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Scouting Orb, Anyone?


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Scouting orb my ass.

We're not going to have idiot invisible, speed and slow fall potions either, or any of the T3 kiddie nonsense like cartoon oil slicks.

It's all pretentious frippery.

I think you'd better stick to Splinter Cell and NOLF.

We're making a hardcore stealth experience here, not a 'fooling around in a virtual Thief-inspired amusment park' experience.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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The speed potions were useful for exploring the parts of the level that the mapper didn't want you to see. That was a bit of fun, and although I'm sure we don't particularly want people to go where they aren't supposed to, it's like an unwritten rule for players to want to.

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I'd hope mappers would build levels with enough content and interest to keep players engaged without resorting to trying to climb out of the level for thier fun.

I can honestly say I've never wanted to do that in any map.

Once you've reached the stage of being so bored you want to do that, it's time to quit and find something else to play.

It's like a gamer's Mexican wave.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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This has nothing to do with being bored. As I said, it is a challenge. It is simialr with copyprotections. Why are the cracked? Because it poses a challenge. Why do people solve chess puzzles? Because they are challenges. Can you beat it or not? Trying to get out of the map is the same.

Gerhard

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I'll have a hard time playing it the way I'd like it, since you thwart every single idea I have, and stick with the conservatives.

No, I'll be playing the game the way the conservative party wants it, because that's the way it'll be.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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I'll have a hard time playing it the way I'd like it, since you thwart every single idea I have, and stick with the conservatives.

No, I'll be playing the game the way the conservative party wants it, because that's the way it'll be.

 

:laugh: Well, if I wanted to play a game like you are proposing, I would just go out and be a Thief in real life. There's no need to replicate true life to the degree you want. I play games to escape reality, not further enforce it upon myself.

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But I like the scouting orb. Keep it in please.

 

Our character isn't Garrett, nor does he have a mechanical eye. We won't be including a scouting orb in the toolset. I'm sure if anyone in the community wants it badly enough, they will mod it in. Won't be hard to do with the doom 3 engine.

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The speed potions were useful for exploring the parts of the level that the mapper didn't want you to see.

 

It doesn't make a lot of sense to include tools in the game just to help players 'break' the maps.

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The scouting orb was just an official cheat.

Anyway, there are much better ideas such as periscopes or a mirror painted black on an extendable pole which you hold round corner, etc.

Yes, there's a chance you'll be seen , but that's the whole point, having a 'free look' around corners without risk is pointless, you may as well just play the map with noclip turned on.

You don't need some ridiculous out of place high tech gear like a remote broadcasting camera and reception equiment.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Scouting orbs just don't fit the world. If you really wanted to break immersion, why not just have cars parked on the city streets? Or have our thief call a drop ship at the end of the mission to pick him up?

 

You could argue of course that robots and cameras are equally stupid, but at least they are pretty steampunky cool.

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That's the problem with the Thief world.

LGS just chucked in any arbitrary thing they fancied from high fantasy magic to futuristic tech to gritty realism, from medeival castles to Victorian factories to art deco mansions..

It's totally inconsistent nonsense really, and that's why it leads to so many arguments as to what should or shouldn't be in the setting.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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The scouting orb was just an official cheat.

Anyway, there are much better ideas such as periscopes or a mirror painted black on an extendable pole which you hold round corner, etc.

Yes, there's a chance you'll be seen , but that's the whole point, having a 'free look' around corners without risk is pointless, you may as well just play the map with noclip turned on.

You don't need some ridiculous out of place high tech gear like a remote broadcasting camera and reception equiment.

 

Portable mirrors are the best option for seeing around corners; scouting orbs are too Thief / Garret specific. I'm glad the team is considering it!

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noclup is a cheat. Potion is an in-game element and adheres to the gamemechanics. A very important distinction, because if you manage to use the pootions to get to some area you can be proud, while noclip is just noclip.

 

 

 

Isnt that the point of many "easter eggs?" You put funny/neat stuff at points where you wouldnt normally go to reward players who waste hours of their lives trying to climb over a certain wall cause they think they might be able to. On one T2 map i spent days stacking crates and climbing because I thought I had heard guard voices after I had cleared the map of AIs. Sure enough, I found a few wandering around at the top of a nearly inaccessable tower. Nothing special, probably just something the programmers forgot about, but I had quite a bit of fun getting there.

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It's part of playing a game, but it's not part of the gameplay as the author intended it. It's outside the bounds. Sure it's rewarding, but it's hardly immersive to see "the end of the world" or a flat wall.

 

you are correct, its really outside of gameplay when I think about it. But the fact that easter eggs are there tells us that someone has fun finding them and someone has fun putting them into place, a part of the "meta-gameplay" if you will. I usually do my easter egging and fooling around after Ive completed the mission. BUt a tool like the speedpotion can be used both for "intended" gameplay as well as easter egg hunting/messing around. So its cool with me.

Edited by Maximius
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It's part of playing a game, but it's not part of the gameplay as the author intended it. It's outside the bounds. Sure it's rewarding, but it's hardly immersive to see "the end of the world" or a flat wall.

 

Your priorities are wrong. Games are meant to be fun and to this end, immersiveness is an important point. However if somebody plays the game in a non-immersive way, BUT AT THE SAME TIME HAS FUN while playing, then the game worked as it should.

 

And how an author intends it, is not neccessarily the end of everything, because the best gameplay is when players find ways of playing where the author did NOT think of and still is fun.

 

 

A good example is that stacking technique in Thief. I doubt that the developers thought of it, but players found it. It works in the defined rules of the gameplay elements and apaarently it provides a lot of fun for poeple, even though the author certainly did not intend it in the extremes we can see.

Gerhard

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