Despite knowing people will hate it, do you still make "that" dungeon?

[Dragnfly]

I'm sure you've went through them. Dungeons that give a big middle finger to the Right Hand Rule. Huge elevator puzzles, trick door puzzles, tunnels like a half dozen squids got tangled up... I'm talking about those dungeons that are challenging for their layout and what you need to do to go through them.

In an Android RPG I was playing it made me think about this because this one dungeon was tough from it's layout alone, And while it was a little taxing to get through I did have that awesome sense of accomplishment when I finally got all the treasure and got to the boss.

So even if you know the players will invent many new curse words, do you include dungeons like that? If so then what percentage? Are all your dungeons like that?

I'm not done all my layouts yet for my current project but I count 4 like that, all end-tier or bonus stuff.

 

[BigPunisherSOB]

I haven't made a game yet but I'm about to start putting a lot of time into one, and I think for my dungeon level design I'm only going to have hard puzzles lead to chests with sick items in them.  That way if the player gets too frustrated, they can give up and still progress through the game, but if they stay to figure it out they get a reward.  Also, I might have some optional boss fights that are hard to get too.

 

[MHRob]

The only dungeon I've ever come to hate was the water temple in the n64 version of Ocarina of Time. Not sure if it's exactly the same on the 3ds version since I haven't gotten it yet, but yeah... The whole water gimmick just drives me nuts. It's probably the only area in the game that took me the longest to complete.

It wasn't so bad in a link between worlds.

 

[Matseb2611]

Dungeons with unusual mechanics and challenging puzzles do provide a nice change in the game, because it's something new for the player to do. However, I think it's important to make sure the player doesn't get frustrated. There is a fine line between fun challenging and frustrating challenging. If your dungeon is very maze-like, for example, don't make the random encounters too frequent. It will only make players throw their controller at the screen.

And for returning players who are replaying the game, this dungeon will be a huge block too. They'll be like "Ugh, not this dungeon again". The novelty of exploring it for the first time and witnessing the new mechanics will no longer be there. The only thing that will be there are memories of frustration.

Make it a challenge, but let the player feel like they're making progress and getting somewhere.

 

[Kvich]

In a single word... YES!

If a dungeon is challenging from layout alone, in form of puzzles, and may cause a few players to pull out their hair when in the thick of it, I don't think it's bad, quite the opposite.

I love having a puzzle, that can be solved with logic and pen and paper, and then it does not matter how hard it is.

I tend to have most of my dungeons have a puzzle, usually a easier one, but maybe 1 or 2 having a complex and challenging puzzle.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I think the key thing that needs to happen is challenge /= annoying or frustrating. If something in a dungeon presents its challenge by being tedious than we need to ask ourselves how can we reconstruct this dungeon so it fairly teases the brain and not the player's emotions. I'm pretty much up for any challenge as long as it is fair and I don't have to wade through heaps of encounters, excessive back tracking, completely random RNG, and also that it doesn't over stay its welcome.

Ever gotten that itchy "I've been in here forever and I'm sort of over it" feeling? That. Pacing is still important for dungeons.

 

[Dragnfly]

Thanks for throwing in an example, MHRob. I remembered that I struggled with the water temple in Twilight Princess quite a bit and didn't "appreciate it's majesty". Ar Tonelico 3 had a fairly nasty elevator dungeon that you had to visit 2 or 3 times in the game. I actually made an ascii map of it when I played through the japanese version and spread it around to other importers. Luckily Ar games have a system where random encounters stop after you've fought X number of them.

I forget which game it was (Playstation/Saturn era) but there was a clue to a nasty puzzle right at the start of the dungeon. By the time you got to the nasty puzzle you'd likely have forgotten the clue if you didn't write it down, but a treasure chest in the puzzle room had a "return to dungeon entrance" item. It cut out half the backtracking for people who didn't jot down the clue for whatever reason.

 

[Wavelength]

No.  If I have any reason to believe players will hate something, I don't include it in my game.  If I see playtesters do hate something that I thought they'd like, I take it out of my game.  If players aren't enjoying what's there, it's worthless.

 

[Peridot Gaming]

I put an underground water system map into my first game that only had one correct path through it.  Lots of dead ends, and crossing back and forth over bridges to try to stay on the right path to get to the exit.

When I first did it I though it would be quite neat, different from the rest of the straight-forward maps that I had done in the rest of the game.  Then I actually playtested it, and I found it a real challenge to get through - but still thought "yeah, this will make things interesting for the player".

A bit further on after more changes to the game, and I needed to run through everything in playtesting several times to check other things were working, and what do you know: every time I got into that map, I could NEVER find the right path through it!

But, no matter how frustrating it got for me, I left that map in there knowing full well that any time I would come back to running through a playtest I would get stuck trying to find the right way through again.  Maybe I subconsciously enjoyed the frustration? 

 

[Dragnfly]

I think difficult dungeons can be about the reward of success but it's a tightrope walk to get it right. A difficult dungeon will assuredly involve lots of backtracking, and backtracking is rarely fun. Also, getting lost means battlers and battle means EXP, so it's easy for the player to over-level while being lost in your crazy elevator dungeon.

For example, in my earlier example with a bonus dungeon in an Android game I'm playing, all of the bonus dungeons have a gimmick of some sort. The first has shifting sand paths, like a conveyor belt thing where you step on a certain tile and it forces you to move along a path. That was fun to figure out.

The second bonus dungeon had alternating door puzzles. You finally find the switch to open red doors, but pressing it also closes the blue doors. That got a bit frustrating but finally getting through it felt good.

The third bonus dungeon? Mix both of the previous mechanics with a teleporter maze. All for inconsequential loot. NOT FUN! Made even less fun because by that point you're basically invincible so battles are just a chore.

So I think you do have to be careful with it and know when too much is too much.

 

[arekpowalan]

Difficult dungeons may be a part of a game's escalated difficulty. There are multiple types of annoying dungeons, like Phantasy Star II's never ending mazes and Lufia 2's dungeons that have puzzles for no reason. Good games know that the difficulty of the dungeon gradually rise as the hero's journey deeper into the game. As the fictional characters level up, the player's brain (mainly stamina, creativity and memory) also has to grow, so to say.

I like the idea of dungeons being organized based on the setting, though. I'm talking about the early Zelda games with temples and stuff. There's always an excuse to have the dungeons built with environmental booby traps: whirlpool in a water temples, gaint fans in the wind temples, elevator maze in the fire temples, etc. That way, the player is warned beforehand they're entering the area they need to start fitting thier brain and go all out against the puzzles.

 

[KanaX]

Ooooh my game might just be full of them It's not as bad as I thought i'd be by some replies, but still...

 

[Wavelength]

There's difficulty that's fun, though, and there's difficulty that's not fun.  The first category tends to be harder to create, but it's worthwhile.  Even if "difficulty" adds to the appeal of a game, or its endgame content... the fun still has to be there.

 

[Kvich]

No.  If I have any reason to believe players will hate something, I don't include it in my game.  If I see playtesters do hate something that I thought they'd like, I take it out of my game.  If players aren't enjoying what's there, it's worthless.

That's actually quite a good reply.

I think it's hard to please everyone, and what might works for some, may not work for other players.

But having a puzzle dungeon that players find challenging while being in it, but feel a sense of accomplishment after beating it, wouldn't be bad in my mind.

I personally scale down, or completely remove, random encounters for puzzle area's, because I want to put the puzzle in focus.

Having some encounters at certain places, like in front of a optional treasure is likely included.