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12th Archivist
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icon A post that doesn't really matter (0)  
I don't like getting annoyed at things because it rarely solves anything.

But this I find worthy of annoyance.

The simplest rooms made by the most average of architects stump me. I find that there is no way to solve them with any relaxation. It's a massive challenge that hurts my brain until the point of anger at the hold.

So how does one go about solving it? It's a raw challenge. Should you keep hacking away at the problem for hours on end until you get it? Giving up is not an option for some of you, but it always is one for me. Generally, if I can't solve a room in 5 minutes, I won't try it anymore. Some rooms are better than others. Ones involving efficiency or snake maneuvering are extremely annoying and take a long time to solve. When I do solve the problem (if ever), I don't feel much happiness that I did solve the problem. It's absolutely horrible. I find that the only holds I can conquer are those with difficulties below 4.5; far less than the average hold norm.

What about architecture? What makes people so good at finding the right spot in difficulty and enjoyability? I assume experience. The more holds you make that you learn from, the better your next hold will be. Unfortunately, your first hold is almost always your worst, and that can get very discouraging. Take for example my first hold Vonnifa's Basement. Only a single room out of all of them got any positive feedback. Out of seven, that's not too bad, but that also means that the other seven odd rooms were considered mediocre at best. In addition, that fact that I didn't test the hold really put a damper on the hold testing, and probably on any of my holds in the future. I think I really messed up with that fact, so much that I doubt any more of my holds will be much more than a nuisance. I'm starting to get a feeling like I won't contribute anything good to the Architecture board. I can keep trying, but it will be a long time before I get good at architecture. Many years long time.

Oh well. If I'm not good at either playing or building in DROD, there's really nothing for me to do. Even playing for 8+ years doesn't help. Perhaps I'm not fit for DROD anymore. That's ok I suppose.

I'll get out of your hair now and stop bugging you.

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 07-04-2009 12:10 AM]
07-04-2009 at 12:10 AM
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Dischorran
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icon Re: A post that doesn't really matter (+2)  
So here's the thing about architecture. Unless you're Jacob or Zch/Kallor or someone else with that kind of ridiculous track record, it usually takes at least couple of weeks for people to get around to testing a hold, and it doesn't look like your hold has been around that long yet. After that, unless a hold is extremely long most testers will only comment after playing the entire thing, so add some time on after that, especially if a room needs to be redone. And then when comments come, they're generally about the things that could stand improvement, since that's the whole point of testing in the first place. Believe me, comments that say "Everything's great!" are useless, and I have a whole truckload of USes and minor graphical glitches in Beethro's Brain to prove it.

So, nothing's wrong with the Vonnifa's Basement process yet. You've identified the problem, and there's a simple solution: write a sticky note to the effect of always playing through something immediately before uploading, put it on your monitor, and then you can be one of the architects making the highly sought after easy holds (as it turns out, that's not something I can do - Entropy was supposed to be easy...).

As for not being the best DROD player, well, if you only do things you're good at you'll constrict your activities far too much. Trust me on this one.

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07-04-2009 at 12:58 AM
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Snacko
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Also, if you don't enjoy playing DROD then, well, don't play it.

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07-04-2009 at 05:47 AM
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Nuntar
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icon Re: A post that doesn't really matter (+1)  
Yeah, I know where you're coming from. I gave up on DROD because of similar feelings. It bugs me, because I know I'm not unintelligent -- for instance, I'm one of the top players and level-designers at Repton, another puzzle game, and I'm not bad at DROD:RPG -- but I've never been able to get DROD, and nothing anyone's ever said has helped me understand why.

My best guess is that it's a combination of two factors. One is that there are just so many game elements in DROD, it's really hard (and time-consuming) to learn everything you need to know about all the possible interactions and the game's set of typical "clues" -- the ways you can get ideas about where to look for a solution just from seeing what's in the room. I'd suggest that one way to counteract this problem might be to start off by playing just AE holds until you've restored some of your confidence -- obviously, starting at the easier end and working upwards.

And on the architecture side, it's really hard for a newcomer to build rooms that are going to get any praise, because pretty much anything you're likely to think of on your first, second or third hold has been done before (and most likely done better) and people won't be shy about telling you so. I guess the answer to this is to concentrate entirely on puzzle elements to begin with -- don't waste time and emotional energy on building a story for a hold that might never get anywhere, but build puzzles, get feedback, build better puzzles, and so on, and save story for when you feel ready to make a serious attempt at building something you want to see on the Holds board.

