fortuni on 7/7/2021 at 16:00

---

Samantha, Nickie and myself have been discussing a complete overhaul (including repairing all the broken links and updating to the latest releases) of the Mission by Type thread for some weeks now and we would like to get your feedback on the proposed changes.

MbyT is without doubt the most popular of all threads so every section to be included, merged or removed was discussed at length and no decision was made hastily, but the thread is enormous and needs thinning out. This can only be done in 2 ways, reduce the number of sections and reduce the number of sections each mission is placed into. Previously some of the bigger missions were in as many as 10+ sections and we have now reduced this to a maximum of 5 for the bigger missions and 2/3 for the smaller ones.

Sections we propose to remove
Cemetery/Graveyard
City & Mansion
Mazes
Most Absorbing/Keep Busy
Mountain
Relic/Artifact/Talisman
Seasonal (Christmas)
Sewer
Water
5 minute Wonder

Sections we propose to merge
Cathedral + Church + Temple
Miscellaneous Buildings + Ruins (miscellaneous buildings already include libraries, brothels etc)
Outdoor/Forest + Swamp
Cathedral/Church/Temple + Cemetery/Graveyard
Caves/Natural Tunnels + Mines/Man-made Tunnels + The Maw

New Sections proposed
All Encompassing
Classic
Demo
Extensive
Great Plot
Most Challenging
Small Mansions/Houses
Underground

Criteria for New Sections
All Encompassing will be an expansion to the old Most Absorbing section, which was a bit wishy washy in its definition, but All Encompassing would imply that the chances are you'll find most types of locations, enemies and beasts in it, think bbb missions.

Classic This is not an attempt to bring back the Must Play section that was dumped last time we upgraded this thread, that section was a minefield to select missions for as every player has a different opinion as to what is a Must Play mission. Classic however is for missions that fully encompass what we all love about Thief without veering off by including obscure puzzles, pixel hunting keys, bizarre plots etc. My consideration as to whether to include a mission in this section was if you ask someone who had only ever played an OM would they absolutely adore this FM without asking 'what was that all about?'

Demo We won't include every demo, just those that are already in the Brief Summary thread, but will also include in the demos all the Dromed Beauty contest missions, and to keep the total number of entries to a minimum any mission in the demo section will not be in any other section.

Extensive A simple classification for monster sized missions and campaigns, FMs that will take some challenge and time to complete.

Great Plot Samantha has been an absolute angel in classifying these, kind of guess you all understand the purpose behind this section.

Most Challenging Obviously similar to most absorbing but possibly has a bigger sweep of which missions we can place in this section, as most absorbing implied loads to do, whereas most challenging means even very small missions can be included if it has really difficult sections, such as killing aunty in Makiko.

Small Mansions/House By introducing this new section we can massively reduce the size of the small section and the mansion section in one easy move, making them less cumbersome. No specific criteria apart from can you finish this mission in your coffee break?

Underground Too often it's not possible to fully distinguish between mines + caves, often missions have both mines and caves in them and sometimes there are areas that just do not fit into either mines or caves, so by having one all encompassing underground section we can both reduce the number of entries and make my job of classifying missions very much easier. Also note there are very few Maw missions, so putting those in the underground section seems to make sense as well.

Reasoning behind sections we propose to remove
City & Mansion This was an attempt by me 10 years ago to reduce the number of missions in City section and the Mansion section by having a separate section for city FMs that also had an extensive mansion, but it was never really added to, so let's get rid of it, it's not needed.

Mazes There were not many missions in this section and 99% of the time the mazes are either very small or are not a significant part of the mission, annoying in some cases yes, but not a dominant feature.

Most Absorbing/Keep Busy See All Encompassing above.

Mountains Seriously do we really need this section?

Relic/Artifact/Talisman As with mountains I started this section 10 years ago as an idea but never really added any missions to it.

Seasonal (Christmas) Every Christmas mission also has snow in it, and usually has the word Christmas in it's title, so do we really need this section?

Sewer There are not many missions that have really significant sewers. Yes some are extensive but almost always sewers are ways to get across a city undetected or an area to traverse to get to tombs/catacombs/crypt and other underground areas. Accordingly I have rarely put missions in the sewer section over the last 10 years apart from being an afterthought and wanting to find an extra section to put a mission in.

