Frowns from people that don't read directions.

Lol, so I just found out why a person frowned my level, and this is the third time in a row. There is a part at the very very very very start of my level where it say turn on the two power breakers and go back in, then it says meteors approaching go back in you can't last long against them, hurry up turn on the power and go back in, the coltrols are put in the movie camera and there is a toggle for the controls, when you turn on the power it give another bubble saying to go back in, it turns on an arrow, and a second light comes on with a power up sound, if you die at that point he door to get back down closes on you. The person just said that he had a hard time fighting and aiming the meteors, but the level looks promising. It is just annoying because two of my feedbacks just did for that part like it was the entire level. All you have to do is hold down R1 and L1 for a couple seconds and the breakers recharge. If the person wants they can destroy all the meteors for a bonus score and a hint. I really don't want to remove the mini-game, and I can beat it 100% of the time. Do I lock all my movie cameras and changed timed magic mouths to all forced cameras? I am honestly annoyed this time after doing quite a bit of work to yet again have a person that ignores directions and gives up. What do you guys think? Do I just deal with this? Do I ruin the flow of the level by saying, this is just a bonus? Is anyone else having this kind of issue with there levels on LBP 2 and even here in the F4F?

Sorry just sad, completely delted, renamed, and published whole thread of photos to make my level as "finished" and now me very second comment and play on my level is that.

This is good to know. :D

Any other problems?

know what is confusing? When people frown your level, but then heart you...is it a love/hate relationship thing?

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Originally Posted by Spider-Jew

know what is confusing? When people frown your level, but then heart you...is it a love/hate relationship thing?

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I strangely get that alot. And not just me as an author but they frown a level yet heart it.

And get used to people not listening, its not the language barrier thats the problem, lot of people (mainly kids) just don't pay attention to text with their short attention spans, or are just plain clueless, you could have a Giant holographic material spelling out "HOLD THE R1 AND L1 BUTTON TO RECHARGE!!" and they still won't get it

Lol, yeah I had the frown heart, also have had the one star and heart. I think people just don't notice at times. AS for other issues, that one is a big one right now, because it is the very start of the level and if peolpe ignore it and just try tapping R1 they not only will never get the power breakers on they will also be killed over and over. But still need to know about the stickers and the little hidden areas I placed in. I don't think anyone has used the hard/easy modes, any of the short-cuts or the teleport at teh start of the level (only get that if you make it to section C before). Nevenz played it last night and gave me some feedback that I think I fixed, but I am not completely sure, he said something about an extra arrow, and I need to ask him where he got lost at.

There's a chance the people didn't like the level, but see that it's you and heart you. Like SJ there, he's popular-ish, so maybe they hearted him because they recognized him from Final Fantasy :P

I find that the trick is to make controls as intuitive as possible. If you can, set up your controls so that even people who hadn't read the instructions can work it out by just trying the buttons. Of course that's not always completely possible, but I've run into some convoluted control schemes that I think don't make sense to anybody but the guy who made them, and that's something you want to avoid. If your play mechanic is similar to one used in other video games, try to make your controls similar to those. If you're not sure if your controls are intuitive enough, invite a friend to try out your vehicle or whatever but don't tell them how it works and see how long it takes them to figure it out. If they can't figure it out, you might want to revise your control scheme.

Another thing you might want to try is putting in a "you suck meter." Some games will give you a hint or some other kind of help if they detect that you're struggling at a particular spot. In your case, you could stick a magic mouth on a sequencer set to positional, set it to subtitles, and have it spell out what the player is doing wrong (if they're not recharging, it can tell them they should recharge and how to do it). By setting the sequencer to positional, you can turn on the subtitles and keep them on until the player does what they're supposed to. I'm a big fan of you suck meters and I work them into my levels at any part I think players might struggle with (once I spawned a checkpoint to let the player skip half of a maze where the boss was shooting them, and once I had one set to emit weapon powerups to help the player take down a large spaceship if they died a couple times).

