Blobbers: to puzzle or not to puzzle?

[aweigh]

v_K i'm simply going to copy/paste one of my more salient musings on this subject in the earlier thread:

v_k i've actually never played a roguelike.

edit: the type of puzzles i enjoy in a dungeon-crawler are of this variety:

in elminage: gothic's ice caverns every floor is filled with one-way slides that force the player to carefully navigate through each floor in order to reach the stairs to the next one.

in elminage: gothic's royal tomb there is an invisible enemy that haunts you throughout the dungeon and you must navigate your way through dozens of 1-way doors, spinners, chutes and secret doors in order to find an item that will let you see him.

are those "puzzles"? i don't consider them puzzles, although they certainly are puzzling for the player.

those are the only type of "puzzles" i want in my dungeon crawlers. fetch-quests and trial-and-error affairs can stay home.

you never addressed this my friend. are those "puzzles"? i consider them part of good dungeon design. when i describe such things i usually use the terms "tricky navigation of the dungeon" and it's something that usually goes in the PRO/Plus column of my ever-present bullet-point lists in all of my posts.

the two brief examples i quote above are the long and short of the extent of puzzles i enjoy when crawling dem dungeons. i repeat once again for emphasis, fetch-quests and trial-and-error affairs can stay home, and finally i add to the sentiment that so too can pixel-hunt-mouse-look puzzles as well.

switch puzzles are fine and in fanct in elminage: gothic's the royal tomb one of the more enjoyable switch puzzles i've encountered is found.

...notice how many time i'ves referend elminage: gothic in this topic? HINT. HINT. MOTHERFUCKING HINT. go and play it friends. you're missing out on the best 'crawlin since the original wizardry games.

 

[V_K]

you never addressed this my friend. are those "puzzles"?

Those are navigation challenges, the only kind of puzzle I hate.

 

[aweigh]

...what the fuck

are you fucking telling me people have different tastes than ME!??

i can't even

someone bring me my bath salts please

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Put me in the anti-puzzle camp, though I know they are expected in certain genres and sub-genres. Usually the solution is either immediately obvious or simply requires trial-and-error. Videogame puzzles rarely require thought, only time.

It's a holdover from my D&D days. A good puzzle brings the group together and provides variety, while a bad puzzle brings the game to a screeching halt. I think game developers err on the side of caution and make their puzzles too easy, or go overboard and make them ridiculously hard.

Blobbers seem particularly prone to this (Grimrock 2 cough cough); you see a locked door, an empty alcove, and a sign that reads "BANANA WALRUS" Figure it out you moron! The solution? Put every item in the game in the slot until it unlocks. Why didn't I think of that?!?

 

[V_K]

Blobbers seem particularly prone to this (Grimrock 2 cough cough); you see a locked door, an empty alcove, and a sign that reads "BANANA WALRUS" Figure it out you moron! The solution? Put every item in the game in the slot until it unlocks. Why didn't I think of that?!?

Grimrock's puzzles were for the most part fairly easy, IMO.

 

[Dorateen]

in elminage: gothic's ice caverns every floor is filled with one-way slides that force the player to carefully navigate through each floor in order to reach the stairs to the next one.

The ice cavern's navigational challenge could be considered a puzzle, if you take into account the introduction of an item that can be found, allowing passage over the sliding tiles.

 

[Electryon]

This is a tough one for me. I grew up on graphical adventures, which are essentially nothing but a series of puzzles. The issue with blobbers is that the puzzle is always about affecting something else on the map. A switch here opens a door here. A key on the third floor opens that one door you couldn't open on the second. A sign written by goblins warns of impending traps. Even with the puzzles, it's all about navigation, and no matter how long you play these things, it's still very easy to get disoriented and lose where you are if you stop paying attention for even a few moves.

