raocow's talkhaus

There are way too many low ceiling levels in this game.

FrozenQuills wrote:But even better is to not use the airship piece and use the clown car or fairy powerup instead, but each of those have their own drawbacks (either huge hitbox or doing everything without taking a hit)

The fairy has the advantage though of giving potentially unlimited tries since getting hit in fairy form just knocks you out of it. With liberal application of reset pipes/doors or simply extra fairy points it's probably the superior choice for a level like this.

Mandew wrote: In actuality, though, what would make this intolerable for me is how the vertical sections kind of force you to take your time and be really careful due to manoeuvering something that is not actually precise nor responsive to control. Basically, the fact that it'd be difficult master the level in such a way that each attempts can meet back to the previous ones faster.

It just doesn't seem fun to me.

If this were SMW with the Lakitu cloud, it'd probably be fine. The problem is that Airship piece in SMBX is glitchy and terrible to use.

Congratulations on beating 1/20th of Part A of the level.

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:

It's sad that the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for people to watch someone else play the game rather than play it themselves and post in the main thread; that honestly bothers me more than the level not being well received. If this ever gets a sequel, I'll ask raocow not to play it just to see if people can muster up the courage to review the damn thing themselves.

Plenty of people are a good enough judge of their own skills to not need to play it. I guarantee this level would flat out make me quit playing the game altogether if I actually bothered playing it. I don't do annoying marathon levels. Especially when they're centered around a glitchy object which is basically guaranteed to result in a lot of unnecessary frustrations.

Also, isn't that what playtesting is for? Did no one else play this level during development?

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:

It's sad that the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for people to watch someone else play the game rather than play it themselves and post in the main thread; that honestly bothers me more than the level not being well received. If this ever gets a sequel, I'll ask raocow not to play it just to see if people can muster up the courage to review the damn thing themselves.

I'm confused. If the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for the reviewer to watch someone else play the level, what is achieved by forcing reviewers to play the level themselves? Doesn't that remove the level of objectivity an observing reviewer can provide? Or am I entirely misunderstanding your point?

For the record, I think reviews by the player and reviews by an observer are equally and differently valid. A review by the player can better report on how the level "feels" or "controls." raocow's Super Cat Planet video yesterday is a good example. If you haven't played the postgame sections he fought through yesterday (which I have), you wouldn't be able to fully appreciate how much of a challenge it is to control little angel girl in the sideways wind slingshot segments. It doesn't translate through the medium of watching the level played.

In contrast, a review by an observer can be "impartial" in the sense that they can better see where and when any issues encountered by the player are the player's fault, rather than the level's. For example, as an observer of this morning's Mario level, I don't think a criticism would be valid about the large green pipes in the second vertical section being misleading. Clearly raocow entered the first large one he saw thinking it would take him forward in the level, only to be upset when it took him back. But as an observer I concluded that that was raocow's fault more than anything - the sign explained that all green pipes would return the player back to the start of the section to get their plane back. That's something an observer is more equipped to comment upon than the player of the level themselves.

So in my view, the most well-rounded review experience is obtained by individuals playing the level who report on their experiences, AND observers watching that play who report on their conclusions.

And for the record, at least 2 other posters here said that they <i>have</i> played the level. One (Stink Terios) has clearly communicated his thoughts on the level, including a defense of it at first followed by a retraction (I'm guessing after a repeat play?). The other (Lejes) simply commented that this level made him quit the game.

Setting aside any questions about the relative merit of particular sections of the level, or use of the plane at all - would you be able to address the most clearly objective detail discussed here? By which I mean, level length? I would appreciate understanding why the level was made as long as it is before the player reaches the first midpoint, as opposed to - for example - being split into two levels.

Voltgloss wrote: And for the record, at least 2 other posters here said that they <i>have</i> played the level. One (Stink Terios) has clearly communicated his thoughts on the level, including a defense of it at first followed by a retraction (I'm guessing after a repeat play?). The other (Lejes) simply commented that this level made him quit the game.

