7 Mages - turn-based blobber where you play a party of mages

[Reapa]

I hate the idiotic puzzels in this game. Now i'm stuck at some stupid dragon that blocks my path and kills my whole party if i get closer. I can't attack it. I can't use invisibility to sneak by. The hint spell doesn't say anything. What kind of moron makes such puzzels?

Have you already been to the city of bones and defended the village? If not, it might just be too early for that route. In case you didn't find the city of bones, it's

Spoiler

behind the second exit of labyrinth.

why the fuck doesn't the game tell me that? these fucking idiots know they have to get some stupid magical staffs, know that they are in the city of bones but can't tell me i need to go through the labyrinth again because that would spoil my walking around the whole game aimlessly wasting food and bumping into fucking one hit dragons. it's like telling me to find caius cosades without telling me where he lives. without the steam guy i wouldn't even know the labyrinth has 2 exits.

 

[V_K]

It's called "old-school".

 

[Reapa]

It's called "old-school".

It's a fucking buzzword that's supposed to excuse the fucking game designer's stupidity. Now i'm stuck in the city of bones. I got some banner. Planted it. A door opened. I fought some pushover terracota trash and the door closed behind me with only one direction left to go. Of course the path is blocked by some invincible ghosts. I hope i can sneak by with invisibility otherwise the game fucking sucks. Shit isn't old school. It's fucking linear.

 

[V_K]

The second half of the game is very linear, yes.
The ghosts are a cruel puzzle, I stumbled on the solution almost accidentally. It makes sense in retrospect, though.

Spoiler

You need to cast True Sight, then you'll be able to hit them.

Also, a trick I used in many of later levels was to leave one character near the level entrance and have him cast Teleport In if things go south.

 

[Reapa]

The second half of the game is very linear, yes.
The ghosts are a cruel puzzle, I stumbled on the solution almost accidentally. It makes sense in retrospect, though.

Spoiler

You need to cast True Sight, then you'll be able to hit them.

Also, a trick I used in many of later levels was to leave one character near the level entrance and have him cast Teleport In if things go south.

Motherfuckers! It only makes sense if the ghosts aren't really ghosts and you somehow know that. Otherwise it's like they copied the principle from a game with enemies using illusion magic but forgot to copy the fucking illusion magic mechanics and lore.
If things go south i just reload. Shit is tedious enough on mobile without splitting my party just in case.
It's puzzels like this that always make me think I'm encountering bugs instead of design and in a way i am. The game often makes no fucking sense.

 

[V_K]

Spoiler

It makes sense becaues if you think of horror stories, rather than fantasy, the ability to see ghosts is a psychic power that not everyone has (think 6th Sense or Lovecraft's From Beyond) - and the spell gives you that power.
Also, the spell description says that it allows you to see invisible, and the ghosts in their original form look quite similar to characters that have invisibility cast on them.

I guess it's a matter of personal preferences - I found the puzzles in the game to be quite logical and, a few notable excpetions notwithstanding, rather easy.

 

[Mustawd]

Spoiler

It makes sense becaues if you think of horror stories, rather than fantasy, the ability to see ghosts is a psychic power that not everyone has (think 6th Sense or Lovecraft's From Beyond) - and the spell gives you that power.
Also, the spell description says that it allows you to see invisible, and the ghosts in their original form look quite similar to characters that have invisibility cast on them.

I guess it's a matter of personal preferences - I found the puzzles in the game to be quite logical and, a few notable excpetions notwithstanding, rather easy.

He just called you dumb Reapa. You gonna take that?

 

[V_K]

Nah, compared to what kind of hints people are asking for on the official forums, Reapa does pretty well.

 

[Mustawd]

*sigh* Drama averted. What a let down.

 

[Reapa]

I'd call it a long stretch since it's not like i'm suddenly getting hit by something i can't see. I can see the ghosts just fine without the spell. First thing i did was try to fry them with a fireball. When that didn't work my thoughts were not 'omg i can't see them' but rather 'they must be immune to fire'. So then i tried the water spell and when that didn't work i cast enemy stats and the fucking stats spell said they were immune to mind magic!!! But i could even tell how much life they had left and some other numbers. It never even crossed my mind i couldn't see them. Also V_K said he himself found out the solution by accident. It may well be a matter of patience rather than smarts. Whenever i play such games if i can't find the solution myself fast enough i get the feeling i'm playing the devs and i look for one on the internet. More often than not it's something logic alone won't solve. This happens a lot with adventure games.

