One suggestion I would like to make - actually it would be more like a plea - would be please, please, please no timed puzzles that take 14 mintues to cycle through! The single most frustrating thing for me in Uru, or any of the Myst games for that matter, was the age (the name escapes me at the moment) where you have to use the ovens to bake the food tablet. Waiting a quarter of an hour for a payoff is too much, especially if your in a trial-and-error mode. Actually, I wouldn't mind if there were no timed puzzles at all, but I know there are some who enjoy them.

I've never liked the timed puzzles either. I've also found the wait to be a bit too long for the pellets. I don't like puzzles with too short of a time limit either, it makes me feel too rushed.

I just don't like timed puzzles, too stressful.

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I never properly finished Er'cana for this very reason.

Oh... I agree I am not a fan of timed puzzles myself.
for me it takes away my enjoyment of the game, I don't
mind difficult puzzles I like these types of challenges better.

I have never been to fond of "out of placed puzzles"
inline with normal game terms nor "a-b" type of games.
"Free roaming Interactive fiction" would be a better description of how
Id like the games to be. Many times myst has touched this experiance which I seek.
Something many said before, where I could live myself.
I rather see more interactive trial-error-effect things that solves the puzzles in our mind rather can solves a way to open a door.
Just to explore in freedom a new civilsation, how they lived,
how there technology works, preceptions, culture, in other terms
get to know them intimately.

Able to touch, listen, see, hear and try everything out for yourself.
Ultimatly the exploring and understanding things is for me
far greater rewarding than solving a mathematical puzzle that
ables you open a path to a new room.

A greather step in this type of playing is to have consequence handling
and interactive sharing of knowledge.
Where you with your own knowledge as person inreal life,
as well with the knowledge gained while playing,
solving all from that civs lifeissues to enhance there progress.
Its like being Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise,
meet new life and explore, do first contact,
but in the frame and settings of the myst series.

The timed puzzles in Path of the Shell were irritating - not least because they made no sense.

The business of dropping a pellet through a hole, then travelling back in time to arrive at the level below BEFORE YOU DROPPED THE PELLET is directly against the laws of both our own and the D'ni universe. Time travel is not possible in either, and yet here we are, zipping back in time because Cyan could find no other way to make the puzzle work - a puzzle that was obviously designed for a multi-player game.

Cyan makes much these days of not "breaking the reality" of the D'ni world, and yet they did precisely this in PotS.

I look forward to seeing the PotS puzzles re-purposed back to the way they were originally designed.

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hogarth wrote:

I look forward to seeing the PotS puzzles re-purposed back to the way they were originally designed.

Though my personal preference is for Cyan to focus on new content, I agree wholeheartedly with the above sentiments.

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Let's hope enough people voted for that.

Seeing the Ages as they were originally intended will count for me as New Content. We need to be realistic in our expectations for the new Uru Live - while there will certainly be at least SOME stuff we haven't seen before, we should be patient about the development of new Ages. Cyan are working with a short staff and a limited budget.

Let's allow the project to flower as it will, grateful for small favors, and hope for the best in the months to come.

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Umm, it is not demonstrably impossible to time travel. We simply haven't done it yet. For all we know, time travel is possible in BOTH universes. It just happened sooner in D'ni because of spiffy D'ni technology.

hogarth wrote:

Cyan are working...

Sorry for the grammatical aside, but isn't 'Cyan' a single non-plural collective noun considered as a whole? And as such isn't it "Cyan is working?" But if you refer to the members of the group as individuals then it's "The people at Cyan are nice." I see this alot and perhaps is a geographical thing. Just curious.

No, actually, I'm just making the English language up as I go along.

It is acceptible usage to say either: "Cyan is..." or "Cyan are...". Try substituting the word "it" for "Cyan" in the first case, and "they" in the second, and you will see that both are legitimate objects of their respective verb tense. The latter usage is more appropriate to my meaning, since it more clearly demonstrates that I was implying Cyan are a group of people, and not simply a "thing".

EDIT: Maratanos, since no one has yet been able to demonstrate the possibility of time travel, we can - for the time being anyway - conclude that it is not possible, since no one can do it that I know of. This can be construed in the same light as someone in the 19th century saying that it is impossible to travel to the moon - as it certainly was NOT possible, given the technology of the time. Uru takes place in the present day, when time travel is not (yet) possible. As for whether it is possible in the D'ni universe, I cite as my authority the Myst series of books, where it is stated that time travel is not a possibility for the D'ni.

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I'll add my part to this "no timed puzzles" voice too.

I did not particularly like waiting 15 minutes for the puzzles in PotS, and totally loathed the short time alloted in Revelation's infamous "spider chair" puzzle.... timed puzzles will likely not cut it for me either. If there was one that went right in the middle of the 2 extremes, i probably would not mind, but then, it probably would not be worth having it timed, either.

909

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I surpose I didn't care for them much either but...

I dunno... I thought it was kinda.... incredible that you had to progress through a game by being patient. ...and I mean at the part next to the big rolly-ball. I mean, it's almost unbelievable in a good way somehow....


~Joey Prundleloon

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There are arguably two timed puzzles in Uru - Ages Beyond Myst, it occurs to me. I say "arguably" because one of them - the gathering of fireflies in Eder Kemo - isn't so much "timed" as that it "involves timing". The other is the business of turning on the power in Gahreesen.

I guess you could include some of the jumps in Gahreesen as involving timing, to say nothing of the dreaded Balcony Jump in the 'hood. And then there is the mad dash through the closing door of the Teledahn prison. (Are there more I'm not thinking of? I just woke up from a nap, and I'm a little fluffy around the edges.)

Incidentally, I played Gahreesen recently with a friend, helping him through the Age as it was his first time playing, and discovered that - just as you would think - turning on the power is very much a piece of cake when you have a friend to stand on the plate for you. Multi-player game, anyone?

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.

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