Archive: 8 posts

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Hello gadders, I come to you tonight with a question of GRAVE importance! .... ...SUSPENSE... Is LBP Karting a dead game? Should the people who haven't managed to farm the 65% of trophies that are only available by online achievements of hard work and popularity mongering, throw it in and find a new game(Yes I know trophy farmers have already done so because LBP games suck for trophy hoarding, but w/e)? Why do you think this game seems so lifeless? Is it because the gobs of 9 year olds that repubbed everything in sight, are confused by the more complex creation system? Tell me what you think about this issue, and what you think could be done to try and save this wonderful leap forward in LBP history? (I for one think adding stunt combos would help a ton, even though there would be a million and one skate park levels published...but that's not so bad eh?) And if you're one of the group of newer players since PSPlus released this game for free (Like Myself), speak up if you like and enjoy this game. Let's get some playgroups going, so we're not just fumbling our way about in what seems to be a single player abyss. (I for one would love to find some buddies that like to create and play regularly/alot, prefferably with a mic but without is ok too.)

2013-07-24 04:18:00 Author: Unknown User

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I recently got it with PS+ like yourself. I held off actually buying it at launch because of all the reports of the buggy gameplay and the horrendous online. I played the BETA and from what I heard from my friends who took the plunge they didn't really bother to improve any of the issues and even removed some stuff! However, FREE was just too good an opportunity to pass up, so, with some reluctance, I downloaded the 14GB monstrosity from the store and wholly expected just to use it to play my friends levels, complain a bit about the rubbish online infrastructure and ignore the create mode as, after 3 years and a hundred odd tracks on Modnation Racers, I really didn't want to be sucked into an even more complex set of creative tools. Oh dear. What happened is I played a few levels then, with encouragement from friends, had a little bit of a play in the editor. Within a couple of hours I'd made a few buildings, after about ten I was trying to create foliage to fill the gaping hole left by UFG and after over one hundred hours of obsessive creating I had my first maxed out level. I was annoyed because it wasn't really finished to my liking, but I gave it to OnePoppa who is something of a veteran of the game and he managed to shave off loads of thermo with some excellent budget saving tips. So I was able to go back and finish it off properly until it was something I was proud of. I had quickly fallen in love with the 3D create tools that, with a little patience, allowed you to create practically anything. Yes, the thermo is a nightmare, but this is an unfortunate limitation of working with such outdated and underpowered hardware as the PS3. Regardless, if you learn the tips and tricks you can still make your level complex & beautiful at the same time. Anyway, long story short, that was Big Apple Battle and I was delighted when a couple of weeks later it was team picked. Not bad for a first level, right? But all along there was a nagging suspicion that the community developer was just phoning in his choices, picked from only those that were posted over on the official forums. As I speak, it's been three weeks since that last set of team picks. The online mode is stale, because you are forced to race a limited number of tracks endlessly and they don't bother to update more frequently. I've written long posts elsewhere about what they should have done to make this aspect of the game better however basing it on the infrastructure that we have got to put up with the least they could do is make a concerted effort to update the team picks more regularly and on a set day. For several years on Modnation Racers there was a dedicated community developer who created weekly blog posts, picked hotlap tracks and generally helped to spread the word and promote the game to the masses. I have not seen ANYBODY do this for LBP Karting, in fact it barely ever gets a mention on the official forum blog post by the community developer, the SAME guy who's job it is to pick the tracks for team picks! Anyway, the lack of support is shocking. There has been no creative DLC released at all, even though we are crying out for additional items, in particular more foliage options (one realistic branch that rapes the thermo is not enough) and additional stickers, perhaps more windows, I am so sick of the three or four LBP1 stickers that are the only options for windows on this game, I have to use extra shape budget to create my own and even that's a pain as you're not creating in true 3D... The online seems better as time goes on to be fair, but you'll still get random freezes, particularly when transferring between the race and pod. All this unecessary movement could have been avoided simply by having miniature lobbies and allowing the pod hosts to choose the tracks they wanted to play, even if they had to put them on their queue list to do so. Instead, a typical venture in LBPK with 3 friends is as follows: Friend 1: Hey, I've got a new track up, wanna try it? Friend 2: Yeah, great, let's get it on! Waiting several minutes for Friends 3 and 4 to join. Friend 3/4: Hey! Friend 1/2: Hey guys, let's race! So they race the track. If all goes according to plan, all four players load into the track and the race finishes. This would be considered a 'good' day. Friend 3: I also have a track, can we play that? Friend 1: On yeah cool, I didn't want to put up with levitating sideways police cars next anyway! The pod leader clicks return to pod. Inevitably, one of the four friends doesn't make it back. Instead, they are treated to either a persistent loading planet or, worse, a hard reset forcing game freeze. Friend 1: On man, we lost (Friend 2,3 or 4). Let's chat about how rubbish this game is online while we wait for them to reboot. There is no answer. Friend 1: Hello? Guys, are you still there? The mics have gone dead. several seconds later, Friend 1 notices that both other Friends have also signed out of PSN, a sure sign they too have suffered game freezes. Friend 1: Ah, balls to this, I'm off back in the editor! That is a typical game session with 4 people in a pod. It works much better with just 2 and if it's just you karting on your own it's almost flawless but coming from a game where 12 player lobbies could be setup giving the host total control over the play content this approach is positively prehistoric! However, the main issue that plagues this game (and, to a lesser extent MNR) is how it is marketed. LittleBigPlanet, with it's cutsie characters and childish art style, is a game marketed towards children. However, no child is going to pick up the creative tools in this game and produce something remarkable. That's why 11 year olds aren't feverishly working away on the next Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty game right now. Kids, the target demograhic of this game, have attention spans of nats and would never have the patience to learn all the complexities and nuances of the editor to produce something particularly worthwhile. Instead, they will go into the trophy page, notice there are two trophies just for making a level and getting 10 people to play it and make the easiest, most humdrum track they can whip up in 2 seconds flat. Then, they will publish that track, bug all their friends to play it and (if they are particularly creative minded) visit the forums to advertise their wonderous creation to the world. It's only 10 plays, right? I may be labelling them all with the same brush here but I speak from experience. I have NEVER met a kid on one of these games that makes anything particularly good. What teenager is really going to sit down for six hours and meticulously re-create a pirate ship, or a helicopter or a shopping mall? No, the people who create on these games are ADULTS and yet these games are never marketed towards us. The majority of the people I met in MNR who I considered were excellent creators were aged 30+. Probably half of thoses were 40+. These people have disposable income that they are happy to spend on masses of DLC to extend their game experience. In LBPK it's even more apparent because the tools are more complex and the range of creative possibilities is even greater. Only an adult is going to have the patience to sit down and actually learn how to use all this stuff, how to get the most out of the tools we are given. A kid will get frustrated very early on and never return because, you know, that's kids for you. So why do they market all these creative games toweards them? Perhaps it's because this is a relatively new sub-genre and they haven't yet identified the demographic that really get's the most out of these games. I guarantee that the first developer to take the plunge and develop a play, create & share game aimed squarely at adults will reap the financial rewards... providing they do a good job of course! But I digress, this has turned into a rather long and poorly structured mediation on the theme, for which I apologise. Suffice to say that IF the online servers worked better and IF the online infrastructure wasn't so prohibitive and repetive and IF the developers actually supported their game a little bit (like they do with LBP2) and provided us with some much needed create DLC and IF the tuorials in game were more informative than Stephen Fry gurning and phoning in rubbish jokes for a massive paycheck and therefore they actually taught you something useful about the process then this could well be one of the best titles available on PS3 today. Unfortunately none of the above is true, so we are left with an average kart racer with exceptionally powerful creative tools that is poorly supported and has infuriatingly inconsistent server connectivity. It's a crying shame because this game represents a MASSIVE missed opportunity for Sony.

