Immediate turn-offs

[Dullstar]

Aesthetic turn-off:

Blurry backgrounds. It's a popular way of differentiating background from not-background, but I hate it. I guess the idea is that the stuff might be less focused if it's further away, but in practice, with properly corrected vision, I don't find this to be the case - in fact, if you told me that you thought the blur effect was realistic, I'd implore you to go get your vision tested. Because, honestly, that's kind of what it looks like - a nearsighted person looking at something far away without their glasses/contacts (this can be observed really well if you have bad, but corrected vision, because then you can put on/take off your glasses for a quick comparison). Of course, technically you can't focus on something close and something far at the same time, but it's not really noticeable IRL, because if you shift your attention from something far away, your focus will adjust, and the fact that the stuff you're not focusing on isn't super clear isn't all that noticeable, because you're not focusing on it. If you try to compensate for this via a graphical effect, the problem is that it doesn't change if the user shifts their attention from the play area to the background, which means the background just looks like garbage all the time.

My suggestion: Prefer differentiating background from not-background via color contrast as opposed to blurring.

Bonus turn-off points: the menu background in NL has a blur effect. On one hand, there's not much going on in that background, so it at least doesn't draw attention to itself, but once I notice it... cannot... unsee...

[WillLem]

My suggestion: Prefer differentiating background from not-background via color contrast as opposed to blurring.

+1 for this. Brightness up, contrast down does the trick

[Shmoley]

I hate X of everything levels and large levels with limited skills are "turn-offs" for me as well. A good example of this is the level I'm currently stuck on in Colorful Arty's Sublems. It's just too overwhelmingly big with too little skills! (No hate towards the creator or the level itself though, it's just not my kind of level.)

[Strato Incendus]

I hate X of everything levels and large levels with limited skills are "turn-offs" for me as well.

Amen! Finally someone who agrees with me on that!

That said, as stated before, I mainly hate X-of-everything levels when the skill supply is so abundant that the level feels pointless (and when it is a large landscape on top of that).

If somebody manages to create an X-of-everything level that seems like it's any-way-you-want, but actually all or at least some of the crucial skills are exactly accounted for (like Nepster's "Final Frustration"), that is something I quite admire. But of course, those levels are few and far between. Thus, when I'm making an X-of-everything level, I usually try to reserve that slot for another attempt at creating a Final-Frustration-like experience, instead of plastering my lower ranks with pointlessly easy X-of-everything levels.

Proxima has correctly pointed out how the X-of-everything levels in the Fun rank actually are still worthwhile because they teach you other things about the game.
Tame in ONML, in contrast, is so open-ended and trivial that it just becomes boring. And sadly, most of the time when people "just" make an X-of-everything level in order for it to be easy first-rank filler, it becomes a Tame level, not a Fun level (literally).

[Shmoley]

Yeah I agree with you on the pointlessness of most X of everything levels. I've never played Nepster's Final Frustration level before but it sounds interesting. This is why I decided to leave X of everything levels out of my level pack due to them being nothing but filler in my eyes. I also agree with it being worse when there's an overly long level that doesn't need to be there like that level from the fun rating from the original lemmings. I believe it was called Take Good Care of my Lemmings or something like that. What's the point of making the lemmings walk such a large distance only for them to build one long staircase? It would be better if the level was just shortened a bit but it would still just be one long build to the exit like in the fun level Don't do Anything too Hasty. I'm pretty sure that's what it was called.

[Dullstar]

From a designer perspective instead of a player perspective: styles where the pieces are sized inconveniently. Examples: Steel pieces in the original game, original game's Pillar set's various blocks. Aesthetically the set is quite nice, but it's kind of a pain to work with. With both examples I mentioned, the main problem is that the sizes of smaller versions of various pieces are such that it's hard to make tile patterns. For example, using the NL tile names, block_07 in Pillar is two pixels wider than two side-by-side block_06s, and block_08 is 4 pixels less tall than both, 8 pixels wider than 2 block_06s, 6 pixels wider than a block_07, and 12 pixels shorter than 3 block 2's. This makes it kind of hard to make nice-looking large terrain chunks, and the problem exists with every set of blocks in the set.

Later I should check how L2 handles the stricter grid: for the most part, L2 classic looks the same if you're not comparing things side-by-side, but the designers might have had to resize some of those pieces to work better; if we added those variants to NL, the set would be a lot easier to use.

[Shmoley]

This one will definitely vary between people but what I dislike are levels with very specific timing. Where you have to do the the same thing over and over and over again until you get it. Like assigning a skill in a very specific way so something specific happens when another lemming uses another skill at a specific time to make something very specific happen.. Dang I said the word specific like 10 bajillion times..

