silver
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I wonder, a little, if we aren't off-topic now.

My understanding of the "official" answer to my original problem is thus:

"yah, some SmS holds will be super hard, we will try to involve less skilled players in future beta tests. but we expect 1 super hard hold per year, regardless"

which is a fine answer...

I guess my outstanding issues/questions are these:

IF (and only if?) SmS holds are a big selling/money-making point, do we even want 1 super-hard hold per year?

I ask because of the scenario where JoeBlow is a new customer. JoeBlow sees the ads for SmS holds and thinks, "yah, more official holds. I don't like picking random regular holds because there's a bunch of super-easy ones, a bunch of super-hard ones, a bunch with stories unrelated to Beethro (and some which confusingly call the character Beethro but don't actually apply to _THE_ Beethro)", and a bunch with offensive scrolls/text which I don't think are appropriate to a family game (the "war" series with its constant "kaka" scrolls comes to mind)"

So JoeBlow subscribes to SmS and downloads his first SmS hold (he can no longer download older ones thanks to a recent decision by Erik, so only ones after his subscription are valid) - and he gets Beethro's Teacher...

BT isn't trivial, doesn't contain non-story material, nor does it have offensive scrolls... BUT it's super hard (for JoeBlow, a casual player).

Now, some percentage of JoeBlows are going to appreciate how BT is hard, but fulfilling because the puzzles are Cool and Original,
and some percentage of JoeBlows are going to think "hard and impossible". and some percentage of THOSE will cancel their subscription.

The problem, ultimately, is determining a difficultly level that keeps most JoeBlows in the first category.

I'm unsure how to solve that, but one way might be to include less experienced smiters in the beta testing and ask them how quickly they gave up. It's not super scientific since some people may find roaches easy but tar impossible, or tar and roaches easy but snakes HaveGotToGo... but... wel, I dunno. I don't know the answers. I just know there's "kinda" a problem in that Syntax's "heaven" of hard puzzles (which are very satisfying to complete - I'm quite proud of figuring out the ones I didn't ask help about!) may be another user's "hell" and that for all likelihood, the majority of players fall in the later category, and getting people to pay for SmS holds involves pleasing a majority (unlike just uploading holds).


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jbluestein
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Oneiromancer wrote:

tonyk wrote:
The Choice - Difficulty 5 (Still a good hold Oneiromancer!)

Not that I don't appreciate the compliment, but...the way you said "still" might be part of the problem. I'm talking about how difficulty is often--either directly or indirectly--associated with hold quality. Probably the most vocal people on the board are the ones that are the most proficient players, which is definitely helpful on the H&S board, but seems to also skew the Holds board. It is clearly possible to make entertaining rooms that are of intermediate difficulty, and I think that there are just as many ways to do this as to make an extremely hard room. Once you start getting into the realm of "easy" rooms then the choices become much more limited, but I think that most of the very difficult rooms are essentially a lot of less tough puzzles combined together in one room. Well, just my opinion.

I agree with your comments.

For the record, this is how I'd rate the various SmS holds:

The Choice: Difficulty 6, Quality 8
Perfection: Difficulty 9, Quality 9
Halph Has a Bad Day: Difficulty 6, Quality 7
Beethro and the Secret Society: Difficulty 7, Quality 10
Beethro's Teacher: Difficulty 9.5, Quality 9

I should point out that I haven't actually completed Perfection or Beethro's Teacher yet, so those ratings are subject to change.

But the point being that low difficulty doesn't necessarily correlate with low quality. All of the SmS holds so far have been very good, and my favorite was certainly not the most difficult. (Although it's the most difficult one that I've conquered so far...)

I really ought to go back and try my hand at those secret rooms in The Choice at some point. Or more Perfection. Or maybe I should fight my way onto the Dreamplane. So many choices...

Josh


____________________________
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jbluestein
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silver wrote:
My understanding of the "official" answer to my original problem is thus:

"yah, some SmS holds will be super hard, we will try to involve less skilled players in future beta tests. but we expect 1 super hard hold per year, regardless"

which is a fine answer...

I guess my outstanding issues/questions are these:

IF (and only if?) SmS holds are a big selling/money-making point, do we even want 1 super-hard hold per year?

