Way of the Machine
Eye of the Storm Ninja
That's a part of the ninja ego, the levels DON'T change, no matter how skilled we are. And some players tend to forget that, that leads to mistakes in the tracklist and countless debates.Originally Posted by Smilies2013 Go to original post
Venomz, Frostbite NJ is a 2 imo, haven't had really much trouble completing it. But still quite a hard 2.
Also why not splitting the levels into level 1.1, 1.2, etc ? That'd give us a more precise rating and it could perhaps help the new players on knowing which track to try next after they passed one.
The main issue with that I think is there aren't enough Ninjas rating tracks. So what may easily end up happening is one track being rated one point higher or below when it could be the other way around to a varying degree. Honestly I think the current "Easy Hard Inconsistent etc." way of describing tracks is a lot more useful, and will result in less arguments about very small degrees of difficulty.Also why not splitting the levels into level 1.1, 1.2, etc ? That'd give us a more precise rating and it could perhaps help the new players on knowing which track to try next after they passed one.
And I don't think the levelling system as it is now is that broken, it was useful enough as I was going through tracks trying ninjas for the first time, I knew that sticking to level 1s was stuff I could beat, albeit I didn't have the information on what was "easy 1" or "hard 1" which may have been useful. But going through the RL ninjas in ascending order of difficulty (which is the same as track order for the base game RL ninjas), was fine.
The main issue is difficulty inflation, as smilies and psykoz have put it. And I think the best thing to do about that is to freeze the difficulty levels ASAP by having as many ninja riders possible rate the current RL ninjas. So whatever they end up being rated as they'll stay that way forever.
To be fair though, Redlynx themselves have been making extremes more difficult, which hasn't helped. To illustrate this, I put up a simple poll for the thread: Which is more difficult if you shorten Way of the Machine to the same length as the Eye of the Storm Ninja? (Remember, difficulty should be about overall checkpoints not the length making it harder to zero fault, include the hardest wotm cps in your view). Now I think EOTS NJ in this case is still more difficult, but lets see what other people think![]()
Hello,
I've read all the comments (awesome!). Firstly I'm not speaking for the com dev team, just my own opinion.
One thing I want to get out the way as I'm curious to what you mean -The inconsistency thing? Every hidden ninja line obstacles on every track on the extremes is completely static. The only thing that can possibly be inconsistent is the bike that you are controlling. Do you mean difficulty spikes?Ok, so I rate this lvl1 because I feel the obstacles are level 1, but some are not recoverable and very inconsistent, such as the 2nd and 5th cps. 5th cp especially is just a really good bunny hop into either catching the back wheel above the obstacle and recovering, or getting the front wheel right over and leaning back at the right time. Any mistake there is a fault.
So a few things I have mentioned a lot in the past and recently is how ninjas have been handled in the past and the com dev team are doing good on bringing that up again. Ambassadors sounds good! there needs to be representatives on making a level system work, it's pretty fundamental for most things that work this way. Also the suggestion of using the beginner, easy, medium etc difficulties along with the ninja tags sounds like a nice idea to represent levels.
I personally think that people are not that far off on what the levels are on ninjas in the first place, there seems to be at least a good understanding already.
I won't blabber on too much as I'm not someone that is super amazing at ninja levels but just another voice with an opinion to somehow achieve and move forward with finding a solution to showing true ninja levels and doing it the right way.
I personally suggest Jeruhnq to be one as he's been around a long time, has all the consoles. I have no idea if he wants to.
Also I think that at least for now a page should be set up that have all the 5 ninja level categories set up and then suggestions getting brought in to that thread and then having discussions on if it's correct or not with the ambassadors having the approval if it's correct or not, rather than just discussing what ninja levels are with no progression.
Ok, peace!
PS. Ascension for cross plat ;P (just my opinion)
And the 1.2 level thing I disagree with, I don't think it needs to be made more complicated when a simplistic level 1 2 3 4 5 system is clear enough, it's pretty precise already, the rest should be left to opinions to keep it clear.
Yea I wrote that up terribly. I meant its somewhat precise and not recoverable, but maybe that's more of a level 2 cp anyway. Light City Run I think is one of the most difficult ninjas to rate accurately, so I'm going to re-evaluate it and break it down, see what conclusion from it I can draw...Originally Posted by DJ_2wItchY Go to original post
Judging Mixed Difficulty
Light City Run CPs: 1 - 2 - 1 - . - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 (. = non-ninja checkpoint there from the extreme)
Now in order to rate the individual checkpoints like that I have to ask myself: "Is this one step above extreme difficulty or two steps above?". Second checkpoint is a really careful angle to land on with precise throttle, so I'll judge it as a 2. Then the big bunny hop cp which you need a fair amount of experience landing on, combined with the follow up obstacles that have to be done right, I'll also call it a 2. Only one i'm slightly unsure about: second last checkpoint: backwheel bounce into smooth landing and bunny hop onto the two incline angles. So if I compare an obstacle like this to, for instance the last cp on meteorain, its similar, a good backwheel bounce onto another follow up bounce from a log, this I would say its one step up from that, so a level 1.
