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Arrows of Death!


nbohr1more

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(I'm sure this has been discussed before but I've scanned the many topics to no avail...)

 

(Not sure if this should go in the Missions thread as it is primarily addressing mission authors...)

 

With numerous missions using "No Kill" objectives to increase the inherent difficulty, the normal Broadhead Arrows are often

nullified as game-play items.

 

I have come to the conclusion that this is a bad trend.

 

Ghosting and No Kill should be optional play styles rather than mandatory enforced methods.

 

We should give players the freedom to make moral choices and see their consequences.

 

Also, it's damned fun to be an archer. I feel disappointed when a mission does not offer me the option to

target distant objects.

 

I know that ghosting culture is preeminent for many high-skilled Thief vets so I don't harbor too many

illusions about my statements swaying design decisions for those who feel "ghosting is the right way".

 

I just feel that the neglect of the Broadhead Arrow is a crime given how fun it is to utilize.

 

If not to kill Guards, I would love to see these arrows used to solve puzzles, cut ropes, open passages.

 

My overall message: Please find a way to incorporate archery into your mission.

 

Thanks.

 

B)

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On killing:

I think the killing is also one of those things that divide people.

From my perspective, like in original thief missions, no-kill and few-allowed-KO's are gameplay difficulty modifiers. In my missions, I try to have the easy difficulty free of these, then medium has no-kill and hard has no-kill and KO amount restriction. Those who don't like these can still play the mission on easy. Having these restrictions is a way to put challenge into the missions. All in all, killing everyone in the mission makes the mission incredibly easy to complete. If you cannot kill people, it is a whole lot more challenging.

 

On broadheads:

You are right, No-kill objectives make death arrows obsolete. In thief 1 you still could use them as an unreliable way to disctract guards, if I remember correctly.

 

Buttons can be toggled with arrows, so that gives the mappers possibility for the players to do cool things with broadheads. The problem is the broken arrow that is suspicious to the guards. Can the player remove those? This is important! I'm thinking about placing a button and an electrical light. The button is lit by the light. Shooting an arrow on the button disables the light and the player can retrieve the arrow so that it will not cause an alarm when an AI relights the light.

 

Mappers could make some lights breakable by the arrows, but there is then the problem of consistency. I'm thinking it would be good to have a particular type of light source that could be intuitively disabled with a broadhead, built in TDM. But the problem is, what kind of light could it possibly be. Nah, maybe it is better just to exploit shootable buttons.

 

There are a lot of interesting things to do with shootable buttons: arrows are small and could be fired through portcullis to the door control button, making broadhead the only way to access certain locations. If the broken arrow causes alarm, it is vital that it can be removed by the player.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Broadheads are amazingly useful even in no-kill no-ko environments, shoot an AI in the leg to make him move away from a door. Shoot it into a wall to make an AI spend time investigating, or shoot over candles with them. Sure they all raise alert levels somewhat, but they're far from having zero use.

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Also, at least in the original games "No-kill" objectives only applied to humans. Broadheads were still useful for beasts and (to a lesser extent) undead.

 

I largely agree with nbohr's perspective on mission playstyles though. Personally I hate "forced ghost" missions and those with KO restrictions, un-blackjackable guards and the like.

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I am for objectives that allow moral choices - including the decision to kill or spare AI. But arrows are pretty useful outside combat situations, like Sotha and others have written (plus they can be used to knock stuff off ledges - a so far underutilised puzzle possibility), so I wouldn't sweat it.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I don't particularly like no-kill restrictions, but the problem is that killing AI is extremely easy, especially with arrows. Any unarmoured AI can be taken out with a single arrow to the head or chest, which makes it fairly trivial to clear the map of AI. My compromise was to use "no more than 2 kills", which is enough to let the player take out a few here and there, but doesn't allow clearing the map (except on easy).

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I personaly like the most this scheme:

Easy:Killing allowed, less gold required

Normal:Dont kill any unarmed peoples, more gold required

Hard:Dont kill anyone, the most gold required

 

No other diferences in objectives. (The position of items and number of guards could be diferen on each dificulty.) Hundereds of misions proved that this scheme is the best for me..

