Headshots in Thief 4 - TTLG Forums

fett on 20/6/2013 at 17:50

Quote Posted by Infinitron

You're approaching this very simplistically. It's not enough to just throw in "multiplicity of playstyles" into the game. Bioshock did that, and the result was for the most part shallow and uninteresting.

You say playing offensively is "not a good strategy overall". But how "not good" is it?

Is it not good enough that you can't possibly kill every guard? Is it not good enough that killing guards deprives you of precious, irreplaceable resources? Is it not good enough that killing every guard is tedious and unfun? Because those are the things a game needs to do incentivize the non-violent, Thiefy playstyle.

What evidence do we have that EM are doing something like that? If you want to defend this game, these are the things you need to find out.

Well, pretty much every person who's played it and the devs have said multiple times, "If you try to fight your way through, you will die quickly. Garrett is a thief, not a warrior." Maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough, but what reason would they have to lie about something like that? To ensure the sale of the game to the...lemme do the math here...seventeen people currently engaged in discussion about it here at TTLG? Hell, I'll even give you the several thousand over at the Eidos forms who are "real Thief" fans and there's still no reason to lie about it. If you think the amount of people who will buy this game is going to increase because they're lead to believe it's a stealth game rather than a shooter/brawler, you've hopelessly misunderstood how AAA games are marketed and sold. EM wouldn't care enough about that small segment to bother lying about it. I predict that 50% of the audience for this new game will never have played the originals. As was the case for DX:HR. They're going to buy it because the trailer looks cool, period, and will never even think about combat vs. stealth.

Beleg Cúthalion on 20/6/2013 at 18:01

Quote Posted by Brethren

Here's the intro to the TDP manual, in case anyone is curious.

Just today I remembered how TDP does exactly NOT explain to you the sneaky tools of your trade in the tutorial (despite being the training ground for a super-secretive society). This is why I at that time (with the CD from some random magazine) didn't know how to use the blackjack at all when I started.

Shinrazero on 20/6/2013 at 18:40

Quote Posted by Chade

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.

While I agree with most of what you said, the notion that headshots are a discouraging mechanic sounds like it's based on assumptions and is a stretch at best. I'd be hard pressed to name one game where headshots were not encouraged. There is a long line of games before this one that rewards headshots, not to mention that headshots are generally associated with "(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olm7xC-gBMY) leet skillz" so when you see it pop up Headshot! 40xp, the player is being told you are skilled in your shots, here's some XP. There's nothing discouraging in that. I'm sure there were be some players would will seek out more efficient XP gains but I would wager many players would be content playing this way.

Fandango on 20/6/2013 at 18:55

Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion

But it DOES teach you how to sword fight and shoot broad heads. :cheeky:

fett on 20/6/2013 at 20:27

I would say based on the majority's analysis of T4, the original games were an abomination to the Thief legacy. And now the circle is complete.

Vae on 20/6/2013 at 20:28

This thread is an obfuscation of the core violation...For you see, even if allowed, Killing should never be rewarded in a THIEF game.

SneakyJack on 20/6/2013 at 20:43

One of the great things about the first few Thief games was being able to approach most situations with multiple solutions - many times mixing it up will prolong enjoyment of the game because you're playing in a different way and breathing new life into a level you've already completed multiple times before. As Fett mentioned I seriously doubt anyone first starting out played though Thief 1 and 2 perfectly trying to ghost every level and restarting if you happened to kill a guard. Part of the Thief experience is making mistakes and learning as you play to become a better thief.

I really like that if I'm feeling particularly saucy on a given day that instead of sneaking up to the lookout tower, dousing the torch on the wall and blackjacking the guard I can just sit in wait next to a shadow shrouded tree until the guard's patrol heads past the pile of stones and provide him with an extra ventilation hole before moving on my way. It's fun to be able to have those decisions at your disposal. Are you breaking the TTLG Forums Master Thief Code (TM) by playing the game in a way different than their expectations of you? Sure. But who cares as long as you are having fun and playing the game in a way you enjoy it most.

