These days we have cheat sites and message boards, so what's the point of trying to put together elaborate gameplay aimed at rewarding the player for puzzling out problems or solving clues? There are those gamers that cheat and those gamers that don't, but I have no idea what the percentage breakdown is these days nor how it varies for my target audience. But I've been thinking about how much work I should seriously put into puzzle generation for my open-ened space game. The original idea I had was that, like the old Traveller pen and paper RPG, I would reward players with information because the game world is so massive. Players who didn't want to randomly stumble upon locations would do missions and be rewarded not only with locations but with hints on how to get past certain obstacles. But then common sense slapped me in the face. This is the net age. If I spent weeks carefully putting together the clues and hints for key locations containing gear or what have you, what would stop a player from simply googling all the answers? Random generation could probably help somewhat if I could come up with a decent system, but even that could be beat with careful enough observation. So what would be the point of all that work? I have a sinking feeling that, these days, the number of gamers who cheat just to get on with the game is far greater than those who don't. Thoughts?

We also have hex editors these days, so what's the point of making a game at all, other than a single button marked "Push to win"?

Answer: don't make a game for the people who don't want to play it.

Is it more fun to solve it than it is to cheat at it?

I think there's different levels of cheating, based on the motivation behind it. There will always be people who cheat purely to reach the end goal as quickly as possible. I don't consider myself one of those people, but I have cheated at games before. In those cases, the common theme was that it was simply -too tedious- to not have done so. (e.g. traveling in Morrowind, in some cases...)

I'm sure there are other motivations for cheating that I'm not thinking of, like perhaps just seeing if it's possible, a technical curiosity akin to that of hacking. (But not cracking.) But I think that for the most part, you can eliminate the draw of hacking by making your game fun.

I do crossword puzzles all the time. The answers are printed upside down a few inches away. So are they useless?

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Original post by Wavinator If I spent weeks carefully putting together the clues and hints for key locations containing gear or what have you, what would stop a player from simply googling all the answers? Random generation could probably help somewhat if I could come up with a decent system, but even that could be beat with careful enough observation.

You might be underestimating the value of clever randomisation - sure, the cheat guide can tell you *how* to solve the puzzle, but it can't tell you the answer. As a (very simple) example, there are a few combination locks in Riven which are randomly seeded, and they can still take considerable time to solve, even with a guide.

A more complex generator, which can randomise placement and content of clues, becomes very tricky to reliably document.

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Original post by Daaark I do crossword puzzles all the time. The answers are printed upside down a few inches away. So are they useless?

I think you hit the nail on the head here. There will always be people who will become frustrated, and reach straight for the answers, but are those people the ones your game is aimed at?

One of the things not being mentioned here is that not only is this the "Net age", but it is also the "age" of rewards/acknowledgements outside of the game. Achievments in XBox360/Steam, probably others currently(or in the near future) that I'm unaware of. If the puzzle is responsible directly or indirectly for one of these achievements, then they'd be getting acknowledgement for something they did not accomplish. This is a problem for people who actually earned the reward or those who've attempted to earn it but haven't for lack of cheating.

As for the solution? Random-generation/procedural-puzzles(same thing?) would be the only answer I can think of at the moment. Or even creating puzzle like scenarios/environments. I guess something along the lines of Mirror's Edge, only procedurally generated, or some manner of randomness that would affect the process.

I'm with sneftel on this one. People will by your game because they want to play it. Make your game for them. But you know what, so what if people put up the answers to your puzzles. People who buy your game still deserve to play it how they want to play it. Those that don't want spoilers wont go looking for them.

I personally love having puzzles in a game, but rewarding with info just isn't going to work because of the ability to google. You should, at any rate, be regularly giving the player info all the time, not making it hard to get. Also there should never be any penalty for failing a puzzle or reward for solving it as fast as possible and it should be easy to re-attempt it, otherwise you yourself will be pressuring people to cheat at it.

So I'd say, make the puzzles. If possible make the design of the puzzles contribute to your worldbuilding, such that even players who cheat at it gain some story immersion from it. Make sure the puzzles are not just numbers, ick. The most important thing about puzzle design is to make ones that people will enjoy trying to solve, and can solve intuitively from studying the puzzle itself, no outside info required.

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Original post by Sneftel We also have hex editors these days, so what's the point of making a game at all, other than a single button marked "Push to win"? Answer: don't make a game for the people who don't want to play it.

This, just try not to make too many puzzles that you absolutely need to solve to continue on the main story.

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Original post by Sneftel We also have hex editors these days, so what's the point of making a game at all, other than a single button marked "Push to win"? Answer: don't make a game for the people who don't want to play it.

I agree with you in sentiment but there's a difference between using a hex editor, which requires a tiny bit of knowledge (starting with what hexadecimal even is) and firing up IE/Mozilla/Whatever and typing "<Game Name> <Puzzle/Quest/Item Name>" (Morrowind Mantle of Woe for example). I can't help but wonder if the easy availability of information makes it more of a temptation than trying to crack the weak encryption that hides the amount of money you have in, say, Civilization (something *I* used to do-- but well after I'd beaten the game).