Discotheque of Doom -Release Notes-

[aquaMat]

Psychotronic wrote: And if this were straightforward, solid-feeling mansion, it might be obvious. But this is a tricky mansion with a lot of paths that are hidden or obscure, with lots of platforms hiding in the walls and invisible ladders. Up until that point, I had always been able to find a way back from any weird corner of the mansion I had found myself in.

My logic at that point was this: the blue key was hidden better than the other key. Therefore, the blue side was a secret path (which it is). So I had better do that part first, and then find the path back to the main section. In fact, I died in that secret section and when I rebooted my save, I went to the blue part first, AGAIN. I still didn't know that there was no way back to the other side. And then when I couldn't find a way up to the other door, it just seemed like, since I could so easily skip that part, it must be optional. I'm not looking forward to going back two whole save points to look for those keys.

There you certainly have a point.... I'll admit that in DoD the player can have the impression that things are a bit differently or pretty much anything is possible....so normal

reasoning

probably can't be counted upon.
However..... I still don't understand the logic of

skipping

the red section, or why you believed it could be less important than the blue side.

To cut a long story short.... I will definitely try to do something about the situation in the next UD.
Maybe I should have sticked to how I had it done in one of the beta versions (albeit only very shortly): where I had simply hidden the blue key inside the red section.... so anybody coming to that

crossing

MUST take the red door, 'cause he simply doesn't have the blue key. (the only reason why I didn't stick to that method was: I liked the initial hiding place of the blue key so much  

Psychotronic wrote: If you want Jack to collect keys as he goes, make them visible. If you want Jack to go hunting for invisible keys, don't hide them very far from the door, because he's likely to find the door first and have no idea where the key is.

Again you have a point...  BUT:  I made clear in the introductory text for DoD, that in this mansion players should be alert at all times...and especially go looking for things even where they least expect them. And that OF COURSE includes that it's not very advisable to skip an entire section... although I understand how it happened and why you did it.

Apart from that I don't quite understand why you're

not looking forward to going back to look for those keys

... is it really so terrible, after you realized you missed an entire section in a mansion, to go back and be able to explore a whole series of new rooms you haven't seen before ?

I consider that more fun than - say - searching the same section of House Of Wonders (to just name 1 example) time and again to find out in which succession I have to open the hundreds of multi-colored doors and to find the resp. keys for them !!
(Note: this is iby NO MEANS meant as a negative statement on HOW.... it's just an example of a mansion I had to replay often).

After all that's one of the main joys of MM: visiting rooms for the very first time ! (At least for me...!)