Rant about Caves

I barely tolerate the cave maps as they are...but when you have a bad cave map AND a defeat all, it just makes me want to log off and wait for the autocomplete to recharge.

I really hate that one Arachnoid cave that has the web traps in it. Little areas that don't look different from any other Arachnoid cave except going near it casts a web grenade on your, your pets, and any escorts as well. Grrrr....

What you did there: I see it.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

I think you misread that. I prefer Paragon City because of two reasons:

1. It's the only side of the game which feels like a HUGE amount of unnecessary work has been put into. There are TONS of zones, and those zones are HUGE. We have an entire zone devoted to just a power station and its surrounding industrial complex. City of Villains has the Hell Forge, which could fit several times over in just the Gordon Trench. I realise "unnecessary" effort is, by its very nature, unnecessary, but to me it gives a sense of luxury. No, we don't need all those zones. I also don't need two TV sets in the house when I'm capable of watching just one, but I like to have two TV set, and in just the same vein, I like zones and locations that aren't necessary.

City of Villains feel like the poor man's version of City of Heroes. Some call it "refined." I call it "shareware." Yes, there's more "point to the mile," as it were, but all that does is make me feel like the luxuries were skipped because there wasn't enough time and money to add them in. Which was, as a point of fact, the case. Every time I see a game clearly and obviously cutting corners to cut costs, it bothers me.

And Praetoria is even worse for almost 90% of its land mass. It's entirely small, again restricted to islands with no illusion of a greater city beyond the zone boundaries, and almost the entire place is pinted the same sterile white and gold colour scheme. It's almost like I'm playing Mirror's Edge. Seriously, go look at the TPN building and tell me it doesn't feel like that. I realise that's kind of the point, and for what it represents - a totalitarian, sterile society - it works very well. What I take issue with is the notion that this is somehow objectively superior to the rest of the game and that it should be cloned over that, as well. I disagree. Praetoria's street layout is indeed slightly superior to that of Paragon City and VASTLY superior to that of the Rogue Isles, but the actual building design is beyond boring. Flat grey surfaces with flat glass surfaces and not a 3D detail in sight. Ugh...

I disagree. The old cave maps are clearly and obviously more complex than the newer grey lab maps simply by virtue of a more complex structure of loops, intersections and dead ends. That's very much the definition of "complex." As for more "thoughtful," no, they very much aren't, unless you want them to be. However, they benefit from more of a focused thought process and situational awareness if you were inclined to put that in. Let me explain.

A linear instance does not require the use of your map. Ever. You can simply proceed from corridor to door to door to corridor by visual cues alone. There is no navigation required within the map, because you're essentially stuck on a rail with one solitary path to follow. A "webwork" instance, by contrast, more or less requires the use of a map, both to know where you've been and to know where you're supposed to go. If you were so inclined, you could just grab the left wall and keep walking until you either blunder into your objective, but even then that only works in a tree-structure environment, whereas many maps are more complex than that, placing their objectives inside of the outer perimeter where you have to look for it.

Now, believe me when I say I know something about this. My diploma project was writing a Java programme to trace through graphs built up from real building plans. There are methods for finding the shortest path from start to objective, but the optimal ones, at least the ones I found, really aren't applicable to human exploration, and even the ones that are still require you to work a map to know where you've been so you don't keep walking in circles. And, yes, some cave maps are sufficiently complicated to where this CAN be a problem. Complicated enough, in fact, that you can get lost in them completely and utterly without a map.

Now, I don't know about you. Maybe you have a better sense of direction than I do and you don't need a map for anything ever. Maybe you're good at keeping a heading and maybe you're good at dead reckoning. I like to think I'm decent at it, giving me the ability to predict dead ends and corridors that will loop me back to where I've been before I explore them. But even if you are, the act of tracing through a non-tree structure map (i.e. a map which has no loops) is one of the more fun aspects of City of Heroes and City of Villains instances.

I love maps which are non-linear, I love maps which split off into several paths which go through different rooms, whereupon several of them converge with each other, only for them all to re-converge later on. There is nothing I enjoy more than a webwork of tunnels spidering their way through a map, giving the feeling of more of a "complex," rather than of a "path."

