hogarth wrote:

Anyway, timed puzzles have been part of Myst since the original game - remember the tree elevator on Myst Island? - and they will probably be part of the game going forward.
Still, the business of just...standing...for a period of 14 or 15 minutes carried things more than a bit too far. That was just silly.

Yeah... but it was the sheer AUDACITY of it all!


~Joey Breadbeard

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"What you still don't understand you have failed to hear or don't need to know..."~Yeesha

No timed puzzles I agree!!!! Just a waste of time. I want to play a game, not be bored waiting to play a game. Timed puzzles were a bad idea.

Waldo (baddata6)

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Ah, thanks, Rev - I knew I was forgetting one - the Teledahn Buckets!

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Proud former member of The Meeting Place

The Teledahn buckets are the work of Satan!

When i was new to Uru and hadn't yet mastered avatar control, it must have taken me 20 tries to get that one. Way harder than any of the other timed puzzles IMHO.

Actually ALL timed puzzles are the work of Satan.

The buckets weren't bad...the 'waiting' was actually just a timer for you to get in. Uru was the very first Myst-game I ever played (and you can imagine how confusing that was...) and the bucket puzzle was one of the few things that actually made sense.

What annoyed me most was the long wait, standing on the shell engraving in Kadish's puzzle, that really made me mad. I mean come on...who buys an adventure game to literally stand around for fifteen minutes while they wait for something to happen? I play games to be entertained! I think Uru lost about half its glamour right there in that stupid room.

Seriously, that doesn't even fall in line with Myst's motto of 'thinking games'. How is standing around, waiting for something to happen a ''thinking'' game? More like a tedious waiting game, if you ask me. I mean, it still wouldn't have been quite as bad if I knew how long to wait for, because then I'd know I have a goal. It was the open-endedness of just, "ok, stand there and hope something happens. We can't say how long, and we can't say what to look for, but just do it."

Cyan needs to figure out that even the Myst-fans have their limits. You should only take realism so far in a game...

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I miss my old signature.

Waiting games are....




















































....tedious!

If you study things closely, it will become clear that you should wait for 625 pro-rahn-tee (is that spelled right?). The clock in Kadish's control room at the very end of Ahnonay should be able to tell you how long that is. Or you could look it up on the DRC site. It's in their D'ni essentials.

But did that change the fact that you were still waiting around for fifteen minutes? To a new Uru player, how on Earth are they supposed to understand what 365 D'ni seconds is?

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I miss my old signature.

During that particular puzzle, I had Uru in a window and went about my business with work, email, etc. I knew when fifteen minutes flashed by because I heard a noise and clicked back to Uru to continue the game. No waiting. No time lost.

Well, also, there is a ticking noise that starts when you pull the lever. I believe it stops if you walk off the shell symbol on the floor. Therefore, you could induce that you had to wait until the ticking stopped of its own accord.

Anyway, you could just walk away and leave the game and do something else for a while.