Stuck! fajor temple balance room2

[Drox]

stuck by the fajor temple balance room 2 on the left side. How could I solve this? pls help @dev

[wervyn]

Maybe describe exactly what you're having trouble with? The thing people most frequently have trouble understanding in these rooms is that the whirlpools in the sand in the upper chamber drop you down into the chamber below. I don't know if that's what's stumping you though.

[Drox]

Originally posted by wervyn:

Maybe describe exactly what you're having trouble with? The thing people most frequently have trouble understanding in these rooms is that the whirlpools in the sand in the upper chamber drop you down into the chamber below. I don't know if that's what's stumping you though.

thank you! That it is.

[wervyn]

So on a tangent, have you ever seen this simple quiz: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html

I swear, this is related, go give it a try before reading on, it'll only take a minute.

Now, without any implied criticism of your problem solving skills, I'm actually genuinely curious: why didn't you try standing on a whirlpool before, just to see what would happen? I'm honestly interested in the psychology behind that, particularly in the realm of games, because it's something I see a lot. Even in conditions where it's understood that there's no penalty for getting the wrong answer, where even character death is just a minor speed bump, a lot of people are still incredibly risk-averse and condition themselves to avoid doing things that might fail, or that the specifically expect to fail. And paradoxically, that's often the cause of their ultimate failure.

Hopefully the connection to the quiz is clear now. An astonishingly large number of people fail that quiz because they never ask any questions to which they expect the answer to be "No". Likewise here, a surprising number of people get stuck on these rooms because they implicitly decide "whirlpools will kill me" but never test that assumption; despite the fact that quicksand is already a known respawn hazard, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense for the whirlpool to do the exact same thing as the surrounding quicksand.

So, go forth enlightened, and never again be afraid to try something you expect to fail in a game. Your problem solving skills will dramatically improve as a result.

[lachsen]

I just tried that problem solving test and failed it. :(
Damn you confirmation bias!

[Drox]

I just tried that web and failed too!
so i think im poor in Problem Solving :(

[wervyn]

Don't feel too bad about that, I was caught by it too the first time I encountered the question. It's mostly interesting because it reveals a massive blind spot in reasoning that almost everyone suffers from to some degree. My key takeaway is, if you know the blind spot is there, then you know to check for it, just like checking your mirrors if you're driving a car. As a result of things like this, part of my problem solving checklist in games when encountering new challenges and puzzles includes "will that dangerous looking thing kill me if I touch it?" and "what happens if I TRY to get the wrong answer?"

[Evu]

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with your argumentation, especially if you see CrossCode as a puzzle solving GAME, but in the case of people I witness getting stuck in these scenarios it's more of a playertype who comprehens CrossCode as a immersive WORLD which they are trying to experience and dive in to explore with their basic logic and own senses.

So the issue for me comes a lot more down to what I would call "unintuitive design". It already got established beforehand, that sinking into sand damages you or sets you back and therefore results in a negative/annoying association with the player. Similarly you wouldn't try to let every new enemy that you encounter hit you, just to confirm your bias, that their attacks do infact hurt and not heal you... In addition to that you obviously have to account for basic human psychology, that sand twirls in real life are never something you would actually seek out or blindly jump into.

Thankfully there are countermeasures to take to salvage the concept more or less easily. Using elements that result in positive associations with the player like lightbeams coming from the ceilling in the floor below and additionally making the sand rinsing through glitter a bit would already do quite a lot imo (or at least to remove the ominous dark spot in the middle of the twirl).

Otherwise you could also have a bit more fun with the introduction of the concept by like having an enemy attack you in the upper floor and then escaping halfway through the fight via a twirl just to ambush you again from the ceiling in the room of balance once you enter it the next time :3

[Ernsteen]

I also think that the sand puzzle is counter-intuitive, because it is not only a classic game trope, but was also introduced in the same dungeon a good bit ealier as nothing else but deadly. An even more pronounced version of the sand in the form of the twirls just seem to be a natural step up to keep things spicy.
The only clue we get is the sand dripping down, but it's hard to make the association in a completely different room. And I'm saying compeltely different because, while the layout is the same and one just walked up the stairs, that is not enough when the interiors are completely, completely different.

