The combat needs to be fixed...

[Jan]

I really like the game that this game tries to be. I enjoy the difficulty, the slow pace of gameplay, I love the setting and the concept, and I can tolerate the clunky controls.

However, the combat is abyssmal. It's okay that the thieves are weak and the guard strong, but I would enjoy having a few more options during combat.
1. As far as I have been able to determine stealth kills such as backstabbing are not in this game.
2. Once you enter combat your thief is locked in and cannot run away.
3. The combat is frustratingly slow, so much so that you'll be lucky to be able to kill the guard before more guards come wandering.
4. Several guards can gang up on a single thief, but two thieves are unable to gang up on a single guard.
5. The guards patrol patterns are so random and wonky that it is nearly impossible to plan ahead.

All this amounts to a very frustrating situation where if you have to get rid of a guard, such as in several of the story missions, your only recourse is open combat, and once you commit to fighting a guard it only a roll of the dice that determines wheter you'll have a chance at winning or have to fight a slowly growing line of guards.

[darkSol]

I believe you can use flanking to allow 2 thieves to attack 1 guard. Also, you could try to lure a guard as far as you can away from the areas where his buddies can help, like a rooftop or a building that is mostly empty.

While it wasn't ultimately successful on my attempt since other guards were drawn in and my thief was defeated, I did find that you can attack a guard who has captured one of your theives, and free them as long as you get to them before they are lead to the edge of the map. Could be useful if you have good combat stats, or have a fighter thief with better jail time traits (like Key for example, if you train him in knife fighting), allowing you to trade one captured thief for the other.

[Fridge Lord]

I agree with you that combat would benefit from being polished in some ways.

In the meantime, I'll second darkSol and share some of my observations from the combat system in hopes that it will help a little. Combat can be a pain sometimes, and it's required for a few missions.

Tips:

1) Train up a few thieves to just be assassins. Don't worry about their stealth too much and just buff their speed and stength. Get them knife fighting, critical strike, and acrobatics. Acrobatics will help them escape.

2) If you're going to fight, try to do it in a building close to an underground escape. Your killers will need to extract and you don't want them to have to cross 3 buildings of guards to get to the extraction point.

3) Plan your combat. Stake out a building and find out where the guards and peasants are first, so as to not run into trouble.

4) Don't fight in the street. Other guards will likely see you, especially if they were in a house and then leave to guard the street.

5) For combat missions, pick a building with few guard patrols, install your thieves there, and go to work. Do not open locked doors right away, as these often contain guard patrols you are not aware of which will then flood the building and level once the door is unlocked.

6) PROTIP- You CAN in fact double team guards. However it can be wonky sometimes so you want to minimize the game's weirdness as much as possible. The best way to do this is to pick a designated fighting/ambush zone in your building of choice.

The ideal fighting spot would be a large room, preferably at the top of a stairwell. We'll call this the killzone. Hide one killer to the left of the killzone (top of stairwell), and one killer to the right of the stairwell. When you're ready to isolate and kill a guard, have them spot a revealed killer, and then have them chase that killer to the killzone (up the stairwell from underneath). As an example, righthand killer pulls guard to top of stairwell, moves into position to right of killzone, and begins fighting with guard. At this point, lefthand killer reveals himself, and moves in to left side of guard. This will cause a doubleteam.

For best results, have the 2nd killer click on the target guard while in fighting mode. The reason we pick this large killzone at the top of the stairwell is because sometimes obstructions like doors and bottoms of stairwells seem to confuse the game and prevent a doubleteam.

I have in some situations also been able to doubleteam a guard when both killers are on the same side of the guard. However, this may be a bug/luck.

Good luck.

[Tactrix]

The issue I have with combat is once you engage in a fight it instantly drops your stealth to 0. Which I think is crazy, it should lock your stealth at whatever it currently is when entering the fight.

