vfig on 7/5/2020 at 22:10

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Just finished this. I was trying to decide what mission to lp next after the TMA20AC entries, and yesterday I picked this up as it had the distinction of being the newest-released fm.

Started on Expert, got about an hour in, and stopped: there were too many guards and too much light on the streets, and the blackjack limit meant I couldn't just knock them out as I wanted (cause it turns out there's a whole lot more than 16 enemies that'd be getting in my way!). And I had seen the comments above about the potentially impossible objective, so continuing on Expert seemed unwise.

So then I restarted on Hard. 2 hours 49 minutes according to the stats screen, but if you include reloads and time spent looking up hints (see below) it was just about 4 hours total.

I did not have fun with this mission. The streets are too large and much too mazelike. The map is very difficult to read (even after I converted the .pcx files to .png to avoid the palette problems when going between pages), and to make it worse they are 90 degrees out: North by the in-game compass is actually to the right on the maps, in defiance of the drawn compass rose (Master of Dromed: set Automap Info > Compass Offset to 270 to correct this)—which kept on confusing me when trying to find my bearings. And then when I finally found my way to Raputo's quarter, and had knocked out every npc in it, I still went all around it at least twice trying to find Raputo with no luck whatsoever. Eventually I got so tired of going round in circles to see if there was a room I'd missed, that I opened up the mission in Dromed in order to locate Raputo. Which showed me he was standing with two guards in the casino room that I'd already been through! But it also showed me that he was on a Cavador-style patrol, which gave me enough information to finally track him down. And when I'd completed the main objective, I realised I still had the Lady Catherine's necklace objective to do! And I'd been everywhere (or so I thought) and had not seen anything or anyone that seemed to meet the description. I was not looking forward to scouring the same streets again, so back to Dromed once more, and I found there was another section of streets that was not on the map that I could see and that I had not yet visited, and sure enough found what I needed there. Oh, and I was not a fan of the many archers with high vantage points who would inevitably see me in the brightly-lit streets.

Overall this mission is a decent first attempt. The story concept is good. Architecture and detailing are adequate. It's layout and gameplay where this falls down.

Master of Dromed: I was streaming as I played, so if you want to some more playtest feedback, the twitch videos will be up for the next 30 days: (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/613276050) Part 1, 2h17m and (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614048440) Part 2, 2h38m (eventually the edited video will go on my youtube channel, but exactly when will depend on scheduling).

Master of Dromed on 8/5/2020 at 03:49

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Near thieves lair is a locked gate. The control panel who opens the gate is in a tower with a wooden door. The door is lockpickable. After you open the gate you gain access to a new section of the town with a few streets. There, in a tower, at a balcony you can find Lady Catherine and a statue. The necklace is on the head of the statue.

Master of Dromed on 8/5/2020 at 08:30

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Hello vfig! Thank you very much for your feedback, i say your feedback was exceptionally helpfull. I watched carefully your 2 videos of almost 5 hours of hard struggle with this map. I am very sorry you had such a frustrating experience but maybe this happened because your not so logical approach to this mission.. as Garrett TMT said you have the sewers in Opera Quarter at the start of the mission to navigate underwater and safe for the streets patrols. As you noticed, the streets with many lamp posts and a lot of light are not the recommended way to proceed.. still you persisted in trying with that approach.
I think the mission can be done pretty easy on expert with around 5 KOs. But we are people playing Thief for almost 20 years so we cannot assume all the players have the same degree of skill. Still i recommend to you and to all not so experienced Thief players to play this mission at normal mode difficulty for the first time so they can get used with the environment first. To play at expert difficulty without knowing the map is simply madness as this place is very very big and you can end up getting lost. You have to know what guards to knock out as you have a limited amount of KOs. This can't be done at first attempt if you are not very experienced in sneaking or ghosting. I wonder.. have you ever played Kidnap mission in Thief 2? This is no harder than finding Cavador in that huge underground mines in the Lost City, full of mechanist patrols. I thought all players had that experience before and finding Raputo in that quarter is not so hard. Still you had been incredible unlucky and pass near him a few times, at one moment you panicked and run in circles not paying attention on what's happening near you. Then you supposed the map is bugged or something and maybe there is no Raputo on the map and lost your concentration to the main goal. Again your approach was not optimal, as you simply can wait for him in one place at his mansion, at the tavern or at the mages and eventually he will show up. If you are running in circles on the map you can miss him as happened.
After all i can say your videos were great and very helpful, you discovered a lot of bugs, the compass is wrong placed, the map is pretty bad and unclear, i have to mark Lady Catherine location and other important places in the future updates. The slipping AIs don't fall down instantly after they are KOed in sleep, other AI just run and fall down after a long time after a KO which looks pretty bad and needs a fix.

Galaer on 8/5/2020 at 09:07

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There are few differences between Kidnap and this mission:

1. In Kidnap we get information that Cavador will start his patrol. In this mission it's only said that Raputo may appear in certain places, but I mistook that as him spawning in these places at the beginning of the mission and staying there forever. There is no info about Raputo walks through city.

2. In Kidnap we have really detailed Cavador's patrol route. In this mission there are only few places mentioned that he can appear, but city is really big. So it's hard to determine his patrol route.

3. In Kidnap we have a really good map. In this mission map is barely readable and I only used first page of map, because only this is good. But not good enough for capturing Raputo.

When I played this mission I mistook Raputo with purple pajama guy from Thieves Lair (that's Raputo's Mansion, isn't it?) and I was confused when objective didn't complete. I was really lucky when I spot real Raputo on random street.

Galaer on 8/5/2020 at 09:31

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Because I had no idea that Raputo's name will get displayed when I will carry him. I played a lot of FMs and in a lot of them when I need to carry body of someone, it just displayed as Unconscious Body. And i thought it's the same case here.