He was sneeking silently in the night, moonlight was his enemy.

(Im not a native speaker, sorry for all miscleanous caused by my english..)

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Heh - it just made me think - imagine if there were a ssteel arrow that when you shot into a wall - stayed there and you could jump on it - like you could make an impromptu ladder up a stone wall with them x-D

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

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Some good feedback here.

 

With regard to the ease of clearing a map... It could be argued that AI alert states are so sensitive that a good patrol route would discourage killing for fear of alerting them.

 

On a related note, is the ai_find_body Objective failure still not implemented?

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Objectives

 

That would also be a useful gradation. Allow killing as long as the AI don't find the bodies during the caper...

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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It could be argued that AI alert states are so sensitive that a good patrol route would discourage killing for fear of alerting them.

 

I disagree. I rarely find anyone in a difficult enough patrol or position that would warrant the NEED to avoid knocking them out, let alone killing with broadheads. (unless they're wearing a helmet).

 

That's not to say that it wouldn't be easy to dissuade players from taking the easy-kill route in a different fashion.

At current, It seems like the AI are absolutely deaf to the muffled grunts, and clattering bodies and weapons when an AI drops like a sack of potatoes. Especially if the AI is wearing armor. Would be much easier to force the player to think and strategize a little more simply by giving these sounds a much larger radius and higher alert level of AI that notice. Could even be set based on difficulty, and not universal(?)

 

I wonder if these are spawnargs that mappers could implement independently or if this is an issue that the team would rather keep unambiguous so that players will better understand the consequences of their actions on a per-FM basis.

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the hardcore no kill no knockout missions are probably turning away potentional players of the mod though, not everyone likes to play a map on settings that start at hardcore then go harder. As far as I remember there's only 2 official thief 2 maps that restrict knockouts and they appear later on in the thief 2 campaign. So by the time you've come across them you should already know how to play the game.

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Instead of tying no kill/ko to difficulty level you can add them as optional objectives. You could probably even have them as optional on all 3 difficulties but hidden on the first one or two (only show up on mission completion). Success in missions can be very arbitrary or user-defined; playstyles vary, some people try to get all the loot and secrets or don't care, and multiple routes are applauded. So optional objectives is probably the way to go. Especially in the upcoming Crucible campaign.

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Yeah for many players, forcing a no-kill / no-knockout rule as a default difficulty is a turn-off. Even I tend to play medium sometimes if i'm looking for a more casual TDM session. But the problem of too-easy kills, and easymode mapclearing persists, as pointed out by springheel:

 

the problem is that killing AI is extremely easy, especially with arrows. Any unarmoured AI can be taken out with a single arrow to the head or chest, which makes it fairly trivial to clear the map of AI.

 

That's why i've advocated my current idea (see above post), difficulty can be ratcheted up without forcing no-kill objective constrictions on the player. The adjustments would be easy to make, but some new soundeffects would likely be necessary. For further insanity, armored guards could make steel-scraping noise when dragged across floors, or jangly noises when carried over the shoulder (unless creeping very slow) that AI can identify and use to further track the intruder (unless you want to leave a body lying around). The changes could be easily mitigated by planned out take-downs with use of mossarrows as a carpet for "crash-landings".

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At current, It seems like the AI are absolutely deaf to the muffled grunts, and clattering bodies and weapons when an AI drops like a sack of potatoes. Especially if the AI is wearing armor. Would be much easier to force the player to think and strategize a little more simply by giving these sounds a much larger radius and higher alert level of AI that notice.

 

That was something I proposed early on and it's actually in the design docs. We've never gotten around to doing it, however. I'm not entirely sure it would have a big impact on this particular problem, though, since death-barks are already supposed to propogate to AI (though I'm not sure they always do). Maybe they need to propagate further.

 

Any changes to carrying bodies would affect kills and KO's equally, which isn't really what we want to do here.

