The aim time of more than a few seconds and then only if you aim directly at the opponent doesn't make sense. I understand that they wanted to weaken the FPS part. But was there no other way? Only retarded people would have such a bad accuracy when shooting at someone.

Maybe less inaccuracy and more immunity to a few firearms would have been the solution. The tranquillizing darts could have been weakened to. They shouldn't penetrate most clothing.

Well, you can always rebalance it yourself if you really wanted to. All the files and everything are there for you to take advantage of.

But yeah, it does make sense. Ever try shooting a moving target with just one arm? Not as easy as you might think. Probably takes a moment to aim, etc. Yes, I'm sure you could argue that Denton could just use his other hand to stabilize, but the point they're trying to make is that if you're untrained at something, you're not going to do it very well.

The point was to add a strict set of role-playing tools into the game, and in reality, they work flawlessly to provide a means of getting from point A to point B in the most creative or interesting ways possible. It forces you to consider your options and plan every skill purchase strategically.

Plus, it's an old Unreal Engine game and I think the only scatter they were able to implement was based on conical spread. bullet does not actually spawn in the gun and shoot out, it's spawned at the front and they use an algorithm to determine its path based on a cone coming from the spawn point. The cone's diameter is adjusted based on weapon skill and rate of movement, Etc.

Ion Storm was making a damn good point and they made the gameplay infinitely more diverse this way. You'll learn to love it eventually. But for now, couldn't you just give it some slack considering it's like 12 years old?

It's exactly that kind of opinion, my thread was addressed to as an answer. I'm going to tell you why this part of Deus Ex, while many stress it as being a part of why it would be a master-piece, is in fact broken. The whole model of a high inaccuracy and aiming, which takes a lot of time, is designed in the wrong way. The skill-system makes it twisted.

The aim time is, in my experience, up to five seconds. In reality you wouldn't wait that long. If you're ready, shoot. It's not a bow. The average marksman needs around three seconds for his most precise shot with a pistol. He aims at the target. In Deus Ex standing still with one weapon in the hands counts as aiming and the accuracy rises. Fooling around and rotating, it won't impact the aiming. It also does not take into account that you have to aim again at a new target. If you have fully aimed it will apply to other targets as well, as long as you don't change your position or jump.

The classy RPG excuse of gimping mechanics in order to turn the player into an idiot is tasteless. In reality you shoot and learn. You don't shoot and decide afterwards, if you want to improve that skill. No, this does not make it interesting. But yes, you are right, they wanted to add role-playing tools. In this case, that is detrimental to the goal of diverse, realistic simulation elements.

Recap:

1. Aim is based on the weapon, position and time. It does not include pointing it at other targets. It does not take into account rotation nor toggling the scope.

2. Aiming takes unnaturally long, even for a newbie.

3. Basic conical spread is too high, even for an inexperienced marksman.

4. The skill-system is artificially over-complicating trivial tasks.

5. There would be enough other ways to tone down the FPS elements.

Your opinions are as valid as anyone else's but I prefer DEx it as it is - primarily, I find games involving shooting, with an accurate representation of a soldier and in a realistic recreation of a war-zone, quite disturbing. Therefore, the lack of logic applied to Denton's abilities sits better for me.

My favoured approach to most missions are stealth, caution and sniping from a safe distance. Irrespective of what you believe to be the games shortfalls, it works for me as I can approach most situations with an intended strategy.

Having given my opinion though, I'm sure there are plenty of people who would agree with you. With gaming budgets being what they are today, perhaps developers can replace easy, normal and hard difficulty levels with different scales of realism or even have multiple options such as the ones you listed.

I'm rambling now. I hope you still enjoy the game despite your frustrations.

In the words of the Big Lebowski, "That's just like your opinion, man."

Also, who said Deus Ex was a realistic simulation? It's a game with robots and augmentations and the Illuminati. Also with a rampant futuristic plague caused by the government. It's meant to be fun, not realistic.

I agree with the guy above: it's one thing if you want to play a sim, but personally I haven't found that many games that go for "realistic" which have managed to keep the "fun" part in. Starcraft was fun, despite the idea of a bunch of drug addicts with rifles taking down a battleship being absolutely preposterous. Similarly, the I find the shooting mechanics (and most other game mechanics in DX) to be incredibly fun, and I would be concerned about making them more realistic. Don't get me wrong, if they are realistic and fun, then better, but it's clear what I'll choose if I can only have one.

That said, I've never actually used a gun and hopefully I never will. If you are used to guns and the game is as unrealistic as you describe it, then it might be frustrating for you. To which I can only say, sucks to be you, you're missing out on a great experience.

