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Warm Cuddly Gumdrop Unicorn Level of Love (With Lasers)

Regarding "social expectation", I think you're completely right here. But that just gives the problem a name; you still need to solve it. If you want people to like your maps, you have to make them conform to the expectations of your target player group (e.g. easy for most, to get lots of thumbs ups, more challenging for people like me, etc.). Or, you have to find a way to make players adjust their expectations with training rooms, dialog, on-screen text, etc. If your maps are good, you may eventually gather your own player group who's expectations match your maps.

I've made several adjustments which should address the issues brought up in discussion. Hopefully all adjustments which make the test chamber more enjoyable for it's victims, I mean, test subjects ~_^

(see changes notes)

I think adding signage would spoil it. The player would immediately go hunting for the signage source. It's a very small room, so if it occurs to you to search it thoroughly you should find it. I think the problem I am facing here is a social expectation. Because of the way some if not most maps are designed, there are expectations that my maps don't adhere to (like, if I find a way to do something, that's the only way to progress).

You could probably light the inside of the corridor without giving it away, but in any case, the player must find and enter this area, unless he uses the "nigh impossible" method, and both toncica and I found it with no trouble, so I don't think you should think of it as "secret". A secret area in a map is unusally an easter egg - something that is fun to find but is not needed to solve the puzzles and exit.

Thanks for explaining how players who can't throw cubes are intended to solve the puzzle. If my cube throwing had not worked, I wonder if I would have found that? Perhaps add signage?

Having done the tedious solution myself I hope that no one would resort to it, because it's just awful, but it is true to the namesake of the original name of the puzzle "Impossible". (The puzzle is supposed to look impossible at first appearance). I doubt I'll ever make another map with such a cruel introduction again though. I suppose there are maps out there where that sort of tedious solution really is the only one, so people might not pick up on my intention to try and get them to explore more thoroughly.

You bring up some really good points, so thank you very much. A lot to consider, for both this map and my later creations.

Let's see, the dark corridor is supposed to be a secret, so if I lit it up, the secret would be lost. The chamber is nigh impossible to beat without it though. There's a hidden button just above you when you first head in which has a decent chance of landing the reflector cube on the button for you. It's not perfect though, which bothers me. I need a better (but still hidden) way to make that work.

I watched toncica's blind run, and found that I did pretty much exactly what he did (not in my video - that was a re-play). The exceptions were: 1) I tried each of the faith plates with the cube expecting that one of them would send me up to the ceiling so that I could portal across to the other side of the laser barrier (none of them did). 2) Once I figured out that I could get the cube from the light bridge and get back to the main room , I concentrated totally on that. 3) I fell into the lower room and got shot to pieces, just as toncica did, but I assumed it was just a trap and made no attempt to go back and live.

What wildgoosespeeder means is that there are different types of "hard". There's thinking hard, like Mevious and toncica maps, skill-and-timing hard, like some Myr (MC) maps, know-all-the-weird-behaviors hard like other Myr (MC) maps, and there's just-keep-trying-until-you-get-lucky hard. The last is also known as tedious. Pretty much nobody likes tedious. It is no excuse that it's not the only solution. Once the player figures out the tedious solution, he may not realize that there are others and your whole map is now, to him, tedious. If you want to justify multiple solutions, make the others easier to find. I did figure out the single-room solution, but no way was I going to do that so I just explored further.

This was an OK map, but not without issues. Being somewhat familiar with your style, it didn't take me long to complete. Here is a video of my solution. But, I left a large area of the map unexplored. The very dark hallways where I spread blue gel as a marker really do need some lighting. Is the cube throw the intended solution? If so, anyone who is any worse than me at cube throwing won't be able to complete the map.

I don't see what you mean by multi-solution tests... and I also don't agreee with your "tedious ≠ hard" (If it were the only possibly way to solve the puzzle, then the fact that it is extremely difficult to perform would become annoying, but you performed that solution by choice). Yes, one can figure out how to get the reflector cube where they want it in theory, but to actually get it there is quite difficult.

I'll add those tests of yours to my queue ~_^