mikjames on 11/5/2022 at 18:06

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Some of us more experimental taffers, may be aware of the hidden entry points at particularly high elevations in the original missions.

Lord Bafford's: Jump onto street lamp, access rooftops, Thief 2 Framed, jump onto generator next to river, follow gate, rooftop entry into the dining area, Thief 2 Casing/Masks, jump onto lamp, jump onto hedge, enter 3rd floor.

There are more examples of missions that can be so cheezed, these are just a few off the top of my head. I've noticed something strange over the decades that I've been playing Thief (god are we that old?), some of these exploits have had attempted fixes applied, to remove them. The most obvious example is my first spoiler example, i.e mission 1.1, where they seem to have patched in an invisible wall, where previously it was much easier to drop down into the courtyard. They ultimately failed, as I just go off to the left and drop in that way, but it's much more difficult to avoid health damage going this route, and feels strangely at odds with the reality that Garrett clearly has an easier way in, that invisible walls are now preventing. Can we either patch these alternate routes out properly, or stop trying to sabotage them? Or is the creator of New Dark pretty much mia at this point?

voodoo47 on 11/5/2022 at 21:43

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a person determined to cheat/exploit will always find a way.

that said, TFix does make a few objects unmantleable to sour their soup for just a little bit (mostly objects that were almost unmantleable under oldDark, but were very mantleable in NewDark because of the improved mantling).

ZylonBane on 12/5/2022 at 02:17

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What is this incoherent garble?

Kangra on 12/5/2022 at 18:25

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There's an interesting element that the genre itself adds to this discussion. The game itself is about going outside of the rules, about finding alternative ways to infiltrate some place without being noticed. So when the exploration leads to routes that are apparently unintended, you're somehow bending the rules even more. There's an added thrill that on top of being a thief in a place you aren't supposed to be when you get somewhere in the game world and feel, "I'm really not supposed to be here."

In something like an Elder Scrolls game I'd be fine with invisible walls since accomplishing the quest by going elsewhere to get the key item feeds into the primary gameplay, and simply skipping that isn't terribly exciting. I am generally on the side of not tinkering with these things in games, since finding these things make it a more fun experience for me. Avoiding them is easily done. And I can see some limits needing to be in place - if skipping past some key point renders the rest of the level nonsensical (for instance, you somehow get into an area with nobody on alert when some alarm was supposed to go off and change their behavior), I'm in favor of fixing it. If it's something too far beyond reality, that should be patched too (e.g. jumping onto some rock caused a glitch that launched you over some high wall). I don't see that in the situations described above.

If it comes down to a competitive situation (e.g. speedrunning or challenge modes) it isn't that hard to come up with explicit rules for it. I suppose ideally it would be on the option screen, where you could select if you wanted 'invisible barriers' on as a convenience for those cases, but that is typically not worth the effort.