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[FrazerJC]

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

Completely agree. I've played quite a few of the custom levels so far and while I'm not amazing at SMB I like to think I'm still pretty damn good, with 100 bandages and a few of the easier IronMan runs under my belt. However, with a lot of the custom levels... So many of them were both long and overly "saw-happy". Such a turn off for the whole chapter!

Same goes with the point about a long level with medium difficulty ending with a stupidly hard jump. I don't want to go through 30 seconds of level just to possibly fail that final jump again because there are 5 saws, 2 rockets and 3 saw-launchers (for example).

I can easily see that a lot of these level creators have a lot of potential for creating some truly amazing and fun levels, but the ones uploaded by Team Meat for testing are just frustrating. And yes, I understand SMB should be frustrating at times, but it should be Fun-Frustrating: "This is so hard, but I want to beat it!"; not "This is so hard, Screw it! I'll go to another level".

... If any of you get what I mean? ^_^;

[RyokoTK]

Jumper Returns IS hard. If you've played any Jumper game, you'd know it's fitting. If you haven't, try the first one. Once you get past the first two sectors you'll see it's motherfucking hard.

[Insani99999]

Don't worry guys - When devmode comes back you'll be seeing a ton of 'easier' levels coming out.

[Xenesis]

I think the big failing with a lot of the levels is putting the hardest part at the end, rather than close to the start.

Jumper Returns is excusable because yeah, Jumper is hard. As is Expert Remix. I think the difficulty will sort itself out once the editor is out though, because the super-hard levels will be pushed to the high end of the spectrum with their difficulty ratings.

[louiscipher]

I liked the featured chapters Butcher Boy, Remnants, and Paradise Lost. Potato Boy was good but too short.

Everything else I really didn't like. It just seemed hard for the sake of being hard without any fun to be had. In some of the hardest levels of Super Meat Boy, there's always a trick like 'oh, I just have to have a running jump from here and, got it! Okay now the next one, damn I fucked up, try again.' Once you figure out the pattern it's fun.

A lot of the Devmode levels just come off like Asshole Mario stages.

*Edit: Some of the Jumper levels like I-9 Gators of NY are pretty good. But the majority of them are just way too hard because the designer thought it necessary to add an extra element to make an already hard jump even harder to make. While also keeping in mind the slow velocity of Ogmo which throws off your rhythm. In the hardest levels in that pack, you could beat if there wasn't an extra saw blade in the way, or the homing rockets didn't fire every second and were slower, and etc. If the designer removed these extra hard elements the levels would be fine, otherwise I want to kick him in the teeth. FYI I feel no remorse for using the exploit on I-13 Street Sweep to beat it. Fuck that.

[juxtapose519]

The reason that most of the new levels are so hard is because most of the people who couldn't finish the original game were turned off before they even gave devmode a passing thought. The people who stuck around to make levels were the ones looking for more of a challenge.

Once the user-friendly level editor comes out, more of the casual players will return and there will be plenty of easy levels in the portal.

And regarding the "Jumper Returns too hard" comments, you should play the original Jumper and you'll take it all back. Returns was easy mode compared to the real deal.

[RockLeeSmile]

And regarding the "Jumper Returns too hard" comments, you should play the original Jumper and you'll take it all back. Returns was easy mode compared to the real deal.

I've played the original Jumper and it was also too hard... however, it was mostly too hard due to some really rough and rigid physics and jumping mechanics. SMB has nearly perfect jumping mechanics and it definitely helps, but the overall challenge doesn't play to the strengths of what is fun about SMB in my opinion. I'm not saying the chapter is bad or saying anything bad about it, it's just too hard for me to find it fun.

It could have been a great opportunity to really drive home how entertaining the double-jumping mechanic could be if the levels really emphasized that the challenge came from overcoming difficult and unconventional jumping schemes. Instead, a lot of that challenge came from several other sources including lots of homing missiles. I'd love it if these levels were labeled the "dark world" versions and have them be redone as easier "light world" versions.

Just my opinion. That is all.

[RyokoTK]

I could have 40 levels of nothing but non-moving spikes and sawblades in Jumper Returns instead, but I figured that would have been kind of boring. ;)

[RockLeeSmile]

I could have 40 levels of nothing but non-moving spikes and sawblades in Jumper Returns instead, but I figured that would have been kind of boring. ;)

I do hear you.

