Archive: 40 posts

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First of all I want to say "cool community". I think it's a testament to LBP as a game that it can develop such thriving third party communities. Few games have a big enough draw to manage that. I actually found the URL in the game posted in a level's description. I forget which one. I want to talk about the process Media Molecule has in place for garnering new levels views. Having just spent a week on my level I was fairly satisfied. Now appreciate this is my first post and I don't want to come across like an arrogant **** claiming I created the best level in the world. I didn't. But on saying that (my biased viewpoint is) it's a lot better than some of the other levels I've seen with 100's (or even 1000's) of plays. Fair play to the guys that made those levels but I'm just wondering how on Earth they managed it. No one has that amount of friends and I'm seriously miffed with the process. I published my level yesterday, it instantly got 25 plays and 8 hearts - which considering only 1 of those hearts was a friend of mine I figured - hey some other people must kinda like my level too. That's cool. But then it stopped. After that initial surge I've had (at time of writing) 35 plays and 10 hearts. Now don't get me wrong - the fact that I can put a level up and people can play it fascinates me but I'm just wondering - a 10:35 heart-to-play ratio is pretty good right? Well I thought so. So why aren't MM driving me anymore "traffic" so to speak. Have I had my "limelight" time now... ... in which case I don't think that's entirely fair. MM should at least be ensuring a 100 or so play a level and if it dips beyond a certain rating (or doesn't have enough hearts) it should then drop off the radar. If I didn't get all these hearts from people I didn't know then I'd say: "fair enough, my level's ****" honestly I would. And I'd try again. Harder. But I put a lot of work in and I think it's been relatively successful on the "hearts" front. So I'm just wondering why MM aren't driving me a few more plays to see if I can't sustain my rating? I'm not expected front page exposure - good grief no, my levels not good enough. I'm just kinda disappointed that I haven't been honoured with at least 50 visitors to my level - especially considering people have been hearting it and (presumably) rating it 3, 4 or maybe 5 stars. Thoughts, opinion and help appreciated.

2008-11-12 20:14:00 Author: get2sammyb Posts: 5

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I get what you mean. Have you ever played "Ramp?" It's absolutely terrible. It doesn't even work for christs sake, yet it hit 200k plays the other day. I think they need to define a way of finding lesser played levels, amongst the junk, and extremely high played ones. A good method would be to use the ranking system they had in place.. All 5 stars get pushed to the frontish, etc etc..

2008-11-12 20:45:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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Hey, welcome to the forums! Glad to have you on board. For your question, I have a very simple answer : The way the system works currently, your level will not sell itself. This is due to several problems. 1- The majority of players will only play levels on the first Cool Levels pages. 2- A recently published level appears for a very short amount of time on those pages (during the Beta, I clocked it at about 2 to 4 minutes). 3- Levels with a high number of plays and hearts stay permanently on the first Cool Levels page. 4- There is no way to look for recently published levels beside the Cool Levels page. What this means is that in order to get more plays for your level you have to sell the level yourself. This is incredibly annoying, unfortunately there is nothing to be done until MM fixes the system. Myself, I know of three ways to get more plays : 1- Republish your levels, this will get them back onto the Cool Levels page for a short amount of time. You can do this simply by moving your published level to another location (I do this once daily). 2- Promote your level on forums (like this one ) and/or youtube. 3- Get your level or yourself hearted by one of the popular authors (this could eventually happen if you do 1 and 2 but is entirely out of our hands). The best advice I can give you is to not worry about the number of plays too much. It doesn't mean that your level is unpopular or bad, it's simply because the system currently makes it near-impossible for new levels to be found.

2008-11-12 20:49:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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I get what you mean. Have you ever played "Ramp?" This is the first level I thought of when I read this thread lol Felt so bad about this level i even had to slate it in the comments:o, and that's not the sort of thing i usually do

2008-11-12 20:50:00 Author: dorien Posts: 2767

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Yeah I thought this because on the 1st page, there are levels with like 20 plays.

2008-11-12 20:51:00 Author: mongoose7 Posts: 473

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You're pretty much right in thinking the system they use is screwed. It really is a shame, as if they had all the ACTUAL best levels on the front page, it would be amazing. It really is a shame tbh Hopefully this will be fixed.

2008-11-12 20:52:00 Author: ryryryan Posts: 3767

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lol I played "ramp" this afternoon actually. And thats what drove me to post this. I couldn't imagine how a level that didn't even work had 6000 odd Hearts. Presumably republishing every 12 hours or so won't get you the ban hammer?

2008-11-12 22:16:00 Author: get2sammyb Posts: 5

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Nope Works wonders. Keep it quiet though eh ?

