(edited by Purple Miku.7032)
twight arbor.. which path ??
One that doesn’t restrict everyone to doing it at a set pace? So me arguing that whether being able to do a puzzle faster or not doesn’t equate to a challenge; is me not understanding his argument? Maybe this is a langauge barrier issue with how words are used because when I hear pace, I equate that to speed.
I feel that a well designed puzzle is one that forces your group to work together using coordination and team work. There can be combat, no combat, or both. Whether you have the option to do it faster is not important. This is why I made the speed run comment because you all are focused on time/speed/pace or whatever you want to call it. No matter how challenging it may be, if you don’t have the option to complete it faster, it’s poorly designed.
I think what they are actually asking for is a lower skill floor, not that it needs to be done faster. So for example, in the ooze puzzle, making it so you don’t have to put in both oozes at once. The challenge of doing both at once is still there, and skill in execution is still rewarded, but pugs who are struggling can “bang it out” slowly but surely.
No not necessarily.
I just think it’s mind-numbingly monotonous to have no choice but to wait for the oozes + the people luring them to take them to the gate. Even if I was the person luring them, I may as well toggle off run and just RP walk to the gate because of how slow they move.
This doesn’t seem like a good design for a puzzle to me in the least bit… there’s very little user input required and you have no control over the speed at which you’re able to do it. It’s not necessarily about speedclearing it, it’s about having literally no choice but to just wait. It’s not fun to wait and watch oozes inch their way over to a door.
At the same time, I also feel that it should be possible for pugs to perhaps be able to lure it along a longer route without interference from oozes. Hell, perhaps the option to give the ooze a permanent invisibility buff at the cost of reducing its speed by over 50% along with the elementals dealing 2x the damage to players or something of that nature instead?
Perhaps instead of luring the ooze, the player would have to attack it/cc it to push it to the door. Like, it won’t move unless you knock it back yourself.
(edited by Purple Miku.7032)
I’ll try to rephrase my posts into one so this may or may not get long-winded. I’m not asking for you to agree with me. We all have our own opinions on what makes a puzzle a puzzle and what makes it challenging and engaging. This is also likely reflected in our play styles. I’ll likely be using challenges and puzzles interchangeably.
For simplicity, let’s say there are three groups of players. You have the new players and those that take time to learn content. You have the average players who understand the mechanics of the dungeons to not struggle and casually run dungeons or do their daily dungeon tour. You then have the hardcore players who compete with each other with their completion times.
All of these players have varying skill sets. The first group, least experienced players, will likely struggle when doing a lot of the dungeon puzzles. Some require coordination and team work to complete which they may not be accustomed to. As a result, a lot of these players will find the puzzles to be a challenge. Some may be easier than others, and easier to learn, but they’ll still be a challenge at first. Everything loses it’s challenge over time as you adapt and get used to doing it.
You have the average players who do dungeon runs casually for gold or armor. Quite often they do dungeon tours of the easier and quicker dungeon paths. They’ve likely mastered these paths well enough that it no longer poses a challenge for them. I’m sure many players can say that they can do CoF P1 without any effort. They’ve learned the mechanics and know how to properly use their skills for the most part. They may not be 100% efficient but then that isn’t necessarily their goal. Both this group and the experienced group’s experience will have a high degree of variability as the majority tend to do pug groups (I know that phrase is redundant).
You then have the hardcore players who know each encounter inside and out, which builds are the best for each encounter, and so on. Since they know everything so well, the puzzles themselves are not much of a challenge. What left is there to challenge themselves with? Time. They create a challenge for themselves by trying to find the quickest way to complete a path. This challenge was not created by Anet, but those players as a collective trying to get more out of the dungeons.
Is the puzzle that the inexperienced players facing and less of a puzzle because that particular one cannot be completed at a faster pace once you’ve gotten down the mechanics? Is it really that poorly designed if it doesn’t have any fail mechanism any option to complete it faster. I kind of duplicated the first question just now.
