roygato
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Posts posted by roygato
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Well, what a banger this turned out to be.
After like a month and maybe 5 hours I'm done. Terms like daunting and labyrinthine don't quite make it justice, it's just insane. On the performance-side of things, my only issue is the initial load of the mission after a reboot, which takes forever (and TDM missions are real slow to load as is, so one can only imagine). Other than that, no crashes, no framerate issues, nothing.
Again, I can only lament the unnecessary knock-out limit on expert, but at least the city is so massive and maneuverable that in theory you should probably get out of harm's way pretty easily. That said, the massiveness comes with a price, that being environmental instability; walls without collision, floors that are apparently sinkholes and random invisible walls blocking some vital pathways. After my initial finishing of the mission, I was really getting angry trying to make my way to the end location, since I was getting manhandled by broken physics. Didn't help that the mission's definition of "west" wasn't exactly what I imagined.
I later (as in yesterday and today) came back after reading this thread, since I had missed some secretive stuff. Honestly, I don't think I would've ever found what I had missed on my own. Those included
Spoiler- The miniature world; honestly, this technically shouldn't have been too bad to find with a little exploring, but since it was on the same street as the level end, and I was just sick of it all at that point, there was no way I was gonna take more time than just run through it. That said, it was certainly cool. As if the mission wasn't large enough as is, why not throw in Xen and a mushroom kingdom. Crazy stuff. At least I had found the wind chime apartment where I could use the mask.
- The mystery stone and the wine cellar. I'm not sure how I managed to not discover the tower, despite running around there, but the wine cellar? If the note at the nearby office worker's apartment was the only clue that it existed, then my god. The mage tower had a note mentioning some nobleman's place at a completely different location, which I either didn't find at all, or it had nothing useful.
Despite missing those, I did at least stumble into the haunted chapel on my own. Also got rid of the big bad non-lethally, because that is just my style. I do think that the large size of the map could've been taken even more advantage of with either expanding the main objective or adding some explicit side objectives. Would've given all the running around more of a purpose. Secret objectives are fine and all, but it may have gone a bit too far here.
I did not find all the secret loot, couldn't be bothered, as per usual. Think I got 9.
So all in all, it definitely has some flaws, but given its size and scope, it's almost a miracle it doesn't completely crumble under its own weight. I don't blame people who find it overwhelming and are turned off because of it, but I think TDM definitely needed something bonkers like this. I tend to enjoy very large missions, and while this was starting to push my patience, it's still a great achievement that the creators should be very proud of.
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This is certainly cool. Historically, I just played every mission and will continue to, but when revisiting, it could make the process of choosing what to play a bit easier.
I have a couple of notes that came to mind:
- I'm not sure how I feel about showing the monster categories in plain sight as they are currently. It's certainly invaluable for filtering and as general information, but if it's not immediately obvious that the mission does have those elements, it may be a bit of a spoiler for a first-timer. Say, there is a big twist where the undead appear or something.
- If it's meant to be installed as a desktop application, I would love if it could go a bit beyond its current functionality and add two aspects that Thief 2's FMSel fan mission manager app uses, those being rating and notes. Rating would be a good filtering option and it's the easiest way to show what I did and didn't enjoy. Notes would let the player write whatever they want about the mission; in Thief 2, I tend to write some thoughts after completion, both as a mini-review and if there is something in particular I should remember in the future, like if the mission is hot-garbage or has performance issues or massive bugs or whatever.
Anyway, I realize if #2 in particular is way off-mark for what this is intended to do. It's just something that I've always wished TDM would have.
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14 hours ago, MrMunkeepants said:
you can still one-shot backstab a haunt in TDM, it is just very tricky to do. I think they are already at a higher alertness, or something.
You know, as soon as I wrote the contrary I started doubting myself, because I'm not sure I actually ever even tried it in TDM. Just assumed it. But thanks for the info, have to give it a shot the next time the opportunity arrives.
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Definitely one of my favorite TDM missions. Very creative, hugely atmospheric and there's a lot to do. I'd probably have more to say if it were fresher in my memory. Already played it twice and most certainly will return to it in the future.
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1 hour ago, Summer said:
I do tend to run away screaming from revenants. Not a fan. It's not even their appearance that gets me, it's the sounds. Eww.
I hate them, because fighting them is impossible. Which wasn't as big of a deal in this mission, but in others, like Alberic's Curse, I had to use cheese strats, like barricading a doorway with knee-high object, leading every revenant to the doorstep and then killing each one with a speed of one hit per hour or something. They block like crazy, I suck at it and holy water is useless.
