Beta 3|4|5 - Key Imbalance issues [Todo list]

[RobSeegel]

Here's a summary of mansions where I noted key issues. Keep in mind that some of these mansions have forks where you're intended to go one way or another, and it's not possible to get everything. So it may be intentional with some mansions. I'm pretty certain it was accidental with some mansions though.

Also, just because there is a key imbalance, doesn't necessarily mean problems.  I don't believe any of the imbalances result in stuck situations. I was looking at that in particular. Often a room can be approached from more than one direction. Too many keys can sometimes be harder than too few because they take up slots and there is no way to discard them, preventing Jack from carrying shields. I noted this in one case below. This really hurts in harder mansions where there are a lot of monsters.

Early on when I noticed imbalances I started checking  all mansions noting what the builder reported. It *might* be that some mansion contain spare, inaccessible rooms with keys that throw counts off. I checked this where I could, but it's  not easy to find such rooms in the builder with the huge grid of possible rooms.

It would be nice for all of these mansions to be played through again, with testers paying specific attention to key-related issues, and if something else is spotted along the way, then that would be a nice bonus.

Cathedral Towers EASY
* Keys: 9 blue, 6 green, 7 purple
 * Doors: 8 blue, 4 green, 6 purple

Cathedral Towers NORMAL
 * Keys: 9 blue, 10 green, 6 yellow
 * Doors: 10 blue, 11 green, 7 yellow

Cathedral Towers HARD
 * Keys: 8 red, 11 blue, 8 yellow
 * Doors: 9 red, 12 blue, 9 yellow

Chateau de Medusa NORMAL
 * Keys: 6 green
 * Doors: 5 green

Falcon Manor EASY:
 * keys: 12 red, 8 blue, 5 purple, 10 yellow
 * doors: 16 red, 11 blue, 4 purple, 11 yellow

Falcon Manor NORMAL:
 * keys: 11 red, 8 blue, 15 green, 8 purple
 * doors: 15 red, 11 blue, 16 green, 7 purple

Falcon Manor HARD:
 * keys: 13 red, 8 blue, 13 green, 14 yellow
 * doors: 15 red, 10 blue, 15 green, 13 yellow

Knight Mansion EASY:
 * keys: 7 red, 11 blue,
 * doors: 8 red, 10 blue

Knight Mansion HARD:
 * keys: 16 blue,
 * doors: 15 blue

Nightmare mansion EASY
  * Keys: 8 red, 12 purple, 11 yellow
  * Doors 9 red, 13 purple, 12 yellow

Nightmare Mansion NORMAL
  * Keys: 9 red
  * Doors: 11 red

Nightmare Mansion HARD - one thing that made this mansion hard is you could very easily end up with lots of unused keys the lower you went which made things much trickier than they would normally be since, even with a backpack, I ended up with lots of keys, and didn't have room for shields which was rough with all the monsters. Well, no denying it was hard. I had to restart from saves twice.
 * Keys: 11 red
 * Doors: 12 red

Spider Mansion has red key imbalances - but it is necessary because of the design. It has areas where there is a choice of paths each behind a red door. Behind each red door there is another red key somewhere used for another pathway. The mansion starts with a red key out in the open that Jack begins with. If any red door didn't have a red key somewhere behind it, it would potentially result in a Jack stuck. This *might* be the situation in other mansions as well.

Update: Vern: If you need me to explain anything, feel free to ask. Hopefully I provided sufficient detail. I also have more than a few assembled maps of many (but not all) of the various mansions that I used to help me figure out some of the crazier mansions.

[triforceguy1]

Have you also taken note of Rainbow keys too?

[RobSeegel]

63657E717865747270626E26170 wrote: Have you also taken note of Rainbow keys too?

Good point - I hadn't. Rainbow keys are used very sparingly. I seem to recall that Vern doesn't really like their use much, especially in built-in mansions. It's too easy to create stuck situations with them. They can be handy in certain situations though.

For example: In Cathedral Towers Hard, there is a rainbow key in room 14498. It's one of those rooms where there are a number of locked doors that branch off to the left or right. In this case there are four doors with different colors. The start key is a rainbow key. So you're guaranteed to wind up with an extra key here. Each door/area protects a key to one of the other doors.

