Samantha1 on 29/10/2020 at 20:36
As awesome as I found the first mission, as bad I found the Second.. not because they are the undead, but because nothing of the stuff you have to do is properly explained. Within 30 minutes I had to come here 3 times to see what I even have to do next, and I was like "so that? Why? How am I supposed to know that?", so I dropped it after 30 minutes.
The first one was pretty great though. After Les Paolis and Cathedral of St. Vincent my 3. favourite from Cardia :)
Cardia on 29/10/2020 at 21:41
Samantha whenever you get stuck please check my youtube channel as i made walktrough videos for all missions, here's a play list for the second part of "Religious conflict" :
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s6_SKIEBPo&list=PLDvZhMQtQT0r3NjPAgqjpjO5VMyc2z6dJ)
also i suggest you to play on a easier difficult mode if you find "expert" to hard. I don't know why most players play all missions for the first time in "expert" mode. I always begin every new mission in "normal" difficult.
Also ready carefully all readables.
I'ts a shame not to finish the second part, for me this is one of my favorite productions.
Samantha1 on 30/10/2020 at 18:54
I´m sorry cardia, but if I have to watch a walkthrough first and spoiler myself through the whole mission because it´s just too difficult to know what to do, then its just not a well-done mission. I always read every readable carefully and pay attention. People (including myself) like to play expert at first because of the additional objectives to do, like finding additional stuff. You are one of the few FM-makes that tend to exaggerate with expert difficulty though, especially with the loot goal. I´ve never played a mission from you in which the loot goal was achieved before the other objectives (annoying loot hunt) and I´ve never played an original thief mission in which I have had problems with it. None. Including thief 3.
I get that you dont want to take the advise of the people here in the forum and orientate yourself on the original thief games like yandros, christine and other amazing fm-makers often do, but you also cannot complain then when people find your FMs not very well done and drop them cause of it. If you want to please yourself with the creation and not the others (which is absolutely your right to do), you have to live with people not enjoying it:angel:
Cardia on 30/10/2020 at 22:47
Samantha the advantage of starting a mission on a lower difficult mode is that when you replay it later on a harder difficult level it becomes easier because you know already many things that will help you to understand better the riddles. Also it's not because a lower difficult level has less and easier goals that the mission is less satisfying, on the contrary in this case for you it can be much more rewarding, you have less complicated goals to accomplish and the loot goal is also much easier, all difficult levels are part of the mission, and were created to give as much as possible satisfaction to the player, give another try to this mission in "easier" mode.
Samantha1 on 31/10/2020 at 11:01
That is indeed your opinion Cardia, but many others including myself see it differently. That´s not how the original thief works either. Expert mode is of course more difficult, having to find more loot, having to do more stuff, having more enemies, but it is never so difficult that you cannot finish it without help before playing normal or hard. Neither thief nor many other games work like that. Only your fanmissions do if Im perfectly honest. Again, that is only my opinion. They are your creations so you can do what you want with them, but again I have to say that you cannot complain then if people tend to not enjoy and/or drop them.
Galaer on 31/10/2020 at 11:20
Disadvantage of playing on lower difficulties is that you may not see some content, because it may be blocked on lower difficulties. Also you can get quest items and get confused by them, because you get objective to get them only on Expert difficulty. And not everyone wants to replay the mission just to play on higher difficulty. It will be mostly the same experience. That's why I don't really understand people playing on lower difficulties. Maybe except situation when they want to avoid ghosting objective on Expert.
Also "loot goal on Normal being easier" is a joke in your missions. In most situations Expert requires 98% of max loot, while lower difficulties slightly less. It's usually 100 loot leeway between difficulties. Out of 10000-20000 max loot. And most of your loot pieces has 100 value. So on Normal you can grab 2 less loot pieces than on Expert, which is really ridiculous. You probably don't know, but you are sabotaging your missions by doing this over and over.
You usually build really beautiful missions, but you don't let players to enjoy them, because to beat them legitly player is forced to look very closely to walls, floors and furnitures to find all loot in random places. This is very exhausting way of searching for loot and not very fun. By doing that player has no time to enjoy look oi the whole mission (usually city) and when he's done, he's too tired to enjoy aesthetics of your mission. When beating your missions I usually have no time to look at it and enjoy atmosphere, I'm too busy searching for loot and key items.