2008-11-12 22:20:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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I can't agree with the "MM should at least be ensuring a 100 or so play a level" statement. This would be a nightmare for organizing and a bit cruel if the level was another.. ramp. Anything on the first 5-10 cool pages will always get more plays than anything else and we may never get rid of those levels under the current system. As for your level, be patient. It's taken a couple weeks to get my plays up to 100+. It's going to be a slow process but each time the level is played and hearted, the chances of others playing it increases exponentially.

2008-11-12 22:48:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

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I rebuslished every 6 hours or so and my level got to 564,179 in like 3 days. worst system ever thought. Glad i got my trophies, so Now i can just create for fun.

2008-11-12 23:22:00 Author: Pinkcars Posts: 380

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Just about to load up the game any bets that the first level that I haven't played before on the cool page is a load of crap?

2008-11-12 23:40:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Just about to load up the game any bets that the first level that I haven't played before on the cool page is a load of crap? Any idiots willing to take this bet?

2008-11-12 23:44:00 Author: Pinkcars Posts: 380

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I kinda agree with this... It does seem kind of annoying when you see all the really rubbish levels, have loads of plays. I can't remember what it was called, but I played this really random level. And it didn't even work.. I was just like... What's going on...? Oh and as a side note which is kinda off topic... How do you add score bubbles in your levels...?

2008-11-12 23:53:00 Author: Vecayse Posts: 18

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I kinda agree with this... It does seem kind of annoying when you see all the really rubbish levels, have loads of plays. I can't remember what it was called, but I played this really random level. And it didn't even work.. I was just like... What's going on...? Oh and as a side note which is kinda off topic... How do you add score bubbles in your levels...? Tools bag, third page third item.

2008-11-13 00:00:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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thats exactly why communities like ours need to support each other. Hopefully if we find a great level here, we will help get it to the top. Like azure palace....but i dont know if thats us or just amazing level design.

2008-11-13 00:00:00 Author: Unknown User

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Ok first cool level of the day and its a short race with almost nothing in the level and a load of points bubbles, already managed to get three hearts out of 27 plays.

2008-11-13 00:08:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Tools bag, third page third item. Thanks a lot... I'm so stupid for not figuring that out myself >.> Well I finished my first level... It's kinda crappy... But I got the publishing a level trophy Yeah... I'll stop going off-topic now

2008-11-13 00:38:00 Author: Vecayse Posts: 18

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I honestly lucked out with the Azure Palace still sticking to page 1 of Cool Levels. If I didn't get the game early, I don't think it would have had that much of an impact. I think it should have surpassed 150k plays and hopefully nearly 20k hearts. Plus mad thanks to lbpcentral. ^^

2008-11-13 02:05:00 Author: gevurah22 Posts: 1476

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I honestly lucked out with the Azure Palace still sticking to page 1 of Cool Levels. If I didn't get the game early, I don't think it would have had that much of an impact. I think it should have surpassed 150k plays and hopefully nearly 20k hearts. Plus mad thanks to lbpcentral. ^^ With alot of skill and a little bit of luck, you hit the jackpot with a popular level lol

2008-11-13 02:16:00 Author: ryryryan Posts: 3767

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Still cant figure out why there isnt a "Published Today" and "Published this Week" page. My level has been up since the beta, and although i didn't expect any hearts or great comments due to it being more a proof of concept of object depth movement, it only had 3 plays when i got the game on Euro release. After a slight update with a 20 case OR gate activated climbable wall, and quite a lot of video uploads and name dropping it is now at 69 plays and 25 hearts. Which is great! until you see levels on the first page with 200,000 plays. Im hoping the server issues are the reason the sorting methods haven't been fixed. The play, create, share scores are still inactive after-all?

2008-11-13 02:49:00 Author: accordion Posts: 76

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This system makes me want to think twice about publishing my next creation... Should I wait out an update/revamp? ...Meh, most likely not. d: As long as people from the forums play it, and my friends, I'm pretty much okay with it. What can I say, I would like to be renown as a decent creator at least... Let people know I have the talent, you know? Just like a lot of other players that make excellent levels, only to have it buried under page 40 after just a day of Publishing...

2008-11-13 05:21:00 Author: aer0blue Posts: 1603

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I published a level 5 days ago and it's got 21 plays..... Is that even possible with the quick play option

2008-11-13 05:59:00 Author: Tomo009 Posts: 274

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I'm pretty sure Donkey Show put lbpc's URL in the description for The Azure Palace. Anyway, a lot of the top levels are really horrible. Basically anything on the first page is crap except anything made by Geosautus or donkey show. But I've found some real gems by looking through the back pages and simply using the search engine. One big problem I have with the search engine is the Tags system. Instead of being like any normal search engine and having the level creator putting in tags that actually make sense to the level (Gardens, swingy, easy, whatever) you have other people put in premade tags for you. And if you haven't looked at tags for popular levels like World of Color, they are labeled with every premade tag. They should really let creators type in the tags for levels like on Youtube.

