How can anyone defend takedowns as a game mechanic? Especially if it's a big part of a game.
It's a button that you press and then you watch a cutscene of the character doing some fancy moves, instead of YOU playing the game and doing fancy shit yourself. It's a gameplay-skipping mechanic.
Ok then, design a fully player-controlled combat system where you can stylishly take someone out in a cinematic multi-part takedown by hitting buttons and wiggling analog sticks.
What's that? It's not fun? Yeah, fuck off. That sounds clunky as shit.
you mean like a combat system
huh, if only HR had any guns or sleep darts...
never heard of gas grenades? being fast enough with a non lethal weapon to take 2 enemies out?
The only clunky thing here is your shit taste
>oni is shit
shitnoob detected
>you just don't have to use it!!
true, you could just not play Press Q to Cinematic and play something better as well
This is the modern gaming audience folks. Holy Shit are they dumb
In a game where enemies enter 'hostile' status instantly you either have a cool looking 'instant takedown' cutscene or you need some kind of active attack that one shots them and is probably pretty low key.
They are using the one that looks cool.
Of course I'm assuming were only talking about equivalent alternatives to these takedowns and you haven't forgotten that ranged weapons and the like exist.
I don't have a problem with takedowns. I do have a problem with that cunt Meghan and the fact that I can't kill her yet.
see Even the original Deus Ex had a superior melee system and it was made 16 years ago.
what, you want me to play the game? That's lame let me press a button to watch short cutscenes with my toon kicking ass, that's where it's at
It's not an inherently bad mechanic. Few things are.
>I press a thing and watch a thing happen
i.e Literally everything you do in a game
It's a mechanic that takes control away from the player.
Yes, you're doing a gross oversimplification of game mechanics, aiming at a model's head and shooting is "pressing a button", but equating it with a button press that automatically aims and shoots for you, that's not the same thing at all, it's an automated sequence.
That was my point. People oversimplify it and seem to take offence at it, but remove it completely from everything else going on in a game.
In some games they require you to get into melee distance in a game where guns are a factor, or they're finishers which require you to already have damaged an enemy or satisfied some other requirement, or they require the enemy to be off guard, where stealth is an element or it's some form of counter requiring a timed press.
There's nothing wrong with the mechanic, even if any particular game executes it poorly.
How is it functionally different from oneshotting any enemy in DX with the Dragons Tooth? They are both one hit kills, it's just that takedowns have a resource requirement making their use more strategic.
>How can anyone defend takedowns as a game mechanic?
How else would you implement stealthy ways to take down enemies?
I mean, the takedowns in HR aren't great, especially how they have that small cut whenever you do one.
Personally i prefer the hitman way of doing things, where you just choke people and drag them away, but that also isn't much deeper mechanically.
I don't get why they have retarded cinematics.
Look at Dishonored, it handles "takedowns" 100% right. If you backstab someone it has a quick flashy animation of you fucking shit up. It doesn't change camera views. It doesn't fade to black so that it comes back in to a cinematic cutscene, it flows 100% well from the gameplay into the takedown and back into the gameplay.
And the executions look nastier and cooler too, so it's not like Deus Ex has any excuse for the shit it pulls.
Cover that goes third person is stupid too. Nigga, just add in leaning.
No, it didn't. Crouching and hitting everyone's asses with a stick once to take them down is not a superior melee system.
You're a garbage boy.
Have you ever played Deus Ex? Because enemies move backwards and strafe when alert, you might misjudge distances and miss, and if you're playing on harder difficulties that might end with you dead. A takedown always succeeds. You can always sprint towards the enemy and Press Q to Takedown in numale revolution.
The resource requirement is one of the big reasons they're bad. They needed a cost to prevent people spamming them since they always work and make you totally invincible, so they made them cost energy. But then they needed to make energy recharge or you'd run out way too fast, and that fucked up balance since you could use any of the other augmentations as much as you wanted as long as you were willing to wait a brief period.
