too much karma?

[Benni Digital]

Just finished the game and i think that there is just too much karma overall youre rewarded with. Just played the average gun-loving orc, but still, max charisma, max quickness, two preaty good weapon skills....i dont know, but it seems to me that there is little left to do (for using him in UGC or some addon) except starting a second career as decker or shaman or whatever. I also think, for a first adventure and looking at where our char starts (no money, no friends, no real connections) the whole story is a bit too, hmmm, huge. A slightly simpler case (spoiler !!!!) which could have ended with the insane doc for example (and a more complicated way to get to him to add some hours) would have been nice. Would have been a better start to upcoming contracts and all.

Well, just my opinion. Love the game, no problem with the save-sytem by the way...

[Dorok]

Yeah I think the game is more suited to make classes mix than pure specialization. About the duration no way it should have been shorter. But twice as big as I would wish to be a perfect duration for me would probably require lower a bit the karma income.

[paladin181]

This character in this game gathered about as much karma in this ONE campaign as my older runner did over 3/4 of his career. Way too much as far as karma rewards without any explanation. You get a karma point for a difficult matrix sequence or a huge fight. You might get 3 or 4 for a successful run (with a bonus point for remaining undetected or for finding all the bonus paydata or other pertinent information that was optional). But this one campaign took my "experienced runner" (with no money weapons and only 3 starter skills) and turned him into a world class melee and pistol samurai with more charm than most elves.

[Sol]

I had the opposite occur, not enough karma and the thought of making another character I won't get to "finish" is irritating.

[Benni Digital]

@Dorok : The duration is not what i meant, of course more would have been better. I was just talking about the scale of the story, (spoiler...) the save-the-city thing. Pretty big for a first job.

[GUY]

I hated that they give you extra AP, pretty much makes you overpowered imo.

[Exarch of Justice]

Keep in mind your playing a video game not an actual pen and paper..there is no counterspelling mage to help you vs spell so wilpower is your only defence..also there is no Face on your "team" so you gotta talk your way or bash your way through everything yourself

[Daemoc]

11: Thou shall single handedly save the world.

You are to young to remember this so I will let this slide, but there used to be eleven commandments. Slick charlton dropped the second tablet though and it broke. They had to imporvise.

Blame hollywood.

But on topic, I don't think it's much different than any other game out there really, it's just done in a shorter amount of time.

Fallout: You get yourself killed by a rat when you step out of the vault, but can kill an army of minigun toting super mutants with ease a few hours later.

[looorg]

It does seem to have been a bit of a Karma rain; I think my first run thru netted me 199 Karma. But then this was a computer game; you need to show some progress. I guess if thru the entire game if you had in the end got like 20 Karma in total which might have been enough to raise only one or two skills or attributes people would have cried about the lack of character progression. After all SR is a character progression game; this since you don't really engage in any kinda widespread hack and slash monster killing and looting -- there won't be any guards dropping any +2 magic pistols or anything. The gear is mundane in most cases; the character is the special one. Which is only amplified in a computer solo game.

[Sevrun]

I would have liked to have seen the karma handed out slower with perhaps a second story arc tossed in (the one leading up to the Saloon shootout would have been AWESOME)

That said Looorg hit it on the head, they needed to show the kiddies substantive progression.

[Cheshyr]

I think the Karma pacing is actually fairly spot-on. The disconnect is the speed of the game. Consdier how long this story would have taken to play in a PnP game. That 15 minute section you just played, that awarded 5 Karma for solving 3 challenges, completing the session alive, and finding one secret? That could have been 2-6 hours in a tabletop setting.

This story, played without the automation and polish of this engine, could haver easily taken 40-200 hours (based on 2-8 hours a session x number of chapters). If you go with chapter count alone, and assume you played every Friday night, this is still 5+ months of content. I'd expect my character to be moderately well fleshed out after that much time.

But yeah, cramming half a year into 12 hours will likely skew your perception of the rate of rewards a bit.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Benni Digital:

@Dorok : The duration is not what i meant, of course more would have been better. I was just talking about the scale of the story, (spoiler...) the save-the-city thing. Pretty big for a first job.

I had got it, but implicitly your comment is saying they spread too much karma for the game contents size, ie there's no place for a followup with the same character.

If the game was 40+ hours long (or 60+ if for you 40 isn't enough) you wouldn't have post that I think, don't you agree?

Originally posted by George Lincoln:

I hated that they give you extra AP, pretty much makes you overpowered imo.

Well for Riggers it's not too much, and I liked how it adds new possibilities for all classes. That said I still have to explore deeper the tactical possibilities.

[daskindt]

I found the Karma rewards to be really excessive, but probably needed for how much they ramp up the difficulty of the enemies.

I'd prefer a more gradual progression for characters that develops your character over the long haul, not just a weekend of heavy play.

[Dorok]

Yeah but also it allows to experiment better around classes builds. It's what I regret in Torchlight 2, it takes too much time to experiment a build. But I still agree with you.

[Teran]

Originally posted by Benni Digital:

Just finished the game and i think that there is just too much karma overall youre rewarded with. Just played the average gun-loving orc, but still, max charisma, max quickness, two preaty good weapon skills....i dont know, but it seems to me that there is little left to do (for using him in UGC or some addon) except starting a second career as decker or shaman or whatever.

That is simply the way games like this work. Developers are stuck balancing between making sure people who don't do any side content gain enough power so they can beat the game against completionist players who do everything everywhere and become too powerful for the game to challenge.

In just about every rpg I've ever played going the completionist route will get you to a point mid game where your character's power level transcends what is required for the game thus making the rest of the game's conflict a formality.

Originally posted by Benni Digital:

I also think, for a first adventure and looking at where our char starts (no money, no friends, no real connections) the whole story is a bit too, hmmm, huge.

I know what you mean but while our character may have started without money or friends our characters weren't born yesterday. They may not have resources they can call on at the start of the game but that doesn't mean they never had resources in fact the game basically points out that you're going through a rough patch financially.

As for friends, honestly no one in the Shadowrun universe has real friends, everyone is an asset and if treating an asset like a friend is advantageous a runner will do so. True friendship does exist but that is a very rare thing.

[Proteus]

I think it is not exactly "too much Karma"
but rather the fact that we have too few talents to distribute the Karma along.

If this were the PnP RPG, you would have a multitude of other skills to which you could distribute your karma as well. And many of them useful to get along in modern SR society, while not exactly useful for pure combat.

For example driving different vehicle types, the knowledge of different languages (i.e. to read or speak in them), knowledge of academic topics (for example zoology or physics), knowledge of cultural topics (for example knowledge of 21st century rock groups, knowledge of clacssical opera ... ), athletics, swimming, hobby skills and so on

Compared to the skills in PnP Shadowrun, the number of skills in Computer-Shadowrun is rather tiny and doesn´t allow you to really flesh out your char ;)