Grimrock

Azel wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote: one specific persons imagined forced hunt for virtual food

No one is talking about a forced food hunt, well, other than you when you said,

" there is plenty of food to grab in the game"
"This is only true when the game (and mod) designers forget to add replenishing food sources"

You rip statements from my post and rearrange them trying to show that i contradict myself? Let's see:

This is only true when the game (and mod) designers forget to add replenishing food sources. The main campaigns of both LoG's do this quite well so unless you deliberatly avoid to look for replenishing food sources this is not an issue.

followed up in next post by

As i said above there is plenty of food to grab in the game.

There is no contradiction, not even regarding the partial sentence you quoted. The game outright tells the player early on where food sources replenish so in case of need you know where you can go. Feeling force to hunt i.e. due to bad management of resources is something completely different.

You have to try harder if you want to show that this entire thread is not about feeling forced to hunt for food.

Now if this thread would be about LoG1 well then you might convince me a bit toward our point of view. LoG1 has only two areas where food replenishes. If the player fails to recognize them as what they are running out of food is very likely due to LoG1's linear nature.

Azel wrote:Not every clue in the game tells you exactly how something should be solved. The map to the Tetris puzzle doesn't explicitly state that you need to follow the order from "left to right" and that is the order of ladders you should climb, as opposed to the order of areas to swim around. Other puzzles simply require walking in a certain pattern so it's not unusual to have someone swimming in circles in the Tetris puzzle for a long time before they finally try adding ladders to the mix. Especially if you did the "hold your breath" puzzle prior. The tetris note could mean a number of things, such as how long you have to wait (rest) before the room changes - this literally happens in other parts of the game; or the order to which you have to leave some item on each Tetris structure (this is the type of solution to probably 90% of the games puzzles).

Let's start off by being honest, the Tetris puzzle is one of the worst designed puzzles out of the entirety of Grimrock 2. You have to rotate the map? Wha? And then you have to make wild assumptions about how its like reading, the shapes are letters, and your party's feet are.. the pens, so therefor... you must... transcribe the shape letters by... walking on platforms? It's one of the two I had to look up a solution to online.

Azel wrote: Agreed that I am stubborn

Puzzle solving adventure games like Myst and Longest Journey rewarded my stubbornness. That is what makes them great for their puzzle solving approach. Grimrock's puzzles tread in to this genre, but doesn't quite offer the reward for dedication and stubbornness to puzzle solving. Hence this thread.

Continuing with honesty, though, you definitely want a different style of game, and are blaming Grimrock 2 for being it's own thing. It's not a "puzzle game", it's not Myst, it's Grimrock 2, an action-RPG hybrid that happens to have many puzzles in it.

Azel wrote:

Anarius wrote:Also, yes, EVERYTHING has a clue.

Hmmm, yet you just tried to explain something that doesn't have a clue:
"The turning directions are not hard to figure out and don't take a lot of trial and error"

Trial and error is not the same as having a clue; it is literally the exact opposite. You're contradicting yourself, making excuses, and explaining how to solve puzzles after they have been figured out. Pretty boring and worthless replies. You seem more interested in making people believe you are amazing at figuring out clues; that's cute

The Tetris puzzle is bad, definitely, but you're really pushing it here. As long as you have found the note that diagrams which direction and how many steps each word represents, you know that each word is either a movement command or a number of steps. Like you, I like to pull out the ol' graph paper and give tough puzzles a go. In this case, I just plotted a couple paths over the pressure plates (only about 4, since left and right could be reversed and the number might be 1 or 4) and walked each one. I don't consider trying 3 or 4 very short paths to be "lots of trial and error".

Azel wrote:However, since Grimrock also tries to implement a strong puzzle solving approach - moreso than a traditional RPG or dungeon cralwer - I feel that the food element begins to work against the game. I feel that the dev's are starting to realize this which is why they added the Chain item that removes starvation as a feature from a character.

They also have an item that makes a character immune to petrification, does this mean they see petrification as working against the game and so should remove it? Certainly not. Food is a resource, so they do include a magical item that allows you to spend less of it, but at a cost. If you are wearing the neck chain, you're not wearing a fire resist amulet or the experience amulet.

