Please Take A Look At Alternate Exits/Roof Areas

[Mad_Gerbil]

I like it that a thief can have serveral ways out of any given area, but the roof nonsense on maps like DE and the wall exit on Nostalgia are lame, IMHO.

On serveral of these maps theives can get to areas that a guard simply cannot go and they can run from one end of the map to the other.

That makes it impossible to set up a meaningful defense. Esentially, some of these maps have an entire "level" with access to the entire map that is completely in the dark and often cannot be reached by guards at all.

Some roof activity is fine, but when a thief can hop up onto a wall and run all the way around Theatre it provides him with a means of escape that takes him from the Theatre grounds all the way to the exit in darkness and totally out of reach of the guards. Makes for a predictable game that way.

[Buho]

Darkened Enlightenment has been modified for version 1.3. There is a post in the archives somewhere. From what I remember, thieves will have greater reign over the outdoors, and guards will be so paranoid as to stay inside more. Also, the library will be locked to guards, so that means less objective camping and more patrolling of the two houses. IMO, those are guardable. Keep an eye on the limited number of entry points and guards should do fine.

Still, there may be time for the mapper to take new suggestions to heart.

[Entropy]

Gerb, guards often win DE, and do fairly well on Flats. I think your blind need for guards to rule every location and aspect of the game with an iron fist is poorly considered. If the rooves are tough on flats or DE, don't go on them. If you can't set up a camping defense, then don't, set up a patrolling one. Stop expecting every game to be a cakewalk for the guards and extremely hard for the thieves. While I look forward to the 1.3 changes which should make thieves more viable as a steal and run force I hope the devs and map designers remember that your comments come from someone who isn't a good thief, (almost) always plays a guard, and has a particularly one-eyed view of how the game should be played.

[LaughingRat]

Who cares if the thieves rule the rooves? There are no objectives there. They can get around on them all they want, it's not going to win them the game, unless for some unfathomable reason the guards go charging blithely onto the dark rooves and all get killed/KO'd.

[WildBill]

The problem here is these unintended and often unbalancing routes. The walls on Nostalgia, the outside of Theater, I don't think those should be in, or if they are, they should be cleaned up. They are paths that are impossible for guards to defend because they require vines to access. The one they can get to -- the walls on Theater -- unbalances the games for thieves. Why? Because the guards can, in ten seconds, exit the theater grounds to camp the exit or go after thieves on the wall. I doubt this was intended.

I have no problem with thief-only places -- I, like Gerbil, I think, just want the mapmakers to get rid of the unintended ones or clean them up.

[LaughingRat]

On Theatre, they may not have been intended, but DE was mentioned specifically, and I hardly think that a thief's abilit to go from one end of the map to another on a rooftop unbalances things. As for Nostalgia, the walltop exit may not have been intended, but it's difficult to use, and only serves to balance out the fact that some of the INTENDED exits are virtually impossible to use.

Vine arrows giving thieves access to places guards don't have? That's what they're THERE for. If a vine arrow gives a thief an escape that wins the game for the thieves because a guard can't follow, it's because the guards didn't do their job earlier in the game, and let the thieves get the objectives in the first place.

[WildBill]

The rooves on DE are perfectly fine. I've actually gotten killed there once by a good guard, I think it was Kore, actually.

I was specifically talking aboout the wall on Theater and the walls on Nostalgia. The problem is that these routes are unintended and impossible for guards to guard. It's the unintended part that really bothers me. That the one on Nostalgia happens to balance out the bugged sewers in this case is mere coincidence.

I'm all for vine arrows -- I've found some amazing places to use them, but being able to get outside the map itself just seems like cheating, as does jump-mantling an invisible wall on a roof to get to the walls in Nostalgia.

[MrEricSir]

If you're guarding the rooves of DE, you're not guarding at all -- you're just asking me to KO you.

[Mad_Gerbil]

LR:

You'll notice I didn't complain about the roofs on Flats. Most of them are in total darkness yet I don't have a problem with that because they are built into the map in such a way that they are an important part of the map.

What I don't like is these "side" exits. The kind of exit where it starts somewhere mid-map and if the thief gets there he has a clear shot all the way to the exit. Any possible exit a thief might take should have guard access (granted, it may be dark and dangerous).

Here is a clue as to what type of exits I don't like: If on one hand you have the game world and on your other hand you have no graphics or dead space then you are likely using an exit I would find "lame".

It's cool with me that vine arrows can take a theif places guards cannot go, but a vine arrow should be used to over come an obstacle not be a gate way to a free run all the way to the exit.

