Beta 4: General Discussion

[RobSeegel]

65786472170 wrote: Hi!
I have been playing the old MM Spider Palace and I must say how easy the hard level seems now after being

practicing

on the hard levels in MM2.

Maybe the hard levels are a bit too hard in MM2, for original mansions?

Good... it isn't just me. That was one of my first comments

One thing that's definitely surprising me with the mansions I've played so far is that in general they seem to be harder than I recall the mansions being in the original game (at least the included mansions)

https://actionsoft.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1335

That was back in April when I was first looking at Leofani. I thought the difficulty had been raised across the board. The notable exceptions were: Dr Demented, Blackheart, Magma Peak (though some of those I'd pegged as maybe being too easy, and perhaps not different enough from Normal to Hard).

... I say all of this now after increasing the difficulty in Dr. Demented's Den Hard. I will (laughingly) say in my defense that making it harder was only part of what I tried to do with it. I was trying to make it feel different enough that it would feel almost like a different mansion, so that there would be lots of surprises even after having played the Easy and Normal versions. I think I was at least partially successful with that.

Part of the problem I think is that there were a relatively small number of testers most (or all) of whom had played the original game and undoutedly a lot of the custom mansions. Maybe the group of above average players resulted in mansions being OK'd with a higher degree of difficulty.

I'm not sure how many testers Vern had enlisted, though I'm certain many of them didn't post a whole lot on the boards. It would have been nice to have seen some more feedback, especially by folks who were new to the game. I came close to asking Vern if one of my coworker's who had never played before could do some testing (by this time the call for testers had already ended).

I haven't played any of the other mansions for Beta 4, and even several weeks before Beta 4. I'm tempted to go back through and play them all again one more time. They will probably feel new to me again. The real problem though is here we are towards the end of testing... making lots of changes at this point will only open the door to introducing other problems.

I think for good or for bad... MM2 will generally skew a bit harder than the original.