Player Carrying alot of loot should make noise and or make him slower?

[Oktokolo]

I think Ghosting, K.O., and kill limits are pretty good examples for realism vs. gameplay. Of course i wouldn't be a thief in Bridgeport as being a thief in a city packed with guards, having walls and guarded gates around every few houses, and facing a kill-on-sight death sentence as soon as anyone even sees you outside... No, i wouldn't be a thief there.
But TDM is one of these power fantasy games, where you can be a ghost robbing everyone blind.
Or you can be a burglar knocking out twenty people without even one dying due to traumatic brain injury.
Or you can even be the thug murdering your way through.

I know for sure, that in the real life i can't ghost, i can't blackjack someone with him guaranteed to survive that, and i daubt, i could even willingly kill someone if i had a gun.
But the game does not judge you for having fun imitating various shades of bad in the virtual world.

So when it comes to the playing styles "Ghost" to "Thug" or even the level of tool use (and certainly the tools themselves), that isn't a question of realism at all.

Personally i just have more fun blackjacking my way through than ghosting by the same guards multiple times.
And sometimes i like to put an arrow in some of the badder guys too.
For some reason i try to use as few consumable tools as possible though.

I would suggest to authors to only have no-kill objectives to protect characters that have to survive for technical reasons (AI needed in a scripted sequence) or the story to make sense.

 

Ghost/blackjack/kill restrictions are objectives that are implicitly present on each mission anyway.
All the author really does by making them mandatory is telling people how not to play.

 

[Filizitas]

I also find the anti knockout rule a bit strong because of my playstyle.
You dont violate the prime directive of stealing stuff by knocking out a few people.

It should be up for gamerules and not immersion.

I like to just bonk everyone if possible, its safe and i am not good enough for ghosting.

[Obsttorte]

On 7/25/2020 at 10:46 PM, Destined said:

As far as I know, the current system creates a "missing entity", when an object that is supposed to be there gets taken. Is this entity dependent on light? I.e. would it help to turn off lights? If it is, it is purely bad design, if it does not work. If not, is it poosible to change that?

That's correct. The ai needs to "see" the missing entity marker, and that depends on the lighting.

 

Punishing the player for carrying lots of loot is really a bad idea as stated by others. But the major reason given, that it punishes the player for doing what the game requires from him or her, is also applyable on things like ko limitations or no kill objectives. I mean you are giving the player broadheads, fire arrows, mines and what else and then tell him not to use it. That is pretty ridiculous.

 

The main issue here is the mission design. Of course it sooner or later breaks immersion if the player collects 40 vases, 20 golden plates, 12 paintings etc... But there is no reason for mission authors to clutter the mission with loot. Simple place less. Of course taking out too much guards will leave an almost empty mission that provides no more challenge and stands in contrast to the actual idea of a stealth game. But mappers can place ai in a way that taking them out is a worse option then sneaking by them.

I don't see Thief and TDM as ghosting games, were the player should not interact with the ai at all. You have your tools for a purpose, and killing is an option, of course. Leaving an ai alive and conscious should be the best option in most situation and not something the player does because it is trve (in terms of how real Thief pros play such games ).