Lets talk augmentations

[Fraggel vonHelldiddler]

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General
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When you start the game, well almost at the start anyways, you get a very interesting system. The new augmentations push past what you can safely use, and therefore you need to turn other systems of. Nice ground-work, but they made it pointless because of a few design choices.

Nr one is that eventually Colera, or whatever his name is, will fix the "glitch" and allow you to max out your augs. Second, many of the augs just do what your weapons already do. And third, some augs are poorly designed in execution, and are therefore more of a chore or overpowered beyond belief.

Had they kept the system through the game, it would have made it so much more interesting. Imagine getting a brief of the mission. From that brief you get clues to what you are going to face. "high jumps, long distances" "Armored opponents" etc etc. That forces you to make choices before you start the mission. Upgrading augs works as usuall, but switching them out can be fone at certain aug-stations restrictively placed around the maps. One in your apartment, one at the interpole HQ, etc. Basically quest-giving hubs. Praxis could be the resource for switching them out, making full aug unlock faster. Add to that special upgrades that are tied to side-missions, and you would have had a more robust mission imho.

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Specific augs
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Cranium Augs
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The only one that changes the gameplay is the social Enhancer. Though the design makes it OP. I have no good alternative, so I hope that someone can come up with an alternative that makes it easier, but not guaranteed. Hacking upgrades are just stat increases that makes the hacking easier, or even doable in some cases. These are mandatory unless you like buying the season pass for deconstructing weapons and building multitools.

Eye aug.
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* Stealth Avatar might be nice for particular types of play-through. But mostly redundant and low priority for praxis. However, since it is unlocked already it does not matter.
* Lidar Mark-tracker never felt useful and would imho be a pointless aug. Even more so with Smart vision. It might fit some other games (Splinter cell, MGS5), but it really has no place in the way this game is played.
* Smart vision is both a quality of life mod, and overpowered game-reducing mod. Using it to find items and secrets is all well and good. But the range is much to long, and that is what makes it OP to the roof.
* Retinal Prosthesis is an example of a good aug for a specific playthrough. Guns blazing, this is an awesome aug without making the game booring. However, I would tone down the effects somewhat. You still get blinded, but it lasts much shorter, say half a second instead of 3-5 or something. Also, if there had been some crosshairs upgrade that allowed for different kinds and colors, I think that it would have been more useful. Not game altering, but we all love different crosshairs. Say one is green but with a thick outline that only shows black and white, so the crosshair is never lost in the background.
* Wayfinder Radar system. Good aug that is more quality of life without making the game that much easier. The vision cones is a bit much imho, if anyone got a suggestion on that, I would love it.

Torso Augs
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Are good as a whole.


Arm augs
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Are all good as well. Though I would have loved to see the addition of say sway-reduction for snipers, and something to do with pistols. Maybe they are less lazer accurate without the aug and upgrade. Though lazer accurate is good when fully upgraded given the game-goal of not creating alerts, imho. Remote hacking can be OP, which is why I would like to see some range changes.

* Peps, Tesla and Nanoblade are all just fluff. I do not use them, but I can see that people like em for coolness factor. Maybe they could be more useful if the leveldesign incorporated their use somehow. Or perhaps enemies. Idk.


Back augs
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These have their purpose. Though in my trials, Typhoon only has a use in gunz blazing playthrough, since enemies will be alerted if you try and aoe them.
* Focus enhancement and Icarus dash are both good augs, though lacking in execution.
* Focus Enchancement could have been done more interesting than just a slow time effect. Perhaps a much stronger slow time, but you que movements that play after you exit the timeslow.
* Icarus dash could have used a faster change from regular flat plane blink, to the controlled freeform blink. The change need not have taken more than 300 milliseconds. Instead it takes what, 3 seconds? The difference here for game-balance imho is that the freeform upgrade would cost far more energy to use.

Skin aug.
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* Cloaking: So OP and remove a lot of the game-play. I will never use it, and I look down on people using it. My suggestion here is that it allows passing through lazers without rasing alarm, and that it slows down detection time, not eliminating it. Even a slight slow-down would make it really really good.
* Rhino dermal & Titan are the 2 augs I have not tested yet. On paper they seem fine for a gunz ablaze playthrough though.

