josepezdj wrote:
But X, still, there are many senses for the concept 'difficulty'. IMHO a puzzle game's difficulty should be right in finding a solution after a certain statements have been already well-defined... it's like defining clearly the rules, set the scenario, make the player experience the "aha-moment"... Right there is where I find this game fascinating. Difficulty shouldn't be put in glitchy maneuvers, again only IMO.

I don't even see any fun or difficulty in non-glitchy but "bizarre" maneuvers, like based in timers, quick sequences in a short time, or very accurate angles of a rotating reflector cube while it is coming out and getting into 2 floor portals!

I mean difficulty in the sense of squeezing your brain to find the unique logical sequence of steps that will allow you to get to the exit... have you played Mevious PTI maps? damn, those are really puzzles!! They are so challenging because each takes you quite a while to find out what to do, the solution is not easy to find at a first sight, indeed, even when those maps are ridiculously small, you have to explore around even hours in some of them to figure out what to do and in which order.

Or Chander's maps... everything there is FAIR, it's only that he likes to find awesome new ways of playing with the puzzle elements...

Come on! let's try all to make good puzzles!

It's in the WIP section. Sicklebrick reward.

Personally I wouldn't play such a map, but as long as it's clearly labelled as such I don't see a problem with its existence; I'm sure there would be a market for it, albeit a limited one. Your map's description says 'This map is for people who can reportal, exfu glitch, and cube hop', which I think is fine. It's hardly your fault if I download it anyway then get pissed off about needing to do those things....

El Farmerino wrote:
Personally I wouldn't play such a map, but as long as it's clearly labelled as such I don't see a problem with its existence; I'm sure there would be a market for it, albeit a limited one. Your map's description says 'This map is for people who can reportal, exfu glitch, and cube hop', which I think is fine. It's hardly your fault if I download it anyway then get pissed off about needing to do those things....

Thank you for that insight. I'm glad everyone here on TWP is so polite and understanding... and junk.

josepezdj wrote:
But X, still, there are many senses for the concept 'difficulty'. IMHO a puzzle game's difficulty should be right in finding a solution after a certain statements have been already well-defined... it's like defining clearly the rules, set the scenario, make the player experience the "aha-moment"... Right there is where I find this game fascinating. Difficulty shouldn't be put in glitchy maneuvers, again only IMO.

I don't even see any fun or difficulty in non-glitchy but "bizarre" maneuvers, like based in timers, quick sequences in a short time, or very accurate angles of a rotating reflector cube while it is coming out and getting into 2 floor portals!

I mean difficulty in the sense of squeezing your brain to find the unique logical sequence of steps that will allow you to get to the exit... have you played Mevious PTI maps? damn, those are really puzzles!! They are so challenging because each takes you quite a while to find out what to do, the solution is not easy to find at a first sight, indeed, even when those maps are ridiculously small, you have to explore around even hours in some of them to figure out what to do and in which order.

Or Chander's maps... everything there is FAIR, it's only that he likes to find awesome new ways of playing with the puzzle elements...

Come on! let's try all to make good puzzles!

Ah yes of course. I wasn't arguing in favor of maps requiring ninja tricks. I'm completely in favor of presenting everything to the player and let him/her figure it out - a "fair-play" puzzle.

But there will still be people who won't like and will be frustrated by fair-play puzzles with high (logical) difficulty, maybe because they don't like over-working their brains (I'm not implying anything as to intelligence here, just that some people play for fun and may not enjoy overthinking)

So my question : would it be fair for those who don't enjoy such maps to downrate them, even if the nature of the maps is clearly mentioned in the description, just because it's not their idea of fun?

I really don't think so...

Well:

1/5 why was this even uploaded
2/5 cute you tried to map
3/5 good but needs improvements.
4/5 great
5/5 excellent.

Because I think portal 2 is a puzzle game. A map that's based around glitches could be a 1/5 "why was this even uploaded? It's not a puzzle, that's what the game is about."

3/5 is also a possible rating, "good but it needs improvements (it should be fixed so it can be solved without bugs)".

