Astro Zombie on 11/10/2013 at 00:30
“We’ve seen players who don’t even bother to read anything they find. We have to make sure the game is fun for them, too.”
Argh!
Stop trying to make games for everyone, damnit!
Vae on 11/10/2013 at 01:20
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Does that make hubs something along the lines of “Thief lite”?
SR: We've seen players who don't even bother to read anything they find. We have to make sure the game is fun for them, too.
Translation: "We're really gonna dumb this sum bitch down".
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Within the framework of Thief, do you think it's better to let players benefit from a full freedom of exploration that includes mistakes and frustrating moments, or is it more effective to include slight nudges in the right direction for a safer but slightly restrictive experience?
SR: On one side, you have the kind of player who demands to jump or go anywhere and die if he or she chooses. Others get bored if they keep dying and don't mind that kind of stuff being blocked off. 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.
This is becoming horrifying.
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SG: Every time I start a new game, I have these old gaming habits kicking in to urge me to find out whether I can fall off this edge or die this way and so on. After I figure it out, I have a pretty good feel of what kind of game I'll be playing. That's my personal way of doing things, but still, falling off because you weren't paying attention isn't that much fun.
Unbelievable...Team NuThief thinks the player shouldn't receive rightful consequences for being a dumb-ass.
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SG: Garrett is a master thief, so he's really flexible in terms of how he handles situations. You can be fast and aggressive, wiping out an entire room before anyone knew you were there. Or you can keep to the shadows and leave no trace of your presence at all. Who's to say one way is better than the other?
Yeah..."wiping out an entire room before anyone knows you're there"...sounds like THIEF gameplay to me...:grr:
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SR: If we decided to backpedal and add in “taffer” because a bunch of people wanted it, we'd get another complaint the next day from someone else saying, “Why stay stuck in the past?”
What sad cop-out, for a sad, tafferless, NuThief experience.
sNeaksieGarrett on 11/10/2013 at 01:33
Yeah I really hate how they're trying to appeal to everyone, but at the same time I understand it completely from a business perspective and considering how costly it is to make big game these days, if they hadn't done this it'd probably cause Eidos Montreal to go out of business like the last two studios that worked on Thief, or at least be a great loss to the company. Not only that, but this is a multi-platform title, so it makes sense that they're making the game the way they are.
I guess it really comes down to how much freedom we really have in the final shipped game. There are a lot of things we already know that are frown worthy and go against what we consider a thief experience. You know, like pre-determined rope points, Focus ability, etc.
The bit about 'taffer' bothered me too, it was like the guy being interviewed was trying to dodge it by saying "maybe maybe not." Either it's in or it's not.:weird:
And then later on, as you point out Vae, SR kinda goes against what was said earlier about using taffer in the game.
Chade on 11/10/2013 at 01:39
Quote Posted by Vae
Yeah..."wiping out an entire room before anyone knows you're there"...sounds like THIEF gameplay to me...:grr:
Wiping out an entire room before anyone knows you're there is the general idea, yes.
I think you meant to quote the "fast and aggressive" bit. ;)
Anyway, if you don't handpick the negative bits, that interview was quite nice. Sure, it re-emphasizes how they're trying to help out "modern" gamers, but we knew that already.
Here's the statements that are actually new, and not just retreading old ground. Well ... iirc, of course:
Quote Posted by TFA
PC Gamer: How many City hubs will we find in Thief?Stephane Roy: You'll be able to explore and pick up jobs in the Dayport, Old Quarter, Cathedral, Stonemarket, South Quarter, Docks, and Auldale districts.
Are there crossover jobs? Can one pick up a job from Stonemarket and have it take place in Auldale, for example?Steven Gallagher: The smaller City wards denote the fact that you'll travel there during the game's main storyline. Most of the side-quests and miscellaneous jobs take place in the major hubs of Stonemarket and South Quarter.
How much variance will players see in terms of where City hub loot is hidden? A number of the jobs I completed seemed to always involve finding a hidden switch behind a painting.SR: During full story missions where you're going after a specific piece of treasure, you'll see a lot of various ways Garrett figures out where his prize is being kept. For hub gameplay, it's much more systemic and reliant on exploration. We hope the full package—both mission and hub gameplay—strikes a good balance for players.
