Stephen4Louise
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Now that we've all had a chance to play TCB for a while, I thought it would be interesting to see how hard people think it is compared to the previous games.

My personal opinion is that TCB was quite easy compared to the previous games.

KDD had the hoards, the killer tar level and the neather (I'm still trying to forget level 13).
JTRH was the hardest of the three for me. This springs to mind along with the three guard rooms at the east on level 25.
TCB on the other hand didn't have any rooms that had me stuck for more than 10 or 15 minutes. There were no large hoards to battle. The new elements did cause me to slow down for a while, but they were introduced perfectly so there were no roadblocks in the middle of the hold.

So rating for difficulty only, based on how I would find the holds today if I was to play them again....

KDD - 6
JTRH - 7
TCB - 5

Steve.

MeckMeck GRE
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KDD was challenging but doable. It started very easy but soon became quite difficult. I conquered this hold. (6)

JtrH was easy in the middle levels, but got horrible hard in the last levels. I gave up on level 24. (7)

TCB is (thanks to the new elements) challenging right from the start. However, there are no real "horror-rooms". (6)

kzc
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Err, what baseline are we supposed to be using? I think the standard is to rate hold difficulty using KDD pegged at 5, but you've rated KDD 6, so I wasn't sure how to vote.

Anyway, my responses were:

KDD - 5 (baseline)
JtRH - 7
TCB - 3

I found TCB to be remarkably easy compared to the previous two. Even given my self-imposed H&S board ban, I conquered it pretty quickly (still a few more secrets left for mastery).

I actually was pretty happy with this. It seems the hardest rooms are non-required secrets, which is as it should be. I much prefer breadth over depth in DROD puzzles, although the occasional Beethro's Teacher is also good for reminding us how challenging this game can be.

Yellow_Mage
Level: Master Delver
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KDD 5
JtRH 6
TCB 6

I found JtRH reasonable, but I really should play thro' it again since I've only played it once.

I think because we know KDD so well it does have really great rooms, and it was rather quite hard. Difficulty is always subjective, but I remember that being a 6 brain hold. That sort of interpretation changes over time, but strangely I find it that holds that have even difficulty are better. KDD and TCB are pretty even throughout (I thought that Under The Library was the first hard level - a bit early I think), JtRH got hard, but it was expected.

Also I finished JtRH much faster than KDD or TCB. Like ridiculously fast. Demos are June 12 to June 19.. so yeah... *burp*

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[Last edited by Yellow_Mage at 04-21-2007 09:01 PM]

Pinnacle
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JtRH was definitely the hardest.
KDD wasn't so hard, but some later levels are a headache.
TCB was harder than KDD, but not too hard at all, and it felt like merely an introduction to the new elements. (although I appreciate a hold I can make progress in and even win)
None of them are easy, though.

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Sergenth
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JtRH is the first one I completed, but I had half of KDD figured out at the time. I found JtRH to be very hard, since it introduced so many advanced tricks and techniques without any explanation -- I must have used the Hints and Solutions board for 30 of the rooms.

Without knowledge of these same tricks, TCB would have been nearly impossible for me if I were a newcomer to DROD. For TCB, I only needed 2 or 3 trips to the H&S board to get past something early on and one of the Builder rooms in the last level.

Pinnacle
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I would also like to add that TCB's levels seemed more compact.
Similar in puzzle content, just seeming smaller. I'm still undecided if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

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Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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[Last edited by Pinnacle at 04-22-2007 01:20 AM]

NiroZ
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Pinnacle wrote:
I would also like to add that TCB's levels seemed more compact.
Similar in puzzle content, just seeming smaller. I'm still undecided if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Yeah, I can agree with you there. Off the top of my head, most of JtRH's levels had around 12 or more rooms per level (if not more), while most of TCB's rooms seemed to have 9 rooms.

