I enjoyed the aesthetics of that level quite a bit. The falling leaves were a really nice touch.
Thank you! Aesthetics first, because I'm an art nerd. I thought "lets make a level where you go under a tree set piece" and worked from there. X'D
The underground bit had a couple of frustrating moments though... but I forgive you! It was still pretty good.
Can I ask which moments specifically? I have one or two spots where I thought "this is going to be a little bull
unless you're really familiar with Mario 3," but I made the level for that kind of player. I'm curious if the spots I predicted would be "problem spots" were snags for you, or if it was spots I didn't think would cause trouble.
So I've been playing stages from all sorts of people I know and mostly some pretty interesting stages. But I got to know, why do so many people want to make such high precision and high difficulty stages? I think everyone needs to relax a little
Okay, time for a long form stream-of-consciousness rant on Mario Maker design philosophy.
I can't speak for everyone else, but I've been playing Mario since I was like two now, so basically every Mario game besides 3 is a joke for me, and I wish they'd be harder. I actually just bought my little bro a Famicom and the JAPANESE version of Mario 3 for us to play through this Summer, because 3 is our favorite out of the 2D games (it's the hardest, and it's so full of cool stuff!), and the JP version of 3 is harder than the American version. So when I make levels, I'm basically making them for me and my little brother and other Mario enthusiasts (like you, I'm sure. I know the level didn't give you
that much trouble, even in the hardest parts. I know you're a huge gamer, hahah. Probably a lot of the rest of the GMC, too). I did a lot of testing, so obviously my level is easier for myself than for anyone else, but I beat my level *on the first try* after I finished making it. I was horrified at how easy it was after spending all that work fine tuning it, and had to fight myself to keep from adding more enemies and steeper jumps. Can you believe the checkpoints were the last things added, too? I thought they were complete bull
, and it killed me to add them, but I knew they had to be added if I wanted most people to finish the level, because there's a huge problem Mario Maker levels come packaged with that normal Mario levels don't:
The main problem with doing hard levels in Mario Maker (even just
pretty hard levels, like mine) is that unlike in a normal Mario game, there's no sense of progression. In a normal Mario game, if you die five times on a stage, you're like "
, this
SUCKS, lol!" But you also want to keep going, because you're not just playing a Mario level. You're playing a Mario
game, and you want to see what's
NEXT - you just saw GIANT world a few stages ago; what kind of crazy treat is the game going to give you next??? With Mario Maker levels, we designers
don't have that draw to keep players retrying over and over again, and sticky parts in a level become frustrating
way faster - without anything to look forward to after the level is finished, why would you keep on playing a level that's frustrating you?
So when you're making a Mario Maker level you want to be popular, it needs to be some collection of these:
-Has a novel gimmick. Self playing levels, joke levels, and the infamously popular musical level all do well
-Short and easy enough to pass in one or two goes in under a few minutes
-Extremely, stupidly difficult so that masochists and youtube streamers flock to it. Super kaizo-hard stages also kind of take on the role of "worlds" all within themselves with checkpoints. When the level is impossible but you get to a checkpoint, you
really want to keep going if you're that kind of person. Most other sorts of levels aren't like that. This is probably why you see a lot of ultra-difficult stages. Without worlds to slowly ramp up the difficulty, these sorts of levels are kind of the closest we get to filling that function?
So....hard (but not ridiculous) levels have no real place in Mario Maker, yeah. I was
really hoping MM2 would allow us to bundle up levels into eight stage worlds or whatever, complete with gameovers and one-ups. That would've gone a
huge way to making difficult levels more fun and engaging. You could ramp up the difficulty over eight levels and let players actually feel like they're progressing, instead of just feeling like they're grinding out a difficult level for no reason. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, so now when difficult levels are made, people ask "why are you making difficult levels?" The answer for me, I guess, is because I
like making difficult (non-kaizo) levels, even though I fully realize that Mario Maker is a horrible medium for them, unless the person playing them is already invested in your level for whatever reason.
Which is why this thread is great. We can all torture each other with difficult, hopefully well designed levels the general public would get pissed off at and quit after a few deaths!! :'D
That said, I enjoyed your easier level too,
@Siolfor the Jackal. I think I'm gonna do a "world" of levels even though MM doesn't facilitate it and post them here. I'll start with some easier ones first, since they're fun to make and play, too.
Edit:
@RangerX ninja'd me. I'll heart all you guys later, and poke around that level some more. I think I only got the first large coin right at the beginning, but I liked that little puzzle. =D