Slayer82 wrote:I honestly never expected that result. Therefore, you'll need to spawn two more Power Gems or a Water Essence if you want to continue. Otherwise, you'll have to start again.
Thank you for informing me of this. It comes a little too late though, and I will not restart your mod as it clearly needs more work. It was fun while it lasted, though.
Also, you need to learn more about game design in general. I'm gonna bring up 4 points from your mod that (in my opinion) could have been done better, and offer suggestions on how to improve them. I'm putting this forth as constructive criticism, I'm not being an ass here.
#1: The starter dungeon.
The starter dungeon is just a few steps short of brilliant. It's tough, non-linear, has plenty of secrets and variety but is never unfair...except at one point, which is the "boss" that must be defeated to be able to escape the dungeon. The problem with him is that there's nothing stopping players from running right into him from the start. There are ominous texts in the dungeon, yes, but they don't express this point strongly enough. You have stated here on the forums several times that players should build up their strength before taking on this boss, but you don't state this well enough where it matters: In-game.
There are many ways to address this, but the quickest and easiest method is to leave a note in the passage that leads to the boss that clearly states that past this point is a tough monster that should only be confronted by a strong and experienced party. It could be a note from a "prior occupant" who leaves this note as a warning how he barely escaped with his life while his friends weren't so fortunate, something like that. Which reminds me, something similar may be needed in-game to inform players that they really should try to get their hands on water-fighting weapons before exploring the water sections of the dungeon.
Lastly, I strongly urge you to reconsider the point we discussed about the starting cage and the "hidden" branches. First impressions are very important, and my interest in this mod was almost killed by the current implementation of the starting point.
#2: Cause and effect in puzzles.
This is by far the biggest problem I had with your mod. Far too many times I would come upon a door, a lock, a gate, a puzzle or some other obstacle and there would be no obvious way to get past it. Fair enough, it's not always supposed to be obvious and players are supposed to experiment to solve most of them, but this mod had too many solutions involving actions that either had little or no connection to circumstances, or were needlessly annoying.
Puzzles would be presented that, when solved, would leave the player clueless as to what they were there for. What did the player gain from solving the puzzle? Should the player have to go look around and see what has changed? If so, how far should he have to go? Around the corner, to the other end of the map? To another map entirely? The number of times I had to walk around and check EVERYWHERE to see what exactly changed by pulling a lever or pushing a button became very tiring early on. "Local" puzzles should have local solutions and local effects. It's only with the grand overreaching puzzles, or puzzles that will open up new maps to the player, where this rule can be ignored. This "rule" has been in effect since the early days of dungeon crawlers, and it's there for a reason.
Puzzles would be presented that had obvious solutions, but those solutions would be located far FAR away. The key to the door leading to the Sentinel, for example, is located 3 maps away in the Excavation Site. By my books that's too far away, especially considering that entering the Excavation Site requires finding a not-so-obvious button.
Puzzles would come up with no clues or hints whatsoever, and sometimes even misleading ones. The Raisa puzzle is a good example of the last point. Raisa has been imprisoned and needs to be freed, but the only clue provided is to use "a Thief's weapon of choice" to open the lock. What is the Thief's weapon of choice to beat a lock? A lockpick, that's what. Because thieves are looters first and foremost, not killers, and this is a lock that we're dealing with here and not some fat nobleman loaded with money. But no, the solution to the puzzle is to use a dagger on the lock. It's not a far-fetched solution, granted, but the problems with this puzzle are not over, as the next paragraph will show.
Puzzles would come up that had solutions that require excessive, pointless work from the player. The Raisa puzzle is the PERFECT example of this. We've established that the lock requires a dagger to be unlocked, now the only problem is finding a dagger. Assuming the party even has a dagger at this point is a long stretch, except perhaps for the Etheral Dagger after that recent fight with the Air Elementals - except that dagger doesn't work. Neither does the Buccaneer's Dagger, or the Assassin's Dagger, or the Punching Knife or even the Throwing Knifes (of which there are plenty). No, it MUST be a generic and regular "Dagger" like the one(s) found in the starter dungeon, and nowhere else it seems (I don't remember seeing a dagger lying around on the same map as the Raisa puzzle. Is there one? There should be.) That means that a LOT of players will have to go back to whereever they dumped their Dagger (which for most players was early on in the mod) and then make their way back to Raisa's prison to be finally able to free her. That involves a LONG walk, and brings us to my next point.
#3: Getting around the island.
The maps in your mod are laid on out an East-West axis, with the players starting in the middle. Once players begin exploring the island for real, they will start to get annoyed that there's no quicker way to get across places on the island than by foot, especially since they'll have to divide their attention between two directions. The original Legend of Grimrock 2 campaign acknowledged this, and allows for a small network of teleporters to be set up within a central hub that's conveniently located on the map closest to the "center" of the game world. Hell, the first Eye of the Beholder game, released 25 years ago, realized this and implemented a system of teleporters to allow players to get around the dungeon more easily.
While you have set up teleporters in your mod, they're all located on the far western side of the map, and they're all one-way. It takes quite a while and effort to reach them, and while they cut down the travel time by 50%, they could just as easily have followed the two examples set above and cut the travel time down by 75% or even 90%, once players have gone through the trouble of accessing the teleporters in the first place.
In addition, a handful of maps are more annoying to travel across than others. While the forest areas are mostly a case of just following the simple path, the swamp requires a rather long swim to reach the Etheral Plains, and the Catacombs are a long, winding passage. For no reason.
I urge you to change the set up of your teleporters. This calls for a massive change, I know, but players will be very grateful for it. But at the end it's your call.
#4: Playtesting a mod is important.
Simply put, you skipped this phase. You released the mod when
you thought it was complete, when it clearly wasn't. At the end of the day you're just one guy, you can't account for everything that may happen with your work. Second (and third, and fourth) opinions are important and very helpful. I downloaded this mod because I read this forum thread and was under the impression that the mod had been playtested, and only had minor kinks and bugs to work out...yet I went and broke your mod quite good and proper without barely trying.
Lots of first-time modders make this kind of mistake, no matter their age.
At this point I'd say that your mod is in open-beta. It's very close to be ready to be "released", but there's still some work to be done.
But above all, don't give up. You've come a long way with this and you're doing great so far - but no one gets it right on the first try.
Good luck.
