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Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Leet »

Pleasantly surprised to see people calling out the "it's bad because it's bad" approach to "criticism" here, which used to be rather widespread in the past (hyper vi, various smbx stuff)
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by raekuul »

You expected a community that's gone through some interesting changes in population to be the same as back then?
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Leet »

Hyper vi was only two playthroughs ago!
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Cosmo Fishhawk »

It was a game that definitely had a lot going for it, despite its problems.

Ben, I'm glad I saw what I did and I wish you every success for the future.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Lockirby2 »

Rockythechao wrote: 5 years ago This video was absolutely necessary. We were just discussing in discordhaus how, between these LP threads and other platforms like youtube and discord, this fandom has a problem with discouraging feedback and criticism when raocow plays games or levels like these.

It's not that most people are particularly vicious or unconstructive -- folks are generally pretty good at outlining what the flaws of a work are. But there's enough aggregate negativity that each individual comment takes on a harsher tone and the rare post that does get too aggressive, too personal, unhelpful, etc. doesn't stand out as much. And when the few people who seem bothered by the seemingly-caustic environment say something about it, they get blown off.
This. I've explicitly avoided adding to the "aggregate negativity" since day 1 of the LP for this exact reason. That said, I didn't do anything to stop it either. IMO, a sufficient quantity of negative criticism is discouraging, no matter how well it is phrased (and a lot of this criticism was not phrased well) or how useful it is. I feel like people almost never cross that line by themselves, but it becomes all too easy to do when there are several dozen different people offering small amounts of criticism to an individual.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Sebby19 »

Ben hasn't posted in a while. I hope he doesn't up and disappear.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Paragraph »

Leet wrote: 5 years ago Hyper vi was only two playthroughs ago!
I don't think anybody expected the Hyper VI author to read negative comments directly. Ben being a member of these forums and actively posting during the LP makes it a lot more personal, especially the negative parts. Especially on Youtube, people probably don't know that and are far more unfiltered than on here, so again, it's very very good that raocow took the time to point out to all of his watchers that the situation is more complex than "lazy person made bad game, fuck him".
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Arctangent »

Leet wrote: 5 years ago Hyper vi was only two playthroughs ago!
Well, to be fair, people tend to be more sympathetic when the creator doesn't feel like the type of person to yank out all your teeth when you're not looking, only to dump them all under your pillow ( without cleaning them ) along with a manual on reattaching teeth from 2300 Neo Japan.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by memnarch »

Sebby19 wrote: 5 years ago Ben hasn't posted in a while. I hope he doesn't up and disappear.
Just a quick note that BuzzNBen21 did make a youtube comment on the post mortem video.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by AuraLancer »

I did not and will not look at youtube comments for any video of this series. I had my fill of horrible youtube people years and years ago. I'm imagining that the worst of it came from there rather than here.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by ano0maly »

Final Thoughts

I see this as an unfortunate combination of YoYo Games and Microsoft together making the base engine (GM8) outdated in contemporary Windows, the buggy and discontinued Mario engine, and the game creator's own errors.

There's clearly a lot of effort put into this, but it was coupled with some planning mistakes, like not catching the problem with the save system and dealing with it early in the development. And if there's ever an overhaul by the author or someone else, one priority would be to switch to a custom save system along the lines Arctangent suggested.

From a level design standpoint rather than technical one, on average I thought the levels were just all right, not too spectacular but would have been seen as another decent hack if it was SMW. My impression is that this game decided to use its own physics and rules different from SMW but didn't really take much advantage of it aside maybe from designing the levels around the physics differences. Many of the levels were basically just SMW hack levels, and they could have just been made in SMW. Apparently we have not seen the best of the levels before this LP stopped, to be fair.

I personally liked the cutscenes, like the clever scripted one at the beginning of the forest world. I think BuzzNBen did a good job blending the cutscenes within the levels or within the overworld, although I would have made the latter re-accessible by making them separate dots or something, if that's not already a thing. I do think the Doomsday aspect hasn't really been a recurring thing other than the occasional dates at the start of levels. After episode 1, it didn't play a significant part of the plot as far as I remember.

