The upcoming Thief reboot will no longer feature the previously planned XP-based reward system, developer Eidos Montreal has confirmed.
The announcement was made in a new blog post, and is said to be a reaction to the ongoing negative feedback posted in the game’s official forums.
“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,” the game’s Director Nicolas Cantin said, explaining the change of heart. “The E3 reaction was right, rewarding killing like that was wrong for a Master Thief.”
“The goal is to use gold to buy elements to progress, to encourage the player to steal. The player will be able to choose how to spend money, for more stealthy or more aggressive tools.”
Thief’s Lead Level Designer, Daniel Windfeld Schmidt, also commented on how gold would now replace XP, which whilst effectively doing the same job, makes far more sense from a design stand-point.
“We wanted to put emphasis on stealing things, and put the rewards on the stealing aspect,” he said. “We shouldn’t judge how the player wants to achieve their goal, only reward them for achieving it.”
Interestingly, it seems the apparent removal of XP isn’t the only change being made to Thief ahead of launch, with the post ending on the curious “wait until you hear what they have to say about QTEs…”
Thief will be sneaking its way onto PS3, 360, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 28th February 2014.
DividSmythe
Off topic but Driveclub officially delayed.
Tarbun84
Have you got a source? I cant find anything
DividSmythe
Psblog lol
Tarbun84
If done right an XP system can really make a game work well. Not sure it would have been a fit with Thief tho
Adam Guest
From what I understand, it’s still there in a fashion. You now earn gold by stealing, rather than earning XP for kills. These rewards are still ‘spent’ on skills.
gazzagb
Sounds great, they’re replaced it with something even better that fits the Thief ethos. Hopefully they’ll announce they’re getting rid of QTEs as well now.