I agree with everyone who has pointed the finger at the hints system.
It does give hints on the lowest setting.
Why would anyone ever need a walkthrough when the hint system, on the highest setting, should be adequate? I can only guess that it is not. So the hint system needs to be revised for people that want the game harder so we get fewer hints and those bizarre souls that pay for a game but don't really want to play it so they get more hints.
With a working hint system, people can choose their level of gameplay.
I would recognise difficulty as "I wasted n hours not knowing what to do". So far I have yet to do that with this season. I definitely did that with season 2 though- I even turned the hints onto maximum to get myself out of it (it did essentially become a walkthrough). Shame on me, I know. But it is by that criterion I know season 3 is too easy.
No, you got it wrong - it's one single path through the game, but the easier one contains a few shortcuts. The programming is not really an issue. For example, 303 could have used a few more item puzzles - in that case you set up new items, add them to some event matrix (or whatever technique Telltale is using), and you're set. Testing can get more complex, yes, and new items need artwork, create extra dialog lines, maybe even cutscenes, etc. But I didn't say it wasn't extra work.
100% agree.
EDIT:
It could only be a matter of including more useless items and hotspots in the games. As was said by thom-22, the last episode was mostly about surveying the game world. Then, the small amount of interactive stuff does everything else.
For example. In the "egyptian" part of the last episode, you have only three pictures and the Rhinoplasty. You know that every picture is gonna be useful for something. You don't have to think what of them could be useful, in order not to try and try and try again. You can try with everyone because all of them do something. I think that's one of the main things that make the games too easy for some of us.
The other is probably design larger chains of tasks in order to solve a puzzle, not only one thing for each item (again talking about the 3rd episode and the egyptian part). But this could be a deeper change, and increase the difficulty of the games even with the hint system.
But the first comment doesn't change anything essential in the games. And the hint system could help to separate the things that are useful from things that aren't.
I would recognise difficulty as "I wasted n hours not knowing what to do".
How about, "I spent n hours exploring thoroughly, analyzing dialogs for clues, and exercising the logical and creative powers of my brain searching for that elusive key to advancement until inspiration struck, the non-obvious became evident and I emerged satisfyingly triumphant"? Regardless, n was pretty close to zero in TSMB.
It could only be a matter of including more useless items and hotspots in the games. As was said by thom-22, the last episode was mostly about surveying the game world. Then, the small amount of interactive stuff does everything else.
Yup. Basically if something was clickable, there was around a 95% chance I had to use it for something. So it was then a case of trying each of Max's superpowers. It was kind of like having an inventory of 3 items which had to be used over and over again in very predictable ways to complete the game.
That's the thing really; there IS an inventory, it's an inventory of superpowers. As much as they are trying to "move away from inventory puzzles" we have to accept that the inventory has just been switched from Sam to Max. Except that Max can only "pick up" a very tiny number of items. And these items are being repeated from game to game.
In fact, Max's inventory is more like having just a small handful of verbs *without* items!
Ok, we cut the sliders and mazes away (and I am all for it). Then we cut inventory based puzzles. Now all that it left from gameplay is walking around and dialogues, enviromental puzzle now and there. Walking around is not much of fun. Enviromental puzzles are great, but hardly can support whole game with gameplay. Dialogues, when written well, are great, but rarely acted well by voiceovers actors. And there are very expensive thus when we will set heavily talkative adventure as a standard, there will be few of them around because few studios can afford good actors in good studio.
For me adventures are about (good) inventory based puzzles. Story is important, but when I want realy good story, I read a book instead. Mood is important too, but moody game without gameplay it´s just annoying interactive movie forcing me to click on several areas on each screen.
Or maybe I am just missing the point Smiley
Well, the big problem is that powers DIDN'T replace inventory in 301 or 302.
Why 303 is so darn easy is because in 303 it DOES. No 4th dimension thinking with teleporting apes or moving reels, nope, just a very limited inventory (rhinoplasty) which is a pain to browse through.
If it wasn't packed as a "power" and fancy Max look I bet this inventory system would have induced a riot, since it's a gigantic step back from the inventory system of the games of old (or even the past seasons).
Powers shouldn't replace inventory (especially if powers = worse inventory) but they should work together to bring more unique solutions to puzzles...