 

[aweigh]

you know, i did play through wiz 6 and in the spirit of fairness Bradley did tighten up his fetch-quest item-puzzles in comparison to his previous puzzle-o-rama which was wiz 5. i haven't played wiz 7 yet, but i have finished wiz 8 (although Bradley didn't have anything to do with Wiz 8 and wiz 8 doesn't feature the Bradley-style pixel-hunt-for-items-then-figure-out-how-they-are-used-in-what-place-in-order-to-progress-usually-by-trial-and-error.

anyway as i was saying i did play wiz 6 and i didn't find _most_ of the running around and fetching shit as tedious as in wiz 5 (i feel i must reiterate that i still consider wiz 5 the best wizardry, despite the fed-ex) so in my limited experience dealing with puzzles in dungeon crawlers i freely admit that logically it all comes down to how they're implemented.

it depends on what the reward is, as for example in the case of wiz 5 and wiz 6 the reward for the puzzles are worthwhile, certainly, since if you don't do them you can't play the game! but i would much rather play through a Bradley-style item/trial-and-error/google.com puzzle that instead of being mandatory in order to unlock the next area, which renders them then ultimately a convulated run-around with the end result basically the equivalent of a Doom keycard that opens the next door; instead something like in (wait for it) ELMINAGE MOTHERFUCKING GOTHIC's (ahem) hidden and optional puzzle in the very first dungeon that rewards you with a secret ninja party member of a race (Devilish) that can't be accessed until much later in the game.

that puzzle consists of:

- having a level 5 bishop in the party in order to trigger the NPC in the church that asks you to find his/her lost son
- revisiting the first dungeon (as you will probably be level 5 and onwards in the second dungeon) and searching an area that you previously probably explored but couldn't do anything with
- running around in one of the floors until you randomly (i think it's randomly?) encounter the demon child NPC and he mentions he wants a locket
- running around in one of the floors of the dungeon until you find the locket which only spawns after all of these previous triggers
- returning to the empty area in the second floor that you initially couldn't do anything with (but had "event text" so you knew it was important) and giving the kid the locket
- you are then free to recruit him or tell him to go suck a dick

that is _definitely_ not a navigational puzzle, and i quite enjoyed it and i quite enjoyed the REWARD. if Bradley had been behind that then the whole thing would not be a hidden mini-quest and it would have been a mandatory part of the first dungeon with the reward being simple game progression. /bradleyhate

edit: also the kid would have probably turned into a ghost when receiving the locket and thanked you for sending him to the afterlife in some drawn-out purple-prose. TEE HEE.

 

[octavius]

you know, i did play through wiz 6 and in the spirit of fairness Bradley did tighten up his fetch-quest item-puzzles in comparison to his previous puzzle-o-rama which was wiz 5. i haven't played wiz 7 yet, but i have finished wiz 8 (although Bradley didn't have anything to do with Wiz 8 and wiz 8 doesn't feature the Bradley-style pixel-hunt-for-items-then-figure-out-how-they-are-used-in-what-place-in-order-to-progress-usually-by-trial-and-error.

Puzzle wise Wiz 7 is more like 5 than 6, IMO. Especially one dungeon had too many Adventure type puzzles for my taste (in the Ratkin ruins IIRC). 7 also suffers a bit from the same bigger-is-better syndrome as 5, while I think 6 is the most compact design of Bradley's Wizardry games.

 

[V_K]

What I'd really love to see made one day is a blobber mixed with a Myst-like. Grimrock 2 had a bit of that, but more in the atmosphere than actual gameplay (although the graveyard puzzle and the bridge came close enough).

 

[TigerKnee]

I think the Crossword Puzzle from Uukrul would actually be a good puzzle... IF the hints weren't so cryptic that only 1% of the players could solve them (I could only solve like 2 before I just looked up an FAQ) - conceptually though, it's pretty great.

 

[aweigh]

i'm just gonna admit it here: i haven't blog-posted about my exploits in uukrul cos i'm puzzle-stuck and combat-stuck. game is fucking hard. not saying i won't resume it soon but for the moment i've gone back to replaying elminage to satiate my crawler needs.

uukrul ain't no joke.

 

[Electryon]

i'm just gonna admit it here: i haven't blog-posted about my exploits in uukrul cos i'm puzzle-stuck and combat-stuck. game is fucking hard. not saying i won't resume it soon but for the moment i've gone back to replaying elminage to satiate my crawler needs.

uukrul ain't no joke.

