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| 9 MAR 2004 at 7:22am |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I agree with you about some of the lame hints we see in the games these days. I think what we need is a game than can monitor our progress and give a another clue if we don't get the first one. This is possible with only a small amount of aditional programming. Everyone has a diferent puzzle solving ability so it is a little hard for a game to have the perfect clues.
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| 9 MAR 2004 at 8:25am |
Lucien21Guild Master
Posts : 4876
Joined: 9 JUL 2003
Location: 0
Status : Offline | The worst one I know of recently involved a completely unhelpful ryhme and 12 pictured seals.
You were supposed to place them in the order dictated by the Ryhme, but ??? ??? >
Dear Diary, My teenage angst bullsh*t now has a bodycount.
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| 9 MAR 2004 at 11:18pm |
KsandraSchattenjger
Posts : 2459
Joined: 2 APR 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Lucien21 (9 MAR 2004 8:25am)
The worst one I know of recently involved a completely unhelpful ryhme and 12 pictured seals.
You were supposed to place them in the order dictated by the Ryhme, but ??? ??? >
I take it you're referring to the demo of JTTCOTE? Yeah, that one was terrible. It didn't help that the poem had clearly been translated from French.
Then there was the wine bottle puzzle in Broken Sword 3 (minor spoilers):
The information you needed was contained in a cutscene. Not that this was so terrible, but there were no other puzzles requiring information from the cutscenes, and I assumed they were just there to explain the story. Since I wasn't finding the story all that interesting, I didn't listen very carefully to the cutscene, and when I came to the puzzle I was totally stumped. Of course, it didn't help that a bug in the game meant the puzzle didn't work properly.
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| 9 MAR 2004 at 11:21pm |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Ksandra (9 MAR 2004 11:18pm)
The information you needed was contained in a cutscene.
And the relevant information was recorded in George's notepad. Maybe you missed that?
I forgot my sig.
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| 9 MAR 2004 at 11:29pm |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | The wine bottle puzzle stymied me as well. I missed the cutscene clue and forgot all about checking George's notebook....and ended up brute forcing it.
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| 9 MAR 2004 at 11:51pm |
KsandraSchattenjger
Posts : 2459
Joined: 2 APR 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By MichalN (9 MAR 2004 11:21pm)
And the relevant information was recorded in George's notepad. Maybe you missed that?
Yeah, actually I did. As a last resort I checked the notebook in case there was anything of interest there; unfortunately I somehow managed to miss that page. I still don't think it's really fair to put puzzle solutions in a cutscene (there was an even worse example of this in The Watchmaker).
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 1:15am |
ElfstoneGuild Master
Posts : 5892
Joined: 4 NOV 2002
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Andromus (9 MAR 2004 11:29pm)
The wine bottle puzzle stymied me as well. I missed the cutscene clue and forgot all about checking George's notebook....and ended up brute forcing it.
Did you succeed?
How long did it take?
It's 120 (5! I mean) different combinations, I think?
[b]playing[/b]: Destination Treasure Island (done in two sittings, but it's nice), Syberia (ho-hum), Dracula: Last Sanctuary (on hold)&&[b]reading[/b]: even more study papers&&[b]listening to[/b]: [url=http://www.last.fm/user/Brax82/]this and that[/url], plus [url=http://www.musicovery.com/]Musicovery[/url]&&[b]TV favorites[/b]: (currently) Pushing Daisies, Chuck, Journeyman (cancelled! grrr...), Heroes&& all-time) 24, Stargate SG1, X-Files, Lost, House
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 1:54am |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Elfstone (10 MAR 2004 1:14am)
Did you succeed?
How long did it take?
It's 120 (5! I mean) different combinations, I think?
Yeah, I eventually solved it. It took a playing session or two. I don't remember exactly how long it took, which is probably just as well. Once again, thick headed persistence triumphs over intelligence!
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 8:47am |
Lucien21Guild Master
Posts : 4876
Joined: 9 JUL 2003
Location: 0
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Ksandra (9 MAR 2004 11:18pm)
I take it you're referring to the demo of JTTCOTE? Yeah, that one was terrible. It didn't help that the poem had clearly been translated from French.
