Dead ends in huge "labyrinths" cause frustration

I did personally find the D2 Act III jungles / river area to be a bit of a pain. Though it was pointed out to me that the sequence of areas at the start of Act III actually changes which is also a cause of the problem.
And the maggot lair was just horrible because of the narrow corridors, I didn't have a problem with the actual exploration part.

I see what you're getting at though, a common thing D2 did in its dungeon was to have several possible goal locations, and only one spawn as the real goal room with the rest as similarly shaped but false rooms with some reward chest and a magic mob or something.

I've taken this design into the Chamber of Sins level 1, so be sure to check that out and see how you like it.

Currently this is a little difficult to do this thing and keep it random without a large amount of pre-designed dungeon shapes.

Any area in particular that you are thinking of?

"

dust7 wrote:

Remove path, add quick time event.

Thanks for the feedback Loumy, that's an interesting insight about the 'squareness' relating to dead-ends. If you have time, the Prison has recently had some new topologies making it more often a L shape than a square shape.

"

DoctorZuber wrote:

I admit, my first instinct was to bash you, although I now freely admit after playing a fairly short while into the game, I think you may have a point.

Perhaps this is a bit too much of a good thing.

I just spent over an hour FAILING to find a path through the second level of submerged passageway. I ended up giving up. I'll try again tomorrow.

It would help if the map was more useful, as is, it's kind of an indecipherable blob. So even though I had pretty much the entire area mapped, I still couldn't see a way out. I ended up surrendering for tonight, I'll have to try again tomorrow.

If the mazes get so impenetrable that it takes an hour (or more) to get through them, it's going to drive away casual gamers who don't have that kind of time to play. This could be a problem.

Be sure to post a /debug screenshot so we can see if it was in fact impenetrable.
And this kinda of thing is really not the intended kind of play, I sympathise with you here. The caves could use a revist for sure.

Moved to general to keep thread alive...

"

Verismitsu wrote:

I think the biggest frustration here comes from the exit being remotely close to the entrance, and the entire rest of the map being a 'dead end' of sorts.

the Tower in the Black Marsh in D2 was a prime example of that on a small scale, sometimes the next floor up was only one room away from the way you came in and the rest was useless.

As a side note: D2 did have some things that you could use to navigate the map other than walking. The Sorceress' Teleport being the major one.

Depends on what you're playing for weather or not it's 'useless'. I personally find it an interesting moment when you discover, after exploring a whole dungeon looking for the exit, that it is in the last area left not far from where you started.

Also, as I recall, the teleports in the Arcane Sanctuary are more of a puzzle element that simply teleport to nearby teleports, rather than randomly around the area.