Chade on 20/6/2013 at 10:59

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I had a few things I wanted to say in some of our mega-threads about the headshots in thief 4. But seeing as we all know mega-threads are the cancer killing TTLG, here's a new thread with a specific topic instead.

I've seen a lot of shock and horror about the new headshots in thief 4, and I think the basic reaction is quite fair, but IMO a lot of the specific criticisms are wrong-headed. I see three main reasons bandied about as to why the headshots are horrible:

1. But thief is meant to be about sneaking, not killing!
2. XP rewards are encouraging the player to do headshots!
3. We don't want these intrusive pop-ups ruining our minimal thief experience!

So let me first say that I think the last criticism is entirely fair. On the other hand, thief 4 has clearly left minimalism behind on the cutting floor a long time ago. The headshot pop-up is just one manifestation of that. Get rid of them, and you'd still have lots of other HUD elements popping up all over the place. Still, it would be nice to remove those pop-ups, I agree.

I think the other two criticisms are wrong though.


But thief is meant to be about sneaking, not killing!

Right, thief is meant to be about sneaking. And a headshot on an unaware guard is a perfectly valid stealthy strategy for a beginner! I think it's been too long since you guys remembered what it's like to be a thief newbie. Here's a brief description of the stages that I vaguely remember going through when I first started playing thief way back in 1998. I've seen a few other newbies play thief, and I think this is similar for most players:

1) Just started playing. Don't realise how blind and deaf guards are. Not very good at navigating my way around yet, not very confident at spotting patrol paths. Very nervious about sneaking close to guards. Sneaking close enough to a guard to blackjack him is seen as a big challenge. If I see a guard not far away, and it's not immediately obvious that he's safe to blackjack, I'm very likely to try to snipe him before he has a chance to spot me. I'm not yet very good at judging when I can get away with shooting a guard, and I'm likely to cause all sorts of alerts by picking the wrong moment to strike, but at least he's not spotting me from half a meter away and getting into a fight.

2) I'm a fair way into the game. I'm getting better at spotting patrol paths, better at finding my way around. In simple situations with a one or two guards whose paths don't overlap badly, I'm very likely to be using a blackjack. However, I'm still too cautious about sticking to the deepest shadows. In more complicated situations I'm still likely to use my trusty bow to take down guards without having to venture out of the safety of my shadows. I'm getting better at judging when I can snipe guards, and clean up the evidence before anyone finds out.

3) By the end of my first playthrough, I've learnt to venture out of the shadows more, learnt to stay hidden in that grey are between absolute darkness and light. I'm getting better at navigating through areas with lots of guards, finding nooks and crannies where I can dispose of guards one by one with my blackjack. The blackjack is my main tool, and if someone forced me to, I could probably manage to play without my bow. However, I'm still using my bow occasionally in particularly hard spots.

4) Playing through a second time on expert. Finally start learning how to do without the bow at all, getting better and better at using the blackjack before I finally move on to ghosting.

The point is, the bow is an absolutely indispensible stealth tool. It is the only thing keeping a budding thief player out of combat in many situations. New thief players simply don't have the skills to blackjack every guard they come across, not without getting seen and getting into fights.


XP rewards are encouraging the player to do headshots!

This is precisely the wrong way around! The XP rewards are (almost certainly) discouraging the player from doing headshots!

So first off, the player is already encouraged to do headshots in thief. Sniping people from a distance is the easiest way to get rid of them without raising a fuss. This is a pretty strong incentive, especially for new players!

So what does XP do on top of that? Well, it rewards players with a little pop up and a little bit of XP. But it also punishes players! It punishes players by removing the opportunity to gain even more XP by blackjacking the guard.

Now the little pop up and small amount of XP will look like nice rewards to new players in the first one or two levels. However, pretty soon they'll realise that they could be getting even more XP by blackjacking the guards. By this time they won't care about some stupid little pop-up they've already seen many times before, and they'll realise that the XP opportunity cost outweighs the reward. At this point in time, the overall effect of the XP system will be to punish the player for headshots.

Looking back at the steps players go through when they start the game, this is exactly what you want to do! Appear to encourage headshots at the beginning when players are relying on sniping to stay hidden, and then as players get better at the game, let them realise that headshots are actually punished.

Now I'm quite partial to the idea that these artificial mechanisms aren't the way we want to reward or punish players in a thief game, but nonetheless, it is almost certainly not true that the XP system will reward headshots.

Vivian on 20/6/2013 at 14:29

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Dude, killing people in the head from afar has ALWAYS been a valid strategy in the thief games on everything except the hardest difficulty. Which is chade's point.

Starker on 20/6/2013 at 14:36

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Headshots were not a valid strategy in Thief. Like you said, the closest you could get to that was shooting people in the head and it wasn't acknowledged in any way. There's a difference between giving the player a fire arrow and giving them a fire arrow and putting guards in a pool of oil. Or stuff like crushing people under chandeliers and statues.

Starker on 20/6/2013 at 14:41

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And you lack reading comprehension.

Vivian on 20/6/2013 at 14:44

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Dude. Seriously.