Then there was the wine bottle puzzle in Broken Sword 3 (minor spoilers):
The information you needed was contained in a cutscene. Not that this was so terrible, but there were no other puzzles requiring information from the cutscenes, and I assumed they were just there to explain the story. Since I wasn't finding the story all that interesting, I didn't listen very carefully to the cutscene, and when I came to the puzzle I was totally stumped. Of course, it didn't help that a bug in the game meant the puzzle didn't work properly.
Yes it was but I was following SirDave's wishes that he didn't want the games named and only vague descriptions used so as not to enter spoilers.
The puzzle was crap though.
The Bottle puzzle to me was completely fair I don't see a problem with giving you clues in cutscenes and the info was in the notebook to refer to so got past it no probs. (didn't have any bugs either)
Dear Diary, My teenage angst bullsh*t now has a bodycount.
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 5:41pm |
ShanyGuild Master
Posts : 3313
Joined: 19 JUN 2003
Status : Online | It's usually when you are given no response about a puzzle when the puzzle becomes unfair. I can think of several examples-
one puzzle had you arranging four stones in a certain way, though may have been easy to guess how to put them- you had to mach the symbols on the stones- but there was an additional part to the puzzle which made it unfair- you had to also place a certain symbol in front of each stone- the hint to one is found only after solving this puzzle! Truly annoying!
Another puzzle is similar to this- it's easy to know what you need to do, but there's something else that complicates the puzzle completely. There's a puzzle where you have to make a connection going through some machines, and you can only connect one machine to another, but not all together, so you had to work on it for awhile. The problem was that you didn't know what was the last point of connection- the one you actually wanted to start working from to be sure it's all working. Again annoying.
Another puzzle was just confusing, the lack of feedback in these puzzles is very frustrating. This one had you try to find a combination to de-code a message. But not only you weren't supposed to use part of the decoder, the puzzle was confusing because one thing in it was completely unclear, if it was I would've solved it early on as I had the right idea at the start.
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 10:44pm |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Just thought of one. Portrait puzzle. If you've played the game you know what I'm talking about. You get limited feedback from people you talk to, and then none at all. I gave up and got the correct picture off of the cd. Turns out I pretty much had it right except for the eyes.
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| 10 MAR 2004 at 10:52pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | SirDave
I do sympathise. I struggle for days and weeks with some puzzles but I think I would have tried the alphabet - my mind obviously works simply.
However the glass pyramid in Timelapse. Boy did I waste weeks looking for the mathematical sequence needed to get the lizard on all the levels. I even roped in my brother (maths degree chap) and he told me to give it up.
Then I rememebered the Golden Rule of these games. All the clues must be supplied and no reliance placed on the player's general knowledge. That's when I started hunting for the clues and found them. Gosh I felt a real dill.
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| 11 MAR 2004 at 12:58am |
adventuredogGuild Master
Posts : 3255
Joined: 14 JAN 2003
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Andromus (10 MAR 2004 10:43pm)
Just thought of one. Portrait puzzle. If you've played the game you know what I'm talking about. You get limited feedback from people you talk to, and then none at all. I gave up and got the correct picture off of the cd. Turns out I pretty much had it right except for the eyes. Good one Andro. That one certainly wasn't fair. I got VERY frustrated and refused to brute force it by trying all the possible combinations (I did do about 15-20 though). Thank heavens for the stalwart folk who bravely go before and produce hints and walkthroughs!
Still adventuring after all these years!
Patiently awaiting The Last Crown: Haunting of Hallowed Isle, and Bracken Tor...
... and Asylum if it's not tooooo scary...
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| 11 MAR 2004 at 5:40am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Jewels of the Oracle I
Totally unfair hall of the pairings or something. You have to get 10 right matches but with no feedback to let you know which pairs you got right. And the only clue is the reason for their pairing is different each time.
Finally got hubby to have a go after weeks and weeks of teeth gnashing. without any thought or clue what he was doing he clicked at random and the bugger solved it and laughed his head off at my 'easy' games.
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| 11 MAR 2004 at 6:32am |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By The Shifty Looking Terrorist (11 MAR 2004 5:39am)
Jewels of the Oracle I
Totally unfair hall of the pairings or something. You have to get 10 right matches but with no feedback to let you know which pairs you got right. And the only clue is the reason for their pairing is different each time.
