Wellingtoncrab

Yeah I would say I agree with @stgatilov - while I think it does work as is you probably need less movement of the blackjack to make the indicator effective and the shorter the animation that still fulfills the intended purpose the better probably. Though the visibility issue in dark area makes sense - I haven’t really run into this personally yet so couldn’t say how much of an issue that is.

@Goldwellas someone who would never use a WIP as the basis for a contest entry, I whole heartedly object. <it is of course fine with me>

@Klatremusmy eternal gratitude for your help in testing and improving the mission, the time you took to put this video together and the many kind words you had for it! Many thanks!

Well, now that’s it’s settled my experience with the new blackjack system in playing through all of Sir Talbot’s Collateral (where I ignored the optional restriction on knockouts) and in testing my own mission has only been good personally. I have not experienced anything like the increased failure rate @datiswousis describing, but I have been using the prompt animation which kind of signals this to you ahead of time (hard to fail when the game is telling you when you will land). It hasn’t misled me in a swing yet in the course of normal play. I will play some with this turned off however to get a better sense of the code changes on their own. Not that you need to change the forum subject again, but testing threads are often prefixed with the version in brackets [2.11] - which was at least handy for finding all the threads by the end of 2.10 testing.

@Daft Mugiwhile I don't understand most of that, I do think I understand you are saying the dev build has the blackjack code as well as the animation in it - thank you!

"Scripts"/"code"/"whatever" - I don't need a rehash on the "point" of the change I am just trying to follow along with these statements to figure out if I am playing with all the changes in effect or not so I know if I am testing the right thing: If you install the dev build it sounds like you are not playing with all the new blackjack behavior unless you use the custom manifest url correct? I am asking because I have noticed a difference though I am not sure if it's primarily just being assisted by the animation, because I have not downloaded a custom manifest.

I have been playing the latest dev build and it includes the animation prompt so I assumed it was the new system - this was in the change notes for the dev build that it included blackjack changes - but apparently it doesn’t include the underlying scripting changes unless you point the installer at a different URL? Only way to know that is to reread this thread. The animation prompt itself has been working very well for me though even without it.

@madtafferyou can see a bunch of permutations of the speed build concept across T1/T2/TDM as well as the resulting missions over in ThiefGuild’s contest browser: https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/?works=lists&work_lists=contests

“Banking Holiday Speed Build Contest”

I would probably try and participate in any contest - though it’s hard to imagine having something I would be able to release within the confines of a speed build due to IRL constraints.

@AluminumHaste Ha! Well I think there is plenty of agreement that should also be a valid play style - second only to climbing out of map bounds at every opportunity.

This is where the discussion does become a little exhausting for me. It so obviously would not work well and no one is seriously considering this sort of thing. Nor is Hazard Pay a similar scenario in design to TPW or 99% of TDM missions.

For the reason I stated - it makes the map feel safer to navigate and risk management is part of the design especially if you’ve opted to play where you cannot save the game. That is why the mission gives you a few broadhead arrows right away and actually makes them effective. It basically trains you do to this in the first few seconds of the mission when it puts you in a narrow hallway behind a barricade and the zombie bursts in. Pulling off a head shot is very satisfying in that it both removes a threat from the map and allows you to recover a resource. I am not surprised and if you read my comments I have plenty of criticism and concerns regarding save restrictions and have stated I am like any other player who get’s frustrated with certain design decisions. I have only ever designed one mission and you might be able to tell from it I am not particularly interested in restricting how players approach the game or even the concept of “mandatory” objectives really. I think we actually agree more or less on the point that mission authors should feel free to design their missions how they see fit and just know like any other creative work they must be willing to accept criticism of it so I think there is very little conflict. I am trying to understand why it is an issue it is option for players and I think I understand now that it being tied to a difficulty setting makes it feel like it also depriving players of other options they enjoy. A pet peeve of mine is actually arbitrarily high loot goals when this also isn’t balanced very carefully in the design. Same with no kill objectives, no knockout objectives, key hunts, etc. all of which are hallmarks in a lot of TDM missions. So perhaps this is just an issue with the granularity of the difficulty settings in hazard pay? Not really feasible that I am aware of, but I imagine if you could play on expert but there was a toggle for this like “iron man” mode in XCOM there wouldn’t be this level of an issue with the design?

