demagogue on 16/4/2013 at 14:16
That's not far from what Thief 2 coop is actually like.
Making distractions for each other, or forking paths so you can infiltrate a building from two sides, or messing with each other for laughs... Remember that coop multiplayer is already set up for Thief 2 with a patch and playable right now. It's fun. Everyone should try it if they haven't before.
pavlovscat on 16/4/2013 at 17:47
I haven't played coop T2 in ages! It IS a lot of fun. There are so many possibilities even with just two players.
A coop option in T4 would go on my plus list.
FenrisUlf on 17/4/2013 at 02:12
Quote Posted by demagogue
That's not far from what Thief 2 coop is actually like.
Making distractions for each other, or forking paths so you can infiltrate a building from two sides, or messing with each other for laughs... Remember that coop multiplayer is already set up for Thief 2 with a patch and playable right now. It's fun. Everyone should try it if they haven't before.
WTF! WHERE IS IT? I must play!
jtr7 on 17/4/2013 at 02:16
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124169)
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124200)
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4kBC-F6TU)
Interestingly, and something I hadn't known until I heard it from him, Randy Smith said that the rough working Multiplayer they had in Thief 2 at LGS had them running around the maps together. I never knew they got it that far, only that the groundwork had been laid.
Digging up stuff:
Quote:
Evilspirit (Tim Stellmach):
There will be a cooperative multiplayer mode that will function like another difficulty level, with co-op specific goals and objectives. There will be no competitive multiplayer.
Quote:
Aardvark (Rich Carlson):
Ever wonder what these "clans" are all about here at TTLG?
A while ago, circa May 2000, many of us began to join together in clans (kind of a "Quake clan" parody) to remind the developers of Thief 3 that WE WANT MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT.
We desired, and desire, an online Thief experience.
....
In 1999, Iikka Keranen and I were hired by LGS to help devise a multiplayer component for Thief 2: The Metal Age! Iikka especially was very excited about it, so we packed up and moved from Dallas, Texas to be a part of that, and to help with the chores required to make it happen.
frobber on 10/7/2013 at 18:02
Quote Posted by demagogue
T4 will certainly have better looking art direction, models, architecture, voice acting (putting aside who does it, it'll still be very professionally done) ... all the assets, I mean.
I think for actual level design it'll be a competition. You could argue FMs pull ahead -- T4 should have maps made for one-off experiences -- so more scripted events, linearity, and mini-game things like funneling the player through the designated parkour route, which doesn't make for good level design according to the classic principles of open, non-linear levels that we like. But then again a lot of FMs don't think self-consciously about their level design and make newbie mistakes too, and T4 should avoid those. So T4 levels should be better than average FMs, but maybe just under classic FMs that really nail the open, non-linear design.
T4 will have more to work with in storytelling just by virtue of having a full-on campaign to do it. Even when FMs have a full-on campaign, it is such a massive task that it's hard to maintain the ambition. E.g., frobber's Keeper of the Prophecies had a good story over a longer campaign, but he had to reuse maps to do it too. It's just almost too much to expect one person to make so many new massive maps by themselves. And group campaigns like T2X have to contend with democratic decisionmaking, which fragments the storytelling a bit, or when they try to be more autocratic (like Cosas & HI), they don't get finished...
FMs don't create their own gameplay mechanics, they just inherit T2 (or TDMs in that case), so it's not really fair to compare mechanics.
Not to quote the whole post here -- but as I've been responding, I realize that I'm reflecting on the whole thing.
After three commercial games and 1,200 fan missions, there is little reason to make T4 other than to cash in on a known brand name. That is a nasty thing to say -- but it's my working hypothesis in the absence of a better reason. We've covered a lot of story material in FMs and I doubt that T4 will find much new to explore. I may be wrong -- there are over 700 Star Trek TV episodes and the new Star Trek movie sold well. Yet selling really well may come at price -- such as making a game that we (as traditional players) see as an over-glitzed commercial sell-out.
From the standpoint of fitting into what has been produced so far -- T4 will essentially need to be an FM in nature (an extension from what has been produced before). FM makers are generally limited by the look and feel of T1 and T2 and anything in T4 that misses the
essence of those elements will be "Thief" in name only. In view of our last new game experience, I won't rag on T3 other than to say that they fell short on many aspects of the look and feel -- particularly lacking large and open spaces and the classic gameaplay methods like ropes and swimming. In an effort to upgrade their graphics, they couldn't get the basics to work. Having suffered through T3, I have the sense that
an overcommitment to money-making is the greatest danger to T4 producers -- not whether or not their story is entirely new.
