roygato

Well, I did write post-Morrowind Bethesda RPGs. No question that Morrowind's combat is terrible, but at the same time, it isn't a very high bar to clear. I think Oblivion clears it only just, simply by removing the tabletop dice rolls. Otherwise it's still godawful. TDM, a game where the combat is more like an afterthought, has better combat than Oblivion, for example. That's fair, voiced dialogue brings a lot to the table, even if it restricts the writing. Even bad voice-acting can have a certain charm. If I'm reading this correctly, and you mean how Skyrim got high-praise from critics despite people complaining about it, personally I wouldn't put almost any weight to the press ratings as far as evaluating a game goes. It somehow doesn't surprise me that a game in a beloved-series hyped to high-heavens gets critical acclaim. Dumbing it down seems like it would make it more likely, not less, as it's even more accessible. Even with Fallout, the same consensus seems to apply. New Vegas, not developed by Bethesda, is often described as the superior RPG, whereas 3 and 4 are seen as more fun to explore. I don't really care for Fallout's flavor of post-apocalypse, so I haven't had any inclination to play any of the games. I've watched some videos though, Fallout 76 seemed like a real riot. I played Oblivion for dumb reasons anyway. There was a let's play of it I watched back in the day, that didn't get very far, but still somehow got me to give it a shot. Thought I could play it as an alternative Thief game; that was a terrible idea in hindsight, as there is nothing to steal. I did finish the game, all the factions and Shivering Isles, but late-game combat, dungeons and fetch quests were beyond mind-numbing.

How do you view the post-Morrowind world of Bethesda RPGs? The common opinion I see is that they're fun to explore, but pretty not good in terms of everything else (writing & combat specifically). I've only ever played Oblivion, couple of years ago, debatable if it was worth it. What I do like about it, is that it produced this brilliant retrospective. If you have five hours to spare, I highly recommend it.

I thought this exact same thing the other day, so I concur. Although I wouldn't mind having any reminders come with a "Get this shit out of my face" tickbox. Depends on how they'd be implemented.

The more I think about it, the less I see what you were even trying to argue for. thebigh is implying that shoving the tutorial down the player's throat is hand-holding. Whether that's true or not is a game-design decision. Mentioning how software is installed is completely irrelevant. If someone prefers the presentation of the old Thief and Deus Ex, it doesn't immediately mean they want to go back to the stone age of software. I don't know why you would even bring it up. Also, if it isn't incredibly obvious, I'm on your side in this argument. I don't see any issue with either enhancing the training mission, or adding a shortcut to it in the menu. I've already stated this multiple times. I don't think thebigh does either. I do take the point of people just forgetting stuff, even if they have played the training, but you can say that for any game. Some of them might have contextual hints that can be toggled off (press whatever to shoulder a body, or snuff a candle). Whether that's an appropriate solution, or even wanted, is another discussion.

This is what I tend to hear as well, when it comes to the Witcher series. I don't have an interest in it myself, but my brother-in-law was (or maybe still is) playing the third one, and was telling me how it's apparently very difficult.

The training mission exists, it's right there. Not only that, but the mission download page literally says that the player should start with it, as well as the other prepackaged ones. That said, I'm not opposed to making that notion more prominent in the game, since I realize some people may just use the in-game downloader at all times. I didn't until just recently, because when I started, it was practically unusable. Although even then, it comes with the download. Training mission = learn the game, this isn't rocket science. At some point this reaches a point of willful ignorance on the part of the player. If they choose to ignore the training mission, and then come complaining about something that is explained there, that is completely unacceptable, and they should be shot into the sun out of a giant cannon. I find it funny you say this to someone, when you argue your points with strawmen, like this: I concede it is an argument, just not a very good one. Installing the game isn't playing the game, this is completely irrelevant. "But it's a matter of usability or something". I have no idea how the game was installed in the olden days, so I can't comment on that. But making the software itself function like it was made in the 21st century doesn't seem like a big concession. I often hear people complain about modernizing game-design; I've never once heard it about software installation processes. I reckon most everything comes with a graphical installer. It doesn't translate at all into how the game should treat the player. It isn't trying to willfully obfuscate, the training mission exists, is pretty substantial and comes with the download. If the mod came with no training at all, and there was no place to learn any of it, or if thebigh was trying to argue for removing the training mission, because he didn't need it, I'd give what you wrote here more of an edge, but as it is, it's just a fallacy.

Yeah. When the player opens the mission selector, you could have a popup that says something like "Welcome to The Dark Mod. It is highly recommended you play through the training mission first, in order to familiarize yourself with the game's mechanics. The regular missions assume that you are familiar with them. [ ] Never show this message again." Or something. Don't remember the original Thief games, but wasn't the training mission for the OG Deus Ex completely skippable, and you had to specifically select it in the main menu?

That's fair. Personally, I'm young enough that I didn't play the likes of Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock 2 when they were new; like I noted in my summary of Human Revolution, it's pretty much that game alone to thank that I started branching out and got into some of these other ones. HR was a completely new world for me. I'd be hard pressed to choose between the first Deus Ex and HR. Both are excellent. Mankind Divided was a disappointment, the story just didn't go anywhere and it's maybe too similar to HR in terms of everything else. Not to mention the idiotic micro-transactions. Sure, when the budgets are high and there is the never-ending race to top the latest best-seller, it's a tough sell for AAA studios to innovate. There's a reason for that: I don't really play AAA games. All the AAA games I played from the last decade are on the list, at least mentioned, save for Halo 4. As my list shows, I'm a huge fan of certain types of games (atmospheric puzzle, stealth, immersive sim, good stories), and AAA studios rarely deliver on that front. You say that, but the last room in HR took me like three hours. But I get what you mean. Certainly in the world of AAA, it's a bigger issue. I get a lot of thinking from all the puzzle games, lol.

