[rpgdemon]

Okay so Down to My Actual Cat Whiskers had me in love with what I thought was a brilliant shortcut you'd designed, and then had me really just disappointed in you for making a trolling fakeout like that. Like, I had been drafting up a post about how awesomely designed that shortcut was, and then realized it was impossible, and just got unhappy. When you design something subtle and subversive into your level that lets the player feel really clever for finding, don't make it a trap. And if you DO make it a trap, don't make it one that pretends to really be a way forward, so that players have to attempt it several times before discovering it's impassability. That's just punishing your players for caring about your level.

So, here's what I was GOING to say:

The shortcut by the first warp pipe was absolutely perfect. After I got the second catsuit, I remembered that tower I had seen while I fell, and I got really excited when I could go back up through the pipe. I felt like -I- had discovered this unintended secret way through the level, and when I got to the coins at the top and realized that it was a planned shortcut, the design floored me. It was pretty much perfectly placed - as a player, I felt like -I- discovered something, on my own, even though it was clearly placed there for me.

As a designer, it's really important to remember you're designing for the player. When you make a level feature, you're not trying to show off how clever you can be, you're trying to make the PLAYER feel clever for tackling it correctly. And this shortcut did that perfectly. The level didn't call out to it in any way, it let me discover it on my own, by thinking critically about what I had seen in passing on the way down. As I was climbing, there was this subversive quality, where I felt like I was charting my OWN way through the course, instead of just following the path. It was only once I had climbed the tower that the level tipped it's hat and said, "Good job! You made it!". By giving me that path of coins, it let me know, "This is a good place for you to be. I'm glad you got up here - Keep going now!" and rewarded me for finding the shortcut, without shoving the fact that you had planned for this to be a shortcut in my face. The triumph was still MINE, and it was great.

Now that THAT'S out of the way...

I AM SO DISGRUNTLED RIGHT NOW. YOU MADE THE DESIGN OF THE LEVEL ALL ABOUT YOURSELF AND ABOUT SHOWING THAT YOU WERE CLEVERER THAN THE PLAYER. YOU LET THEM GO THROUGH THIS AMAZINGLY DESIGNED SHORTCUT, AND THEN PULLED THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER THEM WHEN THEY TRY TO COLLECT THEIR REWARD. THAT WAS HORRIBLE - WHEN A PLAYER HAS TO BE CLEVER AND FIND A SECRET WAY OFF THE BEATEN TRAIL, YOU DON'T KILL THEM AT THE END OF THE PATH OF COINS.

There's no difficulty being added there, the player is just being unfairly killed because they trusted the level to be well designed. In order to get to the trap, they applied critical thinking, made their way off the beaten path, and discovered this cool new secret, all on their own. The only person who finds this is someone who actually cares about the level, and is one of few devoted players who will most appreciate what you've done with it. Once they got to the secret, they knew what the level was telling them to do, executed it correctly, and died because the level was poorly designed, not because they did anything wrong. You put the lulz of trolling the player over consideration for them.

It was just bad design. It punished exactly the subset of players who could, should, and would have been most impressed and excited by your level.