Fian on 11/9/2009 at 16:10
Oh btw, I have also been able to get to bizarre places using climbing gloves (if you get too high the game breaks - probably why they try and prevent it as much as possible).
Hexameron on 11/9/2009 at 17:30
Quote Posted by Fian
As for fear of being caught, I just found myself quitting and reloading if I got caught - which is an immersion breaker.
What kind of playing style do you prefer for T1/T2? What you describe, reloading after being caught, is what a ghoster would do. I personally ghost at all times, but reloading never breaks immersion for me. It takes me three seconds to reload a saved game in most OM's; how long for you?
If you're not ghosting, blackjacking AI makes T1/T2 incredibly easy and the chances of being caught null. Even if you are discovered, in my experience, running away, finding darkness around a corner, or gaining access to an area AI cannot follow always enables a safe escape. In other words, I don't find being caught that problematic or worrisome unless I'm ghosting or the objectives require no alerts.
Springheel on 11/9/2009 at 19:54
Quote:
Amongst these lists of of things wrong with TDS, I want to add to it the "cartoonification" of the City. The first two games had their jokes and silly tertiary characters. Like Benny for example. But the City still had a feeling of maturity to it. The majority of the people you encountered seemed in context with their environment. Even the rare silly one.
In TDS it seemed like everyone in the city was a complete idiot, or a bad actor in a bad comedy.
Don't get me started on the black market fences and shops. Black Market Bertha? How about this line from Heartless Perry, "Hey Garrett, how's the thievin'?"? Are you kidding me Ion Storm? Are you even trying? And here again, they were all given silly voices, all sounding like a mockery, or out of some Saturday morning cartoon. The dialogue and very premise of the "blackmart" in TDS was just so god-awful. It insulted my intelligence, and I didn't appreciate it at all.
In conclusion, if the developers can't take their fictional world seriously, then how can I?
Wow. I needed to quote this. This sums up completely my major problom with TDS. I could have dealt with no rope arrows and jerky movement and even loading zones, as long as the game treated me like an adult.
It's no coincidence that the most esteemed part of TDS was the Cradle, which was the only part of the whole game that didn't come across as a cartoon.
Platinumoxicity on 11/9/2009 at 20:56
BTW is it true that the AI in TDS completely forgot that they ever saw/heard anything? I heard someone say a long time ago that when you mess around and the guards go to red alert mode, they return back to completely normal after it, without a clue that anyone's ever been there. If that's true, it means that the AI was actually worse in TDS than it was in TMA. In TDP and TMA the guards had a permanent suspicion that someone's in the building after confrontation and they were very paranoid of all noises after that.
Beleg Cúthalion on 11/9/2009 at 21:38
Guards and IIRC civillians have a set of paranoia scripts and properties to alter their alertness level/quality/whatever depending on what the player does or if they see the big WANTED! posters. I haven't looked into this any further but to answer your question: Go try it. Everytime I mess around with my FM and come back to an alerted guard he says something like: "Ah, here we go again!"
There are even properties to e.g. make AIs never ramp down after they have been alerted, but all of this is either not used in the game or too subtle. If you just increase the audio/visual/tactile multipliers in Default.ini you'll see what happens with this supposedly stupid AI once they are given back reasonable "senses".
Namdrol on 11/9/2009 at 21:53
IN TDS it seems that on the streets they stay reasonably alert but during missions it's a joke.
You can kill in front of these bozos and then 5 minutes later they'll be humming away to themselves.
And that whole shite about cleaning up blood in TDS? Does it make any difference?
Without a doubt it does in TDP, TMA. Just not in TDS
TDS is a good game, just not in relation to the others.
Bakerman on 12/9/2009 at 03:15
Quote:
I don't even think that Kings have houses as big as some of the levels I saw in Thief 1/2.
I think you'd be surprised. Also, some of the levels in T1/2 weren't houses - they were warehouses, tomb complexes, and cathedrals. Compared to those things, I think even T1/2's levels were quite scaled down.
Quote:
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).
It's really a casual/hardcore divide. I don't consider myself hardcore - just aspiring hardcore ;P. I can certainly see that it's frustrating to run out of rope arrows - but that makes the entire game so much more of an accomplishment. If you're skilled enough to know when and how you should be using your arrows, then you won't have problems.
As far as I remember, you could grab arrows when you were on the rope - but of course, that was rarely very useful. The way to do it was to leap off the rope and grab the arrow at the same time, in one fluid motion. Doing things like that were what made TDP such a fantastically immersive game - it was *your* skill that saved rope arrows, not Garrett doing something when you push a button.
jtr7 on 12/9/2009 at 03:29
Running out of gear is a first-time experience, but shouldn't continue to be on second and third plays. One doesn't even have to do a full playthrough to figure this out. Each mission after another, and each replay, should increase the players' skills so that less and less gear is ever needed, but simply chosen for the fun of it. I remember the tension of not thinking I had enough gear, and trying to use it judiciously while feeling like I really needed to use something to get past a situation, and how all that evaporated with experience. Taking that knowledge into the next Thief game I played, and the next game, made it easier to cope with, knowing ahead of time that I was, in fact, given everything I needed, which was actually too much! Use the training levels to learn to use your bow before proceeding to waste gear.
Bakerman on 12/9/2009 at 04:28
Quote:
Use the training levels to learn to use your bow before proceeding to waste gear.
To be fair, the training levels don't give you any sort of idea of what you'll be facing in a real mission - the only way to learn is to do the missions. Of course, they allow you to practise aiming and such, but they don't teach you *when* you should be using your gear, and when you can find another route, how to use your gear more efficiently, etc.
jtr7 on 12/9/2009 at 04:40
Naw. Finding which part of the sight, which pixel, to aim with, and knowing that aiming upward reduces arc-compensation are simple and invaluable tips. You can waste a ton of broadheads to calibrate yourself, since rope arrows fly the same, and there are sections of missions where you can be noisy without consequence. There are no important places to fire a rope arrow where the player has to really be good with the gear. The player has control over how difficult a shot is, and how to reduce the level of difficulty.
