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| 21 MAR 2004 at 6:34pm |
pollodiabloSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 295
Joined: 4 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Puzzles using slang or abbreviations are very difficult for non-native speakers like me. Sometimes puzzles require knowledge that may be common among American kids, but not elsewhere. I remember there being a puzzle in Ripper, (not Jack The)
Spoiler Alert
that required you to translate something like "no iaid" to a number. Well, first of all, it is not obvious for us second-languagers to substitute "i" with "eye", secondly I had never heard of an expression like "20/20 vision", so I didn't understand the solution even after reading a walkthrough. I still don't understand why the answer would be 2020 as there was no mention of leaving the slash out. The most unfair puzzle ever.
Beta-tester of 'The Path', 'Rhiannon', 'Scratches', 'Hope Springs Eternal', 'Time Stand Still', 'Frasse and the Peas of Kejick', '1893: A World's Fair Mystery', 'Carte Blanche' and 'Oakhaven Plantation' a.o.&&
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| 22 MAR 2004 at 11:26pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | A well designed puzzle should not require advanced maths nor any additional research. The clues should all be available within the game. Surely the idea is to provide entertainment to the widest possible audience, not exclude anyone not currently studying physics and chemistry at university....
Even general knowledge such as the order of colours in the rainbow can be provided elsewhere in the game to be found. Young teenagers may not have this info in their brains, ditto the starsigns. I've had to look this one up, easy to do with a newspaper but perhaps not every player has that type of paper? Wouldn't hurt to scatter the clues in the game.
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| 23 MAR 2004 at 2:55am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Caroline (22 MAR 2004 11:25pm)
A well designed puzzle should not require advanced maths nor any additional research. The clues should all be available within the game. Surely the idea is to provide entertainment to the widest possible audience, not exclude anyone not currently studying physics and chemistry at university....
Even general knowledge such as the order of colours in the rainbow can be provided elsewhere in the game to be found. Young teenagers may not have this info in their brains, ditto the starsigns. I've had to look this one up, easy to do with a newspaper but perhaps not every player has that type of paper? Wouldn't hurt to scatter the clues in the game.
Caroline, you have just nailed one the facts that has been bugging me regarding unfair puzzles. Using terms that are totally non-standard and requiring knowledge that some couldn't possibly know unless they had some sort of specialized interest or education is just plain stupid and unfair. If I wanted to test my trivia skills (which are very limited), I'd play Trivial Pursuit or somesuch. (An exception would be games like Chemicus which by their very name warn you of what is to come.)
Myst and Riven continue to be excellent examples of games that played fair. Virtually everything that had to be solved was present in the game. I can't recall anything in those games that required some special education etc.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 23 MAR 2004 at 3:14pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | SirDave
I would go further to say everything needed to solve puzzles in Myst and Riven was provided within the game. Exile however I felt needed a male brain that had done physics at school and understood certain laws of mechanics. Maybe I'm wrong but I dipped out badly at that game. The puzzles were way too hard in the age with the big silver hoops. The perfect puzzle game - Timelapse. The lizard and the glass pyramid is a superb example of a double bluff puzzle. The clue is there, I didn't find it and nearly fried my brain trying to work it out. lol
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| 23 MAR 2004 at 5:21pm |
CrapstormJourneyman
Posts : 829
Joined: 18 FEB 2004
Status : Online | Oh wow. Caroline, you are the first person I have heard say that Myst III: Exile was too difficult. Most people felt it was too easy. I absolutely loved the "physics" puzzle you are talking about. It is one of the best adventure game puzzles I have ever encountered. I don't think it was unreasonable to expect players to understand the very simple principle of leverage. That's grade 4 stuff where I come from (Canada), and quite independent of gender. If a woman can perform the intellectual gymnastics required to determine the correct amount of flour to use in a cookie recipe when she has a shortage of eggs, she should be able to perform the calculations required in Myst III.
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| 23 MAR 2004 at 7:20pm |
musicmaniacIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 22
Joined: 13 MAR 2004
Status : Online | I love adventure-games, I hate puzzles... Sounds not logic, does it? Well, I DO like puzzles too, but the fact is, I'm not very good at it so in many occassions I have to go searching for a walk-trough or a hint, sometimes discovering that I just should have tried a little harder and then hating myself for it ... But I will NEVER say a puzzle is unfair when I can't solve it ...
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| 23 MAR 2004 at 10:37pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Crapstorm (23 MAR 2004 5:20pm)
Oh wow. Caroline, you are the first person I have heard say that Myst III: Exile was too difficult. Most people felt it was too easy. I don't think it was unreasonable to expect players to understand the very simple principle of leverage. That's grade 4 stuff where I come from .... If a woman can perform the intellectual gymnastics required to determine the correct amount of flour to use in a cookie recipe when she has a shortage of eggs, she should be able to perform the calculations required in Myst III.
Er..... they put eggs in cookies?......
Seriously. I found that age totally difficult. I hated the ball rolling puzzle too. I cheated my way through Exile - and for that I will never forgive them. > I solved Riven myself. I'm not dumb - just wasn't taught physics at school.
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 2:40am |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Caroline (23 MAR 2004 10:37pm)
Seriously. I found that age totally difficult. I hated the ball rolling puzzle too. I cheated my way through Exile - and for that I will never forgive them. > I solved Riven myself. I'm not dumb - just wasn't taught physics at school.
You didn't need physics training, you just needed to look at a model in J'nanin which illustrated the principle for you.
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 3:17am |
CrapstormJourneyman
Posts : 829
Joined: 18 FEB 2004
Status : Online | Actually, I consider solving Riven by oneself a mark of stupidity.
