Trope Description Improvement Drive

I've never read the page for Deconstruction until now but has a pretty lengthy description

Serial Killer has this:

Serial killers are very much Truth in Television, but we must ask that real life examples not be listed here — there are plenty of examples of them on The Other Wiki.

I'd like to rewrite it a little, as there are plenty of real serial killers listed because they're portrayed in fiction... and the current wording is a little ambiguous on that.

Also, that page has a very long description - should some of it potentially be split out to an Analysis page?

I agree with moving a bunch of it to analysis.

Artistic License – Martial Arts once had a long "general" folder that was removed because we don't allow general examples. However the entries are good at explaining the most common problems, while being too long for the description. Would it help if I moved most of it to Analysis? (I would condense it a bit.)

I like that idea.

I support it as well.

Sure.

Control Room Puzzle is very confusing.

It sounds like my just-launched Tile-Flipping Puzzle, where you have multiple switches, and Puzzle Reset is just undoing what's been done.

But the page image from "Take out the Iron Masks, and follow the blue orb to solve the puzzle." is just "Repeat the pattern on the tiles.", or as I'd like to say "Press the tiles in the right order".

But the description of Control Room Puzzle doesn't sound like that at all, talking about obstacles and Unwinnable by Design, which doesn't make much sense in the context of just "Press these switches in the right order, and if you mess up, just try again from the beginning"?

It looks like the description is heavy on the caveats and maybe too light on how the trope normally works, but it sounds like that isn't what you're confused about?

A Control Room Puzzle is a room full of mysterious switches, which you may or may not be able to see what they do when you're standing in front of them. Generally they control world geometry - rotating platforms, raising bridges or ladders, blocking or unblocking passages, rerouting pipes, etc - and you have to arrange them in a way so that you can be in a particular place, maybe without obstructing something else that needs to happen at the same time. The caveats are common side-effects or frustrations when the puzzle is poorly-designed, but not inherent to the trope, if that helps - like if you can get to where you need to be but turned off the thing you need in the process and can't get back to the switches.

I'm not really sure how it's related to Tile-Flipping Puzzle except that sometimes tiles are flipped from a control room. (A control room can be a way to fit other grid puzzles into a game not based on grid puzzle mechanics, too, for instance.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 8th 2024 at 3:04:06 PM

Of note is that the previous revision of the description's bullet points was much worse, because it was too complainy. It was me who had edited out the complaining, back in 2022. The edit in question is here.

- If each switch of the puzzle has to control something, then the page image wouldn't count? It's just a passcode of tiles needing to be activated in the right order?

- Thanks!

Edited by Malady on Feb 8th 2024 at 5:58:10 AM

No, I have no idea what the page image is trying to say. It looks like a top-down view of everything with an associated switch but I can't tell how you control it.

I think of something more like this◊ - probably not obvious how the controls work without actually playing the game (a ball gets tossed back and forth along the tracks based on the position of the pegs) but at least they're on the same screen as the puzzle and the parallel shapes should make it clear how they're linked.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 8th 2024 at 3:18:19 PM

The current image displays the order in which the crystal switches have to be pressed to solve the puzzle.

Also, discussions of images fit better under IP and not here.

Still, both non-explanatory and also spoilers.

And true.

Noaqiyeum:

So, the trope is just "puzzles that use switches"?

Looking at the earliest discoverable version of the page...

Not seeing any commonalities between these starter examples.

Especially not the Goldenrod City example. The Gym is just a maze or something.

The Woohoo Hoouniversity seems to be talking about this puzzle? And the Guffawha Ruins can only be this Toggling Setpiece Puzzle?

And while current version says that the Runescape examples is for Ernest_the_Chicken#Oil_can, not sure how that was decided.

Edited by Malady on Feb 9th 2024 at 10:55:32 AM

No, it's about how you have to press those switches to solve the puzzle in question.

Also, let me remind you that the Control Room Puzzle page has existed since April 2008, so be careful about not trying to bend or alter the scope of the trope just to establish that of a page you've just launched; right now it's Tile-Flipping Puzzle which has to avoid stepping on the other page's toes.

Well, since you have a better grasp of Control Room Puzzle than I do, could you look at Tile-Flipping Puzzle and see if there's any that should be moved?

Or is it somehow possible to have a puzzle fulfil both tropes at the same time?

That would be a better question for the "Is this an example?" thread, but I'll answer here in the hopes that it helps you resolve the conundrum once and for all:

Looking at the currently-listed examples on Tile-Flipping Puzzle, I think they all fit the trope (except maybe the one from Deadly Rooms of Death; I haven't played the game, but judging by the example's writeup it leans more towards Control Room Puzzle since the wiring between the switches and the gates doesn't operate under merely altering the nearby or adjacent elements like it happens in the other examples listed).