I do hope that if Ben makes games in the future, the learned lessons, particularly having sufficient playtesting and refining during and after the development of the content, would lead to good results. I'm glad the post mortem video and the comment Ben posted there shows that there's some kind of a closure to this instead of just an abrupt downer without them.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Rixithechao »

After reading through the discussions surrounding this LP's cancellation, my understanding is that raocow's been playing an older version of Doomsday because FusionWarrior, Ben and whoever else was involved in troubleshooting the game and setting up the virtual machine for it couldn't get the newer versions to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that, but if that's true it's quite possible that at least some of the bugs raocow experienced in this playthrough were already addressed in updates.

Now, real talk.

I've already said my part on how the harsh and mean-spirited criticism has been contributing toward a demoralizing social climate (more than once), but I want to stress just how much this affects people on the edge or outside of this community. The talkhaus is developing a reputation and several people have come to me saying that while they were previously excited about sharing their work with this community and motivated by the prospect of their games being good enough to get raocow's attention someday, they're now afraid to have their work played by him and come under fire by his viewers. "Terrified" is a recurring word in these discussions.

As someone who themselves got involved in this community not just due to enjoyment of raocow but from being inspired by the accomplishments of the talkhaus' collaborative efforts, coming to see this side of it has been... disheartening, to say the least. It's left me and others more than a bit jaded. There have been times when I seriously considered leaving this place for good.

I'm tired of seeing this community become another toxic fandom. I know that the people here are capable of immense kindness and consideration from the gifts everyone gives rao during christmas and his birthday, the support offered to one another when members are going through hard times, and again, the apologies, encouragement, and concern you're showing for Ben now. I ask that everyone please extend that same kindness and understanding to the people who make the fangames, hacks, and SMBX episodes on raocow's radar throughout their time in the spotlight, and not until after they've already been driven away.

If things keep going like they did during this LP, it'll only continue to scare off more newcomers and disillusion existing members. I don't want to see the talkhaus die off like this and looked back on in such a negative light.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Implo »

I know this thread is dead right now. But I have a news for 2.0 players.

Remeber this famous invisible wall in Weirdspace. Apparently it was just accident and it was fixed in newest 2.0 version. So if you had played old 2.0 version, then I have a good news. The saves between these two 2.0 versions are fully compatible. But only between 2.0 versions. Earlier versions doesn't work.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Zach808 »

Rockythechao wrote: 5 years ago After reading through the discussions surrounding this LP's cancellation, my understanding is that raocow's been playing an older version of Doomsday because FusionWarrior, Ben and whoever else was involved in troubleshooting the game and setting up the virtual machine for it couldn't get the newer versions to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that, but if that's true it's quite possible that at least some of the bugs raocow experienced in this playthrough were already addressed in updates.

Now, real talk.

I've already said my part on how the harsh and mean-spirited criticism has been contributing toward a demoralizing social climate (more than once), but I want to stress just how much this affects people on the edge or outside of this community. The talkhaus is developing a reputation and several people have come to me saying that while they were previously excited about sharing their work with this community and motivated by the prospect of their games being good enough to get raocow's attention someday, they're now afraid to have their work played by him and come under fire by his viewers. "Terrified" is a recurring word in these discussions.

As someone who themselves got involved in this community not just due to enjoyment of raocow but from being inspired by the accomplishments of the talkhaus' collaborative efforts, coming to see this side of it has been... disheartening, to say the least. It's left me and others more than a bit jaded. There have been times when I seriously considered leaving this place for good.

I'm tired of seeing this community become another toxic fandom. I know that the people here are capable of immense kindness and consideration from the gifts everyone gives rao during christmas and his birthday, the support offered to one another when members are going through hard times, and again, the apologies, encouragement, and concern you're showing for Ben now. I ask that everyone please extend that same kindness and understanding to the people who make the fangames, hacks, and SMBX episodes on raocow's radar throughout their time in the spotlight, and not until after they've already been driven away.

