Decline Thiaf Pre-Release Thread

[CappenVarra]

 

[dnf]

I thought hacking in New Vegas and Human Revolution was fun. The big problem with HR was that it was overused.

This statement sounds contraditory. If the (mini)game is fun, why is it a problem if it is overused? Minigames in these games are passable at best, annoying at worst. I take Original Deus Ex and Thief lockpicking abstraction any day than this Tetris level crap in today games.

 

[Infinitron]

This statement sounds contraditory. If the (mini)game is fun, why is it a problem if it is overused?

...said Vault Dweller about the skill checks and text adventures in Age of Decadence.

There is such a thing as "too much of a good thing". It's also known as "bad pacing".

 

[dnf]

Except its not good to begin with

 

[Infinitron]

Except its not good to begin with

Well, this is a matter of opinion, but I thought the DX:HR hacking was pretty interesting. DraQ had some interesting proposals on how it could have been improved, one of which was (IIRC) allowing you to hack an entire complex from one place instead of having to hack every terminal you encountered.

 

[dnf]

Except its not good to begin with

Well, this is a matter of opinion, but I thought the DX:HR hacking was pretty interesting.

Sounds like a Games jurnalism euphemism for "it didn't bother me" . Also, in concept at least its pretty easy to fix the hacking minigames: Just try to copy the best hacking game around in the Desu Ex game and voila. It ceases to be a minigame and becomes a central part of the game, just like shotting and sneaking. Or you can make hacking a abstract skillcheck, just not as flawed as the first DX

 

[Carrion]

I thought hacking in New Vegas and Human Revolution was fun.

New Vegas? You mean the minigame that stopped time, was impossible to fail at (you could start over indefinitely without any kind of a penalty) and which therefore was there only to waste the player's time without adding any kind of a challenge into the game? Yeah, we definitely need more of that. Human Revolution's hacking wasn't too bad at first, but at some point you just started to wish that you'd have the old progress bar back.

A lockpicking minigame might work in Thief if it was short and to the point, but the lockpick-switching of the original games worked better than any minigame I can think of. It added some urgency and challenge to the game in those cases when you had a limited amount of time to pick a lock, but it never got tedious like most minigames do. I don't know why they felt the need to change that.

Then again, a minigame seems like the most insignificant of this game's problem. I feel I've been emotionally raped by so many bad sequels/prequels/reboots already that these kind of threads need a TRIGGER WARNING tag.

 

[Roguey]

I downloaded a mod that effectively lets me skip the minigame for the second playthrough on, but I am still curious.

There are also things you can do with the characters that are not part of words. Clicking on matching brackets (i.e. () [] {} <>, even with other characters between, but not a whole word between) can remove a dud password or reset the number of remaining guesses to four. The brackets must be of the same type and on the same line. Although you cannot match brackets with a whole word between them, you can match brackets separated by the dots that appear when a dud word is removed ( <.......> ). Also, two or more opening brackets can be matched to a single closing bracket ("[ [ ]" on a line gives you two chances), but the opposite is not true ("[ ] ]" only gives you one chance). When you scroll across this type of entry from left-to-right, the entire entry will be highlighted letting you know if you've found one or not.

He also ignores the fact that it takes you out of the gameplay. You know what the best lockpicking minigame I ever encountered was? Games like Deus Ex where the 'minigame' was having to try and avoid being seen by enemies during the period it took to pick the lock. All the justifications given for minigames apply to that - it involves a combination of player strategy and character stats, but does so in a way that merges them seemlessly without taking you out of the game.

As he mentioned, the "avoid being seen" is pointless in a game where you can save/reload anywhere. Doubly so if you opt to just kill everyone before you try lockpicking/hacking which is easy enough to do. Furthermore, DX:HR didn't freeze time when you were in the hacking screen so you still had that chance of being caught, and I assume the same will apply to Thief's minigames.

As for the immersion-breaking, that's subjective, like all immersion-related matters.

This statement sounds contraditory. If the (mini)game is fun, why is it a problem if it is overused? Minigames in these games are passable at best, annoying at worst. I take Original Deus Ex and Thief lockpicking abstraction any day than this Tetris level crap in today games.

"That said, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a game mechanic in any game of any genre that really 'never got old'."

New Vegas? You mean the minigame that stopped time, was impossible to fail at (you could start over indefinitely without any kind of a penalty) and which therefore was there only to waste the player's time without adding any kind of a challenge into the game?

Solving puzzles is fun for me. Leaving the hacking screen would reset the puzzle so the penalty is having to start all over. Making it possible to fail is pointless in a game where you can save before attempting the puzzle, as mentioned.

