nicked on 29/7/2008 at 11:22
Quote Posted by New Horizon
Like it or not, Thief 'is' a game and the more 'realistic' you make it, the less it is Thief.
I vote New Horizon for lead designer on Thief 4.
New Horizon on 29/7/2008 at 12:15
Quote Posted by nicked
I vote New Horizon for lead designer on Thief 4.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but there are people on our team far more qualified and talented than me. :) I've simply taken a lot of time to dissect the original games so that I could understand the core gameplay and the philosophy behind it. There are a ton of checks and balances in the gameplay. You can't add features blindly and expect for it to simply work within the Thief gaming structure. As I've said on many occasions, there is plenty of room to take what was done in T1 / 2 and simply tighten up what has already been done. It was far from perfect, so there is plenty of room to heighten the player experience by tuning it further.
Jah on 29/7/2008 at 12:34
Quote Posted by New Horizon
Thief gameplay encourages the player to use stealth and knockout opponents. Waking AI penalizes the player for using an encouraged play technique...so, does the player then have to knock out the same AI 3 or 4 times during a mission? In my very humble opinion, it complicates a basic, simple, premise and pushes the player to either ghost, or towards a more aggressive playstyle.
I can see your point, but the question of realism vs. gameplay is largely a matter of personal preference. Personally, I'm not too fond of the idea that an unconscious guard is as good as a dead one - better, actually, because blackjacking is less noisy and less messy. As someone suggested, it could be possible to bind them, which would keep them from getting up unless someone else stumbles upon them and frees them. Things could also be balanced by penalizing the player for using violence - if the game had free-roaming city parts between the missions, the use of violence could affect the number/frequency of patrols and/or civilians' reactions: A wanted murderer would have everyone screaming for guards, while a less violent, non-lethal approach would allow the player to move in some areas or among certain people without attracting attention.
Making AI's more realistic and more intelligent would also mean that in terms of enemies, missions would concentrate on quality rather than quantity. To me, a smaller number of smarter and tougher enemies would feel more appropriate than having every owner of even a moderate-sized manor employ two dozen guards inside and another ten outside.
New Horizon on 29/7/2008 at 13:10
Quote Posted by Jah
I can see your point, but the question of realism vs. gameplay is largely a matter of personal preference.
It's a matter of preference so far as taste goes, but I'm talking about the philosophy behind the gameplay decisions. As I said before, it's still a game and for the sake of decent gameplay I think it makes sense to reward the player for taking the less violent approach.
People are always wanting to pile more and more features into Thief from different games. It's something I often see and wonder why they play Thief at all. Why not simply play another game? lol
Thief functions on a very basic principle...some of the best games have survived because of their simplicity. In the end, it's just a game, and I can't find any fault in it for being just that. There is room to tighten the existing system, but I really don't think stitching new features onto it is the answer.
Jah on 29/7/2008 at 13:55
Quote Posted by New Horizon
I think it makes sense to reward the player for taking the less violent approach.
I agree, and that's why I suggested a system where violence would have undesirable consequences that would discourage them from resorting to it.
But to paraphrase what you said before, the merit or lack thereof of individual features obviously depends on the overall design, and my suggestion of increased patrols or more hostile civilians wouldn't really work if the game didn't involve any kind of free roaming between missions. In that sense, any discussion of new features (or even some of the old ones) is relatively pointless without a context.
Quote Posted by New Horizon
People are always wanting to pile more and more features into Thief from different games. It's something I often see and wonder why they play Thief at all. Why not simply play another game? lol
More certainly doesn't mean better, but I don't think that means that nothing new should ever be added to the series. TMA, for example, introduced the mechanical eye that enabled zooming and the scouting orbs. Was that a bad decision? The most successful game series (e.g. Civilization) have been successful because they've found the right balance in gradually evolving the game and introducing new features, while still retaining the same core gameplay that makes old players feel right at home.
Overall, however, my approach to Thief 4 would be pretty conservative. For example, I wouldn't want to make any radical changes to the setting (something subtle along the lines of TDP -> TMA would be ok, but nothing modern or futuristic) - I would want the world to be clearly recognizable as the same one from the earlier Thief games - and I would want the main emphasis to be on the actual missions rather than free roaming, i.e. I wouldn't want to turn Thief into GTA. I'm not saying that some of the more radical things suggested in this thread wouldn't make a good game, but to me, that game would be something other than Thief.
TheGrimSmile on 29/7/2008 at 15:11
I think there's something we need to keep in mind...
