Questions for Eidos M's Community Manager

Renault on 21/8/2013 at 19:02

Quote Posted by SneakyJack

I'll let everyone get back to their regularly scheduled woe is me insular circle jerk about how the sky is falling because it does no good to try to offer a perspective from the other side when it's obviously just one big pile-on in the favor of doom and gloom here. One sided discussions are boring and everything in this anticipation subforum has been a chore to read for a while now.

You could, you know, offer up some opposing arguments and create some actual - discussion! - of the topic at hand. Or, you could just show up occasionally, and complain incessantly...about the complainers.

Seriously though, if you think the whole forum is one sided and and there aren't any conflicting views here at all, well then you're not reading enough. It's there, there's debate, pick a side and make an argument. That's how forums work. Make valid points, and produce some evidence to back it up. But your constant criticism of anyone here who raises even the smallest bit of concern about where the new game is going, that's far more unproductive than anything else going on here atm.

SubJeff on 21/8/2013 at 19:06

Quote Posted by Master Taffer 512

Al_B figured it out in one post, but what the f*** ever. Last time I take time out of my day to answer your request.

If you'd explained it properly the first time then I wouldn't have asked again. Don't blame others for your own failings.

In Thief 1 and 2 if you are next to a ledge you can mantle onto and press jump you will mantle onto it.

If you are moving left or right and facing it you will STILL mantle onto it.

Since swoop and jump use the same button is it not reasonable to ask exactly how it works? It seems that it will work differently in Thief (4).

nickie on 21/8/2013 at 19:11

Now we all understand, let's leave it there.

Chade on 21/8/2013 at 22:58

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

This makes no sense, at all. You seem to be comparing the behaviour you'll get when using a specific button in a specific context, across the games. But why would you do this? You'll know in Thief 4 that you can swoop so you won't press the button on flat ground to jump. These movements have different purposes and the contextual binding of swoop or jump to a key is irrelevant to the jump button in Thief 1-3.

Firstly, I don't agree that comparing the behavior of a specific command is nonsensical. Swoop / jump / climb (new mantle if you prefer) are linked together by being placed on the same button. This is not just true mechanically (if you do one you can't do another), but also the layout of the UI is meaningful in its own right.

However, I do agree that the comparison isn't as interesting as others you could make. If you look at the very next paragraph after the one you quoted, I briefly talk about that. The more interesting comparison is between the player's options in different situations. And once again, the comparison I made earlier is useful here, because enumerating all possible situation is a lot of work, and my earlier comparison is a bloody good approximation!

Jump vs. new jump and mantle vs what I called climb (new mantle if you prefer) are clearly the right comparisons. As for jump over flat ground vs. swoop, it's close:
1) The main reason to jump over flat ground is to cross over loud surfaces without making a sound. Swoop now seems to be the way you do this.
2) Whatever jumping on flat ground let you do that swoop doesn't, the only reason you can't do that anymore is because swoop replaced it.

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Climb vs mantle? There is mantling in Thief 4. This comparison makes no sense.

Another example of you assuming the worse. Why not ask instead? Hell, just taking my post in good faith instead of looking for holes should have made it pretty clear what I meant.

I'm using "climb" instead of "new mantle", because we know that some of the contextual climbing actions your character can make, just from an animation pov, don't look like what I would describe as a mantle. Now maybe my idea of what a mantle is is too restrictive, I don't know. But when I watch the E3 gameplay video, and watch the player clamber up some of those pillars, I don't think "he's mantling them", I think "he's climbing them".

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

"New" jump vs jump? We'll have to wait and see exactly how jumping is implemented. But what is "Empty space"? Do you mean gap you have to jump across. Another odd way of putting things.

Now you're so desperate to find things wrong with my post that you're not bothering to think about what I wrote. You're smarter then this.

What does a gap imply? It implies that there is some solid material on the other side of the empty space. We know that your character can jump into empty space, without anything on the other side to jump to, potentially dying in the process. Gap is insufficient.

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

So you see; it's not that I think your posts are stupid, it's that they are just a jumbled mess. At least frothcrew are coherent in their nonsense.

Now, I'll agree to part of this. I do often have competing arguments jumbled up together. "On the other hand", and all that. It's not rare for people irl to wish I had less hands (or words to that effect). I'm perfectly willing to believe that my posts can be hard to understand.

On the other hand (damn it!), I've had three people on this forum tell me recently that they appreciate my posts (before this ridiculous fight broke out btw). Those people span the complete spectrum from disagreeing with what I write to agreeing. I don't think my posts can possibly be anywhere near as bad as you make out.

I think you'll do better by being slower to assume that someone wrote something stupid, and more open to thinking about what they said and seeing how it could make sense.

Now I'm sorry Nickie, but this really is the perfect example ... SE, your recent spat with Master Taffer is the perfect case in point. It was insanely obvious what the answer to your questions were from his second post (personally I think it was insanely obvious from his first post ... but at least your initial question is defensible). Why the hell would you not mantle when moving away but mantle when moving sideways? Why would MT not directly answer your question if that complication existed? It's completely different to LGSs system because with thief 4 the choice of action is done when you press the button, whereas with LGS system the checks for a mantle at each snapshot of time while you're in the air*. But you're so desperate to find something wrong with what he's saying, that you latch onto one word of his as if it's the most important thing in the world, all because it lets you twist some degree of uncertainty out of the bleeding obvious.

There's a great saying: point of view is worth 80 IQ points. Most people aren't dumb. Believing that they are will cause you to make mistakes.

* Imagine jumping to mantle onto a ledge off to the side which is roughly parallel to the line of your jump.