Takedowns fucked the game. They're not even good on their own, either, since watching the animations gets old as fuck very quickly. Everything about them is terrible.
except if you don't have batteries
you could make the argument that putting every point in energy, energy recharge and spending all your money on candy would allow you to have enough energy, but then you'll get swiftly killed since you didn't spend any fucking points into armor or any other skill
in short, it's somewhat feasible but of course you're exaggerating to make a simple mechanic sound like hitler
I recommend you to play Deus Ex again, if you crouch and hit everyone on their backs, you won't knock them out, you need to hit enemies on the back of the head. So it requires a degree of aiming. Now in HR you just press Q anywhere near the enemy and pronto, you watch the game play by itself.
As crude as it might be, a simple melee system is superior to button prompts that trigger automatic kills/KOs.
Yeah, the description I gave you was based on my own play of DX. I was upset that takedowns were in HR too, initially, because I loved using the Dragon's Tooth. But then I realized it was essentially the same shit, considering how I actually used melee in DX.
you can do that and not sue takedowns
only real fault of hr/md is that it doesn't let you use electric boogaloo batons
you actually can do that in md with tesla aug, just don't upgrade it beyond 1 traget and distance
everything in your hands, game let's you roleplay whatever you want
Bayonetta and DmC, you fight with style and you still actually play the game, granted they still have finishers that require no skill, but you get those on top of crazy combos that need you playing the game with skill.
use the stun gun, it has such a short range that it's essentially a melee weapon. most stealth games are in third person though, which is probably why they use takedowns instead of melee combat.
>you need to hit enemies on the back of the head
That's literally what you shouldn't be doing ever. Body hits with stealth weapons actually deal less damage, while a single body hit with a baton takes everyone out.
Follow your own suggestion now.
>Body hits
Meant head.
you should consider killing yourself
it is hitler. what's the point of playing the game in 1st person if the best moves (cover/takedown) is in 3rd.
You mean the batteries that always recharge a single unit? As long as you don't act like a lobotomized chimp by using a takedown in front of other guy, you can do it, hide, plan the next one, at that point your energy will recover enough for another takedown and so on. Candy bars that recover your energy are pretty common, I never had a problem with energy in HR.
Takedowns are bad because the entire close counters system of the game revolves around them. If they had melee weapons it would reduce the shittyness, but no, we can't have that shit, kids these days enjoy watching the same takedown animations over and over again.
The whole "energy resource management" in Human Revolution is a big meme. Yeah, be careful, you might need to wait 10 seconds for that last battery unit to recover!
never understood fascination with this button mashing crap you call combat
heck you don't even need to move just serialize combos in one place
rune and severance has more combat in it than this japanese crap for arcade machines put together
Why not play a better game instead if I have to close my eyes and tiptoe around bad game design?
You see, if your option is to not play a part of the game because it's shit and only play the other way, you're not giving me options. It's like if I propose you, either walk forward or I'll put this extremely hot metal rod up your ass.
the batteries and recharging are all under one skill tree. you can easily max it out and also max out armor and recoil augs. have you ever played this game? you get about 20 praxis points just from the main story alone.
>How can anyone defend takedowns as a game mechanic?
They're retarded. Thief made take downs way more engaging. You couldn't just crouch and move up to people because it'd alert them half the time and so you'd either have to wait for them to path to a safe spot or do some acrobatics and hope you didn't fucking miss your swing. In Deus ex there's no skill involved, it's just battery management if it works like I remember you can just get through just about the entire game with one batter without using anymore. Takedowns are a get out of jail card as long as you got the energy to do it and are close enough to the person.
Deus Ex HR/MD are both stupid easy but enjoyable for the most part.
>bayo or DMC
>button mashing
lmfao post proof of you playing either series well and I'll take your garbage opinion seriously. dumb nigger
yeah, and that style of combat would seriously fucking work for a stealth game
I just played Deus Ex yesterday, body hits with a baton aren't one hit KO, while back to the head hits are. You can't hit the back of the head while crouching.
