vfig on 11/2/2022 at 06:06

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do you find yourself habitually quickloading at the first hint of trouble? do you feel that this habit detracts from your enjoyment of the game? or do you merely want to enforce ironman rules for an event? fear not! Doctor Dark has the answer for you. just add this one simple line to your user.cfg:



now every time you try to load or quickload a mission, it will start over from the beginning. just what the doctor ordered!

Esme on 15/2/2022 at 13:37

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So 2 hours into a mission, the player hits the load key & loses all progress, that'll go down well if they aren't warned beforehand

PinkDot on 15/2/2022 at 17:39

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As long as this doesn't interfere with quick saves, it's not the end of the world. There's always an option to manually load the quicksave.

EDIT: ah, I didn't read it affects the Load command as well, so yeah - removal of option required. (but still, hopefully quicksaves not lost!)

Overlord Nexus on 15/2/2022 at 22:32

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Eurgh, what a nasty trick to pull on players.

marbleman on 16/2/2022 at 16:07

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There is an active discussion around limiting the player's ability to save, not just in the Thief and TDM communities, but in the game industry as a whole, and it is worrying.

While the reason behind it isn't to mess with those who like to ghost missions -- at least I don't think -- the rationale I see most often for such a decision is that, "it's just way too easy to reload when you get caught." Proponents of save limitations want the players to roll with their mistakes, and in Thief, it's actually quite easy to recover from those as AI isn't that persistent. I kinda understand the intention, but I think this forces the players into a specific playstyle, discourages player creativity (though it does encourage improvisation), and goes against the trial and error nature of immersive sims.

Personally, I like to complete missions without being spotted once. If I cannot reload, I could try to recover from my mistake, sure, but I am no longer satisfied with my run because of the mistake made. So instead of trying to recover, I'd rather restart the mission, and as such, the entire intention behind the limitation falls apart. And I will be honest, I think forced ghosting should not exist either. Failing a mission because of being spotted is just as bad, maybe worse. I think the player should be allowed to play with their own playstyle, be it iron man, ghost, or the in-between.

Edit: I should add that I consider save limitations detrimental only for immersive sims where the focus is stealth, not immersive sims in general. In a stealth game, the player's margin for error is much smaller than in a combat-centric game. Also, I'm not saying that there no satisfying way to do save limitations. For example, giving the player an option to manually save wherever but only do so a limited number of times can work. Or, take a look at Gloomwood, where you can only save in specific locations. You rarely need to go more than 5-10 minutes without an option to save, so it's barely an issue.