DRL > Requests For Features

Maze level type- is it really necessary to have them?

<< < (2/4) > >>

grommile:
I don't mind mazes; I greatly prefer them to the wide-open levels (city, cave).

Shoop da Whoop:
I'd like if there was random empty places in mazes.
And, maybe, the special level maze with minotaurs B's.

Game Hunter:
Well, we got five different level types already:

Maze of Rooms
Hellish Caves
Maze
Arena
Hellish City

This is roughly in the order they can appear (Maze of Rooms is always on floor 2, cave/maze can be right after that, I've seen Arenas as early as floor 5, cities come right about there). Any of these level types prior to Hellgate, other than mazes, can come with random pools of water (early) or acid (late). After Hellgate, any level type including mazes can come with random pools of lava.

Enough background, though, we're all more interested in how hard they get. Early on, yes, mazes are a pain and likely the most hazardous type. As the enemy challenge level increases, however, Arenas and Hellish Caves definitely become more difficult, simply over the lack of reliable cover. Mazes at least have the benefit of providing cover, and its walls are destructible such that players can open up the area themselves. Dealing with the more vicious enemies in the game (Arachs, Viles, Mancubi, Revs) requires both offense and defense, and in Mazes you're lucky enough to be allowed these luxuries.

If you want to fix the amount of death caused by mazes, I suggest that the level type simply appear at a later time. It might be a good opportunity to introduce a new type altogether: I recall someone suggesting a warehouse, which could be simplified as big rooms (that is, doors between them) with mini-mazes filled with boxes that are easily blown away by shotgun fire. This would create the same capabilities one has later on with the Maze type, without the extra difficulty it causes in the early stages.

thelaptop:

--- Quote from: Game Hunter on January 03, 2011, 16:05 ---If you want to fix the amount of death caused by mazes, I suggest that the level type simply appear at a later time.

--- End quote ---

That's not the point.  The issue is that the current maze levels have very narrow corridors to the point that even if you were completely equipped with full life, one stray blast from something out of your field of vision can just reduce you to nothing.  That's just not even remotely fair -- we want hard games, but we also want them to be fair enough.  Having the maze levels appearing later is probably not going to help this point; it'll just delay the eventual swearing when the same thing occurs to the well-equipped Doomguy at that stage.

Game Hunter:

--- Quote from: thelaptop on January 03, 2011, 17:11 ---The issue is that the current maze levels have very narrow corridors to the point that even if you were completely equipped with full life, one stray blast from something out of your field of vision can just reduce you to nothing....Having the maze levels appearing later is probably not going to help this point; it'll just delay the eventual swearing when the same thing occurs to the well-equipped Doomguy at that stage.
--- End quote ---
Which is why you can do this:


--- Quote from: Game Hunter on January 03, 2011, 16:05 ---Mazes at least have the benefit of providing cover, and its walls are destructible such that players can open up the area themselves.
--- End quote ---
On the other hand, you're not expected to have a utility-based stash of rockets until later on, where enemies that drop them start to appear. That's why Warehouses (big rooms with easily-removed crate mazes) before Mazes (mostly hallways but filled with rocket-destroyable walls) would be a reasonable answer. If players can't figure out how to modify the terrain to their advantage while being "well-equipped," they might deserve that kind of death. Dying in a second to something unknown until that second is a pretty common death, however, and will happen even in Hellish Cities: learning to avoid situations where these happen is part of the journey to getting some serious victories.

While I can't provide a screenshot at the moment, maze levels tend to be random when it comes to the layout, not only in terms of twists and turns but the width of hallways. You'll see the narrow variety often, true, but wide mazes exist (probably just as often) and still have the same problems, if not moreso (as you can fit more monsters in a wide hallway to suddenly attack you). Furthermore, narrow hallways can also happen in the Maze of Rooms layout (and are indeed the bane of Berserkers and Pacifists everywhere).

If you want to get rid of narrow hallways, rather than the Maze type, I think I can get behind that.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page