[Tactrix]

Originally posted by MrRugila:

Originally posted by Tactrix:

The issue I have with combat is once you engage in a fight it instantly drops your stealth to 0. Which I think is crazy, it should lock your stealth at whatever it currently is when entering the fight.

Why should your stealth stay the same? Attacking a guard with a knife is the opposite of stealth. The guard should realize you are up to no good if you try to kill them.

If you would be stealthily cutting the guard's throat i would understand it if the stealth remained the same. But you are going all out stabby stabby. A knife fighter isn't trying to conceal themselves in combat.

Because here's the outcome, it literally means that once you attack someone you have to leave. Let me say that again you HAVE TO leave. Because the second you attack someone regardless how much stealth you had you now have 0, now that would be ok if the board had like 3 or 4 guards, but even starter boards usually have around 16, so it makes it that once you attack a guard you've basically wasted whatever potential was left on that character.

[Barnabus]

Originally posted by Infamous Pirate Nermal:

6) PROTIP- You CAN in fact double team guards. However it can be wonky sometimes so you want to minimize the game's weirdness as much as possible. The best way to do this is to pick a designated fighting/ambush zone in your building of choice.

The ideal fighting spot would be a large room, preferably at the top of a stairwell. We'll call this the killzone. Hide one killer to the left of the killzone (top of stairwell), and one killer to the right of the stairwell. When you're ready to isolate and kill a guard, have them spot a revealed killer, and then have them chase that killer to the killzone (up the stairwell from underneath). As an example, righthand killer pulls guard to top of stairwell, moves into position to right of killzone, and begins fighting with guard. At this point, lefthand killer reveals himself, and moves in to left side of guard. This will cause a doubleteam.

For best results, have the 2nd killer click on the target guard while in fighting mode. The reason we pick this large killzone at the top of the stairwell is because sometimes obstructions like doors and bottoms of stairwells seem to confuse the game and prevent a doubleteam.

I have in some situations also been able to doubleteam a guard when both killers are on the same side of the guard. However, this may be a bug/luck.

Good luck.

While you can double team a single guard, you don't get the same flanking bonus guards have against you.

[Tactrix]

There is another aspect of fighting that I found to be incredibly unbalanced. So I have candle fighting a guard, she beat the first one, had like 68 health destroyed him and he got her down to 54, the second guard same thing he got her down to 46, in comes the 3rd guard he killed her outright, and I was watching the fight she might have landed 3 blows out of 25, what the hell?

[Tirean]

Once your fighters stats increase you will notice a drastic difference in how they handle guards. On some of the earlier maps you can clear an entire area with just candle by herself.

Fighting is also not supposed to be the be all and end all of the heists, you aren't supposed to go into a zone and kill someone then hide for a while, this isn't skyrim or fallout where you can almost do what you want without consequences. Each action has a consequence attatched to it.

The fun part about the fighting skill is figuring out exactly what to do with your character once they can no longer hide. Do you run them straight to the exit? Do you use them to clear the house you are in before escaping? Do you leap frog the character from one building to the next trying not to get spotted by any new guards?

My advice would be to play more of the game and learn the mechanics a little, the learning curve is very steep.

[Tactrix]

Originally posted by Tirean the Klutz:

Once your fighters stats increase you will notice a drastic difference in how they handle guards. On some of the earlier maps you can clear an entire area with just candle by herself.

Fighting is also not supposed to be the be all and end all of the heists, you aren't supposed to go into a zone and kill someone then hide for a while, this isn't skyrim or fallout where you can almost do what you want without consequences. Each action has a consequence attatched to it.

The fun part about the fighting skill is figuring out exactly what to do with your character once they can no longer hide. Do you run them straight to the exit? Do you use them to clear the house you are in before escaping? Do you leap frog the character from one building to the next trying not to get spotted by any new guards?

My advice would be to play more of the game and learn the mechanics a little, the learning curve is very steep.

