I think Judith may be being a bit harsh, but I understand what they are trying to say and there's some truth there. I remember Alexius (author of the now abandoned Hammerite Imperium) used to complain that he couldn't finish any of the missions for his project because he kept running into all of Dromed's limitations (this was pre-New Dark). I couldn't help but think - if you know what Dromed's limitations are, then why are you trying to build missions that surpass them? Seemed like it should be common sense that you would only build within the technical capabilities of what the engine can do.

No offense is meant, ST, your mission is beautiful and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. But I just upgraded my PC about a year ago (it's an i7 with 16 GB RAM, and a Radeon 7970), and there are some sections of the mission that drop into the 20s for fps. Overall the mission runs great for me, but I can't imagine that a PC more than 3-4 years old can run it very smooth. The Thief community isn't all that big anymore, so it seems a shame to eliminate maybe 50% of your potential players. Might be interesting to do a poll sometime to see what the average PC specs are for FM players that are still active in the community, so authors would have a baseline to work off of.

As in your example: the way use of crowbar was communicated to the players was wrong, at least in my case there were no sounds of wood planks giving way or something like that. There was no feedback for me that I'm going in the right direction, I had to read it on the forums.

DIFFICULTY

In this mission, I'm trying to avoid some stereotypes you might find in the old FMs. In particular,
I'm using a different intensity values of the Receptor/Source settings than you probably got used
of (I mean the situation when you'll have to use an inventory item on the outside item).

Same goes for doors. It might sound harsh again, but nobody really cares how real life looks like in games, translated 1:1. The more important thing is: how can you use game systems to communicate with the player, make him learn something, then give him a challenge and some fun stuff to do. The reason behind door handles, or doors without door handles, color-coded objects and many other things is to show players what they can or can't do, using only visual means. Discovering game or world rules this way is satisfying, and in some cases almost subconscious (e.g. the "red barrels rule" in shooters). This way you avoid frustrating trial and error style gameplay.

Over time, this project will improve, but so far I have no any experience, just observation and intuition.
In addition, not all betatesters worked well.

Sorry for naming mission but I prefer 30 fps with a big amount of object and other stuff than for example 60fps in Kingsbridge where is just nearly empty rooms and spaces.