Coin Box Puzzle

[henke37]

I have this crazy idea on how this puzzle would have been much easier to solve:

Write out the coin values on the actual coins!

[taumel]

Originally Posted by Clord

Even if those puzzles are too easy for you, it is still puzzle game. Also just because you have easy time with the most puzzles, that does not make game bad.

Don't mix up that easy doesn't have to be automatically bad, uninspired and repetitive. You can have easy and entertaining puzzles. The big majority of the puzzles is PA2 sadly is the opposite. Actually they are a lot worse than the ones from PA and those already got some valid critics.

Honest question: Why are TT productions continuing getting worse?

[zak256]

Whoa. It's good I looked up into the forum before melting my brains out :-P
In comparison to all other puzzles in the games, I NEVER would have assumed such tricky questions.

I do appreciate more difficult puzzles, but I would want to know that you have to think more and maybe look up something in Wikipedia or somewhere else. Up to now every PA-puzzle I played wasn't THAT kind of hard.

BUT another big minus I am just experiencing:
I quit both extra-puzzles (the one with the digits and with the coins) to solve them later. Then talked to the person... and now after being back outside it seems I CANNOT GO BACK AND SOLVE THEM! The puzzles appear in my puzzle-list but if I click them only a message appears.
So because the game autosaved the only options for me are: Restart from the beginning or finish the game to the end. What a shame!

Edit: Well, luckily Nelson went back to the house and I could solve the puzzles. Nevertheless it would be better if the possibility of solving puzzles later on in the game would be implemented, i.e. Nelson could go back to the places.

[MissStabby]

I got stuck aswell on this puzzle,
I'm from the netherlands where we use Euros.

Though if the game would just include coins with numbers on them it would be much easier to solve.

First i thought the puzzle was going for the fibbonaci sequence, but then i found out something more... digital, anyways be sure to localize those puzzles.

The fact that we can actually speak/read english doesnt necessarily mean we know how to recognise foreign currencies.

Also this really broke the "flow" of the game since i had to get out to find info on US coinage, then start a account here to type this post...

[Chuck]

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

Maybe that's an American-centric attitude too, though.

[puzzlebox]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

Maybe that's an American-centric attitude too, though.

Ouch.

It's not a complaint about being forced to learn something about another country, it's about a logic puzzle that relies on "common" knowledge that isn't really that common. Would you have done the same puzzle with Myanmar kyats without providing values for the coins?

[thom-22]

Here's another American viewpoint -- all of you non-Americans are absolutely justified in your objections. As soon as I saw the coins, my very first thought was that I couldn't believe Telltale would include a puzzle like that knowing how international its following is. And then to compound the issue with a condescending forum post... I just don't understand Telltale any more.

[Cheeseness]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Maybe that's an American-centric attitude too, though.

Thanks man. I haven't laughed this hard in ages.

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

Seriously though, if we're talking about directed learning experiences, players would get more out of it by having the numbers attached to the nicknames. For anyone who cares about currency, that would be enough to pique interest in finding out more (being an amateur numismatist, I went off and looked up which specific coins were showed), and for anyone who doesn't, they've still been exposed to new information, just in a more subtle, less jarring fashion.

[zak256]

I think the problem at first is not having to look up some information elsewere but more the fact, that (at least) I did not expect that the values of the coins are needed for this puzzle.
I did not think about a specific currency at first, either. The comic characters on the coins let me think of maybe some invented coins just for the game. The term 'dime' and 'penny' did not ring a bell, too. I think the term 'penny' for example is used also in GB, so I assumed it is just a common name for a small valued coin. But you live and learn...

My suggestion would be, to include the term 'US coins' somewhere in the description of the puzzle. I think this would give the vital information, that the coin values might perhaps be important for this puzzle.

You might of course argue about the need for external information for the puzzles in the game in general. I personally would not have something against that as long as it is clear what you have to look up, but maybe it is worth a voting.

Just my 2ct ;-)

[Graywing]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

Maybe that's an American-centric attitude too, though.

I don't think that's a great post for handling user feedback.. diminishing people who don't like to alt+tab out of a game to look up some trivial information as narrow minded foreigners isn't quite a nice thing to say..

But I do think you at telltale games should be glad people do voice their complaints instead of quitting the game, never to buy a telltale product ever again.. it means they actually care about your games.

But maybe that's my Non-American-centric attitude speaking.. (just kidding)

[MissStabby]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

True that we "non-americans" like to learn stuff "about your country" or any other country/subject when the situation is fitting.
Though if you recognise this as is, then provide the learning material in your own game.

