Suggestion: Rebalancing the Level System

[Emral]

Alright, so I'm not good with introductions, so I'll get straight to the point:

The level system, as it is currently used, gives certain levels more attention than others. You might be thinking now that that's intentional - giving the bad levels not as much attention as the good levels... well, even if that's how the unbalance was, I'd still disagree, as creators of every level of skill need an equal amount of feedback to improve. I'll get back to that point later. First off, what's unbalanced:

Examining the amount of views on topics in each ranked subforum, I was able to make out a trend in terms of attention levels in certain cathegories get:
"Subforum Name" (Average Views after 1 month of initial post)

The Best (~350 (Excluding Contests)) > Trash Can (~320) > Pretty Good (~250) > Average (~140)

I blame the attention which the trash can is getting solely on the sadistic nature of the community, wanting to play the worst levels and get a laugh out of them or something, so it shall be ignored further on. In this cathegory, in my opinion, a review from the judges is enough anyways, as the Designer won't listen/doesn't understand half of what the judge is saying.

The Best is in a good position right now. Encouraging people from any other cathegory to play levels from The Best is one of the ways to improve, and singling them out is a good way. However, I have a little sub-suggestion for this cathegory: For further quality control and reduction of bias through a single judge, a level should only be cathegorised as part of The Best once two official judges reviewed it and have given it 9/10 or higher. Reason for this is that, with the development of "Quality Level Design", we'll see more and more levels end up in "The Best", and there will be a large gap in quality between these "levels which one judge thought were good enough for The Best" and, say, levels from the top 5 of an official Contest. The term "The Best" will become less important if we just throw in every level which follows the established rules of "Quality Level Design".

Anyways, back on topic. I still have "Average" and "Pretty Good" to cover. And those two are the reason I'm suggesting this rebalance in the first place:

In my opinion, we have enough good level designers which can give feedback to those who got their level in lower cathegories. Everyone who frequently gets into "Pretty Good", please raise your hands. These people COULD give feedback on the levels in "Average", give some tips, help out a bit, but they don't. Now, I'm not saying that we should brainwash the community into giving more feedback (between you and me, though: We should), but rather that we should raise awareness of these "Average" levels. And here's how:

Combine Average and Pretty Good into one subforum ranging from 3/10 to 8.9/10

Now you might be thinking: "That's crazy! Where's the quality control in that?", to which I respond:
The range from 3/10 to 8.9/10 is very vulnerable to a judge's bias and how they weigh different aspects of design. Depending on which judge reviewed your level up to this point, you got an otherwise "Pretty Good" level into "Average", or vice-versa. This resulted in "High-end Average" levels ending up in "Pretty Good", and "Low-end Pretty Good" levels ending up in "Average" for a long time, so it wouldn't hurt combining them into one.

If you were thinking "Bad levels don't deserve as much attention as good levels" in the beginning of this post, shame on you. They deserve at least as much attention as good levels, especially since we have many, many good designers which all want higher level quality, especially in contests. Dragging Average onto the same level as Pretty Good is to encourage good designers to give inexperienced designers, who frequently get less than 6/10, more feedback, and thus a helping hand for them to become good designers as well.

So what do you think? Do we need to give "Average" more exposure, and in the long term, do we need more high-quality levels?

TL;DR Combine Average and Pretty Good forums to give aspiring designers more exposure and increasing feedback they get from better designers to increase overall level quality within the community.

TL;DR Sub-Suggestion: To get into "The Best", two judges need to give 9/10 or higher.

[underFlo]

I agree that Average levels should get more activity because those designers need the feedback the most - trash can levels are mostly made by really inexperienced people, and I'm afraid the feedback won't help them too much, and those get enough feedback anyway. Pretty Good and The Best level designers can mostly handle that themselves, especially combined with just the feedback from the Review that put them there.

However, I'm afraid that combining those subforums will only put everything in there to the attention level of average levels. Of course, that's not a certainty, but even then people will probably just look at the review and then play (and thus, give feedback) on the levels that are already good anyway. After all, most people would rather play a level that's rated better, at least in most cases. The worse levels would get more views, but the question is how much of those are just people looking at the score and then deciding not to play the level because it's an Average level? The only way to not encounter that problem is if the reviews aren't openly accessible and the reviewer would only PM their review to the creator. That way, a level would be in the section without an openly visible rating. However, I really don't know if doing it that way might actually result in all levels getting less views because people may be "afraid" of playing a worse level and thus avoid that section altogether. Or maybe we come to a situation where only levels from level designers known to be decent get views, and thus feedback, because those are more likely to be good. If that's the case, it would really hurt unknown level designers, even though their levels may be quite good.