And again, I disagree completely. There's nothing more monotonous than blue cave maps, and I love them to death because almost every single blue cave map is delightfully complicated. If grey labs had a structure more complicated than ONE SINGLE PATH then I would be inclined to be more involved with my time in them. As it stands, I can play through these maps with my brain turned off, because it isn't necessary. You can write a dirt-simple AI to trace through those maps in a day, and it would succeed in all but one layout.

Intersections are what make maps interesting, and grey labs do not have intersections. Oh, they have corridor pieces that LOOK like intersections, but when all doors but the one you're supposed to head through are locked, it's still a linear piece just the same. To me, grey maps are boring because they require precisely ZERO situational awareness, to say nothing of the map. About the only place the map is actually useful is in that one huge cell block room, and only because the room is so big with line of sight so broken up.

I've played Half-Live. I'm well aware of how developers hide linear path progression. It doesn't make it any less obvious when all you ever do is find the one path that will take you forward. It doesn't have to be this way, however. Even Half-Live occasionally sends you down branching paths, even if it's just two dead ends with plot devices at the end, such as the Fuel/Oxy/Power obstacle in Blast Pit, though admittedly I can't think of the same happening in Half-Life 2 or its Episodes. But even they aren't as bad as Final Fantasy 13.

All that is to say that, yes, the Praetorian tunnels are impressive... The first five times, about as long as it takes you to see all the tileset pieces. But the maps themselves are boring to a level I cannot describe. I go into a room, and ALL I care about in this room is finding where the "exit" is, for there is one and only one and nothing else in the room really matters. I don't have to look at anything else, because there are no other exist, and because rooms are so big and empty that I'd see a glowie if there were one from any point in the room. It's like spending some time to learn all 26 letters of the English alphabet, and then being given a book of knock-knock jokes. You pretty much know how they're going right from the start.

As a matter of fact, I find it a little insulting that this is what maps have been reduced to. Are we THAT unwilling to actually play this game that we expect everything to be served to us to trip over inadvertently? Are we that bothered by crossroads that we can't bother to just pick one way and explore it? So maybe it's a dead end. So what? It's exploration, it's combat, it's City of Heroes. Isn't that what the game is about? Because surely it can't be about clicking on a door, then clicking on a glowie, then clicking on Exit. Occasionally, maybe, but all the time?

Believe me when I say that I don't talk about "dumbing down" of a game lightly, having been on the receiving end of such remarks in the past. But even I have to draw the line SOMEWHERE. Maps don't need to be this simple. There's no need for it. We have a map, we have a compass... Is it too much to ask that these be useful from time to time? Show of hands: when was the last time you looked at your compass?

I hope you're wrong, I really do. Because you're treading incredibly dangerous grounds here. "I have a short time to play and I don't want my objectives to be impeded for me" runs almost contrary to what a game IS. If the developers were so inclined, they could remove all impediments from the game and just have us click a button to "win," but I'm sure no-one wants that. Games are not like the real world. There's nothing physically preventing them from giving us everything for free. But the cornerstone of game design is intentionally placing impediments in our path to success, intentionally introducing obstacles to overcome. Obviously, how "challenging" those obstacles should be is subject to debate, but what is very much not subject to debate is that these obstacles should, in fact, exist.

In this game, we have enemies to fight as one of the primary obstacles. Can you not see how your argument can apply to them, as well? I only have 5 minutes to play today, so I don't want to have to fight to my objective. I shouldn't have to face these enemies, I should just be allowed to go to my glowie and click it. I dare say the developers disagree with this, given what they've done to prevent Stalkers from doing just that.

You assert that this is not a maze game. I ask "says who?" It has been a "maze game" since City of Heroes launch, at least for some definition of the term "maze game." I'm not talking about some obscure confounding labyrinth here. If I wanted to be especially "hardcore" about it, I could dump you in that one elaborate cave map and disable your map and your compass, and have the game spin you around every 30 seconds just so you lose your heading. THAT would be a maze game. As long as you have a map, as long as you have a compass and, might I add, as long as you have the Reveal power, what "mazes" are we talking about? There is all of ONE overly complex cave map and all of ONE overly complex Oranbega map, which is a copy of that same cave map anyway. Everything else is practically simple, it's just not as simple as the linear hell that is Praetoria.