I actually died super early at the boss and then took a break and posted.

Then I actually saw what the boss was about and God-moded myself through it after a few unsuccessful tries :v
I might elaborate more tomorrow.

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:stuff

you sure seem to want criticism that equates to "what the hell is wrong for you why did you make a required nigh-unbeatable level focused on a buggy piece of crap" instead of, y'know, the stuff you're getting here

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:

It's sad that the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for people to watch someone else play the game rather than play it themselves and post in the main thread; that honestly bothers me more than the level not being well received. If this ever gets a sequel, I'll ask raocow not to play it just to see if people can muster up the courage to review the damn thing themselves.

I've played this level, and honestly it's pretty bad. And even just watching it, it's badly designed.

I broke my face enough on levels that require me to replay 5 to 10 minutes of them on every death, to say that that particular experience is really similar from one to the other. This is no exception, this is absolutely nothing new. No matter what your level's great qualities are, they are null and void in the eye of anyone with the average patience - it's one thing to struggle, but to a lot of people this level would be downright suffering.

Heck, I watched a streamer who did exactly the same. Trust me when I say this: If raocow uploaded raw, unedited footage even once of him breaking his face on an entire level, a lot of people would skip a lot of parts of the video. Anyways, by watching that streamer, I started to empathize with how boring and unpleasant repetition can be.

Voltgloss wrote: I'm confused. If the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for the reviewer to watch someone else play the level, what is achieved by forcing reviewers to play the level themselves? Doesn't that remove the level of objectivity an observing reviewer can provide? Or am I entirely misunderstanding your point?

I think what he's saying is that he's frustrated that everyone's all "oh ya, everything's good!!" until raocow plays it, at which point people start saying what they REALLY think. He's frustrated that few people would playtest this thing because no one cared, leading to the project being held in lower regard than it could've been. I can understand the frustration, but... Wouldn't the easiest thing to do to rectify this be to just ask other communities to playtest it, not just rely on SMWC who was dealing with taking-forever CX AND CP2 at the same time?

Had I known anything about this project and the help that was needed, I could've helped with testing levels.

The culmination of today's episode was like a game of Flappy Bird, where after every death you need to repeat a long tedious obstacle course before you get another crack at fitting the bird through the gaps.

I just assumed I was bad at the game when I played it, not that the game had any problems. That's me every time!!

Anyway this level is super VIPy and I respect that

I'm surprised how few criticisms there are of the miniboss. To me, that looked like one of the worst individual sections of this half of the level, only outmatched by the death-wall section. SMB3 Bowser is pretty random, which doesn't work well for something like this that expects you to be fairly tight on both positioning and timing - that, or get lucky and have him use fireballs when he's in the right place.

Nimono wrote:

Voltgloss wrote: I'm confused. If the only way to get halfway-decent reviews is for the reviewer to watch someone else play the level, what is achieved by forcing reviewers to play the level themselves? Doesn't that remove the level of objectivity an observing reviewer can provide? Or am I entirely misunderstanding your point?

I think what he's saying is that he's frustrated that everyone's all "oh ya, everything's good!!" until raocow plays it, at which point people start saying what they REALLY think.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say.

Voltgloss wrote:Setting aside any questions about the relative merit of particular sections of the level, or use of the plane at all - would you be able to address the most clearly objective detail discussed here? By which I mean, level length?

To be completely honest, I didn't think it was that long or hard. The vertical flight sections can be aced as long as you stop and look at how the spikes are moving (and those sections are only about three screens tall), and the mid-boss "fight" is completely trivial as long as you time hitting the switch block correctly (which isn't that hard to do):

The platforming segment is a bit tricky, but that's right there at the beginning (after the intro section which, again, isn't that long or hard). The moving blocks segment is also a bit tricky, but I didn't think it was difficult enough to warrant having the checkpoint right before it (especially since the player would only have to redo a few small and presumably easy sections to get back there). It's not that bad as long as you stay calm and focus.

