OK. Let's back up for a moment.
Somehow this discussion has turned into a question of the right way to add help for rooms. For instance, Tim started talking about the HA process, and Jacob suggested various other ways that hints can be added to rooms, and Tim said that we could add them to the soon-to-be-released SMS...and all of this misses my point, which was probably not clear enough--looking at my original post, I thought it was implicit, but let me make it explicit.
I'm not asking for a feature to be added to DROD 4.0 which would then be used everywhere and the HAs would have to look at it and so forth. I'm suggesting the possibility of adding a feature to
the very particular "Gunthro and the Epic Blunder" hold. My original concern was that GatEB
might turn out to be less approachable by new players than its (virtual) box suggests, and that certain rooms
in that hold might benefit from an additional source of help for the new, possibly frustrated, player. (Part of my concern on this point was the idea that GatEB hadn't been playtested by novice players, which was the impression I got from an in-game chat conversation. Jacob tells us this isn't true, that at least one novice player did playtest it. That's good to know.)
So, to reiterate: if GatEB is intended to be a somewhat more gentle introduction to the game,
and if it turns out that new players nevertheless find themselves frustrated in the same handful of spots over and over, then one way to fix that without affecting the gameplay or high scores or aesthetics would be to,
in that handful of rooms, let people "
press action key for help"
. (A line of disembodied dialogue could tell people that help is available when they enter.)
Deep breath.
* * * * *
Now, to answer Tim, point by point, since I am assuming that his statement that "
as for someone not wanting to discuss my points, that's exactly my intention"
is intended as sarcasm:
As an HA I'm totally not interested in hints on Action key. As an HA, your interest or lack thereof is wholly irrelevant to what happens to GatEB.
Why not just let the Action key solves the room for me instead? Hints still requires me to solve the room lol. Because this isn't about you; as I said in my first post, this is about new players. And because the point, as I thought I made clear, is not to make the game trivial, it's to make the game approachable.
If we do hints, I pity the poor sod who has to add hints to every room (any volunteers?). Which is funny, because at no point did I ever once say "
to every room"
. It's that kind of comment--which requires either deliberate misreading (in which case it's malicious) or careless misreading (in which case it's uninformed)--that made me disinclined to try to answer in the first place.
Just include victory demos for every room, and we can get more kids on this forums than just hints alone1!!!!111!! Thanks!!!!eleventy!!!! But no one is talking about getting kids on this forum. On the other hand, by releasing a game that's
"designed as an entry-level offering to the DROD world", I thought perhaps we
were trying to get more thoughtful, intelligent people on the forum.
A bad idea packaged in a brilliant English is still a bad idea. I'm glad you think my English is brilliant. I'm sorry you think my idea is bad, though I'm not convinced you
understood my idea. And non-constructive posts packaged in mediocre English are still non-constructive.
...to add help scripting to the soon-to-be-released SMS. Except of course that I was in no way talking about the SMS. If it's not intended to be an entry-level introduction, why would I think it should include hints?
...hints for the 250+ rooms* in TSS as well. Except of course that I way in no way talking about hints in every room.
skell, the problem with doing help scripting in only a certain number of rooms is that it changes the user expectations. Now, see, this is a remarkably valid point. All the same, I think that if you make it clear which rooms have help available in them, there won't be any particular expectations. In particular...
Secondly, how do you define this "certain"? As I said in my original post, I'm suggesting that it should happen for rooms that new players regularly find particularly difficult. And to be honest, I was thinking much less about the "
help this room is hard"
, for which there's the H&S board, and much more about the "
help this new element is underexplained"
.
I do agree with you that perhaps the "F1 button as help" isn't very well described in-game. Ah, the F1-for-help. When's the last time you
read the in-game help?
For instance, I've just now gone to the help. Being confused, as I am, about snake movement (there having been no real introduction to it in the hold), I click on "
monster reference"
. In the monster reference I learn...nothing. I read about all kinds of within-the-Eighth facts about how roaches don't like bright light and feed on what they scavenge and are used as a source of meat, and how rock golems are dumb (which doesn't seem to be true, since in GatEB they have a particularly intricate airlock-style prison door system) and their vocabulary is limited (also not true) and will reconstruct themselves over time (wtf?) and leave a pile of rocks when you kill them (which is, surprisingly, true and useful, but you've got to get three paragraphs in to find it).
Guards are listed in the section of monsters that Gunthro doesn't encounter (not especially true). And finally, three clicks in--from the main page to the monster page to the "
monsters not in this game"
page to the "
mechanics of monster movement patterns"
page--I find actual information about how monsters move. It turns out that page is also listed "
below the fold"
, under "
And more"
, fifth on the list, after "
the story"
and "
the master map of the Eighth"
, where it's unlikely to be noticed.
And good luck learning about "
that gray square that's suddenly around me when I step into shallow water"
. Knowing that it's a kind of invisibility, I went to the index and found "
invisibility potion"
and "
invisible character"
. Since there was no potion involved, I tried the latter and found myself on a page about scripting. So I went back and tried the former and found myself on a page of "
Basic Game Elements"
that in fact makes no mention at all of invisibility, potion or otherwise. Shallow water is only mentioned in passing as something that rafts can't go over. (I can learn about invisibility potions if I click on the link for elements not in this game.) Of course, since it happened in shallow water, I could look that up in the index instead, except that neither "
water"
nor "
shallow water"
is an entry in the index....
My point is this: the help files, which not everyone is inclined to read anyway, are not especially well-organized or easy to traverse. They're certainly not something I'd wish on an entry-level player trying to get a feel for the game.
* * * * *
Assuming I haven't gone over some sort of hidden length limit that makes this post get rejected, I
think I've been about as clear on things as I can manage. But for the love of god, if I haven't, try
asking rather than posting semi-coherent reductio-ad-absurdum rants about how suggesting ways to make the game more welcoming is the equivalent of "
press this key to solve the room"
.