That's one thing that kind of gets to me whenever I jump back to TDM from Thief 2 fan missions, how much more difficult most everything is in TDM. No running up to guards or one-shot backstabbing haunts. At least you can kill zombies with a sword. Not that I'm complaining necessarily, since Thief 2 is ridiculously easy, but it's always something to readjust to. Really wish that Thief 2 had a reliable light-source to carry around, though. Some fan-missions are way too dark for their own good and having to gamma-cheat kind of takes me out of it.
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29 minutes ago, Bienie said:
I was a bit afraid people would find the deed, be confused and then toss it in the trash. Hopefully the window knobs will help with that. It's also the reason for the bread loaves not being frobable before you find the objective, but I can try without that and see if it works/makes sense. I have quite a few bugs already it seems so I will likely make an update pretty soon.
I actually tried burning the deed at one point, since I had carried it around for so long without finding the objective. I figured there must be one, just couldn't find the place. As far bread loaves, I found that one like 5 minutes in, so hadn't come across any bread at that point. Therefore, no confusion on my part.
Also about the side objectives:
SpoilerI had done pretty much everything else before I found the bulletin board near the start area. For example, I had already found the rat-infested basement, killed the rats and collected the reward. It was a little odd I must admit; I think while doing it, I must've thought that it must be a side objective too and that the purse is the reward, but didn't consider another bulletin board, or anything really. Don't think I would've kept looking if the challenge room hadn't informed me that there are 8 secret objectives.
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Quite enjoyed this one. I tend to be a fan of the really large and sprawling city missions (haven't played Painter's Wife yet, excited), but at least with a smaller one like this, you don't get that overwhelming feeling of being a rat in a maze. Especially when the layout is as well designed as this one; not a whole lot of long-distance running required, to get from place to place.
My only real gripe is the arbitrary knockout limit on the highest difficulty; I really don't like these in general, because there is typically very little sense for them to exist, as far as the narrative goes. Take the city watch mission from Thief 2 as a comparison; you were prohibited from knocking out anybody at all, but at least that was well reasoned in the context of the story. In TDM, like this mission, it's more or less the opposite. "Don't cause too much ruckus" is hardly a compelling argument, when I can book it through town with 15 guards running after me. Considering that we're presumably stuck with three difficulty settings, I would either have the mission designed completely for ghosting (story and all), or leave the "X number of knockouts" as an optional objective. Or I suppose if it's a 10-minute speed-build mission, like Springheel's "A Matter of Hours", then by all means.
I suppose the fair question to ask is, why not just pick a lower difficulty? Which I almost did, but I like to try and finish all of these on the highest one, regardless of the limitations imposed. But after having spent my allotted 4 knockouts and having quite a lot to do still, I lost all patience and resorted to the age-old strategy:
Spoiler
I love that you can make the AI beat each other up. I rarely use it, but it's just so amusing. Not pictured are the four guards who were too injured to do anything but run around scared.
Also, related to that, I think I found a bug. I actually killed three or four builders myself, but doing so didn't trigger the mission-fail condition. Killing any other human did.
Other than that, enjoyed having the side-missions return, although I had to read this topic to find two of them.
SpoilerThe environments are too convincing, can't tell which windows are accessible and which pure scenery, lol. Not to mention they were not that obvious as far as placement goes, so well done(?) on that front. Actually come to think of it, even the window that's in one of the offices in the merc house (which you can access atop the stables), I discovered to be operable waaaay after the fact, while running around doing whatever.
I did find the challenge room (I guess the only window I did figure out, since it was slightly open, lol), and I activated all of them just for fun, but didn't really bother going for any, other than the secret objectives, which didn't actually complete for whatever reason.
Oh yeah, also what was up with the Deposit Box 2 key opening the door to the deposit room? I thankfully didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to find a key for that door, it was only after most everyone was dead that I decided to just try every damn key I had. Doesn't usually work, so I was very surprised that it did this time.
I think my final results were about 8300 loot and either 5 or 7 secrets, don't remember. I'm usually not too keen on hunting these, so just found whatever I stumbled upon.
Finally, special mention to the new textures and whatnot in the palace, really great looking stuff.
All in all, well done job again Bienie.
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Cool mission, took me roughly 75 minutes or so (1h 44m according to the timer, but I was fucking around afk for a bit). I was expecting something more run-of-the-mill, but it definitely had some unique touches to it. The watery area being one of them, reminded me of damn Amnesia a little bit.
I also particularly enjoyed how most all of the lights in the hallways had a switch attached; it feels like it's maybe getting more common, but it always irks me a little to have these kinds of electric lights that cannot be interacted with. I understand the gameplay implications, but as in this mission, can just have the AI turn them back on.