Yeah, no argument about the difficulty. They did try at least, by offering the status effects and weapon degradation and whatnot, but the same thing happened as with every other game of its kind, I finish with an inventory absolutely full. I'd be curious to hear what others you might have in mind. I think the last decade was awesome; I whipped up a top 20 list to discuss with some people. and it was pretty effortless. Even with lumping some franchises together, since I couldn't choose. Just for fun, this was my list I wrote in December of 2019. It's a rather long post, but it was fun coming up with it. I've since finished games that would probably make their way in there, such as Nier Automata, Kindred Spirits on the Roof, and maybe Return of the Obra Dinn.

Well, there is Prey 2017, which was pretty baller. It's been maybe five years since I played SS2, so I'm pretty hazy on the details. Don't remember it being that hard, other than before you got a gun. I'd like to think I played it on the hardest difficulty. But since you reminded me of it, I played the Marathon trilogy over the course of the past 8 years and man, those games were ruthless. Never was I as happy to pick up ammo in a shooter. Or reach a save/health station. As far as new games go, finished Ori & The Will of the Wisps the other week. They sure gameyfied it a lot compared to the first one, but it's still really good. About twice as a long too.

Also

Oh yeah, this is one thing I forgot to mention. The player voice did seem really low, even though I have that slider all the way up.

Definitely. As for bugs, I didn't come across any at all, which is rather impressive.

Just finished this, after about 90 minutes. It's hard to write anything without giving something away, but I really enjoyed the environment, the mansion itself clearly had a lot of effort put into it. The atmosphere was quite palpable, even though my preferences lie elsewhere. Still, for what it is, I would consider it a strong showing, and for a first mission nonetheless.

This is explained in the Training mission. You hold the candle with your frob/interact key and pinch it out with the use key. In my case, that would be MB2 + F. Presumably your use key is enter. On occasion, you'll find candles that can't be moved, but instead only extinguished with the frob key, but those are much rarer.

I don't exactly get what noises you're referring to, but I checked it out anyway out of curiosity. The only thing I'd agree to be on the loud side is the ambient music that plays in the side rooms, but turning down the ambient volume fixes that. My sound settings for SFX and ambient music are equal, between the third and second highest lines in the volume bar, before any adjustments. As far as performance goes, I can concur that it does indeed suffer a bit at certain points, namely when looking at the mansion at mission start.

I don't think this is the issue; you can easily make a mission that is tailored around cameras and you use the briefing/a readable in inventory to explain them. What I could foresee is the first thing you mention, the fact that practically no missions exist with cameras currently, so there literally is no way for the player to know what the "standard" behavior even is, other than projecting their Thief knowledge. Picture this: A bank heist. A briefing includes all the usual stuff and also mentions how the building is equipped with these awesome cameras, but it just happens they break if you throw a pebble at them. Then give the player some pebbles and maybe a note from the informant or whoever that re-affirms that you should indeed use these pebbles to take out the cameras. Now that's fine, and should work for that mission, but then another author releases a mission with cameras. They look the same as the cameras in that other guy's mission, but only this time there is no mention of pebbles. So the player scours the map looking for pebbles, doesn't find any, gets mad, and comes to the forums to rain down divine punishment. Or even worse, he finds pebbles, but they just don't do anything this time. In Thief 2, I know how a standard Watcher works, so any FM that adds/subtracts from that is not a big deal, if it's explained (although to your point, I don't think that has ever happened, and I've played about a billion fan missions). But I gained that knowledge through the campaign; TDM doesn't have one, and the current missions that come prepackaged understandably don't include cameras.

One of the few things Deadly Shadows has over the first two games, holy water is actually satisfying to use. None of that water arrow shit, just chuck the whole bottle at them. And flash bombs against whatever those other guys were. But as far as the cameras go, I agree with Dragofer. How they are damaged and disabled is definitely something I'd expect to have a game-wide standard, and any deviation should be made incredibly obvious.

See, this is why I joined this forum. Fuck the mod, it's the forum drama I was lacking in my life, after the previous place I inhabited slowly died out. That time it was music enthusiasts, now programming nerds apparently.

Sure, I get that. But I'd also be willing to suspend disbelief that you'd need a certain amount of water to fry them. Looking at the wiki links posted above, I'd be fine with the Thief 2 route too for electric cameras. Fire arrows are the loud, permanent option. Flash bombs are a silent, temporary solution. And the control panel is the sophisticated option. Can just say they're fortified with Gore-Tex for ultimate waterproofness. I feel like they barely do anything against single targets either. Went back to test on a mission I was recently playing and you need three to kill one zombie??? That's heinous.

I believe a single (direct) fire arrow hit does destroy the cameras in Thief. Think I learned that while playing some random fan mission, just decided to try it for whatever reason. As you mention, they're insanely loud anyway, so it's more or less the final solution. I also wouldn't mind water arrows having some form of effect on the cameras, at least electric ones. If you dump enough of them on one, it wouldn't be too out of reach to expect a reward. Just like you can disable the hulking security bots in Thief 2 with some water. That said, I find the classic Thief 2 "disable everything via a control panel" approach to be the most fun, as far as gameplay goes. As for your final point, I feel like it's a combination of not having many water arrows and holy water being so weak. It's pretty much always a completely wasted piece of equipment on any level, only good for informing me that there will be undead around, if that wasn't readily obvious. Therefore, I tend to just use the arrows on light sources and melee the undead.

Just replayed this to check it out, I assume the loot in question is the white outline. You can get to where the archer is standing by As for water arrows, I didn't come across any, but then again, the letter did advise keeping your hands off. I didn't find all the loot anyway, about 300 short.