The premise seemed reasonable: find out why the locals are being rousted out of the area and clean out a bank vault while you're at it. Fair enough. I was dropped into a city environment that was frankly, on the whole, unimpressive. After a couple of minutes, I found myself pinned down in an apartment with one entrance/exit after the barest glimpse from one of the guards that drew four of them down on me. After ten real-time minutes of them swarming around in the front room, I wrote it off as a bad start. Tried again, took a different tack, and somehow attracted the attention of a guard I never even saw until he bird-dogged me blind down several floors onto a porch. I ducked into some local darkness, and waited another several real time minutes watching the guard circle and taunt before it shouted a battle cry and rushed back out the door for absolutely no apparent reason. Mmkay. That's when I cashed out. Others have said this one gets better, but between the half-assed environment and irrational, endlessly-aggro'd guards I've put up with so far, I have zero interest. It's hardly the worst effort I've ever seen, but 8.94 really? *Really?* Just not feeling it. Not even close.

No downvotes from me - everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I play some missions (won't name them here) that have rave reviews that I uninstall within 15 minutes of starting,

This one (for me) was a weird one where I thought the beginning zone was very basic but somehow I got into it. I don't ghost so maybe that was a factor in me eventually liking it.

Ghosting in general seems like a frustrating affair that just locks you out of half the game experience. I will never understand people forcing themselves to not engage with all the ways the game can go.

There's a couple of things that go into this.

First, getting through a whole level undetected and unsuspected provides a real sense of satisfaction.

Second, blackjacking guards throughout a mission makes it easier as you progress. So you have this weird inversion where the difficulty ramps down instead of up over the course of the mission, and finishing it feels anticlimactic.

Third, you're not supposed to get spotted. It's kind of the point. If you alert guards, sure, you can go on playing if you like but for me it feels like playing through a failure state.

Funny how ghosters just enjoy the game and don't look down on anyone but some non-ghosters can't help but constantly tell them they're playing the game wrong. Someone needs to work through some issues...

@marbleman: That is just not true. I can't count the amount of times people who like to ghost told people who knockout guards that they're doing it wrong, and the skilled way to play is ghosting.

Even FM authors: Why implement useless non-KO objectives? It makes no sense at all.

Let the player decide how he plays. That's the big plus with most immersive sims. No need to decapitate that, by forcing a certain play style onto the player.

That said, I don't really understand the discussion on this mission. As far as I remember it, there was no forced ghosting. And, I also remember it as as a great FM, so, yeah, I think giving it a 5/10 rating doesn't quite cut it, but, everyone is entitled to his opinion, of course. And, I think downvoting someone for his rating or his opinion is also totally stupid.

Fair point, it would be more accurate to say that none of the ghosters I know have a superiority complex, but I don't actually interact with that many ghosters despite being one. Maybe it's just a perspective thing. Still, I don't get this compulsion to tell people they're not having fun the right way.

Yeah, that was my point, and, why I think the best missions, and best games let you play the way you want.

And, if I recall this mission correctly (it's been a while), it doesn't really force you to any specific play style. Otherwise I wouldn't have liked it, I guess. ;)

>"Even FM authors: Why implement useless non-KO objectives? It makes no sense at all."

Yeah, this is something I've changed in how I build my own fan missions. I no longer include no-KO or no-kill objectives unless they're specifically story related (don't kill the guy you're trying to kidnap, don't let the watch captain know about the breakin, that sort of thing).

I also won't force combat or blackjacking; there'll always be a way to ghost it.

I played a campaign recently but can't think which one it was.
One of the missions in the campaign required you to ghost as that was part of the story (maybe looking for a cosh or sword, the usual thing...). I had no problem with that as it seemed to fit that particular mission.

There is exactly a single mission with a (understandable) no K.O. objective in Thief 2, and that is the Masks mission.

Think about it: When you rob people of everything they have, no one cares about some knocked out guards. When you kill everyone, on the other hand, that is a big problem, as no employer or fence wants to have a bloodbath on his hands, which obviously attracts a lot of negative attention.

Ghosting objective are either VERY rare cases where they make sense (I really can't think of many cases where that applies), or, they're just gameplay gimmicks, which don't make sense at all (which is the case in most missions which have them, on Expert difficulty).

Thankfully, most FM authors are able to use their brains, and don't implement no K.O. objectives, and, they also realize that objectives like these are limiting the options people have to play the game their way, not according to the tight corset FM authors force onto them.

@Marbleman Apparently, acknowledging that I don't understand people who ghost amounts to looking down on them? And my "issue" is that I don't understand it?

There's a lot more pressing issues in this world that I'd rather take my time with. If you consider an opinion to be an "issue", that's your loss.

Personally, the reason I enjoy Thief is because of the freedom the game provides you. It isn't an Ocarina of Time stealth section slapped on, where being seen drops you back to the beginning. There's a sense of tension in trying to correct mistakes that were made, rather than being met with an arbitrary "you failed, try again" thing. I'm not telling anyone how to play it, I just don't understand it. And that's not something to get all serious about. Some people here give good reasons for their decision to ghost, and it's nice to see their ways and how they differ from mine. That's the right way to go about it, no need to bother people for having opinions. Thanks!

No. Not understanding other people's playstyles is not the issue. The issue is having this compulsion to tell them that you find their playstyle frustrating and annoying, that they are optimizing the fun out of the game, etc. And I never accused anyone of looking down on others. I said that I and the ghosters I know don't.

Let people have fun their own way. Just because you don't like someone else's playstyle, you don't need to tell them that. Anyway, I got it out of my system; time to move on.

It was in the context of judging the mission through the eyes of someone who deliberately plays the game a specific way that, though valid like any other way, might make the mission seem less appealing. I like to open up discussion about that, but maybe this wasn't the right place. Anyway, I'm very excited to try this mission and see what it's all about.

I heard somewhere that 'patrol routing' – making way points on the FM map for your AI – is the most boring part in the process of FM creation. More so, it happens that the more elaborate and complex patrol routing aspect of your FM, the more it tends to go wrong due to unpredictable reasons ( reaction of an AI to map geometry for example ).
That said, it's hard to overestimate the role of such aspect in player's perception of a FM. You can create astonisning environments, yet it's randomly wandering Benny ( repeat, regularly autonomous to authors intentions ) which will burry your architectural achievments down in the players eyes.

I think this review is a wonderful example of our beloved game's rather unfair manifestation ( can't pick up the right word, hope you will get it as it is ) to effort distribution: some aspects of a FM demands so much effort when the manifestation is so dim.