/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7761215]

Rank the Thief 1 & 2 missions. I'll start:
>Amazing, definitive Thief.
1. Life of the Party
2. The Sword
3. Song of the Caverns
4. Framed
5. Bonehoard
6. Blackmail
>Decent.
7. Shipping and Receiving
8. Running Interference
9. Masks
10. The Lost City
11. First City Bank and Trust
12. Precious Cargo
13. Ambush!
>Meh. These levels are okay, nothing special, nothing terrible.
14. Bafford's Manor
15. Casing the Joint
16. Assassins
17. Ambush!
18. Cragscleft
19. Eavesdropping
20. Trail of Blood
21. Trace the Courier
>Bad, but levels are manageable. These levels are annoying but pretty easy.
22. Kidnap
23. Mage Towers
24. Undercover
>Horrible: Mostly annoying and/or tiring, these levels are the ones where you are just playing it to get to the next level.
25. Haunted Cathedral
26. Thieves Guild
>A glance of autism: A special tier just for RttC. First half is good; second half is autistic.
27. Return to the Cathedral
>Supreme Autism and Complete Retardation of the Highest Degree: Some of the worst levels ever conceived.
28. Stranged Bedfellows
29. Maw of Chaos
30. Escape
31. Soulforge

[Anonymous No.7761590]

>>7761215
Thief Thread

[Anonymous No.7761602]

For me? It's Home Sweet Home by Lady Rowena

[Anonymous No.7761647]

>>7761215
I never minded maw of chaos that much, it's underwhelming as the end to the game but a breezy adventure map with a short and sweet puzzle boss was a nice relief from what came before it.

[Anonymous No.7761669]

>>7761215
I give shipping and receiving a pass as a lore dump mission but it's really belongs in meh, the central gimmick of the level is tedious and doesn't add anything particularly interesting to make up for it.

[Anonymous No.7761714]

>>7761215
Cragscleft and Receiving are definitive Thief, Interference and Masks are meh.

[Anonymous No.7761786]

>>7761215
Soulforge at the bottom? Embarrassing list. You are a massive pleb.

[Anonymous No.7761797]

>life of the meme

[Anonymous No.7761831]

>>7761786
Not everyone has brain damage.

[Anonymous No.7761852]

kys pleb

[Anonymous No.7761884]

>>7761852
Cope soulfag

[Anonymous No.7762521]

ignoring the unfathomably shitty taste of OP:
has anyone else played Whispers below the Cobblestone?
it's basically a city+mansion mission, with a huge underground area.

I liked it a lot. it had some very obvious influences from Into the Odd (underground city) and Ascend the Dim Valley (ruin dwellers).
superb architecture, especially in the Undercity.

my biggest problem is the pacing: the area that should have been used for the climax toward the end was instead placed halfway through, making the remaining part of the mission feel like a bit of a drag in comparison. very odd design choice.
that being said, it's great fun, and I strongly recommend it. it's really nice to see that great FMs are still being developed for T1

[Anonymous No.7762569]

>>7762521
>still shills for the inferior thief game

[Anonymous No.7762735]

>>7762521
I'll check it out, taffer! Thanks for the recommendation

[Anonymous No.7762746]

Anyone saying the pagan levels didn't blow post your run. Unless there's something wrong with you and you got these games down tranny-style there's no way it wasn't a quick load extravaganza.

[Anonymous No.7762769]

>>7762746
if you haven't beaten a thief level ironman you haven't truly appreciated it.

[Anonymous No.7763572]

>>7761215
I liked undercover

[Plutonia No.7764293]

I wanted to condense the main points of the series' lore for newcomers to consume. Any feedback?

[Anonymous No.7764380]

>>7764293
The City isn't nameless. Its name is literally The City.

[Plutonia No.7764401]

>>7764380
Sure, but Blackbrook is probably also called The City by Blackbrook citizens and The City is called something else by them.

[Anonymous No.7764458]

>>7764293
It's looking good, bro. Thank you

[Anonymous No.7764484]

>>7761215
>Masks over Casing the joint
It was redundant and boring. Casing the joint was okay, but basically repeating it felt like a chore.

[Anonymous No.7764737]

Alright, after playing Maw of Chaos and Strange Bedfellows again, I might put them from Retardation to meh. They weren't as bad as I remember but dragged bodies across maps is lame. Maw of Chaos is linear but I actually find it pretty nice breezy change of pace as >>7761647 mentioned.


>>7764484
Masks was boring right after CtJ but I think individually Masks is a bit more fun because you get to rope down into rooms.

