Mystery Hunt 2017: That Unlocking Structure

[devjoe]

Data from Death & Mayhem about the unlocks:

• At 7:23 PM Friday we had 12 open puzzles.
• At 7:24 we solved Dismal Dungeon, which unlocked seven more puzzles.
• At 7:40 we solved Thespians, which unlocked seventeen more puzzles.
• At 8:17 we finished the first event (and solved Pentoku at the same time), and this combined to unlock fourteen more puzzles.

We

Comments

[ext_1611713]

As I said elsewhere, I think the puzzle flood was mainly a function of (a) the quest metas being easier than we expected/intended (we didn't expect teams to have three metas done before the the first event!) and (b) being too safe with the unlock numbers within quest rounds (totally my fault).

For (b), all of the unlocks were within a span of 2-3 levels (for different characters) and they were set up so that if a team just barely reached a quest unlock (which would be likely if you got there by leveling up characters) you'd likely have about three puzzles open, no matter how your levels were distributed at that tipping point. But as it turns out, if you did a lot of your progression by solving quest metas, as many top teams did because of (a), you blew past the minimum unlock requirement, started the quest round with a ton of puzzles, and could focus on the easiest ones, leading to more quest meta solves and more unexpectedly fast progress, lather, rinse, repeat.