LittleBigPlanet General #1
The Cool Levels Pages Have Been Reset
Archive: 179 posts
| It appears that the cool levels pages have been reset and that all levels from it have been removed. Republishing doesn't appear to work any more either. Does anyone have any further info on this? EDIT: MM comment on this on their website.... Good evening! Regular visitors to the LittleBigPlanet community levels may have noticed that the default community search has had a refresh. I thought I would take some time to explain what?s different and why we felt we needed a change. Previously, the first few pages of the community levels displayed those levels which had the most activity in the last 7 days. However, we soon noticed a trend; once a level was popular enough to make it to the front page, it was likely to never leave! Clearly, that?s great if you?re one of the few hundred or so creators with levels on the front pages, but not so good for the creators of the other 500,000 or so LittleBigPlanet levels! It also means that eventually the pages start to look a little static, with very little variation from day to day (or even week to week!). We wanted to try a new system; one that would ensure that the default community selection, was fresh, of a high quality and constantly changing. In brief, the new system ensures that the default selection of levels are those with the highest rating, published within the last 7 days. Once 7 days have passed since a level was first published, it will make room for a new level to gain some exposure (republishing the level over the same slot won?t make it count as a new level). The important part to remember is that it's never been so easy for a level to hit the front page searches. Previously, a level would require 100?s of thousands of plays and hearts to even come close the front page. Now, if a creator publishes a good quality NEW level today and tries out some of our publishing hints in our article publishing 101, it's far more likely their level will hit the top. Don?t forget, we listen to our community very closely, and if it becomes clear that the system needs tweaking in the coming weeks, we?ll get right on it. For now though, enjoy the fresh new community pages and see what amazing new ideas you can find!! It's great to see brand new levels and creators and have to say that we are constantly impressed by the amazingness of the LittleBigPlanet community! We are looking forward to highlighting some creators that have been hidden until now  Danny. | 2009-02-25 23:36:00 Author: wexfordian  Posts: 1904 |
| wow that sucks republishing doesnt...thanks for your info. i dont see the harm in the republishing thing...but then again it wasn't that great it would just keep your levels on there for like a minute and maybe get you a couple more hits | 2009-02-25 23:39:00 Author: Hamsalad  Posts: 2551 |
| but how are you meant to get any now as from what I can figure, it only shows up now for the very firsttime you publish a level and then it dissappears for good. How is there going to be any movement on the cool pages if this is the case? At least the way they had it before levels would be removed if they wern't published once a month removing any old levels that belong to people that don't play anymore. At least that kept a little change going? | 2009-02-25 23:47:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Maybe it's with some kind of hearted minimum...e.g. at 100 hearts it appears there. or 5 stars. | 2009-02-25 23:50:00 Author: oldage  Posts: 2824 |
| It seems that this only alienates levels more than they were before. I watched a level get more than 8,000 plays today. I'm happy for that person, but it's only because it was on page 1 permanently. We get 2 minutes of exposure and they get 24/7...? Do any of our old levels even stand a chance any more? | 2009-02-25 23:52:00 Author: Jaeyden  Posts: 564 |
| darn! oh well. Oldage, you'r siggy makes me happy. | 2009-02-25 23:53:00 Author: DRT99  Posts: 431 |
| darn! oh well. Oldage, you'r siggy makes me happy. Feel free to use it  | 2009-02-25 23:54:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824 |
| OK I've just done a few tests and this is what I know so far.... All my levels that used to be on the cool pages have been removed and now have zero people playing them. There is one or two people playing my wizard of odd level but thats because you can still get to it from the highest rated pages. I published all my levels a second time (as in now there are 2 version) and they got about 20 plays and now have zero people playing and it has gone off the map. They did appear in cool pages and new pages but if you try and republish again they don't appear, not even in the new section. So from what I can tell if you don't make it in the very first publish your level gets lost for good. Surely this is just temporary as I can see how this will help the game? | 2009-02-26 00:00:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| i think they should really alternate the levels on the cool page a lot more often to get other people expsore....i wish i could say leave newly published levels on there but levels are published so often they just get pushed off right away | 2009-02-26 00:02:00 Author: Hamsalad Posts: 2551 |
| I'm just thinking. If they were to reset it every day it would be a great way to get new levels up there. there would be different levels up there each day. I can only hope this is the case as right now new levels won't have a chance if they simply reset it once. | 2009-02-26 00:06:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| No Ramp! No Ramp! =D it would just keep your levels on there for like a minute and maybe get you a couple more hits I went from 50 plays to 1,000. Of course, I republished a LOT. | 2009-02-26 00:16:00 Author: Sackdragon  Posts: 427 |
| I've just noticed that all the newly published levels have glow coming from them to distinguish them from the permanant levels. I don't think this happened before did it? | 2009-02-26 00:23:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| republishing doesn't work?! AHHHH, I really count on that to bring in some more players. | 2009-02-26 00:24:00 Author: RickTheRipper  Posts: 345 |
| This doesn't make any sense and just adds furhter frustration in trying to get more exposure for our levels. So is there no longer any point in republishing? What's going on MM??? | 2009-02-26 00:39:00 Author: OCK  Posts: 1536 |
| I have never seen my levels on page 1. I didnt know how it worked. So when you republish, the level get 1st page time? They really need to work on that system. I play levels all the time that are as good or better that have few plays, compared to some of the ones on that page. There must be some sort of criteria we are not aware of. I have seen levels go away for a few days then mysteriously come back. Who do you have to pay? | 2009-02-26 00:40:00 Author: mrjoeyman  Posts: 217 |
| I'm gonna test this tonight. There might be tweaks that have been done to the cool page. Actually it can't get any worse than how it was really. I mean, it was always the same levels there. I will test the republishing thing. I constantly republish my levels and they never really appeared on first page. It was always like page 4, page 6 and so on. . | 2009-02-26 01:52:00 Author: RangerZero  Posts: 3901 |
| i republished all my levels and checked both the Cool Levels and Newest pages and they weren't on either (checked to page 4). on the Newest page, it was almost the exact same levels on the pages but with 3 or 4 different ones. so far, i'm against this change (as far as republishing goes) | 2009-02-26 02:06:00 Author: RickTheRipper Posts: 345 |
| It seems that this only alienates levels more than they were before. I watched a level get more than 8,000 plays today. I'm happy for that person, but it's only because it was on page 1 permanently. We get 2 minutes of exposure and they get 24/7...? Do any of our old levels even stand a chance any more? Gah, thats gonna hurt with a sequel to Heart of Gold. Heart of gold has like 350 plays and who would play a sequel if they didn't play the first one? My point being it would never stay there for long. Did you try deleting and republishing? | 2009-02-26 02:42:00 Author: Hexagohn  Posts: 335 |
It is very bad news if republishing doesn't work anymore.  | 2009-02-26 02:43:00 Author: xkappax  Posts: 2569 |
| It is very bad news if republishing doesn't work anymore. Seriously, I didnt know that ever did anything. Gah, all those plays that could have been. | 2009-02-26 02:50:00 Author: Hexagohn Posts: 335 |
| Ok, I've been testing and they really fixed the search. Now their system isn't exploitable anymore (at least I didn't find a good one yet). This means now we will TOTALLY suffers from its bad design instead of being able to go around its flaws! BRAVO Media Molecule. It's like a nightmare really. Every time they touch the game, being a patch of reworking something on their end, they always mess up the game MORE. What is it that this happens to the best game this gen? Seriously at some point they will shoot themselve in foot. I mean, it will all come back at them and guess what? They will wonder what went wrong. . | 2009-02-26 03:55:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Gah, thats gonna hurt with a sequel to Heart of Gold. Heart of gold has like 350 plays and who would play a sequel if they didn't play the first one? My point being it would never stay there for long. Did you try deleting and republishing? I did republish one of my levels in a new slot...it got about 15 plays and then disappeared off the radar. Any momentum that any level had before today, it seems is gone. Unless you want to delete it and republish...but that's only going to get you a few plays and then what? I sincerely hope we are missing something. | 2009-02-26 05:20:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| I did republish one of my levels in a new slot...it got about 15 plays and then disappeared off the radar. Any momentum that any level had before today, it seems is gone. Unless you want to delete it and republish...but that's only going to get you a few plays and then what? I sincerely hope we are missing something. As far as I can tell this is all that is happening so unless it is reset every day or maybe week it will be impossible to compete with the levels already on the cool levels page. I think if it were reset every day it would be brilliant as only all levels would be on level pegging each day whether it has 10 plays or 10,000 plays. | 2009-02-26 09:32:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Wow, well that came completely out of left field. I suppose now our best method is to advertise our levels here to get plays... | 2009-02-26 11:21:00 Author: Gilgamesh  Posts: 2536 |
| I understand that everybody, including me of course, wants to get exposure for their levels, but I for one am not interested in a level of mine being featured on "Cool Levels" at all. In fact I dread the possibility of this happening everytime I republish. If your levels require a modicum of skill and dedication to play, the crowd that frequents the "Cool Levels" page can't be the kind of guest you want in your house. I'm convinced it makes more sense to wait for people who traverse hearted lists to drop by because they are a discerning, dedicated and open-minded lot. If that means a modest play count, so be it. But it also means more meaningful tags and comments on your work. | 2009-02-26 12:01:00 Author: tameturtle  Posts: 150 |
| cool levels section is broken and makes no sense, ive seen levels with 0 plays and 0 hearts 1 star on there, THIS IS MADNESS!!! | 2009-02-26 12:03:00 Author: talmasca  Posts: 196 |
| Keep in mind we never knew the conditions that made so you appear on the cool page. So this doesn't change right now. The only problem now is that we can't artificially push our levels on top again and not even when searching by "newest". THIS is the problem. Because NOW we would need to know what are the condition to appear in the cool page. And if it's total random, well, it won't change much things. I think it's bull. There's 2 bugs right now that really **** me off and my make quit LBP (no jokes): - the farking search of my butt. - the disappearance of hearted levels in your list Seriously. . | 2009-02-26 12:48:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| MediaMolecule better produce better ways to get your level to be shown, otherwise I'm not going to be happy with the fact that I put all that work into a level, and I was begging for critique, feedback, things I could fix, and instead, I get a Rubbish tag and a one star. You have any idea how ridiculous that is? Anyways, I'm not happy with this update. | 2009-02-26 12:50:00 Author: Unknown User  |
| I was on page 2 of cool levels all of yesterday with a bunch of other levels. I got over 1,000 plays, and 200 some hearts. This screwed up my heart to play ratio, so of course I'm not on highest rated anymore. I woke up this morning and my level was gone from page 2. (it was the only level that was gone, all the rest were still there) ... my level is nowhere and will never be found again. Way to go media molecule. I think I might quit after this. guys, i'm feeling really bad about myself right now. Like all my time was a waste. | 2009-02-26 13:10:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| I was on page 2 of cool levels all of yesterday with a bunch of other levels. I got over 1,000 plays, and 200 some hearts. This screwed up my heart to play ratio, so of course I'm not on highest rated anymore. I woke up this morning and my level was gone from page 2. (it was the only level that was gone, all the rest were still there) ... my level is nowhere and will never be found again. Way to go media molecule. I think I might quit after this. guys, i'm feeling really bad about myself right now. Like all my time was a waste. I know how you feel. I was really annoyed to find out that my new levels that are only 2 weeks old will never be seen of again. Fair enough I enjoy the process of creating but Whats the point if your level only gets 15 plays the first time you publish then you have to pimp it on various sites to get a few more plays. I really can't see myself putting in the same commitment, if any, to the game if this is the case. | 2009-02-26 13:18:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| I urge everyone to write to hello@mediamolecule.com and express your concerns. Also, go to their blog at mediamolecule.com ... there's an entry about the new search features. They read their blog comments religiously, so you could also try there to express your concerns. | 2009-02-26 13:38:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| I urge everyone to write to hello@mediamolecule.com and express your concerns. I've sent a mail but I won't hold my breath........ | 2009-02-26 13:59:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| I've sent a mail but I won't hold my breath........ I don't know, MM have so far shown a lot of interest in the concerns of the community. The only problem is they already have a lot on their plate, so even if they do decide to fix it we might not see the fix for a while. | 2009-02-26 14:05:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536 |
| Talk about demotivating! Just as my levels were starting to get decent plays, MM change the system and right now it feels pretty pointless to put a whole bunch of effort into creating a level that may never be played no matter how often you tweak, hone, and republish. The new 'Cool Levels' does have a few gems, but way too many are just H4H or copies of other peoples levels. Thats not cool, MM. I'm hoping the new system is temporary, and I'm really hoping it'll change soon... | 2009-02-26 14:27:00 Author: nordwest Posts: 11 |
| i sent a mail to them, and posted on their blog expressing my displeasure. This is almost as bad as it was in the beginning, but this time there's no hope of even republishing to try to get a top spot. Crystal Caves has been in progress since December, and now I've gotten pretty much screwed it seems. Centralia is also gone, but that had 40,000 plays on it, so I can't complain. And yes, I saw wexfordian's stolen level right up there on page one today. This is freakin' ridiculous. | 2009-02-26 14:49:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| I don't really have problems with it, some awesome levels popped up like Killzone 2 LBP | 2009-02-26 14:57:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824 |
| And yes, I saw wexfordian's stolen level right up there on page one today. This is freakin' ridiculous. Are you serious? Its on page one? Which level is it as he has published them all? oh god Im just depressed now. | 2009-02-26 14:58:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Little Fish Big Pond. It was on page 1. By Chiterino. Meanwhile, Crystal Cave in Autumn was nowhere to be found. I'm really #$%^ angry right now. And oldage, I realize a lot of good levels might have come to the surface because of this recent chance, but I'd wager you'd probably care if you wanted your level to get played and then it fell into obscurity... 3 weeks of work, just gone. I'm very sad and upset. | 2009-02-26 15:02:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| The levels on this page should be handpicked. It should be an honor to be on the first page, not the result of a random selection... I'd prefer 3 pages of REAL cool levels updated weekly than 50 pages of random levels that stays there forever. "Wiggler-World" have been there for 2-3 months. This is non-sense. How are we suppose to compete with levels that have already 350,000 plays?!? Until now, republishing helped me to reach 2,250 plays on my Left Behind p1 level with 20 to 50 plays by day. But almost no one played since yesterday... Well, bad timing for MM, Killzone2 is out tomorrow. I think LBP will wait until they fix this... I won't work for endless hours on a level if no one can find it. And H4H levels on the first page!?! C'mon MM!!! Give the stupid trophy to everyone that log online for the first time... Trophies hunters are killing the game slowly. | 2009-02-26 15:20:00 Author: JackBurton25  Posts: 116 |
| "Wiggler-World" have been there for 2-3 months. This is non-sense. How are we suppose to compete with levels that have already 350,000 plays?!? Until now, republishing helped me to reach 2,250 plays on my Left Behind p1 level with 20 to 50 plays by day. But almost no one played since yesterday... And nobody will play it as it currently has no way of of getting noticed. This is whats so seriously wrong with it. I'm all for new levels getting on the pages (and this is coming from someone who used to have all his levels featuring in the top five pages) but if there is no way to get your new level noticed except for the few minutes after MM resets the servers you happen to publish a new level for the first time what is the point? The previous way was flawed but this is just rediculous. Well, bad timing for MM, Killzone2 is out tomorrow. I think LBP will wait until they fix this... I won't work for endless hours on a level if no one can find it. Unfortunately, I and i'm sure a few other creators feel the same way. | 2009-02-26 15:42:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Yea, I think there are like 100 H4H levels on the cool levels page. and Killzone 2 will push me away from LBP for sure. | 2009-02-26 15:43:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824 |
