My suggestions are these.
First. Correct the lighting effects and range in this game to allow for better sighting and use of light. Torches are weapons in the game… but they’re also supposed to be sources of light. A character should hold them as such, as if using them to see where they’re going as much as to bash some potential foe with it.
Second. Please consider and discuss with game designers, dungeon and puzzle makers the concept of “fun”. There is a distinct difference between “challenging” and “frustrating”, and after running Obsidian Sanctum, I am officially too stressed to play the game. And I’ve noticed I’m not the only one who feels this way, nor is this the only puzzle I’ve ended up wondering what kind of sadist designed it, and how unfulfilling their life must be to want to torture people paying their bills, no matter how indirectly.
Obsidian Sanctum. I had never done Obsidian Sanctum before, and though I heard it was hard, I also heard it was fun. I don’t know why someone would lie to me like that. At first, I was having trouble adjusting to all the hairpin turns where you’re hanging on by the pixels of your character’s toes, the long jumps that are made more by odd platform coding that lets you stand in midair sometimes, and repeated falls to your death, or taking heavy damage, but after a little while it was fun; I was learning the jumps and they became easier with repetition. This lasted for all of two minutes.
After falling… and falling… and getting further and falling… and being really careful and falling… and getting attacked while trying to climb the platforms and falling… I made it to a new area. Anyone who’s done it knows the one. The Dark Room. The Dark Room is all that came before… in the dark. Long, barely reachable jumps become long, barely reachable BLIND jumps. There are traps, and the path is convoluted to say the least. And people are attacking you at the same time.
“But they give you torches! Why are you complaining?! GOD!” you might say. Well, I stood there for a bit, holding my “torches”. Even in D&D a torch will give you 20 feet radius of light and let you see indistinctly out to 40 feet. Holding my two torches and looking at the screen, I could see… nowhere. It was dark right at my character’s feet. Literally RIGHT THERE. No radius of light.
Throwing torches would give more light, but only barely, and due to inaccurate collision with walls and pillars, sometimes the light would be muted as it would be getting produced from BEHIND a wall you hit, or INSIDE a pillar. Having perfect aim didn’t guarantee good light as the torches just went into whatever you hit and then winked out before you could really see what was in front of you.
And then there’s the people looking to troll. They run up on you and even though the majority of people are just trying out the puzzle, they’re trying to kill you while you do it. Why is this even a factor in such a hard situation? Why would I be forced to deal with PvP on a platform less than 5 inches wide when I can’t see 2 inches in front of my feet?