Game is ruined by idiotic stages in POI's

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Merandor, Sep 5, 2020.

  1. Spoon

    Spoon Captain

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    You must walk bloody fast then. Them turrets track fast most of the time.
     
    #21
  2. IndigoWyrd

    IndigoWyrd Rear Admiral

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    Try it, you might be surprised.

    If I ever happen on one of these sites again, I'll see if I can't grab some video of how I deal with these. I just haven't seen one since 11.x
     
    #22
  3. Spoon

    Spoon Captain

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    I have tried it. I do as you suggest by luring the turrest to face the other way. Then I run/leap to the switch. Half of the time I get hit once, which is no biggy.
     
    #23
  4. IndigoWyrd

    IndigoWyrd Rear Admiral

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    Are you plodding about in Epic Heavy armor, or armor laden with upgrades that reduce your speed? I've only ever been hit once, and that was because I turned around to look.
     
    #24
  5. Spoon

    Spoon Captain

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    No mate.
    Also just seen a Youtuber do the thing. Medium armour and MultiBoosts. He was shifting and got hit once. No worries though.
    Just that what Ive seen on Youtube with several people and my own experience, I wouldn't walk it.
     
    #25
  6. IndigoWyrd

    IndigoWyrd Rear Admiral

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    Well, I certainly wouldn't rely on YouTube for anything, but that's me and my innately distrustful nature. Nothing wrong with being safe and making a mad dash though.
     
    #26
  7. StyxAnnihilator

    StyxAnnihilator Captain

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    @Merandor and other newbs:
    Learn the game mechanics and how a POI are put together. Might take some hundred hours.
    Some POIs are supposed to be hard for new ones. Later on they become pretty easy. There are much worse ones, and can be several in a cluster. Can see my YT channel for a couple of speed challenges taking POIs. One is the Abandoned Factory, done in a minute.
     
    #27
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  8. The Big Brzezinski

    The Big Brzezinski Captain

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    I look at the fall-through into the turret room, and I can't help but think it REALLY needs better presentation. Instead of dropping right into a seemingly hopeless fight, the player should fall into a completely dark and quiet room. After three seconds or so, a single yellow light starts flashing. The room then sequentially starts lighting up over the course of about six seconds. Finally, the turrets starts "powering up" for another six seconds, during which the turret control lever becomes available. If players aren't fully alert and looking for a solution by then, it's their own fault when they get blasted. All this could be done with some clever lighting and signal work.

    But having them fall in a hole and be suddenly presented with two live antivessel turrets and a horde of Legacy monsters? That's just trolling.
     
    #28
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2020
  9. StyxAnnihilator

    StyxAnnihilator Captain

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    @The Big Brzezinski (and any others) Do you really expect to take an assumable difficult POI on first attempt? You die, so what? Try again, now you know of that trap or whatever, figure it out and find any next obstacle. Is like with such newb mindset then think can master the game the first hours of play, with no skills or understanding how the game works, on very easy difficulty. Have probably whined about too easy and boring after a few more hours of play IF managed to to it on first attempt. Maybe want signs to tell like "Watch out!!! Next room have a turret above the door and a trapdoor 3 blocks in, 2 spawners on each side, 2 shotgun Zirax to the left, 2 rocket Zirax to the right.". "In case you missed the info about the trap door in the floor, it is marked bright red. If you drop down, there will be a small safe room so you can recover and prepare for next room. More signs will guide you so no surprises.".

    Are traps and such that makes it more fun. Maybe finding secret ducts and entrances to bypass. Use the drone to scout a room before enter it, holding the multitool tells you roughly type of blocks by HP. Learn strategies and skills to overcome the challenges. Take it slow, do small retreats for heal and reload. Use the right weapons and try aim for headshot.
    Also most POIs you can take or create easy access to the core, by using a vessel (do not need to be expensive high level). The Abandoned Factory there is a spot outside, where with a cheap beginner SV/HV with a gatling can drill down and take the core, in a few minutes. With an SV you can do it outside spawning range. The ammo used is pretty cheap, compared to the loot and reduced hassle to do it on foot.