I think they're a bit easy - but I had way less trouble with the older seasons. I've only got stuck once or twice in season one or two, but I had to think about a few of the puzzles in 302. 303 was waaaay too easy though.
What would you think of incredibly difficult superfluous side puzzles that didn't affect the outcome of the game but gave you a cool cutscene or something if you finished them?
What do you think would be a good reward for finishing a puzzle that's unnecessary and far more difficult that normal?
The puzzle ITSELF would be a reward. The idea that a person needs a carrot on a stick to pursue at least halfway competent gameplay is simply ridiculous. Gameplay isn't a chore that you go through in order to reach the cool cinematics and quips, it is the very product you are selling. In this latest season, it feels to me like Telltale has mistaken the icing for the cake, and this has lead to something of an incredibly unsatisfying game. Maybe tubs of pure icing sell better, though. I don't have the numbers in front of me, managing the finances isn't my job. At least, not Telltale's finances.
I think what Season 3 could use (for PC and Mac) would be acheivements (either ingame or on Steam) because I know that for PS3 There are trophies, so it shouldn't be that hard.
The puzzle ITSELF would be a reward. The idea that a person needs a carrot on a stick to pursue at least halfway competent gameplay is simply ridiculous. Gameplay isn't a chore that you go through in order to reach the cool cinematics and quips, it is the very product you are selling. In this latest season, it feels to me like Telltale has mistaken the icing for the cake, and this has lead to something of an incredibly unsatisfying game.
You've missed the point. They want to make the games accessible to newbies, and Psy is asking what is a good way to make the games accessible while still including puzzles to allow hardcore adventure gamers to solve satisfyingly difficult puzzles.
On that note, I still think the way MI2 and CMI did it is the best way to achieve that. Lite and normal modes, cut some of the easier puzzles for the easy modes and everyone can be happy.
I came into adventure games late. Very late. I've been a movie/TV/animation geek for far, far longer. Telltale's games drew me in with the quality of their writing, characters, and storytelling, and that is still a huge chunk of where I derive enjoyment from their releases.
Yes. You could say I once thought of the puzzles in adventure games as the icing on the cake rather than the other way around.
Once. Thought.
Although I can't say I see it as the other way around either.
As I said, I'm going to be honest. I can still find the overall experience enjoyable so long as the writing and story are top notch. While I continue to have those to latch onto, I will be more or less happy. Maybe even thrilled, if something particularly spectacular happens story-wise (there's been a good chunk of that in The Devil's Playhouse, IMO).
But. When writing/story becomes a crutch for the puzzles to hobble along with, instead of the two acting in tandem, there is a problem. That's where Season 3 of Sam & Max is falling flat for me, when about 90% of everything else I can shamelessly describe with the non-term "lovelovelove." (Although I still think 302 was a temporary step in the right direction, if still a touch too easy for its own good.)
Don't get me wrong. I understand Telltale's trying a lot of new and different things at once this season, on nearly all fronts. Quite a few gutsy moves and dashes of experimentation that I can't help but admire, with an impressive amount of success in their respective executions. I also don't envy Telltale's position of trying to strike a good balance between difficulty and approachability in their puzzles. It's impossible to please everyone, and there's an element of subjectivity to puzzle solving that can never be fully accounted for. Neither do I advocate a return to liberally peppering games with hopelessly esoteric puzzles ala many old-school adventure games.
Some oddball and not totally logical puzzle elements, though? Like the ones that showed up in Seasons 1 and 2 (especially 2) alongside the more straightforward puzzles? And a few more complex quandaries to untangle? Those I would welcome into TDP, psychic powers or no psychic powers. (And you'd think the psychic powers would make the solutions even crazier, eh? For the most part, alas ...)
tl;dr: I still love The Devil's Playhouse for what it's doing with characters and story, as well as the risks it's taking on those fronts and more. But I have qualms about how those things seem to be taking precedence over puzzle design/gameplay, and I hope to see that addressed in future episodes.
On that note, I still think the way MI2 and CMI did it is the best way to achieve that. Lite and normal modes, cut some of the easier puzzles for the easy modes and everyone can be happy.
I think this could be ideal too. I don't know how practical it would be within the episodic format -- even if Telltale had all the resources necessary to make it happen -- but hey, maybe someday ...
