"Puzzle" locks.

Everstorm

So I ran into one of the latest ESO's version of a puzzle lock during the main quest and it got me wondering: am I the only one who consider these "puzzles" an insult to one's intelligence?
I fully understand that not everybody likes actual puzzle locks but this seems like a compromise that nobody enjoys. It requires no thinking, just pointlessly waiting a second or two in between mouse clicks. Icing on the cake is Evoli reacting like I found the cure for the Knahatan Flu.
Far as I know there is exactly one actual puzzle lock in ESO, the one in the Graystone Mine in Wrothgar. Was the feedback on this one so overwhelmingly negative that ZOS decided to never ever challenge their player base mentally again?

phaneub17_ESO

There are times I think "people can't be this stupid" moments, but realize yes they can. Not on ESO, but on World of Warcraft they added these 5 triangle puzzles where turning on/off one triangle would cause adjacent ones to switch. I can complete them in under 10 seconds with no problem, but watched other players struggle to even grasp the concept sometimes they kept pushing randomly until either it completed or someone else came along and complete it for them.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Combination locks where the solution is carved in the wall right in front of you, and where there are only 4x4x4 combinations if you try the brute force cracking. Sequences you need to complete where a wrong guess doesn't reset the entire puzzle, making it perfectly possible to just click at random for a while and complete the sequence by accident. Timed puzzles where the timer is ridiculously long. Ingenious ancient locks that require you to simply pull a single lever which is in plain sight. The list of ridiculously easy "puzzles" in ESO is long, because this is not meant to be a challenging game.

I remember some slightly challenging puzzles just after release, but they nerfed them very quickly because people complained. One simple but instanced puzzle, I honestly can't remember if it was in ESO or some other game, required you to change the colors of three lights to match three other lights clearly visible behind them, but that was an obstacle for many. The area was full of people shouting "just tell me the solution already, like red-green-green", but the solution was different for each player, and it changed over time. You had to look at your own screen for two seconds and pay attention. That did not go over well with the average player, and soon the solution was made the same for everyone, and stopped changing.

Puzzles in single player games are going the same way. What could have been some mildly challenging Sudoku-type puzzles in Mass Effect: Andromeda were nerfed to literally nothing, giving you the option to just use a "decryption key" to crack any lock that was required to complete the main quest. Skyrim had plenty of combination locks where you could try all options faster than it would take you to backtrack to the place where the secret combination was revealed. The super secret password to the Railroad hideout in Fallout 4 was "Railroad".

Press X to win the game. Welcome to the future.

Gythral

Brute force or better lighting seems to work, most of the time!

Elsonso

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Press X to win the game.

I spent over 1000 hours in that game and now you tell me...

But, yeah, you are correct. Puzzles are not common place because many people simply don't have the patience to do them. The solution either needs to be simple, or easily followed in the game's wiki. In the latter, with grumbling for having to go to the wiki to look it up.

VaranisArano

The Markarth puzzles with the light...I remember just being like, "Okay, click on it till it glows and I'm good." Or traveling through the shadows to get past ruined terrain, where I messed up on the tall Dwarven room once, but it was easy to start over.

Even the moon phase puzzles in the Elsweyr Prologue...I did it the hard way because I thought the riddles were fun, but that meant not looking at the hint plaques on the walls.

The Summerset crows/gates puzzle in the forest was kinda hard though. Lots of trial and error to figure out exactly what the riddle meant.


To be fair, Skyrim's puzzles weren't exactly difficult either.

Elsonso

VaranisArano wrote: »

The Markarth puzzles with the light...I remember just being like, "Okay, click on it till it glows and I'm good." Or traveling through the shadows to get past ruined terrain, where I messed up on the tall Dwarven room once, but it was easy to start over.

Even the moon phase puzzles in the Elsweyr Prologue...I did it the hard way because I thought the riddles were fun, but that meant not looking at the hint plaques on the walls.

The Summerset crows/gates puzzle in the forest was kinda hard though. Lots of trial and error to figure out exactly what the riddle meant.


