I'd like to chime in while this discussion is still relevant, even though I haven't
entirely good-ending'ed TSS yet (I've yet to finish More Fluff, and...I think that's it?).
What I found was a strange phenomenon with the majority of new elements introduced in TSS, where I would absolutely
hate a element the first time it was introduced, and then after a while I would get to liking it a lot better, especially when I started experimenting with the element in building some of my own rooms. I think this might mean that I really just hated the way the element was being used, or that I was angry that I didn't understand it even though I was in the process of learning it? I don't remember this happening with disabled force arrows, and there were probably some other things that didn't bother me as much, but I know it happened with constructs and fluff as concrete examples. In fact, even coming back after several months' break to try and really finish the game after getting the bad ending I felt like Construct Warehouse was designed specifically to remind me of why I used to hate constructs.
I have an idea in my head that a really good puzzle game (or at least one I can enjoy a lot) should allow the player to solve every puzzle in it "
intuitively"
; that is, if the player understands the
point behind the puzzle, then the exact steps should work themselves out quite easily. What this means for me and DROD is that I tend to hate rooms that expect me to think about every single move individually or plan too many moves ahead. So I don't really like playing rooms where I'm expected to understand in a deep, conscious manner the finer points of movement order, or think about the precise position of every single monster in the room some 60+ turns ahead (i.e., much of Construct Warehouse). Like, I can understand that I need to line up the roach queens in a way that makes them not spawn roaches or stay in a neat line so they push the pressure plates, but it's annoying to me when the way to actually do said lining up isn't obvious (or isn't "
obvious enough"
, ambiguous as that is). I prefer things that can be thought of from a big picture perspective, such as a monsterless trapdoor puzzle, which can be challenging but can still be thought of as an entire path all at once, if that makes sense; or a roach horde where I can think "
go over here, kill these roaches"
and figure out the details very quickly with probably a few undos along the way. Even puzzles that ask the player to do a single specific thing ("
linchpin"
types) can be fun to me as long as understanding that thing I need to do is more or less enough to be able to accomplish it.
I can remember being angry at JtRH and TCB in the same way I was at new elements in TSS, but it was a brief phase in those cases while here I actually still hate the way some things are used (again, Construct Warehouse). Maybe there's a threshold of difficulty beyond which a puzzle
can't be intuitive the way I described above, or it might just be a matter of an individual's style in making levels and their own preference in what they think is fun. Either way, I don't want to give the impression that I've disliked TSS, though. I love the story and the majority of the game, it's just that sometimes I got so frustrated I had to quit and come back after a few days to a week (only after running into a wall post-bad ending did my hiatus from playing TSS last longer than that).
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[Last edited by Xindaris at 02-02-2016 11:51 PM]