Hard =/= Fun

[VikingBoyBilly]

I almost blow a gasket over how frustrating some of these mods are. It's bad enough the original ID level designers put episode 3 together on a time deadline and made the levels so hard, but to see much harder things coming from modders who can take their time to polish these things is just sad.

Seeing that all you had to do to beat a new dope was to collect 314 IQ points, I thought "Oh yay, this is gonna be easy!" But I was dead wrong. DEAD. WRONG. It's filled with so many impossible jumps and so few IQ jars that the most I ever got was 209. I don't know how anybody could beat the thing. Generic Keen is only 1 level. I thought for sure it would be the quickest mod I ever played. But I was led so far astray. A mental image of that level is permanently burned in my brain from trying to beat it for 2 hours I think episode smile is the worst by far. I didn't get that far in it, but all the crazy jumping in the first few levels was enough to drive me bonkers.

Some of the ones I like is that fake episode 6 (the one thats about chasing mortimer on a planet where a shikadi ship crashed) and kidnapped keen. Yeah, those are nice and easy. There are some characters from the fanon that I don't understand the origin of. Like this weird floaty green-eyed thing and some green dude in a red cloak. There are so many mods could I ever hope to play them all to see where they first appeared?

[Ceilick]

Some things to keep in mind:

Mod makers aren't professionals.

We have an eagerness to show off our work, sometimes doing so before its ready or rushing through it.

The modder them self is always going to have an easier time with their own levels, so without a beta tester they're bound to be hard.

Modders, it seems to me, are also the most adept players at Keen, and therefore find things easier.

Keenrush is notoriously excellent at maneuvering in Keen 1-3, I was astounded by the video of him playing episode Smile.

I know I've personally tried to make harder levels because I don't want the player to just be able to blow through the mod. I want to make a game, not a walk in the park. I suspect this is likewise for other modders.

This isn't a justification for hardness, but an explanation for it: I agree, some of the mods are damn hard, episode smile as well as the various incarnations of shadow keen drove me insane. A new dope took me several hours over the course of a few days, but it was manageable: a level of hardness I particularly enjoyed.

Like this weird floaty green-eyed thing and some green dude in a red cloak. There are so many mods could I ever hope to play them all to see where they first appeared?

Eh? Gonna need some more information to be able to answer that.

[Syllypryde]

I almost blow a gasket over how frustrating some of these mods are. It's bad enough the original ID level designers put episode 3 together on a time deadline and made the levels so hard, but to see much harder things coming from modders who can take their time to polish these things is just sad.

Seeing that all you had to do to beat a new dope was to collect 314 IQ points, I thought "Oh yay, this is gonna be easy!" But I was dead wrong. DEAD. WRONG. It's filled with so many impossible jumps and so few IQ jars that the most I ever got was 209. I don't know how anybody could beat the thing. Generic Keen is only 1 level. I thought for sure it would be the quickest mod I ever played. But I was led so far astray. A mental image of that level is permanently burned in my brain from trying to beat it for 2 hours I think episode smile is the worst by far. I didn't get that far in it, but all the crazy jumping in the first few levels was enough to drive me bonkers. .........

Besides what Ceilick said, you also have to keep in mind that not all Keeners are at the same skill level. Some people struggle with Keen and others zip through like it is nothing! With that said, modders are most likely going to create mods and levelpacks that are going to be closest to their individual skill levels. I've heard KeenRush himself as well as other Keeners talk about how much of an expert KeenRush is at Keen. So it is of no surprise he is going to create challenging mods.

As for myself, I have said on a few occasions that I am more of a moderate player. Basically, easy is too easy and hard is very hard. Despite my moderate skill level, I found out a couple months ago that I do sometimes have the patience and the skill level to complete harder mods. I only have 4 levels done in Episode Smile and 9 levels done in A New Dope with a 268 IQ. But I know someday I will complete them both. Once in a while I might find myself with the patience and the hand and eye coordination to do harder mods.

Not only are modders going to create mods worthy of their own skill levels, they are also going to create them to the skill levels of the people they would like to play them. Modders who want KeenRush to play their mods are most likely going to make them harder just so KeenRush does not get too bored!

It all comes down to your own skill level and also your level of patience. Sometimes I just want to have fun and other times I might like a challenge. It all depends on my mood.

Patrick

[VikingBoyBilly]

There are these two parts in A new dope where regular jumping and pogo jumping doesn't work at all even though there's no other way than to jump to grab a blue key/avoid death. Does this require the "impossible pogo trick"? Because I never learned how to use it

[Commander Spleen]

The main problem with the harder mods is that they often their levels contain a sequence of high difficulty obstacles. Getting through four of them only to be killed by the fifth can significantly drain morale. And then there's the lives system that will eventually force you to restart the entire game! The beta release of Monky Business 1 was guilty of this, though reviews were mixed with some people not finding it terribly difficult.