Well I've emailed MM too, lets hope someone gets a reply. I'll put no more work into my new levels until MM sort this out or at least clarify the changes  And as the above poster points out, KZ2 coming out tomorrow makes my decision a little easier. | 2009-02-26 15:44:00 Author: nordwest Posts: 11 |
| I'm very deflated about this. I mean, first I come home to see that Centralia is off cool levels. I'm fine with that. Then I saw that I was on page 2. Awesome, I thought. But then I saw some of the other levels that were there, including a very broken level taht i quit out of, a heart for heart extravaganza, and that stolen level by wexfordian. ... I thought that was all really weird. ... Then I tried republishing Centralia, just to see what would happen. Nothing. And then, of course, I wake up this morning and my level is the only one that is gone for some unknown reason. The worst part about this whole darned thing is that they took yet ANOTHER exploit that was helpful and took it out of the game. I mean, what are they going to do next, make it so you can only publish a level if it has a minimum of 17 rocket cheetahs? I'm done trying. I'm done jumping through their hoops that keep shrinking in size. I think I might be done with this game until there is some clarification on their part. This is lunacy. | 2009-02-26 17:37:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
^ this makes sackboy sad Really, now how can we possibly compete with the levels already there? >_> At least give us more then two seconds there <_< | 2009-02-26 17:48:00 Author: RockSauron  Posts: 10882 |
| I'm glad I finished with Shadow Moses yesterday. Perhaps now I will take some time to enjoy Dead Space! I forsee Mm responding to the outcries of the dedicated creator community, but as Gilgamesh said, it might take them a while to fix this. Really, what we need here is a promotion tool. I dont think crap levels get much push from their creators; those that work the hardest on theirs tend to be the ones really trying to get them noticed. Perhaps an Mm spotlight page is what's needed. Or perhaps they need to simply find a way to exclude levels on the "busiest" page from being displayed on the cool levels page (in other words, have the search filters generate unique results for a change). It's very disheartening to think that no amount of creation work is going to amount to anything if your publication slips off the radar in a few hours forever gone to the level abyss. | 2009-02-26 17:50:00 Author: Thegide  Posts: 1465 |
| [...]It's very disheartening to think that no amount of creation work is going to amount to anything if your publication slips off the radar in a few hours forever gone to the level abyss. It's very disheartening, even more when the only weapon we had against it is now gone. Word-of-mouth alone will only get a level so far. And FYI, if the Cool Levels are anything like they used to be, it only takes a handful of minutes to slip off the radar. | 2009-02-26 17:55:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536 |
| My level was on cool levels apparently all day yesterday and it got so many plays. So were most of the other levels that were there... the most upsetting thing is that as of this morning, all those levels are there and mine is gone! I want to know what's going on with that! This is disgusting! (pardon my tone, but I worked 3 weeks nonstop on my latest level, and i'm really sad and livid at the same time) | 2009-02-26 17:56:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| A very simple way to resolve this would be simply restore it the way it was and remove all levels from page 1 every week. There could go into a "hall of fame" pages or whatever. This would bring new levels in every week and allow good levels to rise to the top. | 2009-02-26 18:02:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| I agree with that wholeheartedly. Reward us for our hard work, don't alienate us. Hell, we're their CUSTOMERS! Usually you treat them with respect, right? They need to stop spitting in our fries all the time! | 2009-02-26 18:06:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| The problem is really there never seemed to be a plan to deal with hundreds of thousands of levels. Not to say I told them so, but if you look at some earlier posts I made, I had HUGE concerns for this system. It was never designed to deal with making a million people happy with high play counts. Picture this - let's say you had 1000 games hitting the shelves of Gamestop every single day - with NO genres and NO labelled difficulty, and the ability on the way in the store for pre-teens to look at the outside of the box and put a star rating on it. How would the video game industry survive? In the same way, the system that has been in place is incredibly unfair and flawed - especially if you're someone who will spend a hundred hours perfecting a game WITHOUT GETTING PAID - just so people get a chance to enjoy your creation. I tend to think the fact that other levels have 100,000 plays and Splat Invaders has about 1500 (or Jacques the Acadian Warlord with about 150) isn't really fair (those in this case representing anyones good level that has a relatively low play count). And by the way, publishing your levels constantly is a HUGE stress on the LBP servers - their servers probably can't take anymore and the multiplayer gameplay is being hurt from people publishing 10 times a day for plays. You know - this may not be a bad thing. Maybe people will get disgusted and they will move to forums such as this one to find good levels instead of counting on MM's flawed system... Also, this means that crappy levels won't get much attention so with forums such as this WE have more control over good levels getting attention! We just have to play our own good games and give high scores to good ones so they become highest rated. By the way, I also agree with Wex above - there should be an expiration for levels on page 1. Once they have been there for a week, they should disappear and give other levels a chance at success. Also makes good sense for MM - people are always getting a good fresh list of levels to enjoy. | 2009-02-26 18:42:00 Author: CCubbage  Posts: 4430 |
| That, in theory, is very good... but if you'll remember, cool levels was just as broken in the beginning. I'm tired of tirelessly promoting this level that I'm not getting paid to create. I'm just too ****ed tired. This is like having another job. I want media molecule to, just once, DO SOMETHING FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WORK SO HARD AND CONTINUE TO USE THEIR BROKEN SOFTWARE! My level fell apart 3 times, but I kept going, determined to try to make something that everyone could enjoy. Now that that chance is gone, I am left feeling that I've wasted much of my time for nothing. when cool levels was first broken, in the beginning, and ramp was getting 100,000 plays, I went on every single message board in the world... got reviews, got people to play, but it was awful. I didn't want to ever go back to that time. I'm 30 years old, have a full time job, and i just can't keep up this pace. This is where I have to walk away, I think. I just don't think I can keep it up. And yes, there should be an expiration date on the levels on page 1. They could still be on the servers, but they could be moved somewhere. Something like that can't be that hard to implement, can it? this just makes me so sad. Sorry for my tireless rants on this. I am very unhappy. | 2009-02-26 18:58:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| The problem is really there never seemed to be a plan to deal with hundreds of thousands of levels. Not to say I told them so, but if you look at some earlier posts I made, I had HUGE concerns for this system. It was never designed to deal with making a million people happy with high play counts. Picture this - let's say you had 1000 games hitting the shelves of Gamestop every single day - with NO genres and NO labelled difficulty, and the ability on the way in the store for pre-teens to look at the outside of the box and put a star rating on it. How would the video game industry survive? In the same way, the system that has been in place is incredibly unfair and flawed - especially if you're someone who will spend a hundred hours perfecting a game WITHOUT GETTING PAID - just so people get a chance to enjoy your creation. I tend to think the fact that other levels have 100,000 plays and Splat Invaders has about 1500 (or Jacques the Acadian Warlord with about 150) isn't really fair (those in this case representing anyones good level that has a relatively low play count). And by the way, publishing your levels constantly is a HUGE stress on the LBP servers - their servers probably can't take anymore and the multiplayer gameplay is being hurt from people publishing 10 times a day for plays. You know - this may not be a bad thing. Maybe people will get disgusted and they will move to forums such as this one to find good levels instead of counting on MM's flawed system... Also, this means that crappy levels won't get much attention so with forums such as this WE have more control over good levels getting attention! We just have to play our own good games and give high scores to good ones so they become highest rated. By the way, I also agree with Wex above - there should be an expiration for levels on page 1. Once they have been there for a week, they should disappear and give other levels a chance at success. Also makes good sense for MM - people are always getting a good fresh list of levels to enjoy. It won't even work for forums like here. The more people get here to promote their level, the less your level will have plays. It takes a day or two for your level to disappear from the first page of the showcase section and let me bet nobody plays your level if it's gone from there. Just as an example, all my threads are gone and my level receive zero new play except if I was using the republishing workaround... that doesn't work anymore. The only thing that will happen is that LBP will have much less legs than in could have been on the market and people will simply go play other newer games, whatever they may be. . | 2009-02-26 19:07:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I think it's great to have forums like this one to get constructive feedback and find some of the best levels in lbp. But most people won't take the time to do this... If for every play in my level I have to play another, my next level won't get much plays since I create more than I play... | 2009-02-26 19:10:00 Author: JackBurton25 Posts: 116 |
| a friend of mine just suggested making a copyable "petition" level. ... but I would imagine that it would just get modded | 2009-02-26 19:24:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| It is very sad, I noticed yesterday evening (local time, now it's 20:19) that dino island and ALL other cool levels disappeared into nowhere... I thought to myself ''what the hell has happened?''. I tried to republish for like half an hour and got like 12 plays on my saga, instead of the 40 at a time I usually got doing continuous republication... What can I say, I have yet purchased silent hill homecoming and origins and have pre-bought resident evil 5 (out the 13th of march)... I'm halfway through my newest level 'Miglioshin's platform madness' and after reading all this I think I will never finish it... It is a month of work, 3 bosses, heavy mechanized and really visually complex with loads of moving stuff... just to get 20 plays!? Do me a favor... It is like to show it to my friends (like 12 people excluding my band, my girl, my children, my brother...); are you kidding MM? Why the hell do I have to continue play a game that is rottening patch by patch? Just RIDICULOUS! Bah... I don't understand... | 2009-02-26 19:27:00 Author: Miglioshin  Posts: 336 |
| It won't even work for forums like here. The more people get here to promote their level, the less your level will have plays. It takes a day or two for your level to disappear from the first page of the showcase section and let me bet nobody plays your level if it's gone from there. Just as an example, all my threads are gone and my level receive zero new play except if I was using the republishing workaround... that doesn't work anymore. The only thing that will happen is that LBP will have much less legs than in could have been on the market and people will simply go play other newer games, whatever they may be. . I apologize if you misunderstood what I said. I may have left out a detail or so. Here's the scenario: A guy publishes a level on LBP. It only gets 12 plays and doesn't really stand a chance. It disappears. You publish "Sack's in the city". Its a great game, but only gets about 12 plays and doesn't stand a chance. However, on this forum its popular and gets a lot of attention. It gets decent ratings from decent authors - and it moves higher up in the highest rated in LBP because LBP is not cluttered with thousands of levels that are constantly republished. I'm not saying a level will get a ton of plays on this site - I'm saying it allows people on this site more ability to push other levels to the top if they're worthy. Technically, publishing a level is a really heavy server operation. And with people publishing every half hour as a way to get traffic - it's probably killing their servers. I would venture to bet that there is a further plan that hasn't become manifest to us yet. Since all this is just happening, it may be wise to wait a few days and see what starts happening. | 2009-02-26 19:46:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| I'm right there with you xkappax. Today was supposed to be the day that our Contra project launches...I spent well into the 100's of hours on this level too..just like the EIGHT other FOUR STAR levels I have. I published...got about 12 plays and now it's gone. I've busted my *** for five months trying to get some traction for my levels in this broken "Cool Level" system they have. One heart at a time and one play at a time. I just can't do it anymore, ..time to re-evaluate this game and my priorities. Final Score: Play "0" Create "0" Share"0" | 2009-02-26 20:03:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| I'm willing to wait this out and see what happens, but I'm certainly not going to push another 8-week project like Shadow Moses right now. So, xkappax, I feel your pain. I was never much of a republishing buff, but it was nice to be able to do so when one of my levels hadn't received a play in days. Cubbage is right on the money about the system not being well designed to handle so many levels on their servers. Everyone deserves a chance for their level to see some advertising, but not at the expense of eliminating any chance for some serious attention when you make something good. What is the point in hard effort if people will cumulatively spend less time playing your level than it took for you to make it? There *needs* to be a way to promote your level. I would even consider PAID ADVERTISING. For $2, secure a spot on a "promo zone" search option. When money is involved, all but the serious people go away... and isn't this what we're after? The hardest working creators want some sort of guarantee that their work will be SEEN. Or, since Mm does such a good job checking our levels for moderation, why not an Mm picks page instead of most hearted (which is a load of crap anyways; for all the search options, they [busiest, hearts, tags, etc.] all turn up the same frigging results). | 2009-02-26 20:06:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| If all this is part of a plan to spread the joy of appearing on Cool Pages by Mm, then maybe great. But a simple notification of this beforehand would've been nice, allowing creators to relax and think "OK, I'm going to really polish this before publishing just the once" Instead the current demotivational situation removes the majority of great levels from mainstream player view, leaving a largely simplistic representation of the LBP creative pool behind which will tire even the most H4H-ish player pretty quickly. If someone wanted to kill this game fast, this would be one way to do it. Very saddening indeed. One thing I have noticed however is that last night post-changes there were 50 pages of cool levels, and an hour ago there were 20. Maybe this is just a server issue or maybe its relevant to ongoing changes, who knows? | 2009-02-26 20:15:00 Author: nordwest Posts: 11 |
| Look, guys - I feel the pain as much as anyone. But #1 - we have NO idea what MM has planned. All this just happened. #2 - once we know what their plan is, there may be a solution that will work for our benefit. I personally think the fact that we are a community of people who care about creating good LBP content is a strength that can be used. They may be putting a better system in place right now, for all we know. Sometimes that takes several steps. | 2009-02-26 20:22:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Media molecule has updated their blog with a statement, and frankly, I got the short end of the stick, and I'm really sad. Apparently, cool levels will only feature levels that are a week old, and have a good play/heart ratio. My level was published last wednesday. My level was a week old when this new change went into effect. My level had a high rating, so I got on page 2. Today is thursday. My level is now a week and a day old. My level is now gone. Pardon my expression, but this blows monkey butt. I didn't even get a fighting chance! | 2009-02-26 20:23:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| In the long it might even out. The problem is that the current update kills aways the chance for the existing levels to ever comeback in the first page. And since there's no decent way of exposing old levels, that first batch of millions and millions of level will get cleared by the future million coming. CCubbage, I get what you mean. I think you're right. But it doesn't make up for the flaws of the game. You will still have to market your level like crazy on the internet, something we wouldn't need to do all that much if the game wasn't broken. . | 2009-02-26 20:27:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| If you guys care to read the statement mm issued, feel free. it's at www.mediamolecule.com ... | 2009-02-26 20:31:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| In the long it might even out. The problem is that the current update kills aways the chance for the existing levels to ever comeback in the first page. And since there's no decent way of exposing old levels, that first batch of millions and millions of level will get cleared by the future million coming. CCubbage, I get what you mean. I think you're right. But it doesn't make up for the flaws of the game. You will still have to market your level like crazy on the internet, something we wouldn't need to do all that much if the game wasn't broken. . Yes, I completely agree that the system is broken - I've put more time into trying to preach this since the first few days I was ever on this forum - hopefully so MM would get the point before they had an issue. I'm certainly not a complainer - it's just that when I see a train wreck about to happen..... xkappax - nothing is stopping you from publishing your level out as a different level with the same name if you want to try to take advantage of the new setup and see what happens. I noticed this morning Wex had done this with his levels to see what the result would be.... if you decide to do this let me know and when you publish it I'll go in and play it a few times and give it 5 star ratings to see what happens. | 2009-02-26 20:34:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| I will be doing this. I'll be republishing tonight as soon as I get home from work. Thanks CCubbage. I will support any of you in your endeavors if you decide to do this as well. Thanks! ^_^ | 2009-02-26 20:37:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| In the long it might even out. The problem is that the current update kills aways the chance for the existing levels to ever comeback in the first page. And since there's no decent way of exposing old levels, that first batch of millions and millions of level will get cleared by the future million coming. I think it's a great thing. The highest rated will always be there to aspire to. Nobody wants to see a level on the "Cool Levels" for a year just because it managed to get there in the first place. This way when I turn on LBP I'll have fresh levels to play that are actually decent. | 2009-02-26 20:38:00 Author: Killian  Posts: 2575 |
