Beleg Cúthalion on 26/7/2008 at 19:13
I believe with the usual amount of guards you'd have enough "law enforcement" to prevent you from doing things. But for Expert players that would not even be a barrier anyway, so we're back on our starting point of being able to go everywhere I guess. :erg: I simply think it would get out of hand.
SneakyJack on 26/7/2008 at 19:52
Hmm.. if we were given the ability to choose how we'd make thief different in the next installment.. I can think of many ways I'd make thief different in the past games if I could. :laff:
This will probably be a long one, so I'll break it down into sections. I know a few of these have already been mentioned - and basically I'm just restating what the original poster said in agreement with them.
AI Interactivity:
* Guards need to be able to follow you anywhere that they do not deem "dangerous" to follow. They need to climb, crawl and swim. Seriously.
* I'd like to be able to walk past folks on the street without a weapon drawn and not alarm them or send them running to guards. Thief 3 pretty much did this.
* I'd like many more situations when there are "safe" AI around you that help in battles with guards and whatnot. Whenever a FM has a scripted even where it is one side against the other - I love it.
* If you are confronted by a guard somewhere where the public is also present and you do not have a weapon drawn, they should leave you alone - unless the mission specificially states that word has gotten around to be on the lookout for you or something similar. A guard stabbing a random passerby because he "could" be a thief is lame.
* Someone else had mentioned being able to have branching dialog with some NPCs. This would be a good idea if it didnt get ridiculous. Perhaps even bribing NPCs to give you access to certain areas/keys and whatnot. Could add more depth to the house guests and not just make them blackjack fodder. In general, I'd like to see non-hostile AI more often in the thief world. Not everyone can hate Garrett, he is a legend.
More uses for already established items/places:
* I'd like to see basic items found in every mission out there having more uses. Found a bag of flour? Throw it at a guard to temporary blind him in a cloud of dust. Find a metal container in the kitchen? Throw it at a guard from a distance with his back turned to knock him out. Find a cutting board but have no blackjack? Whack a guard with it to serve the same purpose. Leave a blood spot on the rug? Pull the rug up and toss it into a closet so that no one notices. You should not be able to throw any heavy object at a guard without it having any effect on him. Thats just insane. Haha.
* Re-lightable candles/torches taken a step further - give garrett a few spark stones and let him bust out one of those gold candlesticks he just pilfered if he needs some light. If I find a stick of wood on the ground and cant see in front of me, let me light that stick and carry it around until it burns out.
Gameplay additions:
* Like it was said before - if you see it, you should be able to go there. No more fake doors, no more phoney window textures. There is a tasteful way to do this without overcrowding the city nor making it too RPG like. Just make every house count in the grand scheme of things - it will add so much to immersion.
* Bring back the rope arrows. I dont care how they work, or why they are gone.. just bring them back. In fact, I'd like to see a rare but available "sticky" arrow that uses magic like the vine arrow to stick to hard surfaces. I like to be able to explore everywhere without spending an hour crate stacking - so make it possible.
* Bring back the ability to swim. There is no reason it should have been taken out - ever. Half of the thief missions ive played involved water somehow.
* As someone mentioned, being able to put something shiny on the ground and knock out a guard as he picks it up is hilarious and a great idea.
* Give me my own little "safe hub" of an area. Surround it with a few friendly NPCs - maybe a neighbor that knows I'm a bad guy but still associates with me simply for the thrill of knowing a thief - perhaps a shopkeeper downstairs that fences my goods without anyone knowing while selling me tools that i need - or special ordering rare and expensive ones (like the sticky arrow I mentioned) .. Anyway, make this a place that I can store my things in a safe place (if you are going to limit what I can carry) or a place that I can just horde loot and things ive stolen to illustrate where ive been in my travels. A place I can make plans (with my now real time on screen map) without being found or attacked. Put a music player of sorts there and let me choose which classical music I'd like to listen to. The list goes on.
* If a guard is searching for me in pitch back dark - do not make him wander right into me. This is just lame. In the previous thief games guards will search and come straight for you no matter where you are. They must have catlike night vision.
* More branching objectives. I love when a long epic mission starts out with three objectives and ends up with 12 including not including the four optional ones. I myself love missions that keep branching out and take some time to complete. It makes you feel as if you've truly been through an event.