There has been an infinite lives patch available for Keen 1 for some time, and I now prefer to use it for every mod I can. Official use in mods is less than ideal at this stage though, as it results in the possibility of obtaining an infinite score. The ideal solution to this is to have an in-level score that's separate from the total score, which is added at the completion of the level or zeroed at death. Basically it's the same as saving before a level and loading every time you die. I'm looking into it, but it will take some work.

In my mods, the levels are now aimed at being much more balanced, with two or three high difficulty areas each at maximum, and a greater focus on aesthetics and progression rather than tormenting the player.

[Levellass]

Having grown up not knowing about saved games, and also beta testing LL's stuff, I hope my mod isn't difficult at all. (Did I succeed?)

[Dynamo]

For example the mod The Civilisation Inside was well done but too hard for my tastes. The same applies to Episode Dash. Awesome mods but really, too hard...

I'm fine with hard mods of keen 4-6 because you can save the game when you're in a level. But hard mods for keen 1-3 sometimes get annoying because of this.

[tulip]

I think I know the places you talk about in A New Dope, and yes it is something like an impossible pogo you have to use, but it won't take you higher than a normal pogo, but you can jump wider from a cliff if you do it right.

I can agree with what Ceilick said, and it's certainly difficult to forsee if anyone will have trouble with your mods with out a beta tester, because you know your on level (you built it). A level where you are not at home is much harder.

The better you get, the more fun you'll have with difficult mods. (I personally like the Episode A of ShadowKeen 1 very much now)

I'd say if a mod is too hard for you, try others, and then try it again later, sometimes it's a lot better then.

[shikadi]

some mods are indeed extreme (smile the worst), i remeber the first time i tried keenq i had 4 game overs before passing the second level, now i start the level, 2 minutes later done, next....

Tulips is right, don't play mods that are to hard, try them again later, i did with keenq, its now not that hard(it still gave me more then 20 game overs the first time i tried)
(i hope my mods aren't to hard, well i think nobody wants their modzs to be to hard)

[XkyRauh]

Another point to elaborate on what Ceilick said so well: When a modder is working on a new level, they know the layout--they know where the exit is, where the enemies are, where the secrets hide, where the points float, and where the traps/dead-ends lurk.

When they playtest a level, they're doing it in a biased fashion--because they already know the whole level. The only challenge is seeing how the AI will function within the environment they've created.

When another Keener downloads the levelpack or mod, they don't know the level. They don't know that the cliff up ahead is a blind jump to three extra lives; they don't know that the next cliff is a red herring, and jumping down there will kill you; they don't know that the third cliff is actually the way you have to go to beat the level...

After playing through Portal with the director's commentary on, it's amazing how much you have to essentially hold the player's hand and point out things that seem obvious in order to establish a game world.

This is why playtesting is important! When you make a mod, watch someone play it, but don't say anything. Just watch how they approach that dead-end, that cliff, that just-out-of-reach item. Observe how they handle the stress your level presents. Figure out if there's a visual pattern you can use to present a safe path; a dangerous one; a deceptive one.

Hold the player's hand at first, to build up trust, and then take away some of the cues. Maybe you always put arcs of points that lead to the MIDDLE of a platform offscreen, so that a player who jumps and follows the line winds up in a safe place? Maybe you always put a safety platform immediately off the edge of a cliff, so that a player can always safely fall off of any cliff, as long as they hug the wall? Maybe you never make any platforms of a certain color smaller than a certain size (3x3 tiles)?

Establish some consistency in your game world, so that you can present more complex situations without overwhelming and confusing your player! :D

[tulip]

Consistency is a good point. It can really be annoying when you are confused in every level what can kill you. Some modders deliberately many of those traps you can't possibly know before you've died there.
I normally add a lot of info to the F1 help or elsewhere in the menu, but I noticed that nobody seems to read these informations. (If anyone complains now that he was surprised to be killed by a white lollipop in my mod, I know he hasn't read the help.) So if you don't read it it's your own fault.
Still it's better if you manage to keep your mod intuitive, so that everything works as it looks like.

[Roobar]

I'm with VikingBoyBilly. Your mods are too hard. It's ok for some levels to be hard, but not most of them.

[XkyRauh]

If you're having trouble with my mods, I'm sorry. :) I tried to playtest the snot out of them--particularly Null and Dash.

[K1n9_Duk3]

I normally add a lot of info to the F1 help or elsewhere in the menu, but I noticed that nobody seems to read these informations. (If anyone complains now that he was surprised to be killed by a white lollipop in my mod, I know he hasn't read the help.) So if you don't read it it's your own fault.
Still it's better if you manage to keep your mod intuitive, so that everything works as it looks like.

Maybe some other features could help on keeping it intuitive. Something like the DIE!-signs in the first trilogy could be used to indicate that you should be careful an where you go. This should be easy to implement.
Another thing I could think of would be including messages like the ones Princess Lindsay gives in Keen 4, or the statues in Keen 1 and so on. Then you can just display a window giving the player a hint.

Just display the hint when the player is supposed to encounter a certain situation for the first time, so that he can learn about your mod-world. Displaying these hints all the time would rather be annoying than helpful.