Thief (4) Features. What we know is in, what we know is out.

SubJeff on 23/4/2013 at 06:23

Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn

It hardly seems like a justified response, and everyone pretty much agreed that you were wrong anyway or something. You go from 0 to 100 in 2 seconds! Why so tough man?

No, Spring and Dia think I'm wrong. Dia hasn't engaged in further discussion on it and Spring and I are discussing it. No one else of significance has disagreed in a manner coherent enough to be of consequence.

Given the context and the poster it's perfectly justified. If Dia had posted that I wouldn't have been so "tough" because Dia isn't the most outspoken anti Thief 4 poster on here. jtr is, and if you're going to act out that role you'd better have all your arguments down tight or someone is going to call you out.

Yes jtr, I agree with your last post totally.

Beleg Cúthalion on 23/4/2013 at 07:36

Quote Posted by jtr7

let the player choose where to stand as long as it's reasonable for the task, moving the character in any way should always be limited by terrain not a minigame.

Well, where else can you stand or kneel when picking a lock aside from right in front of it? Ever tried to pick one?

jtr7 on 23/4/2013 at 08:12

If it were someone else asking...

Reduce proximity so it's not 3-4 feet away, and don't restrict it to a set distance or perfect alignment along any axis. In real life, there's an ideal placement for the individual lockpicker, but the locks aren't always placed there, nor placed for the criminal lockpicker. No locking the model into position, or acting like Garrett can't simply let go of the picks. Place the locks to be picked at natural and varied heights so the player has to position accordingly, like a safe under a desk or in a low nook, or up on a shelf, or a hatch in the floor or ceiling, or a bolt in a door, or a lock in the handle, as part of a home/business, a carriage, a trunk, a footlocker, a uniform locker, almost all of which were found before, allowing for organic and natural variety, and adding to the story. Place the locks at various heights and reward player-model positioning with similar philosophy behind attacking body zones. Garrett shouldn't always get comfy and settle into an ideal position, and awkward angles could be calculated into how long picking takes, if they don't make it so simple in truth and artificially complicated to the player. The locks shouldn't be placed at heights and widths for someone lockpicking who happens to be Garrett's dimensions, but should match the needs and choices of the owner who has the key or combo. Chuck out TDS and Splinter Cell, and start with TDM. Leave the camera inside Garrett's head for 1st-Person players, but don't lock it down in lockpicking. 3P players can have it their way, whatever.

If the player will ever be able to go prone in one of these games, Garrett could have to go prone to tackle certain smaller floor safes or hidden locked caches, extra vulnerable to getting caught. Outside of lockpicking, as an intruder and eavesdropper, hiding under beds and tables with table cloths is something a lot of taffers would like to see in an evolved Thief game, and could just be built upon the mechanics for crawling through crawlspaces, maneuvering through damaged walls, or narrow cave bottlenecks, or obstructed openings into hulls, or windows that don't open more than a couple of feet, essentially floor-flattening to go with wall-flattening.

In this 4th title, I'd like to see him better than Basso--the apprentice superseding his master--at lockpicking. He should be able to take a lock on under odd circumstances, having more real practice in one night's work. I know it's asking a lot, but if the game could consider faking the vast variety of pristine locks, rusty locks, grimy locks, frozen locks, and make the experience varied more than the number of clicks, wafers, tumblers, rings... And bring back door-bashing, with the obvious rewards and downsides. I'm wondering if all the panes of glass and the glassware shown in the images are even breakable, or if it will be limited to certain gamespaces as in TMA.

bartekb81 on 23/4/2013 at 08:51

Mini-game isn't so bad as long as it is no fullscreen operation. But it looks like that in Thief 4, unfortunately. They should leave normal vision with visible Garrett's hands and possibility to look around while picking a lock, with adding maybe some tiny vision on tumblers which pop-ups right above the lock to help the player; it would be better for immersion than fullscreen resolve.

jtr7 on 23/4/2013 at 09:03

Yep. In a Thief game, let the screen only show what Garrett himself could sense, showing the player subtly only those things that cannot be conveyed through the tactile, the sense of smell, or taste, or can be better conveyed through sound. Don't let the player know what Garrett could not know at any point, barring knowledge gathered specifically through spoilers and initial playthroughs. Garrett shouldn't say things to the player he never would explain to himself, unless it can be done very naturally and infrequently. Real life lockpicking is fairly considered a game of a sort already. It doesn't need to be an out-of-body or extra-sensory experience with an overlay or 3rd-person, impossible view.

DJ Riff on 23/4/2013 at 09:10

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

If there were then at that point I would accept that differentiates the mechanic enough from the old version. 8 points, fwiw, is the limit for functional comparison because any greater granularity alters the player skill requirement out of the "select, test, wait, repeat" pattern.

