Game Design Question

[THOM]

By way of variation this is not a technical question but a game design question:

I have a puzzle where the player has to put 5 special items on 5 certain pedestals. I want to avoid that the player reveals the correct order just by try and error.

My solution was, to kill the party if an item is placed on the wrong pedestal. But some might think of that to be bad game design. What do you think?

Some further informations: getting the items is the main-puzzle. Placing them correct is just kind of an add-on that gives an additional revard. And of course there are hints how to place them. But I know that some players are lazy. Or consider themself to be smart. Both types tend to shorten a puzzle...

[zimberzimber]

Best thing I can think of is checking how many times and how often the party gives the wrong solution. Based on that, have the puzzle change its solution and hints.

Or just give the party a time out before they can try and solve the puzzle again. About 10 seconds should do. While it won't prevent them from brute-forcing it, it'll prolong their stay and encourage them to actually try and solve it properly.

[minmay]

My solution was, to kill the party if an item is placed on the wrong pedestal. But some might think of that to be bad game design. What do you think?

Deliberately wasting the player's time is bad game design, yes. And if your puzzle is boring enough that players would rather complete it by trial and error in the first place, then you need to rethink your puzzle's design anyway.
Any attempt at preventing players from cheating is doomed to fail; it's their computer, their rules. If you find some way to shut off trial and error, then players who don't want to solve the puzzle will just do something else - bypass it with the console, look at your code, etc.

Also, the puzzle you describe has 120 possible combinations and that's if the player already knows the identity of the 5 items. I doubt trial and error is something players will even attempt; it is faster to unzip the .dat and look at the solution than it is to try that many combinations.

[Isaac]

My solution was, to kill the party if an item is placed on the wrong pedestal. But some might think of that to be bad game design. What do you think?

I think it's bad game design ~that's the so called 'Russian Roulette'. Players will want to experiment (trail & error), and your puzzle kills on first error... That will also kill any curiosity for your puzzle, and make it a "thing in the way" that needs get over with, and being done with it.

If it were mine, I would look into ways that might demonstrate why the order is obviously wrong, with results that suggest the solution. For instance: Let's say that the puzzle opens a door to a library that expects the original students that used it to know the credo of the school before being admitted, and scolds them when they get a verse wrong, or out of order.

Another hypothetical: Consider a puzzle where the Items trigger elemental effects when evaluated by the pedestal. One item causes a fireball, another causes lightning... Their order on the pedestals could affect which is used on which target... the fire striking a water target (and doing nothing) when the item is placed on the lightning pedestal.

[vieuxchat]

You already gave your answer in your original post.
You said :

getting the items is the main-puzzle

Main-puzzle = the player should get the main reward. If, on top of that, the player get the right order for the items, then he gets some additional reward that mustn't be better than the main reward.
So, those who don't bother will put the item in random order, get the main reward and continue. Those who like puzzles will try to get the maximum from your last puzzle (when you say that getting the items is the main puzzle, I think of putting them in the right order as an "easter egg")

You can also chose the reverse : putting in right order = get the main reward, putting in the bad order = get the main reward and a tough fight/trap.

[THOM]

Thanks for all you responses.

I overthought my mechanic and changed it to something like zimberzimbers suggested: the party is now stunned for a while and gets an amount of damage.

@minmay: I might have been not precize - it is not a combination that the party has to find. Just the right item for the right pedestal. So this is just a chance one of five.

But I think now I found the right solution.

[zimberzimber]

Don't forgot preventing them from sleeping it off

[Killcannon]

I know you've solved this Thom for a solution but I'd still like to weigh in on my thoughts and ideas. On this and provide some help toward avoiding pitfalls.

Part of Game Design is finding the balance between risk and reward. In this case finding a suitable punishment to the players for not following clues or simply not caring or bothering enough to pay attention to them. In this thought we can simply ignore the player who will brute force their way through the dungeon or go looking through code/online to find the answers. These players are going to be doing these things regardless of what you put into the dungeon. These players aren't playing for the delight of solving the puzzles or thinking about the solution. Their motivation is purely bound under the drive to finish the game and beat the end boss. These tend to also be the people who'll pick up a game, beat it the same day in as little time as possible. Then go on to tell everyone how many hours it took them, how bad the story was, horrible the mechanics were, etc. Or the other side of the spectrum the people who pick up a game, get to a hard spot and if they can't figure it out by the 2nd attempt claim bad mechanics and never play it again. This is why as a game designer we tend to cut these players out of our rational thought process when looking at designing an encounter. They're simply not going to play by the rules, and we need to focus on making the experience for those who do play by the rules the best it can be; without letting them off scott free.

With that in mind, it's okay to have a puzzle able to be brute forced through trial and error. You can even make doing so a fun experience. I remember one puzzle in Fable, where if you put the wrong item on a wrong pedestal it turned you into a chicken for a period of time. In the end you could still brute force the puzzle to find the result; but the experience was still fun enough that I at least as a player remember the encounter years later. Granted we can't turn people into chickens in Grimrock, but we can still turn the experience into fun and it be a punishment at the same time. So what we need to think of is fun ways to let the player know they've made a mistake; without punishing them too much for that mistake or the punishment being so light it's meaningless. The stun and dealing some damage idea here is a good start at an idea. If the damage and the stun isn't too long or too short.

Some ideas that I had would include:

Destroying the item that was wrongly placed and spawning a fresh item somewhere relatively close by or back in it's original location in the dungeon if not too far away.

Teleporting the party to another room with a monster they have to kill or trap they need to bypass before returning to try again.

Having a trap door open underneath them to some suitable place worthy of their misfortune so they have to wind their way back. Or simply falling endlessly for a period of time before teleporting back to a random spot in the room and facing.

Sometimes even the threat of impending punishment is just enough. Imagine if you put spikes down and when the player walked into the room the spikes went off once around the pedestals. Alerting the party to their presence. That may be enough for the wise party to stop and really think about their choices before proceeding to simply toss on every item until the right thingie clicks into the correct majig.

[THOM]

Thanks, Killcannon, for your thoughts.

Balancing everything will be the last big step for me before the release...

And, well, we can turn a champion into a bear in Grimrock 2 - why not into a chicken? Or a penguin?

[Isaac]

And, well, we can turn a champion into a bear in Grimrock 2 - why not into a chicken? Or a penguin?

Very much like turning people into squirrels in Baldur's Gate; and/or like the possession spell in Dungeonkeeper ~when cast on a chicken. Arx Fatalis had one chicken in the game, that was a trapped mage who had polymorphed himself into the bird, because he was obsessed with chickens... You could find him if you happened to cast the right spell when he was around.

LoG2 could probably support a lowered camera, as well as chicken portraits and appropriate sound effects.