Think back to any game that you found challenging. Did you find them any of the challenges to be less challenging the second or third time through.? Probably so as this is the nature of how this progresses. Does this mean those challenges were poorly designed? How about if you had no means of completing them quicker?
Just because a puzzle can be completed the same by everyone when they do the mechanics does not make it any less of a challenge or poorly designed. I’m pretty sure Anet did not design the puzzles with the speed runners in mind. They wanted to create puzzles that got players to work together and coordinate their actions to overcome whatever obstacle laid in front of them. The whole concept of completing a puzzle and a quick speed or pace once you’ve gotten the mechanics down was created by players trying to add more challenge.
Some examples of what I would deem to be time-gates would be the dialogue at the beginning of the TA dungeon of the clown car from the old dredge fractal. Neither of these offered any sort of challenge to all skill levels of players and just dragged on the time spent in the dungeon/fractal. I’d even consider the NPC at the beginning of the CoE fractal after the 1st champ to be a time-gate even though you can speed her up. You’re still waiting for her to move slowly so you can progress the dungeon. The cannon phase in the Mai Trin boss fractal is also debatable. Sure it’s an endurance challenge but how long is really too long?
As I said at the beginning of this, I’m not asking for you to agree with me. I already know that we may likely not agree with each other as we have two entirely different viewpoints. The best that we can do is see where each other is coming from and agree to disagree. That tends to be the outcome of most discussions anyhow.
No not necessarily.
I just think it’s mind-numbingly monotonous to have no choice but to wait for the oozes + the people luring them to take them to the gate. Even if I was the person luring them, I may as well toggle off run and just RP walk to the gate because of how slow they move.
This doesn’t seem like a good design for a puzzle to me in the least bit… there’s very little user input required and you have no control over the speed at which you’re able to do it. It’s not necessarily about speedclearing it, it’s about having literally no choice but to just wait. It’s not fun to wait and watch oozes inch their way over to a door.
At the same time, I also feel that it should be possible for pugs to perhaps be able to lure it along a longer route without interference from oozes. Hell, perhaps the option to give the ooze a permanent invisibility buff at the cost of reducing its speed by over 50% along with the elementals dealing 2x the damage to players or something of that nature instead?
Perhaps instead of luring the ooze, the player would have to attack it/cc it to push it to the door. Like, it won’t move unless you knock it back yourself.
You do have control over how fast it goes. You can get it right the first time (organized group) or fail a dozen times (PUGs).
Is the puzzle that the inexperienced players facing and less of a puzzle because that particular one cannot be completed at a faster pace once you’ve gotten down the mechanics? Is it really that poorly designed if it doesn’t have any fail mechanism any option to complete it faster. I kind of duplicated the first question just now.
Think back to any game that you found challenging. Did you find them any of the challenges to be less challenging the second or third time through.? Probably so as this is the nature of how this progresses. Does this mean those challenges were poorly designed? How about if you had no means of completing them quicker?
You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.
Also using the 3 types of players. Puzzles would benefit more from having multiple choices. Inexperienced groups would be able to find a method which works for them and experienced groups would be able to find a method which suits their goals (favourite, safest or fastest). So once again i dont know why you are disagreeing with us. Are you really against multiple choice? Do you really want completely linear dungeons and puzzles in the future?
Infamous darkness interpreted what i was trying to say perfectly. Can either of you please explain what you dislike about giving players more options to complete a puzzle?
(edited by spoj.9672)
No not necessarily.
I just think it’s mind-numbingly monotonous to have no choice but to wait for the oozes + the people luring them to take them to the gate. Even if I was the person luring them, I may as well toggle off run and just RP walk to the gate because of how slow they move.
This doesn’t seem like a good design for a puzzle to me in the least bit… there’s very little user input required and you have no control over the speed at which you’re able to do it. It’s not necessarily about speedclearing it, it’s about having literally no choice but to just wait. It’s not fun to wait and watch oozes inch their way over to a door.
