I cringe over the thought that tons of people mindlessly accepted the premise that this was a hand-holdingly-simple puzzle in a game pretending to be smarter than it was. Why do I cringe? Because the lock isn't a puzzle for the player, or for Booker. It's a lock to keep undesirables out of Steampunk Confederate Heaven. Booker is given the password so he can get in without having to solve the puzzle.
It's supposed to be easy; multiple characters in the game want him to make it to Columbia and he's been given the password so he can get in and they can complete their plans. Without it, you don't know if you need to ring one bell 4 times, the next 1, the next 300, or if you need to ring them each in sequence and repeat that 15 times; there are literally infinite potential combinations because you have very few established parameters.
It's not there to challenge the player, it's there for lore/worldbuilding/scenery. You think Magic Sky Racists would leave it up to just one old lighthousekeeper to keep the entrance to their utopia safe?
Please tell me Sup Forums isn't as dumb as I thought.
Chase Scott
how do other desireables figure it out? is it always handed out to people? if thats the case, why does it have to bells? if thats not the case, still why the fuck are they bells?
Evan Lopez
>It's not there to challenge the player, it's there for lore/worldbuilding/scenery. And unfortunately that's what the game focused on in the most hamfisted, nonsensical way.
Jeremiah Butler
Still retarded, as it's so simple 1 2 2
Anyone could figure it out if they started from the beginning. This thread is retarded and so are you.
Elijah Turner
yeah but it is dumb because you cant possibly know all of that 5 mins after you just installed the game and vidya is all about gameplay, it needs to be crafted around gameplay so thats a very stupid way of introducing lore, any sane person will think what the fuck??
Nathan White
I don't know how other people figure it out, maybe General Custer mails them a turd with the solution stapled to it. They never say exactly how but we can assume from how this lock works that someone has to give them the key to get through it. Most locks are like that.
Yes, but that's not the joke that people are laughing at. That's not the joke the original video was centered around, and it's not the joke in 's pic either. It's not the joke the meme is about.
You wouldn't know all the reasons why you've been given the password, but you can at least see it's a lock/puzzle of some sort and the people who are helping you move ahead with your mission gave you the key.
John Ramirez
Don't think for a second that this was their mindset when they came up with this.
Daniel Collins
Why not? That's what I thought it was on my first playthrough, and it still makes the most sense to me. Why don't you think so?
Nolan Harris
ASCEND
Adrian Foster
>wounded knee >le arrow in the knee xD kinda mad
Logan Butler
Even under your argument it's a shit design part of a common criticism of current games. They could have either A) made the player make the conscious connection between the two and pull the card out, implanting the player in the shoes of the character and making him experience the decision and event first-hand or B) Just let the player watch the character do everything
It does not allow the player to engage the game as is the point of it being a video game in the first place.
Daniel Brown
>there are literally infinite potential combinations
And they choose the fucking 15th iteration a not-braindead person would attempt. The ultra secret organization has a password that can be resolved by a fucking dolphin in just 15 attempts.
see >Yes, but that's not the joke that people are laughing at. That's not the joke the original video was centered around, and it's not the joke in 's pic either. It's not the joke the meme is about.
So you feel that by picking a middleground, they lost the advantages of either choice A or choice B?
Samuel Diaz
What kind of mong uses bells as a combination lock? That's some esoteric Resident Evil bullshit.
Gavin Moore
Wait a sec, that card...
Christian Evans
Actually the math is different. You have 3 items, and need to pick 5, they can repeat and order matters, so the combinatorial case = 3^5 = 243 possibilities.
However, if you were bruteforcing, you don't know the amount you need to pick, so that adds some difficulty, but, because of game logic, only the last 5 inputs matter, so doing AAAAA and then B counts as AAAAB, greatly reducing the amount of ringing. Not sure what the math for that last part is though.
Joseph Walker
The largest security problem is that there is a light confirmation that you input the code right so far. That makes it MUCH easier to be broken. If you take the light in consideration, its impossible to try more than 15 unique sequences.
Landon Williams
But without the card, how do you know that you only need to pick 5?
