Beleg Cúthalion on 9/9/2009 at 19:16
Unfortunately we don't have enough feedback from the devs to finally clear up all these things. Anyway, I agree with the final conclusion about climbing; and I always think of Assassin's Creed – no, that's not the usual it-looked-cool-so-why-don't-we... argument, but I mean the way this guy grabbed beams, single stones etc.. Make it a little more challenging (like that you actually have to control Garrett's hands and feet or something different), quite a bit slower (and thus more realistic) and finally not too ...erm... über-human (sorry for the language rape).
SubJeff on 10/9/2009 at 04:14
I finally agree with you on something.
Beleg Cúthalion on 10/9/2009 at 15:16
Didn't we have some accordance in the City mapping project? :p
Fian on 11/9/2009 at 07:07
In a lot of ways, this thread is basically a "Did you like TDP and TMA better than TDS?"
For me personally, I played the games in the following order:
Thief3
Thief1
Thief2
Thief3 was by far the best game to me. I think I play it once a year. I only finished Thief1 and Thief2 so that I could say that I finished them. Being discovered in Thief1 and Thief2 usually either meant that I reloaded, or I spent 10 minutes running through the entire level being chased by 20 guards. In Thief3, I actually found it worth while to hide and come back. Maybe they could have made Thief 3 a little harder, but with small levels, you really need to have the guards give up pretty soon.
Personally, I found the scale of Thief 3 to be about right. I remember playing Thief1 and seeing these massive levels for a house that made no sense at all. Seaside Mansion in Thief3 was just about perfect to me in size and scale. Sure, I would have liked a little larger city, and less loading zones. I suspect that you will either have large cookie-cutter buildings in a large city, or detailed buildings in a smaller zone. Maybe a little larger is possible, but I doubt we will/nor should go back to the huge zones in Thief1/2.
I personally hate rope arrows. You had limited uses which discouraged exploration, and they were rather buggy. I remember spending a long time trying to desperately grab the tip of a rope, since it was the only way to climb out of the area. I also think that Thief3 had plenty of hidden areas to explore - the main limitation was the smaller levels - you are going to have fewer hidden areas in a smaller map. I wonder if those that hated climbing gloves found all of the hidden areas? Ones that come to mind is the Thieve's highway in Old Quarter, a secret passage in Southquarter that allowed you to go above the buildings between your fence and your home, and various passageways in the catacombs underneath the Fort (I forget its name right now).
I think the reason why Thief2 is so much more popular on this board is because the engine to create new Thief2 levels is much easier to use than the Thief3 engine, and as a result you still have a good fanbase that plays Thief2 games. I suspect that you have a large audience of players that were introduced to the Thief Series by Thief3, and would be happy to see a Thief4 that was based on it.
jtr7 on 11/9/2009 at 08:09
Rope arrows didn't have limited uses, were retrievable, and the amount of wood to use them with was generous and placed for interesting exploration or even alternative and safer routes, or do you mean something specific? Rope arrows encourage exploration greatly, and only some people have very buggy ropes, not all. Climbing gloves were given areas where they were forced to be used and were helpful in those areas, of course.
Using climbing gloves obscures more than 2/3rd's the player characters' vision, so the player has to play in 3rd-person to look around where Garrett cannot. Climbing gloves cannot be used wherever the player chooses whenever a wall that looks climbable is around, but only where the devs chose. Of course the devs provided a reward atop the climbable surfaces. I'm not familiar enough, though, to know if it provided access to alternate routes of infiltration and travel much of the time.
All of TDS can fit within two T2 maps, and yes, a mansion that doubles as a party place should be huge. The Playboy Mansion is 22000 square feet, and that's small compared to:
(
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-01-mega-mansion_N.htm)
(
http://homesoftherich.net/2008/10/chelster-hall.html)
The huge places in Thief are nobility, not just rich folk, and the Moiras aren't nobility.
You should know that getting caught and chased is your fault, not the games'. It's not hard not to get caught.
When people talk about why the prefer T2, they aren't talking about FMs. They usually list the things they like and most FMs made with DromEd 2 don't have Mechanists and 'bots and huge levels with lots of vertical freedom.
I'm not surprised you like TDS more.
Briareos H on 11/9/2009 at 09:09
Quote Posted by Fian
I think the reason why Thief2 is so much more popular on this board is because the engine to create new Thief2 levels is much easier to use than the Thief3 engine[...]
You're thinking wrong.
SubJeff on 11/9/2009 at 09:17
Fian - lots of people that play in the order that you do say similar things.
Its a matter of expectations. I went into TDS having played the larger, more complex levels of T1 and 2. And there is no doubt at all that TDS had much, much less scope for exploration than T1 and 2. I think you'll find that of all TDS players those that found the secrets will tend to be T1 and 2 fans because we are used to it and seek it out.
