Under what conditions you will not buy or even not play Thief 4 at all? - by Lady Rowena
rainynight65 on 25/5/2009 at 16:15
Quote Posted by Yandros
Wrong. The first person feel was off
because they implemented third person.
Care to elaborate? Because IMHO, and with all due respect, that's rubbish.
Myagi on 25/5/2009 at 17:10
Throwing third person into the mix did impose restrictions in how they did stuff in first person. Yes in theory that might not have to be the case if they coded the two separately and invested full time in each, but in reality to save time and kill 2 flies with one blow they did things that would work in third and good enough (but not great) in first person so they wouldn't need two sets of animations and control code.
- Lean taking an actual side step (as in fall off the fricking ledge if you "leaned" out), just making the character lean might have A) looked a bit bad in TP or B) wasn't enough movement offset to bring any use in TP
- The slightly annoying "drunk walking" effect, blaming BA for that isn't fair, you can make BA without that kind of shit, this is a result of making movement look good in third person and reusing the same movement code in first person.
(- Lack of rope arrows has been rumored to be because they couldn't get it working satisfactory in third person, I'll withhold judgement on that one though as I don't know where the originated.)
I believe in the shit or get off the pot philosophy here, pick one perspective and stick with it*. Doing both will in real world cases lead to one or both not being as good as they could be because there's always some compromises having to be made. Be it in allocating time and/or coders, level designer having to thinking about two perspectives working instead of totally focusing on one, animators doing stuff for both modes (or doing mentioned compromises where same are using in TP and FP) or play testers' time will suddenly be halved in each mode (or worse one mode gets lower priority and doesn't get as much attention).
* for Thief obviously if you have to pick one it's first person, otherwise I'm sure you'd be breaking some Geneva convention ;)
BrokenArts on 25/5/2009 at 18:45
Don't blame me, I swear I didn't do it! :p
New Horizon on 25/5/2009 at 19:12
Quote Posted by rainynight65
Noone forced you to use the 3rd person view in TDS. In fact, if you didn't accidentally hit the V key you didn't even notice it was there. 1st person was still default. I don't see the problem.
Well, you noticed it was there when you died. They made sure to switch to third person for the death cam, which was annoying and rather quake'ish.
The problems are exactly as Myagi explained. Third person negatively affected first person in many ways. As Myagi suspected, third person was one of the hurdles in getting swimming and rope climbing to work properly, some devs mentioned that...and their insistence on using body awareness..which made controlling Garrett less precise. Like so many things today, they chose form over function and greatly hindered an ok game, that could have been a great game. So yeah, I
was forced to use third person...even when I wasn't using it.
Third person wasn't even intended to be in the game originally. Warren Spector said someone hacked it in for 'fun' and since it looked 'cool' they kept it. From different discussions, we've heard that the levels had to be designed to be third person friendly. Anyway, it's just garbage and doesn't belong in a game like Thief where you're supposed to 'be' the character and unable to see long distances ahead like 3rd person allows. It just drives me nuts that there are so many samey same types of 3rd person action games out there, and all developers seem to want to do with thief is make it like everything else. Is there a developer left on the planet with the guts to do something as wildly different as the original games? I'm sick of the monotony.
Taffer36 on 25/5/2009 at 19:28
I LIKE third-person gameplay.
The problem is that I think games should choose one or the other. Both offer VERY different experiences and developers who have both in a game clearly don't understand this. It's not even about preference, having third-person literally gives you benefits, while first-person adds immersion. But if they give you the option to SEE AROUND CORNERS in third-person then it is no longer just a player choice, it directly affects gameplay. I want a game to pick one and dedicate itself to telling me the story thru that perspective, not try to be a mish-mash of the two.
New Horizon on 25/5/2009 at 23:22
Quote Posted by Taffer36
I LIKE third-person gameplay.
The problem is that I think games should choose one or the other. Both offer VERY different experiences and developers who have both in a game clearly don't understand this. It's not even about preference, having third-person literally gives you benefits, while first-person adds immersion. But if they give you the option to SEE AROUND CORNERS in third-person then it is no longer just a player choice, it directly affects gameplay. I want a game to pick one and dedicate itself to telling me the story thru that perspective, not try to be a mish-mash of the two.
I agree completely. I like third person in the right games.
Petike the Taffer on 26/5/2009 at 00:04
If they'll dumb down the characters and factions into formulaic cartboard cutouts...
If they'll just slavishly remake any of the three games according to the wishes of childishly unpleasable fanboys.
If they'll omit the possibility to customize all game options to your preffered style of gameplay and difficulty. Thief IV should appeal to both total newbies and die-hard fans without alienating anyone. It should go the IL-2 Sturmovik series path : You could incredibly customize everything imaginable about the realism and difficulty in a few single clicks in the options menu - and get either a semi-realistic air combat arcade, or a sophisticated and brutally realistic combat flight simulator. That's what I would love to see in Thief IV - this should be a MUST in the philosophy of the fourth installment's development.
If they won't include a reasonable editor. Both DromEd and T3Ed were never created with the intention of being released for the gaming public, and it shows... Though they are still very fine editors, they're simply not very user friendly...
If they'll...
I could go on and on, but these are some of my main concerns. ;)
Ilion on 26/5/2009 at 00:37
Ive played thief 3 already 2 times and i enjoyed it..., however, i cant help to say that we should forget thief 3 and just make the real thief3, i think the story and setting couldve been much more. thats the truth. A true thief player knows it. we need another piece of art like the first 2 games. But i must say, that with a community such as this, someday it will be true. I really respect you guys, been reading this forums almost since the beginning. never had time to post my thoughts but this THI4f scared me more than my first time in the bonehoard.
Moghedian on 26/5/2009 at 00:45
There are only a few basic things that would prevent me from buying Thief 4:
If it cannot be played on a computer. If it is x-box or playstation or whatever only they can keep it 'cause I'm not having any of it :p
If it requires some kind of online signup thing, or if it is required to be run online...although why on Earth they would do something like that is beyond me.
If it doesn't come out after all :(
oerhört on 26/5/2009 at 02:27
Quote Posted by Lady Rowena
For me, there are only two things that will make me decide to not buy and to not play Thief 4 at all. One is if they will make it a third person game only. I never player a third person game and I have no intention to begin now, even if it's Thief.
Wow, you're missing out.
To each her/his own I guess, but people need to open their eyes a bit. There are a lot of great games out there that aren't Thief. :)