Water There are so few missions is this section, and most that are either have the word 'water' in its title or was an entrant in the water contest, and even then often there is little water action, most of the game play being on dry land, so do we really need this section.

5 Minute Wonders The new small section was built with the criteria in our minds of can you finish this mission within 15-20 minutes? If not then leave out, so do we need a section for 5 minute wonders any more?

Final one last idea!

New Layout
Many moons ago Iceblade suggested we place the different sections in sub categories, so we will be doing that by having 4 sub categories

Special Categories
All Encompassing
Classic
Extensive
Great Plot
Most Challenging

Locations
Banks
Bar/Tavern/Hotel
Castle/Fortress/Tower
Cathedral/Church/Temple
City
Docks/Port/Ship
Factory/Facility/Warehouse
Cottage/Apartment
Prison
Lost City/Civilization
Mansion
Miscellaneous Building (includes libraries, brothels, ruins etc)
Monastery
Museum
Small Mansion/Houses
Thieves Highway/Rooftop
Tombs/Catacombs/Crypts
Town/Village
Underground (caves, mines, underground facilities, maw)

Factions + Enemies
Beasts
City Watch
Hammerites
Keepers
Mages
Mechanists
Pagans
Pirates
Thieves
Undead/Zombies.

Mission Type
AI Battle/Fighting
Assassination
Daylight
Escape
Forced Ghosting
Horror
Humour
Mystery/Detective
Non Garrett
Novelty/Experimental/Surreal/Bizarre
OM Port
Outdoors/Forest/Swamp
Puzzle
Rescue
Sci-Fi/Future/Modern/Other Worlds/Space
Seasonal...(Rain, Snow)
Small
Phobic (Spiders)


So that is what we are proposing along with a few explanations to our reasoning, so we now welcome your comments and suggestions, but please bear in mind that the MbyT is the most evil of all Thief threads, everybody has opinions and never in the history of Thief has there been a generally accepted consensus as to what is good and what is bad about the thread, but Samantha, Nickie and myself have spent weeks discussing a number of ideas and arrived at a range of suggestions that we are happy with and hope you guys can see our way of thinking and approve our proposals.

However if there is overwhelming opinion to leave certain sections in or exclude certain proposed sections we will of course reconsider, but please also consider that I have to play every mission and decide what sections they should go into, and with a lot fewer sections available, making those decisions will be a lot easier, as it will be for Nickie who has to paste everything into the thread.

Samantha1 on 7/7/2021 at 19:12

---

Thanks for your comment toulomne! :) Im a biiiig fan of good stories in fanmissions aswell, that´s why we decided to add this category. Surely there are alot of people that enjoy a good story just as much as we do :D

fortuni on 7/7/2021 at 22:03

---

Yes, we couldn't think of a better expression than All Encompassing, but All in One sums it up perfectly



Maybe, but we used the Brief Summaries table as a crib sheet for all the missions we intend to include in the new MbyT. IMO demos are different from small missions as lot of them are experimental in game play, certainly often unusual.



We mean huge missions, but sometime walking simulators will creep into that section, unintentionally of course.



We didn't like the word 'Hardest' it's a negative word that can put player off, just like the word Keyhunt, challenging implies both hard but beatable. Yes that's semantics for you but we don't want to frighten players into not attempting missions because they are put of the title of a category, so yes they are basically the same but in reality by using a different word we will place more missions into this category.



And that's the problem I have always faced when choosing which categories to put missions into, but I would argue that your wrong in saying that most missions in this section are also in City as well, IIRC I rarely placed them in both categories, after all what would be the point. With the reduction in the number of slots available for each mission we're hoping the selection of which section to put missions into will be easier, but will happily take on board your thoughts, lets see what other think.



