Ignoritus wrote:
No doubt. To be honest, if it weren't too late for that I'd have advised removing the character side of the gimmick altogether from scoring. it seems to me like a lot of people were absolutely baffled with what exactly was expected to make use of their character that wouldn't end up being forced usage of Peach's hover or the unique hammer suits or something similar that would have ended up being in every single level just for character usage points until everyone was absolutely sick of it.
I know I personally wasn't thinking too hard about how much my level made use of the character. I did try to keep the capabilities in mind, but my focus was on just learning to make a level. I feel it was a bit of extra pressure on people new to the engine.
That said, I played a lot of Peach and Link levels in testing and they all felt pretty distinct from each other.
I wouldn't be upset about this change; it would mainly benefit newer people who weren't as confident in using their characters, and to the extent it would change placement, it would be in a way that would result in
less arguing because the extra points are going to "Fun". As I recall, some of the most-argued-about placements last year were due to fun levels with weaker aesthetics and less relevance to the name being beaten by duller or more frustrating levels that had better aesthetics. Especially at the bottom tier, where Grassy Way Plains lost to Mission: Proud Sky due to ignoring the naming gimmick and having no music.
The main reason I could see for objecting to it is that it's a rule change after everything's in... but while I do think that's an important general principle, well, there probably aren't a lot of people who would have drastically changed their levels if character choice was less important. I don't see this mild shift in points doing much harm; if someone was particularly effective with their level name and usage of character, they'll probably get good points in Creativity and that can even lead into more points in Fun.