That's a good idea actually: have the puzzles increase in difficulty as you increase the difficulty setting.
Normal: Basic Math
Advanced: Algebraic and Nonlinear functions
Elite: Calculus
Yah I know, I just thought of it as I was typing the first sentence...
That would have been a much cooler puzzle if I couldn't as easily used a calculator like I did. (To salvage that statement, I was on a team, and they wanted to continue on and did not want to wait for me to solve it and I was the only one with quick access to a calculator! :rolleyes:)
I wonder if puzzles could be move involving using static images.
Do buttons support this feature from within the game? One would think that modifying the same principles behind mission reward selection could result in visual puzzles?
Star Trek 25th Anniversary Collection had real puzzles you had to solve. It had everything from solving codes using alien patters (which only involved copying down what was on the wall when you went to input it) and being shot if wrong to literally putting bubble gum on the end of a stick to reach something down a street drain.
Star Trek 25th Anniversary Collection had real puzzles you had to solve. It had everything from solving codes using alien patters (which only involved copying down what was on the wall when you went to input it) and being shot if wrong to literally putting bubble gum on the end of a stick to reach something down a street drain.
That game did have that adventure game feel to its puzzles.
STO could learn a lot from it as most interaction with the environment in STO is "press F" - which isn't thrilling.
Star Trek 25th Anniversary Collection had real puzzles you had to solve. It had everything from solving codes using alien patters (which only involved copying down what was on the wall when you went to input it) and being shot if wrong to literally putting bubble gum on the end of a stick to reach something down a street drain.
That was such a great game... Aahh the glory days...
I wonder if puzzles could be move involving using static images.
Do buttons support this feature from within the game? One would think that modifying the same principles behind mission reward selection could result in visual puzzles?
What do you mean? I seemed to have missed the point/application.
Me: Hey, whats 6 times 9.
Wife: Why?
Me: Just tell me?
Wife: Are you doing math?
Me: Where is my calculator?
Wife: Do it by hand.
Me: That's what she said.
Wife: *rolls eyes*
half and hour later.....
Wife: why are those space Elves about to blast you?
Me: Sigh. *pushes up glasses* Those are Romulans.
Wife: hahah they just disintegrated you.
Me: Shut it, I beamed up in the nick of time. My peeps came through.
Wife: Math? Space elves? Beaming up? Peeps?
Me: Yeah, sigh, I know.
There are two sciences in the world right now, math and naming things. Everything boils down to them. Since no one has offered any real suggestions, maybe "pattern recognition". Forget who said it, but we are all pattern seeking animals.
Simple puzzles drawn from something like (Just a example), the US's ASVAB tests. The moment they add a crossword puzzle, is the moment we complain about language puzzles, as opposed to math.
I'd love to hear more suggestions on what puzzles are, and less complaints about math.:rolleyes:
Side note I think math should be taught as history, after a basic understanding of symbols and their uses/meanings.
That was such a great game... Aahh the glory days...
What do you mean? I seemed to have missed the point/application.
I was wondering if the tech would support larger images for puzzle purposes.
We can select buttons tied to graphic icons while selecting rewards, so we might be able to introduce cartesian mathematics puzzles using static images. Maybe representing waveform puzzles or even archaeological puzzles to determine the meaning of a tablet.
Star Trek is about scientists and the best minds exploring the galaxy.
Less pew pew. More think think.
this
you guys asking for more complicated puzzles / math etc need to remember that the game caters for a wide variety of ages and people from diverse backgrounds.
not a math issue, but remember how many people said they couldn't fly through those rings and were raging about that? if you make these puzzles too complicated the same thing will occur again.
I was wondering if the tech would support larger images for puzzle purposes.
We can select buttons tied to graphic icons while selecting rewards, so we might be able to introduce cartesian mathematics puzzles using static images. Maybe representing waveform puzzles or even archaeological puzzles to determine the meaning of a tablet.
Oh gotcha. Yah that would be pretty cool. What would be even cooler, would be if one person could do it at a time and you could have in battle scenarios where your teammates would have to cover you (like in an STF to insure you have teammates) I was think that it wouldn't be like you get hit you stop the action, Because that would be irritating, but you could die.