So we have a track with mostly level 1 checkpoints, but two level 2 checkpoints. The question is, rate it as 1 or 2 overall? I feel like if you have one outlier checkpoint in a track, such as a level4/5 cp on Charred Remains NJ but the rest is level 3, then rate it level 3 even with that one difficulty spike. Light City Run NJ has two outliers, or 22% level 2 checkpoints.
If for example you have a mixed track with half lvl 1 and half lvl 2 cps. I'd say its best to use the highest difficulty as the difficulty floor, so its a level 2. But at what threshold is this appropriate? Light City Run's lvl 2 to lvl 1 ratio is 22%, do we vote this as level 1 and make the threshold 25% or higher? or vote this as level 2 and make the threshold 20% or lower? All these questions for something as simple as rating a track's ninja difficulty :P
Also did the same thing with Robot Wasteland, three lvl2 cps the rest lvl1s, decided to rate it as lvl2 instead, to make sure the difficulty represents how difficult it will be to past the track. I'd say rating the individual CPs one by one is definitely the way the go if you are unsure whether a track is one difficulty or another, should help make an overall decision.
Thanks for the suggestion Psykoz & Twitchy but to be honest, i don't want to be a ninja ambassador (btw Twitchy, i only have a ps4).
To reply to the OP, this discussion has been done a ton of time, people rate tracks because of their own skill and opinions ... and people disagree because they are not the sames.
In my opinion the best way to rate ninja tracks, without considering the lvl 1-5 rating system, would be to have a constant leaderboard/program where there is a list of ninja tracks with number of players + faults number of players. The tracks with most players + least faults would be at the top and the tracks with least players + most faults would be at the bottom.
The whole ninja community has changed and is much MUCH bigger than it was on Trials HD (just look at the number of lvl 4 & 5 on HD and compare to Evo or Fusion), which i didn't know.
About the poll, i think the number of cp should not count to define the lvl of a track, it will just be a very long ninja lvl X, harder than usual but in the same category.
I wrote this initially based on the RL ninja recommended thread, forgot this thread popped up. But I'm posting it here since it's more appropriate. Don't have the time to read everything here, but I hope what I wrote relevant to the discussion.
Originally Posted by fleskeknoke Go to original post
The lvl1 obstacles where you don't have a checkpoint in between don't make it a lvl2. It usually makes it a badly designed lvl1 track.The same rules of proper track building from lower difficulties still apply for ninja's. It's not because they are harder, they are exempt from those rules. This means that stretching obstacles for the sake of making them harder is (usually) bad track design.
Ofcourse there are some exceptions, just like in other track, but it has to be consistently troughout the track in my opinion for it to be acceptable. I mean with this, if you want to make a level 2, either make obstacles with techniques used for level 2's, or stretch out obstacles with lvl1 techniques to make it lvl 2-difficulty but do it consistent troughout the track. My opinion is, whenever you can pauze between obstacles it's usually better to place a checkpoint, specially with ninja's, even tough this is even more of a grey area than regular difficulties.
As a very noob ninja rider I like the idea of using the ingame difficulties proposed by RL to label ninja's. It would make it easier to find them (provided we also get a search function for tags)
What I think would help with classifying ninja's is defining some techniques linked to certain difficulties.Notice I say, techniques, not obstacles.Wich are interwoven, but not the same. Ofcourse, for ninja's, I think, will most of the time mean linking extreme techniques after another, with no pauzes in between.
Like implied in the part, I also think there are different ways to make ninja's (tracks). You can build a ninja with ninja techniques that are linked to a certain ninja difficulty, but you can also artificially up the difficulty by stretching obstacles. Like I said, stretching level 1 obstacles will make it a higher difficulty than a level 1, if you still consider it a level 1 that just means the obstacles needed checkpoints and it's bad design.
Some inconsistent rambling, but I hope you guys can understand what I mean. I think the most important part to define difficulties properly is starting to think more in terms of techniques/combo techniques instead of obstacles.
First off, it's great to see you guys being pro-active in getting this discussion going. A lot of interesting points so far and while it might not seem like it yet in the thread I think you are on your way to making great progress.
A few thoughts from me. Keep in mind I'm not a ninja player so my opinions might not be perfectly suited for ninjas but I think at their base ninjas are still just Trials tracks so we should be able to use at least some of the same basic ideas to determine difficulty rating.
