” playstyle because I’m a pack rat. I just couldn’t bear the thought of actually using a consumable if I could just recharge. Though those damned 4-tile jars drive me crazy, not only do they take up way too much space for 3 energy, they don’t stack like the 1-bar and 2-bar candies. I tend to just eat them when I find them.

I went the other way - 5 full bars because I wanted the burst ability, but no recharge powers yet. So far, I think I’ve felt the need for faster recharge maybe once or twice. I.e. situations where I took someone down, and the next guy came around before I was ready. Generally speaking, when I’ve needed more than 1 bar, I’ve needed it all at once and haven’t had enough breathing room to recharge at all. 5 full bars + full cloak can get you through some really hairy combat situations, like the one we were talking about earlier in the spoilers.

I think I may be sloppy, or just really bad at timing. I’ve gotten caught a lot when I thought it was safe to come out from behind cover. There’s also a frequent situation where you have to wait for someone to walk past so you can take them down, and I’ve been spotted then sometimes.

I am kind of curious if the game plays much differently with Recharge 3. It’s just that every time I have a point free, something that will get me into otherwise impassible areas comes up, like jumping or toxin immunity.

2734

It’s too bad we can’t play Gunter. That’s sort of who we’re playing - Gunter complained about feeling obsolete because he was studded with obvious augs like Jensen.

2735

You used pheromones and it came back to bite you, didn’t you?

2736

Oh duh, didn’t see that. I’d still like to mod it to a softer color so I don’t ahve to go without. Just to save time not having to search every single item in the game world.

2737

Actually, yes. Well, more like “I used pheromones and it came back to bite HIM in the ass”, seeing as I left him unconscious on the ground.

2738

Sure, sure.

what would have happened

It’s a good thing you did. If you’d waited a second he would have pulled a gun and shot you in the face.

2739

I’m doing fine with just my starting 2 bars. Haven’t had any use for more yet, though there were times it would have been nice for the one bar to recover faster. I’m always lurking behind a cover object that is coincidentally just wide and high enough to shield me anyway, so there’s no urgency, and I’ve got like 40 bars worth of snacks in my pack in any event.

2740

I’m the same which is why recharge seems better – it reduces the cost of using that single bar. The biggest difference with the recharge upgrades is that you start recharging immediately after using up battery. This makes it a lot easier to burn stealth to get into a better position, wait a little bit, then gank someone, etc. I’ve never used 5 bars worth of energy – the most I’ve ever needed was 3. I found myself waiting on the single bar a lot. Sometimes I was safe and it didn’t matter except for waisting my time but a lot of times I’d be in a position where a guard would come following up after my initial gank/stealth and I wouldn’t have energy to deal with him yet.