Deus Ex Vanilla Matters - A mod for the Vanilla experience

[The_Markie]

Hey guys, I'm the developer of Vanilla Matters, a light-weight mod I made for vanilla Deus Ex to smooth out all the bumps of the original game without compromising the experience.

Here's the run down on what it does:
- Fixes various vanilla bugs including both underlying ones and on the surface.
- Rebalances everything so that more builds are viable and stay relevant throughout the game.
- Adds quality of life improvements for various aspects from HUD to player interactions.

Some highlights:
- Inventory item swapping: Managing your grid inventory is now better than ever when you can swap between one and many items on your grid!

- Reorganized skills: All skills are either reorganized or rescaled to give a fairer specialization experience and prevent powergaming investments. Most weapons have been redistributed into the new weapon skills to make sure all weapons in a skill stay equally relevant and no skill has "all the best weapons".

• For example, "Weapons: Ballistic" now holds Pistol, Assault Rifle, Assault Shotgun, Sawed-Off Shotgun, while "Weapons: Precision" now holds Stealth Pistol, Sniper Rifle, Mini-crossbow.
• As for utility skills, "Swimming" is now a part of "Environmental Training", while "Medicine" now also covers Biocells!

- New Hacking mechanics: Previously the vanilla hacking mechanics was barely tactical and favors frenzy clicking, now you have to think about what you're focusing on, whether it be a camera or a door or even the special option.

• In the new mechanics, you get a time budget that drains extremely slowly when idle, but when you "hack" an option, you have to pay a specific amount of time (depending on the option) from your budget. If you run outta budget, you get detected. Read more in the official changelog at the mod's page to find out the details!

- Take hold mechanics: Instead of picking things up, you can now left click to "take hold" of a pickup (applies to pickups only). You can carry that pickup around in your hands, or use it as will, or pick it up whenever you wish.

• That means you can now hold up to 1 extra medkit, biocell, lockpick, or multitool. You can even keep a fire extinguisher ready for combat, or a flare. Or maybe hold a ballistic armor until you have a slot to use it!

Check out Vanilla Matters now over at ModDB or Nexusmods!
Interested in coding Deus Ex? Check out the Vanilla Matters' source code over at Github, modding guide included!

Have any question? Contact me over at my Discord.

Thanks for being interested

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Vanilla Matters without compromising the experience.

Rebalances everything

 

[Lilura]

Vanilla Deus Ex > Vanilla Matters/Shifter/BioMod/GMDX

Original, authoritative incarnations forever.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

So this is why Pillars of Eternity II release is delayed.

 

[Sigourn]

It's weird how there's not one mod that objectively improves on Deus Ex without making any questionable changes. Then again, one of the features I would be most interested in doesn't seem to be possible (make dead bodies behave like traditional RPG containers so you can choose what to pick up from them).

It's really annoying to try to pick something from a body, only to pick stupid knives and having your inventory cluttered.

 

[thesheeep]

GMDX was such a refined experience, I honestly don't know how that could be topped.
Then again, can't have too many mods for a great game!

 

[Infinitron]

Ash A challenger appears!!

 

[The_Markie]

Vanilla Matters without compromising the experience.

Rebalances everything

Flares are still broken lul

Vanilla Deus Ex > Vanilla Matters/Shifter/BioMod/GMDX

Original, authoritative incarnations forever.

Vanilla Matters is intended as either a last resort for anyone who wants to experience Vanilla but can't stand all the hiccups or people who want to replay Vanilla but don't want to deal with all the drawbacks.

It's weird how there's not one mod that objectively improves on Deus Ex without making any questionable changes. Then again, one of the features I would be most interested in doesn't seem to be possible (make dead bodies behave like traditional RPG containers so you can choose what to pick up from them).

It's really annoying to try to pick something from a body, only to pick stupid knives and having your inventory cluttered.

What changes do you think are questionable? Also I'm finding a way to improve looting without messing with the pace of the game, so look forward to that :D

GMDX was such a refined experience, I honestly don't know how that could be topped.
Then again, can't have too many mods for a great game!

Vanilla Matters and GMDX don't aim for the same thing, while GMDX revises various gameplay aspects and injects new concepts to create a new experience, Vanilla Matters simply fixes only what's broken and leaves the rest intact.