I'd also have to agree with the difficulty sentiments. In kdd, some of it's levels still gives me nightmares (like that trapdoor room). And if I remember correctly in JtRH, there was one or two rooms that I had to copy move by move from a demo. In TCB, my biggest problem was over analysing the rooms, and discovering the quirks of the new elements.

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 04-22-2007 10:08 AM]

zex20913
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I'm not going to vote-rate, but merely comment on something I've been thinking about.

KDD was supposed to be standalone, since no sequel was planned. As such, it did amazing. Very fluid and well-themed levels.

JtRH went away, a bit, from the themed levels, because it had discovered a fan base. The new elements seemed almost tentative in coming out, still combining them into excellent puzzles in later levels, and there were pretty much a perfect amount.

TCB seemed to bite off a bit more than it could chew. While I like (almost) every new element, I would have still been satisfied with a few less, saving them for the next game. Thus, it sort of ended up feeling like a "new element demo", taking away a bit of the game-cohesion.

I may be just babbling, but that's what I feel.

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NiroZ
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I couldn't agree with you more Zex.

TripleM
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Well, I'm going to be in a minority who thought TCB was harder than JtRH. I went through JtRH far too quickly, and it wasn't until the last couple of levels where I found a few hard rooms. But I remember thinking when I got to the end of it 'Oh. Is that all?'.

As for TCB, it was much more fulfilling. Rooms started getting a bit trickier around the OBG level, there were plenty of rooms that stumped me for a while, and I found them all very enjoyable. Add the plot to that, and I came away from the game thinking 'That was awesome'.

Yellow_Mage
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NiroZ wrote:
I couldn't agree with you more Zex.

Ditto.

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stigant
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I didn't use a single hint in JtRH. I used 3 or 4 in TCB. But I still rated JtRH harder. I think my overall impression of JtRH was that it started easy but had some wickedly fiendish rooms that I was determined to get if it killed me. TCB started medium, and when it was hard, I think it was more because it was hard early and I wasn't expecting it to be hard, or I just over looked some subtlty of the new elements. When I needed hints, it was invariably in efficiency type rooms (Briars, mostly) which I just accept that I suck at and move on. JtRH had some efficiency rooms, but they were all lynch pin type rooms... find the trick and you can then delay as long as you want. TCB had several rooms that require you to find pretty much the most efficient way through with no real lynch pin. Also, there were a couple of rooms that had tiny details (an arrow going the other way in a field of arrows, or an orb that opens an extra door when all the other orbs only close doors) that I missed and got stuck on.

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starwed
Level: Delver
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@stigant: you should maybe secret the bit I quoted, since it indicates a solution.

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[Last edited by starwed at 04-22-2007 03:14 AM]

Remlin
Level: Master Delver
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I also think TCB was the easiest of the batch. It seemed like it had to spend so much time introducing all the new elements, it never got around to giving rooms that packed the punch of the later levels of the other two. The secret rooms are suitably difficult, though.

Banjooie
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Kids, I want you to go play KDD again, with the TCB client.

You'll find it is nearly /trivial/. Actually, maybe someone should do a contest to make the most cinematically pleasing demos of KDD levels, or something.

I seem to recall before JtRH, people were like 'holy crap! Two goblins! AT THE SAME TIME! What is this MADNESS?'

And now I think we're pretty much bouncing them off walls in open areas with absolutely no trouble.

The fact of the matter is that we're the same core group: TCB cannot possibly be as hard as JtRH by our standards and still be DOABLE by new people coming into the game. TCB has handed us a giant, giant sandbox full of elements, and to have JtRH's difficulty and enough time to fully explore them all would have made it, like, 700 rooms large. I'm still figuring out new things all the time with this baby, and I don't think we've even begun to consider the possibilities of element interaction here.

Back in JTRH days, killing a slayer was considered /oh my god/. Now, killing a slayer is do--heck, TCB has taught me how to kill a slayer in a room that just has a bomb and maybe a bit of wall there. There's a natural progression of skill, and trying to cater to everyone at once is an absurd proposition. You people want harder holds? The 'Build Holds' button is RIGHT THERE, folks.

