Current Events > My Mario Maker 2 level still has no clears. 0/135

(+) Yeah! (+)

Surely it doesn't suck THAT bad

42W-0B9-7DF

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Tag for later

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Super Mario Bros 4 when

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I'll try it

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It's that bad

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What is the level like?

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uwnim posted...

What is the level like?

Bad

I wonder if I'm still the top 3 or 4 all time north American maker. :)
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someone post a video of their playthrough

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Conflict posted...

I'm playing the level right now and I already see 2 things I don't like about it. Why did you think that POW/wiggler section was a good idea

its supposed to be hard

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Conflict posted...

Oh gosh that p-switch bit is terrible dude. You couldn't put a second adjacent donut block?

Everyone wants to make hard levels but they don't know how to design them from a player's perspective

What was wrong with that?

Really I'm only mad there wasn't a checkpoint after going outside or something. The wiggler was bad too, but it was the first room so whatever.

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Conflict posted...

You have to jump onto the p-switch to get onto the seesaw. Because there's no adjacent donut block, you have to be super precise with your drop, so that it lands onto the highest donut block and you land on top of it. It's absolutely terrible

What i've seen of the level after that isn't as bad, but I died right before the yellow pipe because I just barely missed the semisolid

you're supposed to toss the p switch on the see saw

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What're we lookin' at on a scale of 1 to Bowser Bullet Hell?

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1. Timing of the level is wack. A lot of "hurry up and wait". A lot of spots that make you stop or slow down for no real, enjoyable reason. An obstacle where the difficulty is "You have to wait one second until it's safe" is not a fun obstacle. It's just banal.

2. Geometry is wack. There's a lot of poorly planned areas where you can clip blocks where you shouldn't have to worry about it--The jump up to the three spiny's after the firebar invites clipping on your spin jump, which is an annoying way to die. The small "stair case" that leads to/from the on/off block will cause you to lose momentum for no real reason. The one block hole for the first thwomp section, where it's just annoying (Not difficult) to jump through. The placements of the donuts beneath the see-saw can lead to weird bumping issues with the bottom of the P-Switch. In all honesty, the two donuts should have been organized on the outside of the see-saw so that a mid-air vertical throw is needed to place the P-Switch on them. That would have been a better challenge and would have avoided bumping issues with the p-switch when jumping on to the see-saw.

3. Extraneous shit. The shell is actually pointless during the P-Switch section, the actual challenge should just be to hit the on-off then reach the exit within the timer (Which you can currently do). Even if you're going to make the shell mandatory, just grabbing it from a pipe is the least interesting way to do it--You could spring-launch it and make the player knock it down in mid air. You could even do a bit of simple back and forth platforming with the area utilising the on/off. Well, technically the on/off block is extraneous if you can do a p-switch mid air, but fuck that. My least favorite mid-air. The Bomb-omb part is literally pointless. There is no actual obstacle there other than jump over a muncher. The cannons at the see-saw part are largely pointless since you didn't actually playtest them correctly.

4. Enemy spam. Enemy spam is shit. It's what people do to make a level more "difficult" because they can't think of anything that's "fun". Don't do enemy spam. Things you place in the level should have a purpose. Granted, I haven't developed a speedrun for the level and that enemy spam might be usable to skip the final pipe segment, but what's the point? If you're designing a level where the intent is to skip large parts of the level, why are you investing time into making the parts to begin with? The context of a SMM2 level is a lot different than a full game like SMW, where players were expected to replay the game several times after beating it.

5. WR Chicannery. WR currently sits at around 47s, or it did last night. My initial clear was around 97s, with pretty decent pace for a first clear. I know I could P-Switch jump the see-saw, which would be maybe 12s off. If the enemy spam can be used to skip straight to the Yoshi, I could probably save another 25s. I don't know if that WR time is even possible without a dev block somewhere which, if you literally put a dev block in this fairly easy level, then that's a complete bitch move. I might try to speedrun it tonight after work to see if that's the case or if I'm missing some exploits somewhere. If there's a dev block, then that's just legit kind of sad. This ain't even some kaizo shit.

6. Wiggler is just shit. It forces precision in a mechanic and typical set-up that doesn't allow it. Getting consistent clears required me to develop a specific set-up in the first thwomp section, and even then it's still pretty annoying. It could work in concept but it would need to be retooled.

The see-saw and vertical cannon sections are pretty good. Rest is boring or actively bad.

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^ This is some MASSIVE nitpicking. The only good points you made were 4 and 6.