Interesting - I certainly didn’t avoid combat - I made it a priority to remove threats and this forced me to use every tool I had at my disposal as the risk of dying and losing progress seemed greater if I let the threats remain in the map. To each their own. I imagine it is also a niche of players who then for some reason would also not be interested in playing on another difficulty which allows for quick saving, as the hard coded differences are not that significant in my opinion compared to the customizable difficulty settings players have or how mappers implement different difficulties. So you are in subsection of players who must play on the highest difficulty determined by the designer but this also cannot be too hard?

I disagree a little, as I think you are right as far as the likely dynamic in vanilla Thief/TDM, but since the discussion is about stealth games in general I am not sure this is entirely true. It probably does cause players to try and avoid detection and other risk in games, but the idea is when it occurs the player must then engage with the detection/combat mechanics or at least weigh this against significant progress loss. This understandably sounds like a bad compromise to those players who are not interested and typically always just quickload when this sort of thing kicks off. This is kind of the loop in the modern wolfenstein games - when the player is discovered you go loud so to speak and it works (Especially in New World Order) because that side of the game holds up really well (it also lets you quick save and the encounters are short with generous autosaves so restarting does not come at risk of significant loss of progress). In vanilla thief/TDM this experience is likely to be miserable in the most common scenarios in the game, so forcing players to engage with it seems like a mistake. If you want players to engage with the detection/combat loop making it fun is my mind a more successful approach than restricting a players ability to save (I think Hazard Pay also does this relatively well in the enemy design, which is another reason why I think it works and why we should not be closed off to this avenue for designers). But I do think it is a way to get more players to engage with a different side of a game, or at least those that would typically just quickload to reassert their typical play style instead of using the quickload as a means to experiment with the game as you describe.

@OktokoloI don’t know how many times in the same thread I need to say some version that my perspective is that save restrictions are a mechanic that are just a portion of entire design. Mechanics are very rarely new at this point, but new designs are and this is often achieved by combining mechanics which are not new in new ways. This is why I don’t believe in arbitrarily declaring specific mechanics are good or bad.

Pretty sure my comments regarding Deathloop as the followup to Dishonored cover these points as well.

@Daft MugiI don't think so, but I don't really think "stealth" is much of a genre of games. Thief is part of a legacy of games which have grown beyond being describable as "stealth" games. Most modern "stealth" or simulation focused games simply make alternative playstyles more viable and games well outside what you might consider the normal reach of such things have started to appropriate stealth and simulation mechanics. Deus Ex, Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us 1 & 2, Metal Gear Solid 5, Dishonored 1 &2, Prey, Hitman, Modern Wolfenstein, The Evil Within 2, Elden Ring - all are or can played as "stealth" games. In none of these does detection feel like an irreversible fail state because the player actually has the kind of options that allow them to keep playing. This has to hold up if you want to consider save restrictions, and most of these games don't go that far anyway. Thief is actually better at this than TDM - a quick flash bomb can end an issue with being detected really quickly. In TDM the game does not hold up very well. Try the same thing and you will likely just blind yourself. Good luck knocking out the ai you manage to hit with the bomb as they go through a single cycle animation and then stand like statues for a few brief seconds before they resume hunting you down or you manage slink into the darkness and then into an incredibly long cool down period for the simulation to reset. Try to fight back and whatever blows you manage will land with the impact of a sponge. It's rare that players engage with this part of the game, so the design is not as "robust" so to speak. In this context reloading the game makes an awful lot of sense to me, and taking that ability away makes very little unless you contend with that in designing your mission. You can see maybe how this informs the design of Deathloop (which is not entirely successful imo) - Dishonored is game which holds up very well when the player is detected, but rarely did players who quickly found a comfortable and repeatable method to play engage with and see more than a sliver of the game. Whether players wanted to see more or not I don't know, but the designers were obviously interested in seeing if they could get players out of this mold. So Deathloop makes the player contend with the consequences and then theoretically leverage more aspects of the game, but in return it attempts to make the risk very low and the opportunity to experiment and try the same scenario with a different approach very high. The game is designed for you to play scenarios over and over again - so there isn't much risk in starting over when you're going to be doing this anyway and if you're going through the same content you're likely to want to change things up every once in a while. Did it entirely work? No. Was it interesting to play? On aggregate it more or less worked for me, though I would have preferred Dishonored 3. Am I happy they tried something a little new even if it didn't work entirely? Yes. So why should there be save restrictions? Because we should be open as players and creators to trying new things. We don't have to like them and they don't have to work the first time, but it's how we grow.

