Observations

[Vigil]

I replayed Lord Edmund Entertains last night.
Bloody hell.

The authors of the current crop of ordained classics would do well to revisit missions like this and figure out what they've been missing. Because I had fun, for the first time in a very long while. The most recent mission I genuinely enjoyed playing like this was The Focus, and it was an awfully long dry-spell before that one too.

The mission certainly isn't without its faults, of course. There are no light radiuses which can make sneaking too unforgiving in places. There's technical issues like roombrushing problems and double doors not being linked, and the mission layout is too linear and contrived for my liking. But there were so many things it did right.

• Like AIs. Probably the best compliment I can give is this: it didn't feel like if I knocked out one AI, I might as well knock out them all, and I haven't been able to say that for a long while. It was a mission that genuinely rewarded sneaking, as opposed to ghosting. There were enough AIs to provide a challenge, with cunning overlappings of areas, but there were never too many in one area and most of the patrols made timing a pleasant challenge rather than a chore. Instead of throwing AIs at the player every 5 feet ("Expert really means expert!") the mission used lighting, terrain and floors very well to put the AIs it did have to the best advantage.
  
  To get personally critical for a moment, the very first scene of Coterie of Smokers was 9 guards guarding... a garden. If that doesn't explain why I stopped playing the mission right there, then you're probably reading the wrong thread.
• Like loot. The total loot in the mission was 2008, and it was sparse and well-placed. The lord's table had 3 gold plates, an extravagance. The inn had one treasure goblet, hidden carefully at the back of a shelf. In a modern mission I would expect to walk out of there with 5 goblets (from the Low Poly Guild), 2 fine wines and the purse on someone's belt, and that's if the author had been feeling cautious that day.
• Like architecture. This was one of the most detailed and elaborate missions at the time of release, but the careful simplicity was a breath of fresh air after the overwrought victoriana I've been getting for the past 2 years. Once again, more brushes and custom textures doesn't mean more atmosphere. Perhaps this is Thief 2's fault more than that of FM makers, but I think the starkness of Thief 1's late-medieval 'vibe' offers a much cooler and more involving feel, and I wish people would try to capture that more often. (I'm looking forward to that Thief 1 mission, Zaccheus!)
• Like one of the best readables I have ever seen in an FM. Anyone planning on writing 7-page diaries for every character in their mission, and naturally I am not looking at anyone in particular, should read Lord Edmund's journal and decide if they can match it. If you can't, then don't. The other readables were also well-articulated, to the point and hinted rather than underlined.
• Like being as long as it *needed* to be, and no more. This is something I know is more subjective right than most, but in my book more doesn't mean better and I'm just not a fan of long-winded FMs. A 4-hour FM simply does not contain double the fun of a 2-hour one, though it certainly can contain double the tedium.

I'm not saying LEE excelled, nor that these points are the be-all end-all. But its strengths highlighted the distinct flaws I've been seeing in modern missions, flaws that seem to have their roots more in current FM culture than personal technique.

Nor do I think this is just a matter of my personal taste. I've talked to many people who have expressed the same malaise with modern FMs, and who have also noticed the many authors who have stopped authoring and being part of the community since this climate shift. To put it bluntly, nobody seems to give a damn about good old fashioned gameplay anymore, which is to say gameplay with a small g that comes before the word 'style' in the dictionary.

So I guess the point of this post is, can we stop patting ourselves on the back for our miniature opuses and get back to making missions that are actually enjoyable? I'm getting tired of wading through Concept and Achievement and general self-indulgence in search of kernels of fun.

[Vigil]

I apologise if this thread seems snide and over-critical, but it's the culmination of months of general frustration and specific irritations. I don't want to put anybody's efforts down, but at the same time when I'm this bothered I don't feel that I should continue saying nothing just because I can't say anything nice.

I suppose what I'm reacting to most is the huge amount of back-patting going on (especially the ones patting themselves) as if what authors are producing or working on now is the acme of Dromed achievement. I think there's a lot of ways things could be better, with general outlook as well as with actual missions, but that seems to be getting lost under the weight of the overwhelming praise for releasing missions at all.


Oh, and it hasn't just been The Focus that I've enjoyed lately. Plagiarism and The Relic I also had a lot of fun with. That they were both small contest missions probably says something important

[Gingerbread Man]

Word.

All of it. Just... word.