If more people are to ever play Thief, the game has to be accesible to people who've been living in platforms or FPSs. The games did pretty well at this, making it so you could kill everthing, but gently lead you away from doing so. I think that was the point of the blackjack. People didn't wake up because the game wanted the player to know that the blackjack is the stealthy weapon, the way to go in the game if you don't ghost.
If someone comes to play Thief, expecting a rocket launcher and some grenades, they're going to be a little confused coming into it. If they slowly realize that blackjacking is much more effective than stabbing everything, that's already some stealth experience. But if every guard wakes up and can be freed (if going with the binding option), the player will a.) kill the AI b.) ko every other thing in the building so that no one finds the unfortunate guard(s)
or c.) start tearing their hair out and quit.
All in all (theoretically), you end up with the same problems that are trying to be solved. We can't tell them to "go find another game", or "go get some experience with the previous games." I'm not saying anyone is, but it's kind of feeling I get.
I have never really ghosted a mission, because it's not my style, and I'm not as experienced as others. I feel that a lot of these AI things are pushing the player in two directions, ko all or mess with none. I think the ko and kills should be the same, saving those more ghostly objectives for the higher experiance levels, as it has been. There are missions that were tailored for ghosting (namely Framed) so that players who stick to the bj would have a small experiance of ghosting. It was fun and exciting, but I wouldn't want to do that for every mission.
I think only discovered bodies should attract more guard patrols, as to guide the player into hiding things. Perhaps a blood spot should attract less attention than a dead body.
Jah on 29/7/2008 at 15:53
Quote Posted by TheGrimSmile
If more people are to ever play Thief, the game has to be accesible to people who've been living in platforms or FPSs.
And yet, one of the complaints about TDS was that it "dumbed things down" in an attempt to make it accessible to those who hadn't played the earlier games... I guess you just can't win. ;)
RavynousHunter on 29/7/2008 at 16:09
Quote Posted by Jah
I would want the main emphasis to be on the actual missions rather than free roaming, i.e. I wouldn't want to turn Thief into GTA.
Don't you mean just GT? :cheeky:
I 3/4 agree with ya there, the focus should be more mission-centric; but there's a whole city out there. While you clearly see what Garrett does during a mission, you, in TDP and TMA, never see very much of what happens in the in-between periods. Does Garrett walk the streets, cutting purses, finding odd jobs, fencing loot, and buying equipment? Or does is he a complete shut-in? I personally like the idea of exploration, makes the world seem more... alive, ya know? :thumb:
New Horizon on 29/7/2008 at 16:45
Quote Posted by RavynousHunter
While you clearly see what Garrett does during a mission, you, in TDP and TMA, never see very much of what happens in the in-between periods. Does Garrett walk the streets, cutting purses, finding odd jobs, fencing loot, and buying equipment?
...and that's just it. Everyone is free to imagine the life Garrett leads between missions. I don't need to see him make his bed, go buy his equipment and groceries...or wander through the streets cutting purses...it's irrelevant to the core of the game. We all know he survives somehow inbetween missions...and I don't want the designers choosing how for me. I put all that together in my mind, and I think that's why the first two games are so much 'more' alive to me personally. I felt trapped in TDS, like the designers had boxed me into this miniscule world. The city in T1/2 was much more mysterious and sprawling because it wasn't all mapped out for me in 'limited' detail. Either by design or limitation, the designers of T1/2 fed our minds just enough information to bring the world to life.
hexhunter on 29/7/2008 at 17:20
If it were to be free-roam heavy, then almost everywhere you go would have to be visitable at any point in the story. All the mission areas inside the city would just be another part of the city, all be it a place which is particuarly dangerous without allies and maps and equipment which I only recieve when the story requires me to visit that place. The Thief games have allways used mystery in great ways, and not stopping the player from roaming into dangerous waters is a great way to increase the tension.
I think the most important thing for T4 to do is attract attention from mainstream gamers. T3 got great scores, but it was still very alien and inhospitable to most players, MGS4 really shows how stealth games can keep people interested. When people who don't like Stealth games play MGS4, they often try their best to stay stealthy, but getting caught isn't the end of the world. The game is forgiving, you can play it how you want, but it's teaches the player how to avoid bringing attension to themselves so that in later levels, where getting caught has harsher punishments, the player doesn't drop the controller and walk off... When T4 does this right, we can get a T5 with more content and gameplay built for the hardcore Thief fans...
PS: Does anyone have any links to info about "The Souls"???