[Darkonius Mavakar]

I agree.
I would say the same thing Spinda said

[Shadow Yoshi]

The reason why The Best gets more views than the other subforums is likely not because the levels are over-reviewed, but because people want to play them more than the others and because it's probably the first thing people go to when visiting the Levels forum.

Feedback from one or two judges should be enough to get the designer to improve something. Every level gets judged, so that means every designer is given something they can improve. Getting better also isn't solely at the hands of the people judging the designer's level; designers should also take it upon themselves to figure out ways to make their levels better (mainly by looking at good designers/actual Mario levels).

I do agree that getting into The Best should take more than one review.

[ShadowStarX]

Well, I kind of agree with Spinda but about 'The Best' I agree with you (Enjl) and Joey about the thing with 'The Best' true with a bit more generous system: it doesn't need two 9/10+ reviews, it needs two reviews with an average score of 9/10 or higher. (for example, if the first judge thinks the level worths 8.5/10 but the other one thinks it worths 9.5/10, it'd still be in the best, since the average score is 9.0/10)

[HeroOfRhyme]

Back when I was Level judge I gave my entire thoughts on every level I reviewed, whether they ended up in Trash Can or The Best. I always tried to give my tips and full criticism and try to be helpful, especially for the level I thought deserved to be in the Trash Can.

I havent played SMBX levels for a long time, so I can't say if anyone has improved over what I said, however I can say that I did try to at least put some effort in giving attention to every section.

More to the point about merging, I think that it could be a plausible idea given that I agree with you saying the worse off levels get less attention. I think if the level ends up in the trash can, it should receive two reviews like getting into The Best, that way you arent mistakenly putting an average or above level into the Trash Can.

My two cents.

[aero]

The current system seems to be based on ability and that's how your level gets landed in the forum, and until you pump out decent levels that get into "The Best" you'll be under the mediocrity radar. I'm not sure if having an equal outcome in views will work the way you intend, either.

I'm not an SMBX player, and don't really post about it so take this with a grain of salt.

[Vinyl Scratch]

Rename the Trash Can to something that isn't as demoralizing to the people trying to get a grasp on SMBX and redo the descriptions so everyone is going to want to play them and help the newer people of the community. Of course this is mainly the job of a level judge this is also so people of the community can help each other and we as a community can thrive. I think we should honestly lock levels that are located in "The Best" and if anyone has any technical problem with said level they can always just PM the creator. Levels in The Best should stay in The Best. That way people have to think twice before giving it a higher score.

[Superiorstar]

We should rename the trash can to "Needs work" or "Not recommended".

[PersonNamedUser]

We should rename the trash can to "Needs work" or "Not recommended".

Or to change it to "Not Good".

[Erik]

I think "The Trash Can" sounds indeed a bit bold, I'd say you rename that. We could also reward the "Helpful user" medal for people try to help the designer of which his level landed in "Average" or "The Trash Can".

[Witchking666]

I think "The Trash Can" sounds indeed a bit bold, I'd say you rename that. We could also reward the "Helpful user" medal for people try to help the designer of which his level landed in "Average" or "The Trash Can".

Yeah that's actually quite smart!

And yes i think that names like "the trash can" and "average" are kinda insulting, i dont think anyone would be more insulted if the names were "bad" and "mediocre"
So i suggest changing the names and ranking into something more like this

The Best 9-10 (and yes Enjl i agree with you on the "two judges thing

Great 6-8(previously pretty good)

Pretty good 4-6(previously average)

And "room for inprovement" 0-4

I know you might be thinking like "why" well, this will help build a more positive athmosphere because now all levels get into a (kinda) positive category (and raising the spirit also helpt to lighten up the mood, and in the long term, make people wanna het better!

Plus i think renaming the trash can into the room for inprovement would kinda decrease the sadistic nature towards the trash can
And i think the average forum is having a too big spectrum of levels (like some level have clash and cutoff everywhere while others could be a lower quality level made by a good designer)

Tell me what you think

[ShadowStarX]

I think "The Trash Can" sounds indeed a bit bold, I'd say you rename that. We could also reward the "Helpful user" medal for people try to help the designer of which his level landed in "Average" or "The Trash Can".

Yeah that's actually quite smart!

