The Shroud on 18/10/2013 at 00:26
My main issue with the upgrades we've seen thus far, besides the fact that they take away (to some degree, I'm not saying they completely take away) from the reliance on the player's skills to overcome difficult obstacles, is that they're just...dull. I mean, if I were going to dream up some way to give the player more options in combat, I'd provide them with a new kind of escape aid -- perhaps some purchasable blinding powder that they can throw in a guard's face (which would require good aiming skill on the player's part, and which itself is also a miniature risk-reward scenario) to allow for a quick getaway, or some caltrops that they can scatter on the ground behind them as they're fleeing to temporarily stall their pursuers, or something like that. Those things, I feel, would at least be engaging and offer new types of gameplay scenarios. But just getting statistically better in general at various things like aiming speed and damage and whatnot... That bores me.
Vae on 18/10/2013 at 00:41
I agree they suck, even as simulated advancements...but they shouldn't be there in the first place.
Community members often complain about the contextual, freedom-robbing limitations of jumping, yet it is actually worse than that...because the player can't fail at jumping...There isn't any player skill at all involved with climbing, jumping, auto-takedowns, etc....they're accomplished with just a push of an "I WIN" button.
The Shroud on 18/10/2013 at 02:48
Well I think I did read that it's still possible to miss the landing spots of certain jumps, but in general, yes, I agree. Scripting too much action that's triggered from a single button-press shifts the gameplay to more of a cinematic sequence where the player is watching the action rather than creating it themselves. That makes the player feel less involved as it replaces a portion of their control over each small individual event with something predetermined, a string of small maneuvers grouped into one action. Essentially, it's a shift from the complex to the simple. That may sound like a good thing at first, a "tighter" and more "fluid" design where gameplay proceeds more like a smooth, cinematic sequence than a lot of tiny, disconnected events -- but the more a sequence of events depends upon something preorchestrated rather than directly created by the player, the more it shifts toward the player watching the action instead of composing sequences themselves via their direct manipulation of many small, separate actions. Part of the enjoyment in the Thief series has always been the pervading feeling that whatever happens during gameplay, even the smallest sequence of events, is your performance, your unique rhythm and motion -- almost like you're playing an instrument in the performance of a self-composed melody whose every note and pitch is defined solely by your ability to craft it.
Beleg Cúthalion on 18/10/2013 at 06:04
Quote Posted by Vae
[...], yet it is actually worse than that...
because the player can't fail at jumping...There isn't any player skill at all involved with climbing, jumping, auto-takedowns, etc....they're accomplished with just a push of an "I WIN" button.
Wrong, because...
Quote Posted by The Shroud
Well I think I did read that it's still possible to miss the landing spots of certain jumps, but in general, yes, I agree.
Right. I spent the first hour of playing finding out how not to die by falling off a trim or wooden beam. The movement, as heavily on rails as it was, still didn't wrap you in cotton wool. Quite the opposite, since you often couldn't distinguish where leaping or mantling would work, you'd end up on the street. This isn't an acceptable solution either, but Vae's assumption isn't right at all. Surprise!
SubJeff on 18/10/2013 at 06:48
I wish I still had that blog about how you could do upgrading of Garrett's abilities without affecting the core gameplay.
Anyway, I think you can have "upgrades" to both Garrett and his tools that just provide options without sacrificing the core of the game.
Vae on 18/10/2013 at 09:36
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
I spent the first hour of playing finding out how not to die by falling off a trim or wooden beam.
Quote Posted by Stephane Roy
What we're trying to do here is impart subtle messages that
certain jumps will kill you—if you still tell Garrett to jump, he'll instead crouch near the edge and look down. You can still jump and potentially die if you miss an actual landing spot like a wooden beam. It's a matter of tightening the visual language and showing where and where not to jump to signify that any deaths come from genuine player error and not a communication failure on our part. ~
So only certain jumps you can fail at...but first NuGarrett will auto-crouch to let the player know they're no longer going to be coddled by the game...How nice...:grr:
Quote:
The movement, as heavily on rails as it was, still didn't wrap you in cotton wool.
That doesn't sound very good...:tsktsk:
Quote:
Quite the opposite, since you often couldn't distinguish where leaping or mantling would work, you'd end up on the street.
So you couldn't figure out where to contextually jump or climb?...:laff:
Beleg Cúthalion on 18/10/2013 at 09:54
Quote Posted by Vae
So only certain jumps you can fail at...but first NuGarrett will auto-crouch to let the player know they're no longer going to be coddled by the game...How nice...:grr:
No, I actually died without Garrett crouching. Often.
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That doesn't sound very good...:tsktsk:
But "coddling" isn't nice either? You
do try to give a coherent picture of your opinion, do you?
Quote:
So you couldn't figure out where to contextually jump or climb?...:laff:
After a while it worked (there are for instance square-shaped grates which indicate a "mantleable" wall, where Garrett uses the Claw), but as I said in my summary, a lot is still arbitrary and Joe Khoury said that they have one guy who's only occupation is fixing this problem. If this will result in more obvious rails or a more subtle implementation, I don't know.
Vae on 18/10/2013 at 10:05
Quote:
But "coddling" isn't nice either?
No...overprotecting the player so they don't accidentally hurt themselves, isn't a good idea.
Quote:
After a while it worked (there are for instance square-shaped grates which indicate a "mantleable" wall, where Garrett uses the Claw), but as I said in my summary, a lot is still arbitrary and Joe Khoury said that they have one guy who's only occupation is fixing this problem. If this will result in more obvious rails or a more subtle implementation, I don't know.
Sounds bad either way...:nono:
The Shroud on 18/10/2013 at 19:39
I think the point Beleg is making is that we should understand the extent to which the game presently protects the player from their own foolishness -- that it's not complete protection (some jumps will still kill you), but rather it's situational. That being said, Vae is right. Neither protecting the player from their own mistakes, nor failing to communicate to the player what they can and can't do, are good things.
The irony is that by attempting to reduce player-errors through restricting the player's breadth of control over their movement, the developers have actually managed to implement the worst of both worlds -- simultaneously restricting freedom and failing to communicate to the player the boundaries of their capabilities in interacting with their environment. One would think this awkward dichotomy would be sufficient evidence that it really is better after all to just stick with the classic model of total freedom and let the player retain full responsibility for their mistakes -- and their successes. I guess we'd better hope that their play-testers' feedback will be enough to get them to acknowledge their inherent design flaws before it's too late to fix them.
kora on 18/10/2013 at 21:15
So they basically pulled of a Microsoft Xbox360 announcement poorly reverting their forcefully initiated "always online policy" .. The damage is done & the franchises reputation tarnished. They deserve no commemoration whatsoever.