* I'd like for things I do in the first hour of the mission to influence things I do in the last hour. Even if its minor. Did I knock out a kitchen staff member while she went to the bathroom a half hour ago? Then I want to hear her fellow kitchen staffers complaining about how they'll never get the food prepared in time due to her not coming back. When a guard comes in for a shift change and the other guard is no where to be found - I want to hear him remark about it and mention how he wouldnt mind taking the day shift after the other guard gets fired anyway. I could go on and on about this too. Just the little things that add so much immersion and feeling that what you are doing is affecting more than just a box getting ticked off at the end of the mission.
* Stick with human opponents - I know this may not be too popular, but I was never a fan of haunts/zombies/undead. Animals like Burricks are fine, but I find the undead enemies unscary and boring. I'd like to see new factions of human opponents. In fact, DrK made an amazing faction that I now consider part of the thief universe with the "Souls".
* Speaking of factions - go wild with them. I wouldnt mind a whole game basically revolving around faction wars (races for technology, races for clients (peasants who need protection) and so on - and how Garrett fits in with each faction as they all try for his allegiance and fail while battling each other. A storyline of "The world is getting smaller due to technology, and soon there will only be room for one or two factions to take us into the future. Many will not survive." would be great. I'd like to see fully fleshed out versions of The Hammers, The Mechanists, The Pagans, The Thieves Guild, The Souls, The Assassins, The Guards, The Aristocrats (who employ the other factions but have meetings of their own) and so on and so forth. Just meeting and learning the new factions and the people within could supply a games worth of material. Hell, I could write the entire storyline right now.
Wow, that was one long post and im not nearly finished with all I have to say. :laff:
I'll post more later after more people have had their say in things.
nicked on 26/7/2008 at 20:39
As an aside, I'd like to see a brick-for-brick remake of Thief 1 with new tech. Not that anyone would bother, but it'd be pretty cool to see.
bartekb81 on 26/7/2008 at 21:56
Remake is a good idea. The graphics from T: DS would be good enough(great light&shadows), but some improvements in physics and AI would be neccessary of course;)
R Soul on 26/7/2008 at 22:57
Quote Posted by SneakyJack
The Souls
Now that's my kind of faction :thumb:
I would like violence (including KOs) to cause an increase of guards in the surrounding streets the next time you go there. Not enough to force a replay of the previous mission, just enough to make ghosting have a practical use. There would need to be something to let the player know what's happening.
Each time you play a mission where you are not too violent, the number of guards could decrease.
sNeaksieGarrett on 27/7/2008 at 01:33
The remake idea could be possible with The Dark Mod. :) But just don't make it public and expect to get away with it.
bartekb81 on 27/7/2008 at 13:03
I would give up the open-city idea at all and focus on the missions and plot only. Although it's very tempting it is still too hard to make, I think. Wandering through the City and well-known locations should be never-to-forget experience, but it requires a looot of work... And it's a risky thing.
demagogue on 27/7/2008 at 16:46
I had an idea once ... it would be tweaking Thief into a new game as it progresses, but to let Garrett (or whoever the new PC is) use his money to over-time actually buy up property in the City ... warehouses, ships, goods, etc ... to gradually become a robber-baron, and then have a political angle where he deals with the authorities and nobility as a political player as his power increases. It still keeps the FPS element, there are still jobs to be done, but more things get tagged on as the game goes on.
I like "economy"/"pirate" sort of games that can go on indefinitely as you build an empire, and this one way to do that that hasn't really been done before.
sNeaksieGarrett on 27/7/2008 at 20:06
No offence, but I really hope thief 4 would not be like that.:erg:
demagogue on 28/7/2008 at 01:33
Well, I'm already thinking beyond Thief anyway, I guess, about the direction FPSneakers could go in the future. Thief 4 might be a vehicle to push the boundaries a little, but it might be some other title, too.
But anyway, I sort of went out of order in my thinking. My original main thought was just that it would be nice if the player could actually buy stuff with the money they are getting from jobs. And then combine that with the GTA-like open City idea, it made sense that he might buy property around the City ... a mansion to fill up with all the stuff he's stealing or buying. And it was only from there that some of the other things you might buy came up.
There's also a whole multiplayer angle there, too ... a City full of thieves stealing from each other's mansions to buy more shit to put in their mansions and to beef up their own security to stop all the other thieves out there, along with stock stuff at different levels of difficulty.
I realize this way of sandboxing the game isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I've had fun thinking about it. Like I said before, it may be turning into a different game altogether, but then that's a game I'd like to see, or at least think about.
