Nerfed Puzzles

[Kaldonis]

For anyone interested to see either what GMs say or voice their opinions to Simutronics, there's also a post on the officials (http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Discussions%20with%20Simutronics/The%20Bad,%20and%20the%20Ugly%20(general%20complai nts)/thread/1632751?get_newest=true). However, since it concerns puzzles, my initial opening post was pulled already (even though I tried not to say too much), it'll definitely help me if I can just outright discuss the puzzles somewhere, too.

I don't expect many people will actually agree with me, so advertising it might not be in my interest. But I'm more interested in a discussion than expecting I can effect change.

Puzzles which I am aware have been circumvented:


Lyserian Hills Monastery. Used to require a wizard's familiar (only rodent type) to enter the crack in the door, and push rocks into a basket, which was connected to a rope that opens the door. These days Unlock (407) mostly works, except when the door is left standing open for days on end.

River's Rest Citadel. The bridge dials need to be set correctly, based on the weight of the player(s) on the bridge and any gear. After the overhaul, you can merely climb in with about 20 ranks or so unencumbered.

Thantoph Stronghold / Bowels. To open one door, you can put a sapphire at an altar and pray. I'm not even sure how to get into the Bowels via the next puzzle. These days, you can pop the door with 407, or just swim in by the hotsprings. Someone will need to correct me if the hotsprings were always a possible entry point.


One thing that's just kind of dumb:


The Smuggler's Cutter is now extremely fast. I mainly believe it to be true because you can barely get in a single cockroack race bet in the time it takes. Near the release, 130 worked to get off the boat as it approached town. People used Locate to determine if they were close enough I think. Well the GMs disabled that feature which cut about 5 minutes off the trip. These days, the whole trip was reduced by much more than 5 minutes.


Between Chronomages and go2, honestly we don't need GMs just releasing minimal skill checks so everyone can skip by puzzles. There are plenty of hunting grounds in the game which do not and never did have any puzzles to enter, so people who don't like puzzles have plenty of options. Besides Darkstone and the Rift, what hunting grounds are even left which include significant puzzles? And besides, the Citadel Ledge and Misty Chamber have always allowed incoming teleportation as far as I know, so it's not like you have to solve the puzzle multiple times per day.

Someone was coming to River's Rest the other day and asking for help on LNet. On like every single step. "How much does it cost?" "Where do I buy a ticket?" "Where is the dock?" "How do I get in a barrel so I can log out?" I even provided exact room numbers (though I don't know how to get in a barrel). Then the person was finally like "next time I'm using the chronomage!" I mean, seriously. travel to River's Rest isn't that hard. It's definitely much better going from Solhaven to RR than crossing the Dragon Spine. I honestly don't even want people like this in River's Rest. Don't get me wrong, if you want to use the chronomage that's one thing. But claiming that the Live Bait is too complicated is ridiculous. Just the same as I don't mind helping people, but when it's teaching someone to fish, not giving them one fish.

I'd like to hear about other puzzles that have been nerfed or circumvented, whichever way you stand on the topic! I forget if there was ever anything more complex with the kobold mines, though I know some door got stuck open for an eternity until a GM fixed it. One thing that's really cool about Voln is it forces all the masters in WL to go to the Reach at least once in their lives.

[zoraster]

Puzzles are kind of fun and interesting.... the first time. After that, if you're not using a script, they're just monotonous.

I think Voln and the like are the perfect place for a puzzle. You do it once, you either look up how to do it or if you're the type of person who likes puzzles, you figure it out yourself.

Puzzles that involve getting to a place you want to go back and forth from a bunch suck. Imagine you did the morning crossword. You get a sense of accomplishment when you fill it out. Then the next day you open up the paper and it's the exact same crossword. You do it again. And the next day you do the same crossword. There's nothing to it other than just filling out some squares with letters.

As for the cutter, it can sure take a long time if you just miss it.

[Kaldonis]

Puzzles are kind of fun and interesting.... the first time. After that, if you're not using a script, they're just monotonous.

Sure, I definitely understand the sentiment. It likely reflects the fact of why most places don't have puzzles to enter. I'm not sure how strongly it applies to these cases, though.

For the Citadel, you just need to know your weight and the weight of your gear. This typically will not change much. The difference in the time for climbing (which yields RT) and solving the puzzle is fairly nominal. A lot of the time I just ringed or planar shifted to the ledge, though. It's not uncommon to see familiars sleeping there, either. So a lot of players aren't climbing in every time the hunt anyway, which is hardly different than if there was only the bridge. Anyway, for climbing you should be unencumbered, and so the same principle applies to the bridge (if you only have your base gear and it's constant and you aren't loaded down, you know what numbers to dial in).

