COMING UP NEXT now w/ BUCKET.TXT

[Leet]

is this really the place or time to discuss what raocow chooses to play

Is the "games coming up next" thread the place to discuss what games are coming up next?

Are you asking that?

[ano0maly]

Someone tl;dr this shit. Gods damn it is this really the place or time to discuss what raocow chooses to play on his channel or his forum? It seems really out of place. I get hype for things that are coming up in this thread, maybe it's just being silly but this seems really off topic.

-_-

I mean I just said that there's more going on here than that, even if it indeed got imported from elsewhere

[gbreeze]

Ultimately, raocow can choose what he wants to play. We marked yump 2 as kaizo:light and this wasn't a decision taken lightly. We felt the hack was substantially hard and brutal enough to elicit a kaizo:light ranking. This is going to obviously decrease the number of people that play it, and that's fine. We recognize it's a bit of a more niche hack than jump 1/2, but hey, that's romhacking. That's just how hacks end up sometimes. Perhaps the tags in the C3 thread aren't as visible as the SMWC hack categories, but when the hack is submitted, you will be able to clearly see that it is kaizo:light. This is the same category that Storks or Invictus lie in. Hacks that are certainly not made for everyone, but a niche audience.

I really want to stress that our intent was not to mislead anyone. The yump 2 thread was kept as succinct as possible, but perhaps an unintended consequence was that we didn't clarify the difficulty enough.

If raocow does play this, I really would like to see what this hack IS properly conveyed. I would hate to see people expecting a jump 1/2 lp getting this instead

[Leet]

I dunno why gamers don't like getting mislead anyway. but im a masochist so

[ano0maly]

I don't know, this reads more like you are restating your own points instead of replying to mine (if that was meant to be a response to me).

I'm not, as perhaps you may be thinking, "upset that raocow is playing YUMP 2" necessarily. I'm just offering a commentary on Rixithechao's worries about the perception of the hack and how this extended community will treat it and its creators.

Like I said, what applies to the hack doesn't automatically carry over to the LP without some care. I understand that SMWC may have a variety of styles of hacks, but what raocow's viewers expect him to play and expect themselves to watch is a different matter. I personally don't even know what Storks or Invictus are; I'm not that familiar with SMWC. To us, something like YUMP is an exception to the rule we really only saw last back in 2017. This side of SMWC is not a recurring thing in this channel outside of some individual contest levels, and maybe it helps to be very clear that this hack is different from the usual.

You're probably aware of how people reacted to the original YUMP. Some users tried in various ways to defend it as "creativity gone wild" but it was quite apparent that it didn't even know what it was trying to be and the people in the thread felt baited and misled, despite also acknowledging its strengths. With YUMP 2 people may be misled in a different way, due to lack of adequate communication. The JUMP/YUMP team is presenting one thing, a Youtuber fanbase is expecting another.

Edit: Said the above before you revised your post

[Daizo]

post

That's kind of what happens when you don't fact check: you'll be proven wrong. That's not my fault for showing your error.

Sorry.

[The Doctor]

YUMP2 isn't JUMPhalf. This game is not meant to be on equal footing with a quality-controlled hack like that. raocow needs to make that clear to his Youtube audience.

I am so lost. I've read all your posts several times and I can't even wrap my head around the problem here. Why does raocow have to make anything clear to his audience? What does he need to clear up?

What's the problem? Some of his audience might try the game for themselves, realize it's too hard for them, and stop? The horror! How is that even a problem? I rented The Lion King on the SNES as a wee lad. It was too hard for me and I moved on to other games. I don't have any psychological trauma from the experience. Am I missing something?

This is such a weird topic.

[ano0maly]

Allow me to sum up this particular chain among this wider conversation:

Rixithechao was upset that YUMP 2 would infuriate players and viewers, sometimes on purpose, and that would lead to more toxic vitrol towards the level creators (whether that's an exaggeration of the reality or not I'm not sure but that's how he looks at it).

And others (Validon98) chipped in about their frustrations stemming from the game, to which idol/gbreeze replied "this is really made for us and not for that kind of audience/it's a different niche from the usual".

To which I said "sure, but if he plays it his fans will think they got another game not on par with what they came to his channel for" - and could result in that toxic vitrol towards the creators Rixithechao was upset about.

This embedded in a wider discussion.

[Leet]

I find it very weird that people would come to raocow's channel NOT to see weird janky mario fangames. but also i never read the youtube comments, and im kinda surprised that people do

[ano0maly]

Actually lemme shorten this even further:

It doesn't matter that the fans are wrong for thinking that this is just another normal hack and then insulting and badmouthing the creators for it not being one - that's what they'll do, and Rixi doesn't want any part of it.

