Am I the only one who just fucking HATES puzzles?

[Revae]

Puzzles are great.

[Lila Feuer]

Sun chips are better.

[Fonze]

Am I the only one out of 7 billion people who feels this way about something totally subjective? I mean, I'm so unique and special, and the edges of my snowflake are unlike any other the world has seen, so I must be the only person in the world who hates puzzles. If only I were smarter and could understand them, maybe they would be naturally more fun, totally has nothing to do with my preconception going into a puzzle... totally.

[gaspe]

I love puzzles, especially in Doom maps they have become my favourite aspect of the game. Although personally I make a difference between stuff like Eternal Doom and maps like the recent The Given. The latter is more about pure gimmicks and tricks while I prefer when this stuff is incorporated in "normal" maps with gameplay. Even better if the progression has some obscure elements.

[silentzorah]

I really hate puzzles.  Why?  Because I fucking suck at them.  There is little worse than playing a map and hitting a switch that does... I dunno, something, somewhere.

 

If that's your cup of tea, more power to ya.  Me, I'll stick to gunning down beef-walls, thanks very much.

[snapshot]

Solving puzzles is satisfying and is a key feature for games, it creates memorable experiences, Shooting stuff all the time gets repetitive and boring (Call of Duty series does that).

[Reisal]

If they become overly complicated, maybe. But again I've played through the Silent Hill games and they're known for puzzles for progression.

[Battle_Korbi]

I like puzzles myself, but I am going to stick with OP here.

 

Doom itself really isn't a game that is focused at puzzles. As far as I can tell, PC games before Doom were largely focused at puzzles and people hated Doom because of its straightforwardness and rather lack of "tact and thinking" as well.

 

A lot of modern games go away with puzzles or minimise the puzzle element... That doesn't mean they are bad games. There is a difference between puzzles and strategies in games. Some gamers are exceptional at puzzles but require multiple attempts and trial-and-error experiments before finding a strategy which works the best, yet some gamers suck at puzzles but can tell what they gotta do with what they got right away. Please don't confuse the both.

 

It isn't a matter of intelligence either really. Some puzzles can be dastardly stupid or poorly designed to be easily "broken" and hardly doable. Which is why exstensive testing is really required when fiddling and creating these things.

 

And I can agree with "pace-breaking". OP probably wanted to tell that while these puzzles aren't that "hard" to solve, they can be tedious and can draw stuff out. Like, waiting for this pillar to raise, waiting for a NPC to struttle over to this point (Half Life is notorious with this one), having to run the tiny ball through a maze all over again, it can really be boring. Sometimes this make gamers think that the usually-proper solution ISN'T the proper situation, just because its "meh".

 

Besides, not everyone gets off solving puzzles. Not everyone orgasms when solving a sudoku, some people are just " eh", and some people are both way and can just say "Huh nice. Now lets move on". This thread proves it alone.

 

I am the type of "puzzleer", who, while disliking overly-complicated puzzles, like doing so when under pressure. My favorite gaming moments consist of solving a puzzle while under attack or heavy fire, which is why I love Half Life so much I guess. Sometimes I would even ignore the enemy while trying to solve the puzzle just to add pressure.

 

However, I understand OP's viewpoint. Sometimes doing the same puzzles and minigames over and over can be annoying, especially if the game hypes up a chase sequence but then gives you a puzzle. I get a feeling myself like the game is telling me: "Hurry up but take your time". Yeah I like pressure during puzzles, but I would like to shoot my gun as well, spend some ammo. Some of my favorite shooters don't have puzzles, and I like them because of that. Yet some of my other favorite games have excessive amounts of strategy and self contained puzzles.

[Jimmy]

I am not a smart man so I love a good puzzle. There's a nice sense of accomplishment to eventually completing it, one that's not so immediately visceral and fleeting as mowing down a horde of zombies, for instance. It engages a different part of the brain, and personally I like to keep myself stimulated in a variety of ways.

 

I tend to get bored if a mapset is just puzzles, I suppose (which is why I've never completed Cyberdreams), but a good puzzle can serve as a great cool-down moment to avoid the run-and-gun carnage of a levelset wearing at all thin. That said, I suppose the puzzles have to be designed with a keen eye for consistency, so they don't feel totally out of place, like say a slaughtermap suddenly having Mario-style jump puzzles, or a short map having a Duke3D-style combination puzzle with 5 switches. Imagine a piano ballad being on a predominantly heavy metal album - such a radically different track can fit in well, if the composition and musicianship remains consistent, although for sure it won't be to everyone's taste.

 

I suppose it's inevitable that Void would come up but I would definitely cite it as a WAD that strikes the balance of puzzle-solving gameplay vs. traditional Doom-style run-and-gun beautifully.

[Empyre]

I like puzzles, as long as they don't get too obtuse, but I hate platform jumping. I was enjoying Portal until it changed into a platform jumper. That is where I stopped playing.

[PRIMEVAL]

I don't mind a good puzzle, just don't make them too confusing. A little variety in gameplay can keep things interesting. At least for me.

[Koko Ricky]

Puzzles are an element that FPS adopted from platformers and action/adventure games. I think they're an important part of the genre because I think literally nothing but run-and-gun gameplay is rather one-dimensional. However, I don't like when puzzles are too obscure or break the pacing/flow of the map. Sometimes this happens in classic Doom (Mt. Erebus always comes to mind, because to me it's a bit too open for its own good, I also don't like The Citadel for the same reason). Or how about Blood? You can have up to six different keys which I think is really overkill. Hexen 2 also had a puzzle so cryptic that I straight up abandoned the game because I couldn't figure it out. But eliminating puzzles leaves a map sterile. You need that mild intellectual component instead of just straight-up reflexes, to have a fully rounded experience.

