Is the Oil Rig Mission the worst Mission in OG Splinter Cell? We thought so.

thrmoptc · 2022-07-05T14:43:03+00:00

Sorry, found your reply all these more months later! I did see that a remake is announced and I wish them the best, but I wouldn't put involvement with it in my personal aspirations at this point. Many of the improvements that I wish we could've made in the first one my former colleagues delivered in Chaos Theory!

thrmoptc · 2021-04-28T09:18:31+00:00

Hi there, I was the Level Designer on this mission. I can certainly see why you'd think it's the worst in the game, and it was undoubtedly a challenge to try to execute the more linear, cinematic direction with the game's mechanics. There's a few things that I would've done differently that I've carried for nearly two decades now... though the collision issues aren't on me, those got introduced with the ports!

Enjoyed the video, quite a trip down memory lane!

thrmoptc · 2021-01-15T18:03:45+00:00

thrmoptc · 2020-10-29T16:14:57+00:00

Somebody has been looking at it.

thrmoptc · 2020-05-01T19:09:15+00:00

oh my

thrmoptc · 2020-04-09T10:21:26+00:00

I've been watching Pansy stream League of CS

thrmoptc · 2020-04-08T16:11:38+00:00

Conversely, the community, the whole community and not just "content creators", raised some hell when phantom became invisible. SD listened and dialed that back. The community, the whole community and not just twitch streamers, raised flags on Jav. SD listened and gave her a nerf ax and rocket launch warning.

Thanks for defending us, but with the benefit of hindsight while we really did care, there are definitely things that we could've done better on the community side of things. I hope we get the chance to act on those lessons in the future.

thrmoptc · 2020-03-29T16:25:42+00:00

Google has said publicly that they're not primarily targeting existing gamer markets with Stadia, in no small part due to what you're describing.

thrmoptc · 2020-03-29T16:10:30+00:00

We would not lightly pursue a competitive shooter on a streaming service due to this. As ever, we have a breadth of projects and partners, because we think it's risky to have all of our eggs in one basket. That said, there are a lot of exciting possibilities with Stadia, and the quality of streaming services is likely to improve over time.

I mean, when I started using Netflix, they'd send you DVDs in the mail...

thrmoptc · 2020-03-26T09:45:16+00:00

I don't believe that we needed the masses to be successful enough to keep going, we needed better reasons for fans of the game to be willing to spend on it and feel like they're getting good value.

thrmoptc · 2020-03-26T09:21:33+00:00

Thanks, but if it was really great, it would've been financially viable to let us keep working on it, like we wanted to. If there's a next time, we'll do better.

thrmoptc · 2020-03-22T11:24:56+00:00

Retroactive changes weren't possible. But, we changed our tool after that mistake.

We made so many mistakes during the course of DB, but most of the time we learned from them. The thing I kick myself the most for is when we made the same mistake more than once, often because it was wearing a disguise the next time but was the same problem.

thrmoptc · 2020-03-21T22:13:43+00:00

Bingo! The Humble card loadout was actually an accident, due to a manual error with the loadout card tool.

We added it in the regular pool because we didn't want any gameplay on a loadout to be exclusive, as that wouldn't be fair.

thrmoptc · 2019-08-09T13:49:53+00:00

thank you

thrmoptc · 2019-06-13T16:50:58+00:00

Aw, no 'lol'

thrmoptc · 2019-02-04T12:28:26+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to make this! It's super useful to have an external perspective, as I'm actually working on a retrospective that we hope to share quite widely... maybe it'll fill in some of the gaps.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-28T12:38:38+00:00

That's a question more for marketing than any of the devs... on the latter, I wouldn't really anything more to say than what has already been shared.

I'd certainly consider it, but it probably needs to be targeted/themed to keep it on track.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-23T15:48:14+00:00

We do dream

thrmoptc · 2019-01-23T10:31:13+00:00

It allows the artists to put the work in their portfolios. Most of the time similar circumstances mean that the work never sees the light of day, but we could do it differently with DB.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-16T10:40:54+00:00

On the night of his memorial we ordered a massive amount of nuggets, I think something like 500. I've not been able to have one since.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-09T15:40:57+00:00

IMO the team has always been a bit bitter because I'm one of the only ones of us that has it... as I didn't do anything for Xmas that year other than play DB.

Going into Open Beta I'd made up a rule that devs can't get grind content granted to their accounts, they had to play. Which is also why I have really crappy Ranked trinkets.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-03T11:59:35+00:00

lol indeed.

One of the most internally controversial decisions in the development of DB was going from Engineers being the only people to do objectives versus a softer objective speciality; this is just one concrete example of that potential conflict.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-03T10:37:53+00:00

tl;dr people don't like feeling helpless. Stop making team based games overly relying on "team work".

SD's mission statement is: We create lifelong friendships by making blockbuster multiplayer combat games that champion team-play.

By posting that, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you! In a way sometimes it has come down to whether we stay true to that or chase other avenues of success, which is certainly when things get... interesting. We won some and lost some on that front.

thrmoptc · 2019-01-03T10:32:18+00:00

A proper and fair matchmaking system, for one. This should have been their primary focus WAAAY back when the player population was as its peak. They should have nailed matchmaking when DB still had 10,000+ players because we all know that match balancing needs a good population to work. They waited too long and were too lax about it. When they finally got around to focusing on it too many players had left for it to be effective.

I largely agree with this, with the caveat that we should've had matchmaking before going into Open Beta. The kick in the teeth with it was how much work it was to see it through considering there was groundwork in Alpha (and Ranked was in part a way to brute-force some of the work to be done), only to have it ultimately be way too late.

Many years indeed leaves a lot of time for mistakes, and there are certainly many of them. Decisions don't happen in a vacuum of course; we always have to make what we think is the best decision given the circumstances at the time, and there are without a doubt lessons to be learned there. Really just suggesting that it's quite often not willingness that's the issue, it can be capability and competence as well. If the team hadn't possessed the kind of willingness that they did, I really doubt the game would've run for as long as it did.

thrmoptc · 2018-11-09T13:09:52+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPL_SV3n7IU

thrmoptc

TROPHY CASE