| We wanted to try a new system; one that would ensure that the default community selection, was fresh, of a high quality and constantly changing. In brief, the new system ensures that the default selection of levels are those with the highest rating, published within the last 7 days. Once 7 days have passed since a level was first published, it will make room for a new level to gain some exposure (republishing the level over the same slot won?t make it count as a new level). The important part to remember is that it's never been so easy for a level to hit the front page searches. Previously, a level would require 100?s of thousands of plays and hearts to even come close the front page. Now, if a creator publishes a good quality NEW level today and tries out some of our publishing hints in our article publishing 101, it's far more likely their level will hit the top. Don?t forget, we listen to our community very closely, and if it becomes clear that the system needs tweaking in the coming weeks, we?ll get right on it. Hmmm, well the theory is an interesting one, cutting levels off from Cool Levels after a week. The thing about republishing not counting is a bit of a downer, but I have seen people who republished every 10 minutes for a dumb H4H level. I suppose we could give it a try though, I don't know if deleting old levels and publishing them new (with 0/0 stats) will give them a better ranking... | 2009-02-26 20:40:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536 |
| So all my plays up to this point are MOOT? I have to newly republish all my levels in order for them to have a CHANCE at getting exposure? Doesn't the fact that I've maintained a 4 star rating with twice the average heart ratio count for anything? This is mind boggling. They are asking me to throw away 800 hearts and 4000 plays on my best level. | 2009-02-26 20:43:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| I don't write complaints, ever. But today I make an exception. Yes, they may be working on a solution, but we have no idea, do we? The community is concerned and panicking, and they need to know the severity of this, now, before our best creators up and quit in response. Here is a copy of the email I sent just now: "Hello Media Molecule, I write this to the attention of the LittleBigPlanet development team. It seems that yesterday, February 25, 2009, there were some alterations to the way the Cool Levels pages operated. Specifically, all of the levels from this page have been removed, supposedly to make room for new ones. In addition, it appears that republishing a level no longer forces your level to the front page for exposure. I have been under the impression that the LBP development team, representing Media Molecule, have been largely dedicated to the continual improvement of LittleBigPlanet and have shown a great deal of effort to listen and respond to the feedback from the LBP community. Presumably, the modifications I have outlined above were done in the interest of creators and players to make for a more enjoyable experience. I regret to inform you, however, that this has caused widespread panic and outrage within the LBP creator community. If you are not already alerted to the severity of the community?s response, I strongly urge you to review the negative feedback that is freely accessible on prominent LBP forum sites, such as www.lbpcentral.com and your own site, www.littlebigworkshop.com. For convenience, here is an immediate link: https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=t=9225 I will summarize the general concerns of the community, to avoid wasting your time: - The Cool Levels page was largely considered the ?hall of fame? by dedicated authors - Modifications to the Cool Levels pages now results in popular levels quickly falling off the front pages. - As republishing no longer puts a level back on the front page, authors have no way of promoting their hard work - Once the initial momentum of a new level disappears (usually within 15-30 minutes), it will likely never again see the front pages of Cool Levels - Exposure = plays. You have just killed the potential for any level to receive any amount of exposure. As such, the ?Busiest levels? page will remain unchanged, and it is now MORE difficult to compete with these levels. Similarly, ?Most Hearted? pages are likely to remain unaffected for the same reasons (side note: 90% of the busiest levels are also on the most hearted page) I don't speak on behalf of creators who play this game for two weeks and spend a day making levels. I represent your most dedicated audience, your top creators that spend weeks or months creating a single high quality level. We are the creators that provide the highest quality user-driven content for LittleBigPlanet. With these recent decisions, your top community authors are demoralized, unmotivated, and many are seriously considering quitting LBP. It is a reward when our hard work receives large amounts of exposure and community attention. Without incentive, there is little reason for us to work so hard on our creations, and many of us will re-evaluate why we continue to tirelessly create. The fate of the authoring community depends on your immediate attention and reparations to the search system. You must implement a promotion tool that lets hardworking creators push their content. Thank you for your time and concern, and know this is only one of many many similar emails you will be receiving on this issue. xxxxxxxx xxxxxx PSN: Thegide LittleBigPlanet creator, and Ph.D, Molecular Medicine" | 2009-02-26 20:48:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| What a well written letter. You have said what we all need to say. Perhaps I will write a similar letter. Thank you. ^_^ This IS causing widespread panic. How many of you are going to republish your levels in a different spot today? Show of hands? ... And this will defeat the purpose of what media molecule is going to try to achieve, because say I was to republish Centralia tonight? What if it gets a lot of plays and hearts AGAIN? That would put it right back on cool levels (don't worry guys, I'm not going to do that. Centralia has had it's day in the sun) It seems that all our work up to this point is for naught, and that really sucks. Star Ocean 4 is looking really appealing right now. This is the first time I've seriously thought about walking away completely. | 2009-02-26 20:58:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| Wow. When I read the post on the Mm site I expected you guys to be like "Awesome!". I really don't see what the problem is. Most likely your level would never have gotten onto the "Cool Levels" page. This provides the opportunity on a weekly basis. If your level was popular amongst the players, it would be given a high rating and put on the highest rating page. Nobody is asking you to republish your level. If it has enough plays so that your not willing to republish it then it obviously has enough or it just isn't good enough to get onto the "Cool Levels" page to get the few thousand play boost you want. If your positive it is good enough then republish it and it will go from 2,000 plays to 10,000, and it will be given the chance to get onto the highest rated. | 2009-02-26 21:00:00 Author: Killian Posts: 2575 |
| My biggest problem with it is that mine was there for a day... but since my 7 day period has expired, it's gone now. It was getting a really good reception, too. Instead of getting 7 days from when cool levels got fixed, I got 7 days from publish date. It's upsetting to see all your hard work go up in smoke so quickly. | 2009-02-26 21:04:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| Killian, What you don't seem to get and that TheGide didn't tell in his Email either is that CURRENT AND PAST made levels are doomed. And after your week of exposure in the new system, you're basically doomed. To make this new system work proper, they should simply reset all stats outside hearts and cummulated rating. This way, everybody would have the same chance for popping in the cool page next week. . | 2009-02-26 21:11:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Killian : My level is on the page 5 of the highest rated levels. This gives me like 4 or 5 plays a day. As a result, my level will never get to the first page because people usually don't search through 4-5 pages..they play the levels on the first page. My only hope to get more plays was to republish and appear on the community level page for a moment... | 2009-02-26 21:12:00 Author: JackBurton25 Posts: 116 |
| what ranger zero says is correct. Jayden's Abyss? fallen into the abyss. Centralia a ghost story? Now it really is a ghost story. The fall of winter? Fallen off the face of the earth is more like it. The people who have moderately popular levels actually suffer the most, because they got most of their plays through republishing. I know the fall of winter wasn't the greatest, but every time I republished it, it seems a new person would enjoy it, and that made me really happy. Now, there's no chance for that at all. | 2009-02-26 21:13:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| Killian : My level is on the page 5 of the highest rated levels. This gives me like 4 or 5 plays a day. As a result, my level will never get to the first page because people usually don't go through 4-5 pages, whatever the're searching for...they play the level on the first page. My only hope to get more plays was to republish and appear on the community level page for a moment... Right now you're actually having your chances for next week's reset of the cool pages because YOU ARE getting plays, ratings and hearts right now. My Sack's In The City level per example doesn't. It will probably die there at the barely 400 plays it's having right now since it's gone from the cool pages, won't appear in top rated, busy, top hearted or newest since the republishing doesn't work and it will not receive much attention from the internet either since it's been a couple of weeks it's out. And it's nowhere something of a bad level really, it got a real good appreciation (and especially here!) . | 2009-02-26 21:15:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| To all of you complaining: You were EXPLOITING the republish feature just to get more attention. I was really tired of seeing the same levels all the time. | 2009-02-26 21:16:00 Author: k3k3c Posts: 2 |
| what ranger zero says is correct. Jayden's Abyss? fallen into the abyss. Centralia a ghost story? Now it really is a ghost story. The fall of winter? Fallen off the face of the earth is more like it. The people who have moderately popular levels actually suffer the most, because they got most of their plays through republishing. I know the fall of winter wasn't the greatest, but every time I republished it, it seems a new person would enjoy it, and that made me really happy. Now, there's no chance for that at all. Actually now all that will matter is the first week of your published level. It will be all about pimping it on the net so it gets plays (cause the game advanced search won't help much) and if you make the Cool level the week after you're good to go and if you don't, you're doomed. All previous levels to this update are doomed. . | 2009-02-26 21:17:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I understand where you guys are coming from but people are complaining as if this is a step backward. This is a big improvement. If this wasn't released then you would be in the exact same position as you are now. You'd still be struggling to make yourself known but this provides opportunity for future levels, it doesn't take anything away from what you already had. | 2009-02-26 21:17:00 Author: Killian Posts: 2575 |
| To all of you complaining: You were EXPLOITING the republish feature just to get more attention. I was really tired of seeing the same levels all the time. Republishing a level only shows it on the first or second page for about ten minutes... the chances are low that you saw my level on the first page, even if I published it every ten minutes... I did not published every ten minutes, that's just an example. | 2009-02-26 21:27:00 Author: JackBurton25 Posts: 116 |
| To all of you complaining: You were EXPLOITING the republish feature just to get more attention. I was really tired of seeing the same levels all the time. Basically it means that people were having a workaround the fact the game doesn't give decent exposure to people's levels. Now that the workaround doesn't work anymore, we'll all have to suffer the flaws the game had to begin with. The new cool page and search options are THEORICALLY better now, It's obvious. But the lack of exposure will bite us again in the futur anyways and this will discourage people creating. Lets study this a little bit. The new cool levels page works like this: When your level made 7 days there it's gone and replaced. How to they proceed in order to replace the level? They look at the NEWLY PUBLISHED ones that did good ratings in the last week or so. This means the only way to rank in for the next week is to not only have a new level but also be stubborn enough to market it on the net so it get some plays. After all, the games doesn't promote new levels all that much, you only get a handful of plays from the "newest" section. This means it's going to be a battle on the net. A game where your reward for creating something great is based on the amount of work you're doing on the net to promote it once its available really means the game is ****ing broken. So it's all cool, our futur levels will have all the chances to make it to the top page but what happens after a week? Your level is done. That's it. If you want exposure again you need to go make A NEW LEVEL again. This is what I also find ridiculous in the new way things work. They also need to reset the "most hearted" and "top rated" because new levels with one week exposure simply will have ZERO chances to make it and this will basically render searching by hearts, plays or rating completely irrelevant. It's actually the biggest problem right now imo. . . | 2009-02-26 21:30:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Republishing my saga was the only way to get it played. Ch.1 was initially rated 5 stars, then 4. Until I republished I got nearly 200 plays. After the republication pimping it has 2000 plays (but it took me an hour for several days, like a month or so...) So it was not very easy before, but now it is really impossible without the genre, diffculty and age tags... Ah, and do not forget the griefers, the pre-teenaged, the 'suggested' rating, and the people that randomly choose a tag to quickly skip the voting steps (like tagging Miglioshin's Fantasy Adventure wit VEHICLE tag... sigh) The system itself will be effective only with responsible users, but that's too far away from reality. | 2009-02-26 21:40:00 Author: Miglioshin Posts: 336 |
| To all of you complaining: You were EXPLOITING the republish feature just to get more attention. I was really tired of seeing the same levels all the time. Hello troll who joined the forums just today. You might be surprised to learn we are all tired of seeing the same levels all the time too. You're obviously missing the point, which is that hard work is lost due to sheer volume of levels. A good level deserves exposure, and LBP needs an advertising system of some sorts. Word of mouth won't get you far, but judging by your disposition, I would be inclined to think you have never been in our shoes. You might feel differently if you had contributed even half the dedication and hard work so many on here have. People who spend an extraordinary amount of time producing quality levels deserve more attention than someone who spends 1 hour making a piece of garbage. This is the incentive to work so hard in the first place. If you disagree, you'd best find the door because you'll be hard pressed to find people on these forums that see things as you do. | 2009-02-26 21:54:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| Hello troll who joined the forums just today. You might be surprised to learn we are all tired of seeing the same levels all the time too. You're obviously missing the point, which is that hard work is lost due to sheer volume of levels. A good level deserves exposure, and LBP needs an advertising system of some sorts. Word of mouth won't get you far, but judging by your disposition, I would be inclined to think you have never been in our shoes. You might feel differently if you had contributed even half the dedication and hard work so many on here have. People who spend an extraordinary amount of time producing quality levels deserve more attention than someone who spends 1 hour making a piece of garbage. This is the incentive to work so hard in the first place. If you disagree, you'd best find the door because you'll be hard pressed to find people on these forums that see things as you do. I think your right and the really good and dedicated Creators/levels do need to get exposure more than the H4H and ramp levels. BUT I don't think this should be obtained by people republishing they're levels. As you all have been saying it was a workaround. To me that 'WORKAROUND' was a form of cheating. I did it about 2 times the first week that everyone realised it helped get you more plays. It made me feel dirty and like I was just cheating the system. So I have never done it since. I totally understand why it's been done. But seriously do you honestly believe this was a good solution. Everyone could do the same thing and republish if they wanted but then, are you only then getting the hearts and plays because you republish so much (as we all know people will heart and play anything, RAMP RAMP RAMP) So therefore it comes down to whoever republishes the most gets the exposure. This can not be a good thing, whether it worked or not. Yes the game is flawed and that's why they are trying to do something to help the COOL LEVELS for the long run and NOT just for the amazing levels we have had so far that did get the exposure. No one has the perfect solution and the way it was and the way it is now is DEFINITELY NOT the perfect solution. Only know this, if someone finds the perfect solution then MM would implement it in a heartbeat. They do listen to they're community. But who can listen to a community that moans about a feature being so flawed and when they try to do something new to fix the problems then everyone just starts shouting put it back the way it was. | 2009-02-26 22:37:00 Author: dorien  Posts: 2767 |