If things keep going like they did during this LP, it'll only continue to scare off more newcomers and disillusion existing members. I don't want to see the talkhaus die off like this and looked back on in such a negative light.
While I agree that occasionally things may go a bit overboard, I can't say I think this place is turning into a toxic fandom like you're describing. For the most part, the criticism is constructive, and when it isn't, there's usually something that's bad in a very obvious way, like in the case of the switch not working (or really, the game not booting up in general). For things like that, if I were to have a popular youtuber playing my game, I'd want this kind of stuff to be fixed before the general public sees it. I know, easier said than done, but I can't really expect to be let off easy by raocow or his fans if I request him to play it in the first place. The best anyone would be able to do in this situation is to either sugarcoat the problems, or ignore it entirely, and I wouldn't say either of those options are any better.

I know that some criticisms in the comments sections or threads may be redundant, but you kinda have to expect that if the youtuber has a large number of viewers in general. Not everyone's gonna bother to read all the comments, and they're just gonna post whatever comes to their mind.

To me, the Talkhaus still feels like a place I'd want to have my game seen (not that I'm making one at the moment, but still). For the most part, the criticism is genuinely helpful and people don't typically go out of their way to harass the developers. If the game is good, it still gets the glowing praise it deserves. But if game-breaking bugs like what we've seen here show up multiple times, I don't care what community gets their hands on the game. The reception is always gonna be very harsh if the game isn't presented as a beta or something.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Rixithechao »

Honestly, your reassurance that the fandom isn't that bad is going to be of little comfort to the people who've already been driven away, and it's only going to make the folks watching all of this going down more fearful given that what follows reinforces the idea that they have reason to be afraid of the community. Like, I wouldn't go up to a talent show entrant with stage fright and tell them, "Well you should expect them to mock you and get angry if you screw up out there! You shouldn't have signed up if you didn't want to risk facing the consequences for wasting people's time" after they watched three other people get booed and heckled off the stage.

I will concede that I had several misconceptions about Doomsday's development and Ben's presence in the community before the game got confirmed for the LP. I'm now aware that Ben joined the forums long before raocow DMed him about the game not working on Windows 10, and back when it was still in development he indeed wanted rao to eventually play the game, among other things. Even so, I'm not the only one here who thinks the reception to the game was still disproportionately harsh, as it was for min/max, grand chemo and plenty of others.

Whether you meant it that way or not, I'm honestly kind of disgusted by the implication that collective hostility is deserved, excused, justified, or can/should otherwise be overlooked in cases like these. The fact that some people are going to be jerks doesn't mean we should just accept that and not strive for better. Providing useful feedback and building a supportive and encouraging atmosphere aren't mutually exclusive things, so can we please stop treating them as if they are already?
Last edited by Rixithechao 5 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by ano0maly »

The posts in the forums have been mostly fine for this let's play, honestly. They consisted mainly of fair critiques and were trying to keep things respectful, knowing fully well that the author is right here with them. It's really Youtube comments that had much of senseless hostility without a second thought. And that's kind of expected. It's typical that a close-knit message board community of a few people is going to have more restraint in behavior than open-wide Youtube.

And honestly, putting this as nicely and respectfully as it can be: it was clear that the game lacked ample testing needed before you can say you're done. Even though it had the content done, not having the proper polishing process made this game "unfinished". Even raocow himself recognized that point. And raocow's supposed to generally only play games when they're done, and requests of one's own games are generally not kosher. I agree with Zach808 that if you're going to repeatedly ask a well-known Youtuber to play a pet game of yours, it better be worth it and at least finished.

Unfortunately, the game ended up turning into another Soldexus situation (although for a different reason since that game didn't have functionality problems) - from the persistent requests we thought we would see a sort of unknown classic that had something really amazing inside, and it ended up just being "a game", half-decent and half-flawed. The parts we've seen up now, at least.

