Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Well, if Difficulty = Unfair, I'm sure that I'll never touch any of the hard levels(play them)

Like I said, the level I'm making for this is totally fair, no invisible blocks or anything. It uses a few weird quirks of the engine but no glitches, per se.

I'm just saying I'm going to rate levels I enjoy higher, even if they're not oooohhh perfect design lelelelel
If I find it fun I'm going to rate it higher than if it's boring. Difficulty is a separate score and is not going to affect the placement of the level. If there's something unfair in a level and I laugh at it, I'll probably not deduct points. If there's something unfair in a level and I rage at it, I will deduct points. It's all a matter of enjoyment for me, which is why we have multiple judges. I also don't like the limited glitches rule because I've seen some really cool stuff you can do (like clipping through walls using a key or P-switch) that isn't allowed.

I think a good guideline for difficulty here is around the difficulty of Blocks Below Hell or sHell (for levels without a checkpoint, and that kill the player) or something like Sharp Objects Are Usually Deadly where it's super annoying and frustrating but you can't die.
I don't want to see a ton of bullet spam stuff, but if it's creative and cool like bossedit's Touhou bosses I could be up for that.
Honestly I could be totally down with some levels like SMB3 or SMW's World 8 if they are fun and I enjoy playing them. I just don't want to breeze through all these levels first try and not learn anything new about SMBX. I want to see cool stuff.

And yes, unfair =/= difficulty is totally true. But if a level is just like SMB 1-1 with kaizo blocks everywhere or something I'd find that really hilarious and fun and it adds difficulty. Just make sure there aren't any softlocks.
Something can have difficulty and be totally fair, but sometimes 100% fair is boring.

Technically no level is fair because people that are better at the game will be able to beat it but people that aren't as good won't. That's not fair, right?????!!???!???!!??! Anyways hopefully I'll have fun playing y'all's levels for this.

Oh no that kind of difficulty I cant make.

Mivixion wrote:

That's good

RoundPiplup wrote:Oh no that kind of difficulty I cant make.

Sure you can, just experiment with it

Mivixion wrote:
Difficulty is a separate score and is not going to affect the placement of the level. If there's something unfair in a level and I laugh at it, I'll probably not deduct points. I want to see cool stuff.

And yes, unfair =/= difficulty is totally true. But if a level is just like SMB 1-1 with kaizo blocks everywhere or something I'd find that really hilarious and fun and it adds difficulty

Seriously?

You are directly stating that the difficulty of a level doesn't matter so long as you like it. How can you be so biased in a contest like this? So what you saying is...so long as I appeal to you and not remotely consider the rules of this contest then I get an easy score from you? Ok #Notbiasedatalljudger

Then, you say that the difficulty will NOT AFFECT ITS PLACEMENT, in a contest specifically designed to invoke creative and difficult challenges. I really don't have anything nice to say to that comment bro...that was not thought out at all.

My favorite part though is that you are promoting modified plagiarism. A level can be a carbon copy of something else, so long as it is mildly tweaked. Didn't this community just go through this like two weeks ago already? Let alone, you say that even if a level is a retarded excuse for a level...so long as it is difficult it matters? Yet by your own words, difficulty doesn't matter. So what is the rule of thumb with you man? You're both biased and hippocritical to your own opinions.

Like I am sorry if this is getting annoying, but this is just ridiculous at this point.

I'm just saying I'm going to rate levels I enjoy higher, even if they're not oooohhh perfect design lelelelel
If I find it fun I'm going to rate it higher than if it's boring. Difficulty is a separate score and is not going to affect the placement of the level. If there's something unfair in a level and I laugh at it, I'll probably not deduct points. If there's something unfair in a level and I rage at it, I will deduct points. It's all a matter of enjoyment for me

I can't believe you were capable of going through the thought process of saying this. You're explicitly admitting to being biased, and you're disrespecting the fucking guidelines, as they state that the levels shouldn't be unfair.

which is why we have multiple judges.

So what you're doing is fine because there's other judges that can somewhat reduce the magnitude of the consecuences from your awful actions in this contest. Yeah, alright, that seems acceptable.

I also don't like the limited glitches rule because I've seen some really cool stuff you can do (like clipping through walls using a key or P-switch) that isn't allowed.

This is the only thing you've said that i have agreed with

I think a good guideline for difficulty here is around the difficulty of Blocks Below Hell or sHell (for levels without a checkpoint, and that kill the player) or something like Sharp Objects Are Usually Deadly where it's super annoying and frustrating but you can't die.