 

[Sigourn]

What changes do you think are questionable? Also I'm finding a way to improve looting without messing with the pace of the game, so look forward to that :D

It's not so much "questionable" as in "I don't like this". Rather, "questionable" as in "someone could make a reasonable argument against it". For instance, bugfixes are great to have, same with the inventory swapping. But rebalancing can be done well or wrong, and not everyone is interested in that.

 

[agris]

The_Markie tell us about your "rebalances everything" component. We would also love to know what the "hiccups" and "drawbacks" are that you've improved upon. Especially how you've "improved looting" and "fixed what's broken" while leaving the rest intact.

Long story short: your pitch sounds just like it - a pitch, full of contrived language and generalities that any marketing director would be proud of. If you want to garner interest, be specific. Move beyond the hype.

 

[The_Markie]

It's not so much "questionable" as in "I don't like this". Rather, "questionable" as in "someone could make a reasonable argument against it". For instance, bugfixes are great to have, same with the inventory swapping. But rebalancing can be done well or wrong, and not everyone is interested in that.

Well which part of the balancing seems off to you? The full changelog is over at the mod page, you can also try out the mod to see what's unbalanced.

The_Markie tell us about your "rebalances everything" component. We would also love to know what the "hiccups" and "drawbacks" are that you've improved upon. Especially how you've "improved looting" and "fixed what's broken" while leaving the rest intact.

Long story short: your pitch sounds just like it - a pitch, full of contrived language and generalities that any marketing director would be proud of. If you want to garner interest, be specific. Move beyond the hype.

I can't disclose the full changelog here because it's huge, you can see for yourself over at the mod page. However I can give you a summary:
- Vanilla bugfixes, of course, from mission bugs to mechanics bugs, if you can name it, it's probably fixed. So far I've dealt with at least a dozen.
- Weapons are rebalanced: Pistol's nerfed; Stealth Pistol receives a buff to headshot damage if you specialize in Weapons: Precision; Assault Rifle now fires 3 shots per burst but has slightly higher damage to make it more ammo efficient and scales bettter; Flamethrower's ammo efficiency is also improved if you specialize in Weapons: Destructive; Baton now performs better thanks to a proper fix to the vanilla "backstab range"; DTS is nerfed while Sword is buffed to make both equally viable depending on context; Laser can only take effects when walking or going slower, Scope only works when standing still;Finally, we have various minor buffs and nerfs across the board for the rest of the weapons.
- Skills are reorganized and rescaled: Previously some investments were mostly useless (trained Heavy, Medicine above trained, Lockpicking/Electronics above trained/advanced, Swimming above trained), while some were of extreme values (trained Medicine, advanced Heavy, trained Computer). Now everything is rescaled both in values and cost to make sure there's no regrettable investment throughout the entire game.
- Augs get the same treatment: Previously some augs were mostly "dump-augs" that you would only upgrade for the sake of not wasting cannisters (muscle, spy drone, aqualung, ads), while some augs were massively game-changing (speed enhancement, regen, ballistic resistance, heart, targetting), and finally some augs were just too situational (environmental resistance, emp resistance, energy resistance, vision enhancement). Now they're rescaled or given new functionality to nullify the min-maxing mindset: Run Silence is more viable; Muscle can powerthrow; Vision's sonar capability is buffed; Targetting no longer gives damage bonus; Regen only works after standing still for 2 seconds; ADS blows up ballistic weapons;...
- Quality of Life improvements: Outside of the highlights, it also has things like being to pick up corpses if it has an item and your inventory is full (the items follow the corpse and you can pick them up later), charged pickups being togglable, being able to bring up last held item,...

And I think that's the run down of it. The bottom line is:

REMEMBER TO CHECK OUT THE FULL CHANGELOG OVER AT EITHER NEXUSMODS OR MODDB, AND THANKS FOR READING

 

[unfairlight]

I might try it out for my next playthrough. Looks decent so far.

 

[Theldaran]

The... Vanilla experience?

https://pre00.deviantart.net/1539/t...a_vanilla_render_by_squallala1337-d9pu2xh.png

 

[Master]

The_Markie, there are two Destructive skill tabs and in one it says just "placeholder skill, you shouldn't see this" instead of i presume ballistics?

 

[unfairlight]

Offline since last year, may as well call it dead.

 

[Master]

What a shame.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Turns out vanilla didn't matter all that much.