And while I think they shouldn't be career specific, they should have bonuses/anti-bonuses depending on weather or not your careers match up with the specific task...
And that I suppose is my dream puzzle like objective in STO.
I found it a bit strange, but I didn't find it annoying, and I enjoyed it in a strange role play kinda way. When I picked up my graphing calculator to do the math, it made me feel like I was picking up a tricorder to compute a complex set of equations. Overall I liked the minigaame.
One thing the devs should avoid: unintuitive adventure-game puzzles, like those early 90s SCUMM ones with water bukcets and sticks being combined in some strange, absurd fashion to solve a puzzle.
Less of that and more sensible ones: like needing to craft a key for an ancient temple from nearby ore.
Step one, collect equipment... to do so you must fire paperwork for grant funding, as well as a budget proposal to your department chair. You add everything you will need to the budget, plus everything you have needed for the last 15 proposals...
Then you wait four months praying the museum storing your samples does not lose power...
Get budget back for 1/15th of what you asked for...
Buy gear!
Yaay... now you can begin science!
Take micropipette... or as many as needed for experiment, begin to calibrate each and everyone one. You should have to do this twice a 'day' during your experimenting process. Don't bump them, because then you got to start over...
Now, create your bacteria gel samples... be careful not to spread E. Coli in the process... number one reason bio students get sick their first year in the lab.
I'm going to stop there...
Lab work is long boring and tedious, and while I enjoy it in a lab... simulating it in a computer game is way to fracking much...
Give me simple math and combinations, and mix them around. Mastermind style puzzles are awesome, helll 'hacking' as done in ME2 would be awesome, especially the override mini game. Once you figure both out they are easy, but you still have to pay attention.
Science is in the presentation, not the nitty gritty, I would rather the content be there then fake lab experiements. The Diplo quest in k7 was a good example of lab work in game I would not mind seeing again though... I think Science officers should not have to rely on others for guidance... but my Tactical probably should... hell the first thing I thought when thinking INC as Willoughby was.. "Wait... I only have one test subject? Yeah I am going to need more... and a furnace... probably a lawyer too... is it malpractice still when you don't have a medical degree?"
had similar thoughts on the Defari mission... "Umm yeah... so the shocky padal thingies go where?"
I'm more of a jack of all trades when it comes to technology and most things nerdy, fairly good at most things but master of none.
With that said.. I suck at math. I've always sucked at math. I can help you set up a computer network, twenty+ years of game knowledge, name off hundreds of Magic the Gathering cards from the top of my head and more. But math? Lost to me. I can do basics (add, subtract, divide, multiply) but when you start tossing formulas and equations at me I'm a deer in headlights..
So while I do enjoy general puzzles in game.. please no more math.
I'm a math geek. Finished most of my college math in high school. Captain of math team, etc.
After about two equations, my friend told me that he could see when they turned green if I kept rotating them.. so I said TRIBBLE it, and went to that method.
Sorry, simple arithmetic that I stopped doing by hand years ago(there's a reason why people in advanced mathematics use graphing calculators) is not fun. It's homework. Homework that I was done with back when I was still in school.
I don't find basic math fun. First off it's easy. Second off it reminds me of grade school homework. Thirdly I don't feel that it simulates Star Trek at all. Just because it's math doesn't mean it fits. They'd be doing crazy math that's lightyears beyond what we're even capable. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division don't help me feel like I'm playing a Star Trek game. They make me feel like I'm playing "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" minus several grades (and yes, I am smarter than a 5th grader).
So far the puzzles in STO have been ridiculously easy. The only ones I've had trouble with are... one that was worded really weirdly (grammar oddities shouldn't be part of the puzzle) and another that was just bugged.
We need more universal puzzles and problems. Forgive the examples which have nothing to do with Star Trek but they're examples of FUN puzzle games that are more universal.
1) Zelda puzzles. We could use Zelda-style stuff. It's universal and fun no matter the age and they're not "Are you an idiot? Solve our basic math problem!" things...