As it stands, this statement makes no sense as you're referencing a lot of shit but not actually providing their sources nor stating what was the best part about those levels.

I don't want to see a ton of bullet spam stuff, but if it's creative and cool like bossedit's Touhou bosses I could be up for that.

Yet another statement where you say that levels should be similar to already existing things. You're really limiting people's design ideas.

[quote}Honestly I could be totally down with some levels like SMB3 or SMW's World 8 if they are fun and I enjoy playing them. I just don't want to breeze through all these levels first try and not learn anything new about SMBX. I want to see cool stuff.[/quote]

Who gives a shit if you don't learn anything new? People want to test their design skills with contests in general, sure, it's good to bring something new to the table, but sometimes it's not worth it as you could be more experienced with and old gimmick and end up making the best out of it rather than experimenting with something nobody has much experience with.

You're really just digging yourself deeper in terms of looking like an extremely biased judge who only wants to get specifically pleased by the contestants rather than helping with the development of the actual contest.

And yes, unfair =/= difficulty is totally true. But if a level is just like SMB 1-1 with kaizo blocks everywhere or something I'd find that really hilarious and fun and it adds difficulty. Just make sure there aren't any softlocks.

You're actually contradicting your previous statements. You want to see creative stuff but you'd also love it if something was a poorly designed "amusing" piece of shit?

Please stop before you hurt yourself.

Something can have difficulty and be totally fair, but sometimes 100% fair is boring.

That's a very subjective statement, i'd pass it without thinking about it if you weren't going to base yourself on that in order to judge all the levels. Not to mention, you're somehow still going against the contest's unfairness guidelines.

Technically no level is fair because people that are better at the game will be able to beat it but people that aren't as good won't. That's not fair, right?????!!???!???!!??!

The fairness you're talking about is not from the level, it's actually from the contest. 2 judges can perfectly go through a level and give it a decent score, while the other one might get stuck and end up shitting on its score.

PixelPest wrote:

I'm going to flat out recommend that you should swap Mechadragon and Mivixion's judge priorities, or even just flat out remove mivixion from the judge roster. He's explicitly demonstrating that he doesn't particularly give a shit about the guidelines, and that he's going to be biased towards levels that "amuse" him the most.

The more I read this, The more I get confused on WHAT I should make.

Case in point.

Mivixion wrote:However in some scenarios they are the easiest and fastest option.

So you admit that you're being lazy when you do it. Remember: it's always better to take the time to make sure your level is well designed rather than taking the easy way out and having your level suffer because of it.

PixelPest wrote:I don't agree with everything that Mivixion says

Mivixion wrote:Like I said, the level I'm making for this is totally fair

You were being sarcastic when you said that, though.

Mivixion wrote:Something can have difficulty and be totally fair, but sometimes 100% fair is boring.

If you can't make a "fun" level while being 100% fair, you need to get better at level design.

I don't like (unmarked, if it's for a puzzle and they're marked I don't mind) invisible blocks.. Deaths should only be caused by the player. If deaths are the level's fault (like invisible blocks and other such things), there's a problem with the design.

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:If you can't make a "fun" level while being 100% fair, you need to get better at level design.

ok i need to get better at level design apparently count me out of judging

So you admit that you're being lazy when you do it. Remember: it's always better to take the time to make sure your level is well designed rather than taking the easy way out and having your level suffer because of it.

if it doesn't affect the level at all then how does the level suffer? there are definitely times when it affects the level, but invisible blocks aren't bad every time, they have some really good uses when it comes to preventing unintended skips through the level that could otherwise not be prevented without a ton of reworking the level's core concept or doing a bunch of unnecessary stuff. if it doesn't affect the level at all, who cares? I can't think of an example off the top of my head when I'd do this either way, but I know I've considered using invisible blocks to prevent skips a few times but have eventually scrapped the levels. I always spend ridiculous amounts of time building and testing my levels, so chances are I'll either scrap it or find a workaround by the time I'm done.
I'll agree that invisible blocks that are designed to "gotcha" are usually bad design. I know I've used them myself but if I'm trying to mimic something (kaizo SMW in this case) I'm going to stay true to it

You were being sarcastic when you said that, though.

my level for this doesnt have a single invisible block lol. I was being sarcastic about the level being nondiscriminatory to skill level

Nien wrote:As it stands, this statement makes no sense as you're referencing a lot of shit but not actually providing their sources nor stating what was the best part about those levels.