2008-11-13 06:01:00 Author: qrtda235566 Posts: 3664

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I am pretty sure you can look at recent levels.

2008-11-13 06:06:00 Author: Sambo110 Posts: 162

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What I don't get is when you rate a level between 1 and 5 stars. Yet this isn't refernced anywhere else in the game. You can't see how many stars a level has on average. How does this rating affect anything?

2008-11-13 09:53:00 Author: Piratepete Posts: 110

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I am pretty sure you can look at recent levels. If you are referring to the "Recent" link just to the right of Cool Levels, this only shows levels you have recently played.

2008-11-13 10:58:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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I honestly lucked out with the Azure Palace still sticking to page 1 of Cool Levels. If I didn't get the game early, I don't think it would have had that much of an impact. I think it should have surpassed 150k plays and hopefully nearly 20k hearts. Plus mad thanks to lbpcentral. ^^ You made it? - I feel like I'm among celebrities. That level is HUGE all around the Internet. But the thing with Azure Palace is - it genuinely deserves to be where it is. Everyone should play that level at least twice because it's brilliant. BUT - it makes you wonder how many levels there are out there that are maybe not first-page quality but are still fairly well designed and polished and tested that are never going to get found.

2008-11-13 11:04:00 Author: get2sammyb Posts: 5

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I think what should happen is that when you go to play community maps, you should first be presented with a page of randomly selected maps. If you want to see the best maps, a 'highest ranked' search option should be available. If 'cool levels' is the most immediately available option, people will always start there and whatever is on top will pretty much stay on top. If everyone were out there trying random maps instead of immediately going for the 'coolest' maps, everyone would be getting more plays and things would be distributed a little more fairly. I thought "Quick Play" might at least send me to a random community level, but at least for me it always picks story mode levels. I also think it's important to see how many stars a level has on average. The problem with hearts right now is that they are tied to trophies... so people are out there 'heart trading' and that biases the system. Stars aren't tied to trophies at all, and they are awarded anonymously, so they should be a more accurate judge of quality. However, the average star rating shouldn't appear until a level gets a certain number of plays. Until then there's not enough data and the map should be listed as 'unranked'. I'd really like to see a robust search where you can set a few parameters like minimum star ranking, number of plays, published within the last week, etc. That would be awesome. It would also be hard for a lot of people to use, and I understand that. It's not a must-have. So in summary, I think the following steps would "fix" things for everyone: - Put random maps up front instead of "cool levels". - Expose the average star ranking to players. - Put 'cool levels' as an option somewhere else. This way, you would no longer be competing for plays against the 100 "coolest" levels anymore... you'd just be competing against the 20-or-so levels that were randomly selected to show up along with yours. I think most people who put any effort into their maps will manage to beat out the other 20 crap levels most of the time, and their plays will definitely increase. I would definitely play levels with a low number of plays but a high number of stars. I would definitely play levels that were unranked and give stars appropriately in order to help others find good levels, too. And I would feel much better that people might EVER have a chance to see my level again after it no longer met the 'new' or the 'cool' criteria. Some people here seem to be in touch with Mm... what's the best way to pass along our suggestions?