You know what I find funny? People complain about the Atta map, but it's not complicated in the slightest. It's just big. But you can left wall and start killing everything along the way. It might take a long time, but you WILL come across your objective, because the Atta map is a simple tree structure that's trivial to traverse. Incidentally, to find atta, you need to go straight, straight then right and you'll skip probably 80% of the map.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

See, THIS could make for a sinister maze, I would imagine. Identical, indistinguishable hallways, especially with those graphics, no compass, no map, no way to mark explored terrain... Yeah, that would be evil. It's what turned me off Wolfenstein 3D. At least Doom had a map.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

To be fair, they did try... Kind of. It's just that after so many years, we've stopped seeing them. For instance, a lot of the dead ends in blue labs end with actual elevators. We just can't click on them. A lot of Office hallways end in a "rec room" sort of setup, with a couple of cafeteria tables, a vending machine and a bulletin board. And a lot of other dead ends end with what I refer to as "dead end rooms," which are basically rooms with only one entrance. Not all of them are special, of course, and even if they were, there aren't nearly enough to keep them fresh.

Well, obviously I'd prefer that. Who wouldn't? The thing, though, is that the more effort you put into any particular location and building, the less land area you actually make, which is blatantly evident in City of villains zones and beyond. Yes, they are more detailed as a general thing and yes, they have far more interesting things in them. They are also smaller and far less numerous. And while there is indeed something to be said about quality over quantity, quantity in itself has a particular quality when it comes to terrain.

Everything in City of Villains looks small and crammed together, in an almost cartoonish, unrealistic way. It's like how Spire would supersize your cities into cartoonish icons if you zoom in too far, giving you a small planet with a few big, toy-like cities. This is how City of Villains feels to me. Without any "wasted space," the world begins to feel unrealistic, at least in my eyes. It feels like someone took the real world and cut out everything in-between the the "important" buildings, so you end up with a police station across the street from the bank which is right next to city hall, which is back-to-back with your headquarters, which is across the street from the shopping centre and so on.

When I visited London nearly 10 years ago, the tour bus spent upwards of half an hour from when it came into the city to when it reached where we were going. We passed by a lot of nondescript buildings along the way, and to this day I am amazed at how big London felt, me who comes from a city of what... 200 000? If that. When I look at city of Villains, I see important building, important building, important building and oh! Important building! When I look at Paragon City, I see... Just a city. It's just buildings, as a city should be.

Again, what if all of them were unique and interesting? Sure, even better! But that's just not doable.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think a lot of our disagreement here stems from a difference in preference, and a difference in opinion about where the fun in this game comes from. You enjoy the process of finding your way to your objectives, and I don't. Or at least not in the ways that this game presents that challenge.

I think most of what you said above is correct. I didn't mean to overstate my case when I talked about not having much time to play. What I meant more precisely was that when I get on to play, I want to have fun as quickly and as frequently as possible, which leads to the can of worms of what is fun. There's two ways to answer that, one is personal preference and one is based on ludology. Without writing a treatise or pretending to know more that I do, it seems that our impasse comes from our difference in enjoyment of the process of navigating a complex space per se. You enjoy it, I don't. Your observation about obstacles in games comes from ludology and is, I think, completely correct. Of course games aren't games if there aren't any obstacles or challenges.

The only thing I'd argue about, then, is about whether a maze game is appropriate for this format, or whether it's executed well when it does happen. I think you bring up a good example:
It's true, it's not complicated, but it is frickin' huge. The problem is that it doesn't do anything with the space. Having a cave full of bad guys to punch is fun, but there's a limit to that after which most players are going to want some variation. There's a principle, which I think is correct, that states that it's good for players to have forced, productive down time and variation in their activities. We could create a map that was as big as Paragon City and fill it with enemies, and tell the player to kill a boss which is somewhere random on the map. Without other indicators, finding him will take quite a long time, and without other gimmicks most of that time will just be spent beating up spawn after spawn of the same enemy group. Now, I really enjoy defeating spawns, and that's a large part of what this game offers - but it has to take place within certain reasonable constraints so that it doesn't become too repetitive. The size of the map and the variation of the encounters are factors in ensuring that players don't get bored of doing what is this game's core strength.