But what if this search fails? Then the only option is to skip the mission. But it's never satisfying. I usually feel really disappointed that I didn't beat it legitly, but legit search for loot wasn't fun at all, so I have no choice.
And the last thing. You may not be aware, but by making your loot objective super high, you are provoking all these complaints that you don't like to read. I think you are super good player, but the problem is you require the same amount of skill and perception from other players. And this is just not happening.
Also request: for future beta tests, could you ask your beta testers to estimate difficulty of finding each loot pieces in your mission. That's a lot more work for them, but I found it you have really huge problem with estimating what's easy for player and what's too hard. This info will be very valuable for you.
Cardia on 31/10/2020 at 11:32
Quote Posted by Galaer
Also request: for future beta tests, could you ask your beta testers to estimate difficulty of finding each loot pieces in your mission. That's a lot more work for them, but I found it you have really huge problem with estimating what's easy for player and what's too hard. This info will be very valuable for you.
But i do always allow betatesters to tell me what loot values are satisfying, and i set them according to their suggestions, if they are satisfied then i release the mission with the amounts accorded by everyone in the betatesting group.
Looting is my favorite part on a mission gameplay , that forces me to explore and look carefully every corner, and i like that, i´m sorry.
Galaer on 31/10/2020 at 12:56
Quote Posted by Cardia
But i do always allow betatesters to tell me what loot values are satisfying, and i set them according to their suggestions, if they are satisfied then i release the mission with the amounts accorded by everyone in the betatesting group.
Looting is my favorite part on a mission gameplay , that forces me to explore and look carefully every corner, and i like that, i´m sorry.
You misunderstood me a bit. I meant for betatesters to mention specifically what loot should be on what difficulty. For example:
Chalice from high building on roof - Hard+ difficulty, because on Normal it may be hard for people notice wooden beam to rope.
And continue with that with every loot piece or location in the mission. That's a lot more work of course than simple suggestion what value should be on each difficulty. Also by reading the threads of your missions (for example for Les Paolis) you can find betatester's posts about you completely ignoring their feedback. Then what's the point of beta tests? And about you liking to explore every corner of your missions. Most of the people don't like that. Plus you are the author. You know perfectly well where is every piece of loot, so you don't need to search carefully for loot. And one more thing, there are missions that I like to explore and search for loot, but only if mission is very fun to play and I'm not forced to do that. You unfortunately are forcing to loot hunt and because of that it feels double bad. Please, give people choice. You will notice that a lot of complaints will vanish and there will still be a people wanting to search for loot.
Samantha1 on 31/10/2020 at 13:18
I agree with what Galaer said, that´s exactly why I and many others like to play on expert mode right from the beginning. I too have read about how you often ignore the feedback of betatesters. They give you beforehand the facts that are annoying, the same facts that the players later complain about. Also Yandros (who is one of the best thief fanmission creators on this planet) gave you some very valuable advise in Les paolis. He said:
"When I decide what the loot goals will be in my missions, I consider ONLY loot which is not found in secrets. IMO a player should be able to fulfill the loot goal on Expert without finding ANY secrets and it should never be more than 80%. My rule of thumb is usually 50-60-70% or 50-65-80% of the total loot not in secrets for the loot goals, rounded up to the nearest 100. My objective is for the player to generally have already fulfilled the loot goal by the time they finish all the other objectives (or be very close), because backtracking and searching for missed loot once everything else is done is not fun, and is also something Garrett wouldn't bother to do most of the time."
And that is exactly how it is. Garrett wouldn´t bother with sth. like that and it is annoying to have to look in every corner just for some missing coin. But that´s what many people told you already alot of times, so I guess you purposely ignore it because you see it differently, because you enjoy it. They are your fanmissions and we are thankful for all the hard work you put into them, but you have to understand that if you only try to please yourself and not the players, that negative feedback will always come back to you. You either have to accept the negative feedback then or change the way you handle it.
Cardia on 31/10/2020 at 14:09
Yes i understand what you both feel, and you´re right, i am like Uwe Schimdt aka Atom ( a great artist!), what he says here in 48:14 is what i also say :cheeky: :
[video=youtube_share;H9pYRclq9BY]https://youtu.be/H9pYRclq9BY?t=2893[/video]
"I think it's very important in the first place to make music for yourself and not for the audience" :)