2013-07-24 12:58:00 Author: atheistsw Posts: 147

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Well said atheitsw, in particular, i share the sentiment on the online related problems. I occasionally get to play with my 1 buddy that I have, and we spend a good number of loads waiting for one or the other to reset ps3/reconnect, etc.. After trying probably...mm...10 tracks or so online I found your Big Apple Battle! arena track, and thought to myself, "I'm actually having fun on this track". For the most part I don't like the typical arena style fare that you get, because it's either too cramped(leading to a frustrating fragfest), or it's just a big open Bowl or Box shape area with new paint. So kudos on your level and I hope you continue to create more. So I guess the overall tone of your post suggests(to me anyways) that if you like creating, and like racing, that.. for now you're stuck with being a part of a niche category of players, which are generally restricted to forum interactions(not that it's really a bad thing, forms a closer knit community of creators, and chases off alot of the level repub spammers). I suppose I could live with that. I've got LBP and LBP2 as well, but I have a passion for racing games, and creating is a blast as well. So I look forward to hanging out with the other creators around here, perhaps one day we(the creators lurking around LBPC) can collaborate on something. Maybe even get some competitions going. I would personally love to start some soft of competition on my own, but I wouldn't have any prizes(other then the fun of friendly competition), and I have no way to video record the levels to share the entries on youtube. Unless PS3 has some video record feature I've somehow remained unaware of over the last 6 months...

2013-07-24 16:27:00 Author: Unknown User

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the 65% of trophies that are only available by online achievements of hard work and popularity mongering Online trophies make up 31% of the list by trophy value one needs hard work and one needs populartiy (extra PSN accounts will do the job) the rest are just going through the motions with only playing 100 community levels causing problems due to it being glitchy.