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 3:29am |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Crapstorm (24 MAR 2004 3:17am)
Actually, I consider solving Riven by oneself a mark of stupidity.
You're new here, but you have NO idea into what dangerous waters you are treading.
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 5:24am |
SusanGuild Master
Posts : 5485
Joined: 13 OCT 2002
Location: 0
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Fickfack (24 MAR 2004 3:28am)
You're new here, but you have NO idea into what dangerous waters you are treading.
*insert theme from Jaws here*
I miss my Bubba: 1986 - 2006.
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 7:15am |
AnneGuild Master
Posts : 4800
Joined: 8 MAR 2003
Status : Online | Can`t resist this:
Just when you thought it was safe to return to Myst...
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 10:30pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Crapstorm says:
Actually, I consider solving Riven by oneself a mark of stupidity.
From which one can only assume you needed help?
Anyone who gives themselves 'crap' as a name, isn't going to get taken seriously by me! LOL, LOL
But Fickfack's right, you're wading into pirahna rivers now......
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| 24 MAR 2004 at 11:04pm |
Lucien21Guild Master
Posts : 4876
Joined: 9 JUL 2003
Location: 0
Status : Offline | * whispers to Crapstorm*
"back out of the thread slowly"
"idn't any say not to mention the Myst games unless you want to start one of the weekly Myst sucks - No it doesn't -Yes it does arguments"
*slowly backs away*
Dear Diary, My teenage angst bullsh*t now has a bodycount.
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| 25 APR 2004 at 9:18pm |
papillonSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 340
Joined: 3 JUL 2003
Status : Online |
I think requiring the player to do research is a great idea... but it should be clearly part of the game, and not just something that happens once in one puzzle because only that one puzzle was less-clued.
This also requires things like - a game that will cleanly let you tab out, or preferably play in windowed mode, in order to conduct such research without breaking your game.
Hey, I like learning new stuff! Feel free to force me to crawl around in the real world hunting for information!
[url=http://whineaboutgames.blogspot.com]I Whine About Games[/url]&&&&[url=http://www.hanakogames.com]Anime Games[/url]
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| 25 APR 2004 at 9:25pm |
| Deleted User | Papillon: Then you absolutely must give In Memoriam a try!
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| 6 MAY 2004 at 3:32am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | I am in the process of replaying Riven using the DVD version. It's sort of neat not having to swap disks (even though I used virtual disks it still was a pain) and the sound is better, but one thing that became clear to me was why overall, as much as I loved Riven, I preferred the original Myst (nothing below is really a spoiler):
It was that damn 'animals on the stone slabs' puzzle. I knew the numbers, I had the sounds, but the so-called visual clues were so inconsistent in how they were presented and how they related to what they were supposed to depict that I think the whole puzzle was very poorly done. I don't know what they were thinking! Not to mention that at least 2 of the pictures that were not correct, IMHO represented the way the animals should look better than the correct ones.
It's too bad because the rest of Riven's puzzles were of the 'tough but fair' kind.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 6 MAY 2004 at 3:45am |
| Deleted User | I agree 200% Dave. It was the one really poorly executed puzzle in the game. And, since it is the most complex one, requiring clues from every other location, all the more disappointing.
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| 6 MAY 2004 at 6:46pm |
CrapstormJourneyman
Posts : 829
Joined: 18 FEB 2004
Status : Online | I agree too, and I would like to add that I found the marble puzzle in Riven to be quite weak as well. The information required to solve it was more than a little unclear, and it took much guesswork to achieve the right combination. The whole mechanism was nonsensical. I mean, why was it there? What was its intended function in the game world? It turned out to be nothing more than a glorified lock, the combination to which was hidden in the landscape. But why? Only the developers know.
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| 6 MAY 2004 at 7:54pm |
| Deleted User | I suppose that if I'd been relying on "guesswork" then I might have found the Marble Puzzle unfair too.[smiley=detective.gif]
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| 24 MAY 2004 at 4:41pm |
CoronaIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 93
Joined: 24 MAY 2004
Status : Online | Don't you just love puzzles, like you use a walkthrough to open a safe, and inside the safe is the combination for the safe?
[img[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v108/sargem/StarSig2.jpg[/img]
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| 24 MAY 2004 at 5:38pm |
ShanyGuild Master
Posts : 3313
Joined: 19 JUN 2003
Status : Online | oh yes! how I hate these puzzles... I mention one in one of my earlier posts in this thread.
You have to arrange stones with symbols on them a certain way and then add another symbol that is related to the symbols on a particular stone (not as tough as it sounds), the problem is, to make a certain connetion between one symbol and a certain stone, you have had to play past that puzzle! So unfair and stupid...
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| 26 MAY 2004 at 3:03am |
CoronaIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 93
Joined: 24 MAY 2004
Status : Online | So many puzzles have this theme that you have had to have played the game before ( beta ) that they expect you to "get it".
That annoys me no end.
And then you have to wonder how much 'stock' an Adventure game company have may invested in Prima Strategy guides sales. >
[img[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v108/sargem/StarSig2.jpg[/img]
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| 4 JUN 2004 at 11:22am |
MalicHIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 2
Joined: 1 JUN 2004
Status : Online | The microscope puzzle in the 7th guest,
I dont know anyone who has solved it,
by all accounts not even the guy who made the puzzle
could do it,
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| 4 JUN 2004 at 6:04pm |
ShanyGuild Master
Posts : 3313
Joined: 19 JUN 2003
Status : Online | can you explain why? I never played that game and keep hearing about this infamous puzzle...
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