Yakoob on 29/3/2012 at 15:54

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Sounds like a Nintendo DS game...

ZylonBane on 29/3/2012 at 19:42

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Another perspective is that IW is an RPG (albeit a lightweight one), and RPG players tend to enjoy fiddling with micro-level details. In an FPS/RPG hybrid, an obvious place to add that sort of detail is with the guns. Yet IW gave us an ammo system with less depth than Doom, about as pure of a brain-dead FPS as one can imagine.

A less-often mentioned flaw in IW's weapon handling was the lack of a need to reload. The ability to just hold the trigger down and piss bullets until somebody died unquestionably sucked some of the tactical depth from the combat. And let's think about this from a logical perspective-- All weapons share a common ammo pool, yet you never reload. So presumably every time Alex equips a weapon, he hooks a little hose to it running up his arm to the nanite tank on his back.

Basically, everything about IW's weapon implementation says that the developers think that console gamers are morons.

SDF121 on 29/3/2012 at 21:50

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Speaking of Invisible War, have any of you guys seen this interview?

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGIdYl2oN74)

Here are the previous two segments from the same Post-Mortem interview which focus on the original Deus Ex

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTWvsGA77T4&feature=relmfu)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o31W_E73_U&feature=relmfu)

Papy on 30/3/2012 at 02:41

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With patch 1.1, headshots became powerful and the pistol stopped being a useless weapon.

Also, the most powerful weapon of the game, to a point where it was ridiculous, was the Spy Drone and it didn't use any ammo. You just had to use a few Energy Cells (which were plentiful) until you found a repair bot and then simply wipe out everything from a safe distance.

Let me be clear. Invisible War was an easy game, particularly after Seattle. I never ran out of ammo. After the beginning of the game, I don't think I ever dropped below half of my ammo maximum capacity, and that include some part when I was fooling around with the physics engine. More importantly, I never really felt I was in a dangerous situation. With Deus Ex, I could pause and observe for 15 minutes because I was afraid to die (I don't save between level). With Invisible War, I just went forward without thinking much. I did die a few times during the game, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 times, but it was because I was so bored that I didn't care anymore.

Anyway DDL already explained to you quite clearly why he found universal ammo to be a very bad idea. Now maybe his reasons doesn't apply to you because of the way you play video games. Maybe you don't like to manage resources. Maybe you like being able to use whatever weapon you want, without having to think about how much ammo you have. Maybe you hate games where you have to find a way to do something and then compromise, instead of just doing whatever you feel like. That's your right. But the reasons DDL gave apply to a lot of us. You can't just dismiss those reasons simply because it didn't apply to you. Your personal taste is not the universal truth.

Let me say it again, just to make sure you understand. No matter what is your feeling about universal ammo, it doesn't change the fact that for a lot of people it did have a significantly bad impact on the game.

DDL on 30/3/2012 at 08:19

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Nope, I was just pointing out that mana isn't a suitable analogy: bioelectricity basically IS mana: it's a magical stored resource that you use to power your magical abilities. You can restore it by drinking mana potions using biocells, or by visiting a mana shrine repair bot.

Ammo is a different kettle of fish entirely. Sure, I dislike it from a realism perspective too, but my dislikes extend far beyond that sole reason. It buggers resource management completely, rendering it down to "do I have ammo or not", so you can't save your sabot rounds for the room full of bots, or save your tranq rounds for some people you want to take down without killing: you simply just need to 'have ammo'. And, like I said, you also can't get away with blowing ammo (that you never use) on silly things for shiggles, because every ammo expenditure costs you. I do exactly the same thing in fantasy games, too ("ooh, I have a pile of flame arrows I've not been using! Let's fry some fucks!"). These are things I like doing, and so not being able to do them makes me a sad panda. I'm..pretty sure I'm not alone in this.

And, like papy says, the pistol is massively overpowered, which is why I always ended up using it (admittedly the pistols in DX were pretty OP, too). One or two headshots kills basically anything human short of an armoured templar, and it uses very little ammo. And like ZB says you can basically hose bullets, so even armoured templars drop relatively quickly.

And finally, I note you deftly sidestepped my question about the frequency of games using universal ammo. At the risk of losing the rest of my working day, I checked TVTropes (:p), and it seems to be pretty much just "Invisible war, metroid prime hunters (??) and mass effect".

And even mass effect doesn't quite qualify, since the first one had "no ammo", and the second had "universal ammo which is nevertheless magically partitioned between your guns", so you'd still have resource management elements. I think it's a testament to my tolerance for "unrealistic world behaviour" that this non-interchangability of "universally interchangable heatclip ammo" actually bugs me very very little, since the tradeoff (in that you sometimes have to switch to a gun you're less proficient with) makes the game more interesting..in my opinion.
Mind you, I've not played the 3rd yet.

Still, IW is a fun game, and it IS fairly easy and short. Plus you can kill children with coffee cups, and wreak all manner of havok with tracer tong's corpse.
The ammo thing never stops bugging me, though.:erg: