Beleg Cúthalion on 29/6/2010 at 22:45
@Platinumoxicity: Well, to use your words: No, the sword sucks for a thief and just someone at LGS still stuck in his Dark Camelot thinking put it in and didn't make it suck in the game thanks to the mighty power of computers. I mean, on the one hand you're arguing with a reflecting blade ("reality" argument) but ignore* what I said about cumbersome equipment (also a "reality" argument) and on the other hand you explain everything contra-swordish away by relying on gameplay simplifications of LGS.
If I turned your way of talking in favour of the dagger, it would probably go like this: The dagger is a Thief's weapon because it is small, can be concealed easily [and all those people in the late middle ages wearing daggers probably didn't do so because they wanted to backstab each other.] Thus you are usually not hindered in any way and still have a way of interacting with the world (cutting or destroying things). If you cannot do this in TDS, it's due to gameplay balance. But you want to make the sword, a cumbersome and hindering thing, a Thief's weapon by ignoring all of it's faults in reality and degrading it practically to a one-button super tool with only marginal negative consequences. :p
*Not actually "ignore", but "inconsistent with the previous games" is...welll...no argument. Having AI with facial animations would be inconsistent as well.
Koki on 30/6/2010 at 06:41
I think you're exaggerating how cumbersome a sheathed sword is. Assuming that Garrett is more fit than your average half--starving guard, a 1.5kg sword is not much of a burden. Carrying it on your hip would obviously be a problem as it would get in the way even when crouching, but you can always put it on your back. Sword on your back is just as much of a problem as bow on your back, which Garrett seems to love to haul everywhere. There's the problem that you need to take the sheath off your back just to pull the sword out, but with a little bit of practice it wouldn't be much longer than the current sword-draw animation, and since Garrett probably doesn't expect to draw it a lot, that's an acceptable trade off.
Beleg Cúthalion on 30/6/2010 at 07:44
Even if we accepted that worn-out fantasy trope with swords on the back (there probably is a good reason for our "forefathers" not to do so), it would be there in addition to bowcase and quiver. You're right, the bow might be even more cumbersome, but it is much more vital to the gameplay than the sword.
And I'm not totally exaggerating (left aside the way I put it into words); I got all of these things at home and I can tell you it's even hard to walk downstairs with a sword, let alone crawling.
Platinumoxicity on 30/6/2010 at 12:51
I still can't understand the logic behind the fact that...
1. There's a good tool in Thief called the sword.
2. It's capable of many things but...
3. For balance it makes you more visible and slower when drawn.
4. You want a different tool on top of it that's useful for some but not all of the sword's capabilities.
5. But in order to make anyone even consider using that tool you need to make the sword worse in some aspects.
It's all pointless. You want to cut a double-barreled shotgun in half so that you can have a functional 1-barreled shotgun and a non-functional useless junk barrell. Why not just leave the thing alone and you have something that already works. You don't need 2 different tools that do 2 different things when you already have 1 tool that does both.
Beleg Cúthalion on 30/6/2010 at 21:22
Maybe you find someone else to explain it to you. :erg: I thought I was pretty clear four posts ago, with all the balance thing etc..
Platinumoxicity on 30/6/2010 at 22:44
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
Maybe you find someone else to explain it to you. :erg: I thought I was pretty clear four posts ago, with all the balance thing etc..
I got that... but don't you see that you're trying to find ways to balance the sword and the dagger by taking things away from the sword and transferring them to the dagger? Don't you see a little problem about the whole thing?
The problem is that simply because you want a dagger, you feel the need to find a way to make it somehow comparable to the sword as a weapon, right? What is the reason behind separating certain aspects of one tool to 2 different ones? Why do attributes A&B necessarily need to be in a different tool than attributes C&D? What is it that you think was so wrong about having it all in one package in T1 and T2?
Why do we need 2 weapons that do the same work as 1?It's like discussing the need of having the selection between Rope- and Vine arrows. Both cost the same, the rope arrow can only stick in soft surfaces but the vine arrow can stick to soft surfaces as well as in metal grates. Where's the choice?
Beleg Cúthalion on 30/6/2010 at 23:38
My way of "balancing" sword and dagger (by the way, I was for choosing one of them, not having both!) is not artificial and part of my evil campaign against the sword, it's natural. You don't have a sword with pros and cons in Thief 1&2 but merely a computer-parody of a sword. Likewise you may call the TDS dagger a parody, although not quite such a bad one. What I alter is the level of ridiculousness, not the "working parts" as it were.
Giving the sword its natural flaws (for a thief) is being consequent about its nature (including ingame nature since there is apparently no hide-your-sword magic), vice-versa for the dagger. But their strengths and weaknesses are more or less on the same level of usage. Sword means more violence but less manoeuvrability, dagger means less violent power in turn for more speed or inventory etc. (but this is again some in fact limited RPG thinking which I usually don't like). It's not like you have to decide between being able to pick locks and extinguishing torches. The only real downside is that – assuming my idea was put into action – you cannot battle dozens of guards while being absolutely stealthy and quick and carry all the loot from the mansion. But those two ways of playing are quite the opposite anyway.
Platinumoxicity on 1/7/2010 at 08:47
There was no choice between having the sword and not having it in T1 and T2. That's the reason why they made it a universal tool that doesn't make you glow in the dark all the time. They wanted a game that's fun to play, not realistic to play. If there is a place in the mission where I need to whack 2 planks out of a doorway to get through to find the last pieces of loot, then I will carry all the loot from the mansion while having the sword because the sword is the only tool that allows me to break the planks.
And by the way, your idea of balancing makes the game easier for experts and harder for newbies. People who don't yet "get" the idea of the game will take the sword, which makes the game harder for that particular type of gameplay, but experts who are planning to not getting into any fights will take the dagger which makes the game easier for that particular type of gameplay.
On top of everything the game should be fun. I hardly ever use the sword in Thief 1 and 2, except for breaking wooden planks or icicles to get through. But the sword is still there for anyone who needs it. Thief doesn't need 2 different blades... one that's strictly meant for fighting your way through and one that's strictly meant for assassinating your way though. Thief 1 and 2 had one weapon that was meant for both and more, and before TDS came up with the dagger (Because the broken engine was really hard to program and they couldn't get the swordfighting system to work properly so they scrapped it.) nobody complained about Garrett having the sword. The universal sword that you can use for cutting, breaking doors, defending yourself, backstabbing, even deflecting arrows was fun. There was nothing wrong with that.
Let me guess... You prefer the dagger because of some aesthetic reasons, and because of your particular style of gameplay you want specific attributes to be on the dagger, because you don't need the other attributes, right? So anyone who would like the old weapon that had all the attributes doesn't matter at all, and you don't need to bother with their opinions as long as you get the stealth increase when holding a magical stealth-dagger in your pocket?
I don't think you'd ever even use the dagger. You seem like a "Blackjack 'n' Loot" kinda guy, not the "backstabbing assassin" -guy. You just want the warm feeling of a somehow "thiefy weapon" in your pocket and the reassurance of the noobs getting a stealth decrease because they choce the wrong weapon.
-Just guessing...
Beleg Cúthalion on 1/7/2010 at 13:19
I'm slowly running ou of ideas how to put this into different words all the time...
The sword lacks its usual flaws in Thief 1/2 because it is the only weapon of its kind. To me it's a bit like "If we didn't have it, we wouldn't need it." But this does at no time mean that it is in itself appropriate or that there is no other way. AFAIK the more action-oriented levels of TDP were a concession to players of good old fantasy RPGs – it's quite likely that the sword is also part of that, ergo NOT part of a genuine thief game. The game wasn't changed a lot for TMA (left aside the missions in which the sword became more and more useless due to the "mansion" type locations which don't invite for swordfighting IMHO), that's why the sword remained. For TDS the whole thing was re-worked and unless you can show some interview etc. indicating that it was indeed an engine-related problem (almost every AI in TDS is sword fighting, so why not Garrett if they wanted to?), I consider the dagger a design choice.
Playing as a newbie and taking the sword doesn't make the game more challenging and even if the loot idea was implemented – you don't have to collect all the loot on NORMAL anyway.
About your assumptions... no, I don't think the dagger is more appealing aesthetically. I just got the image of a guy trying to steal things who walks through mansions with a sword which is usually an offensive weapon while this guy doesn't want to be seen in the first place. And that's quite odd. Plus, I know these tools well enough to consider every computer game which simplifies in an almost brutal way is downright unbelievable in this respect. I mean, have you not noticed that I'm not the only one preferring the dagger for a thief and that those comments about wanting-the-sword-back usually go like "Well, I want to have something real in my hands again" as if they were setting out for a battle? I bother with someone else's opinion but I don't accept a kind of argument that is basically: "We want to have a powerful weapon but please reduce its natural weaknesses because I want to play a thief game with it", while you could have a thievy weapon at the same time without reducing it to something ridiculous. That's no noob-bashing either, it is no different teaching than guards killing you in seconds when you walk around carelessly.
Platinumoxicity on 1/7/2010 at 20:34
I'm just saying that Garrett is smart enough to go in armed because he doesn't really have quicksaves.
And there's this sort of double standard when it comes to Thief, stealth and non-lethality. Garrett doesn't care if he kills non-human opponents. Zombies have the memory of a pebble, and giving them some steel to chew on for a while doesn't bother Garrett's conscious because Zombies are not exactly the testimony-giving witness types. The double standard has, for many players defined their personal way of playing, where they prefer to ghost through human missions, while in monster missions they are less bothered by being noticed and killing some.
And what would you do with a dagger anyway? Keep it in your pocket? In TDS there was nothing you could do with it. I think it's one of the most unquestionable flaws of that game that the dagger was completely useless in every respect. Stealth takedowns? Blackjack is the way to go. Combat? Broadhead arrows are for that because you don't want to be hacked and slashed because health potions take 30 seconds to affect you. Breaking things? Oh, right. It was impossible.