This is going to sound sarcastic but I swear it's not... I actually would like to try your idea. There's a LOT you can do with just those basic mechanics and I'm certain that you could make 40 situations or more that are still very fun.

I think some of our core design ideals may come from slightly different places. I'd prefer the default difficulty to come primarily from a player using their judgment and reason to find their way through a level (more like a puzzle). Of course that is still with a certain element of dexterity as well, but not as heavily reliance on twitch reaction. I wonder if maybe your viewpoint maybe flipped in the other direction.

There's nothing right or wrong about either viewpoint, it just is what it is. Also, although I'm painting with a broad brush I am well aware that we are all capable of working outside the constraints of any particular ethos.

Tell me what you think...

[RyokoTK]

The thing with the missile launchers is that Ogmo handles them very differently from Meat Boy, which is why I used them so aggressively. Ogmo's ability to airjump gives him a real advantage in rocket evasion, and the real danger from them is making you move quickly, unlike in some Meat Boy levels where once you jump, you're a sitting duck for a rocket to the face.

And I've made 20 levels with mostly nothing but static sawblades, and they can get kind of boring. Variety is kind of nice ;)

[PsychedelicEyeball]

And regarding the "Jumper Returns too hard" comments, you should play the original Jumper and you'll take it all back. Returns was easy mode compared to the real deal.

I've played the original Jumper and it was also too hard... however, it was mostly too hard due to some really rough and rigid physics and jumping mechanics. SMB has nearly perfect jumping mechanics and it definitely helps, but the overall challenge doesn't play to the strengths of what is fun about SMB in my opinion. I'm not saying the chapter is bad or saying anything bad about it, it's just too hard for me to find it fun.

It could have been a great opportunity to really drive home how entertaining the double-jumping mechanic could be if the levels really emphasized that the challenge came from overcoming difficult and unconventional jumping schemes. Instead, a lot of that challenge came from several other sources including lots of homing missiles. I'd love it if these levels were labeled the "dark world" versions and have them be redone as easier "light world" versions.

Just my opinion. That is all.

I couldn't agree more with this. This is mainly why I find that Jumper Returns doesn't quite work as a chapter, or at least, not as much as it could be.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I didn't do this thread for the sole purpose of bashing Jumper Returns in particular, it just happened that it's the hardest user-made level pack found on the portal for the time being. The main intent behind this thread was to get people's opinions on the difficulty of user levels to see if boding level creators missed the point with the difficulty of their chapters in general (which is what I did with my chapter for a long time, as the early version of it was way too hard for most people).

All in all, thanks to everyone who offered this valuable feedback and I hope all those posts will be of help and interest to people who made levels under devmode or who want to make levels when devmode will surface again in the next update.

[The Silent Protagonist]

Psych-Eye, if you are who I think you are..you have the best accent on the face of the planet.



Regardless of my praise: As much as I really do not like Jumper Returns or chapters of such high difficulty..I think you and I should leave it to the high-difficulty players while we stick to things of which we enjoy like Paradise Lost (which is a favourite of mine now).

[Chilblain]

In my opinion Cramps, Paradise Lost and Butcher Boy were the most fun chapters because they were the most reasonable. They weren't mind-numbingly easy, but they weren't soul-crushingly hard, which meant running through the chapter made you think "I can totally beat this, just give me a few more shots!" which keeps the player (in this case me) going. It felt like they were these neat little puzzles that you had to figure out.

My least favourite SMW chapter was a close tie between Jumper Returns and Remnants. They just kinda felt like they were hard for the wrong reasons. Jumper Returns felt like there was this hidden absolute path that you had to follow or you were screwed, and Remnants was just chock full of levels that were too long. However, personally, I felt that Remnants was the slightly worse one simply because of how it felt like someone took The End's Dark World and made it twenty levels long.

[Patashu]

I'm going to be contrarian and say that I like my levels to be as hard as possible

(it's true)

(make more chapters like jumper returns plz  )

[HybridStars]

I'm going to be contrarian and say that I like my levels to be as hard as possible

Someone on the same wavelength as me.