Yes, there are. Two chests in Auldale section, Fogerty's jewelry. No such locks in missions.

And there's no need to "test" really. Just W+Attack, W+D+Attack, D+Attack, D+S+Attack, etc., repeat. Bind all this to a keyboard macro and you have the auto-unlock hold-to-win button. On a gamepad, just rotate the stick, spamming the attack trigger.

henke on 23/4/2013 at 09:49

I like the TDM lockpicking system too. Only problem with it is that players who are deaf/hard-of-hearing will be left out in the cold. Literally! (since they won't be able to open the doors to get inside!)

jtr7 on 23/4/2013 at 09:59

If they can add a visual cue to match (I thought they did, but it would have to be tested with the sound muted), it should be fine. Garrett's hands in T4 should continue to be showing the player important cues since they went that way, but for the internal mechanism view.

(http://s70.photobucket.com/user/jtr7/media/3_stage.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i106/jtr7/3_stage.jpg:original
(http://s70.photobucket.com/user/jtr7/media/4_stage.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i106/jtr7/4_stage.jpg:original
(http://s70.photobucket.com/user/jtr7/media/5_stage.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i106/jtr7/5_stage.jpg:original
(http://s70.photobucket.com/user/jtr7/media/6_stage.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i106/jtr7/6_stage.jpg:original

Every single time someone brings up how all the locks are easy on keyboard, someone has to remind them about Samuel Fogerty's Diamond Lock, without fail. :laff:

In the Dark Engine, distance is almost always very loose and unnatural, but not every single time, where there are a handful of instances requiring the player to be very close to frob a particular thing, and the 6-foot reach for grabbing loot shouldn't be copied, nor the locked-in automation of TDS, nor the Guy Ritchie internal mechanism view.

Between the Dark and Flesh Engines, either the player needs to bring up the lockpicks, aim, click-and-hold, or clicking the whole door has Garrett automatically reaching for the lockpicks and maneuvering into position for the minigame, where the mouse defaults to angling both of the lockpicks--one automatically, one aimed by the player.

In Dark, you can hold the button down for the picking, but the mouse still moves Garrett the same as if he weren't lockpicking at all, so there's nothing stopping the player from fleeing the scene or interrupting him/herself with a flick of a wrist, walking, running, jumping, or swinging right back without ever lifting the finger off the button and continuing to pick. Although authors can set Dark to reset at fail, so the picking has to be restarted, the devs decided against that for the most part, while TDM's Training has the pkayer start all over. In TDS, you have to disengage with a button, or look around with a button, but Garrett is otherwise glued to the lockpicks until the picking and animation are over. Garrett is not returned to the position the player had him at when the door was frobbed, same with TDS's side-step leaning.

Because the player in Dark can approach the locks at angles other than perpendicular, the player can choose to face a door, an AI's patrol, or ready for an escape route. This isn't a big deal in replays or after the factors affecting a gamespace have been memorized, but even that can be foiled if the devs so choose. In TDS, by default the player's eyes are turned where the player may not want, and while it might make some players tense in a good way, it's just annoying for players who don't like control taken from them for trivial reasons. T4 seems to be copying how TDS positions the player's eyes for them, rather than leaving a natural choice. Proximity was a factor in Dark, and should've been tightened up, but we don't know why the devs chose such a long reach, except to speed up some aspects of the game.

Leave the player in the gamespace. Never take him/her out of it but for the between-mission stuff, or when the player goes to the menu.

bartekb81 on 23/4/2013 at 10:05

TDM system is innovative, that's for sure. And pretty logical, too. I'm simply too impatient in lockpicking since I always try to pick a lock immediately in first try, before hearing out the whole cycle first. Sometimes it works, but often I have to repeat cycles 2-3 times to made it. But maybe this little kind of frustration is logical, too (and refers to lockpicking in real life). And Thief is mostly about patience.

Beleg Cúthalion on 23/4/2013 at 11:01

Quote Posted by jtr7

They are usually placed for the guy having a key who does more or less the same motions as a picker. Why on earth should a lock be placed with the intention of making the position too awkward for a picker while being slightly less awkward for someone with a key? This has passed the limit of reasonable thinking a while ago. As for the rest...

Quote:

No locking the model into position, or acting like Garrett can't simply let go of the picks. (etc.)

...why would you want the challenge of squeezing the player into the awkward picking position (or simply crouch in front of it which wouldn't be anything...special either) combined with a quick escape (although lock picking needs a lot of calmness and concentration) but consider it inferior to force that kind of focussing (NPI) where a single RMB click can get you out of it (as TDS did, where you also could look around with the key held down)? Where is the fundamental difference in a lockpicking simulator that escapes me?