Cool Levels? More like... Crap... levels...

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Originally Posted by Darth J464

No Trophies= No H4H or spam levels

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Oh... if only that were true... H4H is only marginally linked to trophies. Think about it:

What is a trophy to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self-affirmation that makes you look good on your PSN profile

What is a heart to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self affirmation that makes you look good on your LBP profile.


What is the difference: You can reach a point where you have all the trophies. You can never reach a point when you are forced to stop collecting hearts. Attributing H4H soley to trophies is a common misconception. Sure, it encouraged it, but it's basic human psychology that some people will do what they can to collect these things that make them feel good about themselves.

There is a chance you won't see H4H on LBP PSP, but don't count on it ;)

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Originally Posted by rtm223

As long as the initial quality measurement was sound.

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i think guaging the initial rankings would be pretty simple for a player rating, basically everyone would be tied and then you get pushed up for placing good on levels. the more unique plays a level has the more weieght it has on pushing you up the ladder if you get first, and similarly the more it pushes you down. i guess more weight would have to go to the single player scoreboard and so on so you cant let other people skill push you up. I would imagine that if you had a single player score that would be used but if only a multiplay score then that would have to be used at significantly lesser weight. Maybe basically the 2player board would have half value, and 3 player board have a 3rd value or and 8th(2squared) and 4th have a 4th of value or 16th (2cubed).

i think the tricky part would be how to start off the creater rankings, as you only get 20 slot to contribute to you creator rank. and a lot of people have a lot of slots filled up, if not all of them. So reling on the already published levels would bring a bias into the ranking from the previous published levels becuase of the flawed old system, giving lame stuff like fast sackboy an edge. And ignoring them all together and would put a bias on people that have a lot published becuase then the only have a few slots to work with to contribute to their creater ranking instead of a full 20 unless they were to delete and and republish. This is the only area that i dont have a clear picture in my head of how to sort them out with out any bias.

combing the two rankings would be simple as just a product of the two would result in a sortable number that would produce the global rank and thus weights for voting.

It would be kinda of interesting as if you hadnt published any levels then then you would probably need to get a defualt creator rating near the median. And people that produce crap as judged by the community basically get penalized by getting pushed below the median, and now get lesser voting power than if they never published anything.

one thing i know i think we could start russelmuscles at the bottom of the rankings (thats the easiest part...lol).

implementation wise i think the ranks may be quite tricky as well in regards to computational power, Other games with rankings have simple values which to base rank on such as number kills and victories, or flag capture, kill to death ratio for a fps game. Theses you can set up a simple algorythm that just adds to that stat each time you play. In LBP the stats seem to be more dynamic. For example i am in 1st place and there 10k plays, maybe two weeks later i am in 100th place now with 20k plays and at the same time it went from a 4 star level to a 3 star level. Do you need to keep re-evaluating the scoreboards for changes (this would be way to computational intensive to implement in a realtime environment, with the vastness of levels available.) You would probably have to give a value based on the levels current status at time of completion to make it workable on the realtime computational side of things.

anyways i just kinda thinking about this as i go and throwing my thoughts out there. This is a really interesting statistical problem and i can bet that MM doesnt employee a statistician, but they probably should, As solving this problem is going to be very valuable in the future as more games go to this sort of play share create format.

this is the first game of its kind and it is quite obvious there wasnt much thought put into it. And since it was observed as a problem it doesnt seem to much scientific thought was put into it since.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Oh... if only that were true... H4H is only marginally linked to trophies. Think about it:

What is a trophy to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self-affirmation that makes you look good on your PSN profile

What is a heart to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self affirmation that makes you look good on your LBP profile.

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I believe that vast majority of H4Hers are after the trophy, not the hearts. Unfortunitely, it is not possible (at least until LBP PSP is released) to prove either one of our statements true, but please read on to see the reasons why I believe we won't see H4Hers on LBP PSP:

Your arguement is based on your opinion that LBP means more to H4Hers then trophies.

Think about this: A heart will make someone feel good about their position in LBP (just one game) community, but a trophy will make someone feel good on the much larger PSN community (which consists of many more games). It is like this: Would you rather be a celebrity in your home town or a celebrity known around the world?

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What is the difference: You can reach a point where you have all the trophies. You can never reach a point when you are forced to stop collecting hearts.

