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[PsychedelicEyeball]

With the release of the level portal, I imagine that many people who previously played the game either stopped when they were fully done with it or who simply stopped caring at some point because it became too hard decided to finally come back and give some new levels a try.

However, aren't most of the levels that are currently uploaded on the portal too difficult for most people? The way I see it, most people who have used devmode to create levels is reasonably good at the game (most of which probably have Golden God too). Since many people would not bother with devmode, that only leaves to the most experienced players out here to test out levels, which ends up giving a false impression upon the real difficulty of levels, so they probably end up being much harder in order to compensate for the fact that we'll usually think they're easy.

On another forum I frequent, there especially was a fair bit of backlash against Jumper Returns in particular, which I personally feel was deserved. I'm not trying to contest the validity of this chapter being featured as it was deserved, but I agree with people who feel that it's too hard. Those levels in particular felt like something you'd see in I Wanna Be The Guy instead of Super Meat Boy, it's way too unforgiving and you're expected to follow the one pixel-perfect route through the stage, which is not fun at all.

Coincidentally enough, most people seem to enjoy Cramps and Paradise Lost more, mainly on the ground that those stages don't require pixel-perfect mastery and are fun and varied enough.

With that said, I think that a large part of levels that were made end up between those two extremes, although most of the levels that were made are way harder than anything that was part of the original game. I'm not saying that everyone out here should make easy chapters out of the blue like that, I'm simply implying that not everyone should specifically try to push the envelope and make really hard levels for the sake of satisfying hardcore players (which I admit I have being doing with my own chapter as well). Easier chapters would also have their place on the portal.

[DD Commander]

I want Ch. 1 again. You knew you would beat it, btu you played it for fun.

[The_End254]

I want Ch. 1 again. You knew you would beat it, btu you played it for fun.

That's basically cramps, easy but not stupidly easy and fun.

[Blatch]

You FOOLS!

This was one of the main reasons why I had a main difficulty theme for my chapter, Sideways Rain, picked out from the start. I tried to go crazy with my levels, while still keeping that Cramps-esque difficulty.

Now, as for Jumper Returns, RyokoTK based the difficulty of that pack off of the original Jumper. From what I've played of it, I consider it to be a fun level pack with some nice retro-flavored designs. I know I'm not skilled enough to beat some of the levels, so I didn't bother with those. You might not like it, and might deserve the hate, but that's all right! It's based off of a game, I have played, which I haven't beaten yet but know the design logic of. To each his own, is the lesson here.

I'm pretty sure you, PsychedelicEyeball, were guilty of bad design choices while making your pack of levels, Welcome to the Machine. I played your levels, and while I never ended up commenting on them, I can recount some devilish obsticles that were removed when you went over your levels a second time.

If the makers of the levels in Real Life get bagged on because their levels aren't that fair, they don't need to panic! After all, everybody gets a second try in life...

[PirateNipple]

There will always be a flood of extremely tough user-created levels, no matter what the game is, because a good portion of the people that want to make levels are the ones who beat the shit out of the main game and want to make more challenging things. I think they have a great plan for the "enter the unknown" feature, where you pick how hard you want the levels to be, even if it might take a while for most of the levels uploaded to be tagged with an appropriate difficulty (the system will automatically determine the difficulty based on number of deaths as people play the level.) There will be a wide range of levels for people to play.

One truth about level design is that you (the creator of the level) will think the level is easier than most of the people who play it, because you had a specific design in mind, and you hopefully played the level many times to make sure your design worked.

I never bothered to get into the devmode, but I plan on making levels for this game for a while, because I absolutely love how the game plays and I have a lot of ideas that I haven't seen in either the main game or user made levels.

edit: one sad reality about the level portal and rating system is that people who think the level is either way too easy or way too hard will give the level a bad rating, even if the level was designed well. I can't beat some of the hardest levels in the main game (dark world 5 and 7 stuff), but that doesn't mean the levels are poorly designed or anything, rather it's my skill that isn't good enough.

[Jintek]

I'll admit a few of the chapters border on surpassing my skill level, but I enjoy them anyway.  I personally like the balance of Remnants and Cramps/Paradise most, and that's sort of the difficulty I'm shooting for w/ my levels. 

But yeah, all of the levels so far are basically fair...unlike a lot of Mario hacks out there that are near impossible.   

