"Maze to Riches"

[SpaceManiac]

This level is horrible - an impossible maze that can only be completed knowing the plan, with 44,000 points at the end. I move to delete it! Either that or Cyberclone42 publicly reveals the solution.

[Pumpkineater]

I agree. 3 people (including me) rated it 1 star and 5 skulls. I don't believe it deserves anything better.

[BryanSNK]

wow...what a horrible level.

[KevG]

The problem with levels like this is that the only way for other players to compete scorewise is to submit levels of their own that are pretty much impossible for anyone else to solve. Cyberclone42 is only ahead of me in the rankings due to this level. To level the playing field I'll need to submit a level he can't solve. Hence "Simon Says".

There's really nothing unethical about doing this on either of our parts. It's just that it cheapens the high score competion down to submitting ludricously high scoring levels instead of working your way up the score board the old-fashioned way.

While Jamul deleting abusive levels is always an option, I did have a couple of suggestions that might help. First, It would be nice if we could see what it is that smooshes us, at least until restart. Wouldn't help with my level, but it would probably help with Maze to Riches since I strongly suspect there's a fireplace you need to find to continue.

Second, one way to eliminate the problem completely would be to change it so that the player who creates a level only gets points from it added to his score once two or three other people have solved it. This would ensure people only submitted levels that they intended other people to solve.

[Jamul]

I've deleted both levels. It's lame, but it's the position I was put in. The reason is simple: I made a game for people to have fun. I'm not going to let that game devolve into anti-fun. I will delete levels that reasonably appear to be unwinnable, like this. If you want to accelerate the deletion of a level, be sure to 1-star it. If a level gets lots of 1 stars (and no or almost no non-1-stars), I'll definitely consider it for deletion. After all, we don't want levels people hate to be around!

[cyberclone42]

Aww... It was meant to be a hard maze. It really didn't look that hard to me. Okay, I'll make it a little easier. BTW, The thing that was killing you were spikes, and if you shot the target, a fireplace. I'm sorry.

[Jamul]

Instead of making it a little easier, why don't you make a level that doesn't have everything completely hidden and rely on the player memorizing the layout? It will always be much more fun to figure something out than to memorize.

[BryanSNK]

Yeah, it would be a lot better if you could see what the maze is. I like maze levels and hard levels, but not the ones that you can't see what you're doing and then get killed by spikes that you can't even see! Levels are much more fun if you can actually see what is going on.

[cyberclone42]

I made it! And now you don't really need to memorize!

[AtkinsSJ]

There is generally far too much abuse of hidden elements. I don't know why people use them as such, because while they can add to the level, in a lot of cases they're just infuriating for no reason.

[cyberclone42]

Well, 30,000 is a lot of points! I wanted to make it more worth the effort.

[AtkinsSJ]

Actually, I think the worst thing in CP levels is a grating/no-role maze. They're unnecessary. You can do the same with spikes, without requiring people to restart the level every time.

[cyberclone42]

Well, I wanted to add some variety. Plus, I think the grate+no costume zone looks cool.

[KevG]

There is generally far too much abuse of hidden elements. I don't know why people use them as such, because while they can add to the level, in a lot of cases they're just infuriating for no reason.

I don't think it's really that out of hand yet. As long as people keep in mind that there is a difference between a puzzle and a mind-reading exercise things will be fine.

As an exercise in demonstrating what a truly abusive use of hidden elements is I've resubmitted the Simon Says level that Jamul deleted. In the original, the baby penguin's path was completed covered up. And the ghost costume wasn't blocked.