2008-11-13 14:36:00 Author: Risen Posts: 251

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Hey, welcome to the forums! Glad to have you on board. For your question, I have a very simple answer : The way the system works currently, your level will not sell itself. This is due to several problems. 1- The majority of players will only play levels on the first Cool Levels pages. 2- A recently published level appears for a very short amount of time on those pages (during the Beta, I clocked it at about 2 to 4 minutes). 3- Levels with a high number of plays and hearts stay permanently on the first Cool Levels page. 4- There is no way to look for recently published levels beside the Cool Levels page. What this means is that in order to get more plays for your level you have to sell the level yourself. This is incredibly annoying, unfortunately there is nothing to be done until MM fixes the system. Myself, I know of three ways to get more plays : 1- Republish your levels, this will get them back onto the Cool Levels page for a short amount of time. You can do this simply by moving your published level to another location (I do this once daily). 2- Promote your level on forums (like this one ) and/or youtube. 3- Get your level or yourself hearted by one of the popular authors (this could eventually happen if you do 1 and 2 but is entirely out of our hands). The best advice I can give you is to not worry about the number of plays too much. It doesn't mean that your level is unpopular or bad, it's simply because the system currently makes it near-impossible for new levels to be found. A good post about this. And I agree..... I think alot of players just dont think to look past the first page there. And that's nothing against the players, either..... it took me a day or so to realize, wait...... there's so many more pages!!! Now, when I wanna try something new, I can either hit Quick Play (always fun), but if I wanna just play one on my own, I'll just mash the "next page" button a random number of times, and then select something from whatever appears. I can understand the frustration, though. My own level isnt doing too bad..... it's had a few hearts, and right now somewhere around 75 plays. Considering that I made it "insanely hard", as some have put it, mostly as a challenge to myself (complete with deranged shmup-ish boss), that's not bad, as hearts go. I got some good feedback on it too from a few testers. But still..... I'd like MORE feedback, really. I'd like a chance for that level to get some more comments (which is a slow process indeed, I understand), so I can learn more, really. I find it very important to listen to feedback, but..... hard to do when you dont get ENOUGH of it, yes? Still, I cant complain too much. The excellent gameplay and absolutely brilliant editor will inspire me to keep making level after level as time goes on..... and the often hilarious online play just adds to the fun. .....and I didnt know that about republishing the levels in that manner..... good of you to point that out. I'll defnitely try that.

2008-11-17 11:31:00 Author: Bridget Posts: 334

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First of all I understand your frustration. It seems that some of the worst levels ever imagined have the most plays/hearts (this is a mystery I am still trying to work my head around). The most popular levels seem to be remakes (even if they are horrible), incredibly simple vehicle based levels and increasing number of levels with the words "ninja warrior" in the title, presumably trying to feed of the succes of Little Big Ninja Warrior by Burningout which first appeared during the beta. Having said that I will echo what docpac wrote: give it time. I published my level two weeks ago and slowly but surely it is now close to 600 plays and over 110 hearts. The more plays/hearts, the greater chance of more people playing and hearting. I think it goes without saying that you should create a thread under Level Showcase on these forums so more people know about it and have a chance to try it out. But a word of advice: if your going to expect people to play your levels and leave feedback then you need to be prepared to do the same thing, this is not a one-way street. Some people have been joining these forums just to promote themselves and not give other creators the time of day which is NOT cool. And no matter how successfull your lvl may or may not become please don't turn into an arrogant, big-headed ******* because at the end of the day there will always be creators who can do something just as good as you or even better. I hope that helps

2008-11-17 12:02:00 Author: OCK Posts: 1536

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First of all I understand your frustration. It seems that some of the worst levels ever imagined have the most plays/hearts (this is a mystery I am still trying to work my head around). The most popular levels seem to be remakes (even if they are horrible), incredibly simple vehicle based levels and increasing number of levels with the words "ninja warrior" in the title, presumably trying to feed of the succes of Little Big Ninja Warrior by Burningout which first appeared during the beta. Having said that I will echo what docpac wrote: give it time. I published my level two weeks ago and slowly but surely it is now close to 600 plays and over 110 hearts. The more plays/hearts, the greater chance of more people playing and hearting. I think it goes without saying that you should create a thread under Level Showcase on these forums so more people know about it and have a chance to try it out. But a word of advice: if your going to expect people to play your levels and leave feedback then you need to be prepared to do the same thing, this is not a one-way street. Some people have been joining these forums just to promote themselves and not give other creators the time of day which is NOT cool. And no matter how successfull your lvl may or may not become please don't turn into an arrogant, big-headed ******* because at the end of the day there will always be creators who can do something just as good as you or even better. I hope that helps Depends on how well you manage to advertise on the forums though, I'm obviously not so good at it, my first stage still has like 40 plays and 2 hearts after over a week, though it was quite hard and my second which i released about half a week ago which I actually thought was quite good has a pitiful 23 plays, 1 heart. It's not even difficult

2008-11-17 12:40:00 Author: Tomo009 Posts: 274

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If you want more people to play your levels, (because like you, I hate levels like 'ramp' that have thousands of plays) rant about them on forums and republish them daily to get them back on an early page. This is what I've been doing. I only wish that MM would incorporate some sort of way to look at the average 5 star rating a level has recieved, maybe if a level constantly gets ratings of 1 + 2 they get pushed back rather quickly, and they include a show of the average score on all levels. I kind of assumed that this would be in place already... it seemed like a no-brainer.

