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Fan Mission: Chase Mercantile by Airship Ballet (2015/02/04)


Airship Ballet

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Congratulations on the release Airship Ballet! Really looking forward to playing this one tonight, thoroughly enjoyed your first one :)

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Congrats on the release. *thumbs up*

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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It's a beautiful building, but we're bringing ugly business. We'll need keys to get further in, so look for their stashes.

Intel Sandy Bridge i7 2600K @ 3.4ghz stock clocks
8gb Kingston 1600mhz CL8 XMP RAM stock frequency
Sapphire Radeon HD7870 2GB FLeX GHz Edition @ stock @ 1920x1080

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Was a ton of fun to test, and the offices are marvelous to look at. Some of the best interiors I've seen in TDM. Great improvement from your last map which was already a fantastic FM debut :)

 

I'd consider adding a link to just the individual map without the previous part attached to it, because there isn't a simple way of skipping a level in TDM is there? I'd wager some would like to just try out the new map without having to play La Banque a second time.

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I'd consider adding a link to just the individual map without the previous part attached to it, because there isn't a simple way of skipping a level in TDM is there? I'd wager some would like to just try out the new map without having to play La Banque a second time.

There's been a thread up asking as much for the weekend, but not many people got back to me so they've only themselves to blame!
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I fully agree with kyyrma, please can you release it as a standalone mission. I enjoyed La Banque, but playing through it again in order to actually get to Chase Mercantile was frustrating.

 

 

 

 

I was in the process of playing through Chase Mercantile earlier, and while I was enjoying the layout and architecture - I am seriously not a fan of the KO/Kill penalty system. I did not read through your entire post above prior to playing, and when I saw that my loot total was decreasing, I thought that it was a bug that was occurring each time I picked up a particular loot item. I almost wrote an entire post warning you about it, and then I discovered that this was a actually deliberate mechanic that you created.

 

In the event of being detected, it's punishment enough to have to fight and kill the guard in question in order to carry on the mission (rather than take the easy way out and simply reload a save) - having my loot total slashed as well comes across as both needlessly punitive and unrealistic. Why should I suddenly lose gold if I have just lured a guard into a trap and blackjacked him? At a stretch, I can understand that if I'm hauling around a loot bag and I get into a sword fight, that the bag might get slashed and some coins will inevitably spill out; but at the same time, hauling around a giant loot bag with all my goodies would also slow me down (a mechanic you have already successfully dabbled in with having to manually carry the large loot items).

 

However, with KOs, the loot-penalty mechanic literally makes no sense and completely destroys the "lure-and-KO" gameplay style, forcing me to play as a complete ghost if I want to keep my loot total intact.

 

As it stands, the mechanic only serves to encourage 'load-spamming' if you unexpectedly find yourself face-to-face with a guard, rather than flee (almost guaranteed certain death given the abundance of light sources in the basement) or engage in combat (and then definitely lose my loot). I'll certainly be more careful, but then the entire mission becomes either a case of "explore mission," "I found an AI," "spam F9," "avoid previously discovered AI," or alternatively, go into it knowing in advance that I have to ghost it or risk losing my loot - neither option is very appealing.

 

In his critical review of THIEF, Gopher made a crucial point: in a stealth-game, "getting caught should be worse than dying." Here, I would rather die or reload than have my loot slashed because I was a successful swordsman or a clever trickster who lured unsuspecting guards into my eagerly awaiting blackjack - not because I was clumsy. Thief II had its Shoalsgate Station mission, where you were limited to only killing/KO-ing a certain number of guards, and that made sense from a narrative perspective. Equally, one of the FMs here had a section where the light-dark mechanics were literally flipped on its head, where you had to use your lantern in order to detect and then avoid the enemies. In both cases, the mechanic is fully complemented by the narrative. Unfortunately, without any narrative background, this loot-penalty mechanic is forcing players to play the mission one specific way - i.e pure ghosting - without proper cause. You could have achieved the same effect by simply taking away all combat weapons from player.

 

Sadly, as long as the loot-penalty mechanic remains unchanged, I am unable to play the mission according to my gameplay style, which renders your architecture, layout (and hopefully intriguing story) pointless for me, because you are needlessly punishing me (and I am certain that there are others) for tackling the mission in my unique way.

 

I apologise if I have come across as harsh, it is certainly not my intention to diminish or dismiss your hard-work and effort in creating this mission; however, having followed these forums for over three years on an almost daily basis, I truly feel that this loot-penalty mechanic is going to prove highly divisive once more people in the community play the mission, and I hope that there is an easy way to deactivate it.

 

 

 

Edited by Dunedain19
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Grats Merry! I'll get stuck in to both missions as soon as we get 2.03 out the door. I love your intro posts by the way.

 

Do TDM's save game mechanics provide you a way to let people move to the next mission? There's automatically a "final save" that could be used to start up the previous mission just before the mission complete screen.

 

That wouldn't work if TDM itself or the map scripts have been updated in the meantime of course, but it might work for successive missions in the same version of TDM.

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So I've rushed to change a few things. I'm a bit irked: I asked about both the loot penalties and the separate missions thing well before release, just when beta testing started actually. Not many people got back to me, but now the opposite opinion to those who did has come out in full force. These are forums, guys! Your opinion directly changes the output, but if you don't respond it won't change, and usually the release thread is too late a place to do it. Since I'm so great, however, there are now two download links in the OP. Only one (Quinn Co.) will go up in the in-game downloader, but if you want to play just the new one on its own, there's a link to it in the OP that you can sort out yourself. I added mission titles in preparation for 2.03 too.

 

[snip]

I moved the penalties for killing and KOing people to different difficulties. Knockouts will only remove money on expert, and kills will do so on medium and expert. If you want to play the game your way without consequences, easy mode beckons ;)

You mean, post #7 of a thread called 'Beta Testers For My New Mission'?

Yeah, I was going to make a new thread for the question but saw that people were very regularly looking at that post and not replying. I assumed that meant they didn't mind either way.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Yeah, I was going to make a new thread for the question but saw that people were very regularly looking at that post and not replying. I assumed that meant they didn't mind either way.

I didn't de-lurk because I thought it was a question to your beta testers. Oh well.

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Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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I'm a bit confused on what is taking place. So if we played and finished La Banque previously, the stats will not be carried over, correct?

 

We hAVe to play La Banque again (and a new version?) if we want the stat carry over?

 

If we don't care about the stat carry over from the first mission we can just play this new one by itself?

 

Having finished La Banque previously, playing through this new FM without replaying La Banque, what are we missing out on?

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