It seems counter-intuative to make someone have stealth but have it disappear the second they engage in 1 fight, especially if that fight isn't out in the street in the open but in a closed off house. At the very least they should make her stealth go down to 0 while fighting and then back up to what it originally was when the fight began, it's unrealistic for a killer to be stealthless after killing the only person that had seen them. It would be like me mugging you in a dark alley and killing you and then walking out 5 streets over and a random cop who had never seen me before arresting me for killing you because I just happen to walk by him.

[Tirean]

I agree, however this is the mechanic of the game. Maybe if enough people are really against the complete loss of stealth that a small +1 stealth gain from killing a guard could be gained. So after a fight you have 1 stealth instead of 0.

[Tactrix]

Originally posted by Tirean the Klutz:

I agree, however this is the mechanic of the game. Maybe if enough people are really against the complete loss of stealth that a small +1 stealth gain from killing a guard could be gained. So after a fight you have 1 stealth instead of 0.

Everyone I talk to on here seems to think that stealth just vanishing is a ridiculous concept, I personally think that they should put potions around houses that recover some stealth, not a lot like 20 a piece but still.

[Tirean]

Originally posted by Tactrix:

Originally posted by Tirean the Klutz:

I agree, however this is the mechanic of the game. Maybe if enough people are really against the complete loss of stealth that a small +1 stealth gain from killing a guard could be gained. So after a fight you have 1 stealth instead of 0.

Everyone I talk to on here seems to think that stealth just vanishing is a ridiculous concept, I personally think that they should put potions around houses that recover some stealth, not a lot like 20 a piece but still.

I personally feel people are too used to hand holding in video games, however you do have to cater to what your audience wants. So sometimes if the want for easier gameplay is way higher than the want for it to stay the same then something needs to be changed.

It could be a slider so only the portion of players who want that get it, or it could be an overall change where everyone is forced to deal with that.

Either way Stoic seem interested in listening to good feedback and suggestions! So throw out good ideas!

[Tactrix]

Originally posted by Tirean the Klutz:

Originally posted by Tactrix:

Everyone I talk to on here seems to think that stealth just vanishing is a ridiculous concept, I personally think that they should put potions around houses that recover some stealth, not a lot like 20 a piece but still.

I personally feel people are too used to hand holding in video games, however you do have to cater to what your audience wants. So sometimes if the want for easier gameplay is way higher than the want for it to stay the same then something needs to be changed.

It could be a slider so only the portion of players who want that get it, or it could be an overall change where everyone is forced to deal with that.

Either way Stoic seem interested in listening to good feedback and suggestions! So throw out good ideas!

I don't think it would make the game easier, just more realistic, because as it stands right now once you engage in a fight you either have to fight everyone and leave immediatly or just leave immediatly, and that while handy to have is not exactly a great mechanic for sustained gameplay especially if eventually you get to bigger places with more buildings. However if they made some guards harder to beat and some easier to beat like they are now and then made stealth fluctuate based on general common sense things like fighting in the open vs fighting behind closed doors that might bring some realism and yet another level of depth to the gameplay.

[Jan]

I can think of two justifications for having stealth vanish like this.
First, if your thief gets in a scrap with the guards they're probably going to get banged up a little bit, you know stab wounds, gaping lacerations, and blood dripping everywhere. No sane guard is going to ignore some random skulk who looks like they just single handedly stormed the bastille. But this justification only holds if the thief actually gets into a fight instead of running away when discovered.
Second, if your thief has been spotted by someone it stands to reason that they would warn others and perhaps even pass along a description of the thief so that guards know who to look out for. But this justification only holds if the witness actually lives long enough to tell the tale.

It is absolutely absurd that killing one single solitary isolated person in an empty house would rob your thief of all their stealth. Unless this is a setting where people are telepathic, then it makes more sense.