I get both things mentioned all the time, some of the comments are interesting. I think the most confusing one was "It was bad but also good"... lol

I think it's sometimes unclear as to whether you selected boo or yay when you choose hastily with the volume turned down. I've accidentally booed levels which I intended to yay.

I created a level to document the failure of reading.

Level called: READ Level Description:

URL: http://lbp.me/v/xxze7f

Description Reads:
Do not enter this level. This is a test to get a count of the number of people that do not read a level description before playing a level. If your name does not appear on the scoreboard or having played this level on your profile then you have passed and should feel proud. This is not a reverse psychology test but a reading test. I do not want hearts on this level.

Another example of people not reading in my Longest Level Ever which states in the description it can take over 5+ hours. People still get mad and ask me to make it shorter.

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By Sehven:
I find that the trick is to make controls as intuitive as possible...If you're not sure if your controls are intuitive enough, invite a friend to try out your vehicle or whatever but don't tell them how it works and see how long it takes them to figure it out. If they can't figure it out, you might want to revise your control scheme.

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I agree fully with the above quoted and everything else said. You also have to bare in mind that people concentration and reading online/on a screen may be a lot less. So if there's a lot of instructions or a complex set-up the vital points may be missed.

I admit I have done the frown heart thing before. The reason I did this on a level was becuase the level design and effort put into it was amazing so deserved a heart. But at some point in the level or gameplay I either got stuck or died unpredictably. For example, Im happily walking along unaware of the danger ahead and just died due to some hidden bounce pad that you were unable to jump over or miss. Which sent me up into a electric beam which was also hidden. Respawned, happend again and again until I really annoyed and quit to my pod. Although when this sort of senario happens I usually don't give a heart and definitely give it a frown but alway follow up with why and make suggestions to improve it.

It's more likely that they really like your level and appreciate the design etc (heart) but something during the level let it down (frown). You could always do a tutorial option which I've seen on many levels.

As for blastroid:

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I created a level to document the failure of reading.

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That is just hilarious. Out of curiousity I may have a read.

These stories about people not reading descriptions and directions kind of make me think of the Call of Duty community. No matter how a Call of Duty game is made, what the features are, what patches and updates have been made, you can ALWAYS count on them to complain about something. Not that EVERY Call of Duty player is like this, just most of them. Let's be glad the LittleBigPlanet community is better than Call of Duty community. If the LBP community was as bad as the COD community, we'd be getting players who complain about levels being too long, too short, too hard, too easy. And be rating down everyone's levels because their levels aren't as good. All the time! (Well, a whole lot more than what we already have of those players)

Thinking about how most of the COD community is, makes me at least feel a little better about the people who don't read descriptions. :)

Hey, blastroid? How many people have played that reading test level of yours so far?

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Originally Posted by Black265

Hey, blastroid? How many people have played that reading test level of yours so far?

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Just about to hit 1000 plays and has only been published about 1 week. I think most take it as a joke level but you can tell the pizzed off kiddies comments are the ones that got caught. :)

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Originally Posted by Black265

Hey, blastroid? How many people have played that reading test level of yours so far?

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993 according to the link.

err sniped. by the person who was actually asked. lol. i'll go away now.

Heh heh, what's in the level that gets the non-readers mad? And thanks for clarifying Deftmute.
:)

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Originally Posted by Black265

Heh heh, what's in the level that gets the non-readers mad? And thanks for clarifying Deftmute.
:)

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It is a funny level with additional rules once you are in it. If you dare add your name to the wall of shame. I think kiddies just get upset like I was tricking them and their world is crumbling around them because of it. It all goes back to the OP though no-one reads before commenting.

Ohhhhhh, Ok. I make my levels a little easy because I know most of my audience are kids, I don't really want my levels to be slapped with more boos than yays. My hardest level is VR Obstacle Course 5, and even then, it's still not that hard, only the maze of electric floaties is a somewhat hard. I know kids will rate it down for difficulty so I make it a little easy so they won't rate down my levels (at least not as much as they would've if my levels were harder).

