Eidos Montreal has decided to change the XP system in their upcoming game Thief game due to negative feedback from the community.
During the E3 gameplay demo, the player was awarded XP for a headshot kill. This apparently did not go down well with fans who believe that stealing should be rewarded, not killing.
Lead level designer Daniel Windfeld Schmidt said on the matter:
“Fans might be surprised how often the devs go to the forum to see how things are perceived in the ‘real world’, this feedback is extremely valuable to us, so as you can imagine, the consistent reaction to the XP system was something that indicated we needed to revisit some design decisions.”
Game director Nic Cantin also commented, saying:
“At first, we wanted to outline the progression of the player with XP, but it was reducing our motivation to steal. The main goal of a thief should be to gain loot. Garrett is already the Master Thief, so we saw no need to have XP as a core mechanic.”
I like it when devs change factors of their game based on fan responses because it makes it feel like they are actually listening. What is worrying is that they made the decision to gain XP from killing in the first place. As developers of the game, you would think that they would understand that it is not the point of the series. At least it has been changed now and everyone is happy. I had heard some bad things about their E3 showing so hopefully things have improved since then.
Thief is coming to the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on Feb. 25, 2014 in NA and Feb. 28, 2014 in Europe.
