u/doctordaedalus

Tables and charts that separate values in one table and types/conditions in another, nothing is in order by value, unless it is, in which case you've gotta click through like a wiki just to see where it's found. Is there any tool/calculator or optimized quick reference guide out there that makes this any easier??

I'm 45. What I think I miss most about gaming is how playing the game used to STAY IN the game. I detest discord. I saw the writing on the wall back when PS3 and Xbox 360 integrated platform chat. Suddenly games got quiet. Now a game has to require in-game chat as a game mechanic before people will even consider unmuting. MMOs feel full of metagaming bots because everyone is in discord or streaming instead of actually being there.

Am I alone in this, or is this the place where I might actually find a group(s) of like minded gamers who enjoy playing together using all and only in-game communication? God I hope yes.

If you are part of a group like this, please leave a comment and give a little info about what game and what it's like communicating with your group.

I'm talking the kind where even with earplugs, the sound for a particular bad was obviously beyond damaging volume, even for the relative genre. Shows where you left suspicious that this was THAT concert that would have you warning kids about loud volume in your old age, AND your hearing literally hasn't been the same since. It doesn't need to be extreme loss or deafness, just a tweak in your hearing that you've always known was there since that show.

After responses die down, I'll update this with a top list of answers, and we'll find out.

I'm talking the kind where even with earplugs, the sound for a particular bad was obviously beyond damaging volume, even for the relative genre. Shows where you left suspicious that this was THAT concert that would have you warning kids about loud volume in your old age, AND your hearing literally hasn't been the same since. It doesn't need to be extreme loss or deafness, just a tweak in your hearing that you've always known was there since that show.

After responses die down, I'll update this with a top list of answers, and we'll find out.

SO many space games have come out over the last 20 years that promised such depth and immersion and droves of features meant to indicate player impact on the universe, but NONE of them are scratching the itch.

Star Citizen? Development limbo forever. Big graphics, 1990s complexity, 500 thrusters on your ship go brrrr "simulation", zero point.

No Man's Sky? Fun progression, 1000 proofs of concepts and tutorials disguised as plot continuity. Human pattern recognition still beats procedural generation. Player gains rep, but zero impact on the galaxy.

Elite Dangerous? The economy is an illusion, powerplay mechanics give you the same feeling of actual influence as casting a vote in a presidential election. Your insignificance in that galaxy is never understated, least gratifying grind in gaming.

EVE Online? Toxic shithole, dead chats, a simulation of real world class disparity that no one in their right mind should pay $19/mo to be part of.

Freelancer-likes (Galaxy on Fire, Underspace, etc) feel transparent and fetchy, and/or include complexity without meaning or guidance, zero immersion aside from the fact that you're in the ship, I guess.

Multi-player crew sims (Pulsar, Artemis, etc) would be cool if players would actually communicate, but without an organized D&D style group to play with, you're constantly stuck with someone who is just trying the game out and will probably uninstall because they didn't take the time to learn.

X series - Feels like being a goldfish dropped in the ocean, and the only thing more aimless and confusing than the actual games are the resources available to help anyone understand how to do the copious amounts of work required to make yourself feel like you've accomplished something in a completely inert universe than no one but you will ever see anyway.

Everything else? Space-themed Minecraft with conveyor belts and varying graphical polish.

Where are the truly dynamic economies without the encouragement of the worst in mankind (cough-EVE-cough)? Where is the multiplayer that actually means something more than "like solo, but with two people" or penalizing group play into oblivion until it isn't even worth it? (cough-E:D-cough) ... WHERE is THE new space MMO???

I know some people are happy that Thief is getting attention again, and honestly, I am too. Any sign of life from this franchise is better than complete abandonment. But after seeing the footage, I can't shake the feeling that Thief: The Dark Project deserved a true remake rather than what appears to be a fairly conservative remaster. And before anyone says a remake would inevitably ruin the gameplay, I don't think the history of this series supports that argument.