[Deleted_Account]

Puzzles in Doom are not as annoying as having to pick out dead June bugs from your salad. Fuck healthy eating.

[Clay]

As a puzzle lover, I DO find myself hunting for harder puzzles. Now that I look back though, I see that it was the simpler puzzles that were just hard enough to make me think that made it fun...not the difficulty in and of its self. I just felt proud to figure it out. I guess my point is that knowing the puzzle style and usual obstacles, allows the maker to introduce increasingly complicated/difficult puzzles without breaking the stride of game play. With this mechanism, you can add newer, more complicated elements to the game. To use Rubiks cubes as an example: you learn to solve the 3x3x3 and with that you gain knowledge about algorithms, permutations, etc. Now, with the general understanding of the 'tools', you are able to apply them to the more complicated 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 and so on.

 

I do, after some thought, have to agree about the pace breaking issue. In a 'PUZZLE' game, you expect just that. In a shooter however, you wouldn't much want that as it would seem like game elements fighting each other.   

[Da Werecat]

Pace can be fast, pace can be slow, and pace can be varied. I don't really see anything objectively wrong here.

[Battle_Korbi]

2 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Pace can be fast, pace can be slow, and pace can be varied. I don't really see anything objectively wrong here.

Cars can be fast, cars can be slow, and their speeds can vary.

 

Try braking suddenly though.

 

Same with puzzles in some cases (not all).

[Da Werecat]

Well, games aren't cars.

[Battle_Korbi]

Both things can get annoyin out of sudden and often causes rage so you cannot deny the similarities in this case.

[Da Werecat]

There are similarities, but the degree to which it bothers the player can vary from person to person.

 

People complain when they can't solve a problem in a certain amount of time. The amount can be different depending on the player's patience and what it is that they want from the game in the first place. Some people actually like to stop and figure out what to do next. Every puzzle will bring the action to such a stop, even if it's just for a minute, but it's a fair trade-off, IMO.

[GarrettChan]

Define puzzle, especially those you consider puzzle in IWADs.

[40oz]

At the most basic level, the objective of finding the red key and bringing it to a red door to open is the most basic form of puzzles for Doom, and I've never seen anyone complain about the logic of that puzzle (unless the key is unfairly hidden.) From the level designer perspective, you can't fairly judge the difficulty of solving a puzzle because you create the solution long before you finish creating the puzzle in the first place. So sometimes a level designer might decide they are bored with playing levels that a very singular objective or linear direction, so they choose to shake things up a little for the player and give the player something a little more complicated to solve so they use their brain, which can be very rewarding when the player has the attention and intuition to solve it.

 

Unfortunately, puzzles that seem very basic to the creator can be as much as 10 times more complex for the player. This is especially true if they have no reason to be on the lookout for clues to solve the puzzles, so theres a wide range of results that come with puzzle solving. People who have better awareness of their surroundings tend to have more rewarding experiences with puzzles, while others will find them to be interrupting what they played the game for.

 

I believe there's a very fair way to present a puzzle in a manner where the player knows there's a problem to solve before they realize that they are stuck. It's not very easy to see the map exactly how the player will see it for the first time, though. This is why puzzles in games like Doom almost always suck.

[Da Werecat]

9 minutes ago, 40oz said:

This is why puzzles in games like Doom almost always suck.

Quite a leap.

[40oz]

I like puzzles, I'm just speaking in a manner that I think hardcore_gamer would understand.

 

I'm a chameleon ok?

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, 40oz said:

I like puzzles, I'm just speaking in a manner that I think hardcore_gamer would understand.

 

I'm a chameleon ok?

how bizarre...

[Killer5]

Depending on the game I really enjoy puzzles. The Resident Evil series as some of my favorite moments tbh.

 

Doom can go either way with me. If there is a very involved puzzle map I will avoid it (I don't play doom for puzzles). If there is a map that has an involved secret puzzle or something I don't mind them because I can just go back later and solve it without a break in the action if I am really not in the mood for it (TNT Revilution map 16 comes to mind).

 

Crazy puzzles in Doom are cool though.. just another unexpected gameplay type that Doom happens to support that many people think is great (unexpected to me anyways).

[CARRiON]

5 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

Painkiller series. Also arguably the new Doom 90% of the time.

 

EDIT: The Killing Floor series is also another example.

... Then go play those?

 

Are you really asking what the appeal of a puzzle is? Seriously? Yikes.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Whenever I get lost it is rarely caused by an actual puzzle. Dumb switch hunts are usually the shit causing it (especially when it is like hexen, good use of the hub system right there)

[Major Arlene]

Depends on the execution, like everything else. I'm fine as long as it flows well and doesn't break up action too much (of course, it can make perfect sense to one person and no sense to another). 

[leodoom85]

1 minute ago, Major Arlene said:

Depends on the execution, like everything else. I'm fine as long as it flows well and doesn't break up action too much (of course, it can make perfect sense to one person and no sense to another). 

Imagine a puzzle that appears each 5 minutes, interrupting any gameplay action...

[Revae]

1 minute ago, leodoom85 said:

Imagine a puzzle that appears each 5 minutes, interrupting any gameplay action...

I've played I.M. Meen.