Dead ends in huge "labyrinths" cause frustration

When playing big maps that look like huge labyrinths - it is really frustrating finding a dead end without a purpose to it - and having to spend a lot of time running back to the other end of the map.

My suggestion is to reduce the size of labyrinth-like maps - they're not fun to play, when they're huge.

Reserve the biggest size maps for "open" or linear maps (The Ledge).
If however you have to have these dead ends - make it rewarding to find it - add a little "treasure chamber" or some "interesting boss monster".

Edit: I have revised these thoughts in a post further down.

Yeah, there shouldn't be any big maps at all, and there shouldn't be any different ways to go, so you couldn't get frustrated in any way. Maybe you guys at GGG should drop random maps altogether, that concept isn't modern anymore. Also I think every monster should drop the same loot, anything else would be unfair to the players. Skills and passives also suck, get rid of them.

he wants the ledge...over and over and over.

If any of you have played Diablo II - do you remember the maps in Act 3 like "Spider Forest" and "The Flayer Jungle" - or Act 2 "The Maggot Lair"?

Do you remember how frustrating it was running around in those labyrinths?

Personally I prefered the open and linear/symmetric maps.

Like entire Act 4 was large open maps and "The River of Flame" was pretty linear with no dead ends without a purpose. "The Chaos Sanctuary" was symmetric and had no dead ends without a purpose.

Same goes for the first map in Act 5 (Bloody Foothills if I remember correctly) - it was pretty much open and linear.

But of course if you played a Sorceress with teleportation - dead ends were pretty fast to get out of.

I'll reserve this post.

Edit:

Actually I have realized after playing the game through this evening - that the so called "dead ends" I experienced were on very big "square" maps, because the corners are often dead ends.

I have no idea how map generating work - and of course we cannot just delete all corners on a map :-D
It's a challenge.

I guess, that it's the huge size of the maps that makes it feel like the corners are dead ends.
Maybe you could split up 2 large maps into 3 smaller ones.
Finding entrances feels like progression - and exploring huge maps doesn't in the same way feel like progression.
You could even add a little treasure at each entrance - to kind of say "Hey we reward you for finding this.." I dunno :-D

I took some screenshots and drew my walking path into the map.

Chamber of Sins is a really big square map, and I'm glad, that you've looked into lvl 1 at least :-)


Submerged Passage lvl 2




Crossroads




Chamber of Sins lvl 2



But I guess maps like that is what defines the genre? I don't know.

Maybe you should make a poll and ask the beta testers which 3 maps they like the most and which 3 maps they dislike the most. :-)
Of course the results would also be affected by the mobtypes in that area...

@Loumy: Without dead ends, everything would be linear. Did you ever play Final Fantasy 13? There were no dead ends or crazy mazes, which made the game very boring.

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Kendroxide wrote:

@Loumy: Without dead ends, everything would be linear. Did you ever play Final Fantasy 13? There were no dead ends or crazy mazes, which made the game very boring.

You can have large open areas like the crossroads, and side branches in dungeons that lead to something (eg. treasure chest and/or unique monster).