Reply With QuoteWow, if you're right that's one big cock up. I hope the developers hear about this quickly so it can be sorted.
I think we can all agree that, due to marketing decisions or whatever, Thief DS was released before it had been properly tested and polished. Case and point: no mouse-sensitivity slider in the menus. In addition to the odd things like the poorly optimized rag-doll effects, and an expert mode that is too easy, I am subject to random crashes, sound glitches and a host of other little problems.
But the bug I just discovered tonight (which will effect everyone, including XBox players) will make me wait for a patch. Yes, its that bad.
You see, in Thief DS, the difficulty mode affects the following elements of the game:
-objectives
-number of guards
-AI perceptiveness *
-AI combat ability *
When you load your game during a mission, you naturally expect that all of these elements will be preserved. The truth is that the latter two will be reset to normal difficulty, regardless of what setting you started the mission on.
How do I know this for certain?
Well, the DEFAULT.INI file contains a block of entries that describe the "multipliers" used to scale certain AI properties according to difficulty:
Because I was finding the game too easy on expert, I decided to increase the appropriate multipliers. It worked great at first, Hammerites were killing me in about 2 hits, just like in Thief Gold. But after reloading my game I noticed a drastic change. Much to my surprise, the damage seemed to be reduced below even the standard expert level.; -- THIEF 3
;
; AI visual acuity multiplier - how well AIs can see
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Easy=0.9
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Hard=1.15
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Expert=1.2
;
; AI auditory acuity multiplier - how well AIs can hear
Difficulty_AIAudio_Mult_Easy=0.8
Difficulty_AIAudio_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AIAudio_Mult_Hard=1.03
Difficulty_AIAudio_Mult_Expert=1.13
;
; AI tactile acuity multiplier - how well AIs can feel
Difficulty_AITactile_Mult_Easy=1.0
Difficulty_AITactile_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AITactile_Mult_Hard=1.0
Difficulty_AITactile_Mult_Expert=1.0
;
; AI hitpoints multiplier - all AI starting hitpoints will be scaled by this
Difficulty_AIHitPoints_Mult_Easy=0.75
Difficulty_AIHitPoints_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AIHitPoints_Mult_Hard=1.2
Difficulty_AIHitPoints_Mult_Expert=1.3
;
; AI combat speed multiplier - all AI combat animations are scaled by this
Difficulty_AICombatSpeed_Mult_Easy=1.0
Difficulty_AICombatSpeed_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AICombatSpeed_Mult_Hard=1.1
Difficulty_AICombatSpeed_Mult_Expert=1.2
;
; AI-to-player damage multiplier - all damage applied to the player by the AI is scaled by this
Difficulty_AIToPlayerDamage_Mult_Easy=0.5
Difficulty_AIToPlayerDamage_Mult_Normal=1.0
Difficulty_AIToPlayerDamage_Mult_Hard=1.25
Difficulty_AIToPlayerDamage_Mult_Expert=1.5
Unfortunately, this bug seems to occur with unmodified DEFAULT.INI files as well. Try it out for yourself. Restart a mission on *expert*, save immediately, take 1 hit from a baddie and note the health lost. Then load your game, and do the same. The damage will be smaller the second time.
Of all the multipliers listed above, the one that is not affected by this bug is AI hitpoints, which makes sense since they are calculated at the start of the mission.
Think you can get around this bug by setting the "normal difficulty" multipliers in your DEFAULT.INI file to those of "expert"? Think again. The multipliers are reset to 1.0 regardless of what's in the ini file.
This is bad folks, real bad.
Last edited by Northon; 6th Jun 2004 at 08:39.
Wow, if you're right that's one big cock up. I hope the developers hear about this quickly so it can be sorted.
Gott in himmel... this is not good. Though I am not as technically proficient as Northon, it seems that he's right. I noticed something odd about guard behaviour when playing but never really gave it too much of a second thought... looking back, Expert did seem just a bit too easy once it was saved and the mission loaded upon starting up TDS again.
Given the talk of changes at Ion Storm, hopefully this will be resolved in (fairly) short order.
Can't link you guys to the thread, but now that you mention this - I DO remember reading a post from someone who said that the game got really easy playing through this particular place for a second time through.
MAN! That sucks..................
I hope this is fixed by a fan programmer, cause I doubt an official patch will be released soon.
No wonder people have been saying it feels too easy. I bet everyone who's completed it feels ripped off now.
Kind of glad it's not available here for another month, gives time for you guys to iron out the bad bits and improve the first time experience for me
Last edited by Domarius; 6th Jun 2004 at 08:02.
Actually, I said that it got much more difficult.Originally Posted by Domarius
No game has ever been released completely bug-free. Truth be told, I haven't run into any glaringly obvious bugs in T:DS yet. I'm going to try this out and let you know.I think we can all agree that, due to marketing decisions or whatever, Thief DS was released before it had been properly tested and polished.
So perhaps THIS explains why Expert is so easy?!
Dark Sky
[QUOTE=Nupraptor]Actually, I said that it got much more difficult. QUOTE]
My bad memory. I can't beleive the guy I was 'vaguely' talking about, recognised I was talking about him...
I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to find a person with that kind of perception here.
Sorry for mis-quoting you.
I have an idea, could this problem possibly be worked around by changing all the difficulty settings to the expert values in Default.ini?
For example (The expert value is 1.2):
; AI visual acuity multiplier - how well AIs can see
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Easy=1.2
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Normal=1.2
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Hard=1.2
Difficulty_AIVisual_Mult_Expert=1.2
I'm going to try it.
