More secreting for length.
Vike91 wrote:
Wow... this seems to be a really BIG can of worms
Yeah, don't worry about it. At this time of year I start getting anxious and wanting to do things before the humidity rolls in and summer starts to wear on me. But since I've been waiting for TSS, I've been holding off starting anything major, so I get rambly because I have time on my hands and a feeling that I want to do something.
skell wrote:
In DROD without UU the punishment is wasting the player's time and reducing their enjoyment of the game, because I highly doubt there are many people out there who enjoy having to repeat the same sequence of keys multiple times (even more if, due to anger, the accidentally make a mistake in the repeat phase).
Click here to view the secret text
×
That's just it. Typically, I don't mind having to repeat a section. That horde room in the Pirate's Lair with the red herring speed potion... I didn't even see the second one until I was well into the room, so it caught me hundreds of turns in. Some people got pissed at that... I thought it was great. Besides, I knew that was exactly the type of room I'd replay many times for fun. So I just got a jump on that. I guess that makes me an optimist (I considered writing a recap of my TCB replay, but it'd just be "I still like everything, except builders. I hate those guys" (builders really are one of the few things I've ever hated in the game... more chaos than wraithwings, more underfootedness than wubbas, and they mess with terrain (with all the blinking))). It's not that I don't get frustrated... I do, quite easily at times, and having UU to tempt me is another reason I don't like it... because I much rather like that right now I instead have good reason to channel that frustration into finding a solution, instead of repeating a section to try something else and hoping to fumble into one.
The only exception for me is when it really is about repeating the same sequence. And it's only certain cases... clearing the same piece of tar optimally in the same way doesn't bother me, because I don't need to memorize that, I just clear tar.. that's nice and relaxing and gives me something to do while thinking about the puzzle. It only happens with sequences that pretty much need to be memorized (or played very carefully with substantial look ahead). I can definitely see how UU is a big help there... but that isn't a selling point for me, because it also means that there's more tolerance and so more use of it can be made.
skell wrote:
Now I agree, there is no inherently negative consequence for failing to execute except being forced to hit the undo key. The thing is, hitting undo does not magically make you solve the puzzle, you still need to either try all possible combinations until you come to the solution or think more. All in all it makes the game less frustrating (and thus more enjoyable) for players (me included) who are not as smart as some of the people here.
Frustration is an important part of any game... you don't want to get rid of it. That wouldn't make the game more enjoyable, it makes it boring. Potentially frustratingly boring.
skell wrote:
There are players who are so good that their primary source of enjoyment is optimizing, but the vast majority just struggle to solve the puzzles and it's enough for them to enjoy the game very much.
Click here to view the secret text
×
That's just it, though. UU goes way too far. Is it really "solving" a room if you get to the end and have a frankenreplay that's so stitched together than you can't recognize it. It already happens a bit with checkpoints. That, again, is on the philosophical level of what bothers me with UU. I won't deny that people can get some satisfaction from hearing the Exit Level sound in any case... it's just the concept of what it means to "solve" a room is undermined with UU, because it goes beyond fixing a momentary slip up. Yes, this is not true for all rooms... some rooms require finding just the right trick and so can better force figuring out a solution over trying all combinations. So UU favours that sort of room because it favours those puzzles.
skell wrote:
bwross wrote:
Which is good, because, as I've said elsewhere, if UU had been in AE, I probably wouldn't have kept playing because level eight would have convinced me that being able to execute like a true smitemaster isn't as important as searching the game tree for a solution, and I'd assume that the rest of the game would be based more on that.
Eh, unfortunately AE was never really that good of a hold. Don't get me wrong, I loved it the first time I played it, but now that I am wiser and the art of hold making has grew significantly I know that it's the worst choice for the official hold to introduce players. Either JtRH or GatEB are much better.
Click here to view the secret text
×
Yeah, except that those didn't exist at that time. What I saw in AE was the potential and that it was taking things quite seriously on the hack and slash theme side. Although since I came directly from playing roguelikes at that time, I was quite use to being in situations where I needed to execute properly or lose my entire game. Going back to a checkpoint or the start of a room was nothing. A lack of undo wasn't something that even occured to me.
Schik wrote:
Currently the option exists to download the source code, set the CHEATS flag, compile it, and have room/level *skipping* as well as UU.
Click here to view the secret text
×
Yes, if you have access to the source code, or just the machine the game runs on, there are a lot of things you can do. But external things aren't part of the game space... these things get labelled as CHEATS for a reason. That makes it very different when something's there, because, well everything is there with enough effort, so you don't really have a game space if you include all that. It's easy to steal from the bank in a board game or stack a deck of cards with a little practice in sleight of hand... but very few have rules that make that a legal play. It's like having a fourth tightrope walker that uses mirrors to hide the net and tells the audience there isn't one.
Schik wrote:
When I played DooM in the 90s I knew that iddqd existed, but I didn't type it in because I liked the challenge of not using God Mode.
Click here to view the secret text
×
You see, that's part of the metaphysical colouring I'm talking about. Since God Mode was easily available in the game, you've chosen to colour it as a challenge to not use it... you've marked your play as a subset of the game space, as if God Mode was part of standard play. Most people wouldn't colour it that way, though... they'd consider playing without cheat codes as the standard game, because cheat codes would be outside the rules (even if they're standardly available).