Also, do note that sometimes an example can naturally make two or more tropes overlap, so it's not always necessary to restrict its listing to only one page or the other(s). In fact, many plot points, gameplay elements and character traits in media and fiction overlap tropes (for example, Darth Sidious being a Big Bad, The Chessmaster and a Manipulative Bastard; and all of these relate to him being an example of a villain), so if there's a puzzle that has elements of both puzzle tropes, then you can keep the example in both pages. One page can make the example focus on what makes it a CRP and the other page make it focus on the TFP aspect.

Thanks! I'll move discussion to the Example Discussion thread for now then.

...

New topic... What's In It For Me? is just:

What else can we add?

....

Edit: Thanks for answering my Is This An Example question!

Is the key part of the Control Room Puzzle, that there's switches that affect something else at all?

"Press button to activate mechanism as part of solving a puzzle." Is the trope? It was just too simple for me to figure it out?

EDIT: Stock Video Game Puzzle does say:

Edited by Malady on Feb 11th 2024 at 4:58:44 AM

Memetic Loser has this explanation for its possible origins:

I would like to add another sentence that I see from many examples: "Or they have moments of triumph and failure, but the failures are remembered better because they are more plot-relevant or otherwise stand out more."

I'm cool with that addition.

There are switches and their correct configuration is deducible (rather than being more of a combination lock whose code is written down in a note somewhere), yes.

I'm still confused what the connection to Tile-Flipping Puzzle is. They seem pretty distinct in most cases and you never really explained what your understanding of them was or why you thought there was overlap.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 12th 2024 at 7:34:10 PM

- They both usually involve activating switches to make things happen, I just wasn't sure what, if any, restrictions on the switches, the making, and the things that happened were needed for Control Room Puzzle.

EDIT: If the code must be deduced instead of just read off, then this Control Room Puzzle on-page example is wrong?

• A combination between this and a Dialogue Tree occurs in the beginning of Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island. An NPC finds a machine and asks the player what code they should input to keep moving forward (Thankfully, the code happens to be hidden in the same room, so the player doesn't have to do a lot of backtracking to find it).

Edited by Malady on Feb 12th 2024 at 11:40:37 AM

Looking at Tile-Flipping Puzzle again, its definition seems to be far broader than its title, to the point that I wouldn't consider it a Stock Puzzle as claimed. "Lights Out" is a stock puzzle, Knights and Knaves is a stock puzzle, 3 + 5 = 4 is a stock puzzle... "there's a button and you have to figure out what it does" is a puzzle trope, but not a stock puzzle because different buttons have different solution mechanisms. The fact that it's so broad is causing more overlap.

My understanding is that tile puzzles don't usually involve switches (they involve... tiles) and identifying the correct sequence is something specific and local to the tiles (making the tile patterns align) rather than having to do with something else out in the world that they affect like Control Room Puzzle.

Control Room Puzzle is a control room. The controls are in the room, and are physically distanced from whatever they control. Tiles, on the other hand, are something that a control room might control, but are also frequently their own control mechanism, flipped by touching or standing on them, and affecting something that touches or stands on them.

I'm gonna be honest, Malady: I have to agree with Noaq here. There's nowhere near as much potential for overlap between the tropes as you think. A Tile-Flipping Puzzle doesn't even revolve inherently about pressing switches like you do in Control Room Puzzle (and despite what you're thinking, this also has nothing to do with Trial-and-Error Gameplay either; that's just a side effect, nothing else). It's about flipping things with your own input (for example, the two Layton examples as well as the one from Phantom Hourglass I myself suggested during TLP have you flip the tiles directly). You may need to press switches or use some item for the action, but that by itself doesn't imply an overlap with Control Room Puzzle because this one revolves around puzzles where the mechanisms operate differently.

With all due respect, you seem to be a little paranoid over this due to not having studied the differences properly before drafting Tile-Flipping Puzzle to TLP. It's almost like you pitched the idea but then saw the other existing trope and then began making all these questions out of paranoia or what do I know. I'm not saying that either page has a problem because that's not the case. It's that you're trying to distinguish them from the wrong angle. I know how to distinguish the two because the differences aren't that hard to notice. I'm positive that so can you.

EDIT: Also, we already told you that discussing the validiy of specific examples goes to the "Is this an example?" thread. For the last time, I'll make an exception by answering yout latest question but next time USE THAT OTHER THREAD. Deducing the code in that example is part of the puzzle, and it's what the game expects you to do instead of blindly guessing.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Feb 12th 2024 at 5:36:33 AM