I think that Erik also noted that the difficulty level on even the difficult holds was a bit higher than they wanted.

My reading of Erik's post in this thread was: "Yes, we will continue to release difficult SmS holds, but we will probably try to set the maximum difficulty level slightly lower than it seems to be at the moment."

Just my interpretation, though.

Josh


____________________________
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mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Oneiromancer wrote:
I think that most of the very difficult rooms are essentially a lot of less tough puzzles combined together in one room. Well, just my opinion.

Yes, this has generally been my experience, too. Usually, hard rooms are not just considered "really hard (and frustrating?)" because they have a tricky lynchpin solution. Those types, done well, are often called gems. Frustrating is when it's three or four or more of these crammed into a single room, and I may have the motivation to push onward until the first part is done, but then as soon as a second part looms ahead with no end in sight, I just have to take a psychological break. This works fine if I can continue next time where I left off, but the problem is that if I lose interest (e.g. get too frustrated) solving a room in the middle of a several-section room and want to tackle another accessible room in the mean time, then I'll have to exit this room, and as a result have to redo the entire part I've already solved with difficulty at a later time. This is often not fun.

So...my general take on challenging room design (the interesting, not frustrating, type) is: shoot for making puzzles rather than simply hard rooms. What's the point of a hard room if it's no fun to solve? To aid in this, please don't try to make hard rooms by cramming in lots of puzzles that each seem a bit too easy to the architect until a room feels "hard enough". The parts still stand or fall on their own merit, not their total difficulty. If a room has two or more completely separate puzzle sections, consider making them two or more separate rooms. This will make the experience easier overall, but it won't make it less fun than it would have been, had all the rooms all been mashed into one room. (And if it feels too repetive as separate rooms, then it probably is -- in this case, just get rid of the least interesting repetitions and they probably won't be missed.) No one will ever complain that you have too many interesting rooms (whatever that means), and the architect doesn't have to fill up the entire 38x32 space of each room with puzzle widgets -- have some breather room here and there so the player doesn't feel claustrophobic.

Rooms with a single integrated challenging puzzle

Rooms with a sequence of disconnected hard parts

____________________________
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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
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And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 06-09-2006 06:01 PM]

kzc
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 212
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mrimer wrote:
Rooms with a single integrated challenging puzzle

Rooms with a sequence of disconnected hard parts

Preach it, brother. My ideal room is one that's hard and tricky until I see what needs to to be done, then easy, or even trivial, to complete once I see it. In other words, the archetypical lynchpin type puzzle.

If a room looks hard and interesting when I enter it, I'll be enthused about it, but if looks overly busy and/or tedious I'll probably just poke around for a while, then go straight to the H&S board - even if it's not particularly challenging. If it looks hard and tedious I'll probably just stop playing the hold for a while.

Less is more.

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

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mrimer wrote:

Rooms with a single integrated challenging puzzle

Rooms with a sequence of disconnected hard parts

FWIW, most of the rooms in Beethro's Teacher that I've figured out so far seem to be lynchpin puzzles. Really really hard lynchpin puzzles, but once you figure out what to do it becomes pretty easy to do it. (I've solved five of the eight required rooms...just have 1S, 2N1E and 1N2E left to do. A couple of these I even managed without hints!)




____________________________
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Tahnan
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kzc wrote:
If a room looks hard and interesting when I enter it, I'll be enthused about it, but if looks overly busy and/or tedious I'll probably just poke around for a while, then go straight to the H&S board - even if it's not particularly challenging. If it looks hard and tedious I'll probably just stop playing the hold for a while.

I'm reminded, for no especially good reason, of a juggler friend of mine commenting on devil sticks. He enjoyed them, but said the main problem was that juggling was a really easy activity that looked really hard, whereas devil sticking was a really hard activity that looked really easy. Which meant that even though the latter took more skill, the former was more impressive to spectators. (I think he meant "picking up girls".)

Anyway, in DROD you end up with the rooms that look easy or hard because they actually are; the rooms that look hard, but aren't too bad; and the rooms that look easy, until you're in the middle of them going, "I don't even know how I got here."

Slightly closer to topic, I looked at all the rooms I could reach on the first level of Beethro's Teacher and said, "Oh dear Lord, they all look hard. I'll...wait until I can reimport it with voices. Yeah. That's why." But of course, I have no idea how hard they actually are.

