Shadowrun Returns

Someone should just edit the main campaign with more features. Dead Man's switch 2.0.

I worry that a lot of the user generated content won't really get the Shadowrun "feel".

I fired up Life on a Limb this morning and it hung at the first scene transition. Just sat on the loading screen and I had to kill the process. I think the DLC needs to make the completion percentage clearer.

My concern with "100 hour" campaigns--or even ones that intend to have you import DMS characters--is the pacing. A 12-14 hour campaign doles out upgrades at a good pace, so these UGC campaigns will have a choice of having players capped out when they're less than a 6th of the way through, or making people go 20+ hours between upgrades. (You can't add new items.)

Also, there's the karma issue. A long campaign would have to drastically reduce the amount of karma given out or else you'll end up with characters that have every stat and skill at 'optimal' (read: 6-10) levels. But again, going 20+ hours with only a handful of stats in the 1-4 range doesn't sound like much fun to me. I guess I would front load it a lot and then give 1 karma max for everything past about 140 points, but that's not really an ideal solution either.

Vorph_sl said:

My concern with "100 hour" campaigns--or even ones that intend to have you import DMS characters--is the pacing. A 12-14 hour campaign doles out upgrades at a good pace, so these UGC campaigns will have a choice of having players capped out when they're less than a 6th of the way through, or making people go 20+ hours between upgrades. (You can't add new items.)

Also, there's the karma issue. A long campaign would have to drastically reduce the amount of karma given out or else you'll end up with characters that have every stat and skill at 'optimal' (read: 6-10) levels. But again, going 20+ hours with only a handful of stats in the 1-4 range doesn't sound like much fun to me. I guess I would front load it a lot and then give 1 karma max for everything past about 140 points, but that's not really an ideal solution either.

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That's the biggest issue with the Sega Shadowrun, character advancement is so glacial that it really bogs down the middle of the game with endless random runs for karma.

Vorph_sl said:

My concern with "100 hour" campaigns--or even ones that intend to have you import DMS characters--is the pacing. A 12-14 hour campaign doles out upgrades at a good pace, so these UGC campaigns will have a choice of having players capped out when they're less than a 6th of the way through, or making people go 20+ hours between upgrades. (You can't add new items.)

Also, there's the karma issue. A long campaign would have to drastically reduce the amount of karma given out or else you'll end up with characters that have every stat and skill at 'optimal' (read: 6-10) levels. But again, going 20+ hours with only a handful of stats in the 1-4 range doesn't sound like much fun to me. I guess I would front load it a lot and then give 1 karma max for everything past about 140 points, but that's not really an ideal solution either.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is one of the things I've been thinking about for my campaign. You really have to take care to balance stat checks and combat difficulty with the pace of karma gained. Basically, if someone can't meet any of the stat requirements for an objective during a run, they will end up having to fight for it. In DMS you get so much karma it's pretty easy to game this though. I just always save a pool of karma so if I run into a stat check I can just pump that stat right then. They probably should have limited karma spending to Seamstresses Union or something.

I don't know what game you guys got, but mine was pretty terrific. After several partial playthroughs I have found several styles of play functional and giving different options as the story goes. The atmosphere and "Shadowrun Feel" has been excellent in my opinion, both in the visual atmosphere and the characters you meet. The gameplay itself was pretty solid, I liked how it was fairly straight forward with combats more-or-less adding to the plots instead of tons of random trash fights. I enjoyed the decking parts, while not really amazing, it had enough touches of the flavor to be acceptable. Personally I liked decking during missions as it, in my opinion, caught the proper flavor of the setting where you had to risk "Should my gun-team hold out a few more turns so my decker can try to get deeper into the sites matrix to get some goodies or should we cut and run while we got what we need". Also you also rarely need a decker, but lots of times there are tricks where it helps quite a bit.

There are a lot of little flaws and it is hardly perfect, but it is quite serviceable and feels like a labor of love and a fitting tribute to Shadowrun itself. I feel I've more than gotten my money's worth already and just waiting for some good user content to come.

For anyone working with the editor, I came across this post on how to edit weapons and cyberware with a hex editor.

http://www.shadowrun.com/forums/disc...erwear-editing

Can you edit or create brand new weapon abilities? Cause they could use an overhaul

*edit*

The main balancing factor that weapons are missing from tabletop is concealablility, dunno how well you could recreate that in SR

My knowledge of coding is minimal at best. Using a hex editor is basically just switching number values and calls to existing attributes? There's a bit of discussion in that thread about what you can do though.

Life on a limb is gone from workshop...

Life on a Limb had load issues sometimes. Opifer released a new version last night in the campaign comments before he removed it.

The content pack publishing to Steam is extremely slow. I submitted a character gear up map 2 days ago and it still hasn't posted.

http://www.shadowrun.com/forums/disc...ossible#Item_3

Looks like there's a non hex editor option as well.

Gavinrad_sl said:

Can you edit or create brand new weapon abilities? Cause they could use an overhaul

*edit*

The main balancing factor that weapons are missing from tabletop is concealablility, dunno how well you could recreate that in SR

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Eventually.

There are silenced weapons in the game (and smartlink) thatmaybe able to have a variable or triggers set off of them (I'm just guessing, I haven't looked for them).

On a side note, AP can't be raised any higher than what it is currently too (3 max base).

I hope they release content where we can create our whole party. Playing through again using primarily assault rifles and it is quite easy but I still wish I had a decent mage for CC or AoE. Everyone mentions this one mage that is good but I have yet to see her come up on either list.

Mirroring many posts before me I'm sure, but the campaign is pretty shallow. Very, very limited cyberware choices, no bioware at all, no drug addiction/side effects, smartlinks not available until the last mission for some reason, etc etc. I'm pretty excited to see what can be created in the future with this, as the world design and feel of the thing is amazing (though they jumped the shark a bit with harlequin at the end imo).

Ronne_sl said:

Mirroring many posts before me I'm sure, but the campaign is pretty shallow. Very, very limited cyberware choices, no bioware at all, no drug addiction/side effects, smartlinks not available until the last mission for some reason, etc etc. I'm pretty excited to see what can be created in the future with this, as the world design and feel of the thing is amazing (though they jumped the shark a bit with harlequin at the end imo).

Click to expand...

Eh, Harlequin is part of the Sega game too, and iirc he and Telestrian were also neck deep in the insect spirit plot before the failed raid on the main hive at Cermak and Racine and the creation of the Chicago Containment Zone. After that I think the metaplot with the horrors occupied his time and the time of most of the other immortal elves.

*edit* Although getting Harlequin as a controllable party member was a bit shark jumpy. In tabletop he's the equivalent of a several hundred, possibly even a thousand plus karma character.

I just wish Harlequin didn't suck so much. He was the worst character in my party for the final fights. I expected more from him