I was going to make a level that would send a player to a second ending if they were ignoring rules that was a level called "really bad players"...but I never did. I think I first toyed with this idea when the first comment on the level appeared. I used to have the magic mouth to explain the controls, but it was soooooooo long people did not read, so ten I spent tons of hours making video displays of the controls, only to have someone ask for the magic mouth again. The controls are set to a match sack boy, walk and shoot setting, but the secondary laser is R2, which confuses the players because they may be tapping R1 and R2 to fire instead of holding. I may look into a option for a looped timer for the fire trigger, but there is a score sensor that increases fire and adds more fire as they do better...which means two things, it may be impossible to add the looped timer for R2 tappers, and that they must be doing so bad they have not even reached the first power-up. Do I need to disable the skip videos, or do I just let the people that can't play complain, and not punish those who take the time to read and are replaying? Oh I will try the stupid meter thing, I had two levels that would insult players as they did worse and worse, I loved the idea (done in fun), so I could add something that only appears if a person dies without turning on the power. I just don't want to make the level seem like it is less real so I will have to think of a good way to word, you just need to turn on the amps...oh but I can make that part not skippable. :)

Thanks for all the ideas.

People are ridiculous on the servers, and we're held to different standards of pandering and design than actual games are. After being on gaming forums for years, seeing how kneejerk & irrational people's opinions are on real games, and knowing it's even more skewed and spoonfed a world on our servers, I'm surprised there's any positive results for trying to do something different or that may require a moment of cognitive awareness & patience.

You can either give into it & drive yourself nuts trying to please everyone, or just do the best you can to make what you think is good. There's bound to be at least a few people who get it.

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Originally Posted by NinjaMicWZ

You can either give into it & drive yourself nuts trying to please everyone, or just do the best you can to make what you think is good. There's bound to be at least a few people who get it.

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Can we get LBPC to make up some t-shirts with this printed please. :)

Ever think that it might just be too complicated or frustrating for anyone besides the author? It might seem alright to you to have to do a lot of backtracking or giving complicated directions, but as a player it can just be tedious when there are so many other good levels out there to play. People do listen to directions, but when you make it way to complicated it just gets to the point where it isn't even necessary.

People sadly don't read descriptions half the time they just play a level that sounds good

@Blastroid: Really like the sound of the Read Test levels

I had lots of complaints on my levels when I first published them because I made more story based levels and I think people didn't particularly want to read the story so ended up with people complaining about the speech bubbles but of course I just ignored them. Not my problem if kids are playing the levels that don't want to read the text because that's all that says to me.
My levels are more story based and I really like being able to tag my levels now so people can see they're more story bosed so hopefully those little kiddies won't be so excited about playing my levels so they can complain about the text. People should really learn to read, they might miss something important in a level, which is obviously the reason this thread was made

Yeah I got some flak on a story level I made too, and there was not too much story at all.

@sack-jake it is easy to claim that, but until you play it you would just be assuming, which is why I am posting here, to find solutions.

My level is this...
1. a blurb about a crash...
2. a thing saying where you are with a carema angle and opening/glowing platform, a glowing arrow, and directions to go there...
3. movie camera saying" don't stay outside too long, fire arm phasers by holding R1/L1 to recharge two breakers, the camera zooms in on both of them, and for vehicle controls press D-Pad right"...
4.at this point only after they fire at one of the breakers a note pops up saying hurry and finish meteors are comming, do not stay outside you will not last at this point meteors slowly start arriving once every eight seconds slowly speeding up...
5. This is where they die, all they have to do is shoot the two breakers and then lights show to go inside, a speech bubble pops up, and once inside (if they have died but recharged the breakers) the path back down closes, and the console lights up with another bubble saying what to do...
it really is almost too documented on what to do, which takes away from the game and many people hate.

You'll always have this - especially if your level involves puzzles or more than one direction at a time.

I always try to make directions in a level as simple as possible.

My recommendation: Use as few words as possible. Assume your explaining to a 5 year old.

But even then, you'll have people who can't follow basic instructions, or have trouble with your puzzle.