| Hi all I've read this thread with interest, and a similar one has been going on over at LBWorkshop. Firstly, I'd like to thank Thegide for the eloquent email sent to MM. Secondly, there seem a mixture of views about the apparent static nature of the Cool Levels pages. A quick review: as far as we can see, the community levels were ranked on plays and hearts - a play was worth one point, a heart was worth ten. As a level gained momentum and plays, its rank obviously rose. This caused a snowball effect on levels, in that highly played and hearted levels appeared higher and higher, and therefore players who didn't navigate passed the first few pages played the ones in front of them, thus continuing the trend. I had no issue with this - we're all different and some of the Cool levels were poor, others were great. However, regardless of individual opinion, these levels had to EARN this position. They didn't start on page 1, they rose through the ranks. It was considered a great privalege to gain this, quite rightly described as a hall of fame. If you wanted to see new levels, search the new levels. If you were sick of seeing Cool levels, navigate to deeper pages and help out a few of the more rarely played ones. This new system simply punishes the successful. It's a great shame, especially for the newer levels such as my own which was originally published just over two WEEKS ago (not months), and with promotion and pretty good reviews, I got to Page 5 on Cool levels. Quite frankly, I am loathed to publish the sequel, even though I've spent almost 150 hours producing. It is NOT about delusions of grandeur, or something I feel I automatically deserve, it's about not feeling as though you're wasting your time to try your best to produce something that people will enjoy. Just my two pennies worth. You couold try playing my Dragon Rider level, if you can find it! | 2009-02-26 22:38:00 Author: MrsSpookyBuz  Posts: 1492 |
| Exactly. I welcome the change to allow more people with more time front and center. We're mad that it basically condemns anyone that published works within the last few weeks or months though. It cuts like a knife, when you KNOW all your hard work deserves to be seen by more people. This isn't my ego speaking either. If you know me, you know I'm shy to attention and humble with both praise and critique. I speak on behalf of every other creator here that has a comment section full of people expressing how awesome their level was. Self perpetuating slots on the Cool Levels = BAD. Good job fixing that MM. Condemning everyone's hard work for the last few months because we had to continually republish in order to compete with the flaw in THEIR system = RETARDED. Let me also mention that the system has ZERO tools for promoting an author. The hearted authors list is the LAST page on everyone queue and there is no criteria in their search to find accomplished authors based on level rankings or author hearts achieved. | 2009-02-26 22:42:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| This is definately a difficult problem. So, what do we do about it? I'm not sure we need to be angry at what MM is doing yet because we haven't really seen the results yet... Personally, I wouldn't mind if we came up with a list of REAL solutions which would solve the issues, but we need to keep the following points in mind: This is a game. Everyone needs to feel the love and have fun. I have a 7-year-old who has spent just as many hours as many of you have spent creating, but OBVIOUSLY his level is not good enough to have a lot of plays - but I still want him to FEEL like he has accomplished something. Even though WE are concerned with a lot of people enjoying our games, MM's job is much broader - they need everyone who purchases the game to feel like creating. All ages, all skill levels - they don't want a vast majority of people to be upset because people won't play their games - and there are THOUSANDS of games. And no matter what they do a segment is going to be demoralized. They have a catch 22 right now. Either they have a system which favors no one - and the talented creators get irritated. OR they have a system which favors good creators - and the vast majority of untalented gamers get frustrated. I'm personally going to get together a list of changes I feel would solve the problem AND not cause a major issue. I suggest we start a thread for this specific issue - what kind of searches and ratings would work for EVERYONE. Personally, I think a great start would be the following: 1. Allow the author to specify a genre and a difficulty. I KNOW there are some flaws in this, but at LEAST it creates a bigger differentiation between games. 2. Don't allow rating a level until you've finished the game - this will prevent, for instance, young children from lowering ratings because they don't understand the level or people lowering your rating out of spite. 3. Randomize listings a little to be fair - highest rated should mix it up a little so that people look at more levels instead of just the first page. When you have a million LBP units out there you will STILL get a lot of plays then if your level is good enough to be in, for instance, the top 12 highest rated levels pages. Keep in mind, people - I think separate ratings such as IGN, MM picks, and our own spotlight are also a great way to get plays - but as a forum we may need to get out there and publicize it - maybe by putting adverts in our levels... some of this is in OUR hands. | 2009-02-26 23:04:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Hi CCubbage I understand and agree with most of what you said. I suppose a possible suggestion could be a weekly or monthly Cool levels area. But how about introducing a new 'Hall of Fame' section of, say, 10 pages, where the stalwarts remain until being replaced by a higher ranked level. (I understand what you said about our younger players, too. I have played quite a few levels produced by younger children, with maybe a little help from mums and dads(!), and enjoy these as much as the so-called epic levels. It's the choice that counts). | 2009-02-26 23:12:00 Author: MrsSpookyBuz Posts: 1492 |
| Hi CCubbage I understand and agree with most of what you said. I suppose a possible suggestion could be a weekly or monthly Cool levels area. But how about introducing a new 'Hall of Fame' section of, say, 10 pages, where the stalwarts remain until being replaced by a higher ranked level. (I understand what you said about our younger players, too. I have played quite a few levels produced by younger children, with maybe a little help from mums and dads(!), and enjoy these as much as the so-called epic levels. It's the choice that counts). I had thought of having a "Hall of Fame" area several months ago (I think it's somewhere in this site...). But I think the most important thing in solving a problem like this is to start with how you envision the perfect situation working. Here's what I envision: I would love to sit in front of LBP and say to myself "I feel like playing a tomb-raiding style game, but I don't want it to be super difficult". So, I browse to the genre "Adventures", to the difficulty "Normal". At that point I have the text searches, highest rated, newest.... jump into "Highest rated" and I can play through a bunch of games that I like - maybe listed in a random order so I'm not always looking at the same top of the list - with the average star rating to the right. This isn't new technology - this is the way we have been searching for things for many years. And by the way, the globe list is cool looking, but it's the absolute WORST way of displaying a list I've ever seen. At least make a regular list an option I can flip to. And as authors, if you combine it with not allowing people to rate a level until they've finished it you get protected against people killing your levels. | 2009-02-26 23:25:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Just for the record, I did not exploit the "republishing" thing. I would republish occasionally to get more plays, but I"m far too lazy to do it every day like some people. Maybe once every two weeks I would do it. I would also republish if I actually fixed something. I just ran a little test to see how well this new "cool levels" thing works, and sorry to say, but this is a step backwards. I took my crystal cave level, changed the ikon, published it in a different spot to see if I would indeed get my 7 days on cool levels. This is what happened: The level was immediately played by 8 people and hearted by maybe five of those 8 people. The level was on page 6 of cool levels. Then it was on page 13. Now it's gone. This happened in a matter of 15 minutes. I look at it like fishing. Your level is a worm in the sea of cool levels. But your worm only has 15 minutes to catch a fish, and if you don't catch that fish, you NEVER EVER WILL. This is a flawed system, and media molecule said themselves that it might need tweaking. Might need tweaking is a bit of an understatement though. I'm going to walk away from this game now. I am going to walk away from creating, and I am going to walk away until this is fixed. I realize that they have 500,000 levels to deal with or something, but unfortunately, someone with a level as complex as abyss SHOULD get more recognition than someone who makes a level with 6,000 rocket cheetahs and no exit. I'm sorry for saying this, but this is the way I feel. | 2009-02-26 23:29:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| Wow, well that came completely out of left field. I suppose now our best method is to advertise our levels here to get plays... Yeah, and start making new ones lol. A lot of the time people who get levels on the cool levels pages get hearted as a creator or people at least check out there other stuff. So if you make a new level and get it up there it might open the traffic for your other stuff. | 2009-02-26 23:31:00 Author: Hexagohn Posts: 335 |
| I had thought of having a "Hall of Fame" area several months ago (I think it's somewhere in this site...). But I think the most important thing in solving a problem like this is to start with how you envision the perfect situation working. Here's what I envision: I would love to sit in front of LBP and say to myself "I feel like playing a tomb-raiding style game, but I don't want it to be super difficult". So, I browse to the genre "Adventures", to the difficulty "Normal". At that point I have the text searches, highest rated, newest.... jump into "Highest rated" and I can play through a bunch of games that I like - maybe listed in a random order so I'm not always looking at the same top of the list - with the average star rating to the right. This isn't new technology - this is the way we have been searching for things for many years. And by the way, the globe list is cool looking, but it's the absolute WORST way of displaying a list I've ever seen. At least make a regular list an option I can flip to. And as authors, if you combine it with not allowing people to rate a level until they've finished it you get protected against people killing your levels. I think both the 'genre' and 'difficulty' ideas are good ones. My reservations are that if creators are allowed to pick the genre and difficulty for their own levels, then it's still their own opinion of what genre their level is, and how difficult it is. Not to mention the tricksters will no doubt begin to rate their levels as 'ultra difficult' just to get more plays. Unless you meant the genre and difficulty ratings are built up from the people who are playing them. But if they're only around for x number of days, that may become a problem too... | 2009-02-26 23:36:00 Author: MrsSpookyBuz Posts: 1492 |
| I came up with an idea a while ago called "MM approved". Basically there would be a seperate category along with highest rated, busiest etc of levels that someone from MM has personally played and finds to be of a certain quality. There would be a special logo beside the lvl name indicating that MM has given it's seal of approval. Obviously there would be a lot of difficulty implementing this and it would require at least a couple of people at MM playing levels all the time for this purpose. However, with the success of this game and the dedication a lot of us creators have shown through all the problems/bugs the game has had, I think MM should start hiring people to do something like this if they don't already have enough man-power in-house lol. Is this realistic? I think so. Will it ever happen? Not likely. By this point some people are thinking "yeah but we have MM picks" to which I say "yeah but that is only 4-5 levels every week when there are hundreds, if not thousands more, that get overlooked". How is it that The Abyss has not been an MM pick (still the single best level out there imo)? How is it Seminal Gemini has not been an MM pick? And the list goes on and on and on. I did not view the republishing thing as cheating but rather as a necessity to get a bit more exposure for levels that I believe to be of the highest quality and on which I spent countless hours. I do not like the change and I hope someone from MM is reading all the comments here. Am I going to stop creating? No. I love this game and I am dedicated as they come but MM has some serious thinking to do if they want to maintain the popularity of their wonderful creation. | 2009-02-26 23:37:00 Author: OCK Posts: 1536 |
| This is very hurtful to everyone involved. Poor nattura. Nattura's level is one of the most beautiful levels I've ever seen, and it's on cool levels right now, where it belongs. Problem is, this level was published a week ago tomorrow, meaning that it's only got 800 some plays, and tomorrow it falls into the deep dark abyss. This is awful. | 2009-02-26 23:42:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| http://www.mediamolecule.com/2009/02/26/263/ | 2009-02-26 23:42:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824 |
| By the way, here's an experiment I just performed. Interesting. And also kind of shows why the entire system is broken: Based on the feedback I've had from the original splat invaders saga, I'm figuring it's a pretty quality level (imo), or at least the best chance "I" have of performing this experiment. I published it as a brand new level (same name) about an hour ago. Within 10 minutes I have 3 plays and a "1 star" rating. Buried. Never to be seen again. Deleted it. Republished it. Within 5 minutes I have 1 play, a 5 star rating, a heart, and a great comment. How random is that??? You see, beyond what has happened today with the cool levels, there's actually a much bigger issue - since any age of any player can rate your level at any moment without even playing it, the results and which levels get good ratings and carry on are so random that you almost have to publish, cross your fingers, and hope. It's because of this I personally stopped caring how many plays I get a while ago... the only thing that has actually kept me motivated at all is this site. If you guys (and gals) like my work, I could give a flying pigs rear side what the general LBP population thinks. I actually stopped republishing all together unless there were issues. I think OCK's answer would solve some of the issue, but I'm still kind of mortified that people can start my level, exit, immediately throw a bad rating on it, and walk away. Also, if MM wants to QUICKLY solve the issue - take OCK's answer and just let web sites such as ours give them lists. As long as you have people like CC overlooking and qualitified, objective authors reviewing and forwarding decent levels it could get a LOT more decent levels into the hands of the players. This is very hurtful to everyone involved. Poor nattura. Nattura's level is one of the most beautiful levels I've ever seen, and it's on cool levels right now, where it belongs. Problem is, this level was published a week ago tomorrow, meaning that it's only got 800 some plays, and tomorrow it falls into the deep dark abyss. This is awful. Well, it all depends... if it's a high-rated level it's possible that it will still be in the highest rated list somewhere. I'm not sure not being on the cool levels is an abyss.... more of a hole... I think both the 'genre' and 'difficulty' ideas are good ones. My reservations are that if creators are allowed to pick the genre and difficulty for their own levels, then it's still their own opinion of what genre their level is, and how difficult it is. Not to mention the tricksters will no doubt begin to rate their levels as 'ultra difficult' just to get more plays. Unless you meant the genre and difficulty ratings are built up from the people who are playing them. Actually, I was more thinking the genre and difficulty could INITIALLY be set by the author so it would go where they intended. After that there could be 2 possible answers: a) just leave it there and if the author doesn't put it where it belongs players will get irritated and not rate it well or b) Have LBP eventually re-categorize it based on player feedback. Maybe data is collected and after so many plays it's put where it belongs. | 2009-02-27 00:51:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Let's look at this: 1) The issues of bad levels staying on the cool page for too long and getting all the plays = solved. 2) Everybody having a chance at the cool page = solved. It is step toward something. But it doesn't fix the main flaw of the game. You can't have a decent exposure IN ORDER to get the attention you need in order to appear in the new cool page. And after a week you're gone. I don't know if you get it guys but you won't ever see a level with 30 000 plays again. Ever. Actually you won't see anybody over 1000 since one week of exposure will only go so far. It's kinda fair but certainly boring. Instead of having stupid levels with 200 000 plays we simply will have ALL levels under 1000 and a large majority with barely none. The high debit of level published will simply bury most levels into oblivion. Searching by "most hearted", "most played" and "best rated" is also useless now. Why? If they don't reset the stats of EVERYTHING (something nobody would like) the levels that benefited of old system will ALWAYS stay in front in matters of plays and heart and then of rating. Because one week of exposure, even for the best level in the world, isn't enough to dethroned the old levels that were always on the old cool page. This means what? Half the search criterias are now useless. . | 2009-02-27 01:35:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| The interface of the game is really broken. I think we need more options to access good levels. The "most hearted" and "best rated" are almost the same thing, and they have only 1 page. Separing in differents genres and difficult is a good idea, but i think still needs more options. | 2009-02-27 02:00:00 Author: Unknown User |