My mistake for not reading the fine print, sorry.
I don't think i'll be playing again until a patch is released or someone comes up with another hack. It's not funny anymore.
No problem. Since I haven't seen anyone else mention the difficulty on their second playthrough (for that matter, I haven't seen anyone else mention a second playthrough yet), I simply presumed that you meant me.My bad memory. I can't beleive the guy I was 'vaguely' talking about, recognised I was talking about him...
I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to find a person with that kind of perception here.
Sorry for mis-quoting you.
Yet the game being more difficult the second time through could support this theory. On my second playthrough, I already knew where everything was located and exactly what I was supposed to do, so it probably involved much less loading. I probably played through good chunks of the level without loading at all.
And there's me thinking 'what could possibly be that bad'.
So it's either very hard, or not hard at all. I wonder if transitions also affect this...
Do you have anything to support this other than the amount of damage that NPCs are doing to you?
I just tried this out on the very last mission. Started it on Normal, ran into a guard and let him hit me. Took 3 bars of health. Restarted the mission on Expert, saved, ran into the same guard: 3 Bars of health. Loaded the save, ran into the guard: 3 Bars of health. If anything, it appears that the difficulty doesn't really affect how much damage that they deal to you.
I too am skeptical, not because I've tested it, but because too little evidence has been presented, and what has been presented is too anecdotal (spelling?).
If you're just gauging the difficulty setting by guard behavior, you've got to treat it far more scientifically, with good control variables and such, to really be conclusive. It's WAY too easy to think you see something that really isn't there from some small anomolies in some certain situation without good controls.
The Keep for Thief 1 and 2 FMs, Shadowdark for Thief 3 and Dark Mod FMs
I just tried it on Museum. I set the audio multiplier to 10 and the guard with the torch heard me running from a fair distance away (not as much as I thought), he then killed me in 3 hits (the last hit was only 1 hp anyway). Reloaded, tried it again. This time I had to get much closer and he was only hitting me for 2/3 bars at a time.
Am going to try again just to be sure.
I tried it. He's right.
I'm not really of a mind to try to finish the game without saving mid-mission. Guess I'm stuck playing on pathetic normal difficulty, or putting the game on hold until somebody fixes this nonsense...
I can absolutely confirm it affects guards hearing. On first entering the mission the guard could hear me running from a good distance away, and after a reload i had to run right into his torchlight before he even heard me. Shit.
Okey, this is crazy. How can they release it like this?
Oh, has this been posted on the ION forums? Someone should do that, and let the devs know about it.
It's subtle. Probably no one noticed. Look how long it took the Thief community and in the end it was only one person out of how many hardcore players. Everyone probably assumed that the game was too easy, or they were just too good at Thief by now.
Yes, but isn't this what testing is for? I mean, it's a pretty big bug.
Edit: Well, anyway, I just hope they get a patch out as soon as possible. Preferably before it's released here in Europe..
As I just said, the entire Thief community has had the game for over a week and it has only just been noticed (after tweaking with some files). That's the best testing the game could possibly have, and it's taken this long.
Northon - I'm gonna put this up on the Ionstorm board. Maybe there's hope for a last second fix for the PAL X-box release.
Cos this will totally kill the game for Xbox Thief fans....
What, you mean the beta-testers didn't play Thief 24 hours a day when they could have?
Just to make sure, I tried turning up the guards' sight and hearing to 150, then restarted the Citadel on Expert.
I stepped into the torchlight near the first pair of guards, who were about twenty or so paces away from me (well beyond their usual awareness distance). One of them was facing my direction, and as soon as I stepped into the light, he saw me, recognized me as an intruder, and came after me.
Then I restarted again to test their hearing. This time I stayed in the shadows. When their backs were turned, I walked across some tile, and they heard me and started searching.
Then I loaded my game. This time, I could stand in the torchlight, jumping up and down on the tile, and they didn't notice or care, no matter how long I stayed there in bright light jumping around. I'd say this bug definitely exists.
I noticed that, too. Although, I just ended up increasing the mutipliers for all difficulty levels, being that some of the levels take too long to loot hunt, so by dropping down a difficulty level or two, I still get tough guards without having to scour the level for that two percent.
Another thing I've noticed is the sound propagation....apparently, I caught a tip in one of the loading screens that described leaning into doors to hear what's happening on the other side...(a la thief 2)
This seemed weird to me, considering that even after I would close a door behind me (or creep toward), I already heard what was going on on the other side. So I said, "what the Hell", and leaned into it anyway...
Didn't notice a difference, really, until I "un-leaned", and lo and behold, the room I was in was silent, and I couldn't hear anything on the other side of that door. I leaned again into the door, and I could here the goings-on beyond clear as day.
Apparently, the eavesdrop-door-trick only works if you lean into it first. Anybody else notice that?
Also, I noticed that once you've lean into the door, and made it all quiet in the room, you can raise hell, and no one will hear you. Do that before you lean in, and you get company fast. So whatever is supposed to tell the door to block the sound when it's closed obviously isn't initializing.
Seems like a bug in the propagation system to me. Don't get me wrong, the sound is awesome on my crispy new Audigy 2, but c'mon...Thief 2 had the door trick, and it went out without a hitch.
BTW: My Audigy drivers are up to date...including the new EAX 4 protocols.
Last edited by Hylix Ulyx; 6th Jun 2004 at 09:55.
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