Ziemanskye on 5/4/2008 at 10:39

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More about death....


If players have a genuine ability to run away from any encounter, then the issue is kind of the same one it always was in Thief: waiting for the enemy to get bored and become vulnerable again. If the guards are other players, that's not so likely to happen - I know as a gamer I have a tendancy to run people down whenever I can just so they don't come back later.

So....

You take the magic respawn back at base and put in in players hands - at a single button press, and if you've paid to have your flask-refilled or whatever, you're back at base, at the lowest of health (1 point, 1%, 1 Shield, whatever). Obviously, there needs to be catches. Perhaps it requires a few seconds of animation, so you need to be somewhere undisturbed: that would require quite a lot of tuning so that people can run away far/fast enough to have time to do it, but being a thing that only requires the character's hands probably helps. Not getting hit by a ranged attack (or one which hurts over a certain value) while the animation plays, and you go home. What you go home with is: yourself. General clothing, perhaps. In a thief style setting, a blackjack and a bow or other base "class" equipment should be easy to pick up, but should be part of the cost of the respawn since them being left behind can be predicted.

Kind of like the Insurance in EVE-Online. The more you pay up front, the less you lose - because you've kind of alreay paid for it a second time.

The other thing, naturally, is if you respawn somewhere safe, but at effectively no health, you need to change the healing mechanics. The first two thief games had a nice line in eating things for a small benefit, but that's a transferrance - what before was a "what about dying" problem is now a "what about healing" problem.

Don't teleport out - start with a new "apprentice" type
Do teleport out - have to heal, and might lose some of the more expensive toys.

As for spies, well, they need to be detectable. A thief-type setting is a much slower one than a TF2, and also one where the natural play-style is playing solo even if you are on the same team as other people, so you're going to thwack anyone who comes too close. As so spy != assassin is probably a good idea because that way they stay alive longer through not having to get too close to other players.

I would however suggest having something like Password-doors (as in a guy with a crossbow asking for a password :p). Spy's need to over head other people using the password to get into places, which lets you go a little Assassin's Creed on it: find somewhere nearby to blend in - and that's probably not going to be hiding in the shadows since that makes you suspicious to the player-guards - and wait for the chance. It gives the spys something other than thuggery to do, gives an obvious choke-point on how to catch them (they don't know the password).

Not everyone should be leaping around rooftops or hiding in shadows. If they are, then there's not really any other pieces to the environment, and the whole thing probably falls apart in a kind of equivalent of having a line of people waitinng for a cash machine one one side, and a line of peopel waiting to mug those people on the other.

Only with corners and shadows - step bonk/stab, next people on that corner.

thiefinthedark on 10/4/2008 at 02:54

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As promised, here is the link to the first version of the DarkLife design doc. Its only 70% done, and needs some polish yet, but that will be completed before i send it off this weekend.


Scroll down the to the bottom document, Right click the lighter text (it is a link) and "Save as".

thiefinthedark on 10/4/2008 at 04:20

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I fixed the instructions, just realized the error in them :\

thiefinthedark on 10/4/2008 at 04:47

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EDIT: Wow. Stupid lower case w in the hyperlink instead of W. First link works now.

The Magpie on 10/4/2008 at 12:00

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It's too early to really provide any proper criticisms, but let me note that you still have a lot of work to do. The scholarship should be within reach, though. :thumb:

That said, let me commend you on your efforts so far. I am intrigued.

While reading, a random thought occurred to me, so please bear with my stream-of-consciousness brainstorm here: What if it were possible to remove the typing (or rather, the reading of the typed text from other players) for inter-PC communication? I'm not thinking of VoIP solutions, but of only communicating with characters in line of sight by macroed emotes. Thieves' cant as a sign language. Maybe the players (not the characters) should be forced to learn the sign language if they wanted to understand simple messages. Bind often used statements to keys, or navigate a menu tree. This would mean a heavy constraint, of course. It's inappropriate for a lot of situations, and probably un-fun, too.

It's a bad idea, but at least it's one solution to my previously mentioned anti-immersive chatbox problem.

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L.