EvaUnit02 on 13/5/2016 at 11:48
Quote Posted by Vae
When someone says, "I have vivid memories from both my childhood and teens of being stuck in emptied levels littered with corpses for 1-2 hours at a time looking for where to go next, that shit wasn't fun in the slightest."...Sorry to say, that does not reflect a test of patience.
Oh fuck off. I completed Doom 1, 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Blake Stone 1, Decent 1, Dark Forces 1, Heretic 1, Duke 3D all back in the day. Shitty maze levels, key hunts and all. The game design theory was still in its infancy back and thus amateurish as fuck, it wouldn't really become a well-oiled machine until at least 2007 with HL2 Orange Box.
A good example of how bad level design was back in the 1990s is Alien vs. Predator 2000. During the Marine campaign I was lost in one maze level for ages, turns out to progress I had to shoot support beams holding a ceiling platform in place to create a ramp at my feet or something along those lines. The player is given ZERO indication that this was something that they were supposed to do. No visual cues in the environment, nothing. I can't believe that game was released after Half-Life 1, which for the time was a master class in level crafting, where the player was effectively naturally guided in problem solving by the environment and level scripting.
PigLick on 13/5/2016 at 14:09
holy crap this thread brings back memories of hexen and its hub system, good times.
Judith on 13/5/2016 at 15:03
[video=youtube;fLbtw1P4jes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbtw1P4jes[/video]
The player speed doesn't seem to be the problem IMO, but the monsters look completely overwhelmed by that. Maybe higher difficulty levels offer some more challenge in this regard.
Renault on 13/5/2016 at 16:45
Man, screw you guys digging on Hexen, I love that game. I had such high hopes that Hellraid would be the spiritual successor. Well, there's always Ziggurat.
froghawk on 13/5/2016 at 17:11
I adore Hexen (it's probably my favorite Doom engine game), but I played it in the age of walkthroughs and was mightily grateful for that. The truth is that there is so much media to absorb these days that it doesn't make sense to spend hours in one game search for some obscure door that opened in a different map altogether.
That said, I'm fine relying on walkthroughs and wouldn't want the design simplified. For example, playing through Hexen 2's expansion, Portal of Pravus - they listened to the criticism and went linear, and I found it to be a completely tedious and unimaginative experience compared to Hexen/Deathkings/H2.
Sulphur on 13/5/2016 at 18:03
Sure, I liked Hexen back in the day too. To be clear, we're discussing one facet of it and not the whole experience, which had various elements it did well along with the ones it didn't.
Harvester on 13/5/2016 at 18:08
Yeah, also a Hexen fan here. Hugely atmospheric and I dug the puzzle based gameplay. The game usually told you in which level a door opened and it usually only a couple of minutes to find it. I really enjoyed that game but I can understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea.
But still, I mean I suck at stealth games, but I'm not going to say steal the games are bad, they're just not for me. If it took you hours to find the right door in Hexen, maybe you just kind of suck at it. I had no problem finding my way.
Harvester on 13/5/2016 at 18:12
Sorry for spelling errors, typed on my phone.
Renzatic on 13/5/2016 at 19:10
Quote Posted by Vae
Like it or not, the vast majority of people get turned off when things become "confusing", due to navigational complexity and other complex systems that rely on player negotiation with the environment.
It's not confusion due to overly complicated system layered on top of overly complex systems. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, which is tedious and boring. There's nothing mentally taxing about it. No real logic behind it that allows for more astute players to put two and two together, then move on from there. All it requires is a bit of thoroughness, a willingness to backtrack through every hallway you've already visited just to find that one little thing you've might've missed before.
Harvester on 13/5/2016 at 20:10
I don't know, for me it was mostly like 'there's a door here that I can't open, must remember it for later'. And there was a map. Like with Doom, I think you can always see where the doors are on the map.