To be fair, Skyrim's puzzles weren't exactly difficult either.

Not hard, but there is also a bridge puzzle in Sancre Tor and a light puzzle to get to Uncle Leo. Probably others like that. I don't know if there was a solution hidden nearby, as I just did them.

ajkb78

There's a puzzle in the Orsinium main questline that was somewhat awkward. Not particularly because of the solution but because how to implement the solution depends on realising what viewpoint you're supposed to be aligning things to, which seemed far from obvious at the time.

The calendar puzzle in Mazzatun is also hard, not because the puzzle is at all hard but because some damned yahoo always ruins it by just clicking whatever, who cares if it turns the Saxhleel elder into a monster, just so they can finish the dungeon 10s quicker.

But yeah, this is a prmarily action centred MMO so don't expect puzzles to be taken from the GCHQ codebreaker's puzzle compendium, they're just there for flavour.

Everstorm

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Combination locks where the solution is carved in the wall right in front of you, and where there are only 4x4x4 combinations if you try the brute force cracking. Sequences you need to complete where a wrong guess doesn't reset the entire puzzle, making it perfectly possible to just click at random for a while and complete the sequence by accident. Timed puzzles where the timer is ridiculously long. Ingenious ancient locks that require you to simply pull a single lever which is in plain sight. The list of ridiculously easy "puzzles" in ESO is long, because this is not meant to be a challenging game.

I remember some slightly challenging puzzles just after release, but they nerfed them very quickly because people complained. One simple but instanced puzzle, I honestly can't remember if it was in ESO or some other game, required you to change the colors of three lights to match three other lights clearly visible behind them, but that was an obstacle for many. The area was full of people shouting "just tell me the solution already, like red-green-green", but the solution was different for each player, and it changed over time. You had to look at your own screen for two seconds and pay attention. That did not go over well with the average player, and soon the solution was made the same for everyone, and stopped changing.

Puzzles in single player games are going the same way. What could have been some mildly challenging Sudoku-type puzzles in Mass Effect: Andromeda were nerfed to literally nothing, giving you the option to just use a "decryption key" to crack any lock that was required to complete the main quest. Skyrim had plenty of combination locks where you could try all options faster than it would take you to backtrack to the place where the secret combination was revealed. The super secret password to the Railroad hideout in Fallout 4 was "Railroad".

Press X to win the game. Welcome to the future.

The lights one is in Stonefall. I get annoyed by the sheer stupidity each time I run a character through it.
But I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea. What I don't understand is why they put these water downed versions in. What's the point? Does anyone feel any sort of accomplishment when doing them? Why not just 'kill the Overseer' to get the key or password.

Danikat

I like puzzles in games and like the OP I find the ones in ESO disappointing. I remember looking forward to The Lightless Oubliette in Coldharbour because I'd heard it mentioned as one of the longer and more complicated puzzles, then I was disappointed when I finally got there and it just required you to push E on a pillar until it lights up, then repeat the process with a few more pillars. It takes a little while for each one to go through it's animation so it's not quick, which I realised afterwards is probably what they'd meant, but it's also not difficult to work out.

I don't remember talking about them with anyone who enjoys them. Most people seem to either find them too simple or don't want puzzles at all (or any type of challenge or activity except combat) and see them as an unnecessary distraction which should be kept as quick and simple as possible if they can't be left out entirely. I assume there must be a middle ground with people who think they get the difficulty just right and find them fun but as I said I don't remember ever talking to them about it.

It's not a big deal because there's plenty of other games I can play for interesting puzzles, and I like ESO in spite of the lack, but it does seem odd to keep including these half-hearted attempts, especially with NPCs who act like it's a major achievement to get through it.

(On the other hand that can be a nice break from all the condescending scholars assuming your character is too thick to care about anything they can't sell for ale money. At some point I want the option to respond that I'm a member in good standing of both the Psijic Order and the Antiquarians Guild and the freaking Arch Mage of the Mages Guild so yes, I do understand a thing or two about the value of ancient knowledge and yes I would quite like to help find these scrolls for their own sake and not just because you might pay me.)