I don't know. I have no idea why my words and ideas, as someone who doesn't even play DROD any more, should be at all worth listening to, so I guess mainly I was just trying to show that you have my sympathy.

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07-04-2009 at 09:18 PM
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Tahnan
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Will Shortz sometimes talks about the ways in which people solve the New York Times crossword puzzle--some people do it without any references, some people use references, or work in pairs; some people only solve the easier ones that appear early in the week; and so on. And what he says is that you shouldn't ever feel like you're doing it "wrong" just because you don't finish the hardest ones in under ten minutes while watching Meet the Press. It's your puzzle; play it the way you want to.

DROD is like that. You're not "doing it wrong" just because you can't complete Bavato's Dungeon, or just because you can't always tie the #1 score. You should play the holds you like and ignore the ones you don't; you should optimize if you enjoy it and not if you don't; and so on.
07-04-2009 at 09:55 PM
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AtkinsSJ
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I get this as well. I try to like it, but the better-rated, more fun holds tend to also be the most difficult, and the ones I can complete are often not worth it. I guess a key part of the problem is that the good architects are also the people who are good players, so they make much harder holds. So the Smitemasters' Selections also tend to be too hard.

Guess there's not a huge amount that can be done. Can't make the architects less good at the game. :P

Good point about playing AE holds, Nuntar. I'll have to give that more of a go. And have another crack at Advanced Concepts.
07-04-2009 at 10:46 PM
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Tim
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I usually divide hold difficulties in 3 categories. There are the ones under 5 brains, which I'd call "mindless hacking". The 8+ brains category is something I'd call "long term investments and possibly tedious", and the remaining group which people say these rooms "need some thought, but not very difficult".

A good indicator of "need some thought", is that it will cost you at least 5 minutes to discover the solution, so if you don't want to spend more than 5 minutes in a room, then the "mindless hack and slash" category is right for you. That's okay, you can still complete sudoku, tetris, match-3 or find-the-differences "puzzle games" within that category.

The fact that most holds here are harder than that average only means that this game somehow makes it easy to make holds that requires thinking. Although I'd say that the reason why most good architects tend not to be making easy/moderate holds is that it's not worth their time.

One reason is that most of our active, vociferous forumites dislike easy holds and absolutely cannot stand them, even if they should know better to ignore them, while "normal" players don't say that they'd like to see more easier holds.

A second reason is that, contrary to what most people think, making good easy/moderate holds is actually much, much harder than making a very hard one. There exist standard recipes to make very hard holds, but making good easy holds requires even more knowledge to make sure a hold is easy (or fun) enough.

I'd suggest that if any of you would rather like to see more easier holds, or easier Smitemasters' Selections holds, then you need to shout a lot harder. Has any of you commented on those easy fun holds lately? Interesting fact: everyone in this thread must have played and finished my part of Advanced Concepts, and yet I haven't seen anyone making one comment about it. (Fortunately I don't care about it, but other architects might not think that way.)

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[Last edited by Tim at 07-05-2009 11:36 PM]
07-05-2009 at 11:34 PM
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agaricus5
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12th Archivist wrote:
The simplest rooms made by the most average of architects stump me. I find that there is no way to solve them with any relaxation. It's a massive challenge that hurts my brain until the point of anger at the hold.
Interesting. But I think this is a clear example of how one-size-doesn't-fit-all can apply to DROD. What one person finds easy, another person will not. Some people love highly specific solution rooms, I like large (unplanned) horde rooms.

I don't think there is a problem with not being able to complete difficult holds; maybe this is actually because hold ratings are greatly skewed upwards, and an increase in difficulty from 5-6 may be twice that of 3-4. As some have suggested, increasing the number of easy holds is probably the best way to cater for the non-hardcore DRODers or those who simply just aren't good at difficult puzzles.


What about architecture? What makes people so good at finding the right spot in difficulty and enjoyability? I assume experience. The more holds you make that you learn from, the better your next hold will be.
This is an interesting point you bring up. I have wondered about the exact same thing. There are a few people who are serial architects and appear to have both natural talent and experience. But clearly, not all architects have this, and there are some very nice holds out there by people who have not built very much else.

Unfortunately, your first hold is almost always your worst, and that can get very discouraging. Take for example my first hold Vonnifa's Basement. Only a single room out of all of them got any positive feedback. Out of seven, that's not too bad, but that also means that the other seven odd rooms were considered mediocre at best.
As was already stated above, feedback is generally constructive-negative. Testers are actively looking for problems you should be fixing; positive feedback is less likely to be a good method to deliver this information to you! This is very discouraging (I definitely know the feeling), but it really says nothing abut the hold's quality.