Another example: I wanted to make a recording of John Cage's 4'33" (which is completely silent). I could have just recorded in an empty room for it, but that felt wrong because it would have any sounds in the room fixed. I could also have just blatted out the right number of zeros, and but a WAV header on it. But that didn't feel right either. I remembered that Cage had apparently used a random system of cards he designed to come up with the duration... essentially making there be an unheard rhythm to it (beyond the three labeled sections). So what I did was write a script to randomly select a song from my local CDDB with the right length, and then I ripped that, piping the result through another program to replace the signal with zeros. It produced exactly the same file as if I had just written out the zeros, but, yet it feels more authentic to me... so it has a different metaphysical colouring. Some people won't see that colour, and it can't be detected from the file itself, but somehow it can be real. And part of what I don't like about UU is like that... the game feels like it's a different metaphysical colour with UU in the options.
hyperme wrote:
bwross seems to believe that the mere choice for other people to use UU will somehow alter the behavior of everyone who produces DROD holds in such a way to cease the creation of certain types of rooms. Obviously, if the UU option was magic, this might happen. Otherwise, it's kind of a weird concern, since transparent tarstuff didn't kill tar puzzles.
Click here to view the secret text
×
Yeah, but transparent tar doesn't change the nature of tar. What it does is make hidden puzzles with tar rather pointless... you can still do stuff under tar, and make it interesting by having the tar have to be cut in interesting ways. But a puzzle where you need to just find trapdoors under tar, not much point now. Not that they were big before (as I said that was a weak example).
It's not that certain types of rooms will cease creation, it's more subtle. What it will certainly do is shift the game centre... UU's exactly the sort of thing that does that because that's one of the effects of anything that's added to reduce frustration. When you reduce frustration in a game somewhere, the game always needs to shift a bit to restore some tension. Basically, reducing frustration in one area allows things to be pushed further. So it will have some effect. And I've discussed that before... some puzzles I like don't have as much impact with UU (because they're simple enough to fumble through with trial and error... the fact that I do these when I don't want to think too hard adds another problem, because that means that there's a real temptation to use UU when I get frustrated instead of thinking, and UU will be a lot closer than I like to keep things that might tempt me... which is another little reason to keep hating it, because that helps makes it a point of honour), other puzzles I don't like have their frustration reduced which makes them more playable and so I might see more of them. And if I'm not using UU, that means I just suffer more until I do. It's like women's purses... I have a friend that almost never carries a purse, when I commented on in the first time I saw her with one she pointed out that women's clothing tends to not have pockets, because most women carry purses, because women's clothing tends not to have pockets... it's a feedback loop, which means that she ends up carrying a purse sometimes. If the majority of people start using UU it will have a similar effect... a shift in the environment that pushes nonconformers towards conformity. It's a natural thing, and one of the problems with democracy. It's also indirectly one of the reasons I've seen for the design philosophy of being adverse to adding options.
hyperme wrote:
(If bwross' only concern is actually that other people can use UU, however, he probably needs to re-examine something. DROD is a game played on your own, by yourself in such a way that other player's settings don't affect you. Unless you can brute force high scores?)
As I said above, other people using UU isn't a factor beyond what it does to the shared environment (which is probably going to be more of a subtle shift... hopefully it doesn't get to the point where we never see a well placed checkpoint ever again). I have plenty of reasons to not like it on its own.
Jacob wrote:
So I was asking for some examples of how using UU would either detract from solving a puzzle or from the competitive process of optimisation.
Click here to view the secret text
×
It won't help someone to compete at optimization. It is a good tool for optimizers, because it provides arbitrary checkpoints. I had a #1 that I got in TCB because it was still early, which I knew was fairly close to optimal, but had a pause in the middle. And I was sure that that pause wasn't necessary and the score would be beaten because of that. UU would have made it easier to search for a move that would fix it. But it wouldn't find the move... I'd still need to do that.
As for detracting from solving a puzzle... well, as I've mentioned, it would have done that for my first solving of the three tar mother room in KDD. It's not just the impression of the game, it's the fact that it's exactly the sort of room (it provides a lot of frustration for a newbie) where I would have used UU extensively to simply overcome it, and pretty much learn nothing or get any sense of accomplishment for completing it. Any level of undo can make you sloppy... I discovered that a single level conditioned me wrong. The impact of more levels I figure is probably O(1/n), but more important is the point where it goes beyond what's necessary for protecting slip ups and gets into the area where you can use it to avoid thinking. I mean, just the other day I did a room where I had to kill a Rock Giant, putting the the golem piles on four different plates. It was a bit tricky, but I thought it out... and it would have been sooooo easy to brute force that with UU and come out with a solution but without the understanding behind it. Sure I could anaylize it afterwards and try to figure out what I really did, but it was just a small part of a larger room, so I still had other things to do (which could also have benefitted from some UU brute force... sure I would need to figure out the order and strategic things, but I'd never have had to think about the tactical side, and the loss there is a detraction for me). And I really prefer solve and execute over fumble and anaylize as a learning method.