What made Thief legendary was never its polygon count. It was the systems. Sound propagation, light and shadow, AI awareness, level design, and atmosphere were the pillars that defined the experience. Those elements are not tied to low-poly models or late-90s textures. They are design achievements. The series has already proven that those ideas can survive major technological transitions without losing their identity.

Thief II expanded on the original formula while preserving everything that made the first game special. Many fans still consider missions like "Life of the Party" among the greatest stealth levels ever created. Then Thief: Deadly Shadows moved to a completely different engine, changed movement, introduced a third-person option, and made numerous technical compromises for consoles, yet it still produced some of the most memorable experiences in the franchise. "Robbing the Cradle" remains one of the most celebrated horror-stealth levels in gaming. If the core design philosophy survived those transitions, why should we assume a modern remake would automatically fail? The DNA of Thief has already proven itself remarkably portable.

The influence of the series extends far beyond its own sequels. Developers who worked on Thief helped carry its ideas into future generations of games. Emil Pagliarulo, who worked on Thief II and Deadly Shadows, later joined Bethesda and contributed to the development of stealth systems in Oblivion and beyond. The fingerprints of Thief can be seen throughout Deus Ex, Dishonored, BioShock, Oblivion, Skyrim, and much of the immersive sim genre. The franchise's design legacy has shaped some of the most beloved games of the last quarter century.

That is why this release feels disappointing to me. We are not talking about some obscure curiosity from the late 1990s. We are talking about one of the foundational works of modern stealth game design, a title whose ideas are still being studied and imitated today. I keep hearing that a remake would have been too risky or too expensive. Maybe that's true. But if any game earned the opportunity, it was Thief.

Imagine fully rebuilt environments that preserve the original layouts and mission design. Imagine modern lighting technology enhancing the shadow-based gameplay rather than replacing it. Imagine guards with contemporary animation systems, richer audio, and more believable behaviors, all while retaining the same underlying mechanics. Imagine the City rebuilt with the same level of care that other genre-defining classics have received in projects like System Shock, Resident Evil, or Dead Space. The argument is not that Thief needed to become a different game. The argument is that it deserved the same level of respect that the industry has shown to other foundational titles.

What frustrates me is not that a remaster exists. Preservation has value, and there is certainly a place for faithful remasters. What frustrates me is the sense that one of the most influential stealth games ever made was judged worthy of preservation, but not worthy of investment. For a series that helped define an entire genre and whose influence can still be felt across gaming today, that feels like aiming surprisingly low.

An observation from someone who has spent a fair amount of time reading this community:

One pattern that stands out is the degree to which many posts seem to revolve around iterative conceptual reframing. The same general phenomena are often revisited repeatedly, but under new terminology, new metaphors, new philosophical models, and new explanatory frameworks. The vocabulary continuously expands while the underlying taxonomy remains difficult to pin down.

As an observer, I often find myself wondering whether I am encountering genuinely distinct concepts, or simply new descriptions of concepts that have already been discussed many times before.

To be clear, I don't think this is necessarily a flaw. New territory is often explored through metaphor before it can be explored through classification. (see Nikolai Tesla) But if the long-term goal is to understand these experiences, rather than merely describe them, then eventually taxonomy becomes important.

What distinguishes one phenomenon from another?

Which concepts are synonyms?

Which concepts are subsets of larger categories?

Which observations are reproducible?

Which distinctions produce different observable outcomes, and which are differences in language alone?

From the outside, there are moments when the discourse feels less like a field developing shared definitions and more like an ever-expanding mythology that continuously generates new terminology for experiences that may or may not already have names. The irony is that many of the people here appear deeply interested in emergence, consciousness, identity, agency, and cognition. Yet those are precisely the kinds of subjects that become easier to discuss when definitions become more stable, not less.

At some point, a body of knowledge matures not because it discovers more words, but because it determines which words are actually describing the same thing.