Immediate turn-offs

[Strato Incendus]

It has nothing to do with direct drop.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh-noers are still able to exit. We only recently had a change that made it so that Oh-noers would always drown when falling into water, even if they were Swimmers, because they "need their arms" to oh-no.

[WillLem]

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

Direct drop does work as long as the fall distance is below splat height.

The original "direct drop" bug was caused by the "splatter" and "faller" states being exitable, when really they shouldn't be. The lemming should be able to transition to "walker" first.

[Dullstar]

Right, it's because splatters (fallers as well in some versions, but I don't think all ports with direct drop are affected) can exit. A splatter is actively dying, and I would expect an ohnoer to have similar behavior, i.e. not being able to exit.

[namida]

A splatter is actively dying, and I would expect an ohnoer to have similar behavior, i.e. not being able to exit.

I'd think of it like this: Someone who has fallen a long distance and hit the ground is probably already dead. Someone who is sick and about to die can sometimes be saved, we can assume that inside the exit is a very good team of medics with the Bomber antidote.

[WillLem]

we can assume that inside the exit is a very good team of medics with the Bomber antidote.

+1 for this

[mobius]

-big or huge sprawling levels
-levels which have or appear to have very complicated/involved many multi-step solutions.
-when the terrain appears to have been thrown onto the level without much planning or artistic input.

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unusable bombers never bothered me one bit; I always chuckled a bit at them then moved on. While they may be the most used case of a skill you don't need in a puzzle level; any extra unnecessary skill can be inserted into the level to throw the player off. Of course most of the time doing that (with anything other than bomber) runs risk of inserting a back route, why it's so rarely done.

[WillLem]

-big or huge sprawling levels

I disagree; I love these sorts of levels as long as there are plenty of skills to craft out your own solution, or as long as the solution is relatively obvious. Conversely, large maps that are also complicated puzzles: yes, yuck!

-when the terrain appears to have been thrown onto the level without much planning or artistic input.

Agreed.

unusable bombers never bothered me one bit; I always chuckled a bit at them then moved on. While they may be the most used case of a skill you don't need in a puzzle level; any extra unnecessary skill can be inserted into the level to throw the player off

Having recently completed a speedrun of L1 on Amiga, I've come to the conclusion that the unusable Bombers were put there deliberately so that it would be possible for a player to accidentally assign a Bomber instead of, say, a Blocker or Floater (the adjacent skills). Since I have done that a couple of times whilst going through the run (mostly due to relying on arrow keys for skill selection, in real-time, at speed), I would say that this is almost certainly the reason they're there.

Levels like All Or Nothing, Stepping Stones and even (to some extent) We All Fall Down prove that the designers knew that the game had a layer of difficulty that had more to do with the controls than the puzzles, and putting random Bombers in there as another way to add execution difficulty seems like just the sort of thing that they would have found amusing at the time L1 was designed.

The thing is, since NeoLemmix has removed that element of difficulty from the game, it no longer has the same effect, it's just annoying.

[mobius]

-big or huge sprawling levels

I disagree; I love these sorts of levels as long as there are plenty of skills to craft out your own solution, or as long as the solution is relatively obvious. Conversely, large maps that are also complicated puzzles: yes, yuck!

-when the terrain appears to have been thrown onto the level without much planning or artistic input.

Agreed.

unusable bombers never bothered me one bit; I always chuckled a bit at them then moved on. While they may be the most used case of a skill you don't need in a puzzle level; any extra unnecessary skill can be inserted into the level to throw the player off

Having recently completed a speedrun of L1 on Amiga, I've come to the conclusion that the unusable Bombers were put there deliberately so that it would be possible for a player to accidentally assign a Bomber instead of, say, a Blocker or Floater (the adjacent skills). Since I have done that a couple of times whilst going through the run (mostly due to relying on arrow keys for skill selection, in real-time, at speed), I would say that this is almost certainly the reason they're there.

Levels like All Or Nothing, Stepping Stones and even (to some extent) We All Fall Down prove that the designers knew that the game had a layer of difficulty that had more to do with the controls than the puzzles, and putting random Bombers in there as another way to add execution difficulty seems like just the sort of thing that they would have found amusing at the time L1 was designed.

The thing is, since NeoLemmix has removed that element of difficulty from the game, it no longer has the same effect, it's just annoying.

good point. Keep in mind this was the era where this sort of thing was common place. Take a look at games like Chips Challenge or Milon's Secret Castle or Zelda 2. "Gotcha" moments weren't shunned in game design like they are (in many cases anyway) nowadays. [What I call "fake difficulty]
However they're attempt at irritation never worked on me, in this regard anyways! It worked in plenty of other ways...