The puzzle ITSELF would be a reward. The idea that a person needs a carrot on a stick to pursue at least halfway competent gameplay is simply ridiculous. Gameplay isn't a chore that you go through in order to reach the cool cinematics and quips, it is the very product you are selling. In this latest season, it feels to me like Telltale has mistaken the icing for the cake...
...They want to make the games accessible to newbies...
On that note, I still think the way MI2 and CMI did it is the best way to achieve that. Lite and normal modes, cut some of the easier puzzles for the easy modes and everyone can be happy.
Why would Telltale do split-track games when they already have a perfectly good built-in hint system for newbies?
I wouldn't say they are taking risks, especially since these new puzzle types are just as easy. original, and refreshing yes, but not enough developed.
What would you think of incredibly difficult superfluous side puzzles that didn't affect the outcome of the game but gave you a cool cutscene or something if you finished them?
What do you think would be a good reward for finishing a puzzle that's unnecessary and far more difficult that normal?
I think that would be AWESSSSSSSOME - a possible reward could be a sneak preview of some information from later in the season.
Multiple difficulty levels would be interesting but would probably be too complicated to implement and not really worth it in the end...
Because that system doesn't seem to work properly ATM, giving hints to people who put it to off etc.?
That there might be a bug in the system isn't really relevant to my point. Have you reported the problem to tech support? It's not happening to everyone, so you should go through the proper channels if you want Telltale to know about the issue and fix it.
How about reading the three or four posts in this thread that also say they noticed this?
This may be a matter of opinion; in 303 after
everything goes Egyptian try using the salute option when talking to the molemen, or leaving the main street after Dr Norrington talks to you then come straight back. I count these as unnecessary hints.
I can mostly figure out the solutions pretty fast, as most of the times they are pretty obvious. And even though I have 0 hint level, there are still hints in the conversations, or the camera zooms in on something etc
a good exampe is
the newspaper stand at the gift vault. Sam says it even has a picture, and it zooms in on it if you go there again
without those hints it could have been a puzzle in the style of the old LA games
Things like this are exactly the problem I've had with this season in terms of difficulty. If you listen carefully and pay attention to the camera zooming, the game will tell you exactly or almost exactly how to solve most of the puzzles. The few that aren't explained outright can almost always be solved by minimal trial and error. Most puzzles don't require you to think laterally at all, just do exactly what somebody told you to do sometime earlier in the game.
I think the difficulty would be vastly improved if 1. The dialogue and camera work didn't give blatant hints unless the hint system is turned up and 2. more inventory items/interactive environments to cut down on trial and erroring through puzzles. The hint system would keep the game newbie-friendly but keep the game at least a little difficult for grizzled vets. Another option is to ramp up the puzzle difficulty through the season, instead of keeping the difficulty approximately the same episode to episode.
I realize that there's a need for a middle ground on difficulty, but it seems like there must be a way to make the games so that newbies won't be overwhelmed without effectively making them interactive movies if you've played adventure games before.
How about reading the three or four posts in this thread that also say they noticed this?
Three, four, five, six, ten, twenty... does not equal "it's happening to everyone". But note that I was referring to the hint system, which is a distinct part of the game, where Max (or whoever's in his body) gives hints while you're just walking around, at a user-adjustable frequency, and which some people have claimed is broken. That would be a technical matter that I would think Telltale would want to fix (if it exists, but I'm still not sure that it does).
That's entirely different from the clues that are built-in to regular gameplay. Those are a matter of design. Claiming that the hint system is broken because the regular clues are too many and too obvious confuses the real issue that I, others and apparently you have, which is that Telltale's design choices have, unfortunately, made the game too easy. I agree that a lot of the clues that have been mentioned should have been part of the hint system rather than normal gameplay, but that doesn't make the hint system is broken.
Three, four, five, six, ten, twenty... does not equal "it's happening to everyone". But note that I was referring to the hint system, which is a distinct part of the game, where Max (or whoever's in his body) gives hints while you're just walking around, at a user-adjustable frequency, and which some people have claimed is broken. That would be a technical matter that I would think Telltale would want to fix (if it exists, but I'm still not sure that it does).
It's an issue that's there. It's a bug that's NOT computer specific (like Grandpa Stinky, unlike the endbattle bug).
If you're not noticing it, that doesn't make it "not there". And because of the nature of the bug it cannot be not happening to certain people. Of course doing certain actions in order (immediate salute, immediate go to the rat again after you know he lied) would prevent the triggers launching the hint.