A guy posted on one of my Puzzle Wheel levels, "Your level is broken, I got stuck on the second wheel". I guess the 2,000 people before him that made it through just got lucky. :rolleyes:

There are also the people who don't read the description or skip through the text bubbles because it's not in their native language. They'll probably end up quitting your level midway and possibly give it a frown, but not much you can do about that.

The smile/frown system is preferable to the mandatory five-star rating system of LBP1, but I think no rating system at all would be more preferable still because both systems inevitably select for certain types of levels (dumbed-down ones) over others.

Well I ended up putting in a thing that activates a counter when you are inthe mech to active, has a xor for finishing task, an and for being up above mech (where spawn point is) and an inverted prox for players not existing with a timer on count down on .5 seonds to detect if you die in that one part, and then got to use tons of bolds and slightly rude things like "System check shows userer error, Personnel files show user Doe Not Follow Directions" and also said that it is "Highly Frowned upon" just because I knew I would be once they quit the level. :) I can't wait to see who gets mad next. I am tempted to put a counter to three or so and have it set to end my level be having ship decide to self-terminate rather than have to deal with the player for one more minute.

Oh I know I have been frowned by people from other countries many times...but those are a given...and it doesn't bother me because they are just mad because they are stuck reading english....and they have yet to post comments like the three I have had from the direction-not-readers who say things like "nice start for a level"

People have boo'd me because they can't finish my level, but its supposed to be challenging, there is nothing to it but obstacles which I can beat easily. Even after I put a sissy sign on every obstacle the de-lethalizes them so you basically have to just move forward and they still can't beat it so they boo it. Not everyone is as smart or ninja as we are, and I guess its unfair to assume they would be.

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Originally Posted by Gutz

People have boo'd me because they can't finish my level, but its supposed to be challenging, there is nothing to it but obstacles which I can beat easily. Even after I put a sissy sign on every obstacle the de-lethalizes them so you basically have to just move forward and they still can't beat it so they boo it. Not everyone is as smart or ninja as we are, and I guess its unfair to assume they would be.

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I've learnt that introduing an obstical then the next one at a higher difficulty means the player learns and adapts to your level. So it may be that you need a better balance between playability/gameplay and difficulty. But making a level more accessible doesn't always mean making it easier. Even with your sissy sign it may seem like you're 'belittling' the player and mocking them so they may find it tedious and boo you. Like you said not everyone is a ninja.

However, I don't mind a challenge so I'll give your level a go and add it to my queue later.
;)

I haven't played it, no, I was just making a generalization about complicated instructions in levels.
Also just seems like you're advertising your level, isn't that just what F4F is for? Just ask specifically for suggestions regarding said section.

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Originally Posted by blastroid

I created a level to document the failure of reading.

Level called: READ Level Description:

URL: http://lbp.me/v/xxze7f

Description Reads:
Do not enter this level. This is a test to get a count of the number of people that do not read a level description before playing a level. If your name does not appear on the scoreboard or having played this level on your profile then you have passed and should feel proud. This is not a reverse psychology test but a reading test. I do not want hearts on this level.

Another example of people not reading in my Longest Level Ever which states in the description it can take over 5+ hours. People still get mad and ask me to make it shorter.

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This is genius. I love that it has so many plays. :P

Instead whining that people don't read description, maybe acknowledge that fact and prefer to show this information in the level in form of tutorial or at least prompts for controls (i seen genius level that was forcely ordering be to read description for those.... and it was vechicule demo). Since whining won't help in anything or else you have ability to change majority of 100.000 minds

@ Sack-Jake I was doing F4F, but I had finished and published it fresh, and made a new post just saying if you like go play. That is when a person that had frowned it way back, and I had asked him for some feedback decided to come back try it a second time, once again did not read directions (even all the new things I had added), gave up and frowned it again. He left a comment on the level on how he could not beat the asteroids and the aiming was off. Well the only way that could be possible is if he ignored directions twice. I asked him if he did and gave him feedback on his level, he never responded, but my frown suddenly vanished. I had no issue with the frown, just an issue with what do I do now. Right before him the first person that played beat it (Nevenz who just made Cosmic Odyssey, of which level I beat on my first try...not getting stuck at some wall and giving up...ahem...:p). So no this is not F4F, just when you make a statment about a level without trying it you do the same as a F4F that fails to really give feedback and asks others to try your level. :) Plus if people here already know what the issue is they would be biased in playing it to see the issue, I was more looking for options from others that ran into this issue.