In a weird coincidence not seeing “huge interest” in adding save restrictions to every mission either. Apologies @marblemanI think you’re thread took a wrong turn at some point and I have probably contributed to that. Hopefully you got at least something you were after.

@wesp5yes - Hazard Pay also renders an autosave at a specific part of the map and is the only mission I have seen do it, though there may be others: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Altering_the_savegame_behaviour_of_TDM Though I think again this is veering off topic from the OP who wants to hear specifically from members regarding why they are not against restricted saving mechanics in games in general.

@wesp5 Quick saving was still an option for players in the only TDM mission which has an optional save restriction mechanic - who is actually ignoring anything? I apologize if I sound short, as I thought throughout this thread I have made my personal perspective pretty clear and don’t think I have much more to say. I, just like every player has personal preferences and often wish mappers or designers would make different choices in missions/games. This includes poorly designed mechanics around saving the game. This does not translate into me thinking authors must confine themselves to my preferences such as in this quote: It is the designer, whose time and sweat will birth the thing, who gets to make their choice. I do not think it is an affront to some sense of freedom that these things do or could exist, as we players will still get our opportunity to stand in judgement.

@wesp5Kind of like when Spoonman - author of beloved TDM missions like Full Moon Fever, made a mission for T1 that looked like a doom level and where you have no blackjack and run around on almost exclusively metal surfaces? https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/10603/tsr-1000 Or then followed that up with a mission literally called D00M?https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/23989/d00m Maybe creative people don’t want to do the same thing over an over again and not every form of expression is about the viewer or the player having fun, or about them at all?

@chakkmanI am not describing my own design philosophy as I have already mentioned I am not arbitrarily for or against certain mechanics in missions as it depends on the overall design. I provided examples of both where it worked and where it didn’t and said I don’t think most scenarios in TDM are a good fit for this design. This particular design decision currently only exists in one difficulty level of a single TDM mission - so only players which feel like it is additive have to play in that way. The same way not every x-com player has to run iron man mode - though there is clearly an audience for it and you could argue this is an extension of the perfectionist mindset not attempting to undermine it. Sounds like more freedom and more choice, not less. I think this is an example of it working. Just like how players, including me, did not like this design decision in gloomwood and now they are going to add a mode which allows for quicksaving. It all seems reasonable to me.

@chakkman Maybe it’s a translation thing, but what the OP is after was pretty clear to me. In terms of “freedom” what about freedom of expression? Doesn’t a mission author have as much right to design their missions in a way that you hate as you then have the right to pan it on the internet? I think it’s worth discussing the merit or value of design decisions, but you lose at me the point we start saying authors “must” adhere to your preferences. Spoonman, author of one the greatest and universally praised TDM missions of all time, now makes bizarre and divisive FMs for Thief that are not for everyone. Is something wrong with that?

I am not really in favor or against save restrictions - I would only say if the designer deems saves should be restricted the game design should accommodate it. This is true of all mechanics in a game obviously. I also would not be of the opinion the game is too easy and save restrictions are a way to make it more difficult. Really the only reason in my mind is that they would be a tool to make the player engage with more systems in the game, but in return the expectation should be that these systems actually hold up. This is not something to take for granted in terms of TDM which I do no think supports it well "out of the box", or other stealth games for that matter. I did not enjoy this mechanic recently in Gloomwood for example as navigating the large map already felt somewhat tedious and I wasn't inclined to take risks and lose progress. Options when you're detected in Gloomwood seemed to be to die (this is before you acquire the pistol, which causes the whole dynamic of the game to shift into something else even less interesting). While you open up more and more access to the save point as the level progresses - this also felt kind non additive as this usually comes after you have already navigated and cleared a certain route - contrast that with a souls game and this feels like a huge deal. That feeling maybe holds up better for ghosters. The one instance where restrictions are used in TDM works (in my opinion) because it consciously deemphasizes many of the elements that prompt me to quicksave, though it obviously hasn't worked for everyone. For example undead enemies make the blackjack irrelevant (the unreliability of which is a source of compulsive saving on my part - though this topic seems as controversial at times as save restrictions) and making liberal use of the lethal toolset doesn't weigh on my conscience in the same way. They are also easy to outmaneuver. This meant I was playing in a different way and using more of the equipment systems which are often ignored and letting the game systems actually play out in interesting ways that I personally really enjoyed, but I could see this causing real issues for your preference of play style on the other hand.