Mario Moneyball: How to Make a Popular Level in Mario Maker

teh lurv

Arstechnica posted an article the other day where the author used the Mario Maker course stats and rankings to get an idea what makes a popular course in Mario Maker. The article does a good job breaking down the inadequacies of the game's current course sorting and what could be done to improve upon them:



http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/how-to-make-a-popular-super-mario-maker-level/

theirontoupee

Agreed - "it's a bit sad that so many Super Mario Maker players apparently like watching the game play itself at least as much as taking an active part in the level."

TeamOnett

Nintendo doesn't have a very good idea of online organization(looking at you miiverse)

quest4nes

This was obvious day 1. What he fails at though is the point at hard levels are at the top.



Super meat bros level is from andre from game x plain. Its top star status isnt because its hard. Its because its a popular youtube chsnnel. If that was made by you or me it would probably only have 10 stars.



My first level on my wii u  I uploaded last sunday has 11 stars so far. Its doing well.

Kosmic StarDust

I agree that a percentage sliding scale should be used. Give more weight to recently starred levels, and more weight to levels with high star percentages. Gradually decrease the weight of levels as time passes. Also an option to load totally "random" stages outside of 100 Mario mode, would help a great deal. Maybe also a difficulty slider to help define a target completion rate when searching instead of easy-normal-hard. I played a 100 Mario Easy mode and was very underwhelmed at the complete lack of creativity. Many stages were just short sample levels with a few tweaks. Some were devoid of enemies. Normal mode I completed after my first playthrough with about 50-something lives left. I saw a lot of good level designs in there, and a few wtf?



And I really don't mind the autoscrollers. They are a breath of fresh air after trolling through a tough stage.

thesubcon3

Ironically, all of my super easy levels have very high ratings. I think with the current system, people just star levels once they beat it.

Andy_Bogomil

^ agreed. I also find putting things in the title really helps. My Amazon Duck Tales level has a lot more stars than anything else mainly because of the name I think. The randoms ones I see with the highest ranking is almost always 'Mario Redux', 'Mega Man theme', 'Zelda theme', 'Metroid theme' etc.



Auto play levels or ones with giant sprites drawn on them also seem to do well. I'm pretty much done with the random part of this game though. I only play levels that people put codes up for or spend time making my own challenges. 4/5 random levels are typically terrible.



I also realize how many people are terrible at this game. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but even my easy levels have less than 10% success rate for the most part. I can't believe it. I think a lot of people die once or twice and call it a day, which is a shame.

Kosmic StarDust

Originally posted by: Andy_Bogomil



^ agreed. I also find putting things in the title really helps. My Amazon Duck Tales level has a lot more stars than anything else mainly because of the name I think. The randoms ones I see with the highest ranking is almost always 'Mario Redux', 'Mega Man theme', 'Zelda theme', 'Metroid theme' etc.



Auto play levels or ones with giant sprites drawn on them also seem to do well. I'm pretty much done with the random part of this game though. I only play levels that people put codes up for or spend time making my own challenges. 4/5 random levels are typically terrible.



I also realize how many people are terrible at this game. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but even my easy levels have less than 10% success rate for the most part. I can't believe it. I think a lot of people die once or twice and call it a day, which is a shame.

I've noticed this too. A lot of levels I have cleared have low success rates. But occasionally I have a lot of dumb deaths so if it took me ten lives to figure out how to clear a stage, and the success rate is 10%, then I am average player I guess...

DarkTone

Still debating on getting it.

Andy_Bogomil

Originally posted by: stardust4ever

Originally posted by: Andy_Bogomil



^ agreed. I also find putting things in the title really helps. My Amazon Duck Tales level has a lot more stars than anything else mainly because of the name I think. The randoms ones I see with the highest ranking is almost always 'Mario Redux', 'Mega Man theme', 'Zelda theme', 'Metroid theme' etc.



Auto play levels or ones with giant sprites drawn on them also seem to do well. I'm pretty much done with the random part of this game though. I only play levels that people put codes up for or spend time making my own challenges. 4/5 random levels are typically terrible.



I also realize how many people are terrible at this game. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but even my easy levels have less than 10% success rate for the most part. I can't believe it. I think a lot of people die once or twice and call it a day, which is a shame.

I've noticed this too. A lot of levels I have cleared have low success rates. But occasionally I have a lot of dumb deaths so if it took me ten lives to figure out how to clear a stage, and the success rate is 10%, then I am average player I guess...





 

Looking back on the death spots marked with the red 'X', they almost always fall within the first couple jumps or enemies. Unless the stage is total bonkers or just really boring, dying actually makes me want to play the level more.

Kosmic StarDust

Originally posted by: Andy_Bogomil

Originally posted by: stardust4ever

Originally posted by: Andy_Bogomil



^ agreed. I also find putting things in the title really helps. My Amazon Duck Tales level has a lot more stars than anything else mainly because of the name I think. The randoms ones I see with the highest ranking is almost always 'Mario Redux', 'Mega Man theme', 'Zelda theme', 'Metroid theme' etc.



Auto play levels or ones with giant sprites drawn on them also seem to do well. I'm pretty much done with the random part of this game though. I only play levels that people put codes up for or spend time making my own challenges. 4/5 random levels are typically terrible.



I also realize how many people are terrible at this game. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but even my easy levels have less than 10% success rate for the most part. I can't believe it. I think a lot of people die once or twice and call it a day, which is a shame.

I've noticed this too. A lot of levels I have cleared have low success rates. But occasionally I have a lot of dumb deaths so if it took me ten lives to figure out how to clear a stage, and the success rate is 10%, then I am average player I guess...





 

Looking back on the death spots marked with the red 'X', they almost always fall within the first couple jumps or enemies. Unless the stage is total bonkers or just really boring, dying actually makes me want to play the level more.

IS there a way to view the red X on my own uploaded level without playing through it on my own? I can see them with the level zoomed out, but sometimes I wanna see closer up.



But I totally get it if there's a pitfall of some wort right when you start the level. A particularly evil way to do it is to place an enemy right in front of Mario so he has to jump up immediately or get hit.



Too bad you can't start with Mario standing on a platform hovering over a lava pit. That would be sooo evil...

quest4nes

I have noticed that the levels I am playing are getting better than they were week 1 and 2. I think all the hasty people just throwing levels up they didnt spend time on is slowing down and more time and effort to get stars is being made now.



Still see shitty levels atleast 1/3 of the time though now. I know it might be mean, but when I see something just so lazy or dumb I make sure I leave a comment for them to try harder because what they did wasnt good. It gives them a star which sucks, but atleast they will see it. Usually I am the only star or comment they get though.

Kosmic StarDust

Just don't play 100 marios on easy mode. Most of those levels are stupid retarded with zero effort. Half of them were sample builder stages with little to no enemies placed. I have seen some awesome stuff in normal however. Don't have the balls yet to try the "expert" mode I unlocked.

Andy_Bogomil

It's hard to find a balance. I find normal to be too easy for the most part and expert is just annoying. Expert is really where the game falls apart. It's so hard to find a good difficult level. They're almost always a mess or have some gimmick to them.