Beleg Cúthalion on 9/7/2010 at 18:04
Yeah, hostile AIs exist to be fought. Never thought of that. I mean, it's not like they're there to punish me for being a lousy thief or something.
It's like those deep valleys in Mario Land which are there to jump into and hope to get out again, right?
PotatoGuy on 9/7/2010 at 18:23
No, instead of giving the player an opportunity to use the sword, we should reload everytime we get spotted. Because that's how pros do it!
Beleg Cúthalion on 9/7/2010 at 19:11
The point was that you didn't need a sword for the "usual" last resort thing. And that including a sword nonetheless would shift the gameplay in an unthievy way unless with a sword mutilated to something merely computerish.
ZylonBane on 9/7/2010 at 19:12
Quote Posted by PotatoGuy
No, instead of giving the player an opportunity to use the sword, we should reload everytime we get spotted. Because that's how pros do it!
No, don't you see? The pros
never get spotted... so hostile AIs shouldn't even be in the game. It's a waste of resources, you betcha.
Chade on 11/7/2010 at 23:03
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Uh, the player is doing something and a guard comes up and attacks him ... Stop being so stupid.
As I said in the very post you replied to, the player will not just hang around and do nothing while a guard attacks him. Either he draws a weapon and starts combat, or he takes some action to avoid combat.
The actual relevant issues here are:
1) what sort of play do we want to occur when the player gets spotted, and
2) what tools encourage this.
So what sort of behaviour do I want to see when the player gets spotted? I'd like him to run away, hide, and sneak past (or quietly dispose of) the searching guard. I think that being spotted can be the prelude to some interesting stealth gameplay, with the right AI and tools.
Therefore, I'd like combat to be: uninteresting, punishing, and quick. Ideally, the player should step up to the guard, get hit, kill him, and run away. The dagger helps in a few ways: it signals that the player is not a fighter (and is not expected to have fancy moves at his disposal), and it means the guard has a longer reach.
Koki on 12/7/2010 at 06:06
Quote Posted by Chade
Therefore, I'd like combat to be: uninteresting, punishing, and quick.
It's already like that :confused:
Brian The Dog on 12/7/2010 at 11:27
For me, the main thing is to have a smooth engine that can handle audio propagation and shadows, and still look good; followed by a minimal interface where everything is driven by user control and level design. One of the things I really disliked in T3 was "magic upgrades" to the blackjack. If I wanted to play a role-playing game with stats etc, then I'd play one - I want the game to be about MY skill in making Garrett hide in shadows, creep up on guards, and time blackjackings. That's why the earlier levels in T1 & T2 are a bit basic (to get new people up to speed), and there are multiple difficulty settings.
So - smooth quality engine, and great level design. Thief 3 shows that level design covers a multitude of sins :D
ZylonBane on 12/7/2010 at 14:18
Quote Posted by Chade
Therefore, I'd like combat to be: uninteresting, punishing, and quick.
And I'd like to thank the Builder that you aren't on the Thief IV dev team.
Gingerbread Man on 12/7/2010 at 16:24
Am I the only person who remembers that Thief was essentially a puzzle game and that all this bullshit foray into the world of Deus Ex and other less-linear (at least at a mission level), reasonably intelligent shooters is what started us on the road to Deadly Shadows in the first place?
Okay, maybe "puzzle game" is a bit of a stretch, but it sure as hell wasn't about having lots of different equipment because it was cool and awesome, it was about having that equipment so that you could be creative in the way you solved the puzzle. Add the risk / reward element of straying from the safe and obvious path to see what extra baubles and plot points you could find, but there's way more puzzle game than FPS (shooter or sneaker - because honestly, First Person Sneaker means absolutely nothing and is about as useful a buzzword as Shooter 2.0 turned out to be)
I forget what I was saying.
Serpentine on 12/7/2010 at 16:56
I haven't really read back in this thread, but I'd like to just throw some views out:
Re:Sword
I think it's pretty well understood that if you make combat too satisfying or easy you'll just get Brawler IV - Just Easymode Everything; the weapon itself should do damage, block and not be 'boring', but there should be heavy consequence for using it. Punishing the player by making sword combat shit isn't a great option as you well know, you hopefully payed on the expectation the game will be enjoyable; I can see a short sword being used as a utility item for some things and not just a combat mechanic if used well.
Re:AI
Being stronger and better trained than a thief, guards should be tougher and most likely punish you in prolonged melee combat, which focuses more on the bow and stealth. I think they can quite easily do this, and it'd be nice to see a more dynamic AI (not really smarter, just... adaptable to challenges)
Re:Gameplay
The post above talks about Thief as a puzzle game, I think he erroneously meant "problem solving game". This is distinguished from something like Deus Ex which is more of a "non-linear-rpg-fps". I think this will be the hardest thing to avoid doing. I can see they will want a lot more AI interaction and RPG aspects and it will be this if anything that could wreck the game. I hope that they can include the pick your own adventure style that the first two games had without making the options over-obvious, will be hard to keep this through play testing with casual gamers tho... arg.
Re:Tech
The only reason that Thief1/2 broke the mold and perception of the time was the pretty much ground up engine, these days with so many competent pre-built packages and such extraordinary breadth of features/platforms its hard to see them doing this again, however unless they get some really experienced people on the team or take a _good_ bit of time it will DE2/TDS all over again.
The reason for the link to DE is while I know Thief and DE arn't all thatttttt similar, and I hope they don't merge ideas or anything silly like that; The people behind it said "we're going to be ditching all the bad stuff from DE2 and focusing more on the first", pretty much what they say about T4, now if you watch the vids you will noticed they dropped more of the bad stuff from DE2 and have introduced such an immense clusterfsck of new things that eclipse it... I think you'll see a similar thing here, be prepared for new features/mechanics and female characters out the wazoo.
I had held a bit of hope for T4 not sucking, but after seeing the DE3 footage, that hope has since departed and I think we will be seeing a TDS2 in which I can only hope they swap story/characters/universe to something else, in which case the preconceptions might be broken and a game enjoyable on some level gets released.