The core of your issues here seem to stem from a desire to play a different kind of game. You come to the conclusion that food and puzzles are a bad design decision, and arrived there because you personally didn't have fun with it. But other people, obviously, do enjoy the system. The food urgency that unsettled you and disrupted your puzzle experience is exactly what fueled my immersion into the world around me. I'm shipwrecked on an island fraught with danger, where I must fight monsters, solve puzzles, but also take hunting trips in order to survive. It's just that kind of game. That doesn't make it bad.

Thanks for the reply, Rithrin!

Rithrin wrote:Let's start off by being honest, the Tetris puzzle is one of the worst designed puzzles out of the entirety of Grimrock 2. You have to rotate the map? Wha? And then you have to make wild assumptions about how its like reading, the shapes are letters, and your party's feet are.. the pens, so therefor... you must... transcribe the shape letters by... walking on platforms? It's one of the two I had to look up a solution to online.

hah that was fun to read. I don't mind how terrible a puzzle it is since I do enjoy adventure games, I just prefer to enjoy the tedious problem solving without worrying about feeding the characters.

Rithrin wrote:Continuing with honesty, though, you definitely want a different style of game, and are blaming Grimrock 2 for being it's own thing. It's not a "puzzle game", it's not Myst, it's Grimrock 2, an action-RPG hybrid that happens to have many puzzles in it.

That might be true, but I don't feel that way personally. I did not have this concern/request in the original Grimrock. The puzzles were unique to the world of Grimrock just as you describe. However, Grimrock 2 treads very hard in to the world of Myst (isolated, trapped on an Island, open world, mysteries, riddles, puzzles, notes to aid your quest). LoG 2 even has "fast travel" for the first time via the Hub (just like Myst has fast travel via pages in the travel book).

The more I became immersed in to the world of Grimrock 2, the more I felt the lovely nostalgia from the Myst series. There is little doubt that the developers really pushed harder on the puzzle aspect of LoG 2, moreso than they did with the RPG elements. The weapon and armor selection isn't much of a "step up" from the last game, nor are the type of monsters (with the exception of the Trickster due to his ability to interact with the environment so well). LoG 1 was all about the battles and gear, the puzzles were secondary, fun, and quick. LoG 2 is quite the opposite.

So I don't feel that this is me wanting a different game, this is me recognizing the outfit LoG 2 is trying to wear; I'm just recommending the proper shoes to compliment, na' mean?

Rithrin wrote:The Tetris puzzle is bad, definitely, but you're really pushing it here. As long as you have found the note that diagrams which direction and how many steps each word represents, you know that each word is either a movement command or a number of steps.

Maybe that's why those other posters are accusing me of being a bit retarded hahah. My honest experience initially was that the Rotate Left and Rotate Right commands meant turn the camera 180 degrees, and the TE and AR commands meant turn the camera once to the Right or Left. The very first puzzle was easy to solve (and helped correct my TE/AR mistakes) : UHU NA. AR E. TE NA. LAM E. AR NA.

However, when I took what I knew there and applied it to - TE. UHU NA. PALA. UHU NA. PALA NA. AR E. FAAM KO. LAM KO - I must admit I went full retard. I never ended up in any direction that allowed the final "BACK 3" to make any kind of sense. Normally I would embrace the fact that I have no idea wtf is going on, bust out the coffee, pen, and paper, and enjoy a good puzzle session; but because I don't wanna bother worrying about food reserves I said "fuck it" and Google'd the Spoiler.

My search results yielded many posters who were stuck on that second puzzle just like me. A little refreshing to see I'm not alone in my stupidity; although in these cases I tend to applaud the game developers for making such a good and more importantly, fun, puzzle challenge. I consider it a great game accomplishment - especially since in reality I know I'm quite the intelligent individual.

Earlier in this thread, Anurias, stated that my affliction is "over thinking" … and it was a problem he saw when watching YouTube videos of other people playing Grimrock. Whether those of us playing are over-thinking or just playing stupid, the point is that solving the puzzles should be fun, no matter how long it takes the rest of us compared to all the super geniuses. Needing to feed the characters takes away from the enjoyment (I'm started to sound like quite the broken record).

