Platforming and puzzles in an MMO...

[Quisi]

Everyone would look puzzle solutions on the net. MMO communities value only effectiveness. It would only work for instanced 1 player missions.

[ellohwell]

Everyone would look puzzle solutions on the net. MMO communities value only effectiveness. It would only work for instanced 1 player missions.

That's not necessarily true because most players only look up guides if the quest is too difficult or if they're a certain kind of hardcore.

I know I didn't look up a guide for those stupid banishing gates in FFXI until I needed to. I also did Totorak on my own without guides, so if it's easy enough to do with native intuition, then casual player will use that rather than resorting to guides.

My point is: the use of guides will depend on the nature of the content. if it is an endgame instance, then perhaps a guide will be used, if such a guide exists, but if it is a mid-level quest-based dungeon, then players will likely let the problem solve itself naturally, i.e., figure out the puzzle on their own.

I did most of FFXI nation rank quests without a guide. But of course those were different times.

Anyways.

A way to combat using guides for dungeons would be to implement dynamic puzzles. For example, Parley is a kind of dynamic puzzle solving feature. Obviously that would not be very useful in a dungeon environment, but the spirit of the ssytem could be applied to a dungeon.