I could be wrong, but I believe these are the only other rainbow keys in the mansions:

Falcon Manor (All) - 18695 (forked path mansion)
Falcon Manor Normal - 18293

In Falcon manor there is a fork with a blue and a red key. The rainbow key provides a way to open either door.

[RobSeegel]

My advice would be to consider key changes *very* carefully before making one -- especially the impact of making the change. Adding or subtracting a key here or there may have huge impacts in the level of difficulty or the time it takes to complete a mansion.

Removing an

extra

key may in some cases create a Jack stuck. It could be that once a mansion was finished someone testing it got stuck, and maybe the designer added additional keys to help with the specific cases (leaving the original key in place) rather than layout the keys differently. This tends to happen with mansions that have a more open design.

Key and secret issues are among the first (and last) things I note when testing someone's mansions. It's good to catch and correct these early when it's clear why they were laid out the way they were.

I've seen some designers comment that they like forcing players to choose between two doors and one key (Would you like the room with the shield and a few coins or the room with several money bags?). Like I've said before - I dislike these scenarios.

[VernJensen]

Ugh. To fix all that, carefully -- would take a very long time. Much more than I was wanting to take at this point.

[RobSeegel]

1526312D09262D30262D430 wrote: Ugh. To fix all that, carefully -- would take a very long time. Much more than I was wanting to take at this point.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I may have mentioned it in some of the emails back in April/May - though I didn't lay it out quite like I did in this thread. When you didn't really react back then, I sort of shrugged and continued with what I was doing. I did take some time to try and make sure that keys didn't cause a stuck situation. I wasn't able to find one. I thought I'd found one once, but it only forced Jack to take a nearly fatal drop. (I'll find the spot - it was in nightmare mansion).

I have to admit, I was a little surprised to see the numbers when I grouped them all together, and I had some idea of the extent of the problem.

All of those cases are not necessarily the same either. Some of the imbalances (like the one for Spider mansion) are barely worth mentioning. Another thing to keep in mind is that at least some of the imbalances were planned this way. Changing them fundamentally changes the character of the mansion (like the mansions that have a fork in them.).

Perhaps if we can group the imbalances into a few categories and better understand them, it will better tell us how to deal with them. I'm guessing a lot of these are fine as they are. Some may only need small changes.

As a recommendation for future work, it would be worthwhile for you to lay out stricter rules for in-game mansions for designers to adhere to. Reduce the amount of gray area. Such rules would be useful for designers and testers alike.

[RobSeegel]

All right, so I'll take a crack at working through some of these key issues, even if it is only included in a future release (maybe). I'll just start at the top of the list and work down.

Cathedral Towers is actually an easy one to start with because it has a forked path neatly splitting the mansion into three sections: left, right, and middle. I generally hate forked path mansions, but this one is OK, since Jack must go down both forks to finish it. Because of the way it is laid out, it means the key/doors puzzles must be self-contained to each side.

Cathedral Towers EASY key/door matchup:
* Keys: 9 blue, 6 green, 7 purple
* Doors: 8 blue, 4 green, 6 purple

So, more keys than doors. On one hand this means that it should be possible to finish it since there are spare keys. On the other, that's kind of sloppy, and carrying around extra keys can inadvertently make a mansion more difficult than it might normally be, because keys take up valuable space, and once picked up, cannot be dropped - just used.

Green keys: (Starting with the biggest disparity). The right side of the mansion is fine - there are two green keys, and two green doors. No problem there. The issue is on the left side, where there are two green doors, and four green keys. The first two keys encountered are the essential ones.

Room 15897 offers a choice, the green door on the right guards another green key inside plus some treasure. It turns out that this is an optional treasure room.  If you pick either door, you can finish. Take the one on the right you get a small bonus. Once you are passed this section, there is no easy way to come back, and there are no more green doors ahead, so you could remove green keys in the following rooms without disrupting the mansion:  14892, 15895.

Arguably, you could leave one of these so that it's *always* possible to get everything. This will still leave a key imbalance, though, and frankly I kind of like the choice at 15897 - it's one of those smack your head moments once you've realized the trick.

Purple keys:  This time the right side is off: two purple doors, but three purple keys. You have a choice between getting rid of one of two keys on the right side: 14904 or 15300. It's pretty clear to me that the key in room 15300 should go. Getting rid of the other one preserves the layout, and the reason for going down this pathway.