The central question to this discussion as I see it, then, is - does a semi-complicated map with dead ends and long forking paths provide the type of variation that helps relieve repetition. The way this game implements it now - especially on things like the Atta cave map - I would say no. The reason for me is that I don't find any enjoyment in the maze per se. If you put me on a lab map with branching elevators and I take the wrong one down to the end and have to double back, it's exactly the same to me as if it were a linear map with an equivalent length. The map wasn't varied, there were no additional challenges, and worse still, I spent at least half that distance not even killing bad guys, becasue I cleared them all on the way there. If you enjoy navigating that space per se, then I can understand why you'd want more maps like that. But for me it detracts from the actual game of defeating spawns, completing objectives, and progressing an arc.

One way in which non-linear maps would be enjoyable to me is if there were interesting objectives at each path's end. For instance, I have to defeat 5 bosses, and they're spread out along each end of the Atta cave (I forget how many ends the Atta cave actually has). Note, though, that these can't just be named bosses that are otherwise unremarkable, but should each be interesting and unique. It should also be clear that those bosses are distributed in that way - I know ahead of time at that point that I have to visit each cul-de-sac of the map. But what I'm not interested in is having to find them. This game would need to elaborate on the "find them" game for me to enjoy that as an activity - for instance, a clue game where I can try to determine where to go based on evidence, and a consequence for looking in the wrong place.

So I didn't mean to imply that the game should be made easier, or that I want to bypass obstacles because I don't have enough time. What I want is for the game to focus on and improve its core strenghts and clear away common secondary elements that the devs aren't focused on polishing. I would put the "maze game" at the top of that list, because in its mediocre state, I think it detracts from the core game. Do a couple things really well instead of doing a bunch of things poorly. I think the new maps and Praetoria in general demonstrate that the devs are doing that, because maps have become more linear while missions become more interesting and diverse, and while stories improve and become more engaging.

Another problem with huge maps, especially at low levels--there's a very good chance you'll level in the mission and end up fighting -1s for the rest of it. Or even -2s or -3s if you level multiple times.

You bring up one central point here - what does the "maze game" add? Does it add variety, for some definition of the word? You don't feel it does, because it's all the same to you what path you take to your objective, as long as you take A path in general. To me, however, this misses out on one of the most entertaining parts of your typical dungeon crawl, which is the exploration of terrain. Let me give you a bit of context:

When it comes to "hack-n-slash RPGs," I cut my teeth on the original Diablo. This was a game which rewarded two things before all else - greed and aggression. The more monsters you killed before descending to the lower dungeon, the higher your level and the better your gear, generally speaking. The more corridors you explored before progressing the game to new gear, the more money you amassed by pickups and vendor dumps, with which to buy said new gear. As such, the game rewarded me for exploration, for rooting through that damn church basement for every last coin and every last skeleton, because I didn't want to descend down unprepared.

Over the years, I've developed an affinity for finding all the dead ends, all the loops and all the "other" stuff BEFORE I reached the boss at the end of the dungeon, largely because many games will kick you out of the dungeon when it's "done," preventing you from finishing your exploration after the fact. I will almost always leave the "right" way for last whenever I am able to recognise it, and will instead look for paths that look like they lead to dead ends or that look like they'll loop back on each other. I've gotten pretty good at spotting those even on new maps.

To me, this exploration of fog of war is what defines a dungeon crawl. Take this sense of exploration away, and you reduce the game to a beat-em-up, which while decent, isn't superior to a dungeon crawl in my book. As long as I feel like I'm the one moving forward and the one picking my path, the game attains an extra quality that is absent on linear-structure environments.

Think of it like this: I would always pick the structure of Resident Evil 2 over that of Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 2 has a deep sense of exploration and belonging, it does a good job of convincing me I'm actually trying to map out and get through these locations. Resident Evil 4's locations, by contrast, feel much more like "stages." You start at one end and kill stuff and flip switches until you get to the other end. There may or may not be some variety along the way, but there's still only one way defined for you by the game.

