Unconscious guards waking up

[MirceaKitsune]

By the way... there is a little something in regard to gameplay as well, that made me want to debate this idea: There seems to be no real difference between someone being dead or unconscious. Sure, the sword makes noise and causes blood stains, which the blackjack doesn't do so it's more favored. But this is related to the weapons themselves and the act of attacking, rather than the state of the victim. For example, gas arrows don't leave blood either... I don't know if they kill or disable victims currently, but they could easily be considered deadly. If unconscious victims played a somewhat different role compared to dead ones, that could mean more positive diversity and functionality... but currently you can't even tell the difference if you examine a body.

Edited January 2, 2015 by MirceaKitsune

[Springheel]

What is gained by having unconscious AI behave differently from dead ones?

[MirceaKitsune]

What is gained by having unconscious AI behave differently from dead ones?

More complete and detailed gameplay I guess. If being dead and being unconscious are two different states, maybe unconscious AI's could do something different... like constantly snoring (bad idea), occasionally moaning, occasionally twitching, reacting only if you walk over the body, waking up in case you try to drag the body, or something else. But of course this is just a rough idea... such a change would have to maintain difficulty, not encourage killing over knocking out, so on. I might be a fan of excessive complexity here, or maybe just wanting to see more immersion and ultra realism

[Airship Ballet]

I'll take decent gameplay over fidelity any day, and 'decent' obviously isn't synonymous with 'complex'. In terms of reality, if a person is smacked into unconsciousness and allowed to fall naturally and hit their head on the floor, they're quite likely to be dead anyway. If they're still alive, they won't be the same upon getting up and they certainly won't be walking again any time soon. That aside since I said realism isn't king, knocking somebody out and dragging them into the dark is as complex as it needs to get. On top of that, somebody groaning and laying on the floor would almost always be seen before being heard, and it'd have to be a very loud moan for it to be propagated to nearby AI. Anything more than the sight of the body is redundant, even if it's just for show.

 

Speaking of the visible, another option to discourage KOs would be to drop a small blood spatter the passing AI have a chance to spot, or even a chance to drop a blood spatter that's always spotted. While I'm all for KOing everybody in sight when learning a map and key hunting, it'd be nice to make the decision to blackjack a bit less of a no-brainer. It'd also make the gas arrow that bit more useful for clean knockouts

[Springheel]

For every player complaining that blackjacking is too easy, there is one complaining that it is too hard. Blackjacking already has some downsides--you have to get close, you have to hit the head (or back of the head if there's a helmet), you can't use it against alert guards with helmets, collapsing bodies make noise, and then you have to hide the body somewhere. All of these can be reasons why someone might choose to sneak past a guard instead. But we're not out to force that kind of play.

[Airship Ballet]

I think the ideal outcome is to create a game that rewards a person based on skill rather than a particular binary approach. The balance is pretty much there in this: a skilled player can clean a place out loud or quiet and the outcome is the same. Like you say, what you don't want to do is encourage or condemn any particular play style.

[VanishedOne]

Allow the mappers to designate "critical" guards that are expected to be in a certain area, otherwise their friends get spooked. Obviously, this could only work with stationary guards, or the ones with very short patrol paths.

TDS had this, although I only once saw it trigger an alert. I don't know how it dealt with guards who had left their position to investigate something suspicious.

[demagogue]

Stupid phone double posted.

Technology is not making things easier.

[demagogue]

The stats screen records how many KOs the player has done. So I see the challenge of no-KO runs in the same vein as ghosting runs, in fact no KOs is one rule for ghosting, and the stat screen is there to verify it for a player and show off if they want.

 

That's the proper way to do it IMO, as a meta-game, otherwise the mapper would have just designed the mission for no KOs as a formal part of the FM.

 

I mean there's formal and informal restrictions, and that's for mappers and players to decide respectively. The game itself should be agnostic and let them decide. That's the idea behind how things work I think.