[Validon98]

I just want to clarify that my posting here was more to apologize for comments said elsewhere in frustration that may have been a factor in rixi's post and that I understand it's wrong to attempt to have opinions on the hack based off a different standard than how one probably should think about a kaizo light hack. I willingly played the hack knowing it is kaizo light and attempted to think of it the same way as jump 1/2 or mice without thinking until after the fact that "this is clearly its own thing that should not be judged on the same merits as other hacks, it's a hack made without the same kind of restrictions and made to be the kind of thing the authors want to play" and idol/gbreeze more or less repeated what I already had realized. I wanted to try holding myself too to the standards of "kaizo light is beatable without tools" despite playing it just to see what kinds of interesting things might have been done in it, but I also don't have the skills for it and that caused unneeded anger as well. That's a more unrelated and personal topic though in regards to compromising between playing "legitimately" as if anyone cared how I played the hack and just being there to see interesting level ideas or gimmicks like when I played mice for myself.

[gbreeze]

Sorry, I should have clarified that I wasn't responsing to you directly! Just posting on the topic in general, that was my bad.

And yeah, just to piggyback off the convo above, we really wanted to stress what this hack was like for everyone, but also to raocow as well. It looks like an lp is inevitable at this point. xfix already stated that raocow could beat everything but the final postgame level without savestates and he's probably right. But even if it's possible, it will be a rough ride. Some testers have guessed the hack is probably around 30ish% kaizo, just straight up full-on kaizo:light. This is way more than the typical jump hack where there's only like a couple kaizo levels (or none at all in jump half). This is a pretty jarring change from most jump projects, so I apologize if this point has been discussed too much. I think we just really wanted to drive the point home here, since an lp seems inevitable. With yump 1, we were able to keep most things a mystery (which may or may not have worked in anyone's favor), but here this change feels jarring and critical enough to be discussed before an lp occurs

[Daizo]

I don't mind if raocow uses save states for this let's play personally. YUMP2 had me

(one of the designers)

use save states in a bunch of areas to cut the tedium. Not all the levels are like this, but as gbreeze said, a good 30% of the levels are like this.

[ft029]

I don't think anyone should apologize for having opinions about a level or being frustrated about something. That's perfectly normal. I think it's perfectly possible to both dislike a level but still respect the creator for their work (which is encouraging and makes for more constructive criticism rather than toxicity)

Another thing is that expectations are fairly important when playing a game. For example, it's frustrating to play a level that you think is easy, yet you keep dying on.

I personally would like to see raocow play the game since I think there's lots of super creative and interesting things, as well as funny ideas and jokes, that wouldn't fly in more professional settings. But, I hope it comes with the expectation that some endgame levels may be unreasonably difficult and more fun with a savestate or two. (Or split up into multiple videos, wink wonk)

[morsel/morceau]

I agree it should have a better description than 'Welcome.' when it's properly released. We couldn't agree on what to write so it was released at c3 in a zombie, blurbless condition. Hopefully we can set up proper expectations with a good description, although it's hard to get round what people think the hack should be like when trying to explain what it is.

[FusionWarrior]

Um, yeah

Just gonna say a blanket statement that I hope nothing causes raocow to feel the way that one level made raocow feel ever again, regardless of circumstance. Be that life, a movie, a tripple ayy, a fan hack, an indie game, or even a stubbed toe.

But peeps shouldn't be attacked.

Feel free to yell at me now

[Crow]

boy howdy this thread's sure become a

[AUS]

haha wild there are so many new users here than i remember and they sure are loud

[idol]

all my levels will make raocow feel worse

[xfix]

Just gonna say a blanket statement that I hope nothing causes raocow to feel the way that one level made raocow feel ever again, regardless of circumstance. Be that life, a movie, a tripple ayy, a fan hack, an indie game, or even a stubbed toe.