2) Voltorb Flip. Yeah, a Pokemon minigame in SoulSilver and HeartGold based off a real game that I don't know the name of. It's technically math but it's fun as heck math (unlike this game).
3) Anything that isn't freakin' basic math or finding a combination which seems to be most of what STO is doing in this regard. Basic math isn't fun. Finding the right combo to the tunes or floor buttons isn't fun. Waiting for clicking a strangely changing button that rotates through text isn't fun.
The puzzles in STO... aren't really fun.
(P.S. Despite the horrible puzzle in the last episode it was still probably my favorite episode due to the arena)
Heh, I knew this would come about.
Ah well, Devs, I liked it. I'm alright with math as a puzzle, but some people are going to hate it or for some, it will become impossible.
Yeah. I wouldn't mind about a decent curve sketching or maybe solving a computability problem. Petri Nets are also always cool. I kinda miss all that stuff.
---
The way I see it, the math puzzles are just a game representation of a far more complex math problem that the character is actually solving, just as there might be a lot more to divering emergency power to shields then pressing a single button or making a long forward jump then pressing the space key.
That said, I wouldn't mind a few more "logic" puzzles. Combining different facts to come to a new conclusion.
There seem to be systematic approaches to creating such puzzles, too. There is a German science magazine that features a logic trainer that associates different elements with each other. (Like "Peter <-> sports car" or Frank <-> Apartment.) The associations can be entered in a matrix. And there is a list of "facts" with stuff like "Peter does not own a mini-van" and "Frank does not own a sports car" and "The person owning the mini-van does not have a property in the suburbs." and so on...
Puzzles like this can be re-used (possibly in a simplified form - the magazine I refered to I think creates associations between 4 different elements, like person, car, house, job) with different associations and elements and if "hidden" inside a mission, they also become a lot less transparent. It would probably work great for "whodunit" scenarios, but maybe also to solve technical or medical problems (which objects/drugs do I need to combine to repair the device/cure the disease..)
The way I see it, the math puzzles are just a game representation of a far more complex math problem that the character is actually solving
Of course that is the idea but it fails entirely. I'm half expecting to fix the Warp Core by adding two and two together.
Now, I wouldn't want a real warp core equation (or I might... to sell it. :P) but representing advanced futuristic as of yet undiscovered math and science is an effort in futility. I can't be done unless it's technobabble. Now if I were to have a riddle based on technobabble or at least something more creative than stupid BASIC MATH...
With the exception of a few puzzles in-game, most puzzles can be solved by one person - which can be frustrating while playing teamed.
Puzzles that involve assembling facts/clues can work for teams and single players - a team simply moves out in different directions and assembles the facts, and then the players discuss what they have found out, and find the conclusion. My logic puzzle above has - if used in a magazine - a very simple way to "find facts". They are written in front of you. But in a game, this could/should involve moving to different places, interacting with people and objects and finding all the clues.
If you're alone, you do it sequentially, in a team, one guy can go scanning the rock formations in the west, another talks with the mine foreman, a third talks with the researcher, and a fourth is in the medlab and examines the bodies. Something like that.
Puzzles that involve assembling facts/clues can work for teams and single players - a team simply moves out in different directions and assembles the facts, and then the players discuss what they have found out, and find the conclusion. My logic puzzle above has - if used in a magazine - a very simple way to "find facts". They are written in front of you. But in a game, this could/should involve moving to different places, interacting with people and objects and finding all the clues.
If you're alone, you do it sequentially, in a team, one guy can go scanning the rock formations in the west, another talks with the mine foreman, a third talks with the researcher, and a fourth is in the medlab and examines the bodies. Something like that.
They've already done a one-dimensional logic puzzle in "What Lies Beneath". Two or more dimensions would be nicer, though there would probably be people who couldn't apply the logic to solve it. Adding in skill-based minigames to grab hints could address that if they ever got around to making any, though.
That's what annoyed me too. It's not a puzzle; it's not even trivia.
They've already done a one-dimensional logic puzzle in "What Lies Beneath". Two or more dimensions would be nicer, though there would probably be people who couldn't apply the logic to solve it. Adding in skill-based minigames to grab hints could address that if they ever got around to making any, though.
