Yeah, that's what I meant by score I guess - it was more sort of getting loot to say you'd 100%'d it rather than it being for some sort of actual advancement. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, I just always wanted it to have more of an RPG aspect I guess so I could get a bit more involved in the world itself, rather than just going mission to mission.
Would make it an entirely different game. A pure stealing RPG would probably be better as an open-world thing rather than a discrete story/mission-based thing, e.g. if you look at some of the early Thief levels where you have to traverse a city, do it like that except larger, and with a day/night cycle.
The
lack of rpg-elements was actually a deliberate thing with Thief, it allowed the game to be entirely focused on the story and game mechanics. The people behind it had in fact
made intricate RPGs before. "Less is more" as they say. Everyone has ideas of what they'd like
added to a game, however it's generally bad design to just keep adding things because you can, or because they sound cool.
(editing this because it ended up too long and rambly)
e.g. say you add just a "small change" for "realism and tension" which means health/damage carries over from level to level. One problem is that people are now permanently rewarded for save-scumming minor damage instead of soldiering on. And you're also going to want food/health-packs to carry over to the next level so that people aren't penalized if they didn't use it before the final level cutscene. But if food carries over, people will start hoarding food and still save-scum damage any time they can. However, so that non-scummer / non-hoarder people aren't penalized, you're going to want periodic "free health" areas to even the playing field. But "free health" areas also encourage hoarding - you wouldn't waste food if there's a free health area coming up. This all means health-packs are effectively worthless now but people will hoard them anyway, as a player goal, and the regular "free health" areas defeats the entire purpose of carrying over damage anyway. The goals of "tension" and "realism" were in fact harmed, not helped by this set of changes.
Or, say that you introduce "meaningful gear selection for each level" and the goal is "increase player sense of agency". The issue now becomes that "you chose well" is only meaningful if there's a state "you chose badly". People who choose badly will need to restart the mission, causing frustration. To avoid this, you'd want hints about what gear to get without outright telling them what to get. But that's
also frustrating, since
decoding vague hints is now
vital to whether you can complete the level. Hence it'll feel like the game is
demanding of the right choice, but refuses to tell you exactly what the right choice is. The game mechanic had the opposite effect of "increase player sense of agency". This is the reason starting gear isn't
too important in Thief. The choices are about play-style not about ability to complete the level.
Or, how about "money accumulates for the entire game", with the goal of "player sense of achievement". Sounds like fun. However, how does this affect gear purchases? If "gear choice doesn't matter" then nobody would
ever buy optional gear since your final score is being penalized for every purchase, so you have accumulating money, but at the expense of feeling free to try out the optional gear. However, if "gear choice matters" then it's twice as bad. You're final score is determined by buying as little as possible, however the game blocks you from finishing certain levels if you don't buy exactly the right gear. Which just gives you a sense that the game hates you for choosing anything, and that it's
fickle: you didn't buy a toothpick and piece of cheese in level #13 - and
only buy those items, so as to maximize your final score - which means you need to the restart level and make sure to get these items. Additionally, if there's accumulating money in concrete terms, then you're permanently penalized for missing some bit of loot in
any level, which discourages spontaneous play, since you need to scour every level to maximize your bank balance. All of this harms "player sense of achievement" not helps.
See? These things were clearly things that the Thief designs could
easily have added in, but they didn't, because of the forseeable problems for game balance and basic fun that they cause. It's certainly
not the case that they never thought of this stuff.
Author
Topic: SALES Thread (Read 1485179 times)