At the same time, I also feel that it should be possible for pugs to perhaps be able to lure it along a longer route without interference from oozes. Hell, perhaps the option to give the ooze a permanent invisibility buff at the cost of reducing its speed by over 50% along with the elementals dealing 2x the damage to players or something of that nature instead?
Perhaps instead of luring the ooze, the player would have to attack it/cc it to push it to the door. Like, it won’t move unless you knock it back yourself.
They should rather change the ooze puzzle so two of the players have to carry the ooze to the exit rather than luring an AI mob. This way people could movement skills like super speed, bullrush, rocket boots etc. to make it faster but using a portal or a blink should drop the bundle because they would completely trivialise the whole thing even in non experienced groups.
The ooze carrier could have like a perma -50% movement speed and take extra aggro from fire elementals and extra damage from the fire on the floor.
You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.
You still don’t see our point. You are asking for something that’s already there. It’s pointless.
- Riskier: Newbies first choice. Everyone tries to outdps the elementals, defending oozes at same time as moving it away. Not kiting elementals.
- Safer: 4 Players moves all elementals to 1 side, 1 more player gets both oozes and move them slowly on the other side (yes, both oozes follow same players on same path). Then, at the end, he moves 1 ooze to the other side using he gap with no fire near the exit door.
- Experienced: 2 Players move oozes. The other players use reflects, blindness and fears/stuns in order to not let elementals hit the oozes, but there’s no need in killing elementals.
- Safest: 2 Players move all elementals away, then 2 more players move oozes. The first players nuke down the elementals.
- Fastest: 2 Players get the buff and move to the middle of the paths. Then 2 Warriors with “Fear me”, behind the oozes, move them really fast until the oozes reach the maximum feared range. Then warriors CC the other elementals. (To test if a guardian 5 greatsword could make an ooze to go across fire quickly and use that as shortcut to save time).
- Challenging: 2 Players strategy. They go in, different sides, kill their ooze, aggro all elementals and run to the end. Bleed the elementals at the end and use lot of condition damage, then they run to the respawned ooze and move them to the gear while the elementals die because of the bleeds (I use to solo 1 side doing that).
I can give you more strats. Do you still need more choices?
And by the way…
Do you really want completely linear dungeons and puzzles in the future?
Yes.
I’m not sure what you find odd about it. Seems like i’ve been doing dungeons and raids wrong the last 9 years of my life in many different MMOs and I should learn what a dungeon is O,o
Aens / Ellantriel / Nao To Mori / Saelyth. Commander
Guias de Raids en español / Spanish raiding guides
(edited by Elrey.5472)
You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.
The majority of the posts claiming bad design has centered around speed/pacing/whatever.
Hybrid’s responses against my examples were:
Nope, that is a good puzzle. Here is why: disorganized groups with no communication finish it with 35 seconds left on the timer. Organized groups with good communication can finish it with 70 seconds left on the timer. The better you are the faster the puzzle can be completed. Unlike the electric floor puzzle, which takes the same amount of time no matter how many times you’ve experienced it.
The lasers would be an awesome puzzle if there was some punishment for failure. As it is the puzzle is just a time gate and bad design.
No artificial time gate.
All of those have to do with speed and time. None of it has to do with choices.
You’ve given the following reasons regarding time and speed as well
That means they should not be locked behind timegates and ideally they should have a combat element.
Unskippable cutscenes, unecessary timegates, excessively long dialogues, buggy hologram generator hitboxes, player count checks, puzzles that dont involve combat and just add tedious timegating upon replay. Its an explorable dungeon path. It should of been designed to be replayable and at the same time engaging while replaying. It shouldnt give any reason to cause irritation to players. Some people dont mind the puzzles and timegating but many do. Its current design suggests it was built to be played once as a story instance.
The parts that are not bolded I have stated at least once already that I actually agree with. The only exception being the statement that there needs to be a combat element.