I suppose this is overall an area where they need to build some basic building blocks with mini-games. But still, mini-games are ultimately repetitive, and unless they can create a "mini-game" engine inside their game, producing throw-away mini-games doesn't seem like an effective use of resources. I want puzzles that force me to read those mission texts and understand them, it shouldn't be just the "mastery" of a few mini-games that decide my success...
The math puzzle had one advantage - you didn't actually need to do the math. If you just cycled through your options, you could find out the correct solution step by step as well. I think that was a very good approach to help the people that wouldn't get the math (or, didn't care to do so anymore when they run the mission a second time and are too lazy to compute in their head or load the windows calculator.) It can probably not be applied too all puzzles, though.
Ultimately, what type of puzzle they use, there will always be people that have trouble solving them and dislike them for that, or just dislike a particular type of puzzle. But that shouldn't mean they should be discouraged. It's not like everyone likes "Kill 5 enemy mobs" or "interact with 10 blinkies" or "push continue to through 12 dialogs" to complete a mission.
Think about this yall. While I do agree with the argument regarding the "puzzle" also remember that there are people who play that are really not that good at math.....or puzzles in general. If you make it harder for one group, it gets too hard for another. Best to err on the side of caution, right? The one thing I can think of for the "just guess my way through it" approach, it would be nice to see a random rotation of equations. If you get the equation wrong the first time, it rotates to another of equal difficulty. That is the biggest challenge of MMOs, you can't please everyone.
i don't care what cryptic does with puzzles in the game.
As long as they are solvable AND require thought AND don't involve endless killing, i am ok with it.
I, for one, liked the puzzle. I find it almost silly that people would complain that it was too hard. It was basic math (read: pre-high school). Traditionally, Star Trek has always attracted the kinds of people who could easily handle that.
I find the "some people find math too hard, so leave it out" is like saying "some people don't have fast reflexes so Halo needs to be slowed down/made easier/enemies don't shoot". If it's part of the game, you either get better at it, or find someone who can beat that part for you. And in a game like this (not based off reflex) the answers can either be solved by a calculator, by a teammate, or by looking it up online. You're never really stuck like you are in a first person shooter when it gets hard.
My only problem with it is the same as every other puzzle that comes up on the STO dialogue boxes: The right answer is always highlighted for you. There's no sense of impending failure because there's rarely a wrong option. I would love to have wrong options cause mission failure and then have to start it over. That way, more people would take the care to get it right.
That's why I love the satellite repair mission in the Eta Eridani zone. It is possible, by proceeding in the wrong order, to TRIBBLE up a satellite. It makes me actually think about it, or make sure I remember the order when I do the mission. That's what STO needs for missions/mini-games.
Comments
Yah I know, I just thought of it as I was typing the first sentence...
That would have been a much cooler puzzle if I couldn't as easily used a calculator like I did. (To salvage that statement, I was on a team, and they wanted to continue on and did not want to wait for me to solve it and I was the only one with quick access to a calculator! :rolleyes:)
Do buttons support this feature from within the game? One would think that modifying the same principles behind mission reward selection could result in visual puzzles?
That game did have that adventure game feel to its puzzles.
STO could learn a lot from it as most interaction with the environment in STO is "press F" - which isn't thrilling.
That was such a great game... Aahh the glory days...
What do you mean? I seemed to have missed the point/application.
Wife: Why?
Me: Just tell me?
Wife: Are you doing math?
Me: Where is my calculator?
Wife: Do it by hand.
Me: That's what she said.
Wife: *rolls eyes*
half and hour later.....
Wife: why are those space Elves about to blast you?
Me: Sigh. *pushes up glasses* Those are Romulans.
Wife: hahah they just disintegrated you.
Me: Shut it, I beamed up in the nick of time. My peeps came through.
Wife: Math? Space elves? Beaming up? Peeps?
Me: Yeah, sigh, I know.
There are two sciences in the world right now, math and naming things. Everything boils down to them. Since no one has offered any real suggestions, maybe "pattern recognition". Forget who said it, but we are all pattern seeking animals.
