Darkpixel

Sure, that sounds great, I'm not great at concentrating either but I'd be willing to help however I could.

Yes, that would work too

I know, that's why earlier I also suggested a "skip mission" button on the objectives screen after the briefing so that if players absolutely must have the newest version then they can skip to the mission they were on.

You can use that argument for the removal of any element that guides the player. The buy screen is important because it psychologically implants the idea that gold is valuable, and thus makes the player's thoughts sync up with the character's more, leading to better immersion. It could be left as a scoring element but let's just say there's a reason why high-scores as a mechanic fell out of favor. I'm not too great at programming yet, I'm still learning, I'd likely make things worse. And I wouldn't consider it "very little improvement" if the issues with the system are bad enough that almost nobody is using it.

I haven't seen this issue but I'll take your word for it, my point is that there's no use for or motivation to get gold atm

If the bug was gamebreaking then it's a good thing they released the update, otherwise the mission would not work, I don't see how campaigns affects any of this. That's not how thief works. They give you the minimum (and maybe a bit more) of what is needed to complete the mission by default and extras are available for purchase with gold from the previous mission. The buy system is tied to the level that the items will get added to. You could completely randomize the order of levels in thief 2 for example, (except for the first level as it does not have a buy screen) and it would still play completely fine.

And people who started playing before a small bugfix should have no problem not updating for the bugfix and finishing it in their current version I initially assumed the campaign feature didn't exist because people weren't using it, but now I see that people aren't using it because it's not in a good state and it's hard to work with, so my new suggestion is to make it functional, easy, and intuitive, and flexible enough so that mappers start using it. So if its hard to do right now, then change it (at some point), it's what I made the thread for. wdym? in the mission browser they're already named so that players can understand them, I'm advocating for the campaign feature because without it (or without a version that's good enough for people to use), there's no reason to collect gold, the main collectible in the game (besides gold requirements in the objectives but that is the least immersive thing ever and has no place in an immersive sim).

Completing missions is a lot shorter than developing them, and the version numbers would probably let someone know that they are playing an in-progress campaign, so they know they're not getting the full experience if they play it now, and even then, for people who can't wait, a "skip mission" button on the objectives screen could alleviate that if someone wants to play the missions as they come out without replaying them. As for your alternative suggestion, for that to work, the game would need to store the gold collected upon completing a mission and when loading the next one, the next one would have to look for that value for the buy screen to work I said one download, not one pk4, it could be multiple files if that's possible, and mappers don't update their missions that fast, playing these missions is relatively quick compared to the process of developing them, and even if someone took forever to play through a mission/campaign, they could always choose to complete their playthrough on the old version.

Hmm, well these issues would need to be resolved then Well I know that, that’s why making the campaign easily editable to add more levels is important, like someone could release a campaign with only one level in it, and when they make more levels later it would ideally be stupid simple to add more levels to the campaign and set version numbers and whatnot and people with the old version could be warned that they have an old version of the campaign.

When looking through the mission downloader there’s one prominent thing I notice. Many creators try to string together multiple missions into a “campaign“ by labeling them “part 1”, “part 2”, etc. Considering the number of people who do this, I think the feature I’m about to suggest would be very helpful. First of all, one should be able to package multiple missions into one download. There should be a little indicator in the mission browser whether its a standalone mission or a campaign containing multiple missions. Secondly, the creator should be able to specify an order for missions, so that ending one mission and hitting “continue” will immediately start the next mission, including the briefing and objectives screens, like how it is done in the proper thief games. Thirdly, this will allow the implementation of the buy screen! The gold collected in the previous mission will allow the player to purchase items for the next mission from a pool the mission creator sets for each mission. This will add the items to the player’s starting equipment for that mission. Finally, a reason to steal everything that isn’t nailed down! I think these three things in aggregate would allow creators to make proper campaigns instead of levels connected by story only.