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Thief 4 is trash.


Mystry

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Hehe, well in my opinion this whole game is emo-fag right from the start. Can you see the old-real Garrett take on a psychotic-murderous-bad-mouthing-bitch-erin as a sidekick? No way, not even for a minute. It would be a gigantic liability for him, he works alone and his ego doesn't allow him to be put down by some brat bitch all the time. The plot would be better served if they made Erin the evil enemy mastermind that Garret had to save the city from.

 

You're not wrong but you could be a little bit less middle-schooler about it.

 

There's a definite trend of people despising a ton of design elements but still finding themselves enjoying it. It seems to me like the influence of the little investor on their shoulder was weaker for some stages of development and stronger for others. Still, it's like I said: if it's fun and keeps you playing, it's done its job despite all the crap implementation. Tomb Raider was the same: abysmal on paper but fairly entertaining to play provided you received the occasional booster shot of Fluoxetine.

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I agree, the Bank Heist came no where near the quality of TMA's "First City Bank and Trust"...not even close.

 

While I agree Bank Heist DLC was nowhere near the size of the Bank mission in TMA. The reason many people like it is because it was the only mission in the game that was most faithful to original titles in terms of structure. There were no loading screens or cutscenes interrupting gameplay, no scripted escape or forced detection sequences and no blocked off points of no return. The mission actually required exploration and had a surprising amount of content. It definitely showed that EM was capable of constructing classic Thief missions and I feel the game would have been far better had the other missions been designed with the same level of quality. Had they also added a better movement system and more comprehensive city hub this game could have easily gotten 9's and 10's while still staying faithful to the original games.

Edited by bjshepp
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It is very sad that people lost there jobs. But sadly thats the world we live in, and they clearly didn't listen to the fans or heck even the reviewers and now we are left with a steaming pile of shit they are trying to fix. Between the terrible story telling of steven gallagher and the very questionable design choices made by god knows who else the game tanked.

 

If you ever visit the official forums you will see they don't want to hear it and just censor speech there under the guise of their terms and condition. It sucks that they just wouldn't listen to the fans, if they did we wouldn't be left with this situation.

 

Hopefully those people that were fired get dealt a better hand later and as for the others hopefully this time they listen to the fans and the reviewers and make a game that we want!

 

As someone outside of the development team looking in from a consumer standpoint they need to pick a clear pathway at the very start and stick to it. Then we might have some success and more people would keep there jobs as they would be moved straight away onto the sequel team.

Edited by Goldwell
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There's not (necessarily) a connection between the games reviews, sales, and the layoffs. Thief has shipped, the game is done - it's inevitable that some people wouldn't be needed anymore. I'm surprised only 5% of the team was laid off. That would seem to indicate that more DLC or even a sequel is in the works or planning stages. Otherwise, what would the other 95% of the staff be working on?

Edited by brethren
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Well bad reviews of the game, poor sales and staff layoffs all together don't seem like a good recipe for a successful reboot of the franchise if you ask me.

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Getting rid of developers after a project has been completed isn't unusual for any development house, regardless of the reception or success of the game. Otherwise you're just paying for extra overhead that's not working on anything. There are exceptions (e.g. Valve) but as a general rule: if you want job stability, don't work for the major gaming companies.

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If you ever visit the official forums you will see they don't want to hear it and just censor speech there under the guise of their terms and condition. It sucks that they just wouldn't listen to the fans, if they did we wouldn't be left with this situation.

 

Fans are quite free to express their opinions on the official forum and have done so since day one.

If you believe the devs didn't listen/listen enough to the fans, then this has absolutely nothing to do with apparent censorship on the forum. Speech that is rude/offensive etc is removed in accordance with the terms and conditions.... and rightly so.