As to the Monastery, actually most characters are unable to open the door. Only wizards can. So you basically are required to teleport in. It's really not so different from how a lot of classes deal with getting out of the graveyard.

I suppose a similar comparison might be the difficulty of getting rescued in various hunting areas. It's pretty easy to see why everyone would like it made easy to get rescued all over the world, but that doesn't mean the game should be designed that way. I had to decay this week on the Carrack because no one who could fog or field raise was around. Even Familiar Gate isn't good enough, because you have to drag through the portal, and the slant of the deck forbids the possibility.

In that sense, do you support making it universally easier to get rescued, or removing teleportation restrictions in hunting grounds? For example, teleportation into Darkstone Castle? I'm just curious how far the ease or convenience of something is weighed against other values I might wrap up under the banner of "flavor".

[Astru]

When I was visiting the Landing, I basically ended up refusing to hunt in Darkstone Castle because the puzzles were annoying, especially if you don't typically carry a short sword (and some places seemed to dispell spells) so I appreciate when there are ways to avoid the puzzles sometimes.

I get that having a puzzle for getting into a castle makes sense and it's something that seems like a good idea on paper because you shouldn't just be able to walk right into any hunting ground, but that doesn't mean I like dealing with them. :P

[Kaldonis]

When I was visiting the Landing, I basically ended up refusing to hunt in Darkstone Castle because the puzzles were annoying, especially if you don't typically carry a short sword (and some places seemed to dispell spells) so I appreciate when there are ways to avoid the puzzles sometimes.

Yeah, and you also weren't using Lich yet at the time if I recall, so it does lend support to the point that people who use scripts don't care either way and people who aren't scripting will just refuse to hunt these areas generally. The only thing I really didn't like about Darkstone is rescuing kids.

And again, I'm not asking that more puzzles be added to the game. By not hunting DS, you just make more loot there for others to scoop up. I just wish they wouldn't remove or circumvent existing features from the original design. Obviously, there's some flexibility for the reasoning. The Citadel was pretty much largely re-done, so the original designer's concept might not be as important as the new designers' concepts.

[Astru]

I do like the puzzles that aren't for hunting grounds because they can be fun and there's not necessarily a reason you have to go there. Like the one to get to the Huntress's shrine, for instance. Not only does it require a group of people so it's a social thing (unless you have a nice scroll collection), but it's sort of cool to get in there because it's a bit of a trick to get in.

The puzzles for getting into hunting grounds can also be annoying if one is traveling in a group since each member of the group has to do it individually so you get split up. This isn't true of the Citadel bridge (though I feel like trying that with a group would be terrible unless you're hoping to fall, which is sometimes the point), but it is true of Darkstone and possibly some other puzzles as well.

[Kaldonis]

The puzzles for getting into hunting grounds can also be annoying if one is traveling in a group since each member of the group has to do it individually so you get split up.

Yeah but the skill checks that circumvent puzzles to enter the Citadel or the Bowels require each player to do them, even with a group. Whether this is better or worse than an alternative definitely depends on the group. I suppose the only reason the puzzles remain (mechanically) is for people without the proper skill ranks.

[Kembal]

Bowels always had the hotsprings as an entry point.

Rift entry has been made significantly easier for characters in Voln, which has made getting there a lot less tedious.

[Warriorbird]

I liked RR pre cutter.

[Kaldonis]

Bowels always had the hotsprings as an entry point.

Rift entry has been made significantly easier for characters in Voln, which has made getting there a lot less tedious.

Thanks for the information about the hotsprings: makes me feel more like these changes are relatively uncorrelated. And sure, teleportation doesn't bother me. Indeed, teleportation has much more value (either for getting in places, or getting out, including bodies) when places are difficult to enter, and I like that.


I liked RR pre cutter.

Well, yes and no. It was definitely the "good old days" but also you know the janky old days where the the geography had about as much personality as an inbred redneck's family stump. RR is even more isolated now, which is in general a perk (except for the people that try to avoid getting caught scripting by zombie-ing it out in the Rest).

I guess you wouldn't know, but Beacon Hall submitted designs for the expansion of the WL locker annex, at a location no other than right near the old boot the kobold village. Having our wondrous house represented to the world near sketchy kobold shanties was not the first choice of our president, but nostalgia and democracy won most the rest of us over.

Once we see what the GMs are willing to build from our request, we'll post a virtual tour somewhere. I'm trying to implement an insane rolling ladder people can fall off of, but we'll see how well that goes over...

[zoraster]

I know it's a side note, but I have three of my characters out in RR, and I don't think it's a very good place to zombie out. I might argue it's one of the worst place in the game.