I hope that this serves as an important lesson to ensure that something is ready before presentation.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Zach808 »

Oh jesus. Now that I’ve tried looking through the comments on youtube, I have to concede that they’re definitely a lot more hostile than I was expecting. I was basing my post mostly on the thread, which seemed fine to me, and ignored youtube entirely due to me just hating youtube comments in general (and thinking that Talkhaus community was basically just the forum). Yeah, I’d hate to be on the receiving end of those, but at the same time, I have no idea how to fix that problem (or if it’s physically possible to fix) due to the barrier of entry being so low. If I did have any advice for people having raocow play their games, it’s to stick to the thread and not even read that polluted swamp.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Kilgamayan »

There were plenty of people in this thread calling very rudely for the LP to end for several days before Ben actually threw in the towel. This forum is not as innocent as people would like to believe.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by The Doctor »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago There were plenty of people in this thread calling very rudely for the LP to end for several days before Ben actually threw in the towel. This forum is not as innocent as people would like to believe.
Expressing your honest opinions regarding the LP or the game isn't being rude. It's only rude if you're being unnecessarily harsh or your comments turn personal. The YouTube comments were definitely toxic, but I didn't see any of that behaviour here.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by ano0maly »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago There were plenty of people in this thread calling very rudely for the LP to end for several days before Ben actually threw in the towel. This forum is not as innocent as people would like to believe.
That's because the game actually hit a wall several days ago (episode 24) after some glitchiness and level design they may have thought were lackluster recently. And it was more rational than overly hostile.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Kilgamayan »

The thing is that it was personal. There's no way "this LP should be canceled" day after day after day can be anything but personal. It's not constructive from a game-design standpoint, and it's not constructive from an LP standpoint*. It serves literally no purpose but to demotivate the creator, and that becomes clearer and clearer as more people call for the LP to end even when the person actually playing the game and recording the videos is still making videos and not even acknowledging the cries for cancellation.

There are different ways to be a jerk; YouTube's expletives and grammatical mistakes are only one such way. We here in the Northeastern US specialize in polite, rational rudeness, and there was plenty of it to be had in this thread. Rocky and Dragon Fogel have already gone into detail about this; it's worth reading their posts again if you (the impersonal you) still don't get why the commentariat in this thread was Not Good.

*I suppose it could be considered constructive if the end goal of those people was "get this series canceled when it would not be otherwise", but I'm not sure "we successfuly bullied a game maker into asking for the LP of his game to be canceled" is worth pointing at and going "why no, I am not ashamed of this in the slightest".
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Leet »

I don't actually remember people asking for the LP to be cancelled on the talkhaus every day, at all. At least nowhere near as much as previous, much worse LP threads that nobody wanted to criticize at the time

If it's some implicit bullshit thing, then I should explain that I don't believe talking about how the game is literally unbeatable to be equivalent to actually wanting the LP cancelled at all. It's more of an inevitability thing, that the LP will have to cancel itself eventually. If nobody figured out that the broken switch block could be activated by duck-jumping, the LP would have ended right there regardless.

I don't see that topic as having anything to do with the speaker's desires or wishes. I'd have gladly watched the whole game. But it wasn't possible. Of the people who discussed this topic, raocow himself is included. (Please review the description for the second-to-last video.)
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by Kilgamayan »

My memory is admitted poor and I don't have the time to comb the thread and count replies but I do recall the calls for the LP to be canceled began before the broken switch, which was Strike 2 (this, I assume, is the penultimate video you're talking about). My post probably ended up overexaggerating the volume of calls for cancellation but the general sentiment remains that making those calls at all is rude. I cannot fathom a functional purpose for them other than to make the game maker feel bad, even if that was not the intention. Like, did people actually think those comments would influence such a decision?

(I must confess I have no idea what your final paragraph is getting at.)
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Re: Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

Post by ano0maly »

The thing is though, I think we can agree that the author has part of the responsibility for the reception this game got, the ill-prepared state of the game; the posted reactions in this thread were proportional to that.

It's not like Hyper VI where there were calls to stop the LP just because of the difficulty, which I don't think is justified, and that difficulty could have been (and was) mitigated with save states. When basic functionality problems seemingly obstruct continuing, people were suggesting "This is interesting, but perhaps it's best for everyone if we ended it here." And the let's player was considering agreeing with that by video 27. I think that's a fair thing to say.

And there were plenty of posts about what people like about the game, too.
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