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A more “open” puzzle design?

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Oh, right away that sounds much less objectionable, Izzy. If you know that you’re just checking out one of X possibilities, and you understand that checking each one by one is just an alternative way to solve the puzzle because you’ve missed a clue or can’t figure out the hint… yeah, I have no problem with that.

I even designed a similar puzzle myself for a game idea I was working on. There, you were supposed to search a certain student’s locker. You could either hack into the school computer system and simply look up the locker number, notice that the stickers on one particular locker matched doodles on the student’s notebook, or just search each locker in turn until you found the right one (but the janitor would chase you away each time after a few attempts).

     

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I think one thing you have to be careful about is making it clear if there’s a way to brute force the solution. Because most people will choose to do this rather than look for clever alternatives which may or may not exist.

If searching every one of 100 identical warehouses is guaranteed to get you the answer, a very large number of people will choose this option over trying to find something clever.

Andrew Plotkin once wrote something to this effect (possibly when discussing the maze in Myst?), and he almost always has wise things to say about game design.

     

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Found it:

And also (while I’m nitpicking puzzles) there’s that maze. Mazes in adventure games were pretty much universally reviled by 1985. How dared Myst to introduce yet another one? By being clever, of course: it’s a gimmick maze. If you pay attention to certain clues, you can head straight through to the exit.

Observe that this didn’t make anybody happy.

This is a subtle error, and one I have talked about before. Players are lazy. I am a player, and I am lazy (though not a Cretan or a liar); therefore all players are lazy. Also, thinking is harder than working. You can map Myst’s maze by brute force—trying every fork and turn. It’s boring, it takes about 45 minutes, and it works.

Conclusion: nobody will ever find those clever clues. I mean, many people will; but a lot won’t. I didn’t, the first time I played Myst. People will brute-force their way through, and then they will write to the designer and say “You idiot, why did you put a big stupid maze in your game? That was boring.”

(I didn’t write to the designer, actually, because I find a certain perverse pleasure in drawing painstakingly accurate maps. Once in a while, anyway. Oh, I wish I still had that square-by-square precise map of Ultima 3… all in colored pencil on quarter-inch grid paper… mind you, I’m not that perverse any more.)

What I’m saying is, not only did I map the whole maze back when I played Myst, I mapped it again last week when I played RealMyst. Just for the fun of it. But that doesn’t excuse the design error, and the error is this: adding alternate solutions can ruin a puzzle. Truly. If your players think for a while and discover the clever solution, they will like you; if they work mechanically for a while and discover the boring solution, they will dislike you; and either way, their judgement is not rendered upon the solution they missed. It’s no good saying “Look at this clue you didn’t find!”

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/realmyst.html

     
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After a brisk nap - 05 March 2013 03:43 PM

No, I don’t think I’ve misunderstood.

Well i think you have Tongue

The point of the password puzzle example was that the game doesn’t know / doesn’t care how you solved it, right?

Yes - you got that part right

What that means in terms of game logic is that having passed this point in the game guarantees less about what has happened in the game so far.

And this is where you got it wrong!

The password puzzle is still a stand-alone puzzle, meaning that you can guarantee just as much as you can in every other game.
The only things you can’t guarantee is if you picked up all the clues to the password, but since we don’t care a rat’s ass about how you get access to the computer, then this is also totally irrelevant.

Regarding being able to guarantee that you have found the files before you leave the room, well that has nothing to do with the password puzzle, if it was a conventional puzzle, then you still wouldn’t be able to guarantee that you had solved the puzzle before you leave the room. And if it is vital to the game that you can guarantee this, then you just have to make sure there is sufficient clues in the room, and possibly lock the door so you can’t leave, but you would have to do exactly the same in a conventional password puzzle.

One of my overall ideas is to reduce the linearity of the game, and that would mean that you can guarantees less about what has happened in the game so far, and it would require extra work and add to the cost.
But again when talking about requiring less work, i was specifically talking about the stand-alone puzzles.

So you aren’t completely wrong, and we don’t actually disagree, you are just reading more into what i wrote, then i actually wrote.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

Total Posts: 247

Joined 2012-05-21

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For me, the real problem with the maze in Myst was that, in a game in which exploration plays such a key part, it really doesn’t MATTER if I figure out the subtle clue for how to run the maze. I’m STILL going to explore the whole darn maze to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

I’ll admit, I DIDN’T catch the subtle, clever clues for that maze the first time I encountered it. I brute forced my way through it. Yet even when I reached the end through the brute force solution, I STILL felt the need to go back and explore all the paths I hadn’t tried yet, just in case something important (or at least interesting) was there.

