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Thread: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

  
  1. #11
    Awakening Game Master Metal Gear Rex's Avatar
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Quote Originally Posted by dayokay View Post
    One survey respondent said to ditch the existing maps and write new campaigns. I do agree that new quality campaigns are needed (including a replayable hard version of the original), but it seems to me that abandoning some of the existing campaigns would be unwise. Some of them just need modifying to make them acceptable, and it'd be a shame to abandon them.
    I can't really comment on this since I am not familiar with most campaigns.

    Quote Originally Posted by dayokay View Post
    I also think a 'certified' campaign would need to be of a certain size. Some have too few maps to be a campaign.
    Possibly. I like the idea mentioned above by Your, where we have a section for individual maps rather than campaigns to be featured in FX. So those maps could go in there, instead.

    Quote Originally Posted by dayokay View Post
    I admire those who've made mentor speeches - a very hard thing to do.
    It's very hard to make good mentor speeches. Beyond that it's, what, getting the courage to speak several lines in a mic knowing that an untold number of people will be listening to you? Well the voices are modified, so I guess not much courage is needed.

    No, I don't rate the voices very highly myself either. I liked the Imp voice for Burdened Imp's campaign because I thought it sounded cute, like an Imp could sound, without being annoying. But upon attempting to play some other unmemorable campaigns, I couldn't even comprehend what the mentor was saying. That to me says a whole lot more.

    Quote Originally Posted by dayokay View Post
    I wonder how easy it would be to implement a splash screen after a player has chosen a campaign? This could have the background spiel, an explanation of the target audience (new, experienced etc), and a star rating perhaps, using a yet to be determined method of assigning a rank to each campaign?
    I actually had a similar idea. I was thinking that Players should be given some kind of description of the campaign before they try it.
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  2. #12
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Quote Originally Posted by Shonji View Post
    You can't really say that since it is VERY easy to say what you would do vs actually doing it and maintaining such. It is easy to make it sound so simple when you aren't the one in charge of it all. Just the playtester part alone would be quite a bit of work since you would need at least one or preferably a few/several people that can play it repeatedly. And it isn't just merely having fun playing the map. It is seeing if there are any errors, suggestions that could make the map/s better, things that make the level too hard or too easy which in of itself is a very difficult thing to understand since people think differently. Some would find some things very easy while others find it not so. Hell hard and impossible alone would be difficult to tell apart. I remember a long time ago I had a friend make a map where an extremely strong party(I am talking level 10s, Samurai, Wizards, Giants and such) were already coming for you in the very start of the map and you had next to nothing at all, no gold, no pre dug out rooms, no starting creatures, no research, just 3 Imps all level 1 and a 3x3 Treasury to start with. You had to within an extremely short time secure enough resources, get room space dug out, secure the portal, and fortify all within the course of 2-3 minutes before they dug in and killed you, you also had to make sure you had enough funds to get several level 10 creatures or you would lose against that party. This is just the beginning of the map too, that isn't even including everything else. He said it was hard, while it was in-fact impossible to EVER do all that with nothing at all.(I suggested making the party go through a very winding path or give yourself at least a little time to get ready, or start off with some troops, or even start off with 1 Boulder, all that would have made it doable. He rejected it all, funny since he never beat it himself, said he wanted to make a hard campaign, give it to myself and a few friends, we all said it was dumb and impossible, and he never fixed it or continued with maps again.)

    What I am simply getting at is it isn't as easy as people would think. Getting all that set up, making QUALITY maps, having a lot of playtesting as well as coming to a conclusion on how to rate it would all take a lot of time and constant effort. Moreso since the average map usually takes from an hour to even several hours to beat. Just imagine having to playtest a map even 5 times and see it works properly and is as balanced or doable as possible when the map takes 1-5 hours to beat each time. Also how long the mapmaker needs to take to MAKE it to begin with, then constantly having to tweak it since you will rarely have a perfect map on your first time. And these are all people that have lives that have other things to do than just DK. It is a lot of work unless you half ass it and don't care about quality which is the problem. It is easy to make a crappy map and just release it without doing anything, pretty much anyone can do that. It is hard and time consuming to make a truly good map and have it tested to make sure it is good before releasing, and then STILL taking in advice, very few can pull that off.
    I wasn't so much talking about the maps themselves as much about the website itself getting an overhaul.

  3. #13
    Awakening Game Master Metal Gear Rex's Avatar
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Quote Originally Posted by Hades View Post
    I wasn't so much talking about the maps themselves as much about the website itself getting an overhaul.
    I think you entirely missed the point. You can't give the site an overhaul in the way that you said without talking about the maps themselves. According to Mefisto's site, there's over 300 maps there. Can you honestly expect to playtest them all to give them an accurate difficulty setting? That's the biggest issue, because let's be realistic. If we're struggling upkeep with the current campaigns, how can you expect it to be possible to give all the maps on Mefisto's site a good playtesting? I'm not even beginning to get into some of the other issues that Shonji mentioned.
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  4. #14
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Quote Originally Posted by Wyrmcast View Post
    I think it's possible to play-test the maps however it would require someone with a huge amount of free-time or dedication, or else a team of play-testers. It would just take the motivation basically.
    I didn't mean to say or imply that it was impossible, merely to express the difficulty of the task. In order to do an actually good job reviewing all the maps, as anything beneath that takes away the whole point of doing it in the first place, it would be very difficult. Most who are more experienced and know how to properly review maps are people who are older and don't have as much time to spare.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wyrmcast View Post
    Looking at DK2, I play-tested a huge amount of maps in that personally for my mod. So it's not impossible, it's mostly just a time slog and honestly a fight against the boredom of doing the same things over and over again. Testing the stability of maps to root out the ones which will crash the game (and etc.) was the most annoying thing for me.
    That was another issue I had in mind as well, but didn't mention it. Playtesting it over and over again can be a pain unless it's a really good and enjoyable map, but even so, some people don't like playing the same map repeatedly regardless. This can end up lowering the quality of any review they can give a map as they don't want to go to the effort to play the same map over and over again, then repeat the pattern for every map on the site.
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  5. #15
    Beetle Ecarus's Avatar
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    I think that so much people doesnt play fan-made campaigns and levels is because they arent "attractive" enough... I think that levels that are somelike the original DK levels are more attractive to new players. For example, i have played some fan-made levels and they have a single border of impenetrable rock around the lvl... in my opinion, that is ugly... and gives to the lvl the feel that is a low quality lvl.

  6. #16

    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Well, if there's a map really good, or really fun to play, but has an ugly border, I personally volunteer to make give it a natural looking border.

  7. #17

    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    What about setting up a website allowing for people to give scores to maps and to make reviews?
    Something like this :
    http://zero-k.info/Maps

  8. #18
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    Default Re: Survey : Thoughts on the existing campaigns

    Quote Originally Posted by BlueTemplar View Post
    What about setting up a website allowing for people to give scores to maps and to make reviews?
    Something like this :
    http://zero-k.info/Maps
    Much better site layout than lubiki.

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