I prefer what they wanted to achieve with it, too. I would have done it in another way, though. I doubt they would have the patience to do that today. Just look where the series went. I'm not a fan of split difficulty levels for everyone either. Many hard difficulty levels just use cheating AIs. I completely ignore them. Yes, I do. The fact that it's a thriller and involves conspiracies doesn't make it unrealistic. The unrealistic elements just doll it up. There are lots of good simulations. And why should any space-ship not go down under heavy gun fire at last? I'd let the character aim at a target or at its vicinity while the aim enhances. It would take him around 3 seconds to maximize his accuracy. I'd adjust armour values a lot. And the recoil exists in Deus Ex only graphically. That should throw the aim back a lot, to.

We're talking about capital ships being shot down by standard infantry rifles. You seriously don't find anything wrong with that?

Sure, there are lots of good simulators. However, DX isn't a simulator, and I stand by the feeling that the more effort made in making it realistic, the less effort into making it fun. Of course, on a simulator you play for realistic, but in most games I do not. I think the Commandos franchise was run down precisely for making it realistic.

I think the recoil was quite emphasized on DX? I for one couldn't use the assault shotgun unless I spent several recoil mods on it. Or do you mean the hit area doesn't grow? I can't remember if that was the case... But in the end, the game works wonderfully like that. Nobody will argue that it's a bit clunky, but due to those decisions the gameplay became amazing. And, in this game at least, that's what I care about.

Maybe an SC battle-cruiser is not fully clad in armour. Despite that SC is fully unreal any way. I don't see the negative correlation between realism and fun.

Do you mean a delay? I don't see an adjustment to the aim after any shot.

Also you haven't understood anything apparently.

No, I probably haven't. I just don't get it. The game is extremely enjoyable, and I would even say balanced. Sure, shooting may not be as realistic as a person familiar with guns would expect, and some mechanics would have to be changed in order to make it more accurate. Problem I see is, the chances of achieving the same level of fun balanced gameplay after those changes are low, from my standpoint.

My point is simply, I'm happy we got the game we got. I don't see the game getting better with the changes you propose, and feel it might actually leave it worse. But hey, what do I know? I could be wrong, there is certainly room for improvement. Yet they could have tried to tweak and improve some clunky mechanics on the sequel, and we all know they did not. I'm sorry the game feels wrong to you due to those issues, I really do, but calling it broken is something I indeed do not understand.

And if you find a game like DX, but with shooting mechanics to your liking, do let me know. That is a project I would certainly support.

I agree on all of that.

And I don't agree on that. Shooting models are aplenty in the market. It's only a matter of applying a good one.

I don't care about the sequels. The second one was unfinished and had worse physics. The third continues the plague of making wrong design decisions to problems, which were already solved better in the first one. There were probably different people behind it. Warren Spector was only Project Director in the first one I suppose.

The shooting mechanics are broken, Deus Ex in general is great. I just don't want any one to copy the shooting mechanics, because they think that everyone has been calling Deus Ex a great game. No one should copy something uncritically.

That's just an advice that there is no perfect piece of software. They always have to deal with time-constraints, limited personnel and so forth.

The genre is dead, unless a very talented team does something similar. Maybe CD Projekt Red will be able to create a better one.

Well, I think we left our respective opinions clear. I brought up the sequel because, in my opinion, the first game of a franchise should be "breaking the ice", so to speak, and I'm willing to forgive some things not being up to par. I expect the sequel to improve on the original game, by adding features that were cut due to time/budget constraints, smoothing clunky points, etc...

I defend DX not because I think it's perfect, but because I much rather have that part "broken" due to whatever constraint than spending the time to fix it and leaving something much more important unfinished.

I didn't actually notice that Deus Ex had shot randomization until someone told me a few nights ago.

Anyway, I tended to fight close up in Deus Ex (I favored non-lethal in a lot of cases, meaning baton + stun darts, which aren't long range weapons, and otherwise used shotguns a lot), so I suspect I didn't notice because the "cone" where the bullet would go would... still land on the target, shot randomization or no.

I think the game showed you the cone of accuracy with reticle size though, didn't it?

(I think some of the augmentation imbalances were a bigger issue, although Shifter more or less dealt with those.

Also the entire first level apparently being designed by the Daikatana branch of Ion Storm).

Yeah maybe a marksman would. But you might have noticed that you don't start the game as an elite shooter. If you don't have the max level in guns, you don't always hit your target as accurately as you'd want to. Simple.
At highest level, with the upgraded stealth gun i can kill big armored enemies with 2 headshots.

And anyway, go try to shoot with the same kind of weapons used in DE. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be as accurate as you think.

You just have to take a pistol in your firm grip, point it at something and pull the trigger. I'm sure I would hit something of the size of a torso 100% of the time without experience. What is so difficult at pointing an item at a point?