    EDIT: For a newb any difficulty or not knowing stuff could be seen as trolling. "Oh, can not pick that plant, no way to see that I can not pick it, the game is trolling me.". Traps and obstacles are supposed to "troll". Compared to some POIs the Abandoned Factory is easy. Some scenarios you can find yourself stranded on a moon far away after using a teleporter (doing a mission), trolling or just give it something to overcome and test your skills?
     
    #29
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2020
  10. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    The only idiotic thing is to fall into the same trap again and again. Even lab rats can do better... As for the POIs' difficulty, it is high in some, because the game needs challenges here and there. If someone needs to play something casual can go play solitaire or something.
     
    #30
  11. The Big Brzezinski

    The Big Brzezinski Captain

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    I recall my first few runs through POIs. I kept running into death traps. In the days before respawning with equipment, these traps usually meant a death loop. Eventually I stopped trying to do POIs on foot, instead blasting exploratory holes in with a ship and send in the drone to look around. I wouldn't actually go inside until the core or generators were already destroyed. It took a little longer, but it was less stressful, far less risky, and yielded the same rewards. This is the method POI features like the turret room taught me. It's only since I could keep my toolbar between respawns that I've been able to enjoy them again. I always scan the floor, never touch a switch, and am generous with the plasma charges.

    Let's look at that turret room. A new player going through the Factory is in combat mode. They are on the lookout for Legacy monsters and turrets, not environmental hazards. When they fall through, they will be confused, but their mindset will not change. When the shooting starts, they attempt to win using their weapons and jetpack. They rarely succeed. After respawning, they think about what happened. They may assume there's a trick to winning the fight, or a place to escape to, or they don't have good enough gear. Because nothing has clued them into using switches to solve problems, it never occurs to them. They just keep shooting and dying, possibly even uninstalling and refunding.

    My alternate scenario is hardly different in its implementation, but the addition of some anticipatory buildup at least breaks the player out of their run & gun mindset. Suddenly there's nothing to shoot and nowhere to go, but something IS definitely happening. They need to figure out what it is before it's too late. Make that switch obvious, and they'll dive right for it. It would be great little micro-adventure.

    You can't just throw a ball at the back of a juggler's head and say they're bad at juggling once they've regained consciousness. You need to provide a diegetic setup for the experience. Eleon themselves do this with the very first story mission when the teleporter station explodes. Suddenly the player is thrown from clicking through quest dialogue into action mode, making them ready to take on those drones.

    POIs are combat fun houses. They are supposed to be fun little jaunts produced by the creativity of a human designer instead of the whims of an RNG system. The experiences therein need to be capable of sustaining repetition as players encounter them over and over. If an encounter is exasperating when you don't know the trick, and trivial when you do, it is a bad encounter. No one will ever enjoy it. At best, people will tolerate it. This doesn't mean it needs to be expunged from the game. Most likely, it just needs a bit of polish. I'd wager the difference between a good encounter and a bad one is very similar to that between a villain and a supervillain; Presentation!

    Side note: I always read git gud sentiments in Jonah Hill's voice now.

    I recommend going back through Portal again with the commentary on. It's full of little nuggets of wisdom about this very problem. There was one chamber in particular based on using a single block throughout the entire test chamber, but people kept leaving it behind and getting stuck. The solution was not to change the room, but to retexture the block. Thus, the Companion Cube was born. And later incinerated. For science.
     
    #31
  12. StyxAnnihilator

    StyxAnnihilator Captain

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    Looking at turret room if have a decent understanding of game mechanics: OK, died, were not careful enough. Get to a safe position, use the drone to pick up your stuff. Scout with the drone while equipped with a multitool, to find traps and possible hidden sentry guns. Scout with the drone to see layout of the room and try find a strategy to handle it. Maybe place a vessel BluePrint with turret or just protecting walls.
    If you keep dying, then too difficult for you, leave it until more experienced or/and have better gear. Maybe take the loss of death pack or vessel. Maybe even start all over.

