Indeed, while I found Witness difficulty very uneven, with lack of episodic structure like many other games. It lacks guidance so you stumble around until you find things - but it's not actually truly open world as there are many knowledge gates. Which you will regularly bounce off.
That does not make it worse than other puzzle games, just annoying in parts. Especially its huge reliance on perception as opposed to actually thinking and figuring things out, but then it's not quite a puzzle game. It's more of a big escape room game which does have puzzles in it. There are others on the market, few are well known.
(Even something like Antichamber is more of a puzzle game than Witness, yet it is still an escape room rather than a pure puzzle game.)
A relevant contrasting comparison would be to something like The Talos Principle which was heavily playtested including some puzzle redesigns, reordering, some having been dropped. Puzzles were also automatically checked to be doable in desired and a few atypical ways.
The other design principles apply though the same - minimalism, tutorial principles and difficulty scaling.
Antichamber has the guns and blocks and physics, Talos has the few tools and pseudophysics, Witness has varying puzzle mechanics but one input with tons of output.
The difference is the degree of things being hidden. Puzzles with hidden pieces tend to become adventure games. It does not matter if you have to carry the pieces or if they're already in place.
That does not make it worse than other puzzle games, just annoying in parts. Especially its huge reliance on perception as opposed to actually thinking and figuring things out, but then it's not quite a puzzle game. It's more of a big escape room game which does have puzzles in it. There are others on the market, few are well known.
(Even something like Antichamber is more of a puzzle game than Witness, yet it is still an escape room rather than a pure puzzle game.)
A relevant contrasting comparison would be to something like The Talos Principle which was heavily playtested including some puzzle redesigns, reordering, some having been dropped. Puzzles were also automatically checked to be doable in desired and a few atypical ways.
The other design principles apply though the same - minimalism, tutorial principles and difficulty scaling.
Antichamber has the guns and blocks and physics, Talos has the few tools and pseudophysics, Witness has varying puzzle mechanics but one input with tons of output.
The difference is the degree of things being hidden. Puzzles with hidden pieces tend to become adventure games. It does not matter if you have to carry the pieces or if they're already in place.