There there’s another post of yours about speed and pacing
The difference between those examples and the ones in aetherpath is that dolphin and bombs do not slow you down. Yes they add extra time due to you having to move places to get them done. But you have the freedom to do them fast or slow. The aetherpath puzzles seem to force extra timegating on you which just makes things worse when you already experience countless timegates from cutscenes and dialogues. I feel non combat puzzles should be in jumping puzzles not dungeons. People dont do dungeons for puzzles. The only non combat puzzles i dont mind are ones like TAFU’s bee corridor. It doesnt slow you down if you know what you are doing. So its not going to cause irritation but it still makes you pay attention.
The difference between the puzzles hybrid listed and aether puzzles is quite simple. The aether puzzles slow you down and theres no way to really counter that.
The oozes move a set slow speed which makes kiting very slow and there is no way to be faster than that set time.
He said many times now that good design would be for there to be a puzzle that doesn’t restrict everyone to being capable of doing it at a set pace. He gave up on you because you keep misinterpreting him.
Here’s one of my explanations of what a non badly designed puzzle is
Just because a puzzle can be completed the same by everyone when they do the mechanics does not make it any less of a challenge or poorly designed. I’m pretty sure Anet did not design the puzzles with the speed runners in mind. They wanted to create puzzles that got players to work together and coordinate their actions to overcome whatever obstacle laid in front of them. The whole concept of completing a puzzle and a quick speed or pace once you’ve gotten the mechanics down was created by players trying to add more challenge.
Now if you want to change your arguments to talking about choice. Fine. I’ll address that. It doesn’t matter. Having multiple choices doesn’t make a puzzle good or bad. You’re limited on what you can do in the aquatic fractal. You cannot complete either of the two paths different ways. All of which require you to go from Point to Point B.
A well designed puzzle challenges players. This challenge diminishes over time but that doesn’t mean that it’s poorly designed because of that.
Also using the 3 types of players. Puzzles would benefit more from having multiple choices. Inexperienced groups would be able to find a method which works for them and experienced groups would be able to find a method which suits their goals (favourite, safest or fastest). So once again i dont know why you are disagreeing with us. Are you really against multiple choice? Do you really want completely linear dungeons and puzzles in the future?
Infamous darkness interpreted what i was trying to say perfectly. Can either of you please explain what you dislike about giving players more options to complete a puzzle?
I’m not against multiple choices. I never said that I was. It’s just that you cannot say that a puzzle is poorly designed because it lacks that. Choices is not the only criteria. Many other games have puzzles that pretty much have only one way to beat them. Are they poorly designed?
You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.
The majority of the posts claiming bad design has centered around speed/pacing/whatever.
Hybrid’s responses against my examples were:
Nope, that is a good puzzle. Here is why: disorganized groups with no communication finish it with 35 seconds left on the timer. Organized groups with good communication can finish it with 70 seconds left on the timer. The better you are the faster the puzzle can be completed. Unlike the electric floor puzzle, which takes the same amount of time no matter how many times you’ve experienced it.
The lasers would be an awesome puzzle if there was some punishment for failure. As it is the puzzle is just a time gate and bad design.
No artificial time gate.
All of those have to do with speed and time. None of it has to do with choices.
You’ve given the following reasons regarding time and speed as well
That means they should not be locked behind timegates and ideally they should have a combat element.
Unskippable cutscenes, unecessary timegates, excessively long dialogues, buggy hologram generator hitboxes, player count checks, puzzles that dont involve combat and just add tedious timegating upon replay. Its an explorable dungeon path. It should of been designed to be replayable and at the same time engaging while replaying. It shouldnt give any reason to cause irritation to players. Some people dont mind the puzzles and timegating but many do. Its current design suggests it was built to be played once as a story instance.
The parts that are not bolded I have stated at least once already that I actually agree with. The only exception being the statement that there needs to be a combat element.