I was referring to their difficulty level

Yet another statement where you say that levels should be similar to already existing things. You're really limiting people's design ideas.

no i'm not? I'm just throwing stuff out there

You're actually contradicting your previous statements. You want to see creative stuff but you'd also love it if something was a poorly designed "amusing" piece of shit?

that was a joke. if a level like that was submitted to this contest I would score it pretty badly

I'm going to flat out recommend that you should swap Mechadragon and Mivixion's judge priorities, or even just flat out remove mivixion from the judge roster. He's explicitly demonstrating that he doesn't particularly give a shit about the guidelines, and that he's going to be biased towards levels that "amuse" him the most.

not amuse, levels that I enjoy playing, which is sort of the point of a game. When judging I am going to be looking for fairness, but as I think I said earlier(?) I wish the rules were a little more lax about a few things

If a level isn't enjoyable, why would I score it high? If something uses a totally traditional style of gameplay but it's fun and challenging, then it will score high. If it's some crazy new shenanigans with unheard of tricks and it's fun and challenging, it'll score high. If it's somewhere in between those two, and it's fun and challenging, it'll score high. If it uses a totally traditional style of gameplay but is boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll score low. If it's some crazy new shenanigans with unheard of tricks and it's boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll score low. If it's somewhere in between those two, and it's boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll still score low.

Mivixion wrote:invisible blocks aren't bad every time, they have some really good uses when it comes to preventing unintended skips through the level that could otherwise not be prevented without a ton of reworking the level's core concept or doing a bunch of unnecessary stuff. if it doesn't affect the level at all, who cares? I can't think of an example off the top of my head when I'd do this either way

If it doesn't affect the level AT ALL, how is it able to prevent the player from performing unintended skips? Checkmate.

Seriously, I'd like to see an example where invisible blocks (especially the unindicated variety) are the only way to prevent unintended skips without reworking the core concept of the level while also having a core concept that doesn't suck. Let me know when you can come up with an example.

Mivixion wrote:I'll agree that invisible blocks that are designed to "gotcha" are usually bad design.

Usually? Try never. Or can you give us an example of when that's okay, too?

Mivixion wrote:if I'm trying to mimic something (kaizo SMW in this case) I'm going to stay true to it

Pro tip: don't mimic something if it sucks. Kaizo SMW sucks.

Mivixion wrote:I was being sarcastic about the level being nondiscriminatory to skill level

Again, nobody said anything about that. We just said that you shouldn't make your level unfair. If you're going to be sarcastic, don't be sarcastic at a straw man argument.

Mivixion wrote:

You're actually contradicting your previous statements. You want to see creative stuff but you'd also love it if something was a poorly designed "amusing" piece of shit?

that was a joke. if a level like that was submitted to this contest I would score it pretty badly

Could've fooled me. You need to work on your joke design skills.

Mivixion wrote:If something uses a totally traditional style of gameplay but it's fun and challenging, then it will score high. If it's some crazy new shenanigans with unheard of tricks and it's fun and challenging, it'll score high. If it's somewhere in between those two, and it's fun and challenging, it'll score high. If it uses a totally traditional style of gameplay but is boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll score low. If it's some crazy new shenanigans with unheard of tricks and it's boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll score low. If it's somewhere in between those two, and it's boring, uninteresting, and repetitive, it'll still score low.

You know that "fun and challenging" and "boring, uninteresting, and repetitive" aren't the only two level types, right? Just to name one, there's also "unintuitive, unfair, and frustrating," which is what Kaizo SMW and Superpowered X are. It's also way more likely to be in the contest than "boring, uninteresting, and repetitive," and we've been arguing with you because you're defending it.

I wouldnt say that this is an arguement.

An arguement implies Mivy has some sort of stable ground to stand on. At this point, he is resorting to "joking" about a matter he can't directly refute and refuses to admit he was wrong. Note, he didn't touch my comments when I broke everything down; but instead he went for Nien's easy comments and said "lol jk." So really, we are just yelling at a brick wall with the words "I don't care what you say" spray painted on it.