Rithrin wrote:They also have an item that makes a character immune to petrification, does this mean they see petrification as working against the game and so should remove it? Certainly not. Food is a resource, so they do include a magical item that allows you to spend less of it, but at a cost. If you are wearing the neck chain, you're not wearing a fire resist amulet or the experience amulet.

Oh now you're comparing apples and oranges. Starvation is actually a survival trait which cannot be cured even with a Crystal, whereas all other status afflictions can. Most, even petrification, can be cured by just waiting; starvation works entirely different.

And in my case, there is no cost at having my entire party wear the Neck Chain because I would only be wearing it during puzzle solving in order to bypass what I believe is a horrible feature: feeding characters who are trying to decipher a mystery.

Rithrin wrote:The core of your issues here seem to stem from a desire to play a different kind of game. You come to the conclusion that food and puzzles are a bad design decision, and arrived there because you personally didn't have fun with it. But other people, obviously, do enjoy the system. The food urgency that unsettled you and disrupted your puzzle experience is exactly what fueled my immersion into the world around me. I'm shipwrecked on an island fraught with danger, where I must fight monsters, solve puzzles, but also take hunting trips in order to survive. It's just that kind of game. That doesn't make it bad.

I can totally respect that; yet I feel that leaving food in the game hampers its true potential. Grimrock's mechanics allow for the creation of a pure puzzle solving masterpiece. It could probably exceed some of the Myst chapters if done properly. The only thing stopping Grimrock from doing better as an adventure hybrid than an actual dedicated adventure game, is the damn food.

LoG is getting close to hitting its first million copies sold. If they got rid of the food then I bet their future releases could hit Myst numbers: Myst 1 sold over 6 million copies, and Riven sold over 4 million. I would like to see Grimrock hit those numbers, and I think this is one important way to achieve that. I could be wrong but I doubt it

Azel wrote:I can totally respect that; yet I feel that leaving food in the game hampers its true potential. Grimrock's mechanics allow for the creation of a pure puzzle solving masterpiece. It could probably exceed some of the Myst chapters if done properly. The only thing stopping Grimrock from doing better as an adventure hybrid than an actual dedicated adventure game, is the damn food.

LoG is getting close to hitting its first million copies sold. If they got rid of the food then I bet their future releases could hit Myst numbers: Myst 1 sold over 6 million copies, and Riven sold over 4 million. I would like to see Grimrock hit those numbers, and I think this is one important way to achieve that. I could be wrong but I doubt it

If you had followed any similar discussions about LoG1 you'd outright know that you are wrong. There were actually quite a few people who also wanted to see the water mechanic of DM in the game and several successfull mods did add it in

Your comment made no sense and has nothing to do with what I actually said - no one is talking about Mod's - but then again we already established that you have the Head-up-Ass affliction.

Azel wrote:Your comment made no sense and has nothing to do with what I actually said - ..

It's neither my problem nor my fault that you did not grasp the sense.
But hey! feel free to search these forums. Perhaps you'll find something enlightening

Keep working on that post count, Dr. Desperation. You haven't said anything that's too hard to grasp, it's just too stupid to acknowledge. You can keep thinking you made a point about Water and Mod's in this discussion about puzzles and food, and I'll just keep thinking that your parents did a terrible job at home schooling. Fair trade.

heheh you really have no clue what you are talking about.
If your take is that puzzles and food don't mix then adding water would turn LoG into your worst nightmare

Oh you mean a feature that does not exist at all in the current main campaign of the game might make things worse... yes, excellent use of that retarded brain, Dr. Dopey. So someone did something in a Mod and now you think you have an argument about the actual game. You're a sad little monkey.

You say several people liked something, I'm saying 4-6 million liked something else. Try again.

You obviously don't know that I refer to a feature people did ask for before each LoG was released. A simple information you could have gathered by reading these forums but you bring a wild claim. If this claim and some weak name-calling is all you got to counter a fact found in theses forums and/or boost your theorycraft about puzzles and food i pity you.