Psychotronic, I know what room you mean...(where the path splits)...and I have suspected already this was where people missed a section. (It's room #20313, BTW)

We have talked about this during beta-testing.... as of course we saw the potential problem of people being able to head for the lower blue door first.  I considered putting up a BBB (saying 'do the red door first'), but I figured having
put up coins which signal the route to the (higher) red door  and...especially

the fact -(for everyone obvious to see) that the blue door section is LOWER than the red door section....and there are only falling platforms there.....  (so you can't get UP on a falling platform)

was enough indication to the player to DO THE RED SECTION first.  And it's exactly there where the yellow keys(s) fpr later are hidden !!!
I know it's not the most perfect of styles there, it could be clearer....but I thought it was obvious enough !

Your second thought..... I think you're absolutely right that giving out keys for a door that arrives in a much later section bears certain dangers.
I can't even tell you why I like to do it sometimes, other than:
I don't know why, but I have some reservations about the concept where a key should only be allowed in close vicinity to its resp. door... although I fully admit in this case it's really a very very long distance between key and door.

It's probably due to the different playing styles....  my playing style  is collecting anything (keys, money etc.) as soon as I come across it...and it never dawned on me that anybody might NOT collect a key once he spotted it, but first explores the rest of the area.... and comes back for the key later.  What advantages does that give you (other than in a case where you might be short of space for keys ('cause you have 6 shields or something) ??!

Well, I'm sorry for the inconveniance.
In the update I might put up a BBB saying "Do red section first" in the room mentioned above.

OK...I'm still not ready to answer this post in full (and don't think I will be until I finish DoD, and that might take me a few weeks). But I have a moment now to try and explain some things.

aquaMat wrote on 23.03.2007 at 19:54:06:


If you feel I've been unreasonable or impolite, then I apologize. That was never my intent. The language barrier is difficult (I spent two years speaking a foreign language almost exclusively, so I know how easy it can be to completely miss the spirit of what someone is saying). If you ever find yourself offended by something I've written, just remember these five words: "Ryos never means to offend." Seriously, never.

Quote:


Heh, prejudice is an ugly thing, and I completely prejudged DoD based on the negative experience I'd had playing "Mind Mines" and, to a lesser extent, SPoG. Sorry, that wasn't fair of me, and I am giving the mansion a fair chance.

I hope to try and explain why I don't like the style of your mansions, but first I have to figure that out myself. Right now all I can say is that I don't enjoy them, but that's an emotion that I haven't finished analyzing. I may come to appreciate them, like some works of art can only be appreciated and not enjoyed.

Quote:

You're right on the definition of unfair, and it's instructive then to consider what "unfair" is in the context of Midnight Mansion. And to try and do that, I'll invoke a concept I read in a book about writing stories by Orson Scott Card (Characters and Viewpoint).

While I don't have my copy at hand (it's 500 miles away), I'll paraphrase as best I can. Authors have an with their readers. As part of the contract, readers agree to suspend their disbelief and expect in return that the author will present a story that is believable and consistent. Should the author ever fail to uphold his end of the deal (by, say, having a character do something that he wouldn't do for no reason), the reader will rightly feel cheated and may stop reading altogether.

Let's carry this concept to Midnight Mansion and assume that an implicit contract exists between mansion builder and mansion player. What would be the builder's end of the contract?

...well, of course that's open to interpretation, and mine can be summed up like this: when I die, I want it to be my fault. The mansion builder has the implicit responsibility to make sure that the player can only kill himself, instead of being killed by the mansion. "To act, and not be acted upon."

Another part of the implicit contract is that the mansion should never become unfinishable. That's what we call a Jack-stuck. I suppose it's reasonable to use this as part of the design of a mansion, but you better darn well do it on purpose and make sure the player knows what happened.

If you violate the implicit contract...IMHO...that's unfair!

Now, I'm not prepared to give specific examples of DoD violating the implicit contract. Sorry...please have patience with me. 

Quote:


Your hints in DoD are almost uniformly ingenious. What I initially took exception to was the fact that the path forward is quite frequently hidden. This is a major departure from all other mansions out there and it threw me for a loop. But it is used often and well enough that I began to look at it like a puzzle, and I now think it is the mansion's greatest quality (and possibly its saving grace).

Quote:

I never said it was unfair because it was hard. You're putting words in my mouth.

Quote:


Sorry...examples forthcoming.

Quote:


I don't believe I ever complained about the way secrets are hidden, just that the path ahead was a secret, which I addressed above.

Quote:


WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO! Ad hom alert! Help, help, I'm being repressed!

No, seriously, that reads like a personal attack and is quite offensive. One of my favorite mansions, Temple of the Moon, is mind-blowingly difficult.

But hey, I hadn't tried the Swiss Mansion. Maybe I'll have to, as hard mansions, while enjoyable, take considerable time commitment that I don't always have to give them. Sometimes all I need is a simple, straightforward, relaxing 10 minutes.

Quote:


Oh, good heavens, who can please everyone? It's pointless to try. And if it were just that your mansions aren't for me, then I would never say anything (like I've never complained about House of Wonders, which is most definitely just not for me). It goes deeper then that; I have the hubris to think that my opinions will help you design better mansions, ones that I might enjoy playing (and others enjoy more). That's all.