>>7763572
Undercover is okay. The switch objective brought it down a lot, although on my second run since I knew where the switches were it wasn't as bad. I'd put it as decent now.

>>7762746
This. The pagan levels were terrible.

[Anonymous No.7766159]

>>7761215
>soulforge
>bad

[Anonymous No.7766169]

>>7766159
How does such a butt ugly bitch act so smug?

[Anonymous No.7767289]

are fan missions worth playing?

[Plutonia No.7767545]

S:
>First City Bank and Trust - Numerous ways in, randomized security, very challenging, no loot requirement
>Life of The Party - A lot of city exploration, great environmental storytelling, optional evasion segment
>The Sword - Great exploitation of unconventional level design, great atmosphere
>Song of The Caverns - Great twist that makes the player re-think their strategy
>Return to The Cathedral - Great twist, good use of undead as stealth enemies, fantastic atmosphere
>Sabotage at Soulforge - An obstacle course that forces the player to use all their accumulated skills
A:
>Down in The Bonehoard - The best use of difficulty mode selection in the history of videogames
>Framed - Great use of alternate paths to navigate. Fun exploration
>Masks - Good heist mission with tons of treasure to steal
>Precious Cargo - Good contrast in level design styles and interesting ideas
>Casing the Joint - Comfortable and warm atmosphere. A big hunt for small treasures
>Blackmail - Good external and internal exploration. Forced to be rather linear for story purposes
>Undercover - Decent attempt at a different form of stealth. Unavoidable alert ruins the end
>Break from Cragscleft Prison - Miserable atmosphere makes it great. Fun optional chaos of letting inmates out
B:
>Lord Bafford's Manor - A decent, atmospheric introduction to heists
>Shipping... and Receiving - A great non-linear exploration mission that is a bit rushed in the second half
>Assassins - Good trailing objective that leads to a decent mansion heist. Optional evasion segment
>Ambush! - Could use a bit more break-ins
>Eavesdropping - A huge amount of alternate entrances. Unskippable waiting objective hinders its quality
>The Haunted Cathedral - A very atmospheric ruin exploration with unreasonable loot- and enemy placement
>The Lost City - A monotone cave level saved by its interesting use of enemies and tons of ancient treasure
>The Mage Towers - A linear and boring obstacle course with occasional good challenge

[Plutonia No.7767549]

C:
>Running Interference - An unnecessarily linear tutorial mission that takes away the player's options for no reason
>Kidnap - Does its best in recycling one of the weaker levels of the previous game
>Trace the Courier - A very linear stealth challenge with next to no replayability
>Strange Bedfellows - Weird level design of inconsistent challenge. No loot for some reason
>A Keeper's Training - A linear tutorial that doesn't teach the majority of mechanics. Missed opportunity for story
>Thieves Guild - A linear sequence of mandatory secrets, trash NPC placement and bad loot requirement
D:
>Trail of Blood - Very linear, very stupid, too easy. Waste of a unique enemy type
>Into The Maw of Chaos - A single hallway downwards with no interesting challenges. Ends with a wait
>Escape! - A maze with fuck-you enemy placement

[Anonymous No.7767894]

How can I disable texture filtering?

[Anonymous No.7767905]

>>7766169
The same reason fat bitches act smug, bunch of desperate guys that would fuck anything gave them confidence

[Anonymous No.7768094]

>>7767289
yes, both for thief 1 and thief 2. There are countless and a lot of them are good.

[Anonymous No.7768117]

>>7761215
>Eavesdropping in meh
>Shipping and Receiving not in amazing
>Mage Twoers in bad
ngmi

[Anonymous No.7768150]

>>7768094
Wasn't there an anon who was busy writing this giant compendium of must play missions?

[Anonymous No.7768202]

>>7767545
>>7767549
Much better list

[Anonymous No.7768470]

>>7767894
"tex_filter_mode 0" in cam_ext.cfg
make sure you update newdark, older versions would disable lightmap filtering as well.

[Anonymous No.7768472]

>>7766159
Soulforge is trash, easily the worst Thief level ever created, both official and fan-made. I will never understand soulfags who defend it. Yeah, building shit across the entire map is tons of fun, if I wanted crafting I'd play the latest shitty survival game. At least when you're doing similar shit in SS2 you can blast your way through it.

I can only assume the people who like this level have severe brain damage, as there is nothing remotely fun about finding those parts, crafting them, then recrafting them, then finding the antennas, all while avoiding the machines in stealth and doing retarded parkour.