[Tactrix]

Originally posted by Jan-K.:

I can think of two justifications for having stealth vanish like this.
First, if your thief gets in a scrap with the guards they're probably going to get banged up a little bit, you know stab wounds, gaping lacerations, and blood dripping everywhere. No sane guard is going to ignore some random skulk who looks like they just single handedly stormed the bastille. But this justification only holds if the thief actually gets into a fight instead of running away when discovered.
Second, if your thief has been spotted by someone it stands to reason that they would warn others and perhaps even pass along a description of the thief so that guards know who to look out for. But this justification only holds if the witness actually lives long enough to tell the tale.

It is absolutely absurd that killing one single solitary isolated person in an empty house would rob your thief of all their stealth. Unless this is a setting where people are telepathic, then it makes more sense.

I thought of those reasons as well, and I have a solution, first it would have to involve a little change to the animation, so as your stealth disappears you start to look shabby and rundown in the case of a theif or in the case of a killer covered in blood and harder to ignore. Now I noticed that there are random pieces of cloth scattered about in some houses, and as such you would be able to use them to conceal some of the blood and such thus if you were to find them after a fight you could raise your stealth level back up a little. And as for the second reason I completly agree if you are spotted they should actually run off and try to warn someone now that wouldn't actually drop your stealth, what it would do is bring guards to the place where they saw you, and as soon as they leave your line of sight your stealth comes back to what it was when they saw you as they aren't actually there to watch you walk away.

[Fridge Lord]

Just my 2 cents, I personally am fine with the stealth totally vanishing after fighting. In my view, it's important to articulate a philosophical point about game design- which is that, games will never be real life and will never be fully realistic. What we are trying to do is -simulate- an experience using mathematics, interaction, spatial positioning and visual detail. Simulate a real experience using mathematics.

Just as in a pen-and-paper game, you roll a die to determine whether you got a good hit or a bad hit, and then use that result to simulate an event, to describe a real experience.

I go into this game expecting to have the experience of being a medieval thief simulated for me with simple mathematical systems, not expecing real-world, super precise 3d positioning and visual, auditory and kinesthetic stealth detection, etc. The game isn't even 3d, it's a 2d cross section. We simulate the building having an awning by visually depicting an awning jutting out at the player, and having the player unable to see underneath it unless thieves are stationed nearby to have direct lateral line of site. Surely this building has a Z dimension, does it not? Windows through which citizens can see? Passers-by which may see into those windows, neighboring tenants who may hear sounds or have seen certain people enter, etc.? But we cannot simulate this because it is not a 3d game with radiant AI and a living breathing world, etc.

The point I am making is, we simulate complex scenarios knowing the simulation will be abstracted and simplified, not demanding a perfectly accurate real world double.

I don't look at it as, "I killed a guard, the AI is fully telepathic and now automatically knows what I look like, they had no line of sight on me, no line of sight on the body, etc., this game is cheap and unrealistic." I just look at it as roughly abstracted medieval thieving simulator using mathematics. Maybe someone saw or heard the scuffle, had enough good sense to not go near a murder in progress, and reported it to the guards and now they're on the lookout for my description. Maybe the panhandlers and beggars saw and word has traveled through the grapevine. Again you're playing a 2d cross sectional game where the Z dimension isn't even rendered. My bottom line is, I'm supposed to be stealthing and thieving, and murdering guards is an enormous risk. Just like in more detailed stealth games, guards dont detect you if you lockpick, open and close a window, but they will be alerted if you go loud, use brute force, break out your crowbar and shatter it. Same mechanic. I took an overt action to not have to use stealth for this area, therefore I experience gameplay consequences for doing so.

You can say this is "flaw overlooking," but in my view it's really not. If you accept that you are playing a video game simulation to give you an experience using rough mathematics, it's not something I find that frustrating. In fact the entire heisting game interface is a rough simulation of a patch of a neighborhood using crude values from the stakeout view to simulate an amount of loot that may be in that area. If you see it for what it is, it's not that hard to be contented with it.