Did you really just try to implement elements from hack'n'slash into a fucking stealth game
Jesus christ you have to be joking
so you deny takedowns and at the same time prefer strict hand holding design that punishes you for every wrong move?
I don't understand why nu-Deus Ex doesn't just have a chokehold equivalent like every other stealth game. It puts the player at risk, gives them some interaction, and sometimes even gives you the option to kill them if you need them out of the way fast/don't want them to wake up.
I get that it's not as "cinematic", but when you're watching the same 3 "cinematic" takedowns throughout the whole course of the game, who cares how cinematic it is. You just need it to function.
I appreciated Dishonored's gameplay because it didn't have takedowns at all despite being a modern game.
Choking enemies from behind can be done while retreating, and if you let go the button they get away, it was a nice touch.
Dishonored when it comes to gameplay, the stealth and level design were so far ahead of Human Revolution. The problem was how it had so many combat focused stuff, and the story/characters weren't so enticing overall.
nah, thanks, finishing these sponge kicking simulators once is enough
i don't understand how it's any different. i didn't like the take downs because it felt like it was ripping me out of the game. if the animations weren't there i would have just came up behind and slapped them with the baton. it's mechanically the same thing. take downs only make things more cinematic
It avoids the jank of bonking people in Thief or the original Deus Ex.
By locking you into an animation at a certain range instead of it just being a weapon you swing, it makes you less likely to miss due to a frameskip or a wonky hitbox.
It's to make casuals feel like they are doing something awesome
>crouching and aiming up the ass counts as hitting back of the head
I know, I did that
>prefer strict hand holding design
Thanks, you defined the takedown mechanic that you love so much in a short way.
>Unlike most melee weapons, the baton does not do any extra damage when it hits someone's head. Body shots actually do more damage than a headshot does because hitting something's body will always do double the damage (with any weapon, not just the baton), while a headshot has no damage multipliers. The riot prod has this trait as well.
It's not OHKO by rule, but if you upgrade Combat Strength it effectively is. At least on normal-sized enemies, and you can start doing that as soon as you get the baton, which is pretty much right away.
true, but they made this choice in hr and stuck with it for some reason same as 3rd person cover
leaning cover like it's done in thi4f is good
and 1st person takedowns like in dishonored are much better visually
but in principle it's the same thing
meant to
>Dishonored's gameplay because it didn't have takedowns at all
the heck do you thinking backstabbing was?
I played non lethal/stealth.
Dishonored didn't have a button prompt that allowed me to kill or put to sleep 2 guards at once. HR has that.
i hate it going into 3d person cutscene
but I don't see how it's any different mechanically from sticking someone with one hit melee weapon
unless you go slapping everyone on the way and eating snackbars every second, then sure it's bad
but for stealth it's same thing
The most annoying part is that they cut out melee weapons so you are forced to do the fancy move.
Why not borrow the hitman melee moves with the various objects he can use...
The stun gun has a pretty good range for a weapon that puts anyone to sleep quickly.
dishonored also has blink that allows for skipping all guards and not touching anyone at all
so it's the same thing
i think that's one of the reasons they added exo suits in MD
backstabbing is as fast as swinging your sword into the guard's head. you are still vulnerable to damage and detection during it.when fighint head-on, takedowns can only be used if you have the parry timing down or enemies are on his last health.
it's still balanced because unlike the tranq rifle the guards consider it an unsuppressed weapon. and from my experience it seems like you can only get that range if you're leaning out of cover. in first person it has decreased range. might be a bug, but it's most useful in first person, so i think it's balanced.
God forbid someone has to aim a melee weapon at the enemy.
The difference is that a melee system has the element of aiming, and yes you can miss especially on alerted enemies who move to the sides. With takedowns, you have zero player agency, they always are successful, and you just need to be nearby the enemy, sprint to him if he's alert and shit just works. It's the equivalent of skipping gameplay at all, here just watch those amazing punching animations.