[Anonymous No.7768502]

>>7768472
>Yeah, building shit across the entire map is tons of fun
Building shit takes part in the first, smaller part of the map and there isn't much back and forth. Plus, you spend maybe third of the mission runtime building, rest is about the sabotage.
I like it because it's challenging, compared to the final missions of Dark Project and Deadly Shadows which were piss easy.

[Anonymous No.7768519]

>>7768472
The entire game before it introduces you to various mechanics and tools, and the mission objectives force you to utilize what you've learned. The final mission is supposed to test you on all of that, and you can't rely on having enough resources to deal with any situation any way you wish. I struggled with Soulforge as well when I was 12, because I was an impatient and wasteful knockout-spazz who couldn't handle the idea of actually sneaking around enemies. Soulforge is the best final mission in the trilogy precisely because in addition to having a plethora of challenge types to use all your equipment on, it has too many special threats to deal with using what you have. You finally do need to just get the fuck good and be stealthy, because if you aren't, big rape robots will come out of the damn walls.
...there is no reason for the antenna towers to be that tall though. Why the fuck couldn't it be a short lift and a long antenna instead of the other way around?

[Anonymous No.7768601]

>>7768502
>>7768519

I think these are some solid points and the next time I try the level again, I'll try to approach it more patiently. I'll admit, I did act an impatient 12 year old when playing the level. But I do think it tests your skills pretty well.

[Anonymous No.7768640]

>>7768601
The one issue on top of the antenna bullshit I mentioned that I have with the mission is that it does devolve a bit into a series of abstract challenge rooms as opposed to a realistic place. For example the furnace room has no other reason to exist but to have a shadow puzzle for stealth navigation.

[Anonymous No.7768653]

Deadly Shadows has quite a few weak levels, but there are three levels that I believe could hang with the best in 1 & 2, provided you use the Gold patch to remove loading screens.

>Shalebridge Cradle
Probably the scariest level in a non-horror game
>Overlook Mansion
Great atmosphere and sound design. Shadows being affected by lightning is a cool gameplay dynamic that should have been used more often.
>Wieldstrom Museum
Relatively large and open level with good use of verticality. The first two games were notably lacking a museum heist.

[Anonymous No.7768768]

>>7768653
The Clocktower and Keeper Compound were also alright, i really like the concept and overall design of them. If only they didnt feel so small and were expanded upon.

[Anonymous No.7768798]

>that one faggot made another thread so he could reeee- about how insecure Soulforge made him

[Anonymous No.7768823]

>>7767545
>>7767549
This is pretty good. I'd bump Bonehoard up to S-tier. Of all the mystical missions that and 'The Sword' are the ones that most people end up liking the most. Song of the Caverns or Return to the Cathedral shouldn't really be S-tier IMO.

[Plutonia No.7768863]

>>7768823
The reason Bonehoard isn't S-tier is that on hard and expert there is a mandatory use of explosives in a room with hostiles. There's absolutely no way to get the Mystic's Soul stealthily. At least in RtTC you only use the sunburst device a few seconds before the mission ends so the breaking of stealth isn't that egregious.

[Anonymous No.7768960]

>>7768863
holding an adventure map to such a strict standard in regards to stealth seems a bit misguided.

[Plutonia No.7769005]

>>7768960
I don't forgive design in a stealth game that is against the most important aspect of a stealth game. There can't be a non-stealth level in a stealth game. That's the same as having a dying level in a survival game. Or a diplomacy level in Doom.
The thing about stealth is that its failure is an unrecoverable state. Once you have been detected, that is the way it will have been, forever because you can't change the memory of your opponents in any game that isn't Remember Me. So, the game designers can't be allowed to give you that failure state by default. You can take away a player's weapons or most of his health in a shooter game where the objective is to survive and to kill. They can overcome that setback and continue to accomplish their prime directive. In a stealth game, you can't take away the player's undetectability, because they will never get it back. They will never not have been detected there. That's why it can only ever be the result of player error. The alert needs to be a punishment and a mark of shame.

[Anonymous No.7769020]

>>7769005
Thief 1 isn't really strictly a stealth game though. You're tomb raiding pretty much just as much as you're sneakan

[Plutonia No.7769050]

>>7769020
It doesn't change into a different game just because the location is different. It's challenge variety, but variety of challenge for a stealth character. Garrett is such a good thief that he can even sneak around demons. And as the game goes on and you face off with different types of enemies, they test your stealth in different ways. Suddenly, your quiet and clean weapon to dispatch threats no longer works. You can't render undead unconscious. Suddenly the shadows fail you, as fire elementals bring their own light with them. Then you get animals and demons that not only make a lot of noise when you knock them out, but you can't even pick up and hide their bodies because of their weight. Even the missions you think are "tomb raiding" aren't supposed to be Lara Croft style shootouts where you exterminate all wildlife around you. You don't quit stealth just because it's burricks instead of guards. If you do, you do so because you want to.