If I don't like a game I can still rate it. For example I could write a review about call of duty and conclude that I don't like the game because I don't like gameplay mechanics. Would a 5/10 rating from me be worse then someone who really likes the gameplay mechanics and give it an 9/10? I don't think so

Fair point. But again, I'm not at all talking about maps that use glitches, only the ones that are difficult puzzles and require various portal mechanics to solve.
I'm just curious as to what position would those people take who don't particularly enjoy the latter type of puzzles...

I'm not contesting for maps that exclusively require players to exploit certain properties of the source-engine, since then in essence they're no longer Portal 2 maps, merely maps made to run in the source engine.

Xtreger wrote:
Fair point. But again, I'm not at all talking about maps that use glitches, only the ones that are difficult puzzles and require various portal mechanics to solve.
I'm just curious as to what position would those people take who don't particularly enjoy the latter type of puzzles...

I'm not contesting for maps that exclusively require players to exploit certain properties of the source-engine, since then in essence they're no longer Portal 2 maps, merely maps made to run in the source engine.

Difficult maps that require you to think are my favorite kind.
Difficult maps that require bugs or annoying angles for lasers are my least favorite kind.

If you're talking about mechanics like flings, funnel replacement and those kind of things: yea, I love diversity in test elements and puzzles!

Lpfreaky90 wrote:
Xtreger wrote:

Fair point. But again, I'm not at all talking about maps that use glitches, only the ones that are difficult puzzles and require various portal mechanics to solve.
I'm just curious as to what position would those people take who don't particularly enjoy the latter type of puzzles...

I'm not contesting for maps that exclusively require players to exploit certain properties of the source-engine, since then in essence they're no longer Portal 2 maps, merely maps made to run in the source engine.

Difficult maps that require you to think are my favorite kind.
Difficult maps that require bugs or annoying angles for lasers are my least favorite kind.

If you're talking about mechanics like flings, funnel replacement and those kind of things: yea, I love diversity in test elements and puzzles!

I think laser puzzles with angles depend on how it's presented. The first test in space gardens used this in a very nice way, if I do say so myself.

I personally would never downrate a map simply for being too difficult for me, although I would do so for being obscure (i.e. using hidden, hard-to-see portal surfaces, really precise laser angles or anything that relies purely on trial-and-error until you get lucky). I'm not a huge laser puzzle fan in general; they can be good if done right, but a room with 4 redirection cubes and 20 laser relays all over the place is a sure fire way to get me to quit your map.

This whole discussion does bring up a major beef I have with the way the Workshop rating system works - most people don't rate a map unless they finish it, meaning that the more difficult a map is the less ratings it's likely to get. Now, from what I can tell, your rating out of 5 on the Workshop is as much based on the amount of upvotes you get as it is on the up/down ratio. I can see the reasoning behind this, in a sense, but it means that most of my favourite maps never seem to get off 3 stars...

Back on topic, I guess it's a matter of explaining to your audience what kind of map you're making. I loved grayarea's Ignition, for example, but if the description had read 'a short map of medium difficulty' I would have probably downvoted it anyway for making me feel like an idiot. Likewise the OP's glitch-based map - if he labels it as such then I know not to play it, and therefore have no problem with it.

Lpfreaky90 wrote:
For example I could write a review about call of duty and conclude that I don't like the game because I don't like gameplay mechanics. Would a 5/10 rating from me be worse then someone who really likes the gameplay mechanics and give it an 9/10? I don't think so.

Fair point, but then, that's different from saying 'therefore COD games should stop getting published'. For my own part, the fact that I didn't like MW2 at all was enough to dissuade me from buying MW3, but I'm not about to rag on anyone who enjoyed both games.

I would like to note that I am capable of creating tests with an actual puzzle. When it came to this my map, I just got creator's block and stuck with the glitch idea. My good map with a puzzle is in my signature.

I think you guys are getting lost in the verbiage here.

To me, a map that requires glitching, and a map that is difficult, and a map that is frustrating are all three totally separate, but not mutually exclusive, things. It's possible for a map to exhibit zero or more of these and still be a "bad map".