Blink is definitely overpowered, but then Dishonored's levels are way bigger than HR's, also have better design, even if the entire game is shorter than HR, or at least it felt like it to me.
to be fair, parry timing is very generous even I can pull it off in 8 vases out of 10
>How else would you implement stealthy ways to take down enemies?
Because a takedown is more complex than simply hitting someone with a stick, and as such a complex action can´t be reproduced by the player, since all input methods are fundamentally inferior to the movement apparatus every human has.
The gameplay to take someone down would either be detailed and fucking tedious, or abridged and somewhat anticlimactic.
Guess what is better, and that´s what he got.
mgs cqc is FUN
>leaning cover like it's done in thi4f is good
Isn't that one of many things made into a contextual action in Thi4f, so you can only lean at corners? Why not, you know, have a button for it like Thief, Deus Ex, and Dishonored?
>abridged and somewhat anticlimactic.
dx1, dishonored,thief(yes blackjack is easy to use )
Instant takedowns make sense in some games. The game you posted a picture of is a good example.
The player character is a post human killing machine made of synthetic muscle capable of punching through walls. "Pressing a button" accurately simulates the level of challenge involved for Jensen in dispatching grunts hand to hand.
It's not a "gameplay skipping mechanic". Deus Ex is not a fighting game. It's a sandbox where takedowns are one of many tools at your disposal for dealing with the enemy and completing the objective. A tool with its own benefits and drawbacks that need to be weighed when assessing a situation. A takedown lets you take out an enemy instantly but it uses up a precious energy cell that might be better saved for your augments and it's not suitable for dealing with groups of enemies
because it feels clunky as hell, yes i hate laening since thief
and it's not just corners, any edge as far as i remember can be used
I'll give you one example of how takedowns take control away from the player and are obviously inferior.
Playing Deus Ex, Liberty Island on realistic. I can get fucked up from pistol wielding enemies pretty quick. So I find 2 guards giving me their backs. If I try to put one to sleep with a baton to the head, the other will be alerted. So one of the ways to do it, was to use a fire extinguisher to paralize them, and while they're fucked up and coughing, I smack them both in the head.
I know if I had the same situation in Human Revolution, I would just press a button and watch a fancy animation of Jensen dodging shit and knocking them both. But I didn't do any of that shit, I watched a cutscene. It's the definition of style over substance.
Sure takedowns are a very easy way for the developers, because they don't have to make a melee system, balance melee weapons and improve the game around those multiple enemies encounters.
How the is it clunky? You press a button and the camera moves to the side some, it's the same as literally any other control.
Honestly what real difference is there between you clicking a mouse button to make your character pull the trigger of his gun and hitting a key to make him do it stylishly?
>it uses up a precious energy cell that might be better saved for your augments
Except your last energy cell recharges so you don't care, and none of the other energy using augmentations are useful in combat anyway. Either you use energy to knock someone out or you use energy to cloak past them. That's not a hard choice since either way you deal with that enemy.
Takedowns are also fine against groups if you're willing to use resources to get more than one energy cell anyway, since they stop time so nobody can fight back as long as you keep chaining them.
>zero player agency
The player's agency lies in the overall strategy of the gameplay (including whether or not to use a takedown)
You wouldn't complain that an RTS game takes away player agency because it won't let assume control of an individual soldier
...
So instead of pressing a button to watch fancy moves you press a button to watch a shitty swing animation?
\thread
it's like all those fags have never played a real game that has great mechanics and meaningful interactions, because the answer is fucking obvious.
I don't mind it in Dying Light or even Far Cry 3. I remember the cutscenes in HR longer than necessary and bad
Is it any better in the new Deus Ex?
you have to move to the gun's effective range, take aim, and THEN pull the trigger, alerting enemies nearby and probalby get shot at by anothers if you arent quick enough
with take down, you just have to come close to them or let them get close to you. because most enemies cant run as fast as you, you can chain it till energy runs out. take into account that your health and energy for take down recharge, you are invincible during a takedown and it turns into a game of "wait till you can press x"
I would rather play a game than watch cutscenes, yes.
