Topic: Super Mario Maker - OT

As someone who played Mario Paint as a kid I highly doubt it. You know what the first thing you did in that game was? Well usually you'd cover the screen in ridiculous patterns. Do silly animations involving cats and such. Go to the music composer mode and fill the whole thing with cats and pigs. That's what happens. You didn't go and intricately recreate specific things in that game and if you did it was with cats and it was awesome. That's what people will do with Mario Maker.

The only difference with Mario Maker is that they will then have to actually beat the level before they upload it. That'll be the lowest common denominator for a Mario Maker level. Someone will fill it with every enemy and item possible and then have to actually beat it. I actually expect online to be flooded with levels more along the lines of this:

If anyone has played Mario vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars, the vast majority of user created levels was absolute garbage. I'm glad Nintendo included their own share of levels.

@Octane: I have. Nice game but yes, there were next to no decent user-made levels. Nothing even close to Nintendo-levels of quality. Like every other M vs DK game after the 2nd one, I eventually gave up on making levels because they were often ignored...

@Pahvi: I was trying to counter your theory that online will be full of people doing bland levels. Because that's never what happened in Mario Paint (probably the closet thing to Mario Maker). In Mario Paint the "lowest" form of creation was you just messing around, throwing Cats and Pigs all over the place. But in Mario Maker that sort of excess is constrained by the fact that they have to be able to beat the level.

If the user generated levels are garbage then sure, I'll agree. But so far I don't see any reason to believe that they will be. The IGN level I posted above looks interesting enough. The clips I saw of the levels the people at Facebook created? They were also pretty damn good. I don't think we'll have a shortage of good levels to play. If you think that the user created levels will be garbage? Then fine, but..... if that's the case why are you even interested in this game? That's the ENTIRE point of this game.

You just need to know who makes the good levels. I remember on Warioware DIY I only got games from a handful of people (mostly N-lifers) because I trust their quality

@Pahvi:
Well here's a question then. Is a "Mario game" about the level design or the mechanics? Because I tend to think it's about the mechanics. In the same way that I would be ok with a Mario game that had a few procedurally generated levels. It wouldn't suddenly become "not Mario". And I'm sure there will be good levels and less good levels created by the public. But I don't doubt for a second that the vast majority will be pretty damn good. Because they'll share the same mechanics and because of the way I expect people to approach it I assume most levels will lean towards "this is insane" rather than "this is just a flat piece of terrain".

.... and I'm still surprised you thought that level created by IGN I linked to was average. It was short maybe but it was about on par with what you'd usually see in the 2nd world of a typical 2D Mario game. Also worth remembering that the NWC levels weren't created by Nintendo's dev team either. And those levels were insanely good.

I'm hoping the game has some sort of system where you can rate levels and/or follow your favorite creators. For every five levels that involve enemies swarming you in a dick shaped maze or something of the sort, you'll get at least one that is legitimately well-designed from a person who is interested in creating interesting and compelling levels.

I've already got mine planned on graph paper

@Ralizah: It is confirmed that stages will be able to be rated by other players. As you may know you can only post more courses if your ratings are high enough. I did hear somewhere that following would be something you can do but I am not entirely sure on that.

So I am beginning to think that they may not actually release a Console bundle in North America in time for the release of this game. Given that, does anyone have a favorite retailer that offers a Wii-U console cheaper than the others? Or a better question, how often does Wii-U go on sale? Trying to determine when / where to buy the console to prep for the game in Sept.

@Askeptic: All retailers are probably going to have the Wii U set to the manufacturer's suggested retail price. Your best bet is to go to a used games store.

@Askeptic: Get a refurbished system from the Nintendo Store if you want to save money. Haven't heard a bad thing about them, they're supposed to look as good as a new system.

Here's a link: https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/browse/productDetailColorSizeP...
It's $200 for the 32GB model, it also comes with Nintendo Land.

They should have a player ranking system too. Set up tournaments of hand picked user created levels and have a scoring system. It would be cool for creators to have something to strive for like being included in a tournament level set.

I think wanting levels to be included with this game is not missing the point either. Much of the excitement generated for this game has been from trailers showing created levels being played. Yes these show off what is possible with the creation tools but they mostly get you excited to play awesome levels like the ones being shown. If I can't play some of the cool levels that have been shown in trailers and such it will be disappointing. The more pre-made levels included the better.

Nonsense, once again, you're missing the point.

This package is about having fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with one hoping that there's a solid slate of professionally designed levels to complement the experience.

Stop trying to limit this title and push your opinions on others that don't feel the same as you. We all have different priorities here. That I'm more looking forward to playing the game than creating my own levels, and want a selection of pre-made levels created by professionals that represent a known quantity, doesn't mean that I'm missing the boat here.

Clearly, Nintendo agrees with me and will be including a solid slate of levels to start everyone off with that want to just jump in and play, see demonstrations on the possibilities at their fingertips with the level editor, etc. Not only that, but it's just being realistic to realize that even with the best online setup in the world to manage uploads and sort them, it's going to take time for people's creativity to shine and for the best creations to rise to the top. Even with the best of user-created content, a nice selection of professionally designed levels is important for those buying this on day 1.

Plus, who wants to just jump in and go immediately searching to download a bunch of one-off creations for something to play (Not allowing for a full 32 level user created experience is by biggest gripe with this title, so far)? Obviously, Nintendo's setup here to include a bunch of quality levels available immediately is really the only thing they could've done to create a full package that pleases everyone.

@GoneFishin: I'm pretty sure the pre-packaged levels are there primarily to give ideas to players to make their own levels. You're gonna pay full price for Super Mario Maker for the pre-packaged levels? If you want "professionally" made levels. there are already many Mario games that you can play.

I'm going to be one wanting to just jump in and go immediately searching to download a bunch of one-off creations because that is this game's purpose.

sighs
People STILL complain too much.

I agree. While I will tinker with the level creation a bit first, immediately after that I'll go check out the user created levels people have created so far. The invluded levels aren't my biggest priority.

The majority of things posted on the Miiverse for Smash Bros is absolute garbage too, but if you sort them by ratings, the ones that get rated high are really, really good. I'd imagine they'd have a similar system in Mario Maker for finding levels.

I am wondering how long our titles for our stages can be. Hopefully not too short.

Some stage ideas I have...

Larry's Hideout
Wendy's Winter Wonderland
Lemmy's Circus
Morton's Cave
Iggy's Fun House
Roy's River
Ludwig's Symphony Street
Bowser Jr's Airship

It sucks that we can't use the Koopalings as pallete swaps for Bowser Jr (it wouldn't have been hard for them to make) but I'll have to just try and make the Koopaling's faces out of coins or other items in their stage.

From what I could tell from some demo levels, they can get lengthy. Dunno how many sub-levels you can have in the final version, though.