Ninja Difficulty discussion + rating the Official Ninjas
A bit nervous about posting this, but seeing as no one else has made a thread about it I will.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RoguishRonin
Another thing we feel is very important is that the Ninja community comes up with a general consensus as to what constitutes each tier of Ninja track. Not only will this help us in the selection process but it will also assist players who are interested in testing their skills on these tracks for the first time.
So lately a number of people both in the community and RL have made good points about the different levels of ninja difficulty, that they aren't well defined or the lack of consensus on what the difficulties themselves mean. I'd like to post my thoughts regarding these issues as well as potential solutions. Note that my opinion comes from the perspective of someone who has been playing Trials since late June last year when I bought Trials Fusion, and currently at a skill level where the hardest RL ninja I've beaten is Inferno IV NJ (+top 50 global leaderboards on PC).
My Opinion on Difficulty
So difficulty, how should be it be defined? Its subjective, but I feel an important anchor to define it should be linear progression. For instance, when I started playing, as I started getting Gold medals on the Hard tracks, I was able to start getting through the Extreme tracks, starting with the easier extremes like Eye of the storm.
And to elaborate this is generally how I progressed through the main game: Get bronze, then silver on one difficulty, try a harder difficulty and timeout or give up, switch back down a difficulty and try to get gold, maybe succeed and go back up a difficulty and get bronze there, sometimes go down two difficulties from there and get the platinums now that it felt really easy there. etc. etc.
So translating that to Ninjas, I feel there's a fairly simple baseline: If someone gets Gold on an *easy* extreme, they should be able to get bronze an *easy* level 1 (at least after a few attempts). Getting Gold on W.O.T.M, one should be able to get bronze/scrape through pretty much any level 1, just due to WOTM being one of the hardest extremes to be consistent on. Then repeat the process on lvl1s > lvl2s (for nj tracks that medals are set up reasonably of course, maybe define that standard by faults and consistency rather than medals).
l also don't think whether someone can get platinum to be too important; this is because the relative difficulty of getting platinums switches around depending on the consistency (can you recover or are forced to fault) of certain obstacles. For instance, a lot of people seem to find the track Eye of the storm to be easier than Covert Ops. I feel this is only true from a speedrunning perspective. A new player will definitely get bronze on covert ops before they will get bronze on EOTS, BUT, trying to get Platinum? It switches around due to the physics objects that Covert Ops uses, creating a level of inconsistency that makes EOTS easier to zero-fault.
Also for this reason, I feel there is nothing wrong in calling something an "easy lvl1" or a "hard lvl2" etc. as long as this is set in stone. The problem arises when riders use "hard lvl1/easy lvl2" etc. mainly because they are conceding the fact the difficulty isn't properly defined. If the difficulty is properly defined, there is still a significant difference between a very difficult one level, and an easy upper level, for example: Covert Ops as a hard hard, is still significantly different from the easy extreme Eye of the storm. Meteorain as a hard extreme is still easier than the easy lvl 1 Eye of the storm Ninja. Another consistency example, Gigatrack might be more difficult to get a good medal on than an easy extreme, but that's due to length over difficulty. For that reason, it may be easier to get a Gold standard on EOTS Ninja than Way of the Machine, but EOTS Ninja has the more difficult individual obstacles, etc.
Back to defining Ninja difficulty, what's a good solution?
A good first step, as Shifty said is to get a community consensus, such as on the official Redlynx Ninjas. These ratings will serve as useful guide for track creators and riders who wish to define a track difficulty themselves, they can simply refer to the closest difficulty of which there is a Redlynx Ninja, and factor this into their decision. I have already filled in the ratings on tracks I have beaten, based somewhat on my above opinion. These tracks can be loaded up on any platform, console users can search these track names as being uploaded by FusionCommunity, PC users can find these uploaded by osoguineapig.
Hopefully any resulting debates in this thread can also help reach a consensus on things like obstacle difficulty. (esp. Front wheel/back wheel, would be good to hear opinions on that)
Ninja Difficulty Tally
| Track Name |
Difficulty Ratings |
| Eye of the Storm [NJ] |
1 1 |
| Rock of Rages [NJ] |
1 1 |
| Light City Run [NJ] |
1 2 |
| Frostbite [NJ] |
2 2 |
| Inferno IV [NJ] |
3 3 |
| Devil's Beak [NJ] |
2 |
| Way of the Machine [NJ] |
2 2 |
| Deluge [NJ] |
|
| Charred Remains [NJ] |
3 |
| Robot Wasteland [NJ] |
2 2 |
| Meteorain [NJ] |
4 |
So if you are a ninja rider please post in this thread your own difficulty ratings for these tracks. You don't have to beat the track to rate them (I personally choose not to), but provide justification in any case. I will post my rating justifications in the next post.
Ratings are appended like so: Frostbite 2 2 2 1 2 2 etc.