[Anonymous No.7769123]

Down to the Bonehoard and The Sword are the most overrated Thief levels. They are great for one playthrough, and then the novelty wears off.

[Anonymous No.7769478]

>>7769005
>The thing about stealth is that its failure is an unrecoverable state. Once you have been detected, that is the way it will have been, forever because you can't change the memory of your opponents in any game that isn't Remember Me.
This is one of the most autistic and retarded things I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.7769504]

Ghosting. Not even once.

[Anonymous No.7769539]

>>7769478
Witnesses is why you get a better rating in Hitman if you kill a person who saw you than what you get when evading and leaving them alive. Collateral damage as well as witnesses are both unrecoverable mistakes that lower your rating down from Silent Assassin. Zero mistakes is always superior to one mistake.
>>7769504
Who the hell was talking about ghosting? Nobody is advocating for a Thief game that should be designed to be ghostable. None of them have been. The only missions where you aren't allowed to knock out anyone are Casing the Joint and Framed on expert.

[Anonymous No.7769660]

>>7769539
Pretty sure Thief 2 was designed to be ghosted

[Anonymous No.7769676]

>>7769660
It very much isn't. Running Interference requires 8 knockouts and Kidnap requires one, or three if you want to avoid all suspicion.

[Anonymous No.7769743]

I want to play this game a lot. Any mods I need for Thief Gold?

[Anonymous No.7769757]

>>7769743
TFix_Lite and you're good to go

[Anonymous No.7769762]

>>7769743
TFix Lite https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733
It fixes Thief Gold so it works on modern systems but doesn't touch the game design. The author of TFix is kind of an ass, and thought that he knew better than Looking Glass. He did fix the programming error of the mantling system, but he also thought that the level design had been balanced around the absence of properly functioning mantling. So he wanted to make alterations to the level boundaries to prevent players from reaching new areas using a mantling system that actually works as intended. He even "fixed" a wall that he thought was supposed to be too tall to mantle, just because he was too unskilled at the game to jump up that wall and mantle over it using the old and broken mantling mechanic.
...Because obviously, you know. An immersive sim is all about deciding the intended path for players and not giving them any room to improvise. That's why Looking Glass added ladders outside level geometry just in case curious players... oh wait

[Anonymous No.7770330]

What do you guys think of The Dark Mod? Tried playing it a while back, but coming from Thief I really hated the way the way it felt.

[Anonymous No.7770401]

>>7770330
I like it a lot, but haven't been keeping up for a couple years.
people often shit on its movement in these threads, but I like it less floaty. and it feels more tense without the good old exploitable Thief AI.

[Anonymous No.7771354]

>>7770401
>people often shit on its movement in these threads, but I like it less floaty.
First person games have floaty movement for a reason. You shouldn't have things like camera wobble, strafe and curve tilting etc. because in real life, a person's vestibular system filters out that kind of excess movement from their vision. A non-VR videogame can't do that because your head is not really moving the way the character's is, so the force feedback to your vestibular system does not exist and your vision can't filter out that movement. So any additional "realism" in the way a character's head moves is actually less realistic than its absence because of the physiological disconnect between the game and the player.

[Anonymous No.7771407]

>>7761215
(S)pecial: Bonehoard, The Sword, Haunted Cathedral, Lost City (TDP version), Return to the Cathedral
(A)wesome: Cragscleft, Assassins
(B)ased: Bafford, Escape, Strange Bedfellows, Maw of Chaos, Shipping and Receiving, Trail of Blood
I don't (C)are: Eavesdropping, Casing the Joint, Precious Cargo, First City Bank and Trust, Song of the Caverns
I (D)islike them: Running Interference, Undercover
(E)specially bad: Ambush, Trace the Courier
(F)ucking skip them everytime: Thieves Guild, Mage Towers, Kidnap, Soulforge

[Anonymous No.7771424]

>>7762521
Played a half hour of it so far and I like it a lot, good recommendation, I can finally update my shitty taste

I'm still playing through Thief 2x, I'm liking it a lot as well. I'm at "The Art of Deception", I hope the quality stays steady. I really liked "Down Among Dead Men", linear but great level.