2013-07-24 18:53:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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You don't consider hundreds, or even tens of hours spent trudging through garbage heaps while getting repeadtedly thrown out and/or having to reboot your precious PS3 risking data damage and wear and tear on the system, to be hard work? And by "Hard Work" I mean relative for a video game, obviously it's not hard compared to a real life oil rigging job, or crab fisherman in the bering strait.

2013-07-24 19:10:00 Author: Unknown User

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Well said atheitsw, in particular, i share the sentiment on the online related problems. I occasionally get to play with my 1 buddy that I have, and we spend a good number of loads waiting for one or the other to reset ps3/reconnect, etc.. After trying probably...mm...10 tracks or so online I found your Big Apple Battle! arena track, and thought to myself, "I'm actually having fun on this track". For the most part I don't like the typical arena style fare that you get, because it's either too cramped(leading to a frustrating fragfest), or it's just a big open Bowl or Box shape area with new paint. So kudos on your level and I hope you continue to create more. So I guess the overall tone of your post suggests(to me anyways) that if you like creating, and like racing, that.. for now you're stuck with being a part of a niche category of players, which are generally restricted to forum interactions(not that it's really a bad thing, forms a closer knit community of creators, and chases off alot of the level repub spammers). I suppose I could live with that. I've got LBP and LBP2 as well, but I have a passion for racing games, and creating is a blast as well. So I look forward to hanging out with the other creators around here, perhaps one day we(the creators lurking around LBPC) can collaborate on something. Maybe even get some competitions going. I would personally love to start some soft of competition on my own, but I wouldn't have any prizes(other then the fun of friendly competition), and I have no way to video record the levels to share the entries on youtube. Unless PS3 has some video record feature I've somehow remained unaware of over the last 6 months... Thanks man, I'm glad you dig the larger battle arena's and hate the smaller shoebox style ones that seemed to permeate the team picks for a while. Yeah, racing games are my thing, I never really got into the whole create of LBP/LBP2 because platforming just doesn't really do it for me, I made a level on each that I spent ages on but both times I was fighting the thermo constantly because of the detail I was trying to achieve. I had the same issue with LBPK too, but because I love racing games and because I know some awesome people who know the editor like the back of their hand I persevered and learned the tips and tricks necessary to max the thermo while still keeping the level playable. My second track, Uprising!, used every trick in the book to maintain budget and ended up weighing it at 94% thermo. My next project, another battle set within a realistic depiction of Suburbia, is currently at 50% but I have many of the key elements already down so I should have ample spare budget for custom weapons, icons, huds etc etc. I really want to continue creating and utilising these amazing (if slightly irritating at times) 3D creation tools but I need some assurances that this game isn't going to be abandoned. Right now, publishing a new level is a frustrating experience as you see it ever so slowly trickle up in plays. It was a MASSIVE stroke of luck for me to get a team pick for my first effort (largely due to the laziness of the team picker to look anywhere other than the official (graveyard) forums I suspect) but even though I've accumulated a lot of creator hearts off the back of that one, it isn't translating to a lot of interest in my next, likely due to the majority of people who played that first track were really just passing through after picking the game up free on PS+. So it's really hard to judge the true popularity of the game because of this additional caveat that's been created. However, I don't expect any new DLC to be released (unless it's exisitng LBP2 costume compatibility) not even sticker packs from LBP2 for goodness sake! Nor do I expect any of the online bugs or glitches to ever be resolved and I'm losing hope that there will even be any new team picks, although I hope I'm proved wrong with that one and they just add 10+ new levels to the roster to keep things interesting. Good levels mind, none of this 'NFS Race' broken rubbish with sideways levitating police cars and a broken track that allows the AI to skip a vast portion of the track and DNF you EVERY SINGLE TIME!

2013-07-25 12:22:00 Author: atheistsw Posts: 147

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Sounds about like my opinion on it for the most part. That's why I started the LBPKK, because if anything is going to get done, it's most likely going to get done by the people here, rather then the MM team. So join my effort to kick up some interest, and a closer knit creator community, so we don't have to rely on team picks to get any recognition.

2013-07-25 16:04:00 Author: Unknown User

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I only recently got round to buying it, I'm having fun so far and frustrations sorting out create mode, but it seems to be going ok. I saw the LBPKK thread, and searched but it seems there are no levels with the LBPKK1 in the title - it can't be that hard to sort out a prize if that would help get attention - i seem to remember ps store credit being popular in some comps for lbp1 and 2. Amazon vouchers are just as easy and people can use for whatever they like. I'm always happy to chuck some money at stuff if it will get me some fun things to play!

2013-09-07 12:59:00 Author: Unknown User

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