Since others have mentioned them, I found two of the five secrets. I can't really be bothered to look for them specifically, so it's just whatever I stumble across. In fact, I was pretty much done with all the objectives before I found the first one.
SpoilerOf the five, I found the thief's stash behind the greenhouse, as well as the spooky af basement (which was the first: certainly took me by surprise, considering I had already been everywhere). I don't really fancy horror missions, but these kinds of touches certainly add a little bit of thrill. Was too scared to go back in the skeleton room alone after hearing the footsteps, so I recruited the sleeping business partner of the shop keeper to help me. Sadly there was no monster and got stabbed by my grumpy partner instead.
Come to think of it, I never found the hidden money of the dude who lives next to our character. I assume it is somewhere, since he foolishly wrote about it in his journal, but just couldn't figure it out. Didn't need it for the loot quota, so I let him have his victory. Also fell for the chest-trap, since nobody ever uses those.
The mage, forget his name now, and the protecting charm was an interesting touch as well. It didn't end up mattering, but after I had raided the vault, I just offhandedly realized I could loot it off him, and then a little later it dawned on me I could destroy it in the builder's room. So I went and knocked the guy out anyway, just for good measure.
All in all, a very enjoyable mission. Certainly looking forward to playing more from you.
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Spoiler
Funnily enough, it didn't actually take much time to get onto the attacking ship. I think I first tried to get on from the back (where the little boat is being towed), by tightrope-walking, but there seemed to be an invisible wall blocking me. Afterwards, I found a way to wiggle myself up on one specific spot on the side facing the ship you start on.
You can get on top of this here rope.
Here's me standing on it. You can then jump and climb up that netting.
For a bonus, here's me overlooking the mission from atop the ship.
It was only AFTER I had done just about everything on the ship I went to FAQ for the mission where it is stated that you cannot get on the ship. Which did explain why there was nothing to find.
You are correct that it would likely be confusing for a player to suddenly be unable to do anything and then quickly have to figure out what's wrong. Suppose you could throw a big "Watch out moron, you're carrying too much stuff and drowning!" message on the screen, but I doubt many would be happy with that either.
And it's not like I have the technical solutions at hand myself either, as I've only ever played TDM. I haven't personally given up on any mission (I've played all of them), there just hasn't been a compelling enough reason to do so in the TDM catalogue.
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The most fun thing about this mission was
Spoilergetting onto the other boat and fucking around with the AI, such as have them kill each other. Was quite sad there was nothing in the locked (captain's?) room, after I got in with the pilfered key.
As for this mission failing objective, I agree with joebarnin in terms of its implementation. Have them weigh you down and if you act quickly you can save yourself. I did fall into the trap my first time getting to that part, but I realized immediately what I had done wrong. And since I tend to save like a crazy person, it was what, a 5 second revert? So while, as it currently is, it's more than likely (a little) frustrating, I don't think it's worth losing your mind over.
Other than that, certainly for a first mission, it's a decent one. Short, and I really would've liked to have something there in regards to what I wrote in my spoiler, but at least it's a little different.
Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel (23/07/2020)
in Fan Missions
Posted · Edited by roygato
Well okay, from The Painter's Wife to this thing. Disclaimer, I haven't read through this thread, so I may end up repeating stuff that has been brought up.
First of all, this took me 6 hours to finish, which makes it the longest single TDM mission from my recollection. And as I love the longer ones, I'm more than happy about it.
That said, it's definitely atypical. Whereas The Painter's Wife is extremely large, it does it in a very Thiefy-style; just an open ended environment to run around in. The Lost Citadel feels more akin to a Deus Ex mission, or I suppose Thief 4, where you move from area to area by completing objectives. While this was a big issue I had with Thief 4, that it was as if they hadn't played a Thief game at all and just reskinned Human Revolution, I'm very open to having different looks sprinkled in TDM. If I remember correctly, the first Hidden Hands mission was somewhat similar as well. Not to mention, at least in each area, you get to do a fair amount of running around, so it's not exactly a linear hallway to run through.
It also helps that the different areas are so, well, different. The first building, the lake/the compound and the citadel all have their own flavor. Almost like a new mission in each area. Considering the amount of detail, I can only imagine the workload.
While I enjoyed it having plethora of objectives, I almost got frustrated with the loot quota. I played on expert and finished with 4420/5000, 4400 being the objective. And that was after spending like an hour running around trying to find the last pieces. I'm not opposed to mandatory loot quotas, quite the opposite, but there is a certain danger when the mission area is not only this large, but when the design inhibits fast access around the map. Thankfully I managed it on a one-way trip and I honestly cannot imagine where the rest of the loot may have been hidden. Not to mention, 800 loot on one loot object that wasn't even tied to an objective? That's just crazy. At least it wasn't too hidden.