Finally got hubby to have a go after weeks and weeks of teeth gnashing. without any thought or clue what he was doing he clicked at random and the bugger solved it and laughed his head off at my 'easy' games.
Say it ain't so....I think I had four or five puzzles left in the game when I put it aside. That was one of them. And I eventually threw all attempts at logic out the door and started guessing, to no avail. And your husband comes right in and solves it.....sigh....there's no justice.
Well, I'll get it someday -- I'm just not sure which day!
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| 11 MAR 2004 at 10:47pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Andromous
I have no idea what he clicked on and neither did he. I suggest cheating with a w/t on that puzzle.
Have you played Gems of Darkness the Jewels II? I came to hate that smarmy professor.... lol
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| 12 MAR 2004 at 3:13am |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Caroline (11 MAR 2004 10:46pm)
Andromous
I have no idea what he clicked on and neither did he. I suggest cheating with a w/t on that puzzle.
Have you played Gems of Darkness the Jewels II? I came to hate that smarmy professor.... lol
Not yet. I enjoyed Jewels I, so I'll pick it up some day. I have the related Quest For Karma, but I haven't played that yet.
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| 19 MAR 2004 at 6:08am |
Chthonic the ClownIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 11
Joined: 18 MAR 2004
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Lucien21 (9 MAR 2004 8:25am)
The worst one I know of recently involved a completely unhelpful ryhme and 12 pictured seals.
You were supposed to place them in the order dictated by the Ryhme, but ??? ??? >
The rhyme was the least of my troubles. Several of the seals were optical illusions to me. Even after consulting a walkthrough WITH pictures and notations of what the seals were, I had to stare at some of them for several minutes to even figure out how those scribbles on the seals looked anything like the description.
I'll second the portrait puzzle as previously mentioned. I failed to see how the descriptions and the drawings matched at all even after solving it.
And perhaps I missed the hint, but another game had a slider puzzle that involved the (seldom used) symbols of the zodiac, yet there was no reference of those symbols in the game that I found. I don't know what schools teach kids nowadays, but astrology was never in my curriculum. Games shouldn't require knowledge from outside the game world.
Another would be a certain Shakespeare puzzle in a certain survival horror game. I solved it thanks to the fact that I have seen lots of movies, but it was unfair for the same reason as the puzzle above. Game designers shouldn't assume people have extensive literature knowledge.
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, 5 score 8 then 33.&&Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, then 1 split 4 times 21.&&Pointless though the answers be, my true nature, plain to see. HEE HEE!!!!
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| 19 MAR 2004 at 5:33pm |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Chthonic the Clown (19 MAR 2004 6:08am)
And perhaps I missed the hint, but another game had a slider puzzle that involved the (seldom used) symbols of the zodiac, yet there was no reference of those symbols in the game that I found. I don't know what schools teach kids nowadays, but astrology was never in my curriculum. Games shouldn't require knowledge from outside the game world.
Why not? It's not like finding out what the signs of the Zodiac are is terribly difficult.
I forgot my sig.
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| 19 MAR 2004 at 7:05pm |
| Deleted User | Maybe something bigger then a 12 inch screen would have helped...
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| 20 MAR 2004 at 1:45am |
Chthonic the ClownIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 11
Joined: 18 MAR 2004
Status : Online | Originally Posted By MichalN (19 MAR 2004 5:33pm)
Why not? It's not like finding out what the signs of the Zodiac are is terribly difficult.
"Why not?"
Well, the answer to that question lies in the difference between the words trivia and puzzle. The former has never really been a facet of adventures while the latter has been an omnipresent one. Despite having played a considerable number of adventures, I have never experienced trivia in them until 2003. I don't think it is a desirable addition to the genre. There is already such a genre in place with games such as Millionaire, You Don't Know Jack, Trivial Pursuit, etc. Testing one's knowledge is a completely different task than solving puzzles. A Mensa puzzle book doesn't have trivia, and neither should adventures.
"It's not like finding out what the signs of the Zodiac are is terribly difficult."
Nor is it any more difficult to find out Plank's Constant, Avogadro's Number, the birth-date of Nicolo Paganini, or the actual distance that Deimos is from the Martian surface. I guess I don't see your point here. Maybe it is just me, but having to exit a game to look something up on the internet utterly destroys the immersion. It also takes one out of the role of player and into the role of researcher. Games shouldn't require homework.
