I appreciate learning what trips less experienced players up. Ladders totally makes sense. Funny it's that again after the yellow paint stuff earlier this year.
That's gotta be such a tricky design problem. We real humans in reality know when our intent is to climb a ladder and aim perfectly for said ladder. In a game, going near a ladder can be ambiguous, and I think we've all been frustrated when we just wanted the item next to it or to go past it. In a zombie game the cost of that mistake, either missing the ladder or having to step back down and turn around, could be frustrating death!
Meanwhile how the hell else are you supposed to get a player up? Elevators don't always make sense.
You’re right about the design challenge; thinking back, ladders/dropping down a floor only to not get back up was the hardest thing for me, as I only had access to games at friends’ homes. It’s probably why I still have an aversion to ladders in 2D games...
The, ah, “nuclear” option is to have a dedicated mode designed around “no ladders” as a foundational principle, but I think a bridging concept is just to have more mechanisms for topographic traversal. Sure, have ladders, a clear signpost of “maybe try the Y-axis!” but also allow most obstacles to be navigated in multiple ways (double-jump, clambering, grapple hooks, whatever fits). Obviously that increases the mechanical complexity and design work there, but it allows players to find another way around an obstacle that’s more “functional” than “intended as challenge”
Not to get overly hung up on ladders as it’s part of a larger point, but I appreciate seeing this dev break down “interacting with game hard” into its constituent components, and attempting to solve for them.
I appreciate learning what trips less experienced players up. Ladders totally makes sense. Funny it's that again after the yellow paint stuff earlier this year.
That's gotta be such a tricky design problem. We real humans in reality know when our intent is to climb a ladder and aim perfectly for said ladder. In a game, going near a ladder can be ambiguous, and I think we've all been frustrated when we just wanted the item next to it or to go past it. In a zombie game the cost of that mistake, either missing the ladder or having to step back down and turn around, could be frustrating death!
Meanwhile how the hell else are you supposed to get a player up? Elevators don't always make sense.
You’re right about the design challenge; thinking back, ladders/dropping down a floor only to not get back up was the hardest thing for me, as I only had access to games at friends’ homes. It’s probably why I still have an aversion to ladders in 2D games...
The, ah, “nuclear” option is to have a dedicated mode designed around “no ladders” as a foundational principle, but I think a bridging concept is just to have more mechanisms for topographic traversal. Sure, have ladders, a clear signpost of “maybe try the Y-axis!” but also allow most obstacles to be navigated in multiple ways (double-jump, clambering, grapple hooks, whatever fits). Obviously that increases the mechanical complexity and design work there, but it allows players to find another way around an obstacle that’s more “functional” than “intended as challenge”
Not to get overly hung up on ladders as it’s part of a larger point, but I appreciate seeing this dev break down “interacting with game hard” into its constituent components, and attempting to solve for them.