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Actually, everything above is partially false. There is a point where you have all the LBP trophies, but there are more games then LBP that have trophies and there are more coming out all the time. There is a point when you have to stop collecting hearts: each person only has a certian number of levels they can have published at one time and once it is full they only have two options: Delete one of their levels which already have hearts on it (which I don't think they will because that will mean losing the hearts they already have) or don't delete them. Also, once their level is off the cool pages, I doubt even other H4Hers will visit their levels. Think about this: H4Hers make their levels because they are too lazy to make a good level, so I don't think they would go through possibley thousands of people who have hearted their level and heart them pack. They would probabley only go through like 20 levels before quiting. It is very unlikely that hard-to-get-to H4H levels will get any more hearts.

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Attributing H4H soley to trophies is a common misconception.

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I agree with you here, but I feel it is incorrect to say that trophies barely affect the motives of H4Hers.

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Sure, it encouraged it, but it's basic human psychology that some people will do what they can to collect these things that make them feel good about themselves.

There is a chance you won't see H4H on LBP PSP, but don't count on it ;)

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Trophies, like hearts, are also things that people collect to feel good about themselves. I would count on not seeing H4H on LBP PSP, but we will have to wait and see which one of us is correct. :)

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Not if it's what I refer to as a "legitimate" republish, for the purposes of actually making changes / improvements to your level. That's more important that the bump IMO. I suppose to be clearer I should have said 3-5 bumps per day, your ability to republish stays unlimited as before. The idea that you might have your hands tied while your baby was out there and you couldn't update it would probably break me - I had to leave work early when mrsupercomputer hit a level-breaking bug in setbacks in the first couple of days!

In fact, I'd go as far as saying take away the implicit relationship between republish and bump. So you republish and it asks if you want to "promote" your level at the same time. Plenty of times I've had to republish 3 times within 10 minutes because I'm a dufus.

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What I meant is that if you make a correction it's because you want people to benefit it. I mean, you're not doing it only for yourself. In the current system, if that republish wasn't bumping you in the cool pages nobody would play your level therefore removing the purpose of making it better. The game already doesn't promote levels properly. We certainly wouldn't need it to promote even less. Of course here I am not factoring all your possible efforts on the internet in order to get plays/hearts/feedback. To me this doesn't count when we speak about getting the LBP design better. Also, we shouldn't have to actually do the game's job.

I also don't like the link with republishing and promoting either. I remember once I suggested we should have a "promote this level" button. But in the state of the game right now, that button wouldn't help anything actually.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Oh... if only that were true... H4H is only marginally linked to trophies. Think about it:

What is a trophy to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self-affirmation that makes you look good on your PSN profile

What is a heart to an H4Her: An intangible reward used for self affirmation that makes you look good on your LBP profile.

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People brag because there's a reward. If at the start of the game there was no reward (trophies) for show, people wouldn't be that obsessed by getting them. The game doesn't promote levels and it doesn't promote creator's pages more. People simply don't look at them, don't really go in hearted lists, etc. This is compared to a PSN account that everybody is looking at. It's a major difference imo. If there wasn't those ugly designed trophy it would be ALOT better in the community. There would be abuse just because no community can be perfect but it wouldn't be anywhere near the extreme we live through right now.

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i personally use level bumping (dont hurt me!) but i believe the republish bump is needed for creators like me. the aspiring, yet in the grand scheme, unknown creators. the bump is a handy tool to utilize against crap levels i think... like beating them at their own game. at leastuntil a decent filter is introduced. just my opinion as an honest creator.

But anyone can bump, so in stead of having a competition which level draws in the most plays (stars, hearts, whatever), it becomes a competition who can push the bump button the most. Bump is not a tool, it's just another obstacle.

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Originally Posted by poorjack

i personally use level bumping (dont hurt me!) but i believe the republish bump is needed for creators like me. the aspiring, yet in the grand scheme, unknown creators. the bump is a handy tool to utilize against crap levels i think... like beating them at their own game. at leastuntil a decent filter is introduced. just my opinion as an honest creator.

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I agree with something here.
To help the community and the quality of the cool pages, WE NEED great levels to be up there. People needs more example of quality so the overall quality rises. It's simple psychology. So yes, in order to help the bar raise, we need to publish more. I know it's fire by fire but it's all we have right now. The only thing I will always be against are extreme behaviors. Like publishing every freaking 2 mins or clogging the pages by publishing tons of level at the same time and bumping them all.

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eew! duplicate levels hurt jack... i only do one of each level, and choose ONE to publish bump. as they say, "always in moderation: please bump responsibly!"

This really needs to be fixed, i have noticed the annoying trend of OMG the ground is falling! levels lately, and i can barely survive on the community levels of the week untill they are replaced with MORE OMG the ground is falling levels...