Other than that, I think Evu sums it up rather nicely.

[wervyn]

It's initeresting that you bring up the idea of fighting enemies in this context, Evu. In reality, for me, while it's true that I won't get hit by a new attack under the assumption that it might heal me, I frequently WILL look to take attacks just so that I can understand what their damage potential and side-effects are, in order to understand their relative danger. Part of this is unintentional and just part of learning a new attack pattern -- I'm probably going to get hit by something the first time I see it, if I don't know how to react to it yet. Part of it really is making sure I get a complete picture of the enemy's capabilities, though.

Now calibrating challenge for a puzzle-heavy game is really tricky, especially depending on the breadth of the audience you want to attract. Because it is literally impossible to please everyone; there are people who just don't like puzzles, who get really frustrated when a game forces them to stop and think about something and would much prefer any of those segments be heavily signposted with giant flashing red hints. And on the other hand if you do make everything super obvious you'll just bore the people who really do like puzzles, because to them they're barely puzzles anymore if they don't require thought to get through. And since problem-solving skill is just as varied as combat skill among different people, what's really easy to one person can be really difficult for someone else.

Puzzles also come in many different types. A lot of CrossCode is based in mechanical puzzles, understanding how particular game mechanics can be used and interact with other elements, in order to progress. Some are pure spatial-logic puzzles, e.g. arrange these different blocks to direct a ball that hits all of these targets. But some of them, like this one, are observational puzzles: they require you to stop, consider what you're looking at, and then draw a conclusion about the world. Some of the trickiest puzzles that guard optional bonus items are of this type, such as noticing an extra trail of dots and infering the existence of an elemental collector out of view, to reveal the chest holding the Dented Crown.

Observational puzzles seem to catch the largest number of people out, and I think it's because they're usually only heavily explored in games that are pretty directly targetted at "people who really like puzzle games". If it wasn't apparent already, I'm a huge fan of Myst, and just had a blast playing through Obduction since that just came out. Or, half of the content in The Witness is just logic puzzles (which I love), but so, so much of it is also about noticing details in the environment and applying them (which I ALSO love).

In any event, some subtle visual highlighting on the falling sand might do the trick here. I think I'd feel a little insulted if the game directly pointed it out with a scripted enemy event though, almost as bad as if Navi showed up and said "Hey Listen! Lea, I wonder what happens if you fall into one of those whirlpools?! Maybe you should try it!"

[lachsen]

Does anybody here has ideas how the puzzle can be improved without simply removing the "fall through sand mechanic"? We originally had the idea that we constraint the player in way to essentially force it to fall through the sand the first time. But with the current layout that's sort of difficult to do.

As always, simply adding a text hint is something we'd like to avoid.

Something which might work are more subtle visual clues like arrows.

[Drox]

you may change the dungen portal to the "fall through sand mechanic". In the release version we get into the dungen by a portal,I think you can change it to a big sand whirlpool because the portal now floated in the sky.in this way people will have a intuition that the sand whirlpool could be a portal.

[pitman]

I actually liked how you could see the sand grains dropping on those elevated platforms when coming from below, I caught on it pretty quickly thankfully.

[Evu]

@wervyn indeed the varied playerbase of crosscode might be the crucial point here and I also kinda came to that conclusion in my review, funny enough I wrote that something like OoTs Navi in form of a hint system might be exactly what the game needs, tho it should be a lot less intrusive like that example. Sergey comes to mind, since he's always by your side anyway and already has played CrossWorlds before, so you could direct link him when you are stuck or in case of enemies the devs could write small pokedex like passages for him, that lea can then request seperately, since quite some people don't seem to get how to fight the moths for example and instead of asking for help or looking for guides on the internet (once there are some more that is) just hardquit the game at the temple instead and might even argue that enemies are broken or unbalanced (or instead of Sergey just use the seeker sense, which also seems predesined for such functionallity but is kind of underutilized at the moment...)

