Surprise crusher traps, punishing the player for playing. Huh?

Cynical said:

Predictability isn't fun, and too much "playing by the rules" leads to predictability and therefore anti-fun. A good level needs some "dick moves", and should smack you upside the head a few times.

It's cool that we have different views and all, so not to argue for aguments sake but... your analogy would be more accurate if you crush my head instead of smacking me upside the head. =P

I don't see how surprises and whatnot are the same thing as instant random death. All that leads to is repeating and memorization. Takes me out of it, if anything. I'm not saying I don't like anything weird or surprising.

And I can dig that you're in defense of instant crusher traps that make you start over. But are you really never annoyed by this sort of thing, never find it a chore if you haven't saved lately?

so community project with nothing but punishing traps when?

a blind speedrun competition afterwards could be funny :)

raymoohawk said:

so community project with nothing but punishing traps when?

a blind speedrun competition afterwards could be funny :)

This has been suggested and I think it's a terrific idea. I'd just like to know there's a random crusher, put a warning label on the level like cigarettes.

PsychoGoatee said:

And I can dig that you're in defense of instant crusher traps that make you start over. But are you really never annoyed by this sort of thing, never find it a chore if you haven't saved lately?

I don't save at all. Pistol-start demo-style or bust.

I also don't see how dying to a surprise crusher is any different than dying to a monster ambush that one is, shall we say, "particularly unlikely" to survive on a first attempt.

Cynical said:

I don't save at all. Pistol-start demo-style or bust.

I also don't see how dying to a surprise crusher is any different than dying to a monster ambush that one is, shall we say, "particularly unlikely" to survive on a first attempt.

This raises the question of different gameplay approaches. Do you save? How much? Do you consider it fun and appropriate to be surprised as you play, or do you consider it normal to play a map with a psychic foreknowledge of all its "surprises"? Do you consider it normal to play a map and die many times in order to learn where things are?

I've always found it odd that Doom is theoretically a game of surprises, and yet the most important strategy is usually to research and rehearse a map in order to beat it. Many challenges are quite fatal when surprising, and quite easy when the player knows about them beforehand.

I think an "I Wanna Be The Doomguy" mapset would be very, very interesting. If we are explicit about methodical trial-and-error gameplay being central, players might approach it in a receptive frame of mind. It could start a good discussion about aspects of what Doom really is, how it works, how different players play it differently and find it fun in different ways.

Cynical said:

But all they have to do to keep playing Doom is hit the spacebar* after they die?

You still stopped them playing though. Its the stopping that is the problem.

edit: actually having read some of your other replies i dont think this is an argument that will go anywhere so please feel free to ignore this.

The very thing that's often being used to justify bullshit traps ("you can always load a savegame") makes them look stupid and pointless.

So you did something that the level designer thought you shouldn't do, but forgot to give you a clue. You died. You loaded a savegame. The "puzzle" is solved. Whee?

It can only work in masochistic games that revolve around memorization. Indeed, you can make such a level set for Doom, but it will heavily rely on the players feeling hardcore. If they'll abuse savegames in order to finish such a wad, they'll bore themselves to death.

And, in any case, the atmosphere will suffer, because your character is either really lucky or a psychic.

It also should be noted that "combat puzzles" are different from the regular puzzles and traps. There are too many moving parts, and they don't rely exclusively on preknowledge or attention to clues.

I always measure the competency of a trap in Doom by the difference in difficulty between the first and second time it's encountered. If I die immediately, load a saved game and then beat the trap without taking any damage this suggests to me that the trap relied too much on the element of surprise. That said, I think this applies mainly to monster ambush type traps for straight up intentional death traps like crushers or lava pits I think there should be some sort of small clue to put a player on his guard before it's activated.

Now I'm curious about one of my earliest levels use of a crusher trap. Is this BS, clever, or what exactly?

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/d-f/entryway.zip

I appreciate any feedback here.

^
It's treading a line (because the only warning/hint is hearing the activation itself), but there is at least enough time to realise that something is definitely wrong with your situation, and with it there's time to figure out what to do in order to escape.

In other words, it's not going to cause hair-tearing frustration, unless someone is playing with the sound off.

well cool now i know you were the guy commenting on my blog lol

Macblain said:

I think an "I Wanna Be The Doomguy" mapset would be very, very interesting. If we are explicit about methodical trial-and-error gameplay being central, players might approach it in a receptive frame of mind. It could start a good discussion about aspects of what Doom really is, how it works, how different players play it differently and find it fun in different ways.

Speaking as someone who considers it a mortal sin to look at a map in an editor (unless chosen to playetest it) before playing it for real, and plays every megawad map by map from pistol start while recording and replaying the map from the start whenever I die instead of saving and loading, I think I've had enough life experience to say there is no shortage of these.

joepallai said:

Now I'm curious about one of my earliest levels use of a crusher trap. Is this BS, clever, or what exactly?

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/d-f/entryway.zip

I appreciate any feedback here.

I just left a review on /idgames. I really liked the map. It's a prime example of a really good early 2000's map in my opinion.

if you've read Ringworld, there's a clever bit about a state lottery where the winner receives the right to have offspring having the secondary effect of breeding people with incredible luck. Sudden crushers are literally a repetition of this experiment except the intended trait to heighten is, depending on how you look at it, incredible intuition for traps or incredible willingness to try again =P