Does this add more variety to the game? Yes, in my opinion, it does, and for the simple fact that it changes the TYPE of game we're playing. City of Heroes' original missions feel like I'm playing Dino Crisis. Praetoria's missions feel like I'm playing Dino Crisis 2. Just in case that makes any sense. In essence, mixing in a dungeon crawl in with the beat-em-up game provides the kind of variety that a slightly deeper experience brings. It feels less like I'm more part of the experience as I pick my path and I try to figure out my surroundings. It gives me something more to do, "another game" on top of the existing game, as it were. It gives me a fun activity to do when I'm not fighting things. It gives me something to break the monotony of just killing the same few enemies over and over.

Praetoria's maps are gorgeous, but they bore me to death. The part of my brain which helps me maintain orientation in 3D space sits completely unused, because it isn't needed. At no point do I have to think to myself "Wait, if I go left, it feels like I'll swing right back to that intersection I passed a while back!" or "There's no way the boss is in there. I already circled around the outside, so it has to be a dead end." I could, but this is never needed, because as long as I know where I came from, the game will lead me to the end by the nose. I enjoy having dead ends and loops because they give me the illusion of non-linearity without actually burdening me with the problems non-linearity brings with it. It's still a linear game, but it pretends to be non-linear, and it does it fairly well.

That said, the Atta map is not a good example of this. Because it's a tree structure, you can just grab the left wall and keep going. As long as you know where on the wall you got to and which direction you were moving in, you will always see every part of it. It just takes a LONG time, and I know that few people beside me are that determined. That map, both against Atta and against Odysseus' generals, tends to take me between two and three hours to clear out completely, and tends to give me several levels in the process, but that doesn't make it a good map. Especially not when it takes part in those damn caves. Yes, the garbage is interesting, but if it went from cave to sewer to cave to sewer several times, it would be much more interesting. As it stands, it's just literal miles of tunnels and not much else.

I enjoy maps that, on the macro scale, arrange themselves in grid patterns. In fact, this is precisely how I treat outdoor city maps. I'll start along the outer wall until I reach the boundary between two city blocks, then circle around the first block, then explore inside that, then move on to the next block. This allows me to cover lots of land area in a way that is non-boring, basically by dividing it into smaller sections. A map that splits off into a grid, such as that one cave map, is also interesting, because it throws me into unfamiliar terrain, then loops me back to familiar ground anyway. It's an exercise for the mind, trivial as it may be, and I enjoy it very much indeed. You don't really need anything more than that for a "maze game." All you need is a maze. Just like this. Simple, basic, and a linear maze, to boot. You don't need complicated game mechanics to pull this off and, more than anything else, it doesn't require special skills to solve. It doesn't even require all that good an eye.

That's all it comes down to. I say this is "dumbing the game down" because it removes an aspect of the game that I personally enjoy, and replaces it with nothing in return.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Now lately in my mind I've been thinking that an interesting skirt around elevators going up in one floor increments would be to make more than just elevators as a means of ascending or descending a building.
Things could be used like large air ducts, windows to the fire escape, stairwells, maintenance, and even scaling up ladders in empty elevator shafts.
Also, a friend once tried to claim maybe we go up more than one story. ... That argument died when we went up the next elevator, and I saw the plaque reading that we only ascended one floor.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

That's a great deal more stylized than is useful. And remember that the caves in CoX are _abandoned mines, which look more like this:

or this:

Or this mine (too big to include here)
Or this (Lulu tunnel of the Lone Jack mine near Mount Baker):

Or this (the entrance to a mine tunnel of the Clifton Iron Mine in the Adirondacks):

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And to keep those handicapped from wandering about. That's why they'll have two half flights of stairs between the elevators that each connect to one floor above or below. (My brother's in a wheelchair, so the frequent flights of stairs required to access most of any floor tends to catch my attention.)

Actually i just realized the true reason for the inconvenient design: not to stop the Rikti, who can easily teleport or run up and down stairs. No, it's to thwart the inevitable Dalek invasion.

unfortunately after a month of play they are anyway