But before I type another word, let me ask: do you want my feedback? I ask because you act like you don't. Don't hesitate to say no, I won't be offended.

According to the character counter, this post is...7348 characters! Yikes! ryos shuts up now. 

Quote:


This is how I think of it, too. It feels like there's an implicit trust that exists between me and the level architect when I play a new mansion. I trust that the mansion won't kill me without giving me a reasonable chance to defend myself. I trust that the mansion difficulty won't vary wildly without warning. I trust that walls will act like walls and ladders will act like ladders and backgrounds will be backgrounds, that there will be some consistent rules and physics, so I can relax and work on the challenges that I encounter. There's sort of a trial period at the beginning where the contract gets established. And it's very easy during that trial period for the level design to break that trust, and it can be very hard to get me back in the mood again afterwards.

Psychotronic wrote on 25.03.2007 at 03:45:36:


There you certainly have a point.... I'll admit that in DoD the player can have the impression that things are a bit differently or pretty much anything is possible....so normal "reasoning" probably can't be counted upon.
However..... I still don't understand the logic of "skipping" the red section, or why you believed it could be less important than the blue side.

To cut a long story short.... I will definitely try to do something about the situation in the next UD.
Maybe I should have sticked to how I had it done in one of the beta versions (albeit only very shortly): where I had simply hidden the blue key inside the red section.... so anybody coming to that "crossing" MUST take the red door, 'cause he simply doesn't have the blue key. (the only reason why I didn't stick to that method was: I liked the initial hiding place of the blue key so much  

Psychotronic wrote on 25.03.2007 at 03:45:36:


Again you have a point...  BUT:  I made clear in the introductory text for DoD, that in this mansion players should be alert at all times...and especially go looking for things even where they least expect them. And that OF COURSE includes that it's not very advisable to skip an entire section... although I understand how it happened and why you did it.

Apart from that I don't quite understand why you're "not looking forward to going back to look for those keys"... is it really so terrible, after you realized you missed an entire section in a mansion, to go back and be able to explore a whole series of new rooms you haven't seen before ?

I consider that more fun than - say - searching the same section of House Of Wonders (to just name 1 example) time and again to find out in which succession I have to open the hundreds of multi-colored doors and to find the resp. keys for them !!
(Note: this is iby NO MEANS meant as a negative statement on HOW.... it's just an example of a mansion I had to replay often).

After all that's one of the main joys of MM: visiting rooms for the very first time ! (At least for me...!)

It's so many things / posts to answer now...I don't know where to begin. Therefore I'll answer the most important, and might be forgetting a few others....but below you'll find out that last night I have made un update that changes some important issues you have reported.

But first I'll answer a few earlier posts:


Of course I always like to get feedback. And I also like to hear from you.
Only what I don't like (and what I'm sure doesn't help much) is getting such a negative, biased post (like your first one) a mere day after the release of a mansion I spent more than 3 months (!) creating from someone who admitted he hadn't played more than a handful of rooms.
'Cause that only has the effect to influence (or even put off) other people who might otherwise have enjoyed the mansion... it might lead them to believe anything would be terribly wrong with it and maybe they're reluctant to try it out. Esspecially when it's the first post after the release.
(You see I have problems finding the right words..).

But you already apologized for that.

BTW, when I said "why don't you play Swiss Mansion..." it was really not meant as an offensive statement at all (it probably came out sounding sharper than I had attended, I don't know).... no, I really meant it as a suggestion (having had the impression that style probably suited your taste more).... and even if it was a bit polemic (does this word exist in English ?) it certainly wasn't meant as an offense.

And maybe I misunderstood you there..... but I had had the impression you were complaining about the way secrets were hidden and the difficulty of DoD, even if not expressively so.  If that's not the case I apologize for the misunderstanding.


I understand you better now.... your remarks have been helpful.


I have completed a major update of DoD (called it DoD 2.0, if Freddy goes along with that) which irons out a few of the things you have reported, including:

- the blue key (for the blue section) is now WITHIN the red section, plus
- red and blue sections have been marked with a big 1 and 2, respectively to further indicate the "running order"
- a few other keys have been put into new places, less hidden and / or later in the game, including the yellow key needed in room 21104 (which is now in close proximity to its resp. door)
- backtracking in room 21506 is now possible (although a squirrel jump is needed).
- the other JS (room #21712) is now 'repaired'
- somewhere along the way (after a pole that doesn't allow backtracking) a "reserve yellow key" has been hidden, for those players who might have missed an earlier hidden yellow key. (Unfortunately those who find all keys will have a surplus yellow key in the last room...so another imperfection.

If these issues have troubled you before, I have to apologise...but I have to say that none of the beta-testers (which include 2 of my colleagues here, that I had turned on to MM) had ever reported that yellow key issue.... probably they all managed to find all keys so never arrived in front of those blue/yellow doors without a key.  However brell mentioned the risk of players taking the blue section first, after which I had experimented with moving the blue key to within the red section (but unfortunately didn't stick to it.)

I just sent the updates to the admins....and hopefully it's downloadable later today.  Please wait until then....and I'm sure the whole thing is much clearer and you'll enjoy playing more.  

(Sorry...got rather longwinded...)