It was balanced on "normal". Paco becoming a rigger was our way of making him useful to keep around... In the original, he was like coyote, only worse. After the tweaker mission... He just faded away and nobody noticed.

Violets suppression is suppose to allow her to use a "brute force" decking style, which we thought was a welcome change to the watcherIC puzzles. The matrix is more or less the Dead Man Switch Era of difficulty, with HKs graphics... So dimension heat (other than in one level) isn't really an issue.

Aware of the cash issue. We didn't actually modify the payment structures from.the original... So that's how much cash was thrown around in the beginning. May look at implementing a cost for hiring your 'friends', or Kubota taking a cut for use of the safehouse...

Some builds really mow through the combat, and some struggle with it. From your ease, I'm gonna assume a cyberdeck Sammy, or some form of adept. Both of those can get really rediculous armor benefits early on, and effectively negate incoming damage.

As for a "hard" balancing pass... What would you suggest?

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

It was balanced on "normal". Paco becoming a rigger was our way of making him useful to keep around... In the original, he was like coyote, only worse. After the tweaker mission... He just faded away and nobody noticed.

Yeah I get the need to differentiate him from Coyote, and I get that at this point if he were to change you'd need a new rigger character, but he really just doesn't feel to me like a rigger at all, like that was just kinda shoehorned in. Personally I'd have made him a street samurai specializing in different weapons than Coyote, or maybe a grenade/thrown weapons specialist.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

Violets suppression is suppose to allow her to use a "brute force" decking style, which we thought was a welcome change to the watcherIC puzzles. The matrix is more or less the Dead Man Switch Era of difficulty, with HKs graphics... So dimension heat (other than in one level) isn't really an issue.

That's an interesting concept to be sure. However, I think your way of implementing it was backwards. I think Violet should SUCK at stealth, and be terrible at reducing alarm level, but be tough enough that when security goes full throttle on her she can actually stand a chance of fighting them off. That's how I would do a "brute force" character, so that there's actually a downside to using somebody like her over a more stealthy character. It doesn't make sense that the fighter is better at avoiding heavy security than the thief is.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

Aware of the cash issue. We didn't actually modify the payment structures from.the original... So that's how much cash was thrown around in the beginning. May look at implementing a cost for hiring your 'friends', or Kubota taking a cut for use of the safehouse...

Personally I'd just remove the money people give you to hire runners and change the dialogue options to say "I can get some friends together to help" or something, and then reduce the payouts from missions to be more like in Hong Kong.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

Some builds really mow through the combat, and some struggle with it. From your ease, I'm gonna assume a cyberdeck Sammy, or some form of adept. Both of those can get really rediculous armor benefits early on, and effectively negate incoming damage.

I'm actually putting everything into body, cyberware, strength and close combat (with some charisma) and doing a pure augmented cyberweapon fighter. From the second quarter of the game onwards composite attack was basically a one-hit kill. But it wasn't just my character who was trivializing the game; none of my runner allies were ever in any danger of dying.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

As for a "hard" balancing pass... What would you suggest?

Well I'm no expert at the innermost mechanics of this game, but personally I'd look at what the base games do on higher difficulties and try to emulate that. Failing that, maybe make the enemy teams have comparable stat point allocation to the player's team.

Less cash will help, but I actually balanced everything on Hard because when we did Mercurial people threw a fit about how impossible Hard mode was when we balanced everything at Normal.

All Hard mode does is increase the enemy stats. That's how it works in the base game, that's how it works in mods. It's possible to pull the difficulty mode as a variable to trigger extra enemies, etc, but it's also just a place to introduce new bugs.

I accept that we overcorrected the difficulty for DMS based on people's complaints about the HK Matrix and Mercurial difficulty. Once we solve the cash issue, I'll look at rebalancing the fights.

We can go the opposite direction... Reduce the cash AND have Kubota take a cut... Put it more in line with HK & DFDC's economies.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

We can go the opposite direction... Reduce the cash AND have Kubota take a cut... Put it more in line with HK & DFDC's economies.

Nah, that would be messing with Kubota's character. She already said you're family and she won't do that. There's no need to do both when having Kubota take a cut does nothing different from simply having you find that amount less.

Also, I've been giving it some thought, and I thought of a way to make Paco being a decker less awkward:

You could rewrite some of Coyote's journal entries to show Paco having fun messing around with electronics and maybe either being embarrassed by how it makes him feel whimpier, or maybe have Coyote wish he'd do more of that rather than hanging around with that gang of his. It could make the sudden transition more natural if it were hinted at beforehand.