(Perfection, on the other hand...if I never play another room with snake timing, it'll be too soon.)

AlefBet
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mrimer wrote:
... Frustrating is when it's three or four or more of these crammed into a single room, and I may have the motivation to push onward until the first part is done, but then as soon as a second part looms ahead with no end in sight, I just have to take a psychological break.

I agree this happens, and I'm certain I have done it myself. On the other hand, I think this is sort of a tradition handed down from KDD. I remember several of the KDD rooms were actually three or four puzzles put in the same room, but the biggest difference was that these were actually easy puzzles. I'm not sure why putting them in the same room worked so well. Perhaps it was because they created the illusion that they were somehow connected into one big puzzle when they really weren't, or perhaps it was the challenge of completing them all without dying (no checkpoints or undo). But I think that formula does actually work rather well.

Then new architects (like me) come along and apply the same formula. We wake up in the middle of the night with a cool puzzle idea, and we put it into a room first thing the next morning. But then, we think to ourselves, "that's kind of cool, but way too easy. All the delver has to do is wake up in the middle of the night with the same thoughts that I had, and they'll see that this puzzle is obvious." So we put a few more puzzles of a similar nature or difficulty in and say to ourselves, "okay, now, they have to wake up four times in one night. That's more of a challenge." When the underlying premise is false, that anyone else is going to be thinking anything near like what we were thinking when we made the puzzle.

So, in those cases, I think the evil-genius midnight-brilliance puzzles deserve a room to themeselves, while puzzles that we absolutely know are straightforward (because we've seen them in a 2-brain hold, or our three year old sister solves one by dropping her barbie on the keyboard) can be agglomerated.

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Stefan
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Heh. I just have to say it: I told you so.

From the Beethro's Teacher beta board (I hope it won't be a problem that I'll release this information. I removed the only thing that could be considered closed to the public):

Stefan wrote:

Doom wrote:

Stefan wrote:
The difficulty is about right, although bearing in mind that this hold (probably) will be released as SmS, it may be a bit too high (if that is even possible).

Well, Perfection was quite challenging. And do you have anything to say about [removed]...?

Yes, I know that (and [removed] is quite evil), but I'm just a little worried that SmS holds will be far too difficult for the average player.

Personally, I love the high-difficulty holds (and Beethro's Teacher, which I'd give a difficulty rating of about 8, is among my favourites), but as mentioned, I think SmS holds should be geared more towards the average player than the DROD elite.

It's perfectly possible to make good easy holds (difficulty does not equal quality - there are some holds where the difficulty is of the 'wrong kind'), but more often than not, the easier holds tend to be of poor quality. I'd say we need more architects capable of (or willing to) creating high quality easy holds.

____________________________
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[Last edited by Stefan at 06-14-2006 03:41 PM : difficulty rating, not difficult rating]

KevG
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Don't really see where anyone has made this point yet. Smitemaster Selections aren't supposed to be for everyone. In particular, they're not supposed to be for the player who just found DROD and signed up with CaravelNet. They're essentially an expansion pack for the game.

It's reasonable to expect players to have played at least JTRH or KDD(2.0 or free) before attempting them. If you just signed up, play one of the main holds first; you're SS will still be there when your ready for it. I would assume most new players would understand this.

Don't get me wrong, holds that are too hard for experienced players should be few and far between. But, easy holds don't really have a place as Smitemaster Selections either. (The upcoming child-friendly hold excepted.)

kzc
Level: Master Delver

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KevG wrote:
Don't get me wrong, holds that are too hard for experienced players should be few and far between. But, easy holds don't really have a place as Smitemaster Selections either.

I don't think I agree with this. I am a reasonably seasoned player (completed the originial Webfoot DROD - no hints, checkpoints or undo - as well as JTRH, KDD 2.0, Perfection, etc.), but I don't think I enjoy hard holds particularly more or less than those of easy or moderate difficulty. What's more important to me is originality in design and a compelling story. I'd be perfectly happy if all SmSs were of easy difficulty (or all moderate, or all hard, or of mixed difficulty) as long as they meet those criteria.

Pilchard VIII
Level: Smiter
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Amen to that, brother!