Storytelling by committee can work -- examples at Pixar (and Looking Glass, for that matter) though this requires a well-managed central commitment to the story development process. And as much as we all know how storytelling is essential to a deeper gameplay experience, I'm inclined to believe that most game producers -- even today -- are unconvinced that stories in games
as a central element will increase their sales and make them more money.
Regarding my reuse of maps in KotP -- yeah, partly this was to save on building a new map for each mission, partly it was a way to focus the gameplay more on new events rather than making each mission an exploration of unfamiliar new terrain, and partly I simply like the idea of returning to an old setting under altered circumstances (time of year, rain, etc). Setting re-use and re-purposing is a time-honored method in story-telling, and I don't see it as much of a compromise.
Anyhow, that's my two cents, and my annual visit back to the TTLG message boards.
FYI -- In case anyone is interested in how to tell stories in games, I still have my series on this hosted online: (
http://kenramsley.com/storytelling-in-games/inducingreality)
-frobber
webe123 on 12/7/2013 at 02:43
Quote Posted by Kuuso
I would gladly trade one webe123 for ten console kiddies.
I would gladly trade you for another TROLL.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Be careful what you wish for. He might be obnoxious, but console kiddies are worse. Would you really trade him for a bunch of lily white 14 year old XBox Live CODBLOPS players running around, screaming...
"What's this wussie casual faggot crap, yo? I wanna shoot at niggaz, not sneak around 'em, you know what I'm sayin'? I'm hardcore as all get out, rite? I wanna be like BOOM! HEADSHOT, then niggaz fall to tha floor from my mad skillz, yo! 69'n afta' 420', brahs! Ya feel? MY WOW RAID SKILLZ IS BALLS WILD, DAWG! I ROLL UP A FURY WAR COW WITH MAD GEARZ 'N STATZ AND GET ALL CRAY CRAY UP IN SCHOLOMANCE, BRAH-BRAY-BRO! I OUTTA HEA'! PACE"!
...I wouldn't want that. Oh no. I wouldn't want that at all.
You are the one being obnoxious, you seem to disagree with what I say so you have have to troll for a fight? What a concept.
demagogue on 12/7/2013 at 04:15
@frobber, I like your response to my post, and if I didn't emphasize it before, I thought your campaign was actually one of the rare FM campaign success stories we could all learn from. But I'm still happy you gave more details and put it in a wider context too anyway. Great post, thanks.
Chade on 12/7/2013 at 05:01
Given that this thread has been resurrected anyway ...
The obvious differences between thief 4 and our community products is that we make games just for us, whereas thief 4 is trying to please a lot more people. I would be very surprised if thief 4 is more appealing to us then products designed specifically for us to enjoy.
The good news is that it's not really a competition. Thief 4 isn't trying to run in the same race as something like The Dark Mod, and vis-versa. They'll bring different elements to the table, and with any luck, in the end, most of us will be able to enjoy both.
Flavia on 12/7/2013 at 11:56
I don't know, I find it hard to compare 10 minutes of gameplay plus few promises to 1000+ FMs :rolleyes:
Especially since FMs range from pure stealth to pure combat, from drama to comedy, from jokes to horrors, from riddiculously easy to absurdly hard, from little wonders to totall crap. With wide range of gameplay mechanics in between...
Dia on 12/7/2013 at 14:25
Quote Posted by Chade
The obvious differences between thief 4 and our community products is that we make games just for us, whereas thief 4 is trying to please a lot more people.
Precisely.
Quote Posted by Chade
The good news is that it's not really a competition.
I disagree. EM has repeatedly claimed that T4 is 'another' or a 'true' Thief game and has repeatedly tried to illustrate how very similar it is to the original three games. In the minds of a lot of Taffers, EM has
made it a competition by consistently ticking off all the ways in which NuThief is still (what EM considers to be) a Thief game, i.e.: it has stealth, it has a lot of the same weapons, it has the same overall ambience, it has the word 'Thief' in the title and the main protagonist is named 'Garrett'. All of these similarities should be applied in the broadest sense of the word, imo, and in my case just prompts me to compare how many ways in which T4 is NOT a true Thief game. I think EM has also made it a competition to win over as many of the 'old school' Thief fans they can by throwing us sops and crumbs. Not that the piddly amount of sales they'd garner from our Taffers would really matter in the long run.
Will T4 be any better than our Thief community's products? Regarding graphics and technological aspects of the game then yes; only because EM has over $300 million to spend on state of the art game development hardware and software as well as actual developers. But in respect to T4 appealing to us Taffers in the same way our own FM authors have with their creations? A resounding NO! I've been searching for words to define the basic element that I feel EM's NuThief is already lacking and the only thing I can come up with is 'soul'.