I like difficult maps; I like maps that make me sit and think about the solution. The best kind of difficulty maps are ones that make me feel like a genius when I've beaten them. The final map of Space Gardens is a great example of what I consider challenging. I dislike frustrating maps, typically because the reason these maps are frustrating is that they do a poor job of directing the player or a poor job of "explaining" the elements at play. In a lot of ways, what makes a map "fun difficult" and "frustrating difficult" all comes down to the timing of when I as a player am able to understand and execute the puzzle.

Maps that require glitching are an entirely separate beast altogether. I think a map that requires you to use engine glitches in order to complete it is a "bad map". While I recognize that there is an audience for these sort of things, you're still excluding the huge and vast majority of Portal 2 players by requiring your map to use these techniques in order to complete it.

I definitely think that maps that require engine glitching in order to compete should advertise themselves as such for two reasons. For one, the people who like doing that will be able to find it more easily. But two, more importantly, players like myself who have no idea what these engine glitches are or how to complete them will know to avoid your map, rather than spend X amount of time trying to complete it using standard portaling techniques and ultimately failing through no fault of our own. I have and will go fucking thermonuclear on someone's map if the reason I can't beat it is because I don't know how to glitch the engine, and the map didn't warn me of such ahead of time.

I don't think maps that require glitching techniques are difficult in the slightest bit (or at least, aren't difficult because they require glitching), and my frustration from them stems from requiring some sort of meta knowledge that I shouldn't need to have to complete your puzzle. Or rather, my frustration is at the mapper for being unable to create a normal map and feel like they need to introduce some sort of artificial difficulty into their puzzle.

If you want to be a good mapper, if you want people to play your maps, then stop worrying about engine glitches. I have no respect for mappers who think introducing artificial difficulty into their map makes it interesting or gives it replay value.

I totally agree Very well said.

npc_msleeper_boss wrote:
...I like difficult maps; I like maps that make me sit and think about the solution. The best kind of difficulty maps are ones that make me feel like a genius when I've beaten them. The final map of Space Gardens is a great example of what I consider challenging. I dislike frustrating maps, typically because the reason these maps are frustrating is that they do a poor job of directing the player or a poor job of "explaining" the elements at play. In a lot of ways, what makes a map "fun difficult" and "frustrating difficult" all comes down to the timing of when I as a player am able to understand and execute the puzzle...

Well then this and the previous replies give a fairly good estimate of the general co-census, which is what I wanted. Because I've seen instances where people don't like a difficult map even though it gives proper direction, nothing is hidden, etc., i.e. a "fair-play" difficult map in every way.
Maybe the frustration arises because one wasn't able to solve it I've been there myself...

A map can be difficult to the point of hate-fucking me and and I can still enjoy it. It's an art really, there's no formula for making a map both difficult and fun. It all comes down to execution, payoff, and lots of testing. The feeling like you've not just completed the puzzle, but conquered it. As long as I feel like I solved a puzzle rather than mashed rocks together and managed to beat it by luck, then odds are I'll have fun.

I used to speedrun the maps before I started mapping. So I don't have a problem with all these glitches and things. But playing a map which requires you to do all these things can be boring and frustrating. I love clever puzzles, which give me these awesome "aha moments".

If you are looking for some challenge, I think speedruning an actual map is more entertaining than going through the chamber which requires you to bhop, do exfu glitch, wall reportal and other things, because you are breaking mapper's intended solution (that is actually useful, because you can provide feedback to mapper and tell him/her about the skip). As msleeper said before:

npc_msleeper_boss wrote:
Can you upload it? Sure. Will we remove it? No. Will we feel sorry for you when everyone tells you it's an awful map? Not a chance.

I am going to try out your map and see how it is.

npc_msleeper_boss wrote:
The best kind of difficulty maps are ones that make me feel like a genius when I've beaten them. The final map of Space Gardens is a great example of what I consider challenging.

portal2tenacious wrote:
I think laser puzzles with angles depend on how it's presented. The first test in space gardens used this in a very nice way, if I do say so myself.

Thanks