Still, as said, that doesn't mean the bug ain't there.
That's like saying the 202 bust bug doesn't exist, JUST because you didn't have had it.
Three, four, five, six, ten, twenty... does not equal "it's happening to everyone". But note that I was referring to the hint system, which is a distinct part of the game, where Max (or whoever's in his body) gives hints while you're just walking around, at a user-adjustable frequency, and which some people have claimed is broken. That would be a technical matter that I would think Telltale would want to fix (if it exists, but I'm still not sure that it does).
That's entirely different from the clues that are built-in to regular gameplay. Those are a matter of design. Claiming that the hint system is broken because the regular clues are too many and too obvious confuses the real issue that I, others and apparently you have, which is that Telltale's design choices have, unfortunately, made the game too easy. I agree that a lot of the clues that have been mentioned should have been part of the hint system rather than normal gameplay, but that doesn't make the hint system is broken.
The hint system is not just characters saying hints out loud while you're walking around. Sometimes when the hint level is up, you will get extra lines of dialog, or comments when you're examining an item, that you will not get when the hints are disabled.
For this reason, some of the regular lines that sounds like hints, may have been originally designed as hints that should have only been there if the hint level was raised. If that's the case, then the hint system is broken.
I don't think there's a way to know whether that's a design error or a technical error, aside from asking Telltale. In any case, someone should make a topic in the Game Support forum and explain how we're getting unwanted hints, with a full list. That's probably the only way to get Telltale's attention on the issue.
I don't think there's a way to know whether that's a design error or a technical error, aside from asking Telltale. In any case, someone should make a topic in the Game Support forum and explain how we're getting unwanted hints, with a full list. That's probably the only way to get Telltale's attention on the issue.
Exactly, I've never claimed that there isn't a bug, only that those who claim there is haven't demonstrated it, because the problem could also be explained as a design choice. I said many posts ago that if people think there's a programming error, it should be reported as such for evaluation by Telltale.
Exactly, I've never claimed that there isn't a bug, only that those who claim there is haven't demonstrated it, because the problem could also be explained as a design choice. I said many posts ago that if people think there's a programming error, it should be reported as such for evaluation by Telltale.
Lol, have you read our replies? We have already given several situations where this happens already. What more of a demonstration do you need?
Think the problem is that people are being a bit flippant with the words 'broken' and 'bug'. These are normally associated with technical problem's but here many people are using them to describe design decisions.
Think the problem is that people are being a bit flippant with the words 'broken' and 'bug'. These are normally associated with technical problem's but here many people are using them to describe design decisions.
Well, don't want to go back to page 1 and 2, but on 3 and 4 they are indeed only used for... *shock* bugs. Which do appear very obvious in at least 303. Unless TTG decided hint level 0 didn't need to be hintfree.
Lol, have you read our replies? We have already given several situations where this happens already. What more of a demonstration do you need?
You've demonstrated an issue you're having, I've never doubted that you're having an issue. But that's not the same as demonstrating a bug, which only describes unintentional programming errors.
Well, don't want to go back to page 1 and 2, but on 3 and 4 they are indeed only used for... *shock* bugs. Which do appear very obvious in at least 303. Unless TTG decided hint level 0 didn't need to be hintfree.
Okay, so you do understand the difference. I gather you're saying you find improbable the idea that TTG included all those lines on purpose. That's the only point on which I differ with you. And I'm not arguing the opposite, only that we don't know for sure one way or the other. There's other evidence suggesting TTG designed this season, or at least 303, to be easier -- smaller game world, puzzles that can be solved accidentally. And there was a TTG person in this or another thread that basically confirmed they didn't want the games too hard. That's why I can't just automatically assume the issue is an unintentional bug.
Whether it's a bug or a design flaw, let's hope 303 was anomalous and 304 will be at least as challenging as 302 if not more so. We can agree on that, yes?
which only describes unintentional programming errors.
There are intentional programming errors too?
I gather you're saying you find improbable the idea that TTG included all those lines on purpose.
Oh, they included them on purpose. That's the point of the hint system. They aren't to be launched with Hint System 0 though. But they do. And pretty damn fast to boot (just a single area-change).
What otherwise is the point of being able to turn it "off"?
Whether it's a bug or a design flaw, let's hope 303 was anomalous and 304 will be at least as challenging as 302 if not more so. We can agree on that, yes?