Yeah, no need to worry about that in YUMP 2. There is no stage literally called "YUMP 38" in this ROM hack.

xfix already stated that raocow could beat everything but the final postgame level without savestates and he's probably right. But even if it's possible, it will be a rough ride. Some testers have guessed the hack is probably around 30ish% kaizo, just straight up full-on kaizo:light. This is way more than the typical jump hack where there's only like a couple kaizo levels (or none at all in jump half). This is a pretty jarring change from most jump projects, so I apologize if this point has been discussed too much. I think we just really wanted to drive the point home here, since an lp seems inevitable. With yump 1, we were able to keep most things a mystery (which may or may not have worked in anyone's favor), but here this change feels jarring and critical enough to be discussed before an lp occurs

Can confirm this, and yeah, I wasn't sure about this 30% thing, it really didn't feel to me like that when I tested this hack, but I did the math, and yeah, I got about 40% of Kaizo levels. Granted however I used a very generous definition - if at any point a level doesn't really allow you to take damage and isn't a puzzle level where getting damaged isn't really a threat. This definition includes levels like

YELLOW SWITCH PALACE

,

Dr. Malcolm's Flaming Hot Dinos

and

super serious fishing place

, which I don't think YUMP Team would exactly consider to be Kaizo, but eh, gotta have some definition. If I decide to exclude easy Kaizo levels (although this is kinda subjective) the ratio is more like 30%.

Curiously however, I got 35% Kaizo ratio for stick mice in my head and then beat my head in with a hammer and let them back out, mostly due to its end game. However, if you don't see Mario hides inside a husk of a koopa as a Kaizo level, it's more like 30%.

[SAJewers]

If people are being unnecessarily heated and making inappropriately personal posts elsewhere on this forum, I would encourage folks report those posts so we can take a look at them. I can't speak for anyone else on the mod team but I will readily admit I don't patrol every square inch of this website, so it's quite possible things went down somewhere and I didn't see them. (Perhaps posts were reported and they got resolved before I saw the reports! Who knows?)

Beyond that, well, the only thing I can offer is the general life advice of not forgetting to love each other (or at least peacefully co-exist), whether it be here or elsewhere. As empty a platitude as that is.

(For what it's worth, nothing in this thread regarding this apparent issue is action-worthy to me)

To be fair they were also talking about the Discordhaus (where they apparently had to leave over this) and patapon spotzone, not just the forums.

[Zinfandel]

I would like to reiterate that everything in this discussion stemmed from comments I made, and I should probably be shot for it. I'm sorry.

[Rixithechao]

So I don't have much time to write this, and at the risk of throwing more fuel on the fire I started:

ano0maly summed it up best. I have been silently following a lot of LPs and the discussions surrounding them here on the forums, the youtube comments, and the spotzone and discordhaus. If people want a small sample of the vitriol, I posted screenshots in the VLDCX thread. Need further proof? I archived those comments. http://archive.vn/4CpI7

From my perspective, saying nothing can be done about the youtube comments is a defeatist attitude when systems like comment moderation do exist and have been discussed, and those responses + stuff to the effect of "just don't take this community seriously" kind of proves my point that people are enabling and normalizing this stuff. I take this seriously because other people do -- when I say that people are terrified looking in from the outside, it's not an exaggeration, I have literally had people come to me stating precisely that. And it's disingenuous to treat the youtube comments as a space entirely distinct from the forums/spotzone when there's substantial membership overlap between them. For folks who do decide to look over there, you'll see a lot of major names in the community who are active elsewhere in the general raocow orbit in at least some capacity, which, well, is the nature of such a closely-knit a fandom.

With all of that said... to say I could've handled things much better overall is a gross understatement. I especially apologize to jumpteam for that pretty victim blame-y part of the meltdown. I agree that not all media should be made to accommodate every consumer, but I do still feel that the goals/nature of the hack needs to be made crystal clear should raocow do the LP. I also do only have myself to blame for investing myself in the community so much and fretting so much about this stuff, I'm not accusing the fandom of holding me at gunpoint and forcing me to participate or anything like that.

I won't be active on the forum or on discord for the next couple days due to IRL circumstances, and even after that I'm going to give the community as a whole a break from me -- I've already removed myself from discordhaus and I'll be doing the same with the spotzone, staying away from raocow's LPs entirely and logged out from these forums (though I'm open to a temp ban if the mods want that extra bit of certainty, I probably deserve one at this point). I haven't been the most emotionally stable lately; that doesn't excuse my behavior in the slightest, it's just that I realize that in this state, it would be for the best for me to remove myself for the time being and come back when I've got a better grip on things out of time

[raocow]

so uh, reading all this after a bad night's sleep

is this all about how I *might* react to the game?
like what if I actually do have a good time. or an ok time.

[Kilgamayan]

I think the issue is more macro than just debating what happens if you do or do not enjoy YUMP 2. It seems to be more an issue of, whenever you are actively struggling with a game and show clear distaste/negativity for what you are doing, a portion of your viewership blames the creator(s) for you not having a good time and goes forth to harass them. An argument can be, and has been, made that you, as the content creator, have a moral obligation to actively, vocally discourage such behavior, and to actively, vocally condemn it when it happens, as remaining silent is tantamount to endorsing said behavior.