Instead of relying on people's internet connection to solve the problem.
I can imagine other people being without a active internet connection that got permanently stuck in the game. (or just having to do the guessing game)

[LabRatt]

Same problem as the other non-US folks here, except from a slightly different direction. I know the penny, same as here, and I know there's dimes, quarters, nickels and dollars, so I figured out it was US money.

My problem was - "Dime, ok, I think that's the 5 cent one."

My illustration of the problem for you US folks - what's your equivalent of a florin?

[Pinchpenny]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

I don't think anyone is denying the fact that it's interesting to learn about other countries, just that having to load up the internet mid-game to find out the values of coins breaks the atmosphere and could have been handled better (the values could have been written on the coins or a key could have been provided, for example).

[Pirateguybrush]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Whenever I encounter something about another country that I didn't know, I think "Huh. It would be interesting to learn more about that country."

Maybe that's an American-centric attitude too, though.

Chuck, that's really not a professional way to treat your customers. My complaint was that Puzzle Agent is a game about puzzles, where you are given the information and rules needed to solve a puzzle, and then asked to solve it. It is jarring, and poor game design to include a puzzle that requires players to alt tab out and research online. If Puzzle Agent was more ARG-oriented, or included a built in encyclopedia or web browser as an integral gameplay mechanic, that would be different. But in the context of Puzzle Agent, this is a bad puzzle. I'll thank you to not make any more snide remarks, and learn how to take constructive criticism.

[Molokov]

I was warned by a friend about the coin puzzle... so when I found it I was prepared for annoyance.

I was already aware of the values of a dime, nickel & penny (through watching a lot of US TV shows), but the problem was the *other* coins present. Sure, one of them said 'quarter' on it, so I assumed it was 25c, but the other coin wasn't labelled at all, so I had to guess it was $1. I'd worked out the solution to the puzzle had to be 22c (not possible with a single coint) or $1... so I picked the coin that wasn't the quarter.

Turned out I was right.

Do the coins REALLY not have their value on them? Or is it just because we saw the "heads" side?

Australian coins wouldn't have worked, showing the 'Heads' side, considering it's always the Queen. The shapes & sizes & colours may have helped, but not to anyone who isn't familiar with our coins.

I think have 1c, 5c, 10c, 25c, $1 written on the coins would have helped non-Americans immensely.

[puzzlebox]

Originally Posted by Molokov

Australian coins wouldn't have worked, showing the 'Heads' side, considering it's always the Queen.

I like that the oldest Aussie coins have a young image of the Queen, and the newer coins have an older-looking profile. If you get a range of different years you can do like a numismatic timelapse of the Queen aging, jowls and all.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Pirateguybrush

Chuck, that's really not a professional way to treat your customers. My complaint was that Puzzle Agent is a game about puzzles, where you are given the information and rules needed to solve a puzzle, and then asked to solve it. It is jarring, and poor game design to include a puzzle that requires players to alt tab out and research online. If Puzzle Agent was more ARG-oriented, or included a built in encyclopedia or web browser as an integral gameplay mechanic, that would be different. But in the context of Puzzle Agent, this is a bad puzzle. I'll thank you to not make any more snide remarks, and learn how to take constructive criticism.

But you're not my customer! I'm not a full-time employee of Telltale, so the only difference between me and any other forum poster is that I happen to have written dialogue for this game. (And my name is still in italics on this forum for whatever reason). It seems like I should be entitled to comment on the puzzles just as much as anyone else.* I'd respectfully thank you not to get upset when there's no reason to be.

And there was absolutely nothing snide about my remark, and I don't see why people are taking offense at it (apart from the obvious fact that this is the internet). I don't believe there's any such thing as useless information, especially within the context of a puzzle game. I'd much rather be working on a puzzle with a real-world counterpart than something made up like imaginary species of fish or matching socks. If it were a puzzle about, say, Japanese currency, I'd be excited to be learning something I didn't know before. (And it probably would've kept me from short-changing people in Tokyo!) But this is a game set in the US.

I've been playing on the iPad, so I can't speak to alt-tabbing out. But I disagree that it's a "bad puzzle;" I think it's the more interesting kind of puzzle -- taking real information that you've just learned (instead of arbitrary rules presented to you and immediately forgotten), and then applying them.

I like being presented with stuff I don't know or am unfamiliar with. But several times I've seen players complain about games for being "too American" -- here, with the Sam & Max games, and as far back as Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island 2. And I'm saying I don't get that. When I see European or Asian stuff in a game, I think "exotic;" I don't get offended or frustrated.