Agreed. But that is totally unrelated to the hint system anyways.
EDIT: In the "secret" forum Mike Stemmle mentioned ironing out bugs with the hint system for 305. Might be this one.
My personal view is that the collect item a, b, c method has to go and some sort of different method has to be introduced...from memory although The Penal Zone differed from this (item A leads to item B etc.) it was far too easy. The complexity lead to The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, which although wasn't particularly hard, it definitely moved away from the usual method, if the games could revolve over different concepts and trickery like this, I believe the games would get a-bit harder.
Side note though, late-season 2 episodes really had me struggling not due to the episodes' difficulty, but because of their abstractness (it was like fumbling in the dark), in my opinion these are not the kind of puzzles that we want in the games.
I like the current Difficulty level, I'd like to see it a little bit harder (that sounds wrong) but I'm fine with it now, I remember the days of the original Discworld game which were mind bending and had puzzles that just didn't make any sense at all.
Things like this are exactly the problem I've had with this season in terms of difficulty. If you listen carefully and pay attention to the camera zooming, the game will tell you exactly or almost exactly how to solve most of the puzzles. The few that aren't explained outright can almost always be solved by minimal trial and error. Most puzzles don't require you to think laterally at all, just do exactly what somebody told you to do sometime earlier in the game.
Funny thing is, I missed one of the puzzles because I forgot about the scene where Hubert drops his camera in the corn dogs.
The difficulty of the game probably differs according to how people see a game. I'm the sort who loves the humor of the Sam and Max games and will pick every dialogue option possible to get a laugh. This may have made a lot of the Future Vision puzzles too easy (I used that on everything too). At the same time, I'll look at a puzzle and say "How am I supposed to save Flint Paper from an axe to the head with just a vacation ticket and a miner's helmet?!"
I, when I first started playing sam and max found the games challenging and me often having to refur to the tips and hints threads. But now that I am a veteran Sam and maxer, I've kinda changed into that mindset and it is easier to get from poit A to B
Comments
It does give hints on the lowest setting.
Why would anyone ever need a walkthrough when the hint system, on the highest setting, should be adequate? I can only guess that it is not. So the hint system needs to be revised for people that want the game harder so we get fewer hints and those bizarre souls that pay for a game but don't really want to play it so they get more hints.
With a working hint system, people can choose their level of gameplay.
I would recognise difficulty as "I wasted n hours not knowing what to do". So far I have yet to do that with this season. I definitely did that with season 2 though- I even turned the hints onto maximum to get myself out of it (it did essentially become a walkthrough). Shame on me, I know. But it is by that criterion I know season 3 is too easy.
100% agree.
EDIT:
It could only be a matter of including more useless items and hotspots in the games. As was said by thom-22, the last episode was mostly about surveying the game world. Then, the small amount of interactive stuff does everything else.
For example. In the "egyptian" part of the last episode, you have only three pictures and the Rhinoplasty. You know that every picture is gonna be useful for something. You don't have to think what of them could be useful, in order not to try and try and try again. You can try with everyone because all of them do something. I think that's one of the main things that make the games too easy for some of us.
The other is probably design larger chains of tasks in order to solve a puzzle, not only one thing for each item (again talking about the 3rd episode and the egyptian part). But this could be a deeper change, and increase the difficulty of the games even with the hint system.
But the first comment doesn't change anything essential in the games. And the hint system could help to separate the things that are useful from things that aren't.
How about, "I spent n hours exploring thoroughly, analyzing dialogs for clues, and exercising the logical and creative powers of my brain searching for that elusive key to advancement until inspiration struck, the non-obvious became evident and I emerged satisfyingly triumphant"?
Yup. Basically if something was clickable, there was around a 95% chance I had to use it for something. So it was then a case of trying each of Max's superpowers. It was kind of like having an inventory of 3 items which had to be used over and over again in very predictable ways to complete the game.
That's the thing really; there IS an inventory, it's an inventory of superpowers. As much as they are trying to "move away from inventory puzzles" we have to accept that the inventory has just been switched from Sam to Max. Except that Max can only "pick up" a very tiny number of items. And these items are being repeated from game to game.
In fact, Max's inventory is more like having just a small handful of verbs *without* items!
I recently noticed a thread on Wintermute forums with a similar discussion to this one:
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=3808.0
^ This, basically!