 

the hardcore no kill no knockout missions are probably turning away potentional players of the mod though

 

How many missions have both no kill AND no KO restrictions?

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Yes.. some tricky ground here.

 

On one hand... extensive testing has been done to look into problems where sound alerts propagate throughout a whole map...

 

While in the opposite case, AI have been given more ability to communicate alerts to each other and seek out help...

 

 

We see rope recognition and other challenge boosters in v1.07 AI...

 

What is the mod currently tuned for?

 

Where is it heading?

 

Map clearing, of itself could be address by allowing mappers to make AI aware of other AI's patrols. If their companion doesn't cycle back then alert!

 

I imagine this is possible now via scripting but perhaps code support would be better if this is an agreed upon remedy?

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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I disagree with the point that you can still kill on easy and that higher difficulty should have mandatory no kills - maybe you want the challenge of harder settings but still want the freedom to take out enemies when needed.

 

And I would also argue that mission design alone can make it very hard to kill everyone with abandon - there are points in Score to Settle or Heart of Lone Salvation for example that are so well guarded that you would have to go really out of your way to be able to kill people without setting off a general alert (small sounds to separate them, etc), and it is the mission design that makes it an advantage to actually move stealthly and avoid confrontation, not necessarily an abstract restriction. I think that is the ideal way, personally, and all it involves is a good strategic eye from the map maker.

 

New additions to the AI seem to have made it more taxing to kill - there seems to be more general alerts, and thats brilliant. The biggest frailty is still, in my opinion, the lack of awereness between guards, but that can still be simulated by good, hard to breach group placement. Think of the main patio in Heart of Lone Salvation, you simply can't take out the guards there, they are too well covered by one another. Thats also a very fun nut to crack, by the way.

 

My "vote" goes to optional objectives too, if you want to max out your performance, dont kill or KO anyone, sure, but I still think killing is a valid strategy sometimes and one should be able to do it (even the moral question), if one feels the important thing is to go to the point and get the job done.

 

Being an archer is really fun in this mod, killing should indeed be easy, thats realistic, I think its just a matter of working on improving the consequences of killing enemies in the game and missions.

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Map clearing, of itself could be address by allowing mappers to make AI aware of other AI's patrols. If their companion doesn't cycle back then alert!

 

That's a good point. I almost always prefer realistic consequences over artificial restrictions. However, I suspect something like that would be very difficult to code. How does an AI know how often other AI should cycle around? What if they take an alternate route or do a RIT (random, interesting thing?) What does an AI do if another AI goes missing? Is that enough for them to draw their weapon and go into alert mode? Seems pretty extreme. But if they don't do more than comment, then the gameplay effects are pretty small and you haven't really solved anything.

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I also completely agree with ungoliant about increased volume for fight sounds, and of falling (armored) bodies, regardless of death sounds if any - any possible unbalance could be reduced by making the voulme levels gradual according to difficulty (normal=current levels). That would apply to killing AND KOing; I never got why it would work differently, I know the game motivates you to ko rather than kill, but a falling body is a falling body and there should be a consequence for taking out an enemy in any way. All those problems would make it naturally preferable to ghost your way whenever possible, keeping the freedom intact.

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That's a good point. I almost always prefer realistic consequences over artificial restrictions. However, I suspect something like that would be very difficult to code. How does an AI know how often other AI should cycle around? What if they take an alternate route or do a RIT (random, interesting thing?) What does an AI do if another AI goes missing? Is that enough for them to draw their weapon and go into alert mode? Seems pretty extreme. But if they don't do more than comment, then the gameplay effects are pretty small and you haven't really solved anything.

 

 

 

Yes, this would have to be a mapper defined behavior. It would only work for fairly static patrols though some flexibility could be afforded if you gave the AI a time-range for checking-back (etc).

 

Giving mappers simple patrol spawnargs to control this would be helpful IMHO.

