It could be interesting to make Clockworks levels more expansive, and possibly have hidden areas in them that are accessed (possibly with the use of 3 energy like a danger room gate) without using an elevator, like some massive expanse of unexplored territory.
It would add to the story of the world that there are places in the interior of the planet that the Spiral Order has not explored yet.
At its lowest level, this could just mean levels that change layout occasionally (Example: Holy crap this hallway just changed direction while I was standing on it, or a giant girder just crashed through the floor leaving a small chasm that I can't cross right now) and/or are semi-randomly generated. It gets extremely boring after a while to be going through the same map of the abandoned zombie metropolis for the 900,000th time.
In addition, it would be cool to make players figure out how to get places occasionally.
Essentially this would mean making the current switch puzzles an order of magnitude more difficult.
Getting Lost, Mazes, and Puzzle Platforming
I kind of agree. It would make the game more interesting if deeper levels held areas with more difficult puzzles, not just swarms of more difficult enemies. A start could be to make more use of the purple/yellow fence switch found only in the Ironclaw Munitions Factory, or perhaps introduce a new ball and track mechanisim whereas the ball would roll down the track, activating switches that it would roll over, and then hitting a button at the very end of the track. Text art example:
O_<-----Ball rolls down track
----\
-----\
------\__.__
-------/|\------\
--------|--------\
--------|---------\
--------|--------- \_______] <--- Button breaks ball
--------|---------------------------and closes gate
Switch opens
gate
Essentially, once the gate is opened, you'll have to race through it before the ball reaches the end of the track.
About the rock: and if you die and try to revive? On a 4-man party?
About puzzles and platforms in general:
What if someone is just slow and can't figure a puzzle everyone else solved?
In contrast, if you make a complex puzzle for 4 people, what if someone leaves the party?
Puzzles are for singleplayer games.
This is a MMO where you just kill things.
To Thinslayer:
Yeah, I see what you're saying. That's probably a good idea.
I don't see why puzzles can't be implemented... on games with ridiculously hard puzzles, everyone just looks up the answer anyway.
Those purple/yellow fences would work well in many locations, including the "Gremlin Grounds" levels, and there could be some kind of old book cipher-related thing taking place in Candlestick Keep or Scarlet Fortress.
Even more complicated gold key/opening door systems could work well, or buttons that stop working when you get off them.
Just throwing out ideas here...
I totally want to see that happen, but I think it would require a total rework of the game. Let's set our sights a little lower, shall we?
I'm aiming for tougher puzzles. The Compounds have given me a delicious taste of that; I deliberately avoided them on my recent Dauntless Delver run, if that's any indication of their difficulty.
That freeze one in particular, with the rockets and ice...I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.