I really think, not for my sake but for others, that he gets removed from the Judging roster. I honestly can't trust this man to be a judge if he can barely validate his own opinions to three separate people. If he can't prove his own point, how can he be trusted to operate as a judge without causing even more drama or issues, like in CCs.

whatever, do what you will, you can't change opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm just going to judge to whatever guidelines PixelPest eventually decides on. I have my own opinions but for the sake of my sanity and for the general opinion I'll be judging to whatever standards I'm told to instead of rating levels by how enjoyable they are. Tell me what to do because apparently I'm wrong about every single thing I say, and I'll do whatever I'm told and I'll watch as I get last place in the contest. The reason I was chosen to judge was because PixelPest has enjoyed my challenging levels we've given each other insight on cool hard level SMBX stuff and I'm one of the people in this community who actually appreciates challenging levels that aren't just normal levels with stupid huge jumps and enemies every other block. I'm sure there are plenty of people who love that and that's totally fine, but I think that's lame and sterile. Have your own opinions, I'm not going to tell you what to think.

You know that "fun and challenging" and "boring, uninteresting, and repetitive" aren't the only two level types, right?

I never said they were. I just used those two because most of the levels I play fall into one of those categories for me. If you found SX unfair, frustrating, and unintuitive, I'd say you haven't seen anything. There is so much garbage out there in SMW hacking and Mario Maker that you'd be so glad has not found its way to SMBX.

as303298 wrote:

I read all of your posts but didn't have much to say. You're not wrong because everything you're saying is pretty much an opinion

also the only joke I made was about smb 1-1 with kaizo blocks lol

PixelPest wrote:

do what you will with me as a judge, I'm still participating either way

Mivixion wrote:

I have faith that your reviews will be good and I'll keep you as I have you now

"Pro tip: don't mimic something if it sucks. Kaizo SMW sucks." -IMNBH4L

This is the only part where I disagree with you. You personally are entitled to have that view of it but some would disagree there. Kaizo Mario World cannot really be judged on the terms and conditions put forth and set by the standards of official Mario games. It is very much it's own beast with its own set of governing rules in which you are tested by your ability on skill and pattern recognition to solve puzzles rather than abusing the engine, which is more on the side of Pit hacks that go above and beyond standard Kaizo fare which even then in Kaizo, would be unfair level design, let alone having leftover gameplay mechanics from the base engine. Comparing to default Mario games is missing the point because of different standards and practices that goes into the playing and making of a Kaizo level than a more accessible level.

Some links
http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=78852
https://bravesword.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... a-bad-rap/ <- Every time someone says that Kaizo SMW sucks or its a badly designed game im obligated to link this because im not alone in this regard.

as303298 wrote:I wouldnt say that this is an arguement.

An arguement implies Mivy has some sort of stable ground to stand on...So really, we are just yelling at a brick wall with the words "I don't care what you say" spray painted on it.

Ah, fair point. I should stop replying to him.

StrikeForcer wrote:https://bravesword.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... a-bad-rap/ <- Every time someone says that Kaizo SMW sucks or its a badly designed game im obligated to link this because im not alone in this regard.

Oh yeah, that article. I'm going to point out the part of the article that best applies to the current situation:

"Its punishing difficulty is just fluff… a way of retaining challenge even though the player has all of these extra-game resources at his disposal...You have to have a particular kind of personality to enjoy re-loading state a thousand times trying to find the one perfect path that will get Mario to the exit in one piece…"

SMBX doesn't have those resources, so making a "kaizo" level in SMBX merely results in a cheap, poorly designed level. That's why I said that it's a bad idea to mimic Kaizo SMW. Playing Mivixion's levels is like playing Kaizo Mario World on a genuine SNES and being expected to be able to beat it. I admit I could have worded my statement a bit better, but you should be able to understand where I was coming from with that statement.

SMW kaizo was originally designed to be played without savestates or emulators though, and there are plenty of people who run it on consoles

Imaynotbehere4long wrote: SMBX doesn't have those resources, so making a "kaizo" level in SMBX merely results in a cheap, poorly designed level. That's why I said that it's a bad idea to mimic Kaizo SMW. Playing Mivixion's levels is like playing Kaizo Mario World on a genuine SNES and being expected to be able to beat it. I admit I could have worded my statement a bit better, but you should be able to understand where I was coming from with that statement.

I'd disagree with you, kaizo can work in smbx. Simply MaGKL was a lot of fun and made in the best way possible to accommodate for smbx. (can't say about MaGKL2 cuz I haven't gotten to it yet but I'd assume they didn't fuck it over entirely)