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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That's a good point. I almost always prefer realistic consequences over artificial restrictions. However, I suspect something like that would be very difficult to code. How does an AI know how often other AI should cycle around? What if they take an alternate route or do a RIT (random, interesting thing?) What does an AI do if another AI goes missing? Is that enough for them to draw their weapon and go into alert mode? Seems pretty extreme. But if they don't do more than comment, then the gameplay effects are pretty small and you haven't really solved anything.

 

A possible way would be to have the path corners emitting alerts only when their respective AI's state has changed (from alive to dead or KOed), not necessarily by the time passed since he used it. Some amount of time would still need to exist before the alert goes "off", simulating the time other AI would be "willing to wait" for the KOed guy to come back. A possible consequence would be to have the suspecting AI go look for the missing one, instead of staying put, even if alerted. But again, just suggestions, I dont know how much work this would mean for you guys.

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but a falling body is a falling body and there should be a consequence for taking out an enemy in any way. All those problems would make it naturally preferable to ghost your way whenever possible, keeping the freedom intact.

 

But that goes directly against the sentiments being raised in this thread, that players don't want to be forced into ghosting (or harshly punished for not doing so). Ghosting is not, in my opinion, the "standard" of stealth gaming...it is something extra that players do when they want to challenge themselves. There is a bell curve of playstyles, with ghosting at one end and rambo-ing on the other. The middle of the curve is occupied by players who use silent, non-lethal take-downs to clear the map of (human) opponents. I don't think it would be particularly wise to try to shift that curve more towards ghosting even if I personally wanted to.

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I probably don't represent the majority opinion here, but in my mind, incapacitating AI in any way, knockouts or kills, breaks the ghosting rule. I don't believe there is a middle ground of silent non-lethal take downs. There is ghosting, and non-ghosting. The differences of knockouts and kills should be only in the mind of the player, as a morality or professionalism opinion, or in more extreme cases, for plot continuity (but not for the sake of difficulty in and of itself, unless it is a desire of the mapper to differentiate "expert mode" from lower difficulties, but should not influence medium/low difficulties directly).

I believe both knockouts and kills should have similar consequences, because to differentiate gameplay consequences (other than bloodstains) would impact suspension of disbelief.

Edited by ungoliant
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Sorry if I gave that impression, I dont even ghost myself - the point was not to harshly punish take downs, but just to make them a bit more realistic with more relevant consequences based on sounds (and possibly increased awereness between guards); in practical terms, KOing an AI is the same as killing it (he's out for the remaining of the playing time), so it's just as easy to kill them all as it is to ko them all - you clean out the map of opposition, which seems to be what most people here is concerned about. I just think there are still some more interesting tweaks to be made on the difficulty levels and on more accurate consequences (like ungoliant's suggestions), before really talking about wide spread no kill restrictions, IMHO.

Edited by RPGista
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in practical terms, KOing an AI is the same as killing it (he's out for the remaining of the playing time), so it's just as easy to kill them all as it is to ko them all

 

exactly. Thats the easymode rambo concern that I have, that extends beyond the 'arrows of death', although the arrows are by far the worst offender.

 

to reinforce:

Being an archer is really fun in this mod, killing should indeed be easy, thats realistic, I think its just a matter of working on improving the consequences of killing enemies in the game and missions.

I have no problems with the current ease with which the enemies are dispatched. Dealing with the consequences of such acts should be another issue altogether, and is probably a better solution than making an arrow through the eye non-lethal.

Edited by ungoliant
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I don't believe there is a middle ground of silent non-lethal take downs. There is ghosting, and non-ghosting. The differences of knockouts and kills should be only in the mind of the player,

 

They are already significantly different in gameplay terms. Killing is louder and leaves blood behind, meaning you're more likely to be discovered. KO's are quiet and don't leave as much evidence. They're also harder to do, (unless you have a gas arrow) especially on guards with helmets. If players were penalized as much for KOing as they were for killing, that would simply encourage them to take the easy route and shoot arrows from the shadows to take out AI.

 

Our design approach from the beginning was that we wanted players to have plenty of freedom, but they should be rewarded for taking the more difficult (and more thief-like) road.

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