@ Shadowdriver I did add names to every button on the controllinator wayyyyyy back, I had the magic mouth appear when they entered and one more if the tapped the D-Pad right for directions. The issue was it was super wordy, and the direction skippers instantly closed it and got stuck. Then spent days making visual displays that you tap right on the D-Pad and a vehicle image appears with the control scheme shown mapped out. The issue is they were just going down skipping the Level Directions and doing some unknown thing for the 10 seconds or so after they had fired one charge into a breaker, and failed to fire anymore. They may have quit the level, but he said he would hop into the mech and it would explode...the only way (excluding some weird lag glitch) this could have happened is if they were in the big meteor storm and the jumped back down into the ship which implies they were playing it long enough to get to that point in hte time-line because the shower slowly builds up, and pauses its build-up when you are not down there. I think I will just have to email him again and possibly bribe him with more feed-back to find out where he was skipping directions, and what would have made him not do-so.

If I had the thermo to add a tutorial for each of the seven vehicles I am not sure it would even help...because the skippers would skip the directions, and those who take the time woudl just slap their foreheads and say does he think we are morons? And I don't I am just vexed by thy lazy skippers...tis a sea of them out there...har..har..har (read in pirate's voice).

P.S. with all that said, I took Sehven's advise and put in the extra magic mouths and camera set to disable and unskippable to only activate if a person died and did not charge the breakers...so that should help.

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Nevenz who just made Cosmic Odyssey, of which level I beat on my first try...not getting stuck at some wall and giving up...ahem...

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Before you take me completely out of context, there was no indication of doing anything to that wall. I even played the tutorial.
Fortunately, there's now a handy little prompt to approach the wall and mash X, although maybe just making it out of a different material or stickering it red or something would've solved the problem. I thought the level had just broken.

That's besides the point. The thing is, if you want to give the player some specific directions that's fine. You have to make them extremely apparent though, or else it's just a poorly designed level. Also, just make it fun to do from a player's perspective and if you're going to backtrack maybe mix it up by switching up some of the characters or scenery in the room.

There's directions which people will follow willingly to have fun, then there's just poor design.

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Originally Posted by NinjaMicWZ

You can either give into it & drive yourself nuts trying to please everyone, or just do the best you can to make what you think is good.

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I agree, but only to a point. As I said, you should test it with friends and see if they can get it easily. If they can't, then you're not making it the best you can and you need to fix it. It's actually really common: I'd say 95% of the vehicles I've seen in lbp2 just aren't intuitive and/of fun to drive (NuclearFish commented something to that effect on the first beta contraption challenge: many of the entries had terrible controls). Some of them are beautiful with amazing logic behind them and they're feats of engineering in their own right... but if they're not fun to play, what's the point? I wouldn't suggest compromising your vision of a creation to gain popularity, but if only the really dedicated can control it, then your vision is broken and needs fixing.

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Originally Posted by Sack-Jake

Ever think that it might just be too complicated or frustrating for anyone besides the author? It might seem alright to you to have to do a lot of backtracking or giving complicated directions, but as a player it can just be tedious when there are so many other good levels out there to play. People do listen to directions, but when you make it way to complicated it just gets to the point where it isn't even necessary.

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This is a problem that can hit even the exceptional creators. I was in a wip level the other day with one of the more noted creators and the whole thing was amazing, the controls were good and easy to pick up, and the level design was great... except that I was constantly stopping and trying to figure out where I was supposed to be going. If he hadn't been there to tell me which way to go, I would've been stuck. It doesn't take very long for a game to stop being fun once you've gotten stuck. So, while I wouldn't compromise artistic vision, I do think it's important to make your work as accessible as possible.