 

[dnf]

This statement sounds contraditory. If the (mini)game is fun, why is it a problem if it is overused? Minigames in these games are passable at best, annoying at worst. I take Original Deus Ex and Thief lockpicking abstraction any day than this Tetris level crap in today games.

"That said, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a game mechanic in any game of any genre that really 'never got old'."

If you think a mechanic that gets boring after 5 hours of gameplay is fun, be my guest.

 

[dnf]

Except its not good to begin with

Well, this is a matter of opinion, but I thought the DX:HR hacking was pretty interesting.

Sounds like a Games jurnalism euphemism for "it didn't bother me" . Also, in concept at least its pretty easy to fix the hacking minigames: Just try to copy the best hacking game around in the Desu Ex game and voila. It ceases to be a minigame and becomes a central part of the game, just like shotting and sneaking. Or you can make hacking a abstract skillcheck, just not as flawed as the first DX

Deus Ex did not require hacking minigame because the only challenge to hack the computers was to find the passwords. The game focused on exploration and gave you an opportunity to bypass putting skill points in Computers.

And that's the main problem with hacking in the first Deus Ex. The Nameless Mod fixed that.

 

[MetalCraze]

5 hours? Bro if they at least kept 5% in Thiaf of what Thief is - that means you will have to play that shitty lockpicking minigame dozens of times per level.

 

[Roguey]

If you think a mechanic that gets boring after 5 hours of gameplay is fun, be my guest.

I thought Doom was fun but I could never play more than a mission or two at a time because all that shooting gets boring.

 

[Captain Shrek]

And that's the main problem with hacking in the first Deus Ex. The Nameless Mod fixed that.

Look. I want to make clear one thing. We are agreeing on certain issues.

What I am disagreeing with however is the claim that Exploration based alternative to skills is a PROBLEM. It is not. Deus Ex revolutionized Exploration in Role playing games by introducing beautifully designed levels and rewarding actually going through the text. DE:HR in fact does do the exploration well and DOES give a lot of reactive options. But the minigame hardly improves anything.

 

[dnf]

If you think a mechanic that gets boring after 5 hours of gameplay is fun, be my guest.

I thought Doom was fun but I could never play more than a mission or two at a time because all that shooting gets boring.

Install Brutal DooM.

 

[DraQ]

This statement sounds contraditory. If the (mini)game is fun, why is it a problem if it is overused?

...said Vault Dweller about the skill checks and text adventures in Age of Decadence.

There is such a thing as "too much of a good thing". It's also known as "bad pacing".

This.

Take Wizardry 8 for example.
Really fun combat, way too fucking much of it.

Except its not good to begin with

Well, this is a matter of opinion, but I thought the DX:HR hacking was pretty interesting. DraQ had some interesting proposals on how it could have been improved, one of which was (IIRC) allowing you to hack an entire complex from one place instead of having to hack every terminal you encountered.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb to not have ability to hack the network while hacking the network.
You wouldn't get to hack keypads, and even terminals, but once you accessed a terminal you'd be able to hack your way into network from it, with ease depending on its privileges (represented by node level). Keypads and other such devices would be represented as API nodes, so you could hack them from the network, there would be various security nodes, like firewalls, hampering your access to other parts of network, nuke viruses would actually take out a node instead of capturing it (preventing both hacking through it and tracing you through it), say, for several minutes, and wouldn't be a resource, but ability (with different tiers allowing for effective attacks against increasing security level nodes), they'd allow knocking out API nodes too, so for example killing the lights or jamming doors by making keypads unresponsive.
You'd also have decoys to fool trace and maybe backdoors you'd be able to bury in system, and node having been tampered with could be detected depending on your skill and security level on examination by security system.

High privilege systems would allow you to access lower privilege ones connected to them automatically, without triggering trace, so instead of being worthless, passwords for high-level terminals would be even more valuable to a hacker than to non-hacker.

Also, on a completion of trace NPCs would be sent to the terminal it pointed at and attack you if you were in the vicinity.

Ability to hack terminals directly would be a separate upgrade making you effectively your own access point.
Separate upgrades would also include line of sight (IR) and unrestricted remote interface, but they would impose penalty on all hacking checks when used.

 

[Gord]

As he mentioned, the "avoid being seen" is pointless in a game where you can save/reload anywhere. Doubly so if you opt to just kill everyone before you try lockpicking/hacking which is easy enough to do. Furthermore, DX:HR didn't freeze time when you were in the hacking screen so you still had that chance of being caught, and I assume the same will apply to Thief's minigames.