So, the missions are where you'd find more complexity, generally?SG: Well, the complexity of “finding something behind something” isn't that complex, really. I think it's more fair to say that missions offer a little more uniqueness in design. I certainly don't think the intention is for a player to automatically home in on a painting the moment they enter a room.
SR: A primary objective within the hubs is leaving a trail of clues to follow and explore. It's also more accessible—if you only have 20 minutes to play before heading out, you can hop in and finish up a couple hub jobs before you're done as opposed to going through a full story mission.
Does that make hubs something along the lines of “Thief lite”?SG: The hubs are useful for getting to know the world of Thief better. They're also good setting for more lighthearted content. You don't want to be in the middle of mission 5 and get interrupted with a joke out of nowhere or something. You're going to find stuff in the hubs that'll make you smile and laugh.
How flexible are the hub jobs? Could a player discover a job item before actually acquiring the contract and turn it in for the reward anyway?SR: That reminds me of a talk I had with the lead designer a couple days back. We talked about how we want to make sure the hubs represented exploration, but we also didn't want to encourage linearity by blocking off a bunch of stuff. Technically, job items won't show up until you talk to Basso, because that would otherwise render Basso useless. As an example, you can explore a specific apartment relating to a job before talking to Basso, but the combination for a safe in that apartment holding the job item only appears after you pick up the contract.
Vae on 11/10/2013 at 02:16
Quote Posted by Chade
Wiping out an entire room before anyone knows you're there is the general idea, yes.
I think you meant to quote the "fast and aggressive" bit. ;)
I really didn't need to, Chade...considering that we know what he mean't by saying "wiping out"...meaning "aggressively killing everyone in the room with the Focus and Swoop Superpowers, before they knew what hit them" (as per their demonstrations)...as opposed to "slowly and methodically knocking everyone out in the room before anyone sees me".
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Anyway, if you don't handpick the negative bits, that interview was quite nice.
Untrue...I didn't handpick all the negative bits, only a few of them...most of that article is negative or neutral, at best.
Springheel on 11/10/2013 at 02:28
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if you still tell Garrett to jump, he’ll instead crouch near the edge and look down.
That's immersive. :rolleyes:
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Yeah I really hate how they're trying to appeal to everyone,
Yeah, while at the same time denying that they're doing that: "It’s simply impossible to listen to everybody out there, so the guys working on Thief have really learned to trust their feelings behind their decisions".
Yep, like the feelings telling them to make the game fun for people who don't read anything or pay attention to whether they walk off cliffs or not. But throwing in a few references to "taffer" for the actual fans? Naw, screw that.
Chade on 11/10/2013 at 02:49
Quote Posted by Vae
I really didn't need to, Chade...
Yeah, I was just teasing, Vae.
sNeaksieGarrett on 11/10/2013 at 03:22
Quote Posted by Chade
Here's the statements that are actually new, and not just retreading old ground. Well ... iirc, of course:
Right, which I read. No need to quote all that out as if we're too incompetent to read the article.:sweat: That may have not been your intention, but it certainly came off that way to me. The other thing is, the answers for those questions are not without issues IMO.
On the plus side of this, it's nice that there's stuff to do outside of the actual jobs. Based on what was said, THIEF is sounding a bit like an open world game (but with a linear storyline of course), just not as broad as say a GTA game.
Goldmoon Dawn on 11/10/2013 at 03:51
Quote Posted by Springheel
"It's simply impossible to listen to everybody out there, so the guys working on Thief have really learned to trust their feelings behind their decisions".
Yep, like the feelings telling them to make the game fun for people who don't read anything or pay attention to whether they walk off cliffs or not. But throwing in a few references to "taffer" for the actual fans? Naw, screw that.
This is truly at the core of why I feel absolutely terrible for this game. So many other outlandish decisions have spring up from this blasphemous principle of their game design. They themselves are clearly incapable of making a classic game with the depth of the originals and as such they are foolishly attempting to instead cash in on The Dark Project, and it is getting to be rather embarrassing to be an old fan, as they continue to ignorantly taunt and outright mock us.
People will eventually start to wonder why they chose this new *wimp* to replace Garretts true voice and personality. Even to the untrained ear, one can easily detect the difference in mettle between Stephen Russell and the new guy. I think the curtains went down on NuTeam a long time ago. History will hungrily tell this tale, as surely as the Master Builder doth watch over us, but how can anyone look back upon the original games with a straight face ever again?!