KDD was harder than JtRH because of rooms that were done, frankly, with little care. 7S3E in Level 8 is not a pinnacle of architect brilliance. I bet if that room were invented today, people would be complaining about how poorly thought out and uninteresting it was.

This is like when people talk about how great the NES games were. KDD is /good/. There is a lot of GOOD in KDD. It is a fine testament to the timeframe it was.

But to treat TCB as somehow worse as a hold in terms of difficulty because it is not as hard to you as KDD was when you knew nothing about DROD....

This confuses and angers me.

Maurog
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One word - undo.

If you think TCB is much easier than KDD, try to play it the way most of us played KDD - without an undo button. And maybe even without checkpoints. The new elements in TCB will supplement the originality of elements of KDD back at the time nicely. Just try it...

Suddenly not so easy, eh?

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NiroZ
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Banjooie wrote:
This confuses and angers me.

Ah... I don't get it. Where is it that harder difficulty = better? (Otherwise, Beethro's Teacher would be the highest acclaimed hold of all time)

And while we're at it, DROD 2.0 rooms are no easier when played in DROD 3.0. And no, that hold is DROD 1.0.

Neathro
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Neathro
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NiroZ wrote:

Banjooie wrote:
This confuses and angers me.

Ah... I don't get it. Where is it that harder difficulty = better? (Otherwise, Beethro's Teacher would be the highest acclaimed hold of all time)

My sister's hold would be more popular yet!
She's only made 1 room that hard so far though.




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Pilchard VIII
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YAY SURPRISE!

Ps. I gave KDD a 6, JtRH an 8 and TCB a 9.

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Blondbeard
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Pilchard VIII wrote:
YAY SURPRISE!

Ps. I gave KDD a 6, JtRH an 8 and TCB a 9.

Don't you run out of brains pretty quickly when you should rate holds that are more difficult than TCB?

Pilchard VIII
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I rate holds?

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Tootsieroll
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I seem to remember somewhere Erik saying that TCB was meant more for those who have already gone through JTRH, in other words, JTRH or KDD, were the primers.

That being said, JTRH was the first DROD I did, and I found it immensely more difficult than TCB. I actually quit for months during level 22, because I could get no further. Then somehow the game was deleted, so I had to start back on level 1, but I completed the game.

I don't know that I did the original KDD, but I did do KDD 2.0; is that the same? I found it to be the easiest. I thought TCB was easier than JTRH, only because I was very familiar with things. I don't think I would think the same, if it was my first game.

But, I loved TCB's story element!!

AlefBet
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Tootsieroll wrote:
I don't know that I did the original KDD, but I did do KDD 2.0; is that the same?

Essentially, yes. If you played KDD 2.0, you got essentially everything from KDD. The 2.0 version has some new secret rooms and I believe a few new story elements, though. (Thus, if you played KDD 1, you might want to try 2.0 for the extras.)

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bradwall
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TCB starts off pretty easy... however, when you get toward the end, there are some real tough rooms.

ErikH2000
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Some of you people don't understand that rating KDD at a difficulty of 5 is mandatory. The difficulty of KDD is well understood, so JtRH and TCB should always be rated relative to KDD. If you think that JtRH is more than twice as hard as KDD, it's okay to rate it at 11 or 17 or whatever.

But don't say KDD is a 6. That screws up everything.

-Erik

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Mattcrampy
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Far be it for us to say that a user-voted, coarse-grained system of working out difficulty can't be objective.

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Jatopian
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What are you lot on about? TCB is much harder than the previous two, especially once one reaches Oremite Breeding Grounds...

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bradwall
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Jatopian wrote:
What are you lot on about? TCB is much harder than the previous two, especially once one reaches Oremite Breeding Grounds...

Yeah, the Oremite Breeding can really be frustrating.