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, 5 score 8 then 33.&&Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, then 1 split 4 times 21.&&Pointless though the answers be, my true nature, plain to see. HEE HEE!!!!
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| 20 MAR 2004 at 1:47am |
Chthonic the ClownIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 11
Joined: 18 MAR 2004
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Ogre (19 MAR 2004 7:05pm)
Maybe something bigger then a 12 inch screen would have helped...
I haven't used anything smaller than 21" in nearly a decade. I also have perfect vision. Not that that really matters. I am only posting this to say that My Sassy Girl is indeed a very good film.
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, 5 score 8 then 33.&&Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, then 1 split 4 times 21.&&Pointless though the answers be, my true nature, plain to see. HEE HEE!!!!
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| 20 MAR 2004 at 2:04am |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Chthonic the Clown (20 MAR 2004 1:45am)
Despite having played a considerable number of adventures, I have never experienced trivia in them until 2003.
You can't have played too many adventures then. There are quite a few adventures that require "trivia" knowledge such as the order of colours in the spectrum or the distance of planets from the Sun. Or knowing a fairy tale character called Rumpelstiltskin.
A Mensa puzzle book doesn't have trivia, and neither should adventures.
Mensa puzzle books also don't have graphics, sound, stories and interactivity - maybe adventure games shouldn't have those either?
Maybe it is just me, but having to exit a game to look something up on the internet utterly destroys the immersion.
Don't you have an encyclopedia? And what if it is just you?
It also takes one out of the role of player and into the role of researcher.
Ironic, since many adventure game heroes perform significant amount of research in their games.
Games shouldn't require homework.
"Homework" is relative. If a game requires the player to calculate the sum of 34 and 66, is that homework? What if the player cannot do basic arithmetic? Or is it homework only if it's something that you had to look up?
I forgot my sig.
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| 20 MAR 2004 at 3:38am |
Chthonic the ClownIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 11
Joined: 18 MAR 2004
Status : Online | Originally Posted By MichalN (20 MAR 2004 2:04am)
You can't have played too many adventures then. There are quite a few adventures that require "trivia" knowledge such as the order of colours in the spectrum or the distance of planets from the Sun. Or knowing a fairy tale character called Rumpelstiltskin.
I like that illogic. Since you can think of examples I didn't mention, that means I have little to no adventure game experience. Good one!
If we add up all the puzzles in all the adventures ever made and all the ones that relied on useless trivia, what percentage do you think the trivia puzzles would fall into compared to standard puzzles? It would be so small as to be practically non-existent. Trivia has never been a real facet of adventure games. Seeing as it is so small, it is pretty obvious that most developers see it as a design error. In fact, I have seen it said so in a game design document.
Mensa puzzle books also don't have graphics, sound, stories and interactivity - maybe adventure games shouldn't have those either?
You obviously haven't read too many Mensa puzzle books. Visualization plays a integral role in most of the puzzles and hence, yes, graphics play a large part in the overwhelming majority of puzzles. Real puzzles, by nature, are not really interactive either. They have rules and single solutions. The interactivity in an adventure occurs outside the puzzles.
Don't you have an encyclopedia? And what if it is just you?
No, I do not. They are a complete waste of money in the modern era. The net will eventually kill them off, if it hasn't significantly done so already. And I know it isn't just me, since I have seen many others mention the exact same puzzle as I have elsewhere with the exact same complaint.
Ironic, since many adventure game heroes perform significant amount of research in their games.
What the character in a game does has no relation whatsoever to what I do in the real world. Quite often, people like to play characters in games that are nothing like themselves at all. I gleefully kill other human beings in action games, yet don't in real life. Do you actually not see a distinction?
"Homework" is relative. If a game requires the player to calculate the sum of 34 and 66, is that homework? What if the player cannot do basic arithmetic? Or is it homework only if it's something that you had to look up?
There is a big difference between basic skills that everyone should have and trivia. Trivia is essentially meaningless information. Arithmetic is not. Are you honestly trying to tell me that astrology knowledge is on the same level with arithmetic as far as a person's basic skill sets are concerned? Or does it fall into the land of utterly useless trivia?
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, 5 score 8 then 33.&&Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, then 1 split 4 times 21.&&Pointless though the answers be, my true nature, plain to see. HEE HEE!!!!
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