You aren't really trying to use the quality of animations from 18 years ago, are you? Obviously a new game with a similar weapon would look better.
The best example of a takedown system that is not egregious is the souls series riposte/visceral attack.
>Have grab button
>Have several contextual actions to grabbing
Even Metal Gear pulled it off user.
a fire extinguisher would still be a good idea in human revolution, because the second guard might blow your cover before you reach him and in that game when one guard sees you all of the others in the area see you as well. using a fire extinguisher would keep your Ghost bonus intact.
>an RTS game takes away player agency because it won't let assume control of an individual soldier
any rts worth it salt give you individual control :^)
their abilities are just really limited, that's the reason they are called "strategy", not "action"
What strategy there is? The energy in HR regenerates 1 unit if you spend praxis points in the battery aug. Those chocolate bars that recover energy aren't rare at all. So if you let your energy always stay in 1 unit, using takedowns over and over, you can do it without spending any chocolate bars. There's no strategy to this and no resource management at all if your resource is pretty much infinite, it just cannot be spamming quickly. But since you just stalk guards here and there, there's no need to spam them anyway.
how is using spray and then kicking them to unconsciousness stealthy ? they scream like crazy
in HR you'd have whole area on you for causing so much noise
just try throwing concussion grenade on any enemy and whole are come to shoot you
use a fire extinguisher then what, use a takedown? it's not necessary
Being reduced to one energy cell in DX is a hindrance. The recharge rate forces a slower, more measured style of play
>none of the other energy using augmentations are useful in combat anyway
you serious m8
>if you're willing to use resources
resource management is a mechanic
They don't scream like crazy, they stay in place coughing if sprayed with a fire extinguisher, allowing you time to move and hit them on their heads with the baton. Notice I did this all by myself. Had I used a takedown, the game would deal with the 2 enemies for me, I would just watch passively. It's a world of difference.
i wouldn't mind if the said takedown DIDN'T FORCED YOU OUT OF FIRST PERSON
Takedowns are totally silent in HR so it's not like it's any better. You can do a double takedown and have like 5 seconds of fighting with guards and nobody else in the room will hear it. They won't even see it until it's over even if they're looking right at you, either, since nothing else can happen during the takedown animation.
Well, lethal takedowns make noise. Except there's no reason to ever do them since they give you less XP. Not really sure why they're even in the game.
also that reminds me how you could spray room full of guards like 7-12 of them and start kicking them one by one until there is no one lefthonkong place I think was ideal with narrow corridors before dragon tooth
so your retarded analogy about double takedown doesn't count
>I would rather play a game than watch cutscenes, yes.
I almost can't believe you don't have the self control to stop yourself from being such a fucking faggot right now. Don't you have any self awareness? You're getting furious that a game has a cutscene instead of an animation, you don't want to watch it? Then play a different fucking game. What a little bitch. The holocaust should have ended with both of your parents dying.
take downs in Deus Ex worked because they were finite. Most games that have take downs allow you to do them infinitely.
Praxis points are very easy to get in HR.I never had a problem abusing the 1 unit battery recharge at all. Also keep in mind you might want to hide the unconscious body then move around to sneak on the next enemy, giving your battery enough time to recharge.
The only time I needed a lot of energy for takedowns when was I tried to save Malik, I just dashed at enemies with cloak on, using the stung gun and takedowns. The rest of the game doesn't have that urgency factor, plus battery recharge is quite easy if you spend some upgrades in it.
wew lad
It's better than using the same slashing or jabbing animation for backstabs for an instant in various shooters, which is fine in MP but SP doing something a little fancier isn't a bad thing unless the animation is too long.
Quick throat slitting or jab in the back of the neck or like DL breaking their legs by sliding under them then pressing a button to stomp on their heads are all fine, it's not fine when the camera pans out and spins while the protag does this dumb animation or like the fucking stabs in newer Battlefields that take like 10 seconds