In addition, that fact that I didn't test the hold really put a damper on the hold testing, and probably on any of my holds in the future.
I wonder how many of us have made the exact same mistake. I didn't test Bavato's Dungeon properly, either, and it ended up as one of the more important examples of why play-testing is important back in the early days. Funnily enough, I guess I was somewhat lucky, since it was the major reason for the warp room and has allowed the hold to be more accessible to players than it would otherwise be.

I think I really messed up with that fact, so much that I doubt any more of my holds will be much more than a nuisance. I'm starting to get a feeling like I won't contribute anything good to the Architecture board. I can keep trying, but it will be a long time before I get good at architecture. Many years long time.
I don't know whether that is an accurate assessment at all. I feel precisely the same way despite having published one high rated hold: I keep asking myself if the only reason why Bavato's Dungeon is so highly considered is simply because it was new, it was one of the first of its type, and it was built in the early days of Architecture. If it were published now instead of five years ago, what would people think of it? Poorly tested? Overusing puzzle ideas? Tedious? Uninteresting after a while? Above average perhaps, but nothing special?

Actually, it is and has always been considered all of these things by many who have played it; I suspect one or two people may even hold all such opinions simultaneously. However, back then, people were willing to overlook its faults for some of the better aspects of the hold, such as its variety, novelty, difficulty and reliance on basic movement concepts. The key question is: "would this still be the case today?"

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and perhaps upset a few people (I don't mean to do it on purpose, though), but I believe that the effect we're seeing is the effect of an overdispersed population. As I mentioned before somewhere, it is revealing that the top 20 posters account for more than 25% off the posts here. This is similar for hold-playing and testing, where only a few people have managed to play a large proportion of holds and most others have only played a few. The result is that most of the activity around here is shaped by those few people, the "vociferous forumites", as Tim mentions. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not exactly a good thing either.

I think the problems holding back Architecture can be grouped into two large categories:

1. Holds aren't being tested - I think we've already established this several times, so I'll say no more for now.

2. Collective persuasion - One of the things I have noticed both now and from before I left in 2006 is that it feels like people are quicker to play or praise holds from a particular author or containing particular types of puzzles; there is a collective expectation of something and this biases opinions and responses towards that expectation. It's not to say that these holds aren't good and don't deserve praise: they definitely do. It's just that it feels like people in general are being conditioned by this consensus to believe that these holds are the best (despite their own opinions) and use them as the measuring ruler by which to rate other holds.

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I think what we really need as a community is to be more open-minded. We all have our opinions and preferences, we all have holds we like, and holds we don't. However, I think that we should be less quick to criticise and ignore things simply because they don't conform to the accepted norm, and instead give them a second consideration. Is it really that this hold is really not worth playing? Is there really nothing good that can be said about it? Is all that criticism really proportionate to the hold's failings?

Oh well. If I'm not good at either playing or building in DROD, there's really nothing for me to do. Even playing for 8+ years doesn't help. Perhaps I'm not fit for DROD anymore. That's ok I suppose.
I thought the same thing as well. Would anyone really care about anything I might have to offer? Would my work really be worth playing? Is this all a waste of time?

The answer depends on you. Ask yourself, "do you really like playing/building holds?", ignoring any opinions that anyone else may have on the matter. If the answer is yes, then you know what to do. We're stuck in a rut because people aren't doing things; if you give up because you feel that no-one else will appreciate your work, then you are helping to ensure that actually is the case.

And since this is such a personal sort of problem (which I suspect more of us than admit it have) here's my take on the issue:

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07-06-2009 at 11:50 AM
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12th Archivist
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I have returned!

I admit that even DROD is not the most addicting thing in the universe. After I left, I absolutely stopped playing DROD altogether. I felt no remorse, shame, or pity for leaving.

That doesn't mean DROD is worthless. After I left, I didn't feel as challenged mentally as before. Because of that, I started reading highly scientific Wikipedia Articles and learned great things about the universe. Because of that, an equilibrium of knowledge has been settled inside of me as well as a sense of peace and understanding. It's really quite pleasant.

The real reason I came back is because I wanted to know if a new Caravel Project was on. Sadly, there wasn't one, but what project increase can happen in less than a month? No idea, but I hope that a new bar takes the reigns of flawless consistency before the year is gone.

Yours truly:
-me :)

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~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!
07-23-2009 at 12:31 AM
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