Levi Edwards
>Light confirmation if you're inputting it right This is the most retarded security ever.
Zachary Ward
The Bioshock example just highlights the modern game design trend of providing the solution for the puzzle to players because during focus testing there's a bunch of retards that get stuck, frustrated and end up giving up from simple puzzles.
Despite overwhelming evidence that most people don't finish a given game after starting it, developers still are obsessed with making them easy to finish. Ever since they started tracking game progress with achievements you think they'd realize that there's always going to be 80% of the playerbase who beats the first level and 20% that finish the game.
Leo Ortiz
Imagine being so butthurt about your favourite videogame you still hold a grudge against a silly video from five years ago.
Carter Russell
Yeah I thought the video was hilarious but hated how it started this meme of hating the game for failing to be smart. I cringe hardest at the tards you actually think wounded knee is a skyrim reference tho
Austin Sullivan
religious themes
Kevin Ross
Yeah thank you!
Imagine being stuck in your house on a Friday night with nothing better to do than start this thread. Thinking of me as butthurt belies how pathetic my life really is.
Really think about how bored I had to be to start this thread.
Anthony Anderson
I think the presentation is retarded; it was presented to the player as a puzzle. With the "wait a minute, that card" as a cherry on the top of all the silliness of the situation.
It could be simple as "hey, here's the password. Go." And leave the rest to the player.
Noah Brown
But it failed in its "complex" plot premise as well as i vaguely remember. It created paradoxes and ended up having to rely on the ol' "its magic aint gotta explain shit" copout. I really can't get into a debate about it now as i remember fuck all of the details, but i do remember it being wrong. And i'm sure someone will reply saying it made sense but you're a dumb faggot if you do.
Hudson Gray
>Booker walks up to bell lock >See bells >"Oh hey that card they gave me"
Like how could they have literally done this any better? They didn't want to take control from the player so they just had him do stuff and talk to himself while the player could still look around. Like would people really have bitched about this less if they just locked you into a 5 second cut scene for it? Seems so...
Austin Hall
Regardless of the story justification it's designed like a video game puzzle. In real life you'd be given a key to a door or a password, not some weird combination you have to input yourself, especially via fucking bells.
And the reason it's mocked so much is because it's utterly pointless anyway. Not only is the combination simple enough that anyone could guess it, but the fact that attention is specifically brought to the card renders the need to input the solution moot. It might as well just be in a cutscene, there's zero purpose in it being something the character inputs themselves.
This is something Bethesda managed to do way better in Fallout 3, so there's really no excuse for it being as dumb and pointless as it is.
Austin Davis
As far as I can remember it was journalists trying to say it was an intelligent and complex plot. When I played I just thought it was a kinda cool story about multiverse theory. The focus wasn't the science but the dispute between the characters, the history and the culture and the twist in the plot.
Kevin Bennett
The whole thing reeks of having to make it as braindead as possible because some drooling retard of a playtester couldn't figure it out
Anthony Gomez
I think whateverhisface lead designer played a huge role in the "smart" meme as well through video interviews where he acts like a pretentious philosophical twat.
Ethan Barnes
Well, in real life you wouldn't be pulled through dimensions by two versions of the same person who dump you in a lighthouse/launchpad housing a personal rocket-propelled vehicle programmed to fly you to Confederate Steampunk Heavan so you can save your daughter and kill yourself , so let's throw that "in real life" shit out the window.
Yeah it seems pointless but it's just a minor design choice. As said they could have given the player more or less control, but makes perfect sense to me. Why not do this? Until you get your first weapon, the game is very cinematic. You're being introduced into this new world, it makes perfect sense for Booker to be given the solution cause he's not an especially smart guy and his allies and enemies want him to succeed, and it lets the player explore while keeping the story moving. You would rather they write that one magical puzzle that takes everyone the same amount of time to finish, or you'd rather they say "fuck you" to anyone bad at puzzles (it's a shooter, btw), but why do that when this sidesteps the issue and keeps the story moving? No one even thought it was dumb until this video came out. I mean, none of my friends did, and I never saw anything about it here or anywhere else.
