Dear Metanet: N++ userlevel browsing vs. NUMA
Posted: 2016.11.23 (21:50)
So I'm loving N++ so far, after AGDing basically all of the N++ levels (only a couple episodes to go!) - the game is smooth as hell, looks great, and your levels are really fun. But I can't help feeling like it's lacking pretty badly compared to 1.4 in one of the most important ways - it's missing NUMA.
NUMA was the best part of the original game. Besides the forums/IRC, the community revolved around posting levels, getting feedback and ratings on them, sharing demos on them, discussing them in the comments section, etc. When I found this game, it was the first time I'd ever seen such an awesome, fun, friendly and helpful community online, and it hooked me hard. I posted tons of maps to NUMA, I collaborated with people, I made mappacks, I posted on the forums, I chatted in IRC. I was obsessed, and NUMA was (almost) entirely to blame.
This game is missing that, and it's sad. Without its insanely dedicated mapping community, this game would never have survived as long or as well as it has, and this latest development for PC N players is a huge step backwards in that regard. I totally get that you guys want to let people do all their userlevel stuff within the game rather than using an external website, especially with players on PS4, but there are a few features that I think are really, really necessary if you want to foster the kind of mapmaking community you had around 1.4.
In no specific order:
- Comments on maps! Seriously, this is huge. Right now there's basically no way to get feedback on maps at all besides number of ++s which is badly inadequate.
- Ratings on maps - maybe not as important as comments, but I really want to be able to get a better sense of how good a map is. ++s don't really tell you much besides 'a few people sorta thought this was good'.
- Demos on maps - I loved being able to post a run in the comments on NUMA and compete with other people for speedruns/highscores on featured maps. It encourages people to play each others' maps which is awesome.
- User profiles - being able to play through all of an author's maps if you really liked them was also key in building a community of people who knew each others' work, and as far as I can tell you can't search by author on the current N++ userlevel search. Also, it was awesome to be able to highlight some of your best/favourite work in your profile - I found tons of good maps and authors that way.
- Actual features - I want to know why a map was featured, and by who! Reading reviews of featured maps was a really cool way to find maps that you would really like, or to figure out what other people thought made a map truly amazing.
- Tags - as far as I can tell you can't add tags to maps/search by tag, which was huge for discoverability. I liked being able to do things like tag a mappack with the name of the pack, so people could search that tag and get only the mappack, or just things as simple as searching for genres of maps.
Maybe there are a few more things that would be really useful, but I think that gets the core of it well. I really want this game's mapping community to be as awesome or awesomer than 1.4 in its heyday, but I don't think the game really supports it right now. Hopefully it can someday :)
And thanks again for another awesome N game :D :D :D
NUMA was the best part of the original game. Besides the forums/IRC, the community revolved around posting levels, getting feedback and ratings on them, sharing demos on them, discussing them in the comments section, etc. When I found this game, it was the first time I'd ever seen such an awesome, fun, friendly and helpful community online, and it hooked me hard. I posted tons of maps to NUMA, I collaborated with people, I made mappacks, I posted on the forums, I chatted in IRC. I was obsessed, and NUMA was (almost) entirely to blame.
This game is missing that, and it's sad. Without its insanely dedicated mapping community, this game would never have survived as long or as well as it has, and this latest development for PC N players is a huge step backwards in that regard. I totally get that you guys want to let people do all their userlevel stuff within the game rather than using an external website, especially with players on PS4, but there are a few features that I think are really, really necessary if you want to foster the kind of mapmaking community you had around 1.4.
In no specific order:
- Comments on maps! Seriously, this is huge. Right now there's basically no way to get feedback on maps at all besides number of ++s which is badly inadequate.
- Ratings on maps - maybe not as important as comments, but I really want to be able to get a better sense of how good a map is. ++s don't really tell you much besides 'a few people sorta thought this was good'.
- Demos on maps - I loved being able to post a run in the comments on NUMA and compete with other people for speedruns/highscores on featured maps. It encourages people to play each others' maps which is awesome.
- User profiles - being able to play through all of an author's maps if you really liked them was also key in building a community of people who knew each others' work, and as far as I can tell you can't search by author on the current N++ userlevel search. Also, it was awesome to be able to highlight some of your best/favourite work in your profile - I found tons of good maps and authors that way.
- Actual features - I want to know why a map was featured, and by who! Reading reviews of featured maps was a really cool way to find maps that you would really like, or to figure out what other people thought made a map truly amazing.
- Tags - as far as I can tell you can't add tags to maps/search by tag, which was huge for discoverability. I liked being able to do things like tag a mappack with the name of the pack, so people could search that tag and get only the mappack, or just things as simple as searching for genres of maps.
Maybe there are a few more things that would be really useful, but I think that gets the core of it well. I really want this game's mapping community to be as awesome or awesomer than 1.4 in its heyday, but I don't think the game really supports it right now. Hopefully it can someday :)
And thanks again for another awesome N game :D :D :D