But hey, that's just what I thought, and what do I know?

once you know what to do it they aren't that hard, sure, but cumulatively they take a long of time together, especially when you get instant death funtimes right at the end (before the midpoint).

Like, as the maker, yeah, it ain't so bad because you know precisely what to do. That's kind of the key factor.

Oh jeez, I really dislike the æsthetic of the first pink block threateningly closing in on you in the Krazy Kastle Krush Instant Death Extravaganza section. It's like being smothered to death by a gigantic sponge cake make of raw ground meat. While you're sitting in a dorky yellow monoplane/kayak hybrid, at that. What a way to go.

raocow wrote:once you know what to do it they aren't that hard, sure, but cumulatively they take a long of time together, especially when you get instant death funtimes right at the end (before the midpoint).

Like, as the maker, yeah, it ain't so bad because you know precisely what to do. That's kind of the key factor.

Yeah. From what I've seen in the video, the issue with the level is not the difficulty, it's the Checkpoint Starvation and the fact the airship piece is glitchy as hell.

Dragon Fogel wrote:I'm surprised how few criticisms there are of the miniboss. To me, that looked like one of the worst individual sections of this half of the level, only outmatched by the death-wall section. SMB3 Bowser is pretty random, which doesn't work well for something like this that expects you to be fairly tight on both positioning and timing - that, or get lucky and have him use fireballs when he's in the right place.

The miniboss is outrageous, but for me at least, that outrage faded over the sheer amount of time the rest of the level ate. On the countless repeat plays, it eventually wore down to that GIF Imaynotbehere4long posted. I still think the initial reaction I had to it was right, though. It doesn't matter that I internalized a series of movements leading to Raphael's demise eventually, it's still junk that shouldn't have existed in that context. First impressions matter, and you can become numb to how outrageous something is if a newer, bigger outrage keeps replacing it. Like the death-wall section. Gray and another-shade-of-gray are kind of hard to differentiate when blocks are moving that fast. Why couldn't the level have used actual blue blocks for the solidity switch, to pair with the red? Who knows!

I still persevered through all of this. It was the very final screen of the level that made me give up in disgust.

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:But hey, that's just what I thought, and what do I know?

To be snarky, apparently not to cut down on the length of a level that's built around an unreliable and frustrating to use gimmick that can lead to unintuitive deaths, especially ones that stems from mistakes that would otherwise be small if not for how finicky the thing is.

Also, by nature of being the level designer, you're going to play your level a thousand and nine times to make sure everything works. You're going to get very, very good at your level just through sheer repetition. You're absolutely not going to have the perspective of a player, as you know everything about the level and have tried its challenges several times over before you even give the entire thing a run-through. Really, you should never assume - this goes for general game design, too - that you know how your creation actually plays, because a big part of that is how challenges are introduced to the player.

Frankly, from what I'm hearing it sounds like you didn't actually really have dedicated testers. There's a reason why those're seriously important, and finding bugs is hardly the only reason.

Post end-game analysis (and pre-episode 26 analysis) presuming I've seen so far with the entire game is pretty much this. There was many good apples and fun levels, but seemingly not enough actual participants for it to actually be good. I mean, we've seen like what? Ten level authors? Some variety and new blood could've honestly made this a better game or restrictions of some of the lesser levels could've easily left with a superior product.

I'm just an observer for the most part and I've nothing to do with most collaborations, but I just see so many simple flaws that spoil the level overall that could've been solved with testing teams that worked through the levels through even multiple judges before approval.

Overall, it is a generally fun experience, but it could've been something better and bigger should more time have been spent and more actual submissions be accepted into the project that weren't featured in other projects. A fully original game with more time could've been possible. But that's the problem, I don't think there was that much interest as there could've been for the project. If there was more authors submitting levels, perhaps we could've seen a far more polished overall selection of levels.

"I realise it's the endgame, but it still feels like too much. Just because it's 'endgame' doesn't mean it should turn into Russian roulette."
— raocow, in a description on a Let's Play video of An SMWC Production