SubJeff on 21/8/2013 at 23:11

Quote Posted by Chade

But when I watch the E3 gameplay video, and watch the player clamber up some of those pillars, I don't think "he's mantling them", I think "he's climbing them".

Because he is. Those trellises are climbable and are highlighted by Focus. The player climbs them before mantling onto the top. This is not the same as pure mantling.

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SE, your recent spat with Master Taffer is the perfect case in point. It was insanely obvious what the answer to your questions were from his second post

I beg to differ...

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Why the hell would you not mantle when moving away but mantle when moving sideways?

Because you do in every other game with mantle. SS2, Thief 1, 2 and 3, Dishonored.

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Why would MT not directly answer your question if that complication existed? It's completely different to LGSs system because with thief 4 the choice of action is done when you press the button, whereas with LGS system the checks for a mantle at each snapshot of time while you're in the air*. But you're so desperate to find something wrong with what he's saying, that you latch onto one word of his as if it's the most important thing in the world, all because it lets you twist some degree of uncertainty out of the bleeding obvious.

I don't know why he wouldn't. He got around to it in the end though. Why couldn't he have stated that at the start? It was insanely obvious what I was asking about - its what everyone really wants to know, isn't it? How, exactly does the contextual stuff work and how possible is it to mix actions up. This is important because it directly affects the granularity of movement.

Goldmoon Dawn on 21/8/2013 at 23:32

lol @ frothcrew. I hadnt heard that one before!

:cheeky:

Chade on 21/8/2013 at 23:36

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Because he is. Those trellises are climbable and are highlighted by Focus. The player climbs them before mantling onto the top. This is not the same as pure mantling.

Right, and the player is climbing-then-mantling by pressing the super-duper-move-about button. Once, I believe, although I suppose that could be wrong. So ... my use of the word climb instead of mantle was probably appropriate, then.

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Because you do in every other game with mantle. SS2, Thief 1, 2 and 3, Dishonored.

For the second time, it's completely different in thief 4 because EM decides what your action is going to be when you press the super-duper-move-about button. SS2 and Thief 1-3 (and I presume Dishonored ... will play it one day!) check for a possible mantle at each snapshot in time after you've jumped. It works completely differently.

In thief 4, EM can look at the direction you're going when you press super-duper-move-about, and do whatever action they need to in order to take you in that direction. If there's multiple actions you might take in that direction, well ... tough?

In earlier games, it would have been pretty crazy not to treat each snapshot of time in the same way. Whether your feet had just left the ground as you tried to jump sideways along a ledge, or whether you'd jumped from some ledge and turned your head in order to mantle onto something as you passed, the mantling system almost certainly doesn't know the difference. If you wanted to do something different in each of those situations, well ... tough.

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Why couldn't he have stated that at the start?

He did. He just didn't use bullet-proof logical statements, like .. well, like everyone else on the planet. Most of the time, we apply common sense when interpreting another person's words. Most of the time, you do too.

SubJeff on 21/8/2013 at 23:49

Quote Posted by Chade

No, it wasn't, I don't think.

It seems you can climb AND you can mantle. So you could jump up and mantle but sometimes its too high to jump so you'll have to find the climbable part of the thing you're trying to get on and climb high enough to mantle. Which I quite like - I though it would be like this in Thief 3. Alas...

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You're making some assumptions about inner workings of the engines here, no? Do you have any evidence for this?

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In thief 4, EM can look at the direction you're going when you press super-duper-move-about, and do whatever action they need to in order to take you in that direction. If there's multiple actions you might take in that direction, well ... tough?

Oh, I get that. It's the bit I've put in bold that worries me.

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There is no common sense here - it would be common sense to have free jumping imho. It would have been equally possible that they assumed you were looking for a better part to mantle onto and so did nothing as you moved sidewards, only activating mantle when you stopped. It's precisely his lack of "bullet-proof logical statements" that made me ask again. If it were me and someone asked the same question again I, being one of the few people who has played the game (hypothetically speaking), would have explained in more detail instead of being a child about it.

Chade on 22/8/2013 at 00:28

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

You're making some assumptions about inner workings of the engines here, no? Do you have any evidence for this?

You're referring to the underlined bit, I gather. It's an assumption that I'm comfortable with. If it wasn't true, it would be more work to implement, the behavior of mantle would appear arbitrary, and if the difference mattered we'd be able to notice. Have you ever observed any difference in your years of playing thief that does not come down to attributes of that snapshot of time? Velocity, position, direction, architecture? Have I just been fooling myself all these years?

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

It's precisely his lack of "bullet-proof logical statements" that made me ask again. If it were me and someone asked the same question again I, being one of the few people who has played the game (hypothetically speaking), would have explained in more detail instead of being a child about it.

As far as he was concerned, he had answered your question, and you were just being difficult. Yeah, he probably could have given you the benefit of the doubt, but you're hardly in a position to complain about that now, are you?

Even then, MT at one point explicitly put sideways swooping in the "away" bucket. From that point onwards, it's really stretching the bounds of all credibility to believe that sideways swoop doesn't work, yet still the argument went on.

If either one of you had stopped assuming that the other person was a complete idiot, the whole misunderstanding could have been resolved in 2-3 posts tops.

SubJeff on 22/8/2013 at 00:35

Quote Posted by Chade

You're referring to the underlined bit, I gather. It's an assumption that I'm comfortable with.

We'd have to ask some of the modders.

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Why on earth not?

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Even then, MT at one point explicitly put sideways swooping in the "away" bucket.

What is an "away bucket"?

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If either one of you had stopped assuming that the other person was a complete idiot, the whole misunderstanding could have been resolved in 2-3 posts tops.

I never did this. I just thought he wasn't being clear or was purposely avoiding answering.