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It really needs to be said that between Thiaf wrapping up (including patches and technical stuff), and the cancellation of the 3rd project and reorganization, that there will be changes in personnel. After DX:HR wrapped up, and more focus was given to Thiaf with the new Producer and giving Paul Weir the boot, the T4 team went from below 90 to over 150 for awhile. The core team was always around 20. There is also this with the timing of all the changes to take into account, as well:

http://community.eid...fth-Anniversary

 

 

 

Things regarding headcount that they've been saying since the beginning, with updates:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12811

http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/01/report-eidos-montreal-to-increase-total-headcount-by-2015/

Edited by jtr7

A skunk was badgered--the results were strong.

I hope that something better comes along.

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Well bad reviews of the game, poor sales and staff layoffs all together don't seem like a good recipe for a successful reboot of the franchise if you ask me.

 

Do you really believe listening to fans would have made a better game? The developers were aware enough of what the fans though was the best way for a Thief sequel to be, they knew it themselves well enough and could have done it if they had the freedom... which they had not. You are always bound to restrictions in life and everybody in a different way. Indie devs have the freedom to make the game they want, but are restricted in budget, work force, etc. Big companies have the money and the force, but are restricted by the requirement to address to a customer base, or a target group, target platform, or whatever there is.

 

Thief (4) never had a chance. It was born at the wrong time, in the wrong barn. Human Revolution was just a bit luckier.

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Speech that is rude/offensive etc is removed in accordance with the terms and conditions.... and rightly so.

There were plenty of harmless posts/threads that were deleted around the time of the dreaded Stephen Russell petition.

Edited by RavenShore
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Wow, I definitely feel for those laid off (even if their game isn't my cup of tea).

I wonder if they will release an editor so the commnunity has a chance of fixing this game, otherwise lets hope the coomunity can reverse engineer the game so we can use the unreal editor.

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They already explicitly stated that their will not be an editor. Hell I'll be happy if we get another patch, and maybe the promised Mantle and True Audio support that was promised as a launch feature.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Naw, it still serves more than one continuing great purpose. They weren't going to bring SR in. The major work was already done before the announcements came. Letting him know how grateful we are, and even getting a personal response from him, was well worth it. It's true, though, that it's good he voiced not one character in this thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for modding this into something that makes a lot more people happier, tweaks aside, I have no doubt attempting it will be worse than what happened with TDS.

Edited by jtr7

A skunk was badgered--the results were strong.

I hope that something better comes along.

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How glad I am Russell wasn't part of this!

 

The petition was such a horrible idea.

 

When the petition was started it was early days when we pretty much had a couple of screenshots and that first trailer released of the game. Which had a lot of live action and not so much game play so there was no way back then to predict what the game has become now.

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There were plenty of harmless posts/threads that were deleted around the time of the dreaded Stephen Russell petition.

 

By their very nature, harmless posts/threads are never deleted.... merged elsewhere perhaps, but not deleted. All discussion regarding the petition remains in the "Meet Romano" thread, as far as I recall.

EM responded to the petition and stated they were happy with their new voice actor and would not change their mind. It was respectfully requested that no links to the petition be posted on the official forum as they did not wish to give fans any false sense of hope.

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When the petition was started it was early days when we pretty much had a couple of screenshots and that first trailer released of the game. Which had a lot of live action and not so much game play so there was no way back then to predict what the game has become now.

 

 

Actually we had a helluva lot more than that.

 

..................

Edited by jtr7

A skunk was badgered--the results were strong.

I hope that something better comes along.

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and they clearly didn't listen to the fans or heck even the reviewers and now we are left with a steaming pile of shit they are trying to fix. Between the terrible story telling of steven gallagher and the very questionable design choices made by god knows who else the game tanked.

 

I find it a bit funny if somebody says that game developers should listen to their fans, while at the same time complaining that games tend to become more and more money oriented, because in my opiniont these two are interconnected.

 

You can either develop a game because you have a vision, or because you want to make money.

 

If you have a vision, then you should try to implement it the way you intend it to be. Of course there are certain aspects that you may have to get frmo the outside if you want your game to be enjoyed by lots of poeple. But this is mostly in regard to technical aspects (like accessability). Making a game is similar to making art, and if you want to express your vision, you can't really let thousands of people tell you how you should implement YOUR vision.