[Grank]

No offense Gerb but this post shows how biased you really are. Nostalgia has major problems with the sewer exits for thieves. You may have noticed this even as a guard. What I find interesting is you're only interested in fixing things for guards rather than making the game right for both sides. If you were unbiased then you would have mentioned the grate/sewer exits in this post as its a major problem that wasn't intended to be there.

[WildBill]

Grank, not mentioning something does not inherently imply you think it's okay. In your post, you didn't mention that you were opposed to the Holocaust. Can I assume, therefore, you're in favor of it? I think not, that would be absurd. I would hope that Gerb didn't bring up the sewer issue because it's well known, and people have been complaining about it for months. It's also quite possible to use the sewers as they stand now, only one enterance is truly broken.

[LaughingRat]

WBill, of course Grank didn't mention the Holocaust. We weren't discussing it. We WERE discussing problems in Thievery maps, and specifically Nostalgia in fact. Leaving out mention of the Holocaust is perfectly natural, since it wasn't the topic of discussion. Leaving out mention of the sewer lids, however, is a key omission from a discussion of problems with Nostalgia.

Gerb, the rooves in DE don't give you access to, or even a view of any area outside the map, yet you mentioned them specifically. Could you please clarify your position? Is it perhaps actually that you just think thieves shouldn't be able to get away from guards easily?

[WildBill]

LR, it's an analogous situation, just a different degree. We were in fact, I thought, discussing unintended paths around maps, and the walls in Nostalgia were just one example of this. Grank jumping in about Gerbil's bias simply because he didn't mention there was a bug about an exit in one of the maps that Gerb used as an example is as unrelated to the topic at hand as the Holocaust -- the discussion was about UNINTENDED routes on maps, not bugs on intended ones, or the balance of Nostalgia, or whatever else.

As for the roof area on DE, I assumed he was talking about the roof of the book house. It's possible for a thief to get up there, use a vine to go down and get the book, and then return to the roof of the book house, all without a book house key. This was, I believe, not supposed to be able to happen, and what Gerb was complaining about.

[Grank]

Grank, not mentioning something does not inherently imply you think it's okay. In your post, you didn't mention that you were opposed to the Holocaust. Can I assume, therefore, you're in favor of it? I think not, that would be absurd. I would hope that Gerb didn't bring up the sewer issue because it's well known, and people have been complaining about it for months. It's also quite possible to use the sewers as they stand now, only one enterance is truly broken.

We were discussing exits on Nostalgia. I think if he is going to mention eliminating ways for thieves to escape its only fair to also ask that legit ways of escaping be fixed. Yes its possible but we both know it needs to be fixed. I'm not going to respond to the Holocaust as thats a pretty silly comment.

I just find it disturbing that Gerb seeks out ways to limit thieves every chance he gets yet never makes a mention of how things are also unbalanced for thieves. I understand he has no obligation to do so but after reading several of his posts its apparent to me he doesn't really understand the balance of the game.

For instance he wants to limit the blackjack and broadheads but never makes a mention of how hard it is for thieves on Korman to get the Rectory eye when its camped. If you limit the blackjack and broadheads this is going to make a nearly impossible map for thieves truely impossible under certain circumstances.

I could mention more senarios but I hope you get my point. If someone is going to make so many suggestions on how to improve the game I would hope those suggestions were made only after fully understanding both sides of the equation.

[WildBill]

I just find it disturbing that Gerb seeks out ways to limit thieves every chance he gets yet never makes a mention of how things are also unbalanced for thieves. I understand he has no obligation to do so but after reading several of his posts its apparent to me he doesn't really understand the balance of the game.

Gerb has different experiences with this game than most, as he is both a dedicated guard and runs a dedicated guarding guild. He just points what he sees as flaws, or potential flaws, in the balance of the game. In this particular post he was discussing how bugs in maps -- routes that should not be there, specifically -- made the maps much more challenging to guard against thieves who used them.

Gerb is certainly biased. So am I, so are you -- it doesn't make the point he's making any more or less valid because of it, nor does it make everything he says instantly discreditited because someone says he's biased or just whining.

For instance he wants to limit the blackjack and broadheads but never makes a mention of how hard it is for thieves on Korman to get the Rectory eye when its camped. If you limit the blackjack and broadheads this is going to make a nearly impossible map for thieves truely impossible under certain circumstances.

I'll give you the same response to this that you give him when he complains about DM thieves: "It's possible to counter, there are effective ways of doing it, perhaps you should learn them instead of whining about it?"

The problem with that situation lies with the map, I think, and the balance of the game should not be altered simply because one map is unbalanced. I think that this game should be "balanced" so that it is possible to win without killing or KOing a single guard. Balance applies to both the engine, and the maps, and you really have to isolate which one is the true problem before proposing a solution.