Barrybarfly's Track Emporium - "Finale". | Forums

[Barrybarfly]

Having checked other replays, it seems like other people dont seem to have much trouble with the obstacle if they carry momentum. Maybe its like the barrel on The wreck, which I cant pass to save my life but everyone else has no trouble with. Perhaps my obstacle just doesnt fit your "eye" for some reason? Either way, sorry you dont like it and it spoilied things for you.

As for the flow, there are 2 spots where I wasnt sure if the top guys would need to slow down or not but knew that many of us would have to. Maybe in future I can make those kind of situations slightly easier, to help the flow and try to prevent it affecting the difficulty too much. This was my first extreme track (due to certain obstacles I wanted to keep) and I was wary of making some things too easy, which is maybe where I went wrong?

Anyway, although we may disagree about the final obstacle, I have taken your feedback on board. I feel that even if I disagree about my final obstacle, in future it may be best to follow your advice, simply to widen the range of appeal (so to speak) and make sure more people enjoy a track. So please dont think I'm just being defensive or argumentative! I only started this editing lark in Evo, so I'm still very much finding my feet compared to many people which is why there have been certain issues with some tracks. But hopefully I'm getting to the stage where I'm going to hit gold soon and manage to pull everything together in ONE track, instead of spreading it across three of them! LOL

Thanks very much for taking the time to try the track and to leave feedback, its always very appreciated.

[rlmergeuser]

I'll go try your track again to see if I was just sucking or something.

[Barrybarfly]

Like I say, I find that sometimes an obstacle just doesnt seem to fit my eye and I really struggle with it and yet noone else does. Its irritating as all hell because I dont seem to be able to do anything about it. That barrel near the end of The wreck drives me insane and yet noone else seems to struggle with it!

Hopefully you were having an off day and you'll find it ok this time. Either way, its certainly an obstacle I'll be keeping an eye on in replays to see wether people have too much hassle with it. It may be that other people just got fed up with it and never finished so there's no replays of people struggling with obstacles, so I'll still be taking your first feedback on board for the future anyway.

[rlmergeuser]

Alright I thoroughly tested that track and I can say that it was good up until the end. I'm going to add that the second to last obstacle also isn't very good.

I could consistently 0 fault your track up until the last two obstacles. Those two jumps are just waaay too hard. I kept hitting tiny bumps in the driving line that would screw me over because if I didn't hit the ramps perfectly I was dead. It felt like it was based more on luck. Sometimes I would go flying over those two jumps really easily, other times I couldn't even get close. The last obstacle is also 100 times harder from the checkpoint, which isn't fair at all. I would bet quite a few people got stuck at that last checkpoint and gave up.

Those types of obstacles just don't belong in an extreme track. They aren't technical, they're just medium obstacles except harder. Do you see any obstacles like that in Redlynx's extreme tracks? No, and I think there is a reason.

[Barrybarfly]

Fair enough. Maybe I should have ended the track "during" the first jump so that the landing was some kind of death scene?

Thanks for putting in the time to test it out and leave feedback. Like I say, this was my first extreme track, so the jumps were somewhat of a learning experience (apparently! lol). At least the rest of the track worked ok. I certainly feel like I could do another extreme track and take on board what I learnt from this one in order to improve a future one.

So far I seem to be a little stuck in "4 star territory". Everything seems to be fine except for one thing in each track! Either scenery, or one obstacle or one transition. But I learn something new with each track and still manage to produce a track which I feel is better than many on TC know, not that great an achievement! lol). So if I can just start to bring everything together on the one track, it should be a winner.

The toughest thing is to NOT have people like yourself coming into this thread and constructively criticising. I dont really care if all the replies in this thread are considered to be negative and people avoid my tracks because of them. At least then I would be learning what does and doesnt work for everyone and could consistently produce good tracks that everyone wants to play.

So thanks for the feedback, its the most useful tool for new creators like myself and something we often dont have available to us.

[rlmergeuser]

Here's some more feedback that doesn't involve the last two obstacles:

I looked at the leaderboards and it said you had like 17 faults on that track. Was that your best attempt or just a random attempt? I know your probably not the best player in the world but I would generally suggest against releasing tracks that you can't 0 fault and get platinum on yourself.

However, if that was your best attempt, then this track came out surprisingly well for someone who doesn't speedrun extreme tracks. The majority of the obstacles flowed well into each other.

The platinum time was a