 

If you are in for the money, then of course you should listen to the audience, which is what ultimaltely leads us to, what was earler named, the pop culture. Dumbing down television series, music, and of course also game, to appeal to a broad audience, thus hopefully maximzing the income.

 

Personally I think that a professional game developer has to find a mix between the two. They have to make money, but also should try to share their vision. If they succeed, we have something we call a good game, just like there is good art and bad art. In this regard I can easily understand that they have to implement T4 the way which is currently considered "state of the art" in game making. And frankly, I think that WE thief fans are only a very small niche where a game studion can't really make a living off, if they try to appeal only to us and neglect the broad audience where the money is.

 

And the people funding these studios are propably mostly on the money, so there is not much leeway for creativity, unless you manage to create a AAA title which raises enough money to allow for more creative directions. That's why I think it is really a very good thing that now games are funded by kickstarter, because I really hope that this allows the creative freedom to make good and interesting games without the pressure of a publisher who is keen on maximzing the profit. It's certainly not surprising that many really new creative ideas are released by Indies and not by major brands.

Gerhard

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I find it a bit funny if somebody says that game developers should listen to their fans, while at the same time complaining that games tend to become more and more money oriented, because in my opiniont these two are interconnected.

 

You can either develop a game because you have a vision, or because you want to make money.

 

If you have a vision, then you should try to implement it the way you intend it to be. Of course there are certain aspects that you may have to get frmo the outside if you want your game to be enjoyed by lots of poeple. But this is mostly in regard to technical aspects (like accessability). Making a game is similar to making art, and if you want to express your vision, you can't really let thousands of people tell you how you should implement YOUR vision.

 

If you are in for the money, then of course you should listen to the audience, which is what ultimaltely leads us to, what was earler named, the pop culture. Dumbing down television series, music, and of course also game, to appeal to a broad audience, thus hopefully maximzing the income.

 

Personally I think that a professional game developer has to find a mix between the two. They have to make money, but also should try to share their vision. If they succeed, we have something we call a good game, just like there is good art and bad art. In this regard I can easily understand that they have to implement T4 the way which is currently considered "state of the art" in game making. And frankly, I think that WE thief fans are only a very small niche where a game studion can't really make a living off, if they try to appeal only to us and neglect the broad audience where the money is.

 

And the people funding these studios are propably mostly on the money, so there is not much leeway for creativity, unless you manage to create a AAA title which raises enough money to allow for more creative directions. That's why I think it is really a very good thing that now games are funded by kickstarter, because I really hope that this allows the creative freedom to make good and interesting games without the pressure of a publisher who is keen on maximzing the profit. It's certainly not surprising that many really new creative ideas are released by Indies and not by major brands.

 

Well whatever route EM took for Thief was certainly the wrong one. They did such a great job with DXHR but then tanked with Thief.

 

I see what you mean about the vision part about either being for the fans or just for money. It feels like Thief took a strange attempt at both and failed. I mean they tried to listen to fans by giving us a very optional UI but forced shroud which is a universally hated part of the UI

 

They tried to give us immersion and freedom but forced contextual controls on us.

 

They told us they removed Stephan Russell because he didn't fit their vision and wouldn't work with there mocap system but delivered a very under whelming motion capture performance. Whether it was bugs or just a crap system remains to be seen.

 

It seems like Thief is having an identity crisis.

Edited by Goldwell
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the game feels like one of two halfs, anyone noticed that most of the entrance points in to the main game chapters doesn't match the city hub exit points. It feels like one team did the main hubs and another team did the chapters and they didn't talk about the game matching up. I was wondering if the hubs were done by the original team and then the chapters were tacked on by the later team. or the chapters were done in the begining and the hub was added later on. the chapters and hub do not really match up. as in the chapters are really linear with lots of cutscenes, and the hub has loads of paths to get to places and is only restricted by the consoles the game was aimed at, as in aimed originally at the xbox360 and ps3.

Edited by stumpy
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