Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hello there I filled out your form, but after filling in some text in one of the “other” boxes, I hit enter to proceed, and the form was submitted right away, though I wasn’t finished. I resent a finished one though, sorry for the incomplete one

Some questions was a bit difficult to answer though, such as “What’s the average difficulty level of adventure games” as they range from insultingly easy to nearly impossible. Generally I’m of the impression that modern games are averagely easier than the oldies, though this could be just because I’ve become older and (hopefully) more knowledgeable, not to mention more experienced at solving AG puzzles. Or it could be simply because modern AG’s tends to have very few hotspots, so there aren’t that many possible variables.

Dag - 12 April 2013 10:27 AM

Some questions was a bit difficult to answer though, such as “What’s the average difficulty level of adventure games” as they range from insultingly easy to nearly impossible. Generally I’m of the impression that modern games are averagely easier than the oldies…

I agree the difficulty vary very much from game to game, and in the last few years the games has on average become much easier.

I filled out the form.

Like Dag and Iznogood said, some questions were a bit difficult to answer. I agree with his impression that modern games are a bit easier than the old ones.
I think it’s mostly because there are either less screens available at once, or less hotspots per screen, or just generally a lesser amount of puzzles in the game…

He He - I think it depends entirely on how he uses the data Kurufinwe.
In itself it is properly useless, but hopefully his paper isn’t based entirely on our answers.

TimovieMan - 12 April 2013 11:27 AM

I think it’s mostly because there are either less screens available at once, or less hotspots per screen, or just generally a lesser amount of puzzles in the game…

I think the main reason is that there are less screens per scene, and that you can’t leave the scenes before solving everything at that place.

There was recently a little discussion about Chaos on Deponia, where you start in a rather large open exploration area and have to work on several objectives at the same time. There were some that thought it was very overwhelming and difficult, simply because they didn’t know in which areas they could work on what objectives, and they couldn’t just finish the puzzles in one area in move on to the next, but had to do little bits in each area and work on all the objectives simultaneously.

This was actually very common in old games, but nowadays people are more used to being “held in the hands” and being guided through the games, instead of having a more “open” game design, where you have to figure out for yourself what can be accomplished at each location.

Kurufinwe - 12 April 2013 11:29 AM

What is it with lazy students cooking up worthless, unscientific Internet surveys as a replacement to doing actual work?

Or surveys regarding possible game designs. I’ve never seen one of these survey “takers” report back with a game concept or thanks for a passing grade. I think you are totally on the mark with your comment.

I’d also be curious if the same survey was posted on any other gaming sites.

How experienced are you with point-and-click adventure games?

I don’t think “Very experienced” relates to “Played more than ten titles”. Not even “Played more than 50 titles” necessarily means the person is “experienced”, because he/she might have used the walkthrough for all those games. Also, experience comes from diversity, meaning if you’ve played 20 Myst-clones and none of the 3rd-person adventures (or you’ve played 20 newer games and zero classics) you’re not really “experienced”.

When playing point-and-click adventure games, how often do you finish the game without having to look up the solution for a puzzle online?

The answer would be “sometimes” (rarely), but that doesn’t mean the game where I haven’t used the walkthrough is better than the game where I’ve needed help or a hint.

How often do you try to interact with objects randomly because you don’t know what to do?

How do you feel about having to try to combine items at random in order to progress in the game?

Random use/combination of objects is a natural part of the adventure games, and we should not condemn it - I might do that even when i know what to do. Game designers are not to blame if players solve the puzzle by random interaction or item combination, but they’re to blame if there’s no incentive to players to think logically (and even then players might solve it by trial & error).

How often do you feel that you have to rely on knowledge from outside the game in order to complete a puzzle? e.g. knowing that a diamond can cut glass

That really happens all the time in an adventure, because for example you know that you need to use the key on door, and some common knowledge is ok (planet order in “The Black Mirror”). There’re really rare examples where you need to possess high astronomy or nuclear physics knowledge in order to solve a puzzle, which wouldn’t be fair - but GOOD game will have a book on the subject lying nearby which you can read.

What do you feel is the average difficulty in completing the average point-and-click adventure game? How hard do you experience the games of this title to be?

If I understood right, the question asks for the average difficulty of ALL games in the history of the genre? That would be impossible to say, and I’m not sure what an average game would be… If you’re talking in the terms of the difficulty, then there’s an answer already - average game is of average difficulty .

Do you feel that the information to solve all the puzzles in the games is available?

In ALL games? No.

In what game setting do you find the puzzles to be more difficult to solve?

I see what you’re aiming at, but realism should not dictate puzzle design and difficulty. The game might turn out to be good and challenging (in the right way) with the realistic, or let’s say, cartoon setting.

I agree with every single word Diego wrote in the above post

I particular noticed the difficulty question, the only possible answer is almost by definition average. Of course if you compare it with other genres then other answers is possible, but the difficulty also varies at lot in other genres, so it is really a hard question to answer in a meaningful way.

Well, when I filled out the form, I gave a decent number of games in the final two questions, but the thing that became apparent was that most of the comedy games didn’t make the cut from the penultimate to the last question…

In other words, comedy games are the ones where I’ll sooner resort to “try everything on everything” (which is how I interpreted “combine items at random”) because I’m stuck…
And comedy games are usually also the ones where you try that just to see what happens.

It kinda reinforced my answer of ‘unrealistic’ as the kind of setting with more difficult puzzles…