If you read the CRPG Addict's post about the crossword puzzle, you'll find that even though he literally partakes in the American Crossword Puzzle tournament each year, he could barely figure out the answers, much less the aftermath. I mean, there is a reason this game is the ultimate "cult classic" of the genre, and it was put out by Broderbund, who I recall from memory was primarily an edutainment-type company (Mavis Beacon, The Print Shop, Number Crunchers), so it makes sense that their RPG would follow this suite. But what percentage of people (who even knew it existed back then) ever completed it?? It may not have been 1% as mentioned above, but I guarantee it was less than 10%. A poster in the comment section mentioned his grandmother actually helped him with the crossword puzzle to help him finish. In an age before internet, or any way to get ahold of a walkthrough, this game would have been the ultimate brick wall. But this is only the most extreme example. Blobbers are filled with almost purposefully near-impossible puzzles that seemed to require the hintbook that was unerringly advertised in the back of the manual, or possibly those tip hotlines where you could pay by the minute for individual puzzles.

 

[aweigh]

although i don't dispute anything you just wrote, i just want to remind you about the existence of wiz 4, which is also pre-internet... that first room puzzle dude. jesus. at least uukrul PRETENDS that it's a solvable game, heh.

 

[Electryon]

Wizardry IV, I'm convinced, was Sir-Tech's attempt at trolling their own players and delivering the small handful of players who knew every nook and cranny of the first 3 games something they could lose their collective shit over. The "enemies" in IV are named after players who sent in their winning game disks for the original trilogy, which (you have to admit) requires more than your average interest in the genre, bordering on obsession. Not only that, there is apparently a "perfect" ending that requires you to have taken obscure notes from the first 3 games and apply them at the right times in IV.

Personally, I wonder what percentage of people have ever made it out of the first room. I managed that on my own, I've never ventured farther. I figure I'll get to it once I retire....so sometime around 2050....

 

[aweigh]

Puzzle wise Wiz 7 is more like 5 than 6, IMO. Especially one dungeon had too many Adventure type puzzles for my taste (in the Ratkin ruins IIRC). 7 also suffers a bit from the same bigger-is-better syndrome as 5, while I think 6 is the most compact design of Bradley's Wizardry games.

although i've yet to play wiz 7 legitimately i have absolutely no doubt that wiz 6 is the pinnacle of Bradley's abilities as a puzzle designer. too bad about wiz 7 featuring the same style of obnoxious, obtuse and incomprehensible fetch-quest-cum-back-track-a-thalon that he sperged on in wiz 5. dude, tell me this shit isn't obtuse:

in order to progress through level 2 you need to find a hacksaw that is NOT, i repeat and i stand by this statement, NOT HINTED at existing in order to cut the chains off a door. the hacksaw is inside one non-descript room in which you have to utilize the search for hidden items function to find it. the only way a player will _normally_ find it is because they know that they have to search every single room that seems like it might have the "key" to that door. once you find the hacksaw you go to the dooor and cut off the chains and go through it (btw, 80% of the level is dark-zone) and then while exploring you stumble upon a chest that when you try to grab it is literally spirited away by a ghost. once again none of the NPC's in levels 1, 2 and 3 give any hints regarding the gost, specifically, but at least you have something to work with: you know you have to repel a ghost.

so you continue exploring and find an alchemy table. for no reason. there's a mini-bosss guarding the entrance so that at least clues you in that it is important. then you must figure out a 4-way combination of ingredients in order to craft a potion of spirit-be-gone (to the game's credit the potion is listed as one of the possibilities), and you have two ways to solve this: through trial-and-error, and each time you fumble the ingredients your party members die or get paralyzed or whatever. the point is that bradley senses it from across the globe and gets a chubby. logically only an idiot would waste his time trying out the hundreds if not thousands of possible ingredient combinations and assumes the recipe MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN THE LEVEL. thankfully it is; not so fortunately it is in the hands of a completely random NPC encounter. now, not only must you stumble upon the duck of sparks (god i hate bradley's npc's) but you must be aware enough to specifically ask him about alchemy and the potion. I can't remember if just typing 'ghost' is enough, but anyway he then gives you the recipe.

back to the alchemy table; craft the spirit-be-gone potion, and then backtrack to the haunted chest and there you use the potion and repel the ghost and inside you find a jeweled scepter. i want to STRESS that if you're playing normally and have not found the hidden elevator in b1f that can take you to other floors, then the player is almost 100% for sure ignorant what this thing is. but you get it, and and now you can proceed to level 3 (you could proceed to level 3 without doing this but you would almost immediately get stuck, since you need the scepter).