Theoretically the new minigame could work just like the old one, despite the screenshots, i.e. effectively as a timer you have to wait out before being able to open the lock (and sitting in the open while doing so):
Old one had you choose one of to lockpicks, press a button and wait until either the lock opens or you had to switch the lockpick, in which case the procedure repeats itself.
The new one could (fat chance for that, I know) do much the same, you choose a lockpick press a button and watch while a number of pins (depending on the complexity of the lock) get pushed up.

Matters little though. If those scans are true (part of me still clings to the hope they aren't) and not just a trolling attempt out of the demented hive-mind of /v/ the game will be Dishonored Thief's Creed and not a Thief game.
Might still be a good enough game on its own, but as a Thief-series game nothing but a franchise rape.

 

[Hellraiser]

Between the hacking in various popamole I have to say that all of that gets fucking tedious fast. Just give me a fucking skillcheck or something like the locks in deus ex where it is a limited resource the expenditure of which you can sometimes avoid by exploration (or explosives). Sure, it made little sense to have multitools get used up but considering the alternative (another fucking set of pipes/frogger/tetris) I rather take a derpy abstraction than spend half of the game on repetitive minigames. Retards will cry "I'm just watching my dude do nothing, this is bullshitz and not awesum" as if that was worse than yet another fucking terminal to hack in Deux Ex:HR.

Also I don't know about you guys but apparently some hoodlum went away with much jewgold and other riches once belonging to a certain Lord Bafford.

 

[DraQ]

as if that was worse than yet another fucking terminal to hack in Deux Ex:HR.

You miss the point.

I don't have any problem with non-interactive skillchecks, as they are definitely preferable to derpy unrelated minigame, but DX:HR minigame was actually pretty sound.

It was also an improvement over DX1 one in pretty much every aspect.

Watching progress bar, then speed-reading with pesky timer ticking down, or having to stop, log-off and do nothing waiting for meter to recharge so that you can wait for the hack again was neither fun, nor challenging.
You also had stuff like contortionist hacking from under the desk, or all the hostiles politely waiting for you to log off.
DX:HR minigame removed all those problems.

The main problem with DX:HR minigame was that optimal gameplay involved engaging in it at every opportunity and opportunities were as numerous as keypads, terminals and other devices.

By making you hack single network per location, with multiple access points and many factors to consider when deciding your approach (like better access point being in much riskier location), you'd improve the quality and depth of the minigame itself AND greatly reduce the number of times player would play it.

 

[dnf]

Basically, if you want a better minigame you need to make a proper game mechanic wich ceases the minigame from being "mini"

 

[Captain Shrek]

Basically, if you want a better minigame you need to make a proper game mechanic wich ceases the minigame from being "mini"

And that brings to the table the question why would that be even necessary in a game with the depth of Thief.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

The dark mod has a soundbased lockpicking which is based on the original thief games. It adds more challenge, although it's almost like a QTE, but based on sound. I think it's a better alternative if you want to change the simplicity of the original games, and still like the same system.

 

[Jaesun]

I'm trying to keep an open mind since I thought DXHR looked completely awful until I tried the leaked alpha or beta or whatever it was. And then the final game was mostly decent. Mostly. If you squinted enough.

So basically what you are saying is:

When I'm at a restaurant and enjoying a bowl of wonderful home made mushroom soup and I then find a turd in it, I will happily finish the entire bowl of soup.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The dark mod has a soundbased lockpicking which is based on the original thief games. It adds more challenge, although it's almost like a QTE, but based on sound. I think it's a better alternative if you want to change the simplicity of the original games, and still like the same system.

Personally i prefer no QTE´s at all, simple stat checks work best. Depth can be achieved by other elements of the game design without introducing unnecessary hassles.

 

[skacky]

I think Darth Slaughter didn't mean it, TDM's system has next to nothing to do with QTEs (thank the Builder for that) and is an improvement on the old system in my opinion. You have to click when the lock stops moving, which adds a new layer of difficulty in the mix. You can either do it by watching when it stops, or listening since the lock makes a sound when it moves. What's interesting is that each step has a different time, sometimes it's very long or very short, which makes failure possible and if you are under stress you can take twice as much time to pick the door if you keep failing.

 

[Gord]

Simple stat checks are fine and make sense in a rpg, but Thief is no rpg, it doesn't even have "rpg elements".
Therefor, which stat would you check?

I'd prefer they stay with what we had in the old games, where lockpicking was just a way to slow the player down according to lock type while out in the open.