 

[Reapa]

Meanwhile the banners have colors for some reason and nothing seems to hint at why, whether it matters at all and if the colors matter where does each one have to be planted. Another fine example of trial and error while walking around like an idiot. Also some doors seem to get shut when you step on some bones which are always in the way. Of course the fucking hint spell is fucking useless once more. It tells me to watch my step... as if i had any way of influencing whether or not i step on them on my way to the doors. Maybe the pressure plates under the bones don't activate if i go through the tedium of moving my whole fuckin party of 7 over them one at a time...
EDIT: son of a bitch! Of course that didn't work. And there's no levitation spell.

 

[aweigh]

what about to type is not an attack, first off.

V_K enjoys Bradley-type puzzles, which I assume are present in this game from everything I've read. V_K, you gotta remember there are a lot of players, like myself, who don't enjoy these type of puzzles or omissions of information that force backtracking (another classic Bradley-ism). I also d not consider that "old school" I consider it annoying.

Maybe this guy just doesn't enjoy the Bradley-type puzzles in this game, V_K, and who can blame him. all that said remember i've not played this game in any serious capacity; i'm going by the exchanges between you to in this thread. Sounds similar to my rantings against the Wiz 5 and Wiz 6 puzzles (Bradley-isms) and how they detract from the dungeon crawling.

 

[Mustawd]

 

[aweigh]

btw, something like having to cast true sight in order to hit an enemy that is Gating the player (bad design; goes against real blobber design) is actually a more mature "puzzle" than anything Bradley could have ever hoped to conceive of; so I apologize to 7 Mages.

This exact same "scenario" is actually present in the Royal Tomb dungeon in Elminage: Gothic and I loved the idea behind it; except in Gothic the "ghost" wasn't Gating the player. See the difference?

That's the type of "puzzle" that requires intelligent thought from the player and intelligent implementation of resources by the designer.

My above point still remains the same tho. The part where Raeepa mentions having to backtrack a ton because of arbitrarily omitted information is 100% classic Bradley-ism and 100% bad design.

 

[V_K]

Meanwhile the banners have colors for some reason and nothing seems to hint at why, whether it matters at all and if the colors matter where does each one have to be planted. Another fine example of trial and error while walking around like an idiot. Also some doors seem to get shut when you step on some bones which are always in the way. Of course the fucking hint spell is fucking useless once more. It tells me to watch my step... as if i had any way of influencing whether or not i step on them on my way to the doors. Maybe the pressure plates under the bones don't activate if i go through the tedium of moving my whole fuckin party of 7 over them one at a time...
EDIT: son of a bitch! Of course that didn't work. And there's no levitation spell.

I think by this time in the game you should have figured out that if a level has two types of interactable objects, chances are they are connected in some way.

Spoiler

Stepping on bones locks the closest jaws. Planting a banner opens them. Both banner color and placement pad determine which jaws become open. Banners don't have to stay planted for the jaws to stay open, moreover a later puzzle requires replanting a certain banner into another pad.

Also, one-way passages have been a staple of the genre since, well, Wizardry. :D

 

[V_K]

Maybe this guy just doesn't enjoy the Bradley-type puzzles in this game, V_K, and who can blame him.

Well, the game in no dubious terms advertises puzzles as one of its main features, and I have written extensively in this thread about how puzzle-heavy it is, so it's not like he hasn't been warned...

having to backtrack a ton because of arbitrarily omitted information

That's called "exploration".

 

[aweigh]

that's called semantics.

