TDM Mapping Conventions

[Airship Ballet]

Don't forget about the very early T1 FMs who didn't know how/bother to put in fake doors, and so put in real doors leading to brick walls or empty rooms with someone sleeping inside (muh ermershern). If they made the mistake of making them wooden, you could smack them open with your sword and pull back the curtain to reveal you're actually living on a movie set. Shocking.

 

Wow. So thiefy.

I mean... yeah? I'm stealing things, not looking for snaps for my album.

[Springheel]

When you go up to a door and right click it, if there's no sound, you can't open the door. Check the door.

 

That's fine if there are no obstacles between you and the door. But when I risk getting caught, and possibly spending resources to put out lights, to get to a door that turns out to be nothing but window dressing, it doesn't increase my immersion at all. I understand that the mapper can't create an entire world, but as a player I would like to know where the borders are before I run smack into them. It's the same reason I prefer a small fence or stack of crates that say, "you can't go this way", rather than running into invisible barriers.

[Lux]

I like the risk factor and the challenge and yeah it sucks when you have to wait and time the approach, risk getting caught, etc. but that is how life works. If I've got my objectives completed and I haven't met a loot goal I will check other areas first and leave difficult situations till last and weigh the risk vs. the reward. In general it seems that mappers make areas that have to be accessed, accessible in some way. If I study the environment closely I can usually determine that prior and I'm sure a lot of gamers can as well. So whether a door has a handle or not or whether its hiding the last 1% of loot, that's part of the decision tree the player should, in my mind, have to weigh for themself. Its part of a good game like resource managment.

 

Of course that could also be why when someone releases a new FM and I look at the comments in the release thread, when an FM takes someone 1.5-2.5 hours, I'm clocking in 4-5 hours. I realize not everyone has the time to take their time.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Lux