Suggestion: New "Monster Event" Ideas?

[xxalucard]

After playing through Amnesia and a bunch of custom stories, I felt that a lot of the monster events (including those in the actual game) were predictable/repetitive. Not trying to say it wasn't a very fun or scary game, I'm just hoping there are some new kinds of "Monster" related events in A Machine For Pigs.

Some criticism I have for the current "monster events" implemented in Amnesia:


1. *Most* monsters disappear after you hide for a little while. This isn't such a bad thing, but the music cues give way too much away-- you always know when a monster is looking for you and when it's fully gone. I understand that there are still surprises when the monster first attacks you, but I think it's too re-assuring and easy to simply hide and wait for the music to indicate your safe.

My suggestion: Instead of a timer that makes the monster disappear automatically after a certain amount of time when it doesn't detect you; you should use a different variable. The music cue makes it too easy to just sit and wait until your safe-- there should be more situations where you have to solve a puzzle, get to a certain point, or possibly have to stun the monster and run right by him, etc. Basically I think that if you're going to use the basic "hide until the monster goes away" idea, it should be very minimal-- not the most common interaction with them in the game. Also, there should be no music identification of when you're safe (unless you're doing this to mislead the player into thinking they're safe...) or it should be done very minimally at least. You should -never- feel safe....and this brings me to my next point-->

2. Get rid of the closet safe rooms. It's wayyyy too easy and "safe" when you just open up a random wooden closet, walk into it, close the doors, and make it impossible for the monster to attack you. If anything, the monster should be able to destroy closets at random-- at least dissuading the player from using them or feeling 100% safe when inside them. I understand you need SOME areas to be safe in, but random wooden closets can easily be abused throughout the game and shouldn't be.

3. Similar gameplay setups to Justine-- Or at least a difficulty option for some players to switch too. I really liked (despite how frustrating it was) the idea of "one hit and your dead" with no save points-- that really is the definition of fear in a game. I'm not sure if the ENTIRE game should be like that, depending on how long it is-- but some form of this should definitely enter into it. At least an option for it...I liked it

4. There should be some sort of "random monster appearance" system-- I shouldn't be able to sit in a dark room for 10 minutes without fear of anything attacking me. It would be cool if I have some sort of dread about trying to figure out a puzzle or find things-- that the longer I spend somewhere the more likely a monster may randomly appear to attack me. I'm not sure how exactly this should be implemented-- I could see it being annoying if the formula for how "random" it should be doesn't work well all the time. I basically just don't want to feel safe when I linger around somewhere.


That's basically a short little criticism/idea list. randomly felt like sharing. I think the closer the devs get to not letting the player feel "safe," the better a job they're doing. I'd at least like to see options that let the game lean in that direction