Just because a mission is confusing does not make it a maze mission, Lord Alan's Factory is a maze of a map but I would never consider placing it in the maze section, nor for that matter would I place Alcazar or Lost Among the Forsaken. Every mission currently in the mazes section in fairness does not deserve to be in there if you consider the fact that the maze in those individual maps occupy usually less than 5% of the map. The only 2 missions I can think of that that have bigger mazes than that are in Patriot (mission 11) and Gervasius's Archery Tournament, so I see no point in having a section just for 2 missions.
PS. There are mazes in all 3 missions: New Place for Ghosts, Nightmares (Mission 3) and Insanity's Crescendo, maybe not big or difficult, but they are there.



We though of that idea, but then thought you guys would think that was a really silly idea, yes sewers are underground so there is an argument for doing that but do they really share the same space along side cave and mines?



As with sewers one has to ask 'Is the water section of the map important?' Usually the answer is no, it's usually a means to get to another area of the map. When choosing which categories a mission goes into we/I choose the 3 or 4 most important/memorable aspects of that missions and it is very very rarely the case that it is the sewers or the water that dominate the map.



There really is not a lot of difference between a mission that takes 5 mins to beat and one that takes 15 mins to beat.

Now for your list:



Sorry but this one stays out of respect to Kamyk, he was terrified of spiders, he started this thread and only gave me permission 10 years ago to take control of this thread so long as I respected his pet hate of spiders.



Well spotted, yes we've added this along side assassination and mystery, more of a kind of filler section really, if we need or want to place a mission in one more section these mission type sections work well



I actually suggested removing this section but Samantha argued strongly that it should stay. She is very much more into mission plots than I am and persuaded me that Non Garrett characters are essential for plot development, an argument that I was rather pathetic at countering. I absolutely understand your position but you also have to try to see things from other peoples point of view, and that sums up the difficulty in deciding which sections to schange in this thread, different people are attached to different sections. All your arguments are reasonable and fair but when considering how to go forward we all have to accommodate other people strongly help opinions.



There is absolutely no way any one could ever put every type of location/enemy/game play style that players may encounter in this thread giving players a complete understanding of every scenario they are likely to encounter in that mission, if you tried to do that this thread would be 15 miles long. We can only give players a taste of what to expect, and that is only possible by choosing the 3/4/5 most important/memorable aspects of that mission. Of course we will never get it perfect, there's just not the room for that, but we can do our best and that includes getting your feedback on our proposals which will be taken onboard and is very much appreciated.

One final point: Yes there are a number of errors in the current MbyT thread, that's because when I revamped this thread 8 years ago I had only being playing Thief FMs for a couple of years and so took a lot of info from videos, screenshots and the forum, but now having played 90 % of missions, written 100s of walkthroughs and the Brief Summaries I have a much greater wealth of knowledge and experience, and along with Samantha whose been absolutely fabulous in both knowing missions contents and seeing things from a different point of view, we think we are getting close to a pretty good data base of mission classifications. All in all we think we should be able to present a reasonably accurate representation of all the missions available.

Edit rereading your last comment I think I may misunderstood you. One thing I may do when we post the new Mby T thread is to upload a pdf of the spreadsheet with all the sections each mission has been placed in, that would help players see what else they may encounter, in the meantime you can of course you the search function at the top of the thread.

fortuni on 8/7/2021 at 07:46

---

We had a discussion about introducing a Keyhunt section 8 years ago and both Nicki and Nightwalker argued against such a section on the ground that the word Keyhunt has strong negative feelings for many people. The other problem is how do you define such a mission? How well hidden do the keys or loot has to be to justify its inclusion in such a section?

fortuni on 8/7/2021 at 08:34

---

I agree you but I suspect Nickie will still argue against such a section, so am happy to hear peoples thoughts on such a section, but if such a section was introduced we would need to carefully consider what defines Keyhunt, which missions should go into that section, after all if people used that section to avoid such missions it would be unfair on authors to include their mission just because 1 or 2 keys were hidden in a hard to find location.

Edit: Of course we will be having the Most Challenging section, so unfair/unreasonable keyhunt missions can go into that section.




There's absolutely no reason why you or someone else couldn't set up such a data base, trouble is with the MbyT thread is that the entries are also linked to downloads, screenshots and the forum thread, so introducing a data base like that into the current thread would make the number of entries and link impossible to maintain and the size of the thread would be beyond ridiculous, which is exactly the opposite what what we are trying to achieve here.