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KevG
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kzc wrote:
I'd be perfectly happy if all SmSs were of easy difficulty (or all moderate, or all hard, or of mixed difficulty) as long as they meet those criteria.

Smitemaster Selections are billed as a follow-up to JTRH and soon (hopefully) TCB. As such, if the difficulty level differs too drastically from those holds some players are going to be upset. We've already seen what happens when the difficulty gets too far above what's expected. If the difficulty gets set too low at least some of the experienced players are going to feel like they wasted their money on a hold that didn't provide any challenge.

With occasional exceptions, SS holds really need to stick with the moderate difficulty range (i.e. comparable to JTRH or KDD). This is what most player will be expecting; even if their personal preference might lean towards easier or harder holds.

kzc
Level: Master Delver

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KevG wrote:

kzc wrote:
I'd be perfectly happy if all SmSs were of easy difficulty (or all moderate, or all hard, or of mixed difficulty) as long as they meet those criteria.

Smitemaster Selections are billed as a follow-up to JTRH and soon (hopefully) TCB. As such, if the difficulty level differs too drastically from those holds some players are going to be upset. We've already seen what happens when the difficulty gets too far above what's expected. If the difficulty gets set too low at least some of the experienced players are going to feel like they wasted their money on a hold that didn't provide any challenge.

With occasional exceptions, SS holds really need to stick with the moderate difficulty range (i.e. comparable to JTRH or KDD). This is what most player will be expecting; even if their personal preference might lean towards easier or harder holds.

I don't see any reason why expectation should trump preference - nor why preference for moderate holds should trump preference for harder or easier. No matter which difficulty official holds are aimed at, there will be some proportion of players who are disappointed (although I do agree it's likely [but not certain] that "moderate" will have the least negative impact).

I suppose what Caravel "needs to stick with" will be driven in part by what they think will maximize their profit, and in part by what they think suits their artistic/aesthetic vision. I mention my own preference in case it might help inform assessment of the former criterion; I don't think the opinion of any single player, or group of players, should necessarily be privileged beyond its contribution to those considerations.

I wonder what percentage of experienced players care more about difficulty vs. those like me for whom difficulty has very little to do with how much I enjoy a hold. Judging from forum posts, I suspect I'm in the vast minority, but a survey or poll of the question (if one hasn't been done already) might be useful to inform future development.

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[Last edited by kzc at 06-16-2006 08:48 PM]

Syntax
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KevG wrote:
Smitemaster Selections are billed as a follow-up to JTRH and soon (hopefully) TCB.

So, how difficult do you think levels 26-50 should be?

Oneiromancer
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Don't forget that some of the difficulty for the first time you played KDD...and then even more in JtRH...and I'm going to assume that people will feel the same way about TCB...is in experiencing new elements and learning how they work and dealing with them. Going back and playing through the old official holds after you understand all the elements goes so much faster than the first time you play them, and I don't think it is just because you remember how to beat the rooms. Obviously it's hard to test this since almost no one learns how to play on the smaller holds (that I know of).

I guess what I'm getting at is that I would expect the SS holds to be on par with the final levels of KDD and JtRH, where (almost) every element has been introduced, and now you can finally put it all together, but it's still trying to teach you something about the game. I actually like that way of thinking of it...making rooms to teach about new "tricks", and of course teaching should be gentle, but not too hand-holding. But enough about my room-making philosophy...that I wish I could apply as consistently as I would like...

Game on,

____________________________
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Banjooie
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Hi, I mostly learned to play on the smaller holds, because KDD was beating me with a stick going 'AHAHAHA YOU SUCK NUBLET'.

I, uh, learned to deal with brains before I ever saw level 9 of KDD.

Ezlo
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Hi. I learned by creating my own rooms in the editor. I'd stick a few monsters in a room and try to kill them.

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Oneiromancer
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Allright, prove me wrong as soon as humanly possible, I can take it, gimme some more!

Game on,

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Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

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Ummmm....



My sister learned by me telling her!

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RoboBob3000
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My mother sang songs to me about the monsters when I was a baby.

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Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
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I downloaded the JtRH demo and played that first, then became irritated at the three-level limit. I forget how many small holds I played after that, but it was a small amount. I finished my education with KDD.