     
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Great discussion, guys! Let me get back to you after I consolidate myself and read those 3 pages you wrote while I was away.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

Total Posts: 187

Joined 2005-01-25

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Iznogood - 05 March 2013 04:21 PM

The password puzzle is still a stand-alone puzzle, meaning that you can guarantee just as much as you can in every other game.
The only things you can’t guarantee is if you picked up all the clues to the password, but since we don’t care a rat’s ass about how you get access to the computer, then this is also totally irrelevant.

There’s no such thing as a standalone puzzle. (Unless it’s completely optional and has no effect on any other aspect of the game.) Solving the puzzle is going to lead to something else. If the puzzle can be brute-forced, that means it may have been solved as soon as it was presented. Or not. Any other parts of the game that are accessible at this time need to take both possibilities into account. And any parts of the game that follow from solving the puzzle won’t be able to make any assumptions based on where and when the hints to solve it were given (such as that you’ve talked to a certain character, visited a certain location, picked up a certain inventory item or looked at a certain hotspot). Importantly, it’s not just a question of having got the hint itself, but having reached a certain game state where the hint was given.

What you’re essentially saying is that none of the clues that hint at the solution, or any of the consequences of solving the puzzle, have any bearing on any other part of the game. Yes, there are multiple possibilities, but they don’t make a difference. I’d say that that means the puzzle is probably badly motivated and pointless within the story. And you’re assuming that was already the case in the more linear design, which is hardly a fair assumption.

But yeah, I’ll concede that if you have a crappy, pointless puzzle that adds nothing to the story but just exists as an arbitrary barrier in a linear design, you might be able to turn it into a crappy, pointless non-linear puzzle that adds nothing to the story but just exists as an arbitrary barrier, without much extra work. Happy? Tongue

Regarding being able to guarantee that you have found the files before you leave the room, well that has nothing to do with the password puzzle, if it was a conventional puzzle, then you still wouldn’t be able to guarantee that you had solved the puzzle before you leave the room. And if it is vital to the game that you can guarantee this, then you just have to make sure there is sufficient clues in the room, and possibly lock the door so you can’t leave, but you would have to do exactly the same in a conventional password puzzle.

Well, I was assuming cracking the password = accessing the file, so the point was that if doing that is supposed to lead to something (e.g. the phone ringing, or a new location becoming accessible) that shouldn’t happen before you’ve completed other tasks, that would be easy to ensure in a linear design simply by not giving you the hint you need to break the password until the other tasks are complete, while in a non-linear design you need specific tests and triggers for that, or you could end up in a bad game state.

     
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After a brisk nap - 05 March 2013 03:56 PM

Oh, right away that sounds much less objectionable, Izzy. If you know that you’re just checking out one of X possibilities, and you understand that checking each one by one is just an alternative way to solve the puzzle because you’ve missed a clue or can’t figure out the hint… yeah, I have no problem with that.

Well given that there is also a sadistic streak to this, then you might not know it in advance, and you would probably not realize that you can use this as a way of checking out X number of possibilities, before you check out the first one, and realize its not the right place. It really wouldn’t be a wild goose chase without the sadistic streak Naughty

You could of course also just use it as an alternative solution, leg-work vs brain-work, i don’t think anybody would be frustrated about that.

somanycrimes - 05 March 2013 04:01 PM

I think one thing you have to be careful about is making it clear if there’s a way to brute force the solution. Because most people will choose to do this rather than look for clever alternatives which may or may not exist.

I don’t necessarily agree that it shouldn’t be possible to brute force some puzzles.
But in my idea, the warehouse you have to search wouldn’t appear on the map, before you had arranged the clues on the deduction board so that it points to this warehouse. So you wouldn’t be able to entirely skip the brain-work, or at least you would also have to brute force the deduction board.

There are of course many other situations where you can apply the same “Wild goose chase” principle, like have 3 witlessness point you in 3 different directions, and not all of these can be protected against brute force.

diego - 05 March 2013 04:49 PM

Great discussion, guys! Let me get back to you after I consolidate myself and read those 3 pages you wrote while I was away.

I know exactly what you mean, keeping up with all the posts has been quite a task.


I fell like i’m beginning to dominate this thread, and it has become too much about my suggestions, but i really wanted to raise a discussion about the general principles, and to hear other peoples ideas and opinions about this.
So i’m imposing a 2 day non-post restriction on myself, and won’t post in this thread the next 2 days.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Joined 2013-03-05

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Just want to say thank you for this thread pointing me in the direction of Resonance. Right up my alley. I did see the twist coming, but it’s great to see the writer laying the clues out in advance like a mystery pro! Unfortunately it’s properly gazumped something I was writing Cry

     
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TimovieMan - 04 March 2013 03:42 PM

I’m just saying that the entire concept of “open” puzzles is going to be extremely hard - if not impossible - to implement correctly. No matter what the approach, it’s always going to be too easy for some, and too hard for others.