Other than that and back to the sand topic: i'm with you that observational puzzles are great for something that is optional like those hidden items in the dungeon, but to progress on the intented path it might be a bit too much "out there" for CrossCode. After all even games that are specifically targeted at a puzzle solving audience get in general a lot of negative feedback for their more cryptic and/or out of the box puzzles (like The Witness or FEZ), since the player simply didn't expect to have to use unconventional tools to solve them (like sound options or qr code scanners...) I'd kind of compare it to a point and click adventure. You are running around, combining arbitrary items to get some farfetched solutions and all of that is nice and good, since you picked the game up for that experience but in 9 out of 10 old school PnCs you gonna hit that brick wall and think "so here we go" and end up having to do some pixelhunting. And that's kind of what it is, you have to look for pixels of falling sand that kind of blend in with the ambience and decoration of the temple to get the clue to progress.

Now what i would understand is if arrows or even lightbeams would be a too over the top "x marks the spot" kind of thing and feel somewhat insulting to a few, but chances are that the scripted enemy would have had the exact opposite result. After all it's like the most "natural" (in context of CrossWorlds) and flowing way of introducing the concept. The scripted encounter just makes sure that players with different attention levels get more chances to draw the conclusion. Most likely someone like you would have already had a hypothese of the nature of this puzzle before encountering the enemy on the top level and seeing the sand twirls. When the enemy then vanishes into one you would most likely just have seen your thesis as confirmed and directly jumped after him (ambushing the ambusher) or at least be aware of the chance of a possible ambush from above when you enter the lower floor the next time, also making you feel smarter than your surrounding. Only even the most clueless players should get the concept at the very last possible moment, when it is too late for them to avoid a hit from above~ But I guess that is a general problem of games in early access, once people already solved things at their own pace and in more sporatic circumstances everything that later gets streamlined, polished or rebalanced will just unavoidably feel dumped down.

@lachsen: Just want to state again, there's nothing wrong with the puzzle element in and of itself (personally i like the falling through sand mechanic quite a lot too and wouldn't want to see it gone either) the problem just lies completely in the introduction of the concept for me and there are actually a few things which come together here. Stuff like the twirls not having seeker sense info, the map of the upper floor not having a downwards arrow and the fact that the teleporter there to the entrance activates at a counter-intuitive time (only after you've done one of the half-circle-like paths around the temple and reached the entrance again, only then it should activate there and point to the room of a balance again so the player is send in the right direction and knows that there's more to do in that room)

Another thing you can obviously do is increase the suction force of the individual twirls and make some (maybe the non-progress-advancing ones) a lot bigger in size, resulting in a more ambigious path layout to navigate at the upper floor, which would just let more players fall through the twirls, because they'd become a lot harder to avoid in general. A more brute approach might also be to just trap the player in the upper room till there's nothing left to do for him at first then to just fall through a twirl. Not sure if that would work 100% at the moment with the current key distribution througout the dungeon at this point and might end up turning the already kind of linear dungeon even more linear if this gets enforced.

But i think Urinstein actually has the best point here. The rooms just feel overall not connected enough, which makes their relation not very clear. Biggest part of that (even over the rooms general layout imo) might actually be the 180* that is build into the staircase at the back of the wall. Replacing those with an elevator-like structure similarly to the ones on the ship or in the mine should already do the trick, but even better might be a pillar that rises like the one with the "boss-door-key-plattform" in a later room and which also falls back down once lea steps off it on the upper floor, only leaving a bigger gaping hole, that you have to jump down again, if you want to reach the lower floor again. Obviously there should also be sand dripping from above on the edging of the pillar on the lower floor to even more enforce the relation of all of these elements in the players consciousness :3

[Dangerous Beans]

Originally posted by lachsen:

Does anybody here has ideas how the puzzle can be improved without simply removing the "fall through sand mechanic"? We originally had the idea that we constraint the player in way to essentially force it to fall through the sand the first time. But with the current layout that's sort of difficult to do.

As always, simply adding a text hint is something we'd like to avoid.

Something which might work are more subtle visual clues like arrows.

1) Make it unambiguous - I don't remember seeing any that did, but someone above said that some of the whirlpools just kill you. If that's the case then those should be removed.

2) Yeah, absolutely force it to happen. Make a small entrance room with a whirlpool in the center that drops the player down into the erstwhile entrance. At the back of the room place an elevated platform, way too high to jump up to, and put a stair door up there so that the player can return from the room that they fall into and then jump back down into the entrance room in order to leave the temple.

http://puu.sh/r2Ili/6ed815f0fe.png