As jtr7 says (he makes sense for once) rope arrows are much more suited to exploration than gloves. There are so many benefits that you lose and the use is hardly restricted.
Regarding getting caught -Thief is a stealth game and you shouldn't get caught. At every moment you should have a back-up plan for if you are caught. TDS made getting caught less punishing and so removed a lot of the tension from the game, which tbh was silly. If you want a non-punishing stealth game play something else. Thief was always the bastion of the hardcore stealther and we want it to stay that way.
And what Briareos said.
New Horizon on 11/9/2009 at 14:18
A major drive behind T3 development was to be forgiving to the casual player. That's fine on an easy difficulty level, but they carried it into all difficulty levels in TDS.
With the small level sizes, and loading zones, they did have to make the AI give up sooner though. No more being chased around a level for behaving like a taffer.
davehall380 on 11/9/2009 at 14:20
Quote Posted by Fian
Thief3 was by far the best game to me. I think I play it once a year. I only finished Thief1 and Thief2 so that I could say that I finished them. Being discovered in Thief1 and Thief2 usually either meant that I reloaded, or I spent 10 minutes running through the entire level being chased by 20 guards. In Thief3, I actually found it worth while to hide and come back. Maybe they could have made Thief 3 a little harder, but with small levels, you really need to have the guards give up pretty soon.
Personally, I found the scale of Thief 3 to be about right. I remember playing Thief1 and seeing these massive levels for a house that made no sense at all. Seaside Mansion in Thief3 was just about perfect to me in size and scale. Sure, I would have liked a little larger city, and less loading zones. I suspect that you will either have large cookie-cutter buildings in a large city, or detailed buildings in a smaller zone. Maybe a little larger is possible, but I doubt we will/nor should go back to the huge zones in Thief1/2.
I personally hate rope arrows. You had limited uses which discouraged exploration, and they were rather buggy. I remember spending a long time trying to desperately grab the tip of a rope, since it was the only way to climb out of the area. I also think that Thief3 had plenty of hidden areas to explore - the main limitation was the smaller levels - you are going to have fewer hidden areas in a smaller map. I wonder if those that hated climbing gloves found all of the hidden areas? Ones that come to mind is the Thieve's highway in Old Quarter, a secret passage in Southquarter that allowed you to go above the buildings between your fence and your home, and various passageways in the catacombs underneath the Fort (I forget its name right now).
Its interesting to understand the perceptions of someone who prefers TDS over TDP and TMA. Im not sure I agree with the climbing gloves/rope arrow arguement - the rope arrow could be used on textures that the developers might not have neccessarily wanted to use (some peopl ehave gotten to some Bizzare places). TDS exploration was limited by design to where the devs wanted you to go. The
freedom of exploration is therefore more existent in TMA and TDP.
As for the smaller levels, it is generall accepted that this is not a good thing. TDP and TMA had huge expansive levels, and TDS limitations of smaller levels (probably due to the limitations of the XBOX) can only represent a step back (since this hasnt been met with much acclaim). It is easier therefore to find secrets in smaller maps than larger ones, and in positions that they designer wants you to get to by the limited exploration (since nearly all roofs cut you off from climbing up, and the city hub walls are small enough in scale to put 'blocks' in place).
As for TDP and TMA level design, ill admit that TDP at times looked pretty horendous. It wasnt until TMA that the level design really got better as LGS got used to the engine (probably). However, the levels were and still are enjoyable to play. TDS can't be faulted on its level design (the cradle is incredible for instance), but alot of the time it lack immersion for me. This is purely personal, but little details such as pagan magicans, hammers without hammer uniforms etc just didnt meet the expectations.
Fian on 11/9/2009 at 16:08
I do agree that the limited size of the zones is a drawback introduced by XBOX support. Considering the power of the next gen systems, I doubt that will be an issue for Thief 4. But going back to Seaside mansion, if you just combined the 2 zones into one, the size of the mission was perfect for a very large house. I don't even think that Kings have houses as big as some of the levels I saw in Thief 1/2.
As for rope arrows, as a more casual player of Thief 1/2, all I know was that I was always afraid of running out of rope arrows. I probably didn't know where all of the extras were kept, and unless I am mistaken there are only certain times that you can grab the arrows (i.e. not when you are hanging from the rope).
As for immersion, I personally felt that TDS was far more immersive - graphics and sound definitely added to it. As for fear of being caught, I just found myself quitting and reloading if I got caught - which is an immersion breaker.
I will agree that slightly increasing map size (and fewer loading zones) would be an improvement, plus some increase to difficulty. But I personally would prefer a game more like Thief3 than Thief2.