Blue keys: The left half has four doors and five keys. Plus, it has a really useless blue door that I'd recommend taking out, so that means two blue keys to get rid of. Fortunately, it's a pretty easy call to make.

With few exceptions (like room 15897), I think it's generally a bad idea hiding keys behind a door of the same color unless you are really, really careful. In this case, it's not so bad, but only because we have extra keys in the mansion. (this might be why we ended up with a spare blue here). For that reason, I think the key in 14693 has got to go regardless of other change blue changes. Besides, there is at least one other key on this path, so Jack will still need to head this way.

The blue door in 15298 is about worthless. I think it best to leave it with two yellow doors, or better yet, since this is easy (no yellow doors).  Even with two yellow doors, the player will only have to open one of them to finish the game because the room above doesn't prevent it. Anyway… let's assume the yellow doors stay and the blue door goes. I'd suggest you lose the blue key in 15296.  Why? It's kind of easy to get to.. and I think the key in the room above (15096) is much better placed.

Finally, room 15098. This room tells me that it was originally Normal and downgraded. The two useless gray doors (which should be removed), default to open. The two floor switches open them (again, these should be removed). Because of this, a player would only need one of the yellow doors open in the room below. This is an easy mansion after all, and I think it's fine. I just think the yellow doors are sort of pointless is all.

On to Cathedral Towers Normal...

[RobSeegel]

Cathedral Towers Normal
* Keys: 9 blue, 10 green, 6 yellow
* Doors: 10 blue, 11 green, 7 yellow

This one is an uglier problem. Fewer keys than doors. After looking at it a while, I think as ugly as it may be the imbalance was intentional. Fortunately, it's not difficult to fix, if you decide to. For yellow and blue, It pretty much boils down to the following two rooms: 15298 and 14299.

15298 is in the middle, and has 2 green keys, plus a yellow and a blue. Jack only has to pass through this section one time to finish the game and get everything. This means that the doors on only one side need to be used. If he decides to open both sets Jack will be cut himself off from some extra treasure ahead, and will make room 14299 more difficult, though not impossible especially if he has plenty of extra lives.

14299 is almost at the end, and has two spiders, plus two bird cages - one with a blue door, and one with a yellow. Because of the key mismatch, Jack will only ever be able to open one of these doors. Possibly, he may not be able to open either, if the player has decided to go around again, and open both yellow and blue doors in room 15298.  This seems too calculated to not be intentional.

Seems a little cruel for Normal level - I could see something like this for Hard, perhaps, but that's just me. The easy fix here, would be to remove the yellow and blue doors at 15298 or perhaps in 15493. I favor 15298, myself.

The green doors in 15298 are similar. Only one has to be opened, if both are opened, then Jack will not be able to get into the bonus treasure room at 14298. Probably, if it were left to me, I would leave the green keys/doors alone - even if it meant that there was one extra green door. Tough call.

[RobSeegel]

[split] [splithere][splithere_end]

Sorry, mick... I wanted to keep this thread focused - since it's sure to grow as I add more mansions to it.

[RobSeegel]

Cathedral Towers HARD
  * Keys: 8 red, 11 blue, 8 yellow
  * Doors: 9 red, 12 blue, 9 yellow

This one is a little intimidating at first, and like NORMAL, the key imbalance appears to be intentional and carefully planned, so I wouldn't make a change here. For this mansion, the left and right areas are both fine - all keys match up (a relief).  The fun begins in the top portion starting in room 14498. This is the room I referenced in another post in this thread. It has a Rainbow key and four colored doors: green, blue, yellow, and red.

Because we're looking at just the top portion, the key/door counts for this area are:
  * Keys: 2 red, 2 blue, 2 yellow, 3 green, 2 purple
  * Doors: 3 red, 3 blue, 3 yellow, 3 green, 2 purple

Just like NORMAL, there is a choice. Depending on which door you pick, you will end up with a different combination of keys to use which you climb higher in the mansion. You will always end up with a green key, and the second color depends on the door you select. Use the rainbow key on the blue door and you should have a spare blue key (makes logical sense…). The key you select will depend on whether or not you get an extra treasure room (red key in 13698), help with one of two spiders (blue or yellow keys in 13699.) or a completely useless additional green key.

So, this explains the imbalance for blue, yellow, and red. I'd recommend no change for this mansion. For it's difficulty level, it's fine as-is with the imbalance.