I think one of the things that makes me nostalgic for the old crop of maps is that we had played the HELL out of Thief by the time we started making FMs. Mappers were steeped in the understanding of what made missions fun, what the actual skills of mapping are (hint: one of them isn't Stuff Everywhere), and such. Of course, since then most people play Thief / Thief 2 once or twice, play a load of FMs, and then leap straight into building one of their own.

I'm not sure if that's an accurate generalisation, but it seems to be. And there is the inescapable fact that modern maps are built by people who draw their inspiration and benchmarks and general philosophy from years of FMs... which, for good or for evil, isn't the same at all as if all you have are the original missions and a handful of FMs. It's inevitable that things turn into a good-natured and personal-best One-Upmanship, but there's no reason things have to degenerate into "mini-opuses" (which they seem to be tending to)

People building FMs should always look at the first crop, the ones that were considered amazing. LEE, Shunned, Bloodstone, etc. They aren't technical achievements by our current standards. Hell, they aren't even that good-looking for the most part. But they played really really well, and they still stand up to scrutiny. And it's not because the mappers were better, more talented, smarter, better-looking (although... that Gonchong... rawr) -- it's mainly because they didn't get built using four or five years of FMs as their guide.

[mopgoblin]

I'd agree with all of this. It says a lot about the change in FM quality when I can remember this mission in considerable detail (having not played it for years), and yet with many more recent FMs it's a struggle to recall anything a day after playing them.

[Vigil]

GBM, I kiss you!

Thanks for the historical observation skillz too. I hadn't considered the effect that the inspiration of 5 years of FMs has had on FM building, and I didn't really consider that it could be responsible for a negative as well as a positive effect.

People are quite wrapped up in having excelled the OMs but in many important ways, we haven't. From experience we can all say it is dead easy to make a mission look better than the originals, whose general art direction was pretty pants, but it sure as hell isn't easy to make one play better. And in any fan-made project for whatever game, the hardest thing of all is stopping your own self-indulgence - there's no deadline and no team of paid people to say "that's wanky and boring, leave it out".

And yet, and yet, this didn't seem to be such a problem in the older FMs.

[mol]

I agree with what's been said.

It's not my style to criticize the Fan Missions, because I feel like I'm getting something for free and really haven't given much enything back to this community, like building even a simple mission (I'm working on one, but the work is slow), but sometimes it's beneficial to discuss what makes a good mission.

Every aspiring FM author would do well to read what Vigil wrote, and take it under advice. I for one certainly will.

There are many missions that look beautiful, but are a walk in the park to play through. They're fun for a brief taffing session, but don't get you really involved in them. You find yourself going through the motions, but the missions lack balance and finesse. The gameplay isn't always there.

I know good gameplay in a Fan Mission is difficult to accomplish, but many missions out there would've been twice as good had the authors spent those extra hours really thinking about the motivation for everything they have in the mission.

Having said all that, I appreciate every Fan Mission and every FM author out there, and jump up and down with joy when new missions are released. Dromeding is hard work. I for one promise that if I'll ever get as far as releasing my Fan Mission, I'll try to pay extra attention to those points raised by Vigil.

[Morrgan]

Oh yes. I agree with every point, especially about the readables. If most FM diaries (or even one in three or four) were as well written as the one in LEE, I wouldn't hate them with such a passion.

The one thing I remember about the older missions is that I'd play them several times and still have fun every time. Hell, I still have fun when I play through one of my old favorites, such as LEE and Bloodstone. There are plenty of pretty missions these days, but fun ones seem to be rare. *sighs wistfully*

[Vigil]

Thanks mol, and I for one will try to do the same. A lot of this is actually a reaction to my own in-progress mission as well, which is as pretty as a Faberge egg and currently about as substantial. It's early days yet, but I've worried that unless I start caring less about how it looks and how I'll look when it's released and more about the actual playability and fun factor, then it will be just another symptom of what I've been bitching about.

Subtext: Lest anyone think I'm too critical of others, I'll be critical of myself as well

[Ravenhook]

The comment made by Vigil is a very good one,that in the early days Thief2(and of course Thief D.P) had, had the hell played out of it and unlike deadly shadows you could level skip to your favourite style of map, this then I suppose shaped the style of map which we were all familiar with and loved.
Nowerdays the mapper is trying to make his or her own mark on maps and it dosen't always appeal to all.
As I am one of the unfortunates who haven't either the brains or the pacience to reason out Dromed, I salute all mappers who belong in a class of thier own for their enginuity and perseverence.Also a very big thankyou too, for without you guys and girls our life would be far less colourfull.
If we get an editor for T.D.S I wonder if the same pattern will emerge, we'll have to see.