 

[aweigh]

joking aside i think a logical rule of competent game design is to never unintentionally waste the player's time. obscuring one minute piece of information that is easy to miss by the majority of the playtesters (this is a scenario example, of course) which forces the player to waste their time going back through previously visited areas over and over without any clues, directions or gameplay reasons is flat-out bad design.

there should always be a reason for the player to go somewhere in the game and be productive inside the game world. any scenario in which the player finds themselves adrift at sea, so to speak, and not because they missed an obvious clue but because they missed something the majority of players can miss; that scenario is completely useless in terms of game design. there is literally nothing happening either for the player or for the game.

one small example: in Wizardry you are never without knowing where to go. You may be stuck in some inane puzzle or stuck in an area with overpowered enemies but you know that regardless of anything else your primary goal is to reach the next floor of the dungeon.

obviously you can deconstruct this 7 mages example as "well, the player also always knows he has to get to the next area"; but this isn't logically laid out for the player from everything i've read. From Raepa's account he played normally and because of bad design he was forced to spend a large amount of time not being able to achieve his primary goal.

also in wizardry there is also always a skinner-box element present that serves as a safe-guard against "being lost": fixed encounters. each fixed-encounter in Wizardry produces a chest with a random piece of loot inside so the player always, ALWAYS has motivation to actually explore the dungeon. THAT is actual exploration; in this context hunting for loot. In Raepa's account it seems that the more time he spent backtracking the more de-motivated he felt about the game and the more he lost faith in the authorial contract each developer/writer has with their public.

the game provided absolutely no hints whatsoever that the dragon was impassable because of a missed trigger (another piece of bad design, btw); again according to what's written in this thread. Game progression should NEEEEEEEEEEVER EVER reside exclusively on gating and/or binary flags. All of the game's mechanics and skills and systems and sub-systems and shit should be working in concert to always be avaialable for the player to use as a tool-box to progress in the game.

This next sentence is a very stupid suggestion but i type it only for you to visualize what i mean: imagine if one of Raepa's characters had a speech skill, perhaps draconian, which alerted the party to the nature of the encounter and that "something was missing". That's emergent gameplay. That's good game design. Not my suggestion SPECIFICALLY, but the concept behind my suggestion.

 

[V_K]

the game provided absolutely no hints whatsoever that the dragon was impassable because of a missed trigger

Actually, the dragon repeatedly tells you to turn back before incinerating you. If that's not a hint of a missed trigger, I don't know what is.
And by this point in the game there's only one other place left where you can go. Not to mention that most of the players would have probably encountered the cursed spring on their first visit to the labyrinth and have figured out that they'd need to bring their party to pass it.

*Actually, who am I kidding - most players would have asked on the forums the first time they got stuck in the labyrinth and learned that it has two exits long before finding the city of bones becomes a problem.

**On the other hand, the guy who gave me the map did pass the labyrinth by himself, so it's not exactly an impossibly hard puzzle.

 

[V_K]

It's a moot discussion, honestly - we'll never agree on what constitutes bad or good design because in my book bland dungeons with nothing to do other than fight and loot are one of the worst kinds of design there is.

 

[aweigh]

i agree, there is nothing worse than a bland dungeon with nothing tricky to do other than get into random encounters. it's one of the reasons i don't like elminage: original as much as i like elminage: Gothic. the dungeons in Original are quantity over quality and are all outdoors (though that second part is personal preference) with very little in the way of navigational skillsets required. most of the maps in Original are 20x20 square grids with 6 cells, one center-cell, and they all branch into each other. at least 50% of Original's maps are like that. the reason I praise the series so much is primarily because of Gothic, not the previous games.

and also because the battle system; the alchemy system; the spell system; the class changing system and the class-skills system are all the absolute best evolutions of classic wizardry 1-5 mechanics. they basically took the beating heart of wiz 1-5 and refined every single gameplay mechanic to its logical peak. however you are NEVER going to hear me praise any of the dungeons in Elminage: Original. The 2nd game has much better dungeons, and i've yet to play more than the beginning area of the 3rd game, but Gothic has some of the best dungeons in any Wiz-clone ever. absolutely zero filler there.

however i get the sense you want to passively-aggressively imply that *any* dungeon that doesn't feature meticulously implemented puzzles that gate the players' progression through it are "bland". on that we definitely disagree; i consider that to be detrimental to good dungeon design as it takes the focus away from navigation; the area in which early wizardries and elminage: gothic most excels at. Gothic did something right though (i mena, among many other things) by including "theme" dungeons that had light puzzles like the Royal Tomb but nothing even approaching Bradley-levels. Just enough to make them very memorable.