2008-11-17 14:10:00 Author: Avatar_of_Chaos Posts: 48

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Thinking it over.. I think there should be some rearrangement of the following. I'm not sure how many levels can get on a single page. Page 1 - Levels produced in the last 24 hours Page 2 - Top Hearted Levels Page 3 - Rankings (5 star) page 4 - 4 star page 5 - 3 star Page 6 - 2/1 stars Step 2: Fix the search function!!! Step 3: SHOW us the average rating for levels, MM... Step 4: Quick play .. don't throw us in story mode with quick play, MM.. throw us in some of the online games. Step 5: how about a "similar to".. where if you find a level type and you like it.. it can link you (ala the story mode link) to other similar levels? (i'm guessing this would be kind of hard to do , considering the weird tabs people select). Step 6: it's up to the users as well... don't just stick to the first page. First thing I almost always do when I'm go to Cool Levels... I just hit the R1 button a few random times, or pick them based on the tag... because I _know_ i'm going to get something different. Step 6a: Pick a random word... believe it or not, that's how I found one of my all-time favorite ones... I think I just picked the word Mystery or something and it happened to show up. step 6b: Be HONEST in your hearts/rankings. I cannot count the number of comments that say "I "hearted' you, now "heart' me back." (Ramp in particular is HORRIBLE about those kind of comments.). one of the first things I do anymore is reading the comments for any level. If it's a series of "republish""republish""republish" i tend to avoid it... if it's got "heart me" comments... I tend to avoid it as well.

2008-11-18 20:29:00 Author: DaSaintFan Posts: 136

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step 6b: Be HONEST in your hearts/rankings. I cannot count the number of comments that say "I "hearted' you, now "heart' me back." (Ramp in particular is HORRIBLE about those kind of comments.). one of the first things I do anymore is reading the comments for any level. If it's a series of "republish""republish""republish" i tend to avoid it... if it's got "heart me" comments... I tend to avoid it as well. I can understand the annoyance with the heart requests. But what is the problem with republished levels? It is currently one of the only ways to get your level played by more than 20 people. Until something is done about either the Search or the Cool Levels in any case.

2008-11-19 00:32:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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I can understand the annoyance with the heart requests. But what is the problem with republished levels? It is currently one of the only ways to get your level played by more than 20 people. Until something is done about either the Search or the Cool Levels in any case. Yeah I agree. My beta level got around 200 odd plays in the 2 weeks it was on the servers. I did a bit of republishing in the past few days and it's now shot up to 600 plays... Why WOULDN'T I want to keep republishing it?! Ranting on the forums can only get you so far.

2008-11-19 01:45:00 Author: Avatar_of_Chaos Posts: 48

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I have faith in MM. I reckon they'll take notice sooner rather than later and fix up a system that works 'cause right now the "share" aspect of the game is quite broken. My experience with LBP would be a considerably less enjoyable one without this forum. Yeah I agree. My beta level got around 200 odd plays in the 2 weeks it was on the servers. I did a bit of republishing in the past few days and it's now shot up to 600 plays... Why WOULDN'T I want to keep republishing it?! Ranting on the forums can only get you so far. Yeah, wut? I'm not allowed to re-publish to get some plays now? Why not? Until they fix up a better system, I'll be re-publishing all I want.

2008-11-21 00:26:00 Author: UmJammerSully Posts: 1097

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i'm not referring to the "republish" every so often.. .its' the ones that republish, then 2 minutes later republish again, then 2 minutes later republish again... (yes, I've seen those). It was scary... someone republished a single level 7 times in about 15 minutes.

2008-11-21 01:25:00 Author: DaSaintFan Posts: 136

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That's actually fairly easy to do by accident. If you go to the infomoon, select yourself, and then change the 'protected' status of your map, it republishes it. Made a mistake? Changing it back republishes it again. Other options probably do the same.

2008-11-21 01:41:00 Author: Risen Posts: 251

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Indeed, even I've accidentally locked my levels when wanting to check out the comments. It's very annoying that there's no confirmation or way to cancel out of it, and all you have to do is hit left or right and boom, your level is now locked and you have to wait about 10 seconds before you can unlock it, and then another 10 seconds before that's done. That's all under the condition that you don't get "There was an error publishing your level".

2008-11-21 02:19:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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i get what you mean. Have you ever played "ramp?" it's absolutely terrible. It doesn't even work for christs sake, yet it hit 200k plays the other day. I think they need to define a way of finding lesser played levels, amongst the junk, and extremely high played ones. A good method would be to use the ranking system they had in place.. All 5 stars get pushed to the frontish, etc etc.. oh ma gawsh i heartz ramp! I live for that level! I play it every hour! The briliant skate board stacking! The unglueded rocket! The mud stuff! Yeeeaaahh!!!

2008-11-21 06:08:00 Author: Unknown User

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