| RangerZero, very well said. Your third bolded point particularly underscores why this is a step backwards. It doesn't make it easier for good levels to compete with the kingpin levels, it makes it harder. The point system, as described based on hearts and plays is worth garbage so long as hearts are traded and not earned. Cubbage is absolutely right about preventing levels from being rated before they are completed. I don't have a problem with the new algorithm of the Cool Levels page, actually I think the Cool Levels page is now serving its purpose. But, what they've taken away needs to be made up elsewhere. Self-promotion is the key here. Currently there's no way to do so unless you play your own level - and trust me, after 100 hours in create mode, this is the LAST thing I want to do for an evening. I considered republishing a workaround. Let's face it, the kid who made Ramp probably doesn't republish 10 times a day. He's not a hardworking creator. Good, let it slip into the abyss... he's not likely to care or even notice. Those of us who work our butts off want some way of propagating our creations. It was never about 100,000 plays for me... but I'm completely frustrated that I have no way of getting anyone to play my old levels now even though they have barely seen the light of day (I have yet to crack 1000 plays on ANY level) So, what's it going to be. Good levels are likely to have authors that want to promote them. I said it earlier and I'll say again. I would even pay for advertising that's how passionate and proud of my work I am. Authors that make bad or mediocre levels are typically not hardworking creators, and probably aren't here for the long run. | 2009-02-27 02:07:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| This is sad. I noticed that the republish didn't seem to be working last night, and I was afraid that something like this had happened. What they need to also do is have someone out there going through these levels and deleting crap that is really, really bad. I know this can be subjective, of course. There is stuff out there that obviously needs to be deleted, though. I came upon a "creator" one day who had 20 levels named like so: "Share 1" "Share 2" "Share 3" etc. Curious, I jumped into one of them, and literally landed on the scoreboard. That was it. It became obvious to me that these levels were made to help people get the Share trophy. I love trophies, but I don't love them so much that I only play a game to get them. I love playing other people's levels (most of the time.) The Share trophy didn't take that long to get playing the game. Why the need for all these crappy trophy levels? Anyway, these are the types of levels that need to be deleted. Levels that can't be finished. (not because they are hard, because the creator didn't finish them.) Levels that fall apart when you enter them. (obviously the creator didn't play test them, so why should it remain?) I think I'm with the group that might give this game up. I'm almost 30, and games just don't interest me the way they used to. This game was so refreshing to me, I bought it on January 1st and until last night, was playing it for hours a day. I don't know what this Killzone game everyone is talking about is (probably a shooter, I don't like them), but I know MLB 09 The Show is coming out next week. Guess I'll get that and leave LBP behind. (I might still come back here though, I have an obsession with that snake high score that is unhealthy.) | 2009-02-27 03:17:00 Author: RSL  Posts: 13 |
| I would even pay for advertising that's how passionate and proud of my work I am. Authors that make bad or mediocre levels are typically not hardworking creators, and probably aren't here for the long run. Shoot, if you're willing to pay I wonder what would happen if a number of us put some money in a pot and used it to get google advertisement back to the spotlight on THIS page. See if we get more traffic to the levels.... | 2009-02-27 03:18:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| The pay option is interesting. I think a lot of the little kids would be excluded from using it (which is probably a good thing, I'm sad to say.) | 2009-02-27 03:19:00 Author: RSL Posts: 13 |
| I wouldn't agree with paying though. This would go against creativity to me. It would be money that gives exposure so the good creators that don't have as money as you would lack exposure while it's the quality of their work that is supposed to be recognised and nothing else. A fix Media Molecule could have is to put up a great promoting website. And I mean something that would ridiculise Sackbook and would quite copy Youtube. You make that website and you patch advertising for that website in the game. The more as possible. The left planet would become "your page" that would be updated at the same time on the web and in the game, regardless where you update it. . | 2009-02-27 03:23:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I think any rating system is going to be trying to meet two goals that are at odds with one another: 1. Let the best levels of all time rise to the top. 2. Let the best new levels rise to the top. Clearly these two are at odds... but why do we want both? Well, we want to have a hall-of-fame set of levels and not let the best levels be forgotten (I know I have not given any opinion as to what "best" means). But those of us who have played the "best of all time" levels also want to try other great levels and have people be exposed to our levels even if they aren't the "best of all time" but just the "best of the recently released." So from the above I think I, on my own and not yet considering the desires of everyone else, need two pages at least. Now, how do we define the "best of all time?" Certainly plays, stars, and hearts would be a factor. If we do not consider reciprocity (and I will in a minute) then the best levels would have many plays, hearts, and a high score. Since any "Hall of Fame" will produce additional plays perhaps best should also rely on hearts per unique players, or more heavily on overall star score. As more plays are accumulated you could alternatively value them less asymptotically. An example is the rating system on BoardGameGeek.com, which has stability but still lets new games rise the ranks. Now to deal with those engaging in reciprocity... I say let them! Just don't let it affect the levels I see. For example, I don't care about trophy levels, or H4H levels, or 5000 community object levels. I care about quality levels that people put a lot of time and effort into making an engaging experience, like many creators here. Therefore I want to see the levels the YOU all like. I have a mediocre way of doing that today... if I find a level I like I heart it and then check out that creator's hearted levels or creators. I would love to see a "slightly randomized, weighted list of the levels hearted by the creators of the levels I hearted and so on down the chain." This approach has several advantages: 1. It lets like-minded people find each others levels 2. It lets people who would enjoy your level find it among the sea of crap 3. It lets trophy whores find trophy-whore levels and sticker costume lovers find sticker costume levels 4. It keeps those lovely people from finding my spot-lighted level and complaining that it was just too hard and dark and giving it one star. | 2009-02-27 03:24:00 Author: larryjoe701 Posts: 68 |
| Ok seriously guys, I just had an awfully horrible thought right now. Media Molecule truly is owning us more explanations on their new system. What the hell happens when you publish a level but locked now? You know, another workaround we are using in order to not lose our work because of the multiple profile bugs that are still not fixed... So what happens with that? Are you in the week's pool for the next cool page update starting the moment your level is published or starting the moment its unlocked? Does their system even make the difference? If it does not and only care about when it was published, this means that publishing your level as a backup would now be suicide!! You would always miss all your chances to be in the next Cool page update. Seriously, at that point I would totally and definetely stop playing this game. . | 2009-02-27 03:56:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| No, that ones not true. When you finally open your level just remove the locked one and republish it. We're going to need to think a little differently, but this works fine. I just went out a little bit ago and published Splat as a whole new level alongside the other one (experiment...) and it did in fact get in the cool levels. However, it picked up 19 plays at a 5 star and 9 hearts - and that was it. Republishing after that did nothing. I'm going to wait and see. If a 5-star rated new level with about 50% hearts dies..... I'm not sure what to say about that.... but we'll see. I'll let it sit for a few days. If it dies, well... thats the best I can do. | 2009-02-27 04:03:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| No, that ones not true. When you finally open your level just remove the locked one and republish it. We're going to need to think a little differently, but this works fine. Oh! You're totally right. I didn't think about this one. False alarm . | 2009-02-27 04:47:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| yeah, ranger, that's what I did with crystal cave. My crystal cave level actually was getting plays and hearts when it was locked cause I had people testing it. When it was ready to release, I just deleted the locked one and put up a whole new one in a different area. The game thinks it's a new level. | 2009-02-27 05:06:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| No, the real issue is that now you have ZERO room for error. By the time you get all the feedback from releasing a level and making tweaks and adjustments based on people playing it, you've missed your window. What's the point? You have NO second chance unless you start from 0....Sheesh, I can't even get pictures uploaded until my level is on page 4 quickly sliding even further. | 2009-02-27 05:06:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| yes, you are correct. Like i said before, i did that crystal cave test, and within a half an hour, it was gone from cool levels. It had five stars and 8 plays and 5 hearts or something like that. but it didn't stay, it fell off. There's no chance at all. With this system, there is no point. | 2009-02-27 05:07:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| They at least need to let us republish a couple times a day IMO. All we want is some time in front of the audience. | 2009-02-27 05:34:00 Author: Jaeyden Posts: 564 |
| i don't care what they do with the Cool Levels page, but at least let levels that get republished show up on the Newest page | 2009-02-27 07:00:00 Author: RickTheRipper Posts: 345 |
| Well it's obvious the system has never worked properly for new creators. No offense to many of the fantastic creators on here who clearly deserve all the praise their great levels have received, but new creators simply have no way of competing with levels that have been around a long time and have huge hits on their levels (usually more to do with how long the level has been published than anything quite frankly). The whole system has been flawed from the beginning, and this new direction is clearly NOT the answer. The only decent of my two levels has been up for only a month and a half at most, and I only just recently broke the 100 plays mark. It started as a 3 star rating and finally moved up to a 4 star. As for hearts.. I couldn't even tell you because I don't even pay much attention to this sort of thing. Sure it's nice to see.. but really... whip-dee-doo. Is it an AMAZING level? Absolutely not. Is it SUPER-FUN to play. Absolutely not. Is it STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL? Nope... but it looks alright. Did I pour tons of development hours into it only to be frustrated that it doesn't get exposure due to a crappy system.... sure I do. Did ANY of that actually matter in how it got it's plays, ratings, or hearts. Absolutely not. I read a few weeks ago about the republishing cheat (don't kid yourselves.. it's definitely a cheat), and thought.. what the heck - if it will get me some exposure so I can get some feedback to see if what I'm doing is worth keeping on doing it then it's worth a shot. I've re-published the level quite a few times (though certainly not daily) and this obviously helped. Did it really make a difference when trying to compete with the same levels on the front of the Cool Levels page or even 5 or 6 pages in... no... it did not. Am I upset about this at all? No.. that would be a little pathetic on my part. What I really care about is that the few individuals who actually HAVE taken a chance on my "lowly level of only a hundred plays or so", enjoyed their time while playing it. That is satisfying enough to me. I appreciate that the top levels have been there for so long (mainly due to the fact that good levels really don't have much competition), but understand that THAT is why they have remained there for so long and been able to rack up so many hits. I'm saying that your levels certainly deserve the recognition they have gotten, but they've gotten it... maybe it's time to move over and let other levels get a fair shake at some recognition. The best solution I can think of is taking all the levels that have reached a certain amount of plays (however high that might be - 500/1000/5000), and put them in their own category such as an ACTUAL "Hall of Fame". That way, people can search through to find those levels which have been around long enough to gain exposure and plays while new levels have room to move around on the cool levels pages. It didn't take long for me to figure out how lame the cool levels page worked, and any time I have gone there or most hearted or highest rated... I immediately skip to at least page 4 or 5 in hopes that I might find some great level that is just as deserving to be on page one with some of the rest of the great levels (or more deserving than the majority of crappy ones there) and play it to give the author a fair shake. The fact is that no matter what system is in place... it will always be flawed from everyones point of view. That's players and creators alike.. good or bad. It truly makes me sad to hear some of you say you're throwing in the towel because of this new change. You are great creators and I think you will be sorely missed in the community. Many many years ago when I graduated from art school, I came to a sad realization about myself. Throughout my 5 years of training, I slowly began to subconsciously change my style of creating to cater to different teachers, in the sense that my direction would change depending on which teacher I was creating for. Creating for myself began to take a back seat to creating for others, recognition, and high marks. I lost touch with why I began creating in the first place... for me, which sadly is where many of you seem to be speaking from today. If you truly want to stop creating based solely on the grounds that your creations will not be seen and that all your hard work is for not... then you are simply doing it for the wrong reasons. A true and compassionate artist does not give up because they are not rich, popular, recognized by their peers or the community, or any other reason. A true artist does not give up creating... because their satisfaction comes from the act of creating itself. That is what motivates them. That is what keeps them going. That is what makes them a happy artist. Most importantly... that is what makes them successful. As for me, I'm going to take the next month or so and get my KILLZONE 2 fix, as LBP has really only been filling in the time until it's arrival. Now that it's here, well..... I'll still be popping my head in and out though. I'm not gone... just on vacation. Stay well. Stay positive. And for Gawds sake... keep creating! Cheers! | 2009-02-27 08:19:00 Author: Rustbukkit  Posts: 1737 |
| They at least need to let us republish a couple times a day IMO. All we want is some time in front of the audience. I agree. Or even better, why not impose a limit as to how many times a level can be republished during a specified time? (i.e. once a day, 10 times a week, 50 times a month). It doesn't matter what this limit is, as long as the limit was the same for everyone. | 2009-02-27 09:58:00 Author: MrsSpookyBuz Posts: 1492 |
| Well, I published my pinball levels new2 days ago First 24 hrs it got 30 plays and 5 stars. last 24 hrs it has had a total of............ 0! How does the system work now when 3 star levels are on the first page and a level that get 5 stars allowed fade into nowhere? Oh I have updated the OP with MM's response.... | 2009-02-27 10:26:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Republishing doesnt work anymore? Well that's a bit..... annoying. Now, I dont do the republishing dance very often. With something like LBP, I prefer to get into a community such as this one, and get plays that way. Which is nice, cause instead of totally random people I've never met before playing it, I'll get people that I might know, who are willing to give feedback and arent gonna H4H, and so on. So I just plain dont hit the publish thing often. I'll do it every now and then, like maybe once in a day for the heck of it. I always figured, well if it adds a few more plays, well, that's more chances for people to FIND the thing. I only have one really major level up, which is my boss level Danmaku Rave, but the thing took *really* freaking long to make and a ton of effort, and has been very well recieved here in LBPC.... so I'd like to see it get a chance to be found by players that might like it. That's the reason why I'd republish whatsoever. That thing was made for a certain type of player, but that's not much if that type of player never sees it! However, I do like the idea of the cool levels page being changed up. Eventually, you get sick of seeing certain things on there over and over and over and over and over and over. Particularly if you've already got them hearted anyway. Or if they're something stupid like Ramp and shouldnt be there. Heck, usually I dont even go to that page cause of that; I'll either hit Quick Play for a random choice, or go to the Newest page and see what can be found. | 2009-02-27 11:29:00 Author: Bridget  Posts: 334 |