Tutorials, visual cues in context, and progressive challenge design is great, when it can be done... but honestly, I think the people in question in these situations, don't take any note of the onscreen prompts, or try to decipher what they mean.

Don't even try to give your attacks fancy names, either, just call it "ATTACK" or some won't even bother to press the button out of some warped sense of intimidation. Even if you make a 5 minute cut scene explaining everything to a T, unskippable, the same sugar-brain people will just mash X, roll their eyes, and think "COME ON ALREADY!', and not only be confused when the game starts, but now confused AND angry at you & the level for making them wait, only to confuse them. If you make it optional as a submenu selection by controls & settings, or top scores, the same crowd won't click that either. They might not even know to use the left joystick to select options, or to press X on "START" even if there's a flashing X button next to the selection that should prompt some common sense.

Imagine if, in the 80's, you walked up to an arcade machine, and there was a smaller arcade machine next to it that informed you what an arcade is, that you need a quarter to play, what a button is, and what a joystick is, that your left hand should be on the left side where the joystick is, and your right on the otherside.

It also has to anticipate that you might not know right from left, and give you a visual queue. If you walk up to the Street Fighter cabinet, a voice tells you to go to the other cabinet first, and the other cabinet tells you what a fighting game is, that depending on which slot you put the quarter in, you'll be on the right or left side of the screen, that you can't control both characters, that you're not the character in the background waving his arms, that the two green bars at the top of the screen are life bars, that red chunks means some has been taken away, and that green is what's remaining. Also, it has to tell you that the two numbers in the center are a time limit, so you can't just put two quarters in and stand there doing nothing. It has to completely educate you in less than 5 minutes in the way that hours of learning moves in a practice or training mode on a home port would as well, otherwise, it's too hard, I didn't know I could block, my friend killed me, and I didn't know the other guy on the screen was going to attack me! :(

You are right about that, just published a little fun beta level (well fun for me) to run some online testing. While I was playing I got that option to let a person join. They got in the back of the plane and never once could figure out to hit x or R2, when in the fron they only hit square, in the back they only needed to hit x, I even messaged them with "x" serveral times in a row, they could not figure out how to jump dowm from a back layer to a lower front layer...He/she finally quit, but I was amazed at their unique style of playing.

I'm sure there were plenty of people who got frustrated because they didn't understand, and quit after one quarter in those days, but there was no option to leave a frowny or smiley at the end, so we'd never know.

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Originally Posted by blastroid

I created a level to document the failure of reading.

Level called: READ Level Description:

...

Another example of people not reading in my Longest Level Ever which states in the description it can take over 5+ hours. People still get mad and ask me to make it shorter.

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And how many people used Dive In to get to those levels, I wonder...

I am tempted to try the 5 hour level, but that is a long time for me to be on LBP and not creating...not being kicked from the network...and not being hit up with play requests from people that try to get you to go play other levels. :)

On a funny note, got a reply back from teh person, and it turns out he may not have played it a second time, just left a frown and assuming it was the same as before, and he had never read the instuctions the first time.
Also published a new level in a beta form, really unpolished, with horridly fast directions for the controls of some rather complex planes...and it gat all smiles. :) But the fact it was jets on an aircraft carrier may attract another type of player opposed to the space one, or beta may only get the attention of people that are looking to do a bit more thinking? Again thanks for eveyone's help, the issue I think is fixed as much as is possible. Any more stuff and I get wierd thermo glitches like walls vanishing in play mode, but the items that were attached to it are still there floating and nowhere near anythign else to hold them up...along with lethal items becoming safe randomly through the level. Ohh scratch that I forgot about that guy last night who couldn't layer change.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rogar

I'm sure there were plenty of people who got frustrated because they didn't understand, and quit after one quarter in those days, but there was no option to leave a frowny or smiley at the end, so we'd never know.

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People who get frustrated when they don't understand things are mentally challenged.