Why 303 is so darn easy is because in 303 it DOES. No 4th dimension thinking with teleporting apes or moving reels, nope, just a very limited inventory (rhinoplasty) which is a pain to browse through.
If it wasn't packed as a "power" and fancy Max look I bet this inventory system would have induced a riot, since it's a gigantic step back from the inventory system of the games of old (or even the past seasons).
Powers shouldn't replace inventory (especially if powers = worse inventory) but they should work together to bring more unique solutions to puzzles...
You've missed the point. They want to make the games accessible to newbies, and Psy is asking what is a good way to make the games accessible while still including puzzles to allow hardcore adventure gamers to solve satisfyingly difficult puzzles.
On that note, I still think the way MI2 and CMI did it is the best way to achieve that. Lite and normal modes, cut some of the easier puzzles for the easy modes and everyone can be happy.
I'm going to be honest.
I came into adventure games late. Very late. I've been a movie/TV/animation geek for far, far longer. Telltale's games drew me in with the quality of their writing, characters, and storytelling, and that is still a huge chunk of where I derive enjoyment from their releases.
Yes. You could say I once thought of the puzzles in adventure games as the icing on the cake rather than the other way around.
Once. Thought.
Although I can't say I see it as the other way around either.
As I said, I'm going to be honest. I can still find the overall experience enjoyable so long as the writing and story are top notch. While I continue to have those to latch onto, I will be more or less happy. Maybe even thrilled, if something particularly spectacular happens story-wise (there's been a good chunk of that in The Devil's Playhouse, IMO).
But. When writing/story becomes a crutch for the puzzles to hobble along with, instead of the two acting in tandem, there is a problem. That's where Season 3 of Sam & Max is falling flat for me, when about 90% of everything else I can shamelessly describe with the non-term "lovelovelove." (Although I still think 302 was a temporary step in the right direction, if still a touch too easy for its own good.)
Don't get me wrong. I understand Telltale's trying a lot of new and different things at once this season, on nearly all fronts. Quite a few gutsy moves and dashes of experimentation that I can't help but admire, with an impressive amount of success in their respective executions. I also don't envy Telltale's position of trying to strike a good balance between difficulty and approachability in their puzzles. It's impossible to please everyone, and there's an element of subjectivity to puzzle solving that can never be fully accounted for. Neither do I advocate a return to liberally peppering games with hopelessly esoteric puzzles ala many old-school adventure games.
Some oddball and not totally logical puzzle elements, though? Like the ones that showed up in Seasons 1 and 2 (especially 2) alongside the more straightforward puzzles? And a few more complex quandaries to untangle? Those I would welcome into TDP, psychic powers or no psychic powers. (And you'd think the psychic powers would make the solutions even crazier, eh? For the most part, alas ...)
tl;dr: I still love The Devil's Playhouse for what it's doing with characters and story, as well as the risks it's taking on those fronts and more. But I have qualms about how those things seem to be taking precedence over puzzle design/gameplay, and I hope to see that addressed in future episodes.
I think this could be ideal too. I don't know how practical it would be within the episodic format -- even if Telltale had all the resources necessary to make it happen -- but hey, maybe someday ...
+1
Why would Telltale do split-track games when they already have a perfectly good built-in hint system for newbies?
I think that would be AWESSSSSSSOME - a possible reward could be a sneak preview of some information from later in the season.
Multiple difficulty levels would be interesting but would probably be too complicated to implement and not really worth it in the end...
That there might be a bug in the system isn't really relevant to my point. Have you reported the problem to tech support? It's not happening to everyone, so you should go through the proper channels if you want Telltale to know about the issue and fix it.
It is. Maybe not everyone is noticing it.
It didn't happen to me and I certainly would have noticed. You're going to have to back up that assertion if you want it taken seriously. :rolleyes:
How about reading the three or four posts in this thread that also say they noticed this?
This may be a matter of opinion; in 303 after
Things like this are exactly the problem I've had with this season in terms of difficulty. If you listen carefully and pay attention to the camera zooming, the game will tell you exactly or almost exactly how to solve most of the puzzles. The few that aren't explained outright can almost always be solved by minimal trial and error. Most puzzles don't require you to think laterally at all, just do exactly what somebody told you to do sometime earlier in the game.