| Well, I published my pinball levels new2 days ago First 24 hrs it got 30 plays and 5 stars. last 24 hrs it has had a total of............ 0! How does the system work now when 3 star levels are on the first page and a level that get 5 stars allowed fade into nowhere? Oh I have updated the OP with MM's response.... Yup... same thing here. I tried it - republished Splat Invaders Saga. Got 17 plays, 9 hearts... 5 star rating... then, that was it... game over. 0 plays since. Even with publishing several more times. Granted, I HAVE quite of few plays on Splat Invaders Saga... but if I was a new creator and had just spent the 60 hours it took to make (give or take..) I would be HIGHLY frustrated. But, beyond that... if you read my earlier post you'd see the FIRST time I experimented here and published Splat Invaders again I got 2 plays and 1 STAR RATING and that was it... could you imagine how I would have felt if I was a new creator???? MM has GOT to stop LETTING PEOPLE RATE A LEVEL WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING IT TO THE SCOREBOARD! I'm absolutely dumbfounded that a company could create such a great game but could miss that detail!!!! It would be like Isaac Newton purposely standing under a pile of falling rocks. And those of you who are against the republishing: Nobody WANTS to republish constantly, and I'm not quite sure anyone cares the way Cool Levels work - it's just that Media Molecule seems to have been so shortsighted in that it has absolutely nothing in place to sort, categorize, or otherwise FIND anything in the hundreds of thousands of published levels - about 1% of which are quality (they think they do, but really....). And if people can't find quality content then LBP really isn't very good and less people will buy it. Heck, I absolutely guarrantee the ONLY reason LBP wasn't buried after release (when it sold like a box of turds) was because the decent authors designed great content and spread word-of-mouth. | 2009-02-27 11:50:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Did anyone notice my link? | 2009-02-27 12:16:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824 |
| Did anyone notice my link? I did and I have updated the origianl post with it. Thanks. | 2009-02-27 12:28:00 Author: wexfordian Posts: 1904 |
| Ok news to me. Whats the cool levels page and where is it? | 2009-02-27 13:13:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340 |
| Now it's the "Community Levels". It was named "Cool Levels" before... | 2009-02-27 13:16:00 Author: JackBurton25 Posts: 116 |
| I think our problems with the system pretty much have been covered now. xKappaX, republishing your level never gave you more than some minutes on top, just like when you will now publish a new level in the new system. The problem with the new system is that you will have one week to pimp your level in order to ever make it on top. And after your week, in the case you make the top, you'll be done and will never be back. One thing i'm wondering is if their system will check wich levels (that isn't on the community top page) had the most activity since the last seven days or will they only pool with new levels that were published in the last seven days. This is crucial info and, of course, Media Molecule isn't explaining how it works. . | 2009-02-27 14:38:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I think it's clear we have a problem now. It's time we started looking for solutions. MM says they'll listen to the community on this one, so let's take them up on that. Here are some suggestions I think will help give all levels more exposure : https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=p=155524 If we get enough good ideas going, we should send them all to MM with a clear description of the problem we have now and why we need a solution. | 2009-02-27 15:06:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536 |
| correct, and as I discovered with my little test that I did, even if you make a new level and it gets a high rating, it still falls off the face of the earth. Even if you do pimp your level out for a week, and it somehow works its way up in the ranks, you'll get one day on cool levels if you're lucky. Heck, it took me one week to get 100 plays on my level, with constant advertising. They need to actually use their News section, they need to actually spotlight creators. This was the purpose of that area in the beginning, but it's like they forgot about us or something And Media Molecule isn't explaining how it works because I think possibly they're realizing that there is a fatal flaw with the system, there always has been, but this new change has made it even worse ... I think they are getting flooded with complaints. I have expressed my displeasure in their blog, and many others have too. They said they may tweak the system, and i think we'll be seeing this, because it's very unfair. i keep seeing comments on their blog saying "this is great!" but I don't think these people understand that this system benefits no one and punishes everyone. And gilgamesh, this is a great idea. We need to band together. | 2009-02-27 15:06:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| I noticed that the "cool levels" page has changed to. A coulple of nights ago I turned on LBP and noticed that the levels on there have completley changed. I also republished my levels, but I noticed that this time, they didn't appear on the cool levels page or the newest levels page. Then I knew Mm has changed the "cool levels" page and that they've made it so republishing a level does not work at all anymore. It seems like a bad thing, and that Mm have changed the cool levels pages for the worse. The thing is though, we haven't really seen the results of the change yet, so I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet, but there is one obvious flaw in this new system. The flaw is that even if your level got stuck on the cool levels (which seems very unlikely, just like before) your level could only have a maximnum of one week out in the sun, then it would be in the deep dark abyss of page 50, heck, it probably wont be on the cool levels page at all! I kind of hope they make some slight tweaks to the system, but the main thing Mm should do is add more stuff on (they should use the news page a lot more to. ). By this I mean add more pages like a "hall of fame" for example or making it optional to rate levels. If they added the right sort of additions to the game, this new system would probably work fine and the flaws that have always been on the system would probably be gone.This is just my 2 cents, even if the new system stayed how it is, I wouldn't quit LBP. I just love the game too much to do that and I love creating levels and seeing what the community has made.  | 2009-02-27 16:58:00 Author: lk9988  Posts: 1077 |
| Well, in the last 36 hours, despite all of my pimping, I've only gotten about a dozen plays and a few hearts on my brand new MGS level. How the hell is it supposed to work its way to the top, when it falls out of view in 20 minutes? Seriously, broken. I'm trying the publishing as new thing also.. I'll let you know how it turns out. | 2009-02-27 17:35:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
Ugh, well this sucks... I hope Mm fixes some very important issues pointed out by all of you. When I make a lvl, I put my heart and soul into it so I do want my lvls to be played by as many people as possible!! Republishing a lot does have problems of its own, but it seemed the best way to get a little attention to your level. Promoting them on sites like these is a great help too but not every member of LBP looks at those. We will see how this one turns out but I think Mm will revise some of the steps they've taken soon enough. | 2009-02-27 18:09:00 Author: Zwollie  Posts: 2173 |
| They're going to have to. From what people are seeing so far, the new system is only likely to get you a few dozen plays max before your exposure window is over. I can see this turning into a fight for publishing newly during primetime. Watch their servers crap out hehe. | 2009-02-27 18:51:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| MM has GOT to stop LETTING PEOPLE RATE A LEVEL WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING IT TO THE SCOREBOARD! I'm absolutely dumbfounded that a company could create such a great game but could miss that detail!!!! It would be like Isaac Newton purposely standing under a pile of falling rocks. Yes that! It beggars belief that Mm didn't realise that it would distort the rating system. It would also be a good way to see if your level was too hard - no rating, and would probably push people on to give it another go. It might even lead to people commenting on the level, as opposed to just giving it a bad tag with no explanation. | 2009-02-27 19:04:00 Author: Boogaloo  Posts: 254 |
| Yes that! It beggars belief that Mm didn't realise that it would distort the rating system. It would also be a good way to see if your level was too hard - no rating, and would probably push people on to give it another go. It might even lead to people commenting on the level, as opposed to just giving it a bad tag with no explanation. Couldn't agree more with those comments | 2009-02-27 19:31:00 Author: Zwollie Posts: 2173 |
| In case you're wondering just how bad this problem is... My republication got about 30 plays in 30 minutes, and even garnered a nice compliment on the comments page. I then played my level under two separate accounts to find that I was the only person to have finished the level (me and me were the only scores on the scoreboard). So... 28 people "played" my level, gave me a 3-star rating, yet none of them even finished it. | 2009-02-27 19:32:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| Yes that! It beggars belief that Mm didn't realise that it would distort the rating system. It would also be a good way to see if your level was too hard - no rating, and would probably push people on to give it another go. It might even lead to people commenting on the level, as opposed to just giving it a bad tag with no explanation. Lets just hope Mm is reading this | 2009-02-27 19:48:00 Author: Zwollie Posts: 2173 |
| Well, in the last 36 hours, despite all of my pimping, I've only gotten about a dozen plays and a few hearts on my brand new MGS level. How the hell is it supposed to work its way to the top, when it falls out of view in 20 minutes? Seriously, broken. I'm trying the publishing as new thing also.. I'll let you know how it turns out. This here isn't what the problem is. Your level with 12 plays will fight against other levels in the same situation and the level with 12 plays will win over the one with 8 and make the top page at the next update. The problem with the game is the general lack of exposure for you old levels, and your new levels after their first week. Then also the uselessness of the "most hearted", "most plays" and "highest rated" searches. . | 2009-02-27 21:06:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Originally Posted by CCubbage MM has GOT to stop LETTING PEOPLE RATE A LEVEL WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING IT TO THE SCOREBOARD! I'm absolutely dumbfounded that a company could create such a great game but could miss that detail!!!! It would be like Isaac Newton purposely standing under a pile of falling rocks. Yes that! It beggars belief that Mm didn't realise that it would distort the rating system. It would also be a good way to see if your level was too hard - no rating, and would probably push people on to give it another go. It might even lead to people commenting on the level, as opposed to just giving it a bad tag with no explanation. It's actually worse than that because they do not LET people rate a level they haven't finished, they FORCE you to rate it. You are not allowed past the rate screen until you've made a selection. I know this well, as I am not a great gamer and often have trouble finishing more difficult levels (I still haven't completed all the Story levels !!), and when I quit out of frustration, I'd prefer not to rate the level, as I don't feel that I'm "qualified". But I am not given that choice. | 2009-02-27 21:17:00 Author: v0rtex  Posts: 1878 |
| True... but it's based on a weighted average so at least if you leave the score the same you haven't dropped it. HOWEVER... you HAVE been forced to make it less likely the level will move to a higher star status, since with weighted average the more plays, the less percentage your particular score counts for. So, for instance, once your level reaches 1000 plays at 4 stars, there is very little chance of it moving to 3 OR 5. However, with only a few plays the player pretty much chooses your fate... even if it's a 9 year old with A.D.D. and a screaming mother in the kitchen telling him to turn the thing off, it's time for dinner. So, the 9-year-old quickly exits the game in the middle, throws the controller at the cat. The cat smacks the controller with it's paw - thus accidentally setting the game to a 1 star setting. 30 seconds later, the level you have just spent 145 hours perfecting has been permenantly thrown into a 2 star pile of horse poop (by the way, you don't realize 30 seconds BEFORE this a great gamer had just given you a 5 star status...) Conversely, you will NEVER EVER EVER catch up with a level which somehow got 5 stars and a lot of plays because the vast amount of people, regardless of whether it really IS 5 stars - will just leave the default rating alone at 5 stars (probably the same 9-year-old) so the level will just keep going up and up and up - while your level will stay at 4 stars and every day will be less likely to be highly rated. | 2009-02-27 21:36:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| About the republishing, it works if you go to your level in creator mode, put some sticker in it, save, and republish it. Your level stays on Cool Leves for some minutes... | 2009-02-27 22:41:00 Author: Unknown User |
| Well, that's a very good thing to know! Thank you for that wonderful information. And let me tell you, I just played one of your levels, Tomasoares, and it was wonderful! I will play the others tomorrow. My crystal cave level hasn't gotten a play all day, (well, maybe one, but that's about it) This is broken. Edit: This does work. If you edit your level at all, and then reupload it, it goes on cool levels again, so all hope is not lost, guys! I guess if you make a change, you get another chance? For a few minutes at least. | 2009-02-27 22:59:00 Author: xkappax Posts: 2569 |
| Ok news to me. Whats the cool levels page and where is it? The page you were on forever ! (you might still be there) | 2009-02-27 23:35:00 Author: mrjoeyman Posts: 217 |
| Well, that's a very good thing to know! Thank you for that wonderful information. And let me tell you, I just played one of your levels, Tomasoares, and it was wonderful! I will play the others tomorrow. My crystal cave level hasn't gotten a play all day, (well, maybe one, but that's about it) This is broken. Edit: This does work. If you edit your level at all, and then reupload it, it goes on cool levels again, so all hope is not lost, guys! I guess if you make a change, you get another chance? For a few minutes at least. And let's test if only entering the level and then saving would be working. I mean, to test what the game considers as "a change". True... but it's based on a weighted average so at least if you leave the score the same you haven't dropped it. HOWEVER... you HAVE been forced to make it less likely the level will move to a higher star status, since with weighted average the more plays, the less percentage your particular score counts for. So, for instance, once your level reaches 1000 plays at 4 stars, there is very little chance of it moving to 3 OR 5. However, with only a few plays the player pretty much chooses your fate... even if it's a 9 year old with A.D.D. and a screaming mother in the kitchen telling him to turn the thing off, it's time for dinner. So, the 9-year-old quickly exits the game in the middle, throws the controller at the cat. The cat smacks the controller with it's paw - thus accidentally setting the game to a 1 star setting. 30 seconds later, the level you have just spent 145 hours perfecting has been permenantly thrown into a 2 star pile of horse poop (by the way, you don't realize 30 seconds BEFORE this a great gamer had just given you a 5 star status...) Conversely, you will NEVER EVER EVER catch up with a level which somehow got 5 stars and a lot of plays because the vast amount of people, regardless of whether it really IS 5 stars - will just leave the default rating alone at 5 stars (probably the same 9-year-old) so the level will just keep going up and up and up - while your level will stay at 4 stars and every day will be less likely to be highly rated. Isn't it weighted average or plays and heart? I don't think the stars influence anything outside the "best rated" right? EDIT: I just re-read Media Molecule post.... It's not even the best activity that will bring you to the top but the best rating... OMG can't they see this is ****ed up and doesn't work? How can they mess their things so badly. They HAD to factor in the hearts and plays to make this new system at least a little relevant. . | 2009-02-27 23:56:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Great, this is even better, only one of my levels got up to the cool levels page and didn't really give me enough traffic and I had to rely on republishing to get at least 5 or 6 more plays and now NO PLAYS, it seems like my level will eventually be completely stopped in traffic from other people. God....this is annoying, it leaves one of my best levels in the dust... | 2009-02-28 00:50:00 Author: EchoEchoOneNine  Posts: 61 |
| And let's test if only entering the level and then saving would be working. I mean, to test what the game considers as "a change". Isn't it weighted average or plays and heart? I don't think the stars influence anything outside the "best rated" right? EDIT: I just re-read Media Molecule post.... It's not even the best activity that will bring you to the top but the best rating... OMG can't they see this is ****ed up and doesn't work? How can they mess their things so badly. They HAD to factor in the hearts and plays to make this new system at least a little relevant. . Exactly. NOW you're getting why I'm so puzzled. To have a system that almost entirely relies on rating - and then have a system where a) anyone can rate (or even spam rate) something continually without playing the level, and b) have the rating auto-populated at the end of every play so a person defaults it even if they don't really mean it, and c) use a weighted average based on the previous 2. Statistically, this is incredibly flawed. In fact, if you look back at an early post I made several months ago (it was on an Aer0blue creator crisis thread), I brought this up and people were arguing with me. But it's a BIG problem and breeds completely wrong ratings on levels. And this, folks, is what is driving the system. (along with tags that mix randomized difficulty, genre, and general description tags into one big goopy mess and have players choose one on the way out of the game.) The first day I bought LittleBigPlanet and saw the way this was happening I said, "Wow... this is going to create a scenario where certain levels get pushed permenantly to the top, and others will be unfairly hidden...." It wasn't me being a conspiracy theorist - it's a simple fact by the way it's designed. The bottom line is the BASIC problem isn't that hard to fix - it's just that they keep fixing the wrong thing (imo). There are a few things they could do that -granted, may tick off a few people that love a million plays - but make it much more fair and make a lot more people happy. | 2009-02-28 03:48:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Gah..No more Republishing?!? Crap...getting more plays will be impossible now =( | 2009-02-28 04:11:00 Author: King_Tubb  Posts: 435 |
| What a bad system... I was sad that my levels have only few plays but it will be even worse now... I am a little bit disapointed when i see that my Bearers levels do not have more than 900 plays....for the three levels together (the first one have been uploaded 5 weeks ago). The last episode was published two weeks ago: total? 150 plays.... Great!  And now, with the new system, it seems that these levels never will go on a cool page or something.... | 2009-02-28 08:11:00 Author: Takelow  Posts: 1355 |