Edit: I just remembered that I was a bit overexcited to test out the fact that you can type out the password if you know it (I believe the original game doesn't let you) so I kinda skimmed through her diary, so if you already did this, my apologies.

Yup. You can type her password, if you know it.

Originally posted by RaustBD:

Yeah I get the need to differentiate him from Coyote, and I get that at this point if he were to change you'd need a new rigger character, but he really just doesn't feel to me like a rigger at all, like that was just kinda shoehorned in. Personally I'd have made him a street samurai specializing in different weapons than Coyote, or maybe a grenade/thrown weapons specialist.

I also think it feels a little odd that Paco is a rigger, but a rigger is needed for the team. In an ideal world it might be nice to either swap out Coyote and Paco's roles (with the justification that Coyote's injuries incline her to look for a little extra edge) and continue Paco with SMG and/or melee weapons (since that's what he uses the first time you meet him), or just swap him out for a brand new character. That would be A LOT of work to swap things around and rewrite stuff tough, and there are many other things I would rather have fixed up first.

Neither of the other two were sold on my Paco Rigger concept either.

So here's my thought train. Paco strikes me as the immature boyfriend, trying to hold on to the girl that's out of his league, long past their "fresh until" date.

When she gets injured, and gets the cyberarm, paco sees the chance to reconnect, by also getting cybered and jumps at it without thinking. Now the skills required to pilot a drone, probably aren't that different from piloting a video game... Which would fall in-line with his "immature nature". If the engine allowed for it, I'd have scripted the drone to crash into walls, and knock over lamps... Things like that, and constantly have Paco saying things like "damn it, behave yourself!"

I think it was believable, and I suspect anyone who's been in one of those relationships that should've ended but hasn't can see the line of reasoning. So Paco may be based largely off of a personal experience for me... And feels like a natural fit.

TMI, I'm sure... But that's where his concept came from.

Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:

Neither of the other two were sold on my Paco Rigger concept either.

So here's my thought train. Paco strikes me as the immature boyfriend, trying to hold on to the girl that's out of his league, long past their "fresh until" date.

When she gets injured, and gets the cyberarm, paco sees the chance to reconnect, by also getting cybered and jumps at it without thinking. Now the skills required to pilot a drone, probably aren't that different from piloting a video game... Which would fall in-line with his "immature nature". If the engine allowed for it, I'd have scripted the drone to crash into walls, and knock over lamps... Things like that, and constantly have Paco saying things like "damn it, behave yourself!"

I think it was believable, and I suspect anyone who's been in one of those relationships that should've ended but hasn't can see the line of reasoning. So Paco may be based largely off of a personal experience for me... And feels like a natural fit.

TMI, I'm sure... But that's where his concept came from.

It's a small thing, and I shouldn't complain too much. After all, I take Paco on most missions just because that drone is so darn handy for uncovering enemies and getting into places.

We will be addressing difficulty now that we have a table build. I'm going to revise some of the rewards, and add additional spending options, as well as correct the crew conversations to fire correctly. Look for an update in the coming week!

This is a good idea, I was looking forward to trying it out, but it is way too easy. The starting karma level seems to be way to high. I started off with a 4 in quickness, a 3 in ranged combat, and a 3 in pistol and in the very first fight an aimed shot gave me 99% chance to hit almost every enemy in sight. And that is on the hard level. I don't need to be dying five times to get through every fight but there needs to be some challenge. Doesn't the original game start you off with about 30 karma? That's more reasonable given the difficulty of the foes.

Yes this was definitely easier than in the original game. I ended up with 10K nuyen more than i could spend and 23 unspent karma (which was earned during the last bug-splatting run). Part of it could be that the UI is so much better for ensuring the party is properly equipped. Anyway, the ease made the story smoother to follow - i never ran out of options or was forced to restart from an earlier mission.

Agreed. We've considered reducing the payouts or having Kubota take a cut to operate in her safehouse... Or making the companions charge you to hire them... Lots of options, bit at the end of the day, it's the story people are already generally familiar with and they're playing this to.sse what's new, not what we removed. (Shrug)

The money and payouts weren't even an issue for me, I didn't make it that far in. In the very first fight I had a 99% chance to hit and was getting critical hits almost every time. And my combat skills were not even my focus. This was on the hard setting. I don't need to be dying every five minutes, but this was just boring. Did you up the starting karma to Hong Kong levels? If I remember, you start out more powerful in each game. Maybe you should reduce the initial back to the original levels. It was a good idea but my character started out so over powered I got bored and quit after about two fights. I might give it another try if this issue is ever worked out and it becomes a fun challenge rather than the boring cake walk that it is now.