[mopgoblin]

People are quite wrapped up in having excelled the OMs but in many important ways, we haven't.

It's always annoyed me when people have said that a mission is better than the OMs, as if quality is simple enough that it can be measured so easily, and you can line them all up and say "well, this one is clearly better than that one". The closest remotely measurable thing there is (being-an-enjoyable-Thief-mission-ness or whatever) rarely shows up in quantities similar to those of most OMs anyway, I'd say. If you collected up all such FMs you'd have maybe a dozen.

One thing I wonder about fairly often is why maps seem to be considered optional (well, technically they're not essential, but what reason is there to not include one in a non-miniscule mission?), and the only reason automaps can't be thought of as mythical is that no one ever even mentions them. The thing about maps (and automaps) is that they're easier to make than a custom object or roughly equivalent to a custom texture, but they provide an automatic +1 to gameplay (know a little about where you're going before you arrive, and get planning), and can also improve the atmosphere etc if they're done well. I don't recall any OMs which didn't have an automap.

There's too much focus on custom stuff, as well. It doesn't help if you've got a new object model, or a texture, motion, tech thing, weapon, or creature - unless it makes the mission more enjoyable. This means it either helps the gameplay or improves the atmosphere. Things that improve the atmosphere are generally fairly similar to what's already there. Not necessarily inconspicuous, but having the same style. Ideally if I gave the mission to someone who'd never played Thief before, and if I asked them to find the custom object, they'd need many guesses to get it right. It should also be noted that of the two (fairly) recent missions I downloaded and played last night, the small-ish (<5MB) one has proved itself considerably more enjoyable than the very large (>20MB) one. On a scale of which I'm not going to reveal the upper limit, I'd give them about 1.90 and 0.25 respectively.

[Ottoj55]

until recently i'd only played perhaps a dozen FMs, i've decided to start playing FMs, as of now i've finished about 50. about 15 of them i've personally rated 6 or above, i'll see how it holds up, but that means about 1/3 of missions are decent enough that i would replay them. the key ingredient is that all these missions had good stories.

i've also decided that the undead are a crutch. i've played two missions so overloaded with the walking dead that they ceased being fun. the OMs and the better FMs used the undead to sparing, and more frightening levels. there is nothing fun about finding a way to insert yourself in the patrol of two haunts so that you can make it down the hall past three zombies and then hide in a room waiting for the next gap. it is fun when you open a door and a zombie is there waiting. hordes of undead does not equal scarey people. just like long journals doesn't equal story. and just like key hunts don't equal interesting gameplay and just like overly complicated puzzles with bad clues don't equal a mystery.

[bbb]

Clearly some missions are heads above others. I enjoy most of them but have only played the T1/TG missions (all of them at this point). When I get to play hundreds of missions free for a game I love, I don't complain. I appreciate what has been done.

I am finishing my third mission and clearly my missions are in the best category, but some people have enjoyed playing them. I try to make missions in the T1, Lord Bafford style. Although I don't do a lot of self back patting, I do appreciate how much work goes in to making even a small misison and have apprciation for those who spend time making missions that entertain me.

Overall, I think this posting is overly critical. If you don't like a mission or missions, don't play them or go spend $50 for new boring crappy games! When I fell on KOMAG's site and realized I could play lots of Thief missions, I thought I died and went to heaven!!!

BBB

[bbb]

Correction - I meant that my missions are NOT in the best category. Sorry for the misposting that seems really arrogant. Unintentional mistake.

[The_Dude]

I think one of the problems is that Thief in general is becoming a little stale and the current crop of designers seem to spend more time on aesthetics than on gameplay (which for me is the key). I too find most recent FM's tedious (not because they are bad) but then I have played virtually everyone released. I think designers need to try new styles without going too far and leaving the Thief universe behind. My favourite FM recently was the CoSaS release, Gathering at the Bar.

What I would really like to see is more FM's created by team efforts, using the best skills of each contributor. So many of these tend to fail because their dream is too large. Wouldn't it be great if we had small teams producing Contest 5 size FM's, full of detail and ingenuity.