| I thinky only people who finished the level or took a 'game over' (if it is impossible to complete) should rate. The game needs to show the exactly rate that the level has too (like 4.23 stars) | 2009-02-28 12:51:00 Author: Unknown User |
| Impossible to complete, or impossible to complete for that particular player? The problem with allowing anyone to rate a level if they can't truly finish it is the vast range of age/skill level - if you allow people to rate a level by just getting the game over, my 7-year-old is going to rate your game poorly even if it's a masterpiece (he would rate my levels as a 1 star) If it's impossible, it will have a lot of plays but NO rating and NO heart - which will give the player a clue - it will certainly give the author a clue. I want to see games from authors such as NinjaMicWZ, Dimo1138, or Bridget get high scores because the right people played it, finished it, and saw the value. And I would love to see my level Splat II not get low scores just because I was innovative at the beginning and require the player to learn something new (not difficult - just new). | 2009-02-28 13:13:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| I think it's a great idea for the creator of a new level to get a chance to be in the first pages quicker than before. It's seems that with the old system it was actually impossible. To be honest it was a bit boring to have all the time the same levels in the first pages! With this new system players will clearly see what people like to play from week to week and if a new level appear to be good it least you can try it! | 2009-02-28 13:31:00 Author: mfd17  Posts: 67 |
| It is certainly a good idea, it's just that it's put on top of an incredibly flawed system rating system that is random enough to bury as well as promote. | 2009-02-28 13:44:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Exactly. NOW you're getting why I'm so puzzled. To have a system that almost entirely relies on rating - and then have a system where a) anyone can rate (or even spam rate) something continually without playing the level, and b) have the rating auto-populated at the end of every play so a person defaults it even if they don't really mean it, and c) use a weighted average based on the previous 2. Statistically, this is incredibly flawed. In fact, if you look back at an early post I made several months ago (it was on an Aer0blue creator crisis thread), I brought this up and people were arguing with me. But it's a BIG problem and breeds completely wrong ratings on levels. And this, folks, is what is driving the system. (along with tags that mix randomized difficulty, genre, and general description tags into one big goopy mess and have players choose one on the way out of the game.) The first day I bought LittleBigPlanet and saw the way this was happening I said, "Wow... this is going to create a scenario where certain levels get pushed permenantly to the top, and others will be unfairly hidden...." It wasn't me being a conspiracy theorist - it's a simple fact by the way it's designed. The bottom line is the BASIC problem isn't that hard to fix - it's just that they keep fixing the wrong thing (imo). There are a few things they could do that -granted, may tick off a few people that love a million plays - but make it much more fair and make a lot more people happy. Yes, yes, yes and... YES. They definitely HAVE TO change the rating system into optional. Absolutely. Why don't we sign in an open mail that we will send to MM after a week or so (to give the opportunity to all LBPC user to be aware of it; like sticky threads or someting)? Cartman? | 2009-02-28 14:15:00 Author: Miglioshin Posts: 336 |
| Republishing my saga was the only way to get it played. Ch.1 was initially rated 5 stars, then 4. Until I republished I got nearly 200 plays. After the republication pimping it has 2000 plays (but it took me an hour for several days, like a month or so...) So it was not very easy before, but now it is really impossible without the genre, diffculty and age tags... Ah, and do not forget the griefers, the pre-teenaged, the 'suggested' rating, and the people that randomly choose a tag to quickly skip the voting steps (like tagging Miglioshin's Fantasy Adventure wit VEHICLE tag... sigh) The system itself will be effective only with responsible users, but that's too far away from reality. Lol someone tagged my Bomb Voyage survival challenge braaaaains... it made me really mad. | 2009-02-28 16:31:00 Author: Hexagohn Posts: 335 |
| What I find completely puzzling about this entire "revamp" is that STILL the levels on page 1 of cool levels are mostly those with over 10,000 plays. Yes, they are previously unseen levels with 10,000 plays, but they are popular already nonetheless. Easier to make it to the front page? No, simply more random than before, especially if your author name is not star-studded from previous constant exposure on the front page since october. I've done a few copy-republication tests with my latest creation, and it's not looking good. The weighted average rating system is broken to the point where it's still not in your best interest to publish a level without having it prerated by several friends locked before publishing. My results so far with Shadow Moses: 4 hearts-31 plays-3 stars... gone (tags: beautiful, brilliant, complex) 4 hearts-22 plays-3 stars... gone (tags: beautiful, brilliant, tricky) 1 heart-17 plays-2 stars... gone (tags: frustrating) I'm still getting more plays and hearts and better ratings on the original publication, which has been published locked for over a month, and was unlocked for the first time on Thursday. The star ratings hurt the most, because they are completely bogus. Forgive me if this sounds egotistical, but this is a 5-star level being rated like garbage (2 stars? please...) by people who don't even finish it. This is starting to make me very angry, I better stop writing... | 2009-02-28 16:34:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| TheGide, Give it at leat a week. The levels cannot disppear just like all of sudden even in the new system. I'm sure it's going to be ok in the next few week. If we isolate the problem of the top community page, this problem is solved. What's jarring is the problems it cause elsewhere. The direct cause of that new thing is that everybody will have less plays because the game isn't promoting our levels properly. But in fact we will all battle for the top community page equally because we will ALL have less plays (well, less ratings because it's sadly the rating that decides). Our only advantage will be to republish our levels (republishing a new or republishing after saving DOES work) and pimp them on the net. In fact we might even have more chances to get on top of the community page than ever. What's bad is that it's the rating that will bring you up there and not calculation that considers the plays and the hearts. Will a level that have been played 3 times but received 5 stars will be priorised over a level that had 100 plays but an average or 4? That's the true question that Media Molecule of course isn't explaining. And after 7 days, your level start to plummel down the pages. Here again they didn't explained ****. After 7 days would we fall on the second page and then have a certain number of days pinned there? Is it the functionning of all pages or just the top one? Will a level more than 7 days old be in the pool for the top page? In fact you know what ****** me off the most? The more time passes the more it's not the new system itself BUT THE LACK OF INFO WE SUFFER FROM. Media Molecule isn't explaining anything. They NEVER give the usefull info se we understand how their bullcrap work. To me this demonstrate that, just like their design for the whole community aspect, they didn't study their thing all that much or they lack some great designers. And that's freaking bad because LBP in itself is the very best idea of a game since the beginning of this generation. I'm just flasbergasted days after days how some pros can handle some greatness this badly. . | 2009-02-28 17:32:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Impossible to complete, or impossible to complete for that particular player? The problem with allowing anyone to rate a level if they can't truly finish it is the vast range of age/skill level - if you allow people to rate a level by just getting the game over, my 7-year-old is going to rate your game poorly even if it's a masterpiece (he would rate my levels as a 1 star) If it's impossible, it will have a lot of plays but NO rating and NO heart - which will give the player a clue - it will certainly give the author a clue. I want to see games from authors such as NinjaMicWZ, Dimo1138, or Bridget get high scores because the right people played it, finished it, and saw the value. And I would love to see my level Splat II not get low scores just because I was innovative at the beginning and require the player to learn something new (not difficult - just new). Yeah, you're right... I think MM should put a difficult system. Maybe a star like system, 1 to 5, where 1 is really easy (no danger) and 5 the hardest. The number is choosen by the creator, before publishing the level. | 2009-02-28 18:38:00 Author: Unknown User |
| Just a quick message to confirm some things: 1) Editing your level, saving it, and republishing it will still put your level onto the Cool Levels pages 2) However, no matter how much you do this, if your level has been 'stuck' on any Cool Level page in the past, it will appear on the Cool Levels pages but it will NOT stick again. 3) Is it me, or is it that all those folks who were happy with the changes have now got levels stuck on Cool Levels that are worse than before? H4H, Trophy this, Trophy that, and 8 billion objects free? Jeez. Take care all | 2009-02-28 21:12:00 Author: MrsSpookyBuz Posts: 1492 |
| Just a quick message to confirm some things: 1) Editing your level, saving it, and republishing it will still put your level onto the Cool Levels pages 2) However, no matter how much you do this, if your level has been 'stuck' on any Cool Level page in the past, it will appear on the Cool Levels pages but it will NOT stick again. 3) Is it me, or is it that all those folks who were happy with the changes have now got levels stuck on Cool Levels that are worse than before? H4H, Trophy this, Trophy that, and 8 billion objects free? Jeez. Take care all Yes I CRINGE when I see all those "win a billion things!" levels | 2009-02-28 22:20:00 Author: mrjoeyman Posts: 217 |
| The problem is most people who play this game, lack the ability to create a level, so they have no respect for a masterpiece. And, most of them never give a level a second chance, as soon as they run out of lives (or even die once) they immedaitly quit the level and give it a one star. And because levels are based on rating, you cant have one of those people(which is more that half the community) play your level early. Which results in republishing your level...several times, if you get a bad start. | 2009-03-01 14:59:00 Author: King_Tubb Posts: 435 |
| I don't know about taking away the ability to rate levels if the player hasn't finished it. How would one rate levels in which you can't finish it due to an impossible to reach scoreboard or a complete lack of a scoreboard? You can't make a new system based off an old system that is fundamentally flawed. In my opinion, level quality shouldn't be based off of hearts at all. In my mind, hearting a level is the same as hearting anything else: if you want to play it more than once, you heart it so it's easy to find. It doesn't mean that the level was fantastic, or even good, it just means that there was something in it that I wanted to play again. I've hearted levels simply because there was something in it that I wanted to implement in my own level and wanted to be able to find it again. That doesn't mean that everyone should play that level. I've also skipped hearting levels that I thought were really good, simply because I didn't want to have to flip through a pile of pages of hearted levels find something (cuz let's face it, the interface is bad. Cute, but just plain bad). I played it once and enjoyed it, that was enough for me. I rated the level high, and even told people on my friends list about it. But that's not enough. I don't know what the answer is, but before anyone freaks out over it, take a step back and look at things, and perhaps a better system can be developed. Perhaps a 'Vote' stat that can be used to promote a level you enjoyed that is reset every week/month. Perhaps a 'Send level to friends' option that sends a shortcut to the level to everyone on your friends list in their messages (is there any use for that message page, anyway?). Again, I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that if some of the people here put half the creativity into coming up with an answer as they put into some of their levels, the answer is out there. | 2009-03-01 20:32:00 Author: nextlevel88 Posts: 149 |
| Ah... that's not cool, that republishing in the same slot doesn't work anymore :/ because, i've done that quite a lot of time now... even though i only got 600 hits on my level now. | 2009-03-01 20:42:00 Author: Yarbone  Posts: 3036 |
| How would one rate levels in which you can't finish it due to an impossible to reach scoreboard or a complete lack of a scoreboard? This ones pretty simple. The magazines you read, or websites that rate video games require the critic to finish the level so they get a properly rounded review. If it can't be finished - no review. This works out perfectly because a level that can't be finished won't have a review. There are definately pros and cons in EVERY design, however there is far less of a tradeoff in only allowing people who finished a level to rate it - especially in this environment. Challenging levels, or levels with innovative mechanics, would stand a chance instead of being pushed out ALL the time for easy levels. Keep in mind who's playing this stuff. My 7-year-old can finish Dinosaur Island, but I personally would rather play something with a little more meat behind it. Ah... that's not cool, that republishing in the same slot doesn't work anymore :/ because, i've done that quite a lot of time now... even though i only got 600 hits on my level now. There does seem to be a change here - if you don't CHANGE something in your level it doesn't really work. I've tried moving a tiny thing (like a cloud a few pixels) and republishing and it works. | 2009-03-01 23:10:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| If the rating will be only able to people who finished the level, then should be cool too show the total number of rates and the exactly score (like 4,36 stars) | 2009-03-01 23:26:00 Author: Unknown User |
| I don't know about taking away the ability to rate levels if the player hasn't finished it. How would one rate levels in which you can't finish it due to an impossible to reach scoreboard or a complete lack of a scoreboard? You can't make a new system based off an old system that is fundamentally flawed. In my opinion, level quality shouldn't be based off of hearts at all. In my mind, hearting a level is the same as hearting anything else: if you want to play it more than once, you heart it so it's easy to find. It doesn't mean that the level was fantastic, or even good, it just means that there was something in it that I wanted to play again. I've hearted levels simply because there was something in it that I wanted to implement in my own level and wanted to be able to find it again. That doesn't mean that everyone should play that level. I've also skipped hearting levels that I thought were really good, simply because I didn't want to have to flip through a pile of pages of hearted levels find something (cuz let's face it, the interface is bad. Cute, but just plain bad). I played it once and enjoyed it, that was enough for me. I rated the level high, and even told people on my friends list about it. But that's not enough. I don't know what the answer is, but before anyone freaks out over it, take a step back and look at things, and perhaps a better system can be developed. Perhaps a 'Vote' stat that can be used to promote a level you enjoyed that is reset every week/month. Perhaps a 'Send level to friends' option that sends a shortcut to the level to everyone on your friends list in their messages (is there any use for that message page, anyway?). Again, I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that if some of the people here put half the creativity into coming up with an answer as they put into some of their levels, the answer is out there. You should read the thread. We came with solutions and ideas and there's even a thread just for the ideas. We thought about a promote button too. "Hearting" isn't hard to understand. It's "favorite". You use that just like your internet explorer favorite. Some people like you will only favorite a site they want to comeback to. Some people like me will favorite the best levels (aka, will want to replay them). Lastly, about the rating there's an easy solution: Make it mandatory only for people who finished the level but still make it available when you didn't reach the scoreboard. If you can still rate a level without finishing it, the options should be 2-3 clicks/move deep in the menus so it would limit the abuse AND provide a possibility of rating even if you didn't finish the level. . | 2009-03-02 00:53:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| There does seem to be a change here - if you don't CHANGE something in your level it doesn't really work. I've tried moving a tiny thing (like a cloud a few pixels) and republishing and it works. Yeah, what I've done is just put a small piece of dark matter way out of view and I move it a little each time I want to republish. Right now republishing is having great effects for me. I wonder if it is because most people haven't figured out how to get it to work yet and so I have a better chance at being seen. My level went from 200 to 700 plays (and counting) in less than a day. For me, that is huge, since my month old level sits at 350 or so and that was my highest by far since before yesterday. | 2009-03-02 01:09:00 Author: RSL Posts: 13 |
| This ones pretty simple. The magazines you read, or websites that rate video games require the critic to finish the level so they get a properly rounded review. If it can't be finished - no review. This works out perfectly because a level that can't be finished won't have a review. There are definately pros and cons in EVERY design, however there is far less of a tradeoff in only allowing people who finished a level to rate it - especially in this environment. Challenging levels, or levels with innovative mechanics, would stand a chance instead of being pushed out ALL the time for easy levels. Keep in mind who's playing this stuff. My 7-year-old can finish Dinosaur Island, but I personally would rather play something with a little more meat behind it. Ah, I see. 50 plays and no review would be a bad sign. That's a good point. | 2009-03-02 08:34:00 Author: nextlevel88 Posts: 149 |