I agree. But I’m not really sure if I want developers to “think” about their target audience. It feels artificial. An “honest” developer will make the game the way it feels it should be done, no matter if it turns out to be easy or hard game.

TimovieMan - 04 March 2013 03:42 PM

And I’m not really sure that that’s going to be the right approach for longevity in our genre’s popularity (which should be one of the primary concerns)

Now, I’m not sure about this. I’ll echo Josh Mandel’s interview where he said: “It may always be a niche audience, but that’s okay. There’s no shame at all in not being the dominant form of gaming, and there are even a few advantages, such as not being the beneficiary of a million lousy me-too products that flood the market and ruin the genre.”

After a brisk nap - 04 March 2013 03:54 PM

I’m not sure there’s anything revolutionary about it. If you have to guess a password, you need to have clues, otherwise it’s not really a puzzle.

You may have a point, but the password example is not really about being “revolutionary” as much as being the more intuitive in a simple gradation of possible puzzle designs. To make myself clear, I’ll bring another example I already spoke of sporadically, where I’ll try to grade the ways the same puzzle is designed and solved on some “open-endedness”, or “creativeness” scale:

The main character (you) has to speak with another man, who had locked himself and doesn’t want to open the door to anyone, save for his girlfriend. His girlfriend, however, is mad at him, and doesn’t want to speak with him at the moment. The puzzle is about finding the way to make the man to open his door. You visit his girlfriend, and talk to her. The conversation is recorded on your tape recorder.

1) “Low open-endedness” solution - Out of the whole conversation, the game has recorded only one line the girlfriend spoke out of the contest, which is “...open the door”. The game has automatically recorded only this one line, you had no choice about which lines to record, and you’re presented with the ready-to-go inventory item - tape recorder with one recorded line - “Open the door”, said by his girlfriend. All you have to do is go to the man’s house, knock on his house door, and when he says: “Who is it?”, you [Use] the tape recorder on [Door], and he opens the door thinking it’s his girlfriend outside the door.


2) “High open-endedness” solution - You have choice which lines to record while speaking with his girlfriend. Not only that, but then you need to construct the proper sentence, based on the clue you got that the man only wants to open the door and speak to his girlfriend. You have recorded several lines while talking with his girlfriend:

You: Why are you mad at him?
Girlfriend: I feel he didn’t open himself up. Like something is bothering him, but he doesn’t want to speak about it.
You: When did you see him the last time?
Girlfriend: At his place. We had another fight, I’ve slammed the door and walked away.

Now, you’re presented with another puzzle, like a sound editing program - you need to take the word “Open” from the first sentence, and “the door” from the second, thus constructing the line “Open the door”, which is only then available in your inventory as a readied item. You go to man’s house, and use the tape with “Open the door” sentence on house door.

Those two are extreme variations, and it’s possible to hit the middle ground in some ways, but just like the password puzzle, it’s about how designers can succeed (if they want to) to give to players more “illusion” it’s actually them who’re solving the puzzle.

 

somanycrimes - 05 March 2013 09:41 AM

So Poirot is a good example here, but Holmes isn’t. That’s not a criticism of Holmes stories, they’re just a slightly different genre.

Good point, but Sherlock Holmes games don’t have to follow the Doyle’s narrative concept. Also, many small “reveals”, or puzzle solutions typical for Holmes can bring not the same, but similar effect of fulfillment like the “big reveal” in Poirot. Regarding the “Player is not Sherlock Holmes” issue, an interesting approach, but again I’m not sure it’s a crucial thing designers should think of when designing a game - Monkey Island designers wanted to tell a story of a naive pirate wannabe - some of us are amused by guiding the naive pirate wannabe, some of us are partly identified with Guybrush… but in reality, it’s a good and balanced mix of both that really makes the difference and brings the “storytelling” and “interactive” side of the video games media. I WANT to be astonished by Holmes’ brilliance, but part of me somehow always wanted even while reading books/watching movies to deduce some of the things myself - Sherlock shouldn’t be much different from Guybrush when it comes to games, even though it is a special case with a well-known character. I’m not even sure if we should make the distinction between 3rd and 1st persons when it comes to “player is a player” and “player is a character” issue. The thing, however, which will be different is whether the game is closer to an “interactive movie” or “heavy puzzler” because every story can work properly in any concept, even if it is about already defined characters. Not only that, but designers can also choose, accidentally or intentionally, what sort of “balance” between “players vs character” the game will strike.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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One thing I was thinking today is that a rigidly “closed” design does suit comic games more. Day of the Tentacle, for example, feels almost like a Rube Goldberg machine. To get that effect, I think there needs to be the sense that every piece has its unique function, no matter how ridiculous.

So I think it’s more serious games that could benefit most from these sorts of puzzles.

     

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