What is *your* opinion?

[Karsten75]

Saw this on a map and was wondering what the rest of the community thinks about this attitude?

My nth Map. Again, don't bother to try and debate hard vs. medium. I find that more people download maps if they're classified as hard, and so sue me if I want people to actually try my maps.

I don't like being gamed, but I suppose every system does get gamed by someone.

[Sqaz]

Well, you can't blame him that he wants a lot of people playing his map (and he's right that expert only and hard maps get more downloads even if they're rubbish) there are plenty of other maps that have a to high difficulty given by the author.

The only way to solve things like this is to let the players select the difficulty or to always watch the average playing time.

[SPIFFEN]

I have sayd that the mapmaker shouldnt select how hard the map is ,
only expert players might choose the right hardness if they use alot of time on the map they make .

So i think it should be deleted as an option ,
and be an auto thing from the average time score or something .

[bobandirus]

But then the oblivion map is really tricky, but takes minutes, and some other maps (none spring to mind) are not hard at all, just take a long time to compleate as there is a lot of creeper ground to cover, while you start on a very defensable position.

[knucracker]

So I can just remove the difficulty option if everyone thinks that might be better.  The difficulty hasn't really worked out very well, and a number of authors have pretty much just started ignoring it.... (can't say I blame them).

Should I just remove it and let the completion times serve as indicators of what you might be getting into when you play a map?
I suppose that authors can still describe the difficulty in the description if they really want to.

[JACKL]

yeah,that sounds good!

[Karsten75]

So I can just remove the difficulty option if everyone thinks that might be better.  The difficulty hasn't really worked out very well, and a number of authors have pretty much just started ignoring it.... (can't say I blame them).

Should I just remove it and let the completion times serve as indicators of what you might be getting into when you play a map?
I suppose that authors can still describe the difficulty in the description if they really want to.

I gues your option is easiest to implement, but I have an alternate suggestion:

Allow the players to decide difficulty. On the same page where we upload our scores, allow us to select from (Trivial, Easy, Medium, Hard, Evil, and Puzzler). On the site, then display the consensus rating. Of course, that does not allow a map that is unplayed/unplayable to be rated, but still....


And while we are talking about map ratings, etc., would it be terribly hard to show the map's star rating on the overview page?  And can you change the "Comments" and "Scores" lines that are there to hyperlinks so we can go directly to either comments or scores for a particular map?

[betadata]

Rating the difficulty is an objective thing. As said before what is easy for one may be hard for another. If we are voting I say leave it out altogether. The times for completion is a much better idea of what you are getting into and more accurate measure of the map.

[UpperKEES]

Saw this on a map and was wondering what the rest of the community thinks about this attitude?

My nth Map. Again, don't bother to try and debate hard vs. medium. I find that more people download maps if they're classified as hard, and so sue me if I want people to actually try my maps.

Well, at least this guy is being honest about it. I bet a lot of people do the same thing without mentioning it. I find about 80% of the maps easier than described. (Most of the time because the author doesn't realize how the game can be played.)

So I can just remove the difficulty option if everyone thinks that might be better.  The difficulty hasn't really worked out very well, and a number of authors have pretty much just started ignoring it.... (can't say I blame them).

Should I just remove it and let the completion times serve as indicators of what you might be getting into when you play a map?
I suppose that authors can still describe the difficulty in the description if they really want to.

I would leave it as it is, for reasons mentioned by bobandirus. People will realize the difficulty rating is relative, but in combination with the completion times it still gives some info.

[Kamron3]

and put the 1-click download back please ;)

_k

[Xylnalya]

I'd go with Karsten here - In my opinion the difficulty rating's too important to simply leave it out. I see myself how hard it is to judge it, there's always something you don't think of when concidering. However, I wouldn't like the difficulty names to be 'Puzzler' etc. since these on the other hand are terms everyone uses differently. By staying with the present names we/you/Virgil could make a small table on the map's page, showing how many people voted for each difficulty. This way both the mapmakers get feedback and anyone who's interested in downloading it can see how many people actually voted it in what category.

e.g.
Trivial - 0
Easy - 2
Medium - 1
Hard - 4
Expert - 0

Talking 'bout revivin' an' ol' topic, eh?