If a mission has a fail-on-kill objective - you're playing the mission wrong by killing a guard. It's as simple as that. If it doesn't then approach the mission the way you see fit and complete the objectives you do have. This weird obsession people have with saying who is right and wrong with how they play is strange. Forced ghosting for people that don't enjoy it makes a mission terribly tedious for those that don't enjoy playing that way and nothing you can say about how Thief 'should be played' will change that.

While I agree that numbers popping up over a headshot is very immersion breaking I also think they (headshots, not the numbers) definitely have a place in thief gameplay even if it's not in there for you. If you don't want to see a headshot... don't do it. Multiple choice is the best part. Why not play how you like and stop being so worried about people not playing exactly like you do like they're competing with a ghost racer on a racing game speed run?

fett on 20/6/2013 at 21:05

It's ironic that in a forum for a game that celebrates freedom of choice (and looks to continue in that vein), there are still gameplay police. This is a notion that I've observed developing in this community over the years. If you don't ghost, you're not a "real" or "good" player. If the fan mission isn't frustratingly difficult with obscure mini-quests and indecipherable objectives, it's not a "good" fan mission. What ever happened to just playing the game and having fun? I played through the first two without a walkthrough but I swear to gods I haven't played a single FM in years that I didn't have to keep alt/tabbing out to check a walkthrough. As a community, we really don't have grounds to bitch about killing immersion. ;)

Honestly, the first time I played through Dishonored I found it a bit dull because I was trying to ghost it (same for DX:HR). When I let myself go a bit and used the tools the designers had provided, I discovered that the games were very well made and a shitload of fun to play.

As has been pointed out - there are subtle rewards in Thief already for headshots. The guard/obstacle goes down without much of a sound, without alerting the other guards. This is still a "stealthy" approach to completing the mission - it just doesn't meet the oft self-imposed ghosting guidelines that really were never part of the core gameplay to begin with.

The reason there's so much disagreement over how Thief should be played is only further evidence that the originals allowed for all these styles, rewarded them, even.

edit: I don't want to go into a long dissertation here, but only about half of the TG missions had killing prohibitions, and one or two required you to clear a map of certain creatures (i.e. bugbeasts in Undercover) once you'd already started down that playstyle path. Very few missions in the entire series have killing prohibitions except on the expert level (or you could call it the "oldschool" level. *cough*). I really don't know where all this THIEF SHOULDN'T BE ABOUT KILLING stuff comes from because LGS only included it frequently on the expert difficulty. Which, again, allowed those new to the game to play on easier levels, with more assists, and more rewards/fewer penalties for killing.

Vae on 20/6/2013 at 21:16

It's interesting to note, my previous statement can not be truly refuted...as I speak of THIEF core design philosophy, rather than a play-style approach within that context.

Infinitron on 20/6/2013 at 21:27

Quote Posted by fett

It's not a question of lying. It's a question of poor design. It's quite likely that they'll stick in some sort of mechanic meant to encourage the player to avoid combat, that will end up not being effective or strict enough. "We felt we had to nerf this to avoid punishing the combat players too much", they'll say in the post-mortem.

Quote:

To ensure the sale of the game to the...lemme do the math here...seventeen people currently engaged in discussion about it here at TTLG? Hell, I'll even give you the several thousand over at the Eidos forms who are "real Thief" fans and there's still no reason to lie about it. If you think the amount of people who will buy this game is going to increase because they're lead to believe it's a stealth game rather than a shooter/brawler, you've hopelessly misunderstood how AAA games are marketed and sold. EM wouldn't care enough about that small segment to bother lying about it. I predict that 50% of the audience for this new game will never have played the originals. As was the case for DX:HR. They're going to buy it because the trailer looks cool, period, and will never even think about combat vs. stealth.

Look, I really don't care. The whole "business savvy gamer" schtick is really tiresome. Yes, all of us here know and understand that game developers need to make money. But as gaming connoisseurs, we can't let that distract us from our only priority, which is to demand high quality games.