    Death loop is just the same lazy/impatient/slow behavior dealing with something too difficult for current level of knowledge, as dealing with more advanced POIs.

    The juggler story do not fit this theme. For me it sounds like someone wanting to be a juggler and starts complaining of how difficult it is to handle 3 balls, that want the balls changed so they do the job themselves, while flapping with hands and arms with no clue.
    I can use the story of a blindfolded Jedi, that have trained to turn around and catch balls or whatever.
     
    #32
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  13. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    I think one problem is that a lot of people take the attitude that death is failure.
    Empyrion has so many respawn options that dying is just part of the game mechanics and there will be times that you will die if you are inexperienced. That's not a bad thing.
    A room in a POI that kills you no matter what, bad design.
    A room in a POI that kills an inexperienced player, that's not necessarily bad design. It probably shouldn't be on the easy starting planets, but it's not bad design.

    Some mistakes will kill you in Empyrion. If POI design is limited to mechanics that will not kill inexperienced players, then every POI will end up being incredibly easy for those players who have become experienced with the game and than can get boring for some.

    I always advocate for a variety of content that goes from easy to ultra hard. That means that some POIs will absolutely destroy inexperienced players. What we need is a better way of showing players how hard a particular POI is going to be, since POI level only has minimal effect on the actual difficulty (a level 1 drone base or abandoned factory will always be orders of magnitude harder than even a level 10 abandoned mine, for example).
     
    #33
  14. The Big Brzezinski

    The Big Brzezinski Captain

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    This is generally a true thing. Death is only a failure in the sense that you were operating under a theory, and the combat experiment disproved that theory. Then you take the data you've gathered and try a new theory. The true failure is when you don't get any useful data from the experience. You walked in, you threw the fish at the wall of ears, you died, you don't understand what happened or why. This failure can be further exacerbated by respawn runs and unrecoverable corpse bags. The investment of time, resources, and patience has returned nothing. The learning has stopped. The fun has stopped. The encounter has failed.

    That's why presentation is important. Level designers are supposed to provide the data players need to form better theories. When that data is missing, the experimentation process can be horribly derailed as players misread the situation and misunderstand why they died. The turret room is not a difficult encounter. All you need to do is flick a switch and shoot a few bugs. But, if you don't give a player time to adjust their thinking, they generally just press forward. This isn't players being dumb. It's players operating under established theories in an information vacuum.

    Here's an even simpler idea for that turret trap room. Before players even get close, blow up some single blocks from the floor as they approach. Make it clear the floor is not to be taken for granted. Even this simple change would telegraph that there are hazards to address besides monsters. Plus, stuff blows up this way, which is generally a self-justifying event.
     
    #34
  15. dichebach

    dichebach Captain

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    My solution to the stupid POIs: I dig a tunnel to them, blast a hole in them, then either destroy the core by gatling drill or if I'm feeling sporting, build a series of "filler" ramparts to enter safely, block off spawners and farm them.

    upload_2021-2-26_23-3-39.png
     
    #35
  16. piddlefoot

    piddlefoot Rear Admiral

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    Till death do us part !

    Its good to die every now and then, keeps you grounded in Empyrion reality ! hahaha
     
    #36
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  17. playlessNamer

    playlessNamer Lieutenant

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    Its not about "to easy" or "to hard", its about the style and how it feels. I absolute dislike this "crash down the floor into a deathroom" gameplay too. What is the creators idea behind it? Better check every little step with your tool? This creates ugly gameplay. When the area looks broken and unstable its ok to force players to take care but on a straight floor with the same texture outa nothing its just cheap.
    This is impossible the first time and easy when you know it. Get creative pls.
     
    #37
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  18. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    It is adventurous the first time and easy when you know it, until you forget about it. Bear in mind that among many POIs with trap doors on the floor etc one may need to play that much to remember every trap in every poi. Plus the original creators change things from update to update making things more interesting.
     
    #38
  19. playlessNamer

    playlessNamer Lieutenant

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    Our definition of "interesting" seems different.
     
    #39
  20. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    Of course. We are both humans. Different and unique.
     
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