...and then I still didn't have JtRH, so I went back to the small holds to refine my techniques.

Nevertheless, I'm still only an intermediate player, in my own opinion - I rate myself 6 or 7 brains out of 10

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KevG
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kzc wrote:
I don't see any reason why expectation should trump preference

1. Basic business ethics. Smitemaster Selections are sold sight unseen. Caravel has an obligation to deliver a product reasonably in line with the expectations of the people who buy it.

2. It's impossible to cater to everyone's preferences; or even determine what percentage of customers share a given preference. It is possible to estimate, within reason, what expectations people have.

3. People get upset when their expectations aren't met. It's not the difficulty of Beethro's Teacher that prompted complaints; it's the difficulty compared to what difficulty people were expecting. A customer's preferences come in to play when he decides whether or not to purchase the SS selections. After that it's his expectations that determine whether or not he is satisfied with his purchase.

I wonder what percentage of experienced players care more about difficulty vs. those like me for whom difficulty has very little to do with how much I enjoy a hold.

Let's say CaravelNet offered three options for a year's membership. Option 1: all holds are completable within a couple of hours. Option 2: all hold should take anywhere from a few days to a week or two to solve. Option 3: all holds are guaranteed to be too difficult for you to solve more than one or two rooms. I think it's safe to say the vast majority of players would choose option 2.

I couldn't care less about scripting. I'd be perfectly happy if they released SS hold scripting-free. But, I would never try to claim that scripting isn't an important part of SS holds. Enjoying holds of all difficulty levels is fine. Denying that difficulty level is an important consideration in designing SS holds is an unsupportable contention.

Nothing I've said above in this post actually adds anything to the thread. Erik already addressed the difficulty level concerns in his post on page 1. The issue of restricting maximum difficulty has pretty much been beat into the ground. The only concern left was addressing the issue of not going to far overboard the other way. That was the point of my first post in this thread.

Jacob
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3749
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Sheesh, this is all putting a lot of pressure on me for the upcoming 71.429% complete beginner friendly SmS.

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My Holds and Levels:

kzc
Level: Master Delver

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KevG wrote:

kzc wrote:
I don't see any reason why expectation should trump preference

1. Basic business ethics. Smitemaster Selections are sold sight unseen. Caravel has an obligation to deliver a product reasonably in line with the expectations of the people who buy it.

2. It's impossible to cater to everyone's preferences; or even determine what percentage of customers share a given preference. It is possible to estimate, within reason, what expectations people have.

3. People get upset when their expectations aren't met. It's not the difficulty of Beethro's Teacher that prompted complaints; it's the difficulty compared to what difficulty people were expecting. A customer's preferences come in to play when he decides whether or not to purchase the SS selections. After that it's his expectations that determine whether or not he is satisfied with his purchase.

1) is true enough. 2) is probably not true - it seems at least as easy to determine preference as expectation. It is, of course, easier to manage expectation than preference. 3) is true, but people get upset when their preferences aren't met as well. I'd also add that not meeting expectations may not be universally bad - some may be pleasantly surprised with something they weren't expecting. In order for expectation to _trump_ preference, it would have to be the case that it would be better to give everyone something they don't want as long as it was something they were expecting, which is absurd. Expectations are an important consideration, but not the only or, IMO, the most important one.

I wonder what percentage of experienced players care more about difficulty vs. those like me for whom difficulty has very little to do with how much I enjoy a hold.

Let's say CaravelNet offered three options for a year's membership. Option 1: all holds are completable within a couple of hours. Option 2: all hold should take anywhere from a few days to a week or two to solve. Option 3: all holds are guaranteed to be too difficult for you to solve more than one or two rooms. I think it's safe to say the vast majority of players would choose option 2.

Probably, although I'm not completely sure about "vast". But you're getting somewhat afield from the original point I objected to, which was "easy holds don't really have a place as Smitemaster Selections either." There could certainly be an option 4 where some SmSs are "easy", some are "hard" and most are moderate.

I couldn't care less about scripting. I'd be perfectly happy if they released SS hold scripting-free. But, I would never try to claim that scripting isn't an important part of SS holds. Enjoying holds of all difficulty levels is fine. Denying that difficulty level is an important consideration in designing SS holds is an unsupportable contention.