[Invisibility]

I agree with you on this, Vigil. Lord Edmund was the first FM I played, and I enjoyed it. Bloodstone Prison was another great one. Some FMs appear really good, but often their polish conceals their faults more than it makes the player enjoy the mission. I also think that making too long a mission can really ruin what's already there. Ominous Bequest was wonderfully built, but the ending was drawn out so much it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Shunned was a tiny mission by today's standards, but it was well-built and I felt satisfied (though pretty shaken, I'll admit) with how it ended.

Also, I think one good way to judge a mission is how you feel when you finish it. If you feel like you've accomplished something, that's good. If you're happy because you had fun, that's good. If you're scared and thanking the Builder you survived that, that's usually good as well. If you're thinking, "Thank God I'm done with this mission," that's not so good. I know it's really hard to get it right, especially if you don't have a lot of experience with Dromed, but it's something FM authors should keep in mind.

P.S. -- Vigil, I've been considering replaying Lord Edmund sometime soon. Just because of this thread, I think I will later today.

[Eshaktaar]

Hey, was there some subliminal message on the forums that made people play LEE? It just happens I replayed this mission very recently, as well. It was one of the first FMs I played, and I still enjoy it.

Gameplay is the hardest part of a mission, as it is something abstract, something that can't be simply written down in a tutorial (e.g. there's loads of tutorials around telling you how to make patrol routes in the technical sense - but none of them talk about how to make them "fun"). As an author you have to follow your instincts what makes a map enjoyable - there are a couple of rough guidelines, but apart from that you're on your own. I agree with GBM that authors who'd spent days playing the original Thief missions again and again before even the editor got released acquired a better understanding what makes a mission work.

One of my pet peeves are FMs that alter the gameplay just for the sake of making things harder (e.g. You can't blackjack normal guards anymore - why? Because the author said so!), and missions that give me the feeling that the author is constantly shouting "NYAH!" into my neck while I'm playing (e.g. I have to run through half the mission without any equipment, and when I finally get my blackjack, it's rendered useless). In my book, harder seldomly equals better.

Anyway, thanks for this thread, Vigil!

[Invisibility]

One of my pet peeves are FMs that alter the gameplay just for the sake of making things harder (e.g. You can't blackjack normal guards anymore - why? Because the author said so!), and missions that give me the feeling that the author is constantly shouting "NYAH!" into my neck while I'm playing (e.g. I have to run through half the mission without any equipment, and when I finally get my blackjack, it's rendered useless). In my book, harder seldomly equals better.

Your last point is a good one, but I think mindless challenge is what should specifically be avoided. Don't make it challenging for challenge's sake. If two guards have patrols that intersect, forcing you to time their movements and judge the best time to sneak across a hallway and pick a lock in open light, that's imaginative challenge.

If you place several guards patrolling across a well-lit, wide expanse of tile, never stepping into another room so you can sneak past, with no way around, they're going to be a huge annoyance to the player. If you add a no-blackjacking objective and make the player traverse the entire mission (which isn't always a bad thing in itself, but depending on the mission it can get annoying...) multiple times during the course of the mission for a nigh-impossible key hunt, they'll probably be very irritated by the end of the mission.

[mopgoblin]

Overall, I think this posting is overly critical. If you don't like a mission or missions, don't play them or go spend $50 for new boring crappy games!

Similarly, if you don't like this thread then you could just not read it, yes? Anyway, I reckon there are a lot of threads which contain too much praise, but I have a pretty good idea of what sort of reaction I'd get if I posted that in the middle of one.

One of my pet peeves are FMs that alter the gameplay just for the sake of making things harder (e.g. You can't blackjack normal guards anymore - why? Because the author said so!), and missions that give me the feeling that the author is constantly shouting "NYAH!" into my neck while I'm playing (e.g. I have to run through half the mission without any equipment, and when I finally get my blackjack, it's rendered useless). In my book, harder seldomly equals better.

Yeah, whenever I start a mission which says "You [lost/broke/bit a large piece out of] your [sword/blackjack]. Find a replacement", the first thing I think is "Not another one of these find-replacement-stuff missions". Having no weapons doesn't add to gameplay, it adds to the number of times I have to wait for quickloads.