[WillLem]

Another one to add to this list:

Unusable Bombers!

So, the save requirement is 100%, and there are 10 Bombers.

Why?

I can think of only 3 possible reasons:

1) To deliberately annoy/distract/confuse the player
2) Because it was originally an X-of-everything level and the designer forgot to remove them
3) To copy L1, because L1 did it

Pretty much every custom pack I've played so far that centres around the classic-8 does this (notable offenders: DoveLems, GeoffLems, Lemmings Plus III). If there's anything that even I'm happy to leave in L1 where it didn't belong in the first place, it's unusable Bombers. Grr

Rant over

[Crane]

I admit I've added "Schmuck Bait" bombers in my levels before.  My most famous one, I think, is from Crystal Caves.  Usually I have three good reasons to include them:

- It's an X-of-everything level, whether or not the Blocker is used in the solution.
- To pair with a Blocker tool (e.g. 1 Bomber, 1 Blocker), since it's tradition, I guess (also to test to see if the player is paying attention).
- Neatness.  This is my later reason for including it in Crystal Caves, as well as to mimic a classic Mayhem level.  With the Bombers, the tool arrangements where 5 1 20 - 5 1 20 (5 Climbers, 1 Floater, 20 Bombers, 5 Builders, 1 Basher, 20 Miners).

True, including the bombers for no reason is a little irritating.

[kaywhyn]

Another one to add to this list:
Unusable Bombers!

This was often the first thing I noticed when I was LPing Seb Lems. Admittedly, I found it amusing the first few times, but later on it just loses its amusement value. At the same time, there have been some cases where they're not automatically useless, since for example some of them happened to have cloners. In those cases, it's important to not jump to the conclusion of the bombers being useless so hastily Otherwise, without cloners and on those where you need to save 100%, then yes, the bombers are pointless.

I admit I've added "Schmuck Bait" bombers in my levels before.

Ah, you must be a fan of the Tv Tropes site

As for the topic itself, I have some, but I will write a post answering that at a later time  

[Dullstar]

Personally, I dislike unusable bombers enough that I wouldn't mind an engine feature to automatically remove such bombers from the skillset. Sure, there's edge cases with cloners, but they're not hard to account for.

[namida]

Personally, I dislike unusable bombers enough that I wouldn't mind an engine feature to automatically remove such bombers from the skillset. Sure, there's edge cases with cloners, but they're not hard to account for.

It is possible for a level to exist (and at least 3 such levels exist in practice, possibly more) that require 100%, do not give any cloners (or require 100% including the cloners), and require the use of a bomber or stoner to solve.

The 3 levels

Lemmings Plus III, Fierce 1, "Dead Is The New Black"
Lemmings Plus Omega II, Sharp 7, "Odyssey"
Lemmings Plus Alpha, Decimation 4, "Oh Blast..."

The change would not prevent such levels from existing, as they could simply be reworked into non-100% levels that still overall require the trick in question.

[ericderkovits]

Here are those 3 levels solved by Icho on his Youtube channel

Lemmings Plus III: Fierce 1 (Dead is The New Black)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuUQytSsHcI&list=PLKR1N9oJTTlLYdPI-ILkJJhnjrZ-gINsy&index=60

Lemming Plus Omega II: Sharp 7 (Odyssey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvOxJMYCrtM&list=PLKR1N9oJTTlJ-7nY4WKPTVhVeXNSDhVkc&index=57

Lemmings Plus Alpha: Decimation 4 (Oh Blast...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASvnyFULRdw&list=PLKR1N9oJTTlI6CFD0N0cRO_nbW8d005XV&index=19

[kaywhyn]

It is possible for a level to exist (and at least 3 such levels exist in practice, possibly more) that require 100%, do not give any cloners (or require 100% including the cloners), and require the use of a bomber or stoner to solve.

You're right, so my statement saying bombers are completely useless on 100% levels isn't accurate. I didn't think about it carefully enough and especially the one from Lemmings Plus Alpha completely escaped me In that case, what's more accurate is saying they might appear to be useless at first on such levels, but of course it depends. Sometimes they're absolutely required (like with the three you mentioned in the spoiler), sometimes not. There's 2 levels in United that I now just remembered that also meet the "requires 100%" and needs a "bomber/stoner" to solve. They both happen to be timed levels as well. One of them doesn't have cloners, but the other one does, and you still need to save everyone, including the clone(s). So, that makes at least 5 levels that exist to require a bomber(s)/stoner(s) on 100% levels.

[Dullstar]

Huh. I would have expected that to be impossible based on the fact that direct drop doesn't work.