Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Vote on How You Want Highlighting

skavenhorde

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There seems to be quite a few unhappy fans out there because of the amount of highlighting being demonstrated in the trailers. There is a poll over at Deus Ex's forums asking people how they would want the game to deal with this issue. When I first saw the trailers I would have hoped that this feature could be turned off in the control panel, but I'm not sure if that will be possible this late in the dev cycle.

So if you feel like voicing your opinion on this head on over to Deus Ex forums and cast your vote. You'll need to register to be able to take part in the poll.
Here are the eight different choices you can choose from:
Keep highlighting as is.

Remove all highlighting.

Modify highlighting; have ON/OFF toggle in options menu.

Modify highlighting; have ON/OFF toggle in-game (as an augmentation).

Modify highlighting; only highlight 1 object at a time when within range to use it.

Modify highlighting; have a scaling system to customize # and range of highlights.

Modify highlighting; change opacity and/or thickness.

Modify highlighting; make into an aug with upgrades.
Thanks, Von Paulus, for bringing this to my attention.
More information.

Source Destructoid
 
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cool.

voted.
 
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Options, that's what I want.

Not one or the other. Whichever I want for THAT playthrough. On or off is fine for me.

Oh, and after actually reading the post! I don't want it tied to augmentations/skills. NO NO NO

Options as in, hey look turn that shit off in the Options menu. NOT tied to how the levels are made. Sheesh, hell no.
 
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Same here. Like I said on their forums, it seems like a no brainer to include an on/off switch.

That highlighting is bad. I believe that one of the testers would have mentioned this. ;)

Even if they don't get rid of it it still looks like a good game, but that damn yellow neon lighting pointing me to where I can use items is annoying.
 
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When I first saw the trailers I would have hoped that this feature could be turned off in the control panel, but I'm not sure if that will be possible this late in the dev cycle.
I'm no coder, but what I've read so far, at least the option of disabling via options menu, would be easy. But they feel that would affect their "vision" of the game.
We have total confidence in our design choices and this debate has given us the desire to create a demo to prove our points. Starting next week, we'll work with marketing and we'll do our best to release a demo. Attention, I'm not promising anything, but we'll try!"
Of course that's BS. We all know what they intend. Simplify the game so much that casual players can play it. They must have build the game around these little gae aids. So probably the game design will suffer if there's no highlighting at all.
 
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Nice that they do a poll about it.
This seems to indicate that they actually do listen.
And this behaviour results (if it is true) in a +1 reputation bonus for me.
Another +1 or even +2 if the results of this poll, especially the choice with the most votes, is actually implemented into the game.
 
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Nice that they do a poll about it.
This seems to indicate that they actually do listen.
And this behaviour results (if it is true) in a +1 reputation bonus for me.
Another +1 or even +2 if the results of this poll, especially the choice with the most votes, is actually implemented into the game.
They didn't do the poll. The poll was made by a forum member. The only thing they recognized is that there is a poll.
They are despising the forum. They having a "open debate" about the highlighting in a blog and in French. They seem to only "discovered" the poll yesterday.

http://www.gameblog.fr/blogs/eidosm...e-c-etait-des-lunettes-de-soleil-debat-sur-la
 
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At the risk of sounding unfriendly (wich I'm not trying to be), but: when will people finally stop whining about these things? I mean: nobody has actually played the game yet. Let it slide a bit. Or look at it this way: You're an augmented guy. Your HUD highlights all kinds of crap. It's part of the game's sci-fi experience. Or something :)
 
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The French blog is funny (in a bad way). Lots of people don't care about the highlights there and the highlight is apparently because Jasen is wearing super sunglasses with augmented reality tech in them….

I can understand what they are trying to do with it, but they didn't use the best way to show the highlights.
 
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Honestly, I can live with highlighting. Why? Because it makes sense. It's something that fits perfectly fine into the whole augmented reality concept. For example, in real life, I could really imagine googles that highlight the correct doors in a building for me, because I have never been there. Would make it much easier to find something without having to ask someone. And I surely can see the advantages of having a system that highlights potential threats (in other words: people), toegether with available stats (armed, armor, threat level, name (if known), etc.). All of this can be done with computers (theoretically) and so I personally would like to see it in a cyberpunk game.

BUT (of course there's a but), it should be designed as an InGame system, of course. The basic augmented reality system, for example, could highlight your path, possible obstacles, your coworkers, etc. - but if you want to have something to aid you in combat (for example, analyze the enemies weapons), you would need a military augmented reality system. Hidden doors, for example, should not be highlighted, unless you found out about them before (for example in plans, found by hacking). There are so many nice details you can do with highlighting, but of course, you also can do so much bs with it…

And no, I don't think that highlighting automatically leads to showing you the way the designers want you to take. If designed well, highlighting would show you some rather obvious ways, but would let you search for others yourself. It wouldn't be a problem to explain, for example: "No augumented reality system was built yet to highlight ways a cyberized spy would likely take - for example, jumping over the street and climbing the drain piple - even military augmented reality systems tend to be pretty conservative."
 
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@Irian
Sure if it was well designed, I could see your point. And in that case it wouldn't highlight all the doors and all the ladders. It would be selective. And of course it would make the game more easy, because the augmentations would lead you to the right path. So in the end we wouldn't have so much a game but a tutorial how things will be in the future.
This is handholding. Isn't it enough to have already mission markers around in the game?
 
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Of course it wouldn't highlight all ladders or doors. If would highlight specific ladders and/or doors, if you had to take them to get to the point you marked on your map, for example.

Would it make the game more easy? Not really. It makes the game only as much easier as magic makes a game easier, which is, not at all, if the game is well designed. It's another path, but not a better one. So, the system would prevent you from becoming lost in an office building, but it doesn't automatically show you the safest way around all guards, for example. The basic system, for example, could tell you the most direct route - in other words, the most dangerous one. Upgrades could make the system better, but there could still be ways that the system wouldn't see, so there's still room for the player to explore even better ways. And of course, if one computer program can tell you, what way would be the best one to enter, the enemies could use that program, too, and prepare some nasty suprises for people who trust their computers too much.

So, imho, Augmented Reality could be a really, really cool feature for a game. But honestly, I doubt that it will be one in Human Revolution :)
 
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I'm not against the augmented reality, only make it customizable/tunable.
Let it show what we want, the range and the angle. That yes, it would be real.
But while not difficult to implement, it's probably already to late at this stage. So, at least make the highlight optional.
 
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I would like both of the most voted for options having it where you can toggle it off/on and it only highlights one item at a time when you are within activation range.

PS. Maybe have an augmentation that allows you to find interactive things at a distance but this would show up on your map rather then being highlighted at a distance.
 
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My choice would be no highlighting at all, or to at least be able to toggle it off in the options menu.

Have gamers in general really become this stupid and/or lazy that we need usable pieces of the environment to be highlighted for us? Whatever happened to finding these things ourselves?
 
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My choice would be no highlighting at all, or to at least be able to toggle it off in the options menu.

Have gamers in general really become this stupid and/or lazy that we need usable pieces of the environment to be highlighted for us? Whatever happened to finding these things ourselves?

Seems so. Guess we all want a fast and easy rush.
To bad i am not a "we".
 
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I voted remove all, only because I know from experience that developers HATE having toggles for everything.
 
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I would have to play the actual game to be certain of whether highlighting is a sensible or useful feature in the game.

But my impression is that it's entirely superfluous - and I'd prefer being able to avoid it altogether.

I don't like toggle options in general - so if they must have this, I'd prefer it to be an augmentation that's NOT obligatory - and that you could elect not to have, without gimping yourself in some other way.
 
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