Where I think it's silly is when the complaint turns to one of "Ugly Americanism." In other words, treating the game as if it were a standardized test where "cultural bias" is forbidden, and any game that relies on US-specific cultural idioms is decried as if it were some kind of modern imperialism. Sometimes a monkey wrench is just a goofy pun, chopping down a cherry tree is an excuse for a time-travel puzzle, and people in Minnesota use American coinage. I know I wouldn't have minded if the puzzle used Canadian money, and I had to go look up what a loony was.


* In fact, when I was an employee, one of the most appealing things about the TTG forums was that they allowed open discussion between developers and fans that you don't get from larger studios. One of the things that quickly ruined that was when posters stopped acting like people united over an interest in games and started behaving like "customers" who were making complaints about a "product." Maybe that's inevitable whenever the size of the audience grows past a certain point, but it's still a shame.

Regardless, I don't in any way speak for Telltale, and it shouldn't be inferred that I do.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Pinchpenny

I don't think anyone is denying the fact that it's interesting to learn about other countries, just that having to load up the internet mid-game to find out the values of coins breaks the atmosphere and could have been handled better (the values could have been written on the coins or a key could have been provided, for example).

Well actually, from the sound of it, quite a few people are denying the fact that it's interesting to learn about other countries -- the "how could they possibly think this would play to non-Americans?!" that's been said a few times in this thread and then on other message boards. That's the part that doesn't sit right with me -- it comes across as a kind of resentment.

As for putting the values on the coins vs. alt-tabbing out: fair enough, but I'd still have to disagree. Putting numbers on the coins just basically turns it into a math problem, and I personally prefer puzzles with real-world counterparts than purely arbitrary ones.

And as for atmosphere, I think -- my own opinion, not the "official view" of the game or whatever -- that the PA games (and Professor Layton) flip the usual presentation of a traditional graphic adventure game, to where the puzzles inherently stand out as separate from the story. They're inherently artificial, whereas in a SCUMM-type game you try as hard as possible to make the puzzles feel like they're intertwined with the story. So I believe it's a lot better to have puzzles that require outside knowledge. You could even say that the second puzzle in the game requires familiarity with 12-hour clocks instead of military time to get the right solution.

Also, your name doesn't make any sense to me. Please change it.

Originally Posted by LabRatt

My illustration of the problem for you US folks - what's your equivalent of a florin?

That'd be a "buck," right? Isn't "florin" slang or outdated terminology for a guilder?

[LabRatt]

Actually, guilder's the far more outdated name.
Florin wasn't a good example as, as you say, it is outdated, but I couldn't think of a modern example except perhaps "quid". Our coins have silly names like ten pence piece, twenty pence piece, etc. Florin used to be slang for a two shilling coin, and post-decimalisation continued to be used as the coin became a ten pence piece (still 1/10 of a pound, you see.)

My point was that to US players Dime actually means something, but to people outside it might not. Enough US TV and film is exported that we probably know the word, but might be wrong about its value. If I'd never heard the word Dime I might have looked it up, but I knew it so didn't. Turned out I was wrong about its value. If "Buck" had come into it I wouldn't have bothered either - as far as I know that's slang for a dollar. Maybe I'm wrong.

Don't you intend the game to be the same experience in every market? Perhaps not, as you don't offer translations.

Originally Posted by Chuck

You could even say that the second puzzle in the game requires familiarity with 12-hour clocks instead of military time to get the right solution.

Not true actually - that wasn't my first stop when I solved it. I got to the idea of looping back round to 1 before I identified it as the sequence on a clock. Realising it was from a clock helped me be sure when I thought "no, it can't be that simple can it?"

[ETA:]

Perhaps, if you're taking the "non-americans should first look up the names of american coins" approach, the first hint should have explained that a dime is 10 cents.

And, we're used to there being cultural references that we don't necessarily get in our games - Yakov Smirnoff in BttF is a good current example - but we're not accustomed to that being anything other than background. If a question asks us who the 43rd man to be made US President is, we'll go to Wikipedia and find it's Barack Obama (though we'll probably say George W Bush, as we believe most people get it wrong) as we know that's specific cultural information that's important, but it's easy to misinterpret coins based on knowledge of your own local currency.

[Pirateguybrush]

Chuck, the TTG logo by your name implies that you are a TTG employee, and your comment came over as somewhat snarky - mainly because of the "Maybe that's an American-centric attitude" comment. Putting the values on the coins wouldn't have turned it into a math puzzle, as the puzzle isn't a math puzzle at all. It's a puzzle about binary code. I still maintain that the requirement for country-specific outside knowledge is unfair, and can't be assumed. As I said before, if it was more of an ARG-type game which regularly got you to research things online, that would be okay. But PA has established itself as a game where the puzzles are self-contained, so therefore a puzzle about American currency, or traditional Japanese clothing, or one that required you to understand how to count in German is out of context, and therefore a bad puzzle.