[StealthAngel667]

Thank you for this topic. This is what I've been complaining about from the beginning.
Here, on the SMB forums, are what you may call some of the true SMB fans. Most of us have 100%ed the game and went past that. The developers of the custom levels also started on these forums. This means that they came from a community that is at least above-averagely skilled at SMB.

Now, let's look at Steam stats. Not even 3% of all SMB players have beaten the Dark World yet, and it's even less for Golden God.
So making levels that are harder than, say, chapter 3 Dark World, will probably appeal to maybe 5% of the entire community.
And as the OP stated, most people already dropped the game when they found it too hard or were done with it. Most people are just done with a game when they finish the main goal. In SMB, the main goal can be considered to be the Light World, because that's when you see the credits.

Also, I find most if not all custom levels to be too LONG. In SMB, there's only a couple of levels that take 40 seconds. I've already seen at least 10 custom levels that take more than that.

So, simple solution: take your really difficult levels and take the cool or gimmicky parts out of them. Release just those little parts as small, figure-one-trick-out-and-you're-done levels.
It's okay if you want to still upload your xboxhuge 2 minute levels, but don't expect me to play them. And I've 100%ed the original game, so I think lots of people will agree here.

[GameRoom]

edit: one sad reality about the level portal and rating system is that people who think the level is either way too easy or way too hard will give the level a bad rating, even if the level was designed well. I can't beat some of the hardest levels in the main game (dark world 5 and 7 stuff), but that doesn't mean the levels are poorly designed or anything, rather it's my skill that isn't good enough.

I doubt people would play 5 saw levels if they're not good enough, so it should only be an issue with levels that were just published.

[Blatch]

Also, I find most if not all custom levels to be too LONG. In SMB, there's only a couple of levels that take 40 seconds. I've already seen at least 10 custom levels that take more than that.

Gentle Rain. Natch.

To me, the only reeeeeeally long levels that get the point across easily are the ones from the End. Sure, they aren't that difficult, but most of them are tricky throughout. Not to mention, all of the diificulty is distributed evenly through the level. Compared to other levels which mostly have 1 insanely tricky jump near the end of the level, all of the jumps from the levels in the End are difficult, but no one jump is bad enough that you can just throw yourself blindly through it and hope for the best.

Bottom Line? Ball-Chopping Difficulty + Long Level = Not something most people enjoy!  
                                                                                                                                        ?
But Easy Difficulty + Fair Mechanics + Long Level = Happy Group Of Players!    

 
       
 

[Leiche]

Mine were never hard.
Cousinoers levels got me by the balls, they were so difficult everytime i played them i wanted to punch him right in the middle of his face.

[RockLeeSmile]

I agree that the Jumper levels are way too hard... at least for me.

Most railed against my first chapter for being too hard, yet that level of difficulty was praised in the Jumper chapters. It left me very confused.

[Nachogrande96]

I found the Jumper levels a bit hard myself. I haven't played using Ogmo that much though, so it's probably more difficult because of the fact that I usually only play as Meat Boy. I guess some people tend to find parts of the game harder than others because of how they play it.

tl,dr: I don't think any of the levels are too hard, they just seem hard to those who aren't used to a certain character/level of difficulty.

[NovaSilisko]

This exact situation is what drove me to MAKE Paradise Lost/cramps in the first place. I really hate levels that are unfair, and ones that are excessively long. Mostly combinations of both.

Look at Paradise Lost 20 - it's quite long, but the individual challenges aren't really that difficult. The enemy on a long level is pressure, and combining that with an already extremely difficult challenge just ruins it in the eyes of many.

[TunnelingEffect]

Cramps and Paradise lost are far too easy for my taste, I blind ran both of them and probably only died 20 times between the two total.

Jumper Returns is the best chapter up on the portal right now easily.

I haven't played using Ogmo that much though, so it's probably more difficult because of the fact that I usually only play as Meat Boy. I guess some people tend to find parts of the game harder than others because of how they play it.

tl,dr: I don't think any of the levels are too hard, they just seem hard to those who aren't used to a certain character/level of difficulty.

I have to agree 100%.

[Karoo]

dont we already have the why so hardcore difficulty in fan levels thread for this?

and I dis-like the saw rating system, allot of people that suck will skew the data and all the levels will lean towards 5 or 1 but not many in between.