ONLY YOU CAN SAVE COOL PAGES! (everyone reading this).

Step 1 - Create a great level and get it up there!
Step 2 - Drop down a few pages in cool pages every day and find a fun level (they're there I tell you!) and give it a play, a heart, and a 5 star to move it up.

@ccdubbage: I wouldnt neccesarily just give it a five star rating, even if it wasa good level, id have to think about it first, you might want to change that so it doesnt deceive other readers I realse this may be sarcasm, ut its a little hard to know through the internet...

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Originally Posted by grayspence

@ccdubbage: I wouldnt neccesarily just give it a five star rating, even if it wasa good level, id have to think about it first, you might want to change that so it doesnt deceive other readers I realse this may be sarcasm, ut its a little hard to know through the internet...

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Nope, not gonna change my wording. If the rating system were fair I would agree, but if I see a great level that is struggling or has a less-than-stellar rating based on difficulty I try to give it a little extra nudge. If it isn't too good I try to rate fairly. I try not to bring a level down unfairly, but I am CERTAINLY willing to lift it up.... all I'm doing many times is countering low ratings from a bunch of kids who decided it was a 1 star level.

(reference to MrsSpookyBuz' ratings thread?)

i agree that most "great" or "cinematic" levels deserve a bump, because there are too many people that think a level is crap if it has no skate board. Not to throw wild assumptions out there, but i bet media molecule wishes they could go back in time and not put a skateboard in the game after seeing the epidemic it caused at first, and that is (slowly) coming back in one form or another.

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Originally Posted by jwwphotos

Yes and YES!

1. Yes I agree with Wex as well !!

2. YES!! genres and difficulties are what I have been wishing and suggesting for quite some time. The default cool levels could be your favorite genre or maybe the last one searched.

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I'd never thought of that. The closest thing they've got at the moment is tags, which I'd rather see the genre system replace.

That said, tags are usually the only way for people to get across that a level is actually low quality regardless of the number of hearts (H4H) or plays (like my cheeky survival challenge).

It would mean going from a community defined system to an author defined system and theres nothing to stop people publishing their levels under the wrong genres to get more plays.

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Originally Posted by Asbestos101

I'd never thought of that. The closest thing they've got at the moment is tags, which I'd rather see the genre system replace.

That said, tags are usually the only way for people to get across that a level is actually low quality regardless of the number of hearts (H4H) or plays (like my cheeky survival challenge).

It would mean going from a community defined system to an author defined system and theres nothing to stop people publishing their levels under the wrong genres to get more plays.

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There's one thing to stop people from going under the wrong genres..... players would get irritated.... which would result in lower rating.

Just taking a peek at the front page now...Must say, this is the worst wave of "Cool" levels I have ever seen...Seriously...The worst...It's never been this bad...Kinda upsetting how creativity is being completely overshadowed by crap levels.

As well as this, who the **** is "lemon_and_gravy"?

I am glad that bomb levels are finally dying down, but now there is an onslaught of these obstacle course, jumping challenges and the floor is falling levels. Some of the obstacle courses are really good, visually and skill wise. The first floor disappearing level was brilliantly original.
There seems that half of the first 3 cool pages are full of these unoriginal levels.
Obstacle courses should be good, not put together in a few hours. And should have some fun elements. Not just, 'Beat the high scores'.
And don't get me stared on the 30 jump ones...

This definetely looks like a never ending story. If it isn't bomb survival it's falling floor levels. Those pointless trends will never go away, new ones will keep poping out.
God bless the day in wich we can open the cool pages and actually see cool levels, if that day ever happens to finally arrive.

Aww boy, I'm seriously losing all hope for that day to arrive...

we truly are in a creative slump. we need to practice the 5 star bumping idea i think. where we rate a good level 5 stars just to bump it up. (btw, big fan of lafarges request)

Another possibility could be that a lot of the younger players don't like too much dialogue or well thought out plots and anything even remotely complex. I could imagine them mostly just wanted quick simple levels, especially ones where things go boom.

So I believe that to be a big part of it. And if I'm repeating something that someone else in the thread said, I wouldn't know since I only read first page.

So just figured I'd throw out my opinion on this.

As for myself, I find fun in everything, whether they are visual masterpieces, or made with basic things in create mode background/floor, story or no story, etc.

If the gameplay is good then I could care less how the visuals look, although the more visually nice, the more admiration I have. But no amount of uglyness will turn me away if the gameplay is good. But sometimes I am in the mood for those stunning levels that are high quality in all respects. And even levels that are more made for sightseeing rather than gameplay appeal to me also. It just depends.