I think the difficulty would be vastly improved if 1. The dialogue and camera work didn't give blatant hints unless the hint system is turned up and 2. more inventory items/interactive environments to cut down on trial and erroring through puzzles. The hint system would keep the game newbie-friendly but keep the game at least a little difficult for grizzled vets. Another option is to ramp up the puzzle difficulty through the season, instead of keeping the difficulty approximately the same episode to episode.
I realize that there's a need for a middle ground on difficulty, but it seems like there must be a way to make the games so that newbies won't be overwhelmed without effectively making them interactive movies if you've played adventure games before.
Three, four, five, six, ten, twenty... does not equal "it's happening to everyone". But note that I was referring to the hint system, which is a distinct part of the game, where Max (or whoever's in his body) gives hints while you're just walking around, at a user-adjustable frequency, and which some people have claimed is broken. That would be a technical matter that I would think Telltale would want to fix (if it exists, but I'm still not sure that it does).
That's entirely different from the clues that are built-in to regular gameplay. Those are a matter of design. Claiming that the hint system is broken because the regular clues are too many and too obvious confuses the real issue that I, others and apparently you have, which is that Telltale's design choices have, unfortunately, made the game too easy. I agree that a lot of the clues that have been mentioned should have been part of the hint system rather than normal gameplay, but that doesn't make the hint system is broken.
If you're not noticing it, that doesn't make it "not there". And because of the nature of the bug it cannot be not happening to certain people. Of course doing certain actions in order (immediate salute, immediate go to the rat again after you know he lied) would prevent the triggers launching the hint.
Still, as said, that doesn't mean the bug ain't there.
That's like saying the 202 bust bug doesn't exist, JUST because you didn't have had it.
The hint system is not just characters saying hints out loud while you're walking around. Sometimes when the hint level is up, you will get extra lines of dialog, or comments when you're examining an item, that you will not get when the hints are disabled.
For this reason, some of the regular lines that sounds like hints, may have been originally designed as hints that should have only been there if the hint level was raised. If that's the case, then the hint system is broken.
I don't think there's a way to know whether that's a design error or a technical error, aside from asking Telltale. In any case, someone should make a topic in the Game Support forum and explain how we're getting unwanted hints, with a full list. That's probably the only way to get Telltale's attention on the issue.
Exactly, I've never claimed that there isn't a bug, only that those who claim there is haven't demonstrated it, because the problem could also be explained as a design choice. I said many posts ago that if people think there's a programming error, it should be reported as such for evaluation by Telltale.
Anyways, this is all just a bit of history repeating...
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12266#post12266
What's slightly upsetting is that the solution people in that thread came up with is the hint system we're now complaining about.
You've demonstrated an issue you're having, I've never doubted that you're having an issue. But that's not the same as demonstrating a bug, which only describes unintentional programming errors.
Okay, so you do understand the difference. I gather you're saying you find improbable the idea that TTG included all those lines on purpose. That's the only point on which I differ with you. And I'm not arguing the opposite, only that we don't know for sure one way or the other. There's other evidence suggesting TTG designed this season, or at least 303, to be easier -- smaller game world, puzzles that can be solved accidentally. And there was a TTG person in this or another thread that basically confirmed they didn't want the games too hard. That's why I can't just automatically assume the issue is an unintentional bug.
Whether it's a bug or a design flaw, let's hope 303 was anomalous and 304 will be at least as challenging as 302 if not more so. We can agree on that, yes?
What otherwise is the point of being able to turn it "off"? Agreed. But that is totally unrelated to the hint system anyways.
EDIT: In the "secret" forum Mike Stemmle mentioned ironing out bugs with the hint system for 305. Might be this one.
Side note though, late-season 2 episodes really had me struggling not due to the episodes' difficulty, but because of their abstractness (it was like fumbling in the dark), in my opinion these are not the kind of puzzles that we want in the games.
... and every free game is infinitely better, too.
Funny thing is, I missed one of the puzzles because I forgot about the scene where Hubert drops his camera in the corn dogs.
The difficulty of the game probably differs according to how people see a game. I'm the sort who loves the humor of the Sam and Max games and will pick every dialogue option possible to get a laugh. This may have made a lot of the Future Vision puzzles too easy (I used that on everything too). At the same time, I'll look at a puzzle and say "How am I supposed to save Flint Paper from an axe to the head with just a vacation ticket and a miner's helmet?!"