Simple puzzles drawn from something like (Just a example), the US's ASVAB tests. The moment they add a crossword puzzle, is the moment we complain about language puzzles, as opposed to math.
I'd love to hear more suggestions on what puzzles are, and less complaints about math.:rolleyes:
Side note I think math should be taught as history, after a basic understanding of symbols and their uses/meanings.
I was wondering if the tech would support larger images for puzzle purposes.
We can select buttons tied to graphic icons while selecting rewards, so we might be able to introduce cartesian mathematics puzzles using static images. Maybe representing waveform puzzles or even archaeological puzzles to determine the meaning of a tablet.
this
you guys asking for more complicated puzzles / math etc need to remember that the game caters for a wide variety of ages and people from diverse backgrounds.
not a math issue, but remember how many people said they couldn't fly through those rings and were raging about that? if you make these puzzles too complicated the same thing will occur again.
Oh gotcha. Yah that would be pretty cool. What would be even cooler, would be if one person could do it at a time and you could have in battle scenarios where your teammates would have to cover you (like in an STF to insure you have teammates) I was think that it wouldn't be like you get hit you stop the action, Because that would be irritating, but you could die.
And while I think they shouldn't be career specific, they should have bonuses/anti-bonuses depending on weather or not your careers match up with the specific task...
And that I suppose is my dream puzzle like objective in STO.
With the exception of a few puzzles in-game, most puzzles can be solved by one person - which can be frustrating while playing teamed.
Less of that and more sensible ones: like needing to craft a key for an ancient temple from nearby ore.
DNA Splicing...
Step one, collect equipment... to do so you must fire paperwork for grant funding, as well as a budget proposal to your department chair. You add everything you will need to the budget, plus everything you have needed for the last 15 proposals...
Then you wait four months praying the museum storing your samples does not lose power...
Get budget back for 1/15th of what you asked for...
Buy gear!
Yaay... now you can begin science!
Take micropipette... or as many as needed for experiment, begin to calibrate each and everyone one. You should have to do this twice a 'day' during your experimenting process. Don't bump them, because then you got to start over...
Now, create your bacteria gel samples... be careful not to spread E. Coli in the process... number one reason bio students get sick their first year in the lab.
I'm going to stop there...
Lab work is long boring and tedious, and while I enjoy it in a lab... simulating it in a computer game is way to fracking much...
Give me simple math and combinations, and mix them around. Mastermind style puzzles are awesome, helll 'hacking' as done in ME2 would be awesome, especially the override mini game. Once you figure both out they are easy, but you still have to pay attention.
Science is in the presentation, not the nitty gritty, I would rather the content be there then fake lab experiements. The Diplo quest in k7 was a good example of lab work in game I would not mind seeing again though... I think Science officers should not have to rely on others for guidance... but my Tactical probably should... hell the first thing I thought when thinking INC as Willoughby was.. "Wait... I only have one test subject? Yeah I am going to need more... and a furnace... probably a lawyer too... is it malpractice still when you don't have a medical degree?"
had similar thoughts on the Defari mission... "Umm yeah... so the shocky padal thingies go where?"
With that said.. I suck at math. I've always sucked at math. I can help you set up a computer network, twenty+ years of game knowledge, name off hundreds of Magic the Gathering cards from the top of my head and more. But math? Lost to me. I can do basics (add, subtract, divide, multiply) but when you start tossing formulas and equations at me I'm a deer in headlights..
So while I do enjoy general puzzles in game.. please no more math.
After about two equations, my friend told me that he could see when they turned green if I kept rotating them.. so I said TRIBBLE it, and went to that method.
Sorry, simple arithmetic that I stopped doing by hand years ago(there's a reason why people in advanced mathematics use graphing calculators) is not fun. It's homework. Homework that I was done with back when I was still in school.
Heh, I knew this would come about.
Ah well, Devs, I liked it. I'm alright with math as a puzzle, but some people are going to hate it or for some, it will become impossible.
Yeah. I wouldn't mind about a decent curve sketching or maybe solving a computability problem. Petri Nets are also always cool. I kinda miss all that stuff.
