SECRET CONTENT: HOW HIDDEN IS TOO HIDDEN?

I think that if there's going to be a lot of hidden content, we need to know that there's going to be hidden content early on in the game. I've seen a lot of games in which it's never mentioned that there's hidden object in the game at all. I'm not going to trawl through a walkthrough and expose myself to spoilers to find out whether there's bonus content or not.
Once that's done, hidden doesn't mean impossible to find. For example, the case mentioned in the first place.
Another example is in The Way. The bonus from using Scatha's The Woman Within is something that you have to find out through the walkthrough. However, since you're highly likely to use the skill, it's not that bad but what makes it bad is the chance. If you're unlucky, you won't get it, ever.
In my opinion, I won't care if you can only find it at one specific time as long as that specific time doesn't have a 1 in 10 chance.
Also, is shouldn't be an invisible chest hidden on an tileset that is always non-passable which gives you no clue. Case in point here are the Goodie caves in the Aveyond series. They're cheats but you can get the picture that finding that there's bonus content there is impossible for the average gamer unless you interact with everything

author=xavion
For an example if there is no hint that it exists at all (Zodiac Spear) it's unfair, whereas even if it's only hinted in a roundabout way yet in a way that people could be like 'Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I did this?' and probably would be it's fine, for example in my game I've got what is pretty much a joke spell that kills your party when used but if you survive it (auto-revive) it sends you to a secret dungeon, thats not too secret because the spell is obviously suspicious and it doesn't require much too get into too the point where you could even discover it by chance since it sounds powerful enough to use in a battle where you might need auto-revive.

Actually it kind of is. From a purely player perspective, if all that spell dose is kill your own party I would never use it! Even if it did massive damage to the enemy as well (and I mean insta kill everything) I still wouldn’t touch it with a 12 foot pole. I don’t even think the idea of using Auto-life before hand would even occur to me (although it would to some people). I just wouldn’t use it period, especially when I have much more reliable ways of killing things.

I wouldn’t think that your joke spell had any special significance behind it. I would think it’s just that, a joke, a very unfunny joke. So unless I run into someone who just so happens to mention that he knows someone who survived using that specific spell and that he woke up in some weird place I would miss out on your hidden dungeon entirely without ever knowing it’s there. Now that is too hidden.

author=masterofmayhem
Actually it kind of is. From a purely player perspective, if all that spell dose is kill your own party I would never use it! Even if it did massive damage to the enemy as well (and I mean insta kill everything) I still wouldn’t touch it with a 12 foot pole. I don’t even think the idea of using Auto-life before hand would even occur to me (although it would to some people). I just wouldn’t use it period, especially when I have much more reliable ways of killing things.

Exactly, even if it did say 10000 damage to all enemies and killed even ONE member, I wouldn't use it unless desperate

author=xavion
Perhaps more information is required.
The spell is called Armageddon, the description tells you to save first, it's a divine level spell, and when you use it it gives you a message about how you caused the apocalypse and died too early to save the world. It is also useful because it kills you as I have an achievement system of a sort where earning them unlocks new classes too play with but they're only registered upon death because that's when you're scored.

That dose change things a little. If the enemy encounters are powerful enough to warrant the sacrifice of one of my characters to bet them, with the knowledge I can always replace them and providing losing a fight doesn’t cause a game over I could see the spell seeing more use. But my point still stands.

If a message comes up saying that you just caused the apocalypse how am I spoused to know that Auto-life works on Armageddon in the fist place? Or that surviving might cause something special to happen? Realistically most players would see it as a last ditch effort spell that would only cast when there down to the last character with critical Hp and are going to loss anyway and for the hell of it.

Remember the 'died too early' thing is a admittedly extremely subtle hint that you can survive it. Besides if I wanted too really annoy the players I'd make it create a hidden folder and move itself so it's inside the hidden folder both hiding the game and breaking all shortcut links, effectively making it so people have too 'search' for the world in the universes backup 'file system' before they can continue playing, of course I'd make a message saying that so people have to search their computer and move it back to keep playing as that's just how I am.

But that makes me think of some of my other stuff most notably the discovery you'll make fairly early on 'If it makes sense, it will happen' of course that only applies about 99.99% of the time but still, for example the easiest way to discover thief hideout's with lots of loot is to accept one of the randoms in an inn to join you, go to sleep, then travel around listening for rumors of where the random ran off to with all you stuff. Because most people willing to join you immediately are thieves, that's an example of a bad surprise much like your discovery that disease is real or stealing off a traveling caravan will cause shops to run out of stock will be unhappy.

While that was slightly unrelated it does mean I can say that not all secrets are good for example in you secret passage you could have it dark with a spiked pit that kills you or a secret dungeon that turns out to be locked and the guy in front of it with the key steals your stuff, although they'll probably be less hidden they still work just to give the player a slight boost that they found something before you take it away from them.

The best idea is to lure the searchers to the treasure. Make a chest visible but hard to get to. They know it's there, they can see it. If you colour code the chests (say red is for awesome stuff) and put a special chest in a visible place they'll know the item is worth trying to get to. It's all about incentive.

Another option is to let them know how many treasures are in an area. Even having a treasure list ( 3 rare treasures, 4 normal and 4 plentiful ones) or even offer some type of treasure room that they can open if they complete certain tasks within the dungeon.

Make them want the treasures. Most people don't want to go through a huge group of monsters and puzzles just to get a lousy potion that may or may not be at the end of a tunnel. I can understand that. I wouldn't want to go through all that trouble for something like that either.

As for that poll, about 75% said they'd look for hidden treasures. That's not bad stats at all, despite the low vote amount. Therefore, scatter treasures around and people will search.

Final Fantasy IX with Excalibur II is another example. Without looking at walkthroughs and spoiler pages, how would you know to try and rush the game and beat it up to the Lich battle in Memoria within 5 (how many?) hours just to make the weapon appear in some random area of the map you have to search for?

When you have some sort of hint in the game pointing for something hidden then finding that something fills you with accomplishment.

When you sort of bump into a random secret with no previous knowledge whatsoever about it you feel meh... It's still nice to find it, but it doesn't feel like a reward since you weren't actively searching for it.

Play older ID Software games for a good sense of secret locations. I just recently played the online version of Wolfenstein on the Bethesda website, and I would not be able to find all 100% of the secret locations. That was also before the internet. I'm sure in a matter of seconds I could google the correct locations.

Secrets nowadays must be clever enough to hide, but simple enough to find. You wouldn't want too many people looking up a help document, unless that's your intention. Maybe on a second or third playthrough a secret becomes clear to you.