Difficulty should not be based on any one player's skil level or even a group of players skill level. Skill level is always going to be biased. No matter how good you are there is probably somebody better and no matter how bad you are there is probably somebody who is worse. To complicate things even further skill level changes. The more you play the more you improve. Determining difficulty settings based on how hard or easy the track was for you is going to fail and I personally feel is the main problem with the current system. Many ninja builders are rating their ninja tracks based on how hard they are for them to complete. In many cases the players might have a frame of reference from other ninjas so their rating could be close but it's never going to be truely accurate (the track almost always will feel easier to the builder than it actually is).
I think it's much better to define certain standards based on techniques required, obstacles and checkpoints (by the way I also agree that making a checkpoint longer is an artifical way to increase difficulty but people will continue to do it so we should factor for it). Obviously it's still a very grey area but I think Steiner was onto something with this post:
Also bass... I mean, mayne got right to the point (at the end of a very long postOriginally Posted by Steiner84 Go to original post)
What is required to pass a checkpoint is going to be a better indication of dificulty than what kind of obstacle it is or how hard it is for certain players.Originally Posted by IImayneII Go to original post
Finally I think Jeruhnq brought up an interesting idea:
I'm not sure how possible this would be to implement in game (I wouldn't hold my breath) but I do think something like this could help stear the discussion. If we look at a cross section of ninja tracks sorted by these factors it could at least show a progression of difficulty based on the entire community's skill level and give some ideas to the level of certain tracks. I don't think this would be a clear definition as there are other factors that can affect these numbers (older tracks will have more players, DLC tracks will likely have less players, etc.) but I think we could use this kind of data to help better gauge the dificulty of some of these factors you have been discussing.Originally Posted by Jeruhnq Go to original post
I'll see if I can get this data for a selection of ninja tracks to help the process.
First off, it's great to see you guys being pro-active in getting this discussion going. A lot of interesting points so far and while it might not seem like it yet in the thread I think you are on your way to making great progress.
A few thoughts from me. Keep in mind I'm not a ninja player so my opinions might not be perfectly suited for ninjas but I think at their base ninjas are still just Trials tracks so we should be able to use at least some of the same basic ideas to determine difficulty rating.
Difficulty should not be based on any one player's skil level or even a group of players skill level. Skill level is always going to be biased. No matter how good you are there is probably somebody better and no matter how bad you are there is probably somebody who is worse. To complicate things even further skill level changes. The more you play the more you improve. Determining difficulty settings based on how hard or easy the track was for you is going to fail and I personally feel is the main problem with the current system. Many ninja builders are rating their ninja tracks based on how hard they are for them to complete. In many cases the players might have a frame of reference from other ninjas so their rating could be close but it's never going to be truely accurate (the track almost always will feel easier to the builder than it actually is).
I think it's much better to define certain standards based on techniques required, obstacles and checkpoints (by the way I also agree that making a checkpoint longer is an artifical way to increase difficulty but people will continue to do it so we should factor for it). Obviously it's still a very grey area but I think Steiner was onto something with this post:
Also bass... I mean, mayne got right to the point (at the end of a very long postOriginally Posted by Steiner84 Go to original post)
What is required to pass a checkpoint is going to be a better indication of dificulty than what kind of obstacle it is or how hard it is for certain players.Originally Posted by IImayneII Go to original post
Finally I think Jeruhnq brought up an interesting idea:
I'm not sure how possible this would be to implement in game (I wouldn't hold my breath) but I do think something like this could help stear the discussion. If we look at a cross section of ninja tracks sorted by these factors it could at least show a progression of difficulty based on the entire community's skill level and give some ideas to the level of certain tracks. I don't think this would be a clear definition as there are other factors that can affect these numbers (older tracks will have more players, DLC tracks will likely have less players, etc.) but I think we could use this kind of data to help better gauge the dificulty of some of these factors you have been discussing.Originally Posted by Jeruhnq Go to original post
I'll see if I can get this data for a selection of ninja tracks to help the process.
Originally Posted by cannibalshogun Go to original post
very problematic imo.
very very problematic.
First, people grind tracks. On their first run they might 150 fault the track, the gruind it a few times and post a 20 fault run.
You would need to track the first run of players for that.
wich leads to the second problem: Premature restarts. There are a good amount of players who just restart the track over and over before the finish until they get a good run. So when they post the first score on the LB they have practically beaten the track 4 times allready.
Other players dont do this and just play a track once, from start to finish without restart and subsequently post a much higher fault run then what they would end up with when they would have restarted a few times.
so, scores are, more often then not, not compareable..