And yes i think that names like "the trash can" and "average" are kinda insulting, i dont think anyone would be more insulted if the names were "bad" and "mediocre"
So i suggest changing the names and ranking into something more like this

The Best 9-10 (and yes Enjl i agree with you on the "two judges thing

Great 6-8(previously pretty good)

Pretty good 4-6(previously average)

And "room for inprovement" 0-4

I know you might be thinking like "why" well, this will help build a more positive athmosphere because now all levels get into a (kinda) positive category (and raising the spirit also helpt to lighten up the mood, and in the long term, make people wanna het better!

Plus i think renaming the trash can into the room for inprovement would kinda decrease the sadistic nature towards the trash can
And i think the average forum is having a too big spectrum of levels (like some level have clash and cutoff everywhere while others could be a lower quality level made by a good designer)

Tell me what you think

Something like that could work, renaming the sections isn't a bad idea.

True the Great vs. Pretty Good could be a bit stricter. Great could be 7.0 to 8.9 instead of 6.0 to 8.9, and your pretty good could be called 'not bad'
So:
Best: 9/10 or better AVERAGE SCORE (two 9/10+ reviews would be a bit strict) from two official reviews
Great: 7/10 to 8.9/10 - also if the level gets 9/10 from one review, it moves here and it can move to the best only if a second judge reviews it again and the average score of the reviews is 9/10 or higher
Not Bad: 4/10 to 6.9/10
Room for improvement: 3.9/10 or worse - If you keep giving feedback here, you can get the helpful user medal

[Imaynotbehere4long]

And yes i think that names like "the trash can" and "average" are kinda insulting, i dont think anyone would be more insulted if the names were "bad" and "mediocre"

I never found "average" to be insulting; it just means that the level you made is on par with your average official World 1 Mario level. Honestly, "mediocre" has always had a more negative connotation to me, even though I know they mean the same thing.

As for the "two reviews required to be in The Best" suggestion, I remember this was brought up (by Joey) when I was an official Level Judge, and the idea was almost unanimously shot down before I even got to the thread. If I remember correctly, the argument was that "The Best" was already too exclusive by only including levels with 9+/10 scores, and by requiring multiple judges to give an appropriate score, few (if any) newer levels would make it into "The Best."

[Emral]

And yes i think that names like "the trash can" and "average" are kinda insulting, i dont think anyone would be more insulted if the names were "bad" and "mediocre"

I never found "average" to be insulting; it just means that the level you made is on par with your average official World 1 Mario level. Honestly, "mediocre" has always had a more negative connotation to me, even though I know they mean the same thing.

How about "Decent"?

As for the "two reviews required to be in The Best" suggestion, I remember this was brought up (by Joey) when I was an official Level Judge, and the idea was almost unanimously shot down before I even got to the thread. If I remember correctly, the argument was that "The Best" was already too exclusive by only including levels with 9+/10 scores, and by requiring multiple judges to give an appropriate score, few (if any) newer levels would make it into "The Best."

I brought it up because I think it's not exclusive enough. Of course, we could rename the section to "Exceptionally Good", to stop pulling apart the term "Best", but I feel like as the highest level of classification, it should be a bit more exclusive.

[Shadow Yoshi]

it just means that the level you made is on par with your average official World 1 Mario level.

That's not what it means at all, though. "Average" means that your level isn't that good but isn't bad either.

[HeroOfRhyme]

I don't see any problems with "Average" either, honestly. It just means you make levels as good as the average creator. Nothing bad about that.

I see more problem with Trash Can, because that could lead people to believe that they make trash levels that cant be fixed up to be a better thing. Even looking at the name "Trash Can" makes me not want to end up there.

[Witchking666]

Okay maybe average isn't insulting
But it just has too much damn range
Some levels in the average section are just a bunch of damn clusterfucks put there because "the concept is original" while others are actually fun to play And good-looking, though they arent refreshing enough to be placed in pretty good

And then about the trash can
As stated above the category litterary sais "your level is so bad i throw it in a garbage can" which i think is kinda bold, that's why i think "room for inprovement " or "needs work" are better because some of the designers who end up in the trash can actually want to get better, but are just either ignored or their levels Are played by people who just want to play the worst levels there are just because they think its funny.


Then the reason why i wanted the best to be a little more secluded is because "best" shouldnt be used for every nonlinear level with nice gameplay (Which does happen) plus i think that the Contest rankings are biased as fuck aswell (like some people who got 20th place or so end up in the best while others who got into the top 15 (or ten even) get into pretty good just because they got a brunch of eights instead of a nine.
Right now you can get a level which got a lot of sixes into the best because one judge liked it enough to give it a nine

Once again
Tell me your opinions!