| You should read the thread. We came with solutions and ideas and there's even a thread just for the ideas. We thought about a promote button too. "Hearting" isn't hard to understand. It's "favorite". You use that just like your internet explorer favorite. Some people like you will only favorite a site they want to comeback to. Some people like me will favorite the best levels (aka, will want to replay them). Lastly, about the rating there's an easy solution: Make it mandatory only for people who finished the level but still make it available when you didn't reach the scoreboard. If you can still rate a level without finishing it, the options should be 2-3 clicks/move deep in the menus so it would limit the abuse AND provide a possibility of rating even if you didn't finish the level. . Though that was my first post, I've been lurking for quite some time, and I did read the thread. And after reading it, it's become apparent that a lot of creators on this site have decided to throw up their hands and give up, and to me, that kinda sucks. I also think that time will take care of a lot of this. The game isn't going to be attracting new players forever, and the existing ones will get their trophies and move on, leaving the dedicated creators to play the game. And I stand by what I said before about hearting. Yes, in some cases, it's your favorite level. But in some cases, it's nothing more than a level you come back to for whatever reason. For example, when my nephew comes over, we play Connect 4, so I hearted it. Does that mean that the particular version of Connect 4 that I hearted, out of the 100s of Connect 4 levels, is the best one? Or does that mean that it's better than some of the levels I played and didn't heart? No, not at all. It's just conveniently on a list for me to find it. At the moment, the searchlight, LED light, grass sponge, and basic stone are on my hearted page. Doesn't mean they're the best materials to build with, just means I use them a lot at the moment. Either way, I'm not in here to start an argument with my first post (or third). I'll save that for my 54th post, if I get that far. I'm just a lurker, after all. It just bothered me to see some of these more talented creators throwing in the towel. I don't blame them for being upset with this, but still, the rest of the community will suffer for that. | 2009-03-02 08:48:00 Author: nextlevel88 Posts: 149 |
| I'm not quite sure we're ready to throw up our hands... I think this whole thing just caught everyone by surprise. But, a little time allows you to be more objective and see what the results are. Even though I have always been frustrated by the rating system, I have definately been getting more hits on my levels since they reset the first page of cool levels. However, that still doesn't mean I'm getting QUALITY hits a lot of times. I would love to be able to design a real, challenging level without it getting creamed. And I'm not talking hardcore - I'm talking a couple tries to beat it, which is virtually impossible to design with getting low ratings in LBP right now. I did a little research on this over the weekend. I browsed through about 50 authors and looked at the designs, the ratings, the quality - and it's pretty safe to say it's really difficult to get high ratings and be challenging. (not ALL the time - definately the Contra series, which is fantastic, managed to get the eye of a lot of hardcore gamers and beat those odds - but the same authors had poor results with challenging games before those levels). | 2009-03-02 14:06:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| ...it's really difficult to get high ratings and be challenging... It'd be nice if 'Challenging' was one of the tags you could give a level. The word 'challenging', when applied to games, sounds like a more immersive, engaging experience than 'difficult' or 'tricky' - which doubtlessly put people off. In fact it would be a more technically correct term to describe a game that is fun and well put together, as well as tough. | 2009-03-02 14:28:00 Author: Boogaloo Posts: 254 |
| OK, so I've been giiving the new 'system' a watching eye over the weekend and noticed a couple of things... Republishing new tweaks to two of my levels made no difference at all for appearing on Cool Levels or Newest, but - and this might be positive - I did steadily receive plenty of plays across all of my levels (one even went over 1000 - yay!) Hardly any plays post-change to the system, then more as people got used to the improved search? Could be... Either way, Mm still need to fully clarify both the changes that have been made and notify planned future changes (and stop penalising creative change) | 2009-03-02 15:42:00 Author: nordwest Posts: 11 |
| wow... if you publish your level now, it'll have great effect on the plays 'n hearts | 2009-03-03 17:59:00 Author: Yarbone Posts: 3036 |
| It'd be nice if 'Challenging' was one of the tags you could give a level. The word 'challenging', when applied to games, sounds like a more immersive, engaging experience than 'difficult' or 'tricky' - which doubtlessly put people off. In fact it would be a more technically correct term to describe a game that is fun and well put together, as well as tough. We would need a proper tag system for a start. The one we have now really is useless. . | 2009-03-03 18:01:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| Tagsuselesslol. The tag system at least is optional, but inevitably your level ends up acquiring every tag there is once it's played enough. The text labels are nigh useless to actually describing a level. Why they felt they needed 3 separate rating systems to describe a level is beyond me. One rating system, that is optional to use, and can only be used by a person ONCE on a level would have sufficed. Tags should be set by the level's author, much like how we can tag our own threads with keywords on these forums. Get rid of the useless "brilliant" tags that people only like to apply to their own work anyways. | 2009-03-03 20:15:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465 |
| Tagsuselesslol. The tag system at least is optional, but inevitably your level ends up acquiring every tag there is once it's played enough. The text labels are nigh useless to actually describing a level. Why they felt they needed 3 separate rating systems to describe a level is beyond me. One rating system, that is optional to use, and can only be used by a person ONCE on a level would have sufficed. Tags should be set by the level's author, much like how we can tag our own threads with keywords on these forums. Get rid of the useless "brilliant" tags that people only like to apply to their own work anyways. Absolutely! The fact is, MM's design of allowing others to tag your level would work if you had a community of mature people who would truly look at a level for what it is before tagging it. But this system puts FAR too much power into the hands of pre-teens and lower-than-usual-IQ people who love the power, but don't have the wisdom to use it. I would LOOOVE to see MM put their games in their hands to rate their levels instead of letting Playstation magazine and EGM rate them! | 2009-03-03 20:28:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Tagsuselesslol. The tag system at least is optional, but inevitably your level ends up acquiring every tag there is once it's played enough. The text labels are nigh useless to actually describing a level. aaaaaaand another thing half thought out / badly designed. lol Seriously, having real tags (aka you decide them) would have worked so great. When MM was designing the game they had a plan they decided to follow, it was "play", "create" and then "share". They went "play", they went "create" and then they went "sh... to hell with this, drop the thing on shelves!". . | 2009-03-03 20:30:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I think a level has to have a max. number of tags, like 3 or so.... So your level get the tags wich it has received most of.... | 2009-03-03 21:20:00 Author: Yarbone Posts: 3036 |
| I don't think you should have to finish a level before you can rate it but I don't think a rating should be compulsory either. For instance I have a level called RUN SACKBOY RUN and it has about 4,500 plays (without loads of republishing). Now this level is REALLY PUNISHING and most people take about 30-50 plays to finish it (the level only lasts about 2mins max if you manage to finish it, so gets lots of quick replays and has that one more go feel to it). This level has about 45 hearts and about 3or4 STARS. I have had really good feedback on this level and most people that end up sticking with it to finish it, love it. I think that only about 20 people max have ever finished it but it has over double that amount in hearts and quite a good rating (seeing as most "difficult/challenging" levels get a poor rating due to most playing it like once or twice and dying straight away then hitting 1 star and tagging it rubbish). So it shows that even the people that didn't end up finishing it (OCK ) can still heart it and give it a good rating.If you needed to finish this level to rate or heart it then it probably would have 5 STARS as you have to be dedicated to the level to finish it. But this also wouldn't give me the wider opinion on it. Also what about levels that are just pure art or places just to hang out with friends that might not even have scoreboards (like the example Alex Evans once gave that someone could just make a sticker wall with pictures of their cats lol) , do these not deserve to be rated for not having a finish???. It's really hard to get the fine balance to please everyone and I don't think MM will ever achieve this as I don't think there is a perfect system that can work for such a diverse game. I'm just interested to see where this goes | 2009-03-03 21:29:00 Author: dorien Posts: 2767 |
| Ok, here's an experiment I performed: I published Splat Invaders Saga as a separate level this last weekend. Now, this is a level that I'm pretty confident is decent. It has been spotlighted here (with authors saying I raised the bar), it has been on IGN, and right now it has 4 stars and about a 25% heart ratio (and thats with a lot of people playing it many times). When I published it as an experiment, it immediately came back with a couple plays and a 1 star rating. Then it sat indefinately with no more plays. There are tradeoffs to EVERY design - but allowing people to rate a game if they haven't played it is ludicrous. Yes, there may be a reason or 2 why they SHOULD be able to do it, but there is a vast amount of reasons they shouldn't. Please don't publish your level while my 7-year-old is playing!!!!!! If he can't immediately finish it he will rate it 1 star - I guarrantee you! And there are thousands upon thousands of kids just like him sitting in front of LBP with their fingers on the trigger. You may be fortunate enough to avoid them, but to me - I want REAL reviews from people who took the time to look at the entire experience I gave them. I DON'T WANT to write dinosaur island games! Would you want movie reviewers to review a movie if they only saw the beginning? Would you want the people reviewing your video games to just look at the opening sequence and then put a rating on it? How about do a review of a restaurant after looking at the menu? The truth is, there are different sets of people who play your game - people who know who you are, know what they're in for, and are up for the task - and those that randomly jump in and give poor scores to challenging levels - right now it's kind of a flip of the coin. And once the star rating goes down, whether it deserves it or not - if it then gets about a hundred plays guess what? You're stuck with it, or you have to republish. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I will except this rating system when MM allows 10 year olds and under to rate their levels for the world to see by randomly hitting buttons. It's just SO much work to spend 50-60 hours building these things to have immature kids systematically bury them. | 2009-03-03 22:16:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| Ok, here's an experiment I performed: I published Splat Invaders Saga as a separate level this last weekend. Now, this is a level that I'm pretty confident is decent. It has been spotlighted here (with authors saying I raised the bar), it has been on IGN, and right now it has 4 stars and about a 25% heart ratio (and thats with a lot of people playing it many times). When I published it as an experiment, it immediately came back with a couple plays and a 1 star rating. Then it sat indefinately with no more plays. There are tradeoffs to EVERY design - but allowing people to rate a game if they haven't played it is ludicrous. Yes, there may be a reason or 2 why they SHOULD be able to do it, but there is a vast amount of reasons they shouldn't. Please don't publish your level while my 7-year-old is playing!!!!!! If he can't immediately finish it he will rate it 1 star - I guarrantee you! And there are thousands upon thousands of kids just like him sitting in front of LBP with their fingers on the trigger. You may be fortunate enough to avoid them, but to me - I want REAL reviews from people who took the time to look at the entire experience I gave them. I DON'T WANT to write dinosaur island games! Would you want movie reviewers to review a movie if they only saw the beginning? Would you want the people reviewing your video games to just look at the opening sequence and then put a rating on it? How about do a review of a restaurant after looking at the menu? The truth is, there are different sets of people who play your game - people who know who you are, know what they're in for, and are up for the task - and those that randomly jump in and give poor scores to challenging levels - right now it's kind of a flip of the coin. And once the star rating goes down, whether it deserves it or not - if it then gets about a hundred plays guess what? You're stuck with it, or you have to republish. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I will except this rating system when MM allows 10 year olds and under to rate their levels for the world to see by randomly hitting buttons. It's just SO much work to spend 50-60 hours building these things to have immature kids systematically bury them. This problem + the other guy's problem can be solved by applying my solution. Make rating mandatory only when you finish the level but make it accessible otherwise. You only need to put the rating some 2-3 manipulation deep in the menus. This would prevent any impulsive rating, mistakes and would also prevent kids to rate the thing. Let's face it, many people can't even find their own hearted list. This means alot. When you quit a level without finishing it, make the rating optional and like 2-3 menus deep. Problem solved. . | 2009-03-03 22:40:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901 |
| I agree. Maybe even have to hit R1 as the last step - that'll REALLY throw 'em! Netflix found, also, that they could get better ratings if, when asking for the final rating, they hid the existing rating until you finish your selection. That forces cognitive thinking. | 2009-03-03 22:45:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
| This problem + the other guy's problem can be solved by applying my solution. Make rating mandatory only when you finish the level but make it accessible otherwise. You only need to put the rating some 2-3 manipulation deep in the menus. This would prevent any impulsive rating, mistakes and would also prevent kids to rate the thing. Let's face it, many people can't even find their own hearted list. This means alot. When you quit a level without finishing it, make the rating optional and like 2-3 menus deep. Problem solved. . Yeah I really liked this suggestion when you mentioned it earlier but I completely forgot to mention it in my post This would be a step forward imo As I would still like the option that if say I played a friends levels that I really liked and the visuals and playability was great but I didn't personally have the skills to complete it. I would still want to maybe give it 5 STARS and heart it as I loved the challenge (even though I didn't have what it takes to finish it) | 2009-03-03 22:50:00 Author: dorien Posts: 2767 |
| Like I said in the other thread... I'm glad the republish train is dead. I gave up on it a month or two ago, because it just felt ridiculous keeping LBP on and republishing constantly trying to find a sweet spot on a certain day at a certain time of night to get a handful of new plays. Turning on LBP first thing in the morning, lol really bad obsessive habits. I think the best thing is really just to put it out there, let it go, and not even worry about it anymore. If someone likes your level, they'll come back and play it some time, or bring one of their friends... their friend might go back later and heart it. People will eventually find it through hearted levels/authors list chains. When you publish a fully new level, it may bring in a couple extra plays for your old levels... over time, the key is to just stay active and keep churning out material to avoid stagnation, and to keep anyone who hearted you and one of your levels a nice surprise the next time they check your levels. When this Contra hype is over... I'll be dead in the water again... but at least 3,000 people had the opportunity to check out the creators and levels I have hearted, and if they're the dedicated and educated LBP players they'll probably find another connection, and another, and another that leads to one of your levels... and vice versa from anyone that might have me or one of my levels hearted on their list. I remember someone came and told me gevurah22 had my Metal Slug Solid level hearted, and I was like "awesome... that will probably bring me a new play or two every few weeks" I go and play some of the earliest levels I hearted around launch, that I still love, and I see that they might have 20 new plays, and a couple more hearts... even though the author hasn't been on since November... so I know the abyss isn't as dark as it looks. The cool pages are a big mess - it's just an algorithm doing what it does, and would probably be better just cycling on a continuous basis in total randomization with the same "new publish" getting a minute or two on page 1 system in place (so many people publishing at the same time, you couldn't glue them ALL to page 1 as only so many can fit), but the connection of the community is the heart and soul of the operation. 90% of the people who give levels a hundred thousand plays won't be playing LBP next year. | 2009-03-03 22:59:00 Author: Unknown User |
| Yes, you're probably right... but keep in mind, I'm not really coming from a self-serving perspective - I'm kind of like you - I just don't really care if I get a ton of plays. The ONLY time I tried to do the reposting scheme was experimenting with it in the last week - which I kind of wish I hadn't. Splat II would have been a much higher rated level if I had just treated it like my other levels - let the community play it. However, I DO care about the game. I think if MM gets these things sorted out and the great authors are encouraged LBP will have a great run. If people always have good content they can find, and that content keeps expanding it will translate into more LBP sales, which will mean longevity. | 2009-03-03 23:30:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430 |
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