you arrive in level 3 and navigate the maze (which is actually well designed, and i motherfucking guarantee you that bradley had very little to do with the maps themselves) and you reach a temple with textual descriptions of bling bling, clueing you that the scepter might come in handy. you reach the only area you possibly can at this moment after exploring the rest of level 3 and enter the jeweled "temple" and encounter a door, and an NPC. the NPC very politely congratulates you and offers to take the scepter and use it to whatever; a first time player (...me. i fell for it...) will almost certainly give it to him and then the NPC laughs in your fucking face, takes out his dick and pisses all over your wagging tongues and fights you. you kill him (or not, git gud) and not only is the scepter NOT in his corpse's loot, but now you have to backtrack Aaaaaalll the way back to level 2 and FIND THE HACK SAW AGAIN AND DO EVERYTHING AGAIN THIS SHIT OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD FUCK YOU BRADLEYYY

THIS IS NOT GOOD PUZZLE DESIGN!!!!!!!1

edit: funnily enough after i finished wiz 5 i read the crpg addict's entry on it and he fell for the npc's EVIL TRICKERY as well. that at least made me feel better...

 

[octavius]

Heh, Bradley made you his bitch, eh?
IIRC some of the NPCs you kill would turn up at the Inn and be recruitable. Maybe the Scepter could be obtained that way?
But yeah, Wiz 5 could be annoying as hell. Having to check every wall for hidden doors, for example. Or, worst of all, the game bugg(er)ing me at the very last insant. Read all about it in the Wizardy thread.

Personally, I wonder what percentage of people have ever made it out of the first room. I managed that on my own, I've never ventured farther. I figure I'll get to it once I retire....so sometime around 2050....

If you had played Wiz 3 you would know that the Ligh spell reveals secret doors, and that Priests can cast it. But yeah, it's a long shot.
But you just can't treat Wiz 4 as other CRPGs. No matter how cruel other CRPGS are, at least they are fair. In Wiz 4 you have to meta game.

 

[TigerKnee]

I think the Uukrul crossword puzzle is technically optional - the reward is a Heart but if I'm not wrong, you don't need all of them to beat the game.

Not that the average player wouldn't get stonewalled by some other area later on

 

[aweigh]

yeah, i think i can acquiesce to puzzles as long as they're not used in an obnoxious way to gate the critical path.

 

[Fowyr]

I think the Uukrul crossword puzzle is technically optional - the reward is a Heart but if I'm not wrong, you don't need all of them to beat the game.

Yup. "Eight frozen keys for six bloodied locks".

Brofisted aweigh for hilarious tale of his plight. Schadeunfreude is so good feeling.

Bradley is God.

 

[Norfleet]

Personally I hate random trash encounters irrespective of puzzles.
(Bard's Tale, I'm looking at you!)

Well, it's one thing to have a few random trash encounters every now and then, particularly when you haven't got anything else to do and are just looking to kill something for the XP and loot, but it's just freaking annoying when they're spammed constantly at you when you're trying to get work done, without any apparent logic for why they apparently can appear out of nowhere, including in dead ends you were just in. They aren't even a real threat in any way: They're just ANNOYING. That's what makes them trash mobs.

 

[Electryon]

One thing we can't accuse Sir-Tech of is being misleading or dishonest....check out the WARNINGS on the original box....also, any 7 year old capable of completing this game would have be destined for working at NASA or MIT....

 

[Eirinjas]

Grimrock's puzzles were for the most part fairly easy, IMO.

Except for the bullshit twitch puzzle where you have to block magic missiles from hitting a wall in order to open a door. That brought my game to a halt. I like puzzles, but that kind of nonsense in a step-based blobber is fucking lame.

 

[aweigh]

since we're all talking so much about Wizardry 4, why not try the uber-monocled remake for ps1? here is a 2 minute video i recorded to demonstrate:

 

[Electryon]

I have a copy of that too, as well as the SNES trilogy of the first three....one one hand, it eliminates the need to go through the bullshit transfer process to 2 & 3. On the other hand, playing these games on consoles almost feels like cheating. That said, I'd still almost have to recommend doing it that way. Both of them have a small bit of Japanese text left hanging around even with all the right settings, but not enough to hinder gameplay.