I agree that the various no-KO setups are usually a bad idea. The best examples would be Framed (which is done properly) and Casing (not all that far from the worst setup possible, even if we pretend the fail-if-seen bit doesn't exist). For a start, the mission has to be a bit more forgiving when you make a mistake - more shadows (or chances to create them, at least) than normal, always-noisy floors avoided in favour of only-noisy-to-land-on or always-quiet floors in the majority of areas, AI distribution should be quite sparse, etc. If that's not the case, it turns into "guard thinks he sees or hears someone, reload, try again". Also, a knockout limit is a far better idea than "don't blackjack anyone", taking away the blackjack, or filling the mission with those no-KO guards.

[NXMT]

I'm going to have to agree with the forced ghosting comments. I don't have trouble with ghosting at all but sometimes, you are simply thrusted into a VERY UNFORGIVEABLE situation where the enemy AI seem to be alert and there's too little shadows to sneak through. As mopgoblin mentioned, it's better to limit the number of KO's then take it away all together AND not even give the players useful equipment such as flash bombs or gas mines to compensate. Scaling the walls in Tuttocomb's tomb is a perfect example.

[demagogue]

Eshkatar made half of my point. Gameplay is so hard to think about when you're juggling enough balls making an FM, whereas the aesthetics are so much more tangible. It's hard to resist falling into this trap.

Some of it, too, is the FM making process. I only have so many hours in a week to work on my FM, and maybe 2 hours for each session, so I tend to end up focusing on one "scene" per session, getting the atmosphere right...

But after so many sessions of doing that, I look back on the whole thing and realize the gameplay is getting squeezed out! My feeling is that gameplay is holistic, but my (RL driven) editing methodology gets overly technical. It's like a trap you can see coming, but it's difficult to avoid.

I guess reflecting the problem is the first step, and I liked the idea of soaking up the OM's to put one in the right frame of mind... It's just hard to work into a working methodology the idea that you have to be in the right "frame of mind"...

I'm glad that this thread has helped put into words some of my frustration with the FM making process which I hadn't been able to articulate myself.

[Vigil]

bbb, I have the world's smallest violin playing as we speak in honor of every person who has ever sat down in front of Dromed, hammered at it, and released something. I know just how much work goes into them.

But to put what I think is your position into the cold hard light of day, does putting time and effort into doing something you enjoy mean that everyone else has to forget their critical faculties and praise the author to the heavens? Or else shut the hell up and go play some other game, if they get irritated, frustrated or just plain bored to tears at the result? It's as if this is meant to be a choir, not a forum.

I have a bun in the oven as well, to join the hundreds on hundreds of FMs people have been making for 6 years for their own amusement and public recognition. When it's released, if it ever is, I don't want people to pile me with gratitude and praise merely because of the time I put into something I enjoyed doing. I want them to tell me, honestly, what they think of it. If someone thinks it's horribly dull, or too frustrating, or full of self-indulgent wank, then I want them to tell me. I'd far rather have sincere criticism than insincere praise or blind gratitude or silence, which seem to be the only options allowed when someone doesn't actually like a mission.

(Not that this thread is meant to be about complaining about not being allowed to criticise. That's a separate thread entirely, and one that would probably get locked once I got into full swing.)

[Vigil]

Well put, demagogue. I wish I could add something to that, but I can't I really agree with your comment about gameplay being holistic, whereas generally I think authors design piecemeal, and as you say when you're focusing so hard on one scene or area then you can't see the wood for the trees.

[The_Dude]

Some good points have been made and I don't think this thread is in any way derogatory to current designers.

I too am sick of all these self-congratulatory threads posted by authors showing off their latest masterpiece. People then line up to "ooh and ahh" in appreciation at the latest screenshots of architectural wonder. I find myself hammering the keyboard shouting "Yes, but what about the gameplay".

Having said this I'm sure most designers plan to make their FM's playable but as Eshaktaar states this is not easy. I hope my current FM will offer players hours of involving gameplay but it is very difficult to judge. Perhaps we should have a panel of judges to test each FM released and only allow the good ones to be hosted by TTLG. All "failures" would be returned to the authors with tips on how to improve their effort!

[Ottoj55]

thats what beta testing is for. i think in the end that beta testers just need to be more up front about the missions. i want testers to tear my stuff apart looking for plot holes, bad ai patrols, places with bad gameplay, etc. etc, not just architecture. i admit when i test things that architecture usually is the first complaint, but that is because i view it as something that can with some time be fixed easily. bad gameplay is harder.

[The_Dude]

Yes I agree, but it is difficult for beta testers to be too critical.