There there’s another post of yours about speed and pacing
The difference between those examples and the ones in aetherpath is that dolphin and bombs do not slow you down. Yes they add extra time due to you having to move places to get them done. But you have the freedom to do them fast or slow. The aetherpath puzzles seem to force extra timegating on you which just makes things worse when you already experience countless timegates from cutscenes and dialogues. I feel non combat puzzles should be in jumping puzzles not dungeons. People dont do dungeons for puzzles. The only non combat puzzles i dont mind are ones like TAFU’s bee corridor. It doesnt slow you down if you know what you are doing. So its not going to cause irritation but it still makes you pay attention.
What you’re missing is its about time*gates* not just time. If a puzzle takes a long time, relatively speaking, thats not necessarily bad. If the puzzle allows for tactical innovation and improvement thats great even if it takes 5 minutes (and the rewards are appropriate) but the problem is when it takes 5 minutes no matter what and there is no room for improvement. That is the ACp3 problem.
The Ooze puzzle is slightly better, but not by much. As I said, there is one “good” tactic and all other tactics are inferior and a better tactic will never be created than the good one. The best possible run of that puzzle has been done and there is no tactical innovation. It’s solved and it’s sad. It’s horrible.
The electric floor puzzle is just as bad as the ACp3 burrow event. In fact, the only saving grace is that its shorter than the burrow event. But nonetheless, there is only one way to do it: the right way. Doing it any other way is not doing it at all. It’s a solved puzzle.
Solved puzzles have limited replayability. No one enjoys solved puzzles. The best thing you can say about a solved puzzle is that its short. CoFp1 braziers puzzle is solved and simplistic, but at least its fast and not tedious. If only the electric floor puzzle was fast and not tedious.
I’m not against multiple choices. I never said that I was. It’s just that you cannot say that a puzzle is poorly designed because it lacks that. Choices is not the only criteria. Many other games have puzzles that pretty much have only one way to beat them. Are they poorly designed?
Im pretty sure many people would disagree with that. At least when talking about puzzles for replayable content. Most people would say a good puzzle is one which has multiple solutions but is also challenging. Hybrid points it out quite clearly. They are solved so there is nothing to be gained from repeating them. The problem is this is a dungeon which is meant to be replayed so it should be designed with that in mind. It clearly isnt.
I’d give up if I were you…
It requires some form of strategy and coordination other that just stacking on the boss and spamming your #1 key.
Again with this story?
Ohai, jooooe. I logged randomly in archeage but nat says he never sees you online? Wut’s wrong with you?
Look at all of those speed runs videos. Notice that one thing they have in common is that they all stack. I just want to clarify that I am in no way against stacking as I actually prefer it to the clusterkitten that can happen when people don’t.
I brought stacking up because I don’t see that very engaging and it’s used for a lot of the trash mobs and bosses for good reason. How can some puzzles be deemed not engaging yet some people want more combat puzzles where you’re essentially just stacking like we all usually do?
I was reading through this and this caught my eye. If you watch many of the new tactics actually the whole stacking in a corner thing isn’t as common. It’s good for if enemies are spread out and you want to bring them in closer so it’s still happening, but if it’s a single boss or some other tactic can be used to bring them together (read pulls) then that most likely will be quicker and therefor preferred. I’d note the recent tournament where SEp1 was done and more or less the deciding event was when one team went to the normal stack spot and the other rushed right in, used temporal curtain to pull the golems together and burn them down. Saved enough time to more or less ensure them a win.
I’d give up if I were you…
Heh. Im a masochist.
I’d give up if I were you…
Heh. Im a masochist.
Hmmm… /wink
Solved puzzles have limited replayability. No one enjoys solved puzzles.
Aren’t all boss fights like solved puzzles after a while? Yet you need to complete it.
Aens / Ellantriel / Nao To Mori / Saelyth. Commander
Guias de Raids en español / Spanish raiding guides
I’ll respond to your posts later but I have a few questions in the meantime.