Good thing no one said that, then. My only point is that, while it's clear that some people will object to easy holds being included as SmSs, we also know that some people will welcome them, and some don't mind much either way - while it's probable the first group is the largest of the three, I'm not sure it's larger than the other two combined. I don't have much objection to "SmSs just generally be of moderate difficulty" (in fact, I'd agree with it), but only to "easy holds have no place as SmSs".

Chaco
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As somebody who will probably pick a year of CaravelNet as his 8-contest participation prize, I'd like to say that the reason I'm doing so is for the Smitemaster's Selections. And, to be honest, I'm not really sure I want 4 gut-wrenching-throw-computer-out-window holds, which is why I'm considering a different prize.

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eytanz
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I'm getting a bit annoyed by this, to be honest. Everyone involved with SmS hold selection has already said that we recognize that the past holds were overall too difficult and that future ones, while not necessarily easy, won't be as tough. I really don't see why people feel the need to keep hammering the point about the difficulty when they've already gotten what they want in this respect.

I'm not saying that people should get SmS holds, I just don't see why people seem to be beating a dead horse and/or implying that the Caravelnet team is lying about their intentions.

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Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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Because we have some crazy person who out of nowhere is like SMS SHOULD NEVER BE EASY YOU FOOLS, and then he goes and kicks puppies. Possibly while stealing candy from baby kittens, before carefully placing them high in trees and then stealing money from old ladies and keeping them from crossing the street, even with a boy scout escort.

larrymurk
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I'll have to say I like a hold that is well-constructed and challenging.

Well-constructed can be fairly subjective, but here I'm generally looking for:
1. Completable.
2. Hold is not a confusing maze-like random mess (unless this is the intention in which case I'd probably skip).
3. Nice, coherent storyline is a plus.
4. Rooms/puzzles are interesting and fun. Here, I like to see something different puzzlewise, maybe aesthetically interesting, or interesting based on the storyline. Not just a bunch of monster x here and monster y there that can be killed the same way I have a hundred times before.

As for challenging:
I believe the perfect rooms/holds are those that the player plays and thinks to themselve's, "This is really tricky, I've never exactly done/seen this before, I'm not sure if I can solve this.." but they can solve it and they have seen/learned something new, and they feel like they've accomplished something that actually took some thought.

Therein lies the tricky part, I believe hittting the optimal challenging level depends on the player skill level. I personally would far prefer an extremely challenging hold (like 9, not 10 please) but would likely find 5-6 less exciting and under 5 probably less interesting.

Storyline gripe:
I must say that many times I've started playing really neat games with great stories and graphics just to find out that even on the easiest settings (if they have them) I can not finish the game. Most annoying. I wish all games had the option to skip these impassable points so one could continue on with the game and see the rest of the story.

With DROD this might be done by:
1. Having a forumn to ask for hints (ok, we already have this).
2. Allow demo viewing before completing rooms.
3. Have a "skip room" key (possibly not easily implementable).
4. Especially for SS/canon holds, provide multiple difficulty versions.

Have I said enough yet?

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 06-18-2006 01:04 AM]

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Over in the thread for Beethro's Teacher, Doom and I just had this exchange (emphasis mine):

On top of that, there's so far been an annoying overreliance on lots of roach queens to create difficulty. Especially First Level 3E and First Level 1N strike me as rooms that consist of a regular puzzle plus a lot of roach queens behind force arrows to make it harder.

Okay... I agree with you here. Those rooms could've been more interesting with less roach queens and more different tricks. Thanks, I'll try to keep in mind when making rooms later. But again, this isn't a major focus in most of the areas in the hold. It just happened that there were several of those near the beginning.

I copied this over here, because I think it makes an important point: with very hard holds, it's generally a good idea to have a somewhat diverse selection of puzzles early on. If you have too many similar rooms, there's a risk that a player will grow tired of those rooms and give up on the hold, and at that point, it really doesn't matter that most of the rest of the hold has another focus. Perfection manages this quite well, actually - you can always select from rooms with different themes.

Also, I think it's worth noting that you can spread out the difficulty a lot more if you release two (smaller) holds instead of one. I know I would've been significantly less annoyed by Beethro's Teacher if it had been released together with another, easier hold.

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