Leg augs
Good over all, though I wish there had been an upgrade to the leg silencer that either reduced the energy cost, or removed the permanent energy loss from the aug-use. Or hell, removed the energycost all together.

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General changes
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If they had added a specific backpack for weapons, then some of the projectile/weapon/dmg augs would have made more sense. True, you would not be able to loot surplus weapons, but I think that is kinda silly in all games. I would rather that you switch out the weapon you have, either in the field, or from a vendor. Buying from vendor with the option of sending it to your HQ stash. This in addition with keeping the heat-management system could mean that some missions require certain weapons that take up too much space, and therefore you slot a weapon-aug, and therefore you need to shut down some non-essential aug. Imho that would have made for a much more interesting system of checks and balances.

Some augs like the silent running aug could use rare upgrades. These would preferably be tied to a side-mission of some description. They could easily be balanced with increased heat-cost etc.

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Augs I think are missing
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Distraction aug
A tiny lazer will rapidly heat up whatever it strikes, and give off a small audible crack. Cannot be heard through doors or when other ambient noice overshadow it (the party level, etc). This aug could also be used to set off explosives without triggering an alarm when those explosives are carried by an enemy. After all there was no gun-sound, and poor quality sometimes make it through.

Weak-spot calculator aug
This aug simply shows weak-spots in different colors. Tier 1 is a toggle with energy cost. Tier 2 removes the energy cost, and tier 3 is automatically applied to any target that you aim at.

[Angelus033]

Hoy
Typhoon is non necessary a gun blazing aug, you can charge it with non lethal rounds and use it in desperate situations, when the alarm goes on.
Yeah, cloaking is kinda OP but sometimes necessary if you want to stealth through the whole game.
Rhino is a passive non energy consuming armor, while Titan is a lot stronger than Rhino but consumes energy at a quick rate. They both are designed for a rampage playthrough, but can somewhat be useful in a pacifist/stealth game if you are discovered and have to run.

I like your idea for the distract aug, but maybe call it "laser" ? For the cost of 2 praxis, you can generate a laser that uses 1 "stack" of energy to heat something up to a medium range (effectiveness decrease the further).

• Could be used to melt some locks silently, and so open doors that are locked but not piratable
  
• Could heat some random useless stuff, like bins or jars, to produce noise and distract
  
• Detonate explosives remotely
  
• Could be seeable by ennemies, so you'd have to be careful with vision lines
  
• Targetted on the head, could kill; targetted on robots/turets/cameras, could melt them

[Tijger]

PEPS was imho useless, but Tesla is very good, the ability to target 4 (at the max) enemies and take them out non-lethally is excellent, no weapon in your inventory can replicate that.

Havent tried nano blades yet, probably in my next playthrough. I think the Augs are decently balanced, I see your point about them being OP BUT Adam Jensen is supposed to be pretty much superhuman, he's not an average joe they stuck some carbon fiber onto.

[Fraggel vonHelldiddler]

Originally posted by Tijger:

BUT Adam Jensen is supposed to be pretty much superhuman, he's not an average joe they stuck some carbon fiber onto.

Yes, agreed. But you can reach the same feeling without removing the challenge nor major parts of what makes the game fun.

You have to intentionally gimp yourself to play the real game, and that is just bad design imho.

I managed to get through the game just fine without cloak nor any of the projectile augs with ghost rating. True, there was a lot of trial and error, but that was mostly because of game glitches like the reversed icarus dash, or friendly NPC turning hostile for no reason, etc etc etc. Couple that with frequent CTD and suddenly unusable saves, I just gave up on the foxy thing.

All you really need is 1 pistol with EMP, one stun gun, hacking augs, and movement augs (icars dash and drop, jumping, carrying, and punching holes). If you have the deconstruct aug, then you do not even need the hacking augs. Hell, I even avoided turret and robot hacking abilities until NG+, and that is mostly because I focus on speed-running with no detection.