You say a puzzle should have multiple options. Let’s say a puzzle has five ways to complete it but they all take exactly the same amount of time. Would this be poorly designed?
List five puzzles within this game that you would say are well designed. Considering that you all allear to be in the same guild, or even set dungeon group, I’m sure you can easily come up with a list together.
I’d give up if I were you…
Condescension towards those you disagree with because they don’t agree with you… classic dungeon forum.
I didn’t really state my opinion on this matter… But yeah, I tend to support whoever makes sense and actually has a point. The fact that he’s a super cool guy helps too.
Now go be cathurt elsewhere.
Orrrr you can keep having your feelings crushed against my indifference? I’m already taken, my heart is with someone else. Soz.
I’ll respond to your posts later but I have a few questions in the meantime.
You say a puzzle should have multiple options. Let’s say a puzzle has five ways to complete it but they all take exactly the same amount of time. Would this be poorly designed?
List five puzzles within this game that you would say are well designed. Considering that you all allear to be in the same guild, or even set dungeon group, I’m sure you can easily come up with a list together.
Well designed puzzles should have multiple options. There should be harder but faster options, some middle ground options, then a slower but easier option.
THe only thing that fits that criteria that I can think of would be the COE p1 console puzzle. Though I don’t know if I’d call it good on it’s other merits but it does follow that criteria. You could do 1-1-1-1-1, or it’s even possible to just do all 5 at once. More common though you’ll find the standard is 1-4, and if your group lacks someone who can solo defend then maybe 2-3 or 1-1-3.
In this situation there is the possibility of upping your game to master the content to a level you weren’t able to achieve initially. That simply isn’t the case in many puzzles, I mean there is the whole “you failed” thing where eventually you stop failing, but that’s not mastery that’s just a pass/fail.
I’d say there are a few requirements I’d put on a good puzzle though.
1) being what I said, there should be different levels of possibilities with scaling difficulties, rewarding harder options with increased speeds but having slower easier methods available.
2) This is objective but it should be fun, this opinion can vary but I’ve seen games make good puzzles but they just somehow aren’t fun which leaves them as unwanted and hated.
3) no timesinks, there should never be a situation where you’re left waiting for the next phase.
4) require participation, everyone should be doing something, that doesn’t mean everyone has to be doing the puzzle, but if it’s a puzzle that only 2 people need to do, put in something for the other 3 to be kept busy with, be that some adds coming in or whatever. Again though, that doesn’t mean it should require 5 people, just that no one should be sitting there waiting for things to be done if they are there.
I particularly like the Arah p3/p4 light orbs puzzle. It’s a simple move the light orb from point a to point b, how you actually do it is up to you. Portal? Maybe. Shadow trap? Just running it? One person soloing with a special build? It’s completely open ended. It’s a bit simple, it would be nice if there were more things to make the actual movement harder or more complicated but the basic puzzle is great.
So good puzzles…
1. CoEp1 hacking event
2. Arah3/4 Orbs
3. CoFp2 Bombs
4. ACp2 arming the traps event
5. CMp1/p2 scavenger hunts
There ya go.
I particularly like the Arah p3/p4 light orbs puzzle. It’s a simple move the light orb from point a to point b, how you actually do it is up to you. Portal? Maybe. Shadow trap? Just running it? One person soloing with a special build? It’s completely open ended. It’s a bit simple, it would be nice if there were more things to make the actual movement harder or more complicated but the basic puzzle is great.
So good puzzles…
1. CoEp1 hacking event
2. Arah3/4 Orbs
3. CoFp2 Bombs
4. ACp2 arming the traps event
5. CMp1/p2 scavenger huntsThere ya go.
You mean “decent”.
Compared to the other sh… puzzles.
I always liked CoF p3’s Tunnel of Fiery Death and Whatnot. Doesn’t have to slow you down, but it can be a painful challenge if you don’t know your mobility/defensive skills very well…
Come to think of it, the endboss was really good, too. Shame that path never got run as often.