jtbalogh on 31/3/2006 at 14:58
Tiger, @SoulShakers right. There is no need to reinvent the map system. TDS could have just used what T1/2 had.
Quote Posted by tiger
third-person mode, combined with certain first-person needs, definitely improved
You are talking about the best of both worlds but does not prove if one or the other is good or bad. That is what bothers older players. They think that people switch to third person just to look around corners. Maybe fine tuning our skills to sneak, jump, climb, run, hide, frob, etc., all in both first person or third, rather than switching modes just to be able to do one action easier.
New Horizon on 31/3/2006 at 17:43
Quote Posted by jtbalogh
Tiger, @SoulShakers right. There is no need to reinvent the map system. TDS could have just used what T1/2 had.
You are talking about the best of both worlds but does not prove if one or the other is good or bad. That is what bothers older players. They think that people switch to third person just to look around corners. Maybe fine tuning our skills to sneak, jump, climb, run, hide, frob, etc., all in both first person or third, rather than switching modes just to be able to do one action easier.
I'm not so much bothered by what other players do, so much as what the designers did. They took a game series, that was pretty much accepted as the game that set the standard for the 'first person sneaker' and turned it into some kind of frankenstein hybrid. Third person is more of an action perspective, but first is more intimate. What bothers me is that someone on the design team conciously decided to superimpose more common games onto the Thief core experience, in effect blurring the lines and misrepresenting what the game actually was to the new players.
footsteps on 31/3/2006 at 18:14
I think you guys are overreacting :). Thief 3 is miles, miles ahead of most games nowadays in the gameplay and storyline department. Take a highly popular game like half-life 2 for instance: an extremely basic run and gun shooter with only a few puzzles here and there that require a modicum of thought, and next to no storyline (not ingame anyway). Basically, the McD's of action shooters.
I think Ion Storm did a good job. The story and ambience is dark and captivating, the stencil shadows really make the world come alive, and the gameplay was not 'actionized'. I can think of a million horrible ways they could've destroyed the game by making it more commercially viable.
Brother Reginald on 31/3/2006 at 18:43
I've got nothing against 3rd person sneakers, just I don't agree with that style of gameplay. In 1st person, you are a master thief sneaking through the shadows to avoid guards, in 3rd person you are controlling a master thief sneaking through the shadows. It's a lot less immersive if you follow the latter route, in my opinion.
As for DS being too easy, I think I found it so at first, but lately I've made a new challenge for the game-
-Use the tweaker to remove the lightgem. (I know it's an integral part of gameplay but in real life we don't have one!)
-Use the minimalist project to increase difficulty.
-Never reload the game apart from when coming back to it after a break; never just do it when you get caught.
-Ghost it!
-Go for 100% loot.
-Try and save it in a place where garrett would realistically be able to hide for long periods of time (i.e his apartment!)
So far I've done the first four missions under these criteria, and I think it's going pretty well so far; probably rivals the first time in the Cradle as the best TDS experience so far.
New Horizon on 31/3/2006 at 18:58
Quote Posted by footsteps
I think you guys are overreacting :). Thief 3 is miles, miles ahead of most games nowadays in the gameplay and storyline department.
As were Thief 1 and 2 at the time they were released, but we're not comparing Thief 3 to 'other' games, we're comparing it to the two titles that came before it. ;) As keepers of the Thief flame, we expected Thief 3 to at least meet the standards set in the previous titles. Compared to the originals...it did not. Comparing Thief to anything but Thief wouldn't really be that accurate a thing to do.
Kovitlac on 31/3/2006 at 21:17
Quote:
BTW, you just verified that the game is for new players, and not old players, which has to betray some of the thief concept to achieve this.
Like any game makers are going to say 'well, we have a very moderately-popular game here and we're perfectly happy with that...'
Yeah, right.
ALL games try to get more players, is what I'm saying. It stayed true to the other games in storyline, game concept, characters, tools, ect. Oh, but people freak when they include a scar on Garrett's face...
footsteps is right - people are way overreacting about this.
Quote:
As keepers of the Thief flame, we expected Thief 3 to at least meet the standards set in the previous titles. Compared to the originals...it did not.
Rarely do games do that. Same thing with movies. And how they are compared is all a matter of opinion. I happen to prefer Thief III over the others.
tiger@sound.net on 31/3/2006 at 23:46
Brother Reginald, you have a fine example of player do-able options.
(And Ghosting, with T3, is one of my favorite options, BTW!)
And we can always mention the purity of only using the first-person mode.
(PS I have mentioned, to a huge group of Postal 2 players, that a third-person view would probably ruin its natural in-your-face fear and reality.)
So, as I have humbly tried to ask the Keepers of the Thief Flame, here.
Which T2 Core Requirements are dearly missed by you, concerning T3?
And please try to stay with the ones that you think of as "easy do-ables".
(And, of course, using another more on-topic message would be proper.)
jtbalogh on 1/4/2006 at 00:55
It is obvious that some new members who joined in 2006 are offended by the Thief Flame. Your opinions are respected since they will eventually change in a year when you realize supporting the Thief Flame seems more appropriate than supporting a manufacturer who broke all ties with the thief community (do you see Ion Storm actively involved with anything ever ?). If being passionate is being overreactive for old players, so be it. Eventually you all will be older active members and will see a lot of things differently from experience.
We already discussed what was missed from T3 many times. Searching the forum can help, or we can open a new thread.
Martek on 1/4/2006 at 03:40
Quote Posted by jtbalogh
It is obvious that some new members who joined in 2006 are offended by the Thief Flame. Your opinions are respected since they will eventually change in a year when you realize supporting the Thief Flame seems more appropriate than supporting a manufacturer who broke all ties with the thief community (do you see Ion Storm actively involved with anything ever ?). If being passionate is being overreactive for old players, so be it. Eventually you all will be older active members and will see a lot of things differently from experience.
I'm taking that as satire, even if it is soo often truth. :p
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One thing I didn't like about TDS 1st-person, is that the field of view felt too narrow as compared to the previous Thiefs. Same for DX2.
I don't actually know what the fov was in any of the Thiefs or the two DX's, so it might just be my imagination that 1st view in TDS and DX2 were "narrow", but it feels that way to me while it does not feel that way in T1, T2 and DX. (As an aside, anyone know the fov in these games?)
In games with a narrow fov that have both 1st/3rd, I find myself using both modes, while if they seem to have a "comfortable" fov, I tend to stick to 1st.
Oblivion is a current example. It has a default 75° and that "feels" too narrow to me. I often manually change it to 90°. In "real life" I have better than average peripheral vision and feel like I need it in-game too, otherwise I feel like I have tunnel vision. 3rd usually helps to alleviate the tunnel vision feeling because it is behind the character and thus your "real life" on-screen view is wider than the character's actual 1st view but closer to how you think the character's 1st view should be. (If that makes sense).
Same in TDS. 3rd view offset my perception that 1st-view was too narrow and thus made the game better for me at times.
Cheers,
Martek
jtbalogh on 1/4/2006 at 04:27
Thanks martek, that is a great observation. TDS in first person does have a smaller degree of view while T1/2 has 90 degrees. With T1/2, I can stand at a corner of a hallway and look down the left and right hallways at the same time, but not with TDS. No wonder I felt like first person did not show enough of the screen and I longed for more with third person. One more proof for what developers intended can be wrong. One more proof that developers ignored previous games.