I've been trying to not knockoutfag as much. Only doing it as necessary. I think it would be neat to have an "ammo count" for the blackjack, or a limited amount of uses before it breaks, would have made for an interesting mechanic

[Anonymous No.7771437]

>>7771424
I think Payday 2 has zipties or something. You can incapacitate a limited amount of enemies, but when you run out of resources, you have to leave them unconscious but not restrained, so as soon as they wake up you have to deal with an alarm.

[Anonymous No.7771759]

>>7771354
by floaty I meant that in Thief it's a bit like you're trudging through water, there's some inertia or something. while TDM feels more snappy/responsive.
and regardless, Thief has noticeable headbob anyway, while TDM is more customizable. so I'm not sure what your point was. 'realism' is almost always a shit argument also.

[Anonymous No.7771815]

>>7771759
Yeah. AAA developers these days try to make things look "realistic" by introducing real camera effects and all sorts of wobbly mass qualities into the camera of a game, without the slightest clue that their attempts at making it look more like a movie simultaneously makes the game worse to play and ironically less realistic. It's the worst of all worlds. Sometimes better gameplay does in fact coincide with realism. It's just that many devs don't know what that is. Good games sacrifice realism for better gameplay. Bad games sacrifice gameplay for better realism. Irredeemable pieces of shit sacrifice both for no gain.

[Anonymous No.7772048]

>>7761215
>Rank the Thief 1 & 2 missions. I'll start:

Thief 1 levels>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Thief 3 levels>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Thief 2

[Anonymous No.7772052]

Bad opinions galore

[Anonymous No.7772078]

>>7767545
>>Framed - Great use of alternate paths to navigate. Fun exploration
>>Masks - Good heist mission with tons of treasure to steal
>>Precious Cargo - Good contrast in level design styles and interesting ideas
>>Casing the Joint - Comfortable and warm atmosphere. A big hunt for small treasures

this all are garbage

[Anonymous No.7772087]

>>7772048
Rank 4channel's contrarian hipsters. I'll start:
/v/ == /tv/ == /mu/ == /vr/ == /vg/

[Anonymous No.7772091]

>>7772087
80% of the missions in thief 2 are garbage

[Anonymous No.7772153]

>>7772091
I'm sorry, but you're confused. It's 80% of your post that is garbage. I calculated.

[Anonymous No.7772272]

>>7772091
>Thief Gold
-A Keeper's Training is a tutorial mission that neglects to teach you half of the game's features and simultaneously doesn't let you go back and practice previously taught mechanics. It's almost as bad an antithesis to the game's general design as Death of A Showman in Hitman Blood Money.
-On top of being a sewer level, Thieves Guild is a linear sequence of mandatory secrets, and after all that work the exit door is 15 meters away from your objective, like you're playing Skyrim or some other zoomer trash.
-Haunted Cathedral has completely unreasonable AI and loot placement. It's like the mission wants you to have an all-out fight with burricks, zombies and spiders at the same time, since you're forced to stand on a lit pedestal while hurling out explosives.
-Mages Towers also suffers from linearity. You have to go through each of the funhouse rides before you can get the treasure, and two out of four towers are pointless waste of time, not challenges.
-Escape is just a maze, and on Expert you have a primary objective in a room who's layout is completely against stealth. Fully lit, with multiple patrolling enemy types.
-Strange Bedfellows feels more like "that stealth level in a non-stealth game" than a Thief mission. Every NPC is deliberately placed in a way that is trivial to bypass, and there's essentially a single way through.
-Maw of Chaos is just a straigh path down with nothing interesting going for it. Its only redeeming factor is that you use theft to defeat a final boss.

[Anonymous No.7772276]

>Thief 2
-Eavesdropping would be a great little mission if it wasn't for the long unskippable dialogue you have to listen.
-Trace The Courier recycles a mission layout while making it completely linear.
-Trail of Blood is like a Call of Duty level. An illusion of exploration turns into a hallway of setpieces.
-Kidnap recycles a Thief 1 mission and somehow manages to make a familiar place harder to navigate.
-Casing The Joint is largely pointless other than being a balanced mandatory ghost mission for beginners. Also, there's no reason to block a player from entering "a non-mission zone" just because your objective is to find it only.

So, 33% of Thief 2 missions are bad. Personally I like the gameplay of Casing, but recycling geometry and barring off locations is still cheap and shitty. 43% of Thief 1 missions are bad. And you know what? Only 18% of Deadly Shadows missions are bad.