---
The way I see it, the math puzzles are just a game representation of a far more complex math problem that the character is actually solving, just as there might be a lot more to divering emergency power to shields then pressing a single button or making a long forward jump then pressing the space key.
That said, I wouldn't mind a few more "logic" puzzles. Combining different facts to come to a new conclusion.
There seem to be systematic approaches to creating such puzzles, too. There is a German science magazine that features a logic trainer that associates different elements with each other. (Like "Peter <-> sports car" or Frank <-> Apartment.) The associations can be entered in a matrix. And there is a list of "facts" with stuff like "Peter does not own a mini-van" and "Frank does not own a sports car" and "The person owning the mini-van does not have a property in the suburbs." and so on...
Puzzles like this can be re-used (possibly in a simplified form - the magazine I refered to I think creates associations between 4 different elements, like person, car, house, job) with different associations and elements and if "hidden" inside a mission, they also become a lot less transparent. It would probably work great for "whodunit" scenarios, but maybe also to solve technical or medical problems (which objects/drugs do I need to combine to repair the device/cure the disease..)
Of course that is the idea but it fails entirely. I'm half expecting to fix the Warp Core by adding two and two together.
Now, I wouldn't want a real warp core equation (or I might... to sell it. :P) but representing advanced futuristic as of yet undiscovered math and science is an effort in futility. I can't be done unless it's technobabble. Now if I were to have a riddle based on technobabble or at least something more creative than stupid BASIC MATH...
:rolleyes:
Puzzles that involve assembling facts/clues can work for teams and single players - a team simply moves out in different directions and assembles the facts, and then the players discuss what they have found out, and find the conclusion. My logic puzzle above has - if used in a magazine - a very simple way to "find facts". They are written in front of you. But in a game, this could/should involve moving to different places, interacting with people and objects and finding all the clues.
If you're alone, you do it sequentially, in a team, one guy can go scanning the rock formations in the west, another talks with the mine foreman, a third talks with the researcher, and a fourth is in the medlab and examines the bodies. Something like that.
That's what annoyed me too. It's not a puzzle; it's not even trivia.
They've already done a one-dimensional logic puzzle in "What Lies Beneath". Two or more dimensions would be nicer, though there would probably be people who couldn't apply the logic to solve it. Adding in skill-based minigames to grab hints could address that if they ever got around to making any, though.
Now I am blind. CU IN COURT CRYPTIC!
The math puzzle had one advantage - you didn't actually need to do the math. If you just cycled through your options, you could find out the correct solution step by step as well. I think that was a very good approach to help the people that wouldn't get the math (or, didn't care to do so anymore when they run the mission a second time and are too lazy to compute in their head or load the windows calculator.) It can probably not be applied too all puzzles, though.
Ultimately, what type of puzzle they use, there will always be people that have trouble solving them and dislike them for that, or just dislike a particular type of puzzle. But that shouldn't mean they should be discouraged. It's not like everyone likes "Kill 5 enemy mobs" or "interact with 10 blinkies" or "push continue to through 12 dialogs" to complete a mission.
As long as they are solvable AND require thought AND don't involve endless killing, i am ok with it.
I find the "some people find math too hard, so leave it out" is like saying "some people don't have fast reflexes so Halo needs to be slowed down/made easier/enemies don't shoot". If it's part of the game, you either get better at it, or find someone who can beat that part for you. And in a game like this (not based off reflex) the answers can either be solved by a calculator, by a teammate, or by looking it up online. You're never really stuck like you are in a first person shooter when it gets hard.
My only problem with it is the same as every other puzzle that comes up on the STO dialogue boxes: The right answer is always highlighted for you. There's no sense of impending failure because there's rarely a wrong option. I would love to have wrong options cause mission failure and then have to start it over. That way, more people would take the care to get it right.
That's why I love the satellite repair mission in the Eta Eridani zone. It is possible, by proceeding in the wrong order, to TRIBBLE up a satellite. It makes me actually think about it, or make sure I remember the order when I do the mission. That's what STO needs for missions/mini-games.