 

[V_K]

Let's just agree to disagree, I don't have time for pointless flame wars.

 

[Reapa]

You can always gate some loot behind weird puzzels. I enjoy the game a lot otherwise i'd have quit a long time ago. I just wish there was more to read in it. Some npcs with some lines about the areas the player has to go through would have been great. When those mages talked about the city of bones they could have mentioned the fucking labyrinth. Just planting some skulls in that cursed spring was not a very good clue. There was a skull in the 'tutorial' dungeon. Was that a clue the city of bones was maybe under the 'tutorial' dungeon? Also why cursed spring? Is the city of bones cursed? There's a difference between subtle and missleading. Then you have a party of 7 fucking mages so when a dragon tells you to go back it doesnt't automatically mean you should. In fact it's kind of stupid that it's the only thing you can do. You're not even allowed to attack it iirc.
EDIT: i almost forgot: the game sucks at itemization. Most of my party is still in underware and has the same type of weapon. There's just no reason to buy any armor. 7 mages pretty much kill everything with fire in one round. Also the only armor i've found so far was in the 'tutorial' dungeon which by the way was also the most enjoyable. Secret passages with some loot never get boring. That is exploration! By all means, put some puzzles in there but don't just forget about them. It seems to me they made the 'tutorial' dungeon with the most enthusiasm and then just threw up some extra maps for people to buy and given that the 'tutorial' is free and then you have to buy the rest it's also false advertising.

 

[V_K]

You can always gate some loot behind weird puzzels.

I know I'm the minority in that regards but personally I just don't find loot rewarding enough to bother. Ideally, you should have a choice - fight a battle, solve a puzzle, stealth your way through etc. But there aren't many games that do this.

Some npcs with some lines about the areas the player has to go through would have been great.

This I actually agree with, this game's predecessor, Gates of Skeldal, had a few "flavour" NPCs that could give you bits and pieces of lore.

When those mages talked about the city of bones they could have mentioned the fucking labyrinth. Just planting some skulls in that cursed spring was not a very good clue. There was a skull in the 'tutorial' dungeon. Was that a clue the city of bones was maybe under the 'tutorial' dungeon? Also why cursed spring? Is the city of bones cursed?

It's just typical blobber logic. At this point in the game the Labyrinth and the Dark Forest are the only areas you haven't fully explored. Which means the way to the City of Bones should be in one of them. And since the Dragon blocks your way in the Forest, that leaves the only possible option.
Concerning the cursed spring, the very fact that it is different from all other springs is a clue that there's something important behind it.

Spoiler

And the fact that you can't pass it without a party is a clue that this passage is important for the story.

Yes, it's all very meta and gamey - but I wouldn't call it misleading.

What I find more funny about the Labyrinth, is that if it's the only way to go between the village and the town, how the hell did those fucking peasants manage to go through? :D

 

[Reapa]

Meanwhile the banners have colors for some reason and nothing seems to hint at why, whether it matters at all and if the colors matter where does each one have to be planted. Another fine example of trial and error while walking around like an idiot. Also some doors seem to get shut when you step on some bones which are always in the way. Of course the fucking hint spell is fucking useless once more. It tells me to watch my step... as if i had any way of influencing whether or not i step on them on my way to the doors. Maybe the pressure plates under the bones don't activate if i go through the tedium of moving my whole fuckin party of 7 over them one at a time...
EDIT: son of a bitch! Of course that didn't work. And there's no levitation spell.

I think by this time in the game you should have figured out that if a level has two types of interactable objects, chances are they are connected in some way.

Spoiler

Stepping on bones locks the closest jaws. Planting a banner opens them. Both banner color and placement pad determine which jaws become open. Banners don't have to stay planted for the jaws to stay open, moreover a later puzzle requires replanting a certain banner into another pad.

Also, one-way passages have been a staple of the genre since, well, Wizardry. :D

I was asking which banner goes where since the game leaves it at trial and error with a whole bunch of backtracking. Also i could open a door with a banner but then i'd have to walk over the pressure plates and the door would close again. I guess i was too tired and sick of these annoyances to realize it's probably just a matter of leaving someone right in front of the door and then telleporting everyone after the banner had been planted.