The level sucks because it has annoying sections and an unnecessary clear condition when it could use a checkpoint. Not because of any of that overanalytical crap you posted.
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One_Day_Remains posted...

^ This is some MASSIVE nitpicking. The only good point you made was 4.

The level sucks because it has annoying sections and an unnecessary clear condition when it could use a checkpoint. Not because of any of that overanalytical crap you posted.

lol Sure dude. What makes those sections annoying? Why does it need a checkpoint? Your average player doesn't even understand why they don't find things fun. You see it all the time in game development (Same thing with Kaizo). Game designers don't need to know that a section is good or bad, they need to know why. I've laid out the reasons why. Every little unnecessary hitch adds to the experience. I could 100% redo this level and make it flow much better, with much less gears grinding together and even more difficulty, and make it a better level for it. Not to say this level was a total travesty or anything like that, but it has basic design issues throughout that make it frustrating.

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The wiggler is annoying because it's inconsistent and requires precision when it's difficult to execute

The cannon section sucks because it's flooded, and you could find yourself bouncing off a cannonball and getting hit by a red cannonball trying to wait for the right moment to jump to the other side

The enemy spam sucks for reasons already explained

You're complaining about relatively tame things like having to wait for a fire bar, having to get the koopa shell to get to the other side, or there being only one muncher in the bob-omb bit. That's nitpicking. Literally the whole point of fire bars is having to pick the right time to proceed lol.

It needs a checkpoint because there's like 5 sections in a row and there's actually no point in the clear condition. People generally don't like getting far into a level and having to start the whole thing over again. If Yoshi needs to be mandatory to beat the level, then implement an obstacle. Like a wall and a bob-omb you can only get via inhaling it with Yoshi.
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Lol the cannon section is good dude. The pattern is extremely consistent if you do it correctly your first run, and you can use the diagonal crossing cannonball on every fire timer to scale two cannon levels at once. If you fail and fall, the timer may get disrupted and you're forced to try to climb with an erratic timer. If you really wanted to, you could just reset the timer by going through the pipe again

Are you seriously critiquing my critique when you can't even recognize an easy cannonball pattern? The firebar is not a matter of timing--The window is so large other than that fact that if you arrive there with good pace you have to decelerate for a second. The firebar serves no purpose after the first time you see it other than to make you slow down a little.

The koopa shell is extraneous and a trap for less-skilled players. If you don't know the P-switch timer well, you might think the level designer actually play tested this section and made sure you had to get the Koopa shell to pass the obstacle. This isn't the case. This isn't a puzzle section where uncovering the solution is the obstacle, this is a case where the level creator inadequately tested the level and didn't make the obstacle correctly. You can make a section where you need the koopa shell or a section where you don't. This is an obstacle that looks like the former but is actually the latter. Further more, again, waiting for the koopa to spawn from the pipe is more unnecessary waiting for the player. In levels that are fairly difficult and expect the player to replay them many times, every section of waiting is not something the player will experience just once--They'll experience it potentially dozens or even hundreds of times. What looks like 2 seconds of waiting becomes 3 minutes worth of waiting over a play session of the level. That's 3 minutes I could have given the player something actually fun to do instead.

Did you find the bob-omb section fun? Did you like hitting the block, waiting, and then jumping over one muncher on flat ground? This shouldn't even be controversial. The segment is legitimately pointless. If someone filled a level with these pointless contraptions, you would find it terribly boring. You should. It is boring. Part of the design process is the editorial process--Cutting away the unnecessary, unimportant, or unfun. It's an important part of any level or game design.

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tag for later.

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The cannon section is very clearly not good. It doesn't help that the timing of each cannon varies wildly (because they are spawn-dependent). It's a prime example of the enemy spam you were just complaining about a few posts ago.

There was literally nothing to care about in regards to the bob-omb section. Could it have been more interesting? Of course. But that's hardly something that appears on my radar when you have two terrible sections and no checkpoint.

You're complaining about "waiting" in regards to relatively meaningless shit. Okay, so you may not need the koopa shell to progress through the level. So what? That just means you have more than one option, and one is objectively better for speedrunners. This actually isn't uncommon; a lot of levels have multiple paths (kinda like Ninjis) with one path being faster than the other. Hardly something to raise a stink over
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there is no dev block lmao get good dude


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No but really though I'm glad some people played it

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Lmao, people getting in a massive argument over fucking Mario Maker
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

Lmao, people getting in a massive argument over fucking Mario Maker

This is hardly a "massive argument"... tf
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Honestly this is one of the more lighthearted debates I've actually had on here.

The level does suck tho
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