Audio was probably the biggest pain point I had. For reference, up to this point, I played every TDM mission with the "Ambient" sound slider at 100%. This mission forced me to lower it to around 40% and the music was still too loud at times. On the flipside, the dialogue, the player character in particular, was way too quiet and often drowned by the background music. Other than the mixing, the music itself was wildly inappropriate on two notable occasions, those being
the jumpscare after entering the Court and the rock track after opening the chapel key vault.
The first one is not only incredibly annoying, and the mixing issue only makes it worse, but also made little sense, since it's not like anything was happening. The latter was just hilariously out of place; believe me, as a hobbyist musician, I love it when map makers add flair by inserting non-stock sound elements, but that was very immersion-breaking.
The mission is also not without bugs (is any?). For starters, I'm not sure if it was intentional or just something wrong on my end, but the the roof on the very first building had all sorts of collision issues. I couldn't vault on to anything, and if I did jump onto one of those white box things for example, I couldn't properly jump while on top of them; jumping would lift me a little bit in the air and I would be stuck in an aerial glide until I got far enough away from the box. Same occurred on similar boxes on the ground level, right side of the building, where the spider bot patrols. Not a huge deal, but while trying to explore high and low, it got a little annoying.
Second is related to an objective. I may have just gotten incredibly lucky
You get the optional objective of finding the staff, and in the underwater compound, you find the three items you supposedly needed to obtain it. After entering the cave and exploring, I ended up in the enclosure where the staff was located. Except that the door to the staff room was already opened. I killed the skeleton guard, walked into the staff room and picked it up, objective complete. Only afterwards I realized the room had those three pedestals, that would activate the door when the three items were placed correctly. Certainly a bizarre case.
Some miscellaneous possibly spoilery stuff
As I mentioned earlier, I really enjoyed the different areas, the citadel in particular. Which is why it was a little bit of a shame that it only consisted of undead. Makes perfect sense considering the story, but undead make stealth pointless for me. Why would I waste time sneaking when I can just kill everyone? And obviously the combat isn't very fun either, but it gets the job done faster. It's too bad, since it really is a great environment to run around, and human enemies would've made it even more so.
I really loved the puzzle to open the chapel key vault. Not only the whole build-up, having to collect all the stories and stuff, but the presentation too. There's just something so visually appealing about these room-scale puzzle contraptions. And the puzzle itself was fun too.
As somebody else did also mention, the bomb objective was a mixed bag. I feel like I was quite lucky to figure out the fan-enclosures as fast as I did; never seen anything like it before, so could've potentially taken all day. After that, finding the bomb was easy, but the disassemble objective (or however it was worded) was incredibly misleading. I think I spent over half an hour walking around the entire map, trying to find a place where I could pull the damn thing apart. Eventually I found nothing, walked into the airlock and only then realized that a) there was a switch on the wall I could've pulled this entire time to open the airlock and b) I didn't actually have to do anything to the bomb. So my question is, why even have this objective, if you only needed to remove the bomb in the first place? Although to be fair, had I used my eyeballs and noticed the airlock-opening lever, I would've been out of there immediately and this paragraph wouldn't exist, but I still don't see the point of having that extra objective.
The last thing I feel like bringing up was the cave, and namely the hidden lever that puts all the gears in motion (big stairs start spinning, firetraps awaken and the visible levers become active). It isn't actually necessary at all to pull it, is it? I mean, it's only three zombies by the door. It probably takes less time to kill them by hand than waiting for the lazy firefucks to float down to ground level to even start fighting, only to miss every shot. If it really is unnecessary, I find that quite curious. Seems like a lot of effort for something that you're probably better off skipping, unless you want the fire arrows from the elemental cage.
This is just a note on game-mechanics, but I did not realize until after I was done with everything that I could break the security cameras and the spider bots with just my sword. Would've relieved a little bit of pressure had I known that earlier, lol. I quite enjoyed the cams too, since you barely see anybody ever use them.
While I did bring up a fair amount of negatives, I must reiterate that I did have fun. It's a giant mission with a really strong plot, lot of objectives, puzzles, and it's little different in design to typical TDM missions. While some of the more annoying aspects sapped some enjoyment out of it, I still commend the massive effort putting something like this together must've taken. It's not perfect, and I would be tempted to change some stuff for it to be more to my liking, but I would still recommend it to just about everybody. Good job again, I look forward to future missions.
PS. I realize there is a separate thread for walkthroughs and longer-form reviews, so feel free to move this if you feel these should go there instead. It's more natural for me to write in the mission-specific threads, but if you have rules or want to keep these for hints/support/whatnot then by all means.