I actually don't think its population is much lower than many other places, at least not practically speaking. First, RR has only two super nodes (other than Zul Logoth no other place with a mechanical impediment has as few) so the few who do hunt RR are fairly pushed together. Second, people seem to like to engage as much or more in RR than anywhere else in the game while resting. Although it's not against the rules to afk rest, if I were a zombie I wouldn't pick a place I thought people would recognize my character, try to chat with him/her, and so forth.

That said, reality and perception might be different. Maybe people assume it's good because it's remote.

[Whirlin]

I actually really liked Zoraster's post and reply on puzzles.

It made me consider the early days of WOW when instances required keys to unlock. Quests that needed to be completed in order to unlock an area. In many ways, these puzzles are pre-keys. Ideally, completion of the puzzle should 'unlock' the puzzle permanently to reduce monotony.

Fast forward a few years with a company that's tried keys (WOW), and they got rid of keys entirely, because the quests to complete become monotonous, and just acted as a barrier of entry.

So what's the best approach? Quests to unlock specific hunting grounds? That kinda sounds annoying. Do away with puzzles? I dunno, that really disengages the atmosphere. Make Keys to bipass puzzles that have been completed? That may be a nice option, but is it really worth dedicating development efforts into the creation of a new infrastructure that doesn't exist? It may be nice to be added to the development backlog, however, I feel that there are much better areas of Gemstone to dedicate development efforts to further enhance the character experience.

[Gelston]

I actually really liked Zoraster's post and reply on puzzles.

It made me consider the early days of WOW when instances required keys to unlock. Quests that needed to be completed in order to unlock an area. In many ways, these puzzles are pre-keys. Ideally, completion of the puzzle should 'unlock' the puzzle permanently to reduce monotony.

Fast forward a few years with a company that's tried keys (WOW), and they got rid of keys entirely, because the quests to complete become monotonous, and just acted as a barrier of entry.

So what's the best approach? Quests to unlock specific hunting grounds? That kinda sounds annoying. Do away with puzzles? I dunno, that really disengages the atmosphere. Make Keys to bipass puzzles that have been completed? That may be a nice option, but is it really worth dedicating development efforts into the creation of a new infrastructure that doesn't exist? It may be nice to be added to the development backlog, however, I feel that there are much better areas of Gemstone to dedicate development efforts to further enhance the character experience.

Shit, WoW has gotten rid of leveling entirely, if you pay them.

[Kaldonis]

I know it's a side note, but I have three of my characters out in RR, and I don't think it's a very good place to zombie out. I might argue it's one of the worst place in the game.

First, RR has only two super nodes

I agree it's not at all the best place to script hunt, but it certainly hasn't stopped people.

I was going to look into even plain nodes lately. A lot of people visiting for the storyline are hiding out in a weird place. They claim it's to avoid the "out of towners" but oddly, most of them have certainly not been around RR lately. I usually afk rest at Beacon Hall Common Room. It's a supernode and open to the public. Want to check out the status of the fountain room in the Warren. That should be made a supernode if it's not already.


So what's the best approach? Quests to unlock specific hunting grounds? That kinda sounds annoying. Do away with puzzles? I dunno, that really disengages the atmosphere. Make Keys to bipass puzzles that have been completed? That may be a nice option, but is it really worth dedicating development efforts into the creation of a new infrastructure that doesn't exist? It may be nice to be added to the development backlog, however, I feel that there are much better areas of Gemstone to dedicate development efforts to further enhance the character experience.

It's a nice point.

If I use Solhaven CoL entry as an example, where one has to push a specific combination of letters, firstly, make it unique for each character, like the ranger guild mazes. Then once you do it the first time, the next time you enter the room and you're like go door or whatever and the game is like You easily remember to push the keys S H I T H E A D and the door opens!

Maybe if you didn't come back for awhile, it'd give you some RT. And if you didn't visit in a long time you'd forget and need to re-solve it.

Of course, this doesn't really get us anywhere for some of the existing puzzles (nerfed or otherwise). The Monastery wasn't even designed for most people to be able to open the door. For the Citadel, I feel like a major problem is the relationship with the gear weight. I mean, sure it's realistic that way, but it certainly prevents the You quickly remember your weight, dial in 120 pounds, and pull the lever. The bridge spins around and you hop off the other side!

But as the point you raise, is it all worth it or not? In the case of a new area being created or another being reviewed, I think it's definitely a viable option. As to existing puzzles, that's a much trickier discussion.

[khorpulent]

I think Cavernhold is still as annoying and mysterious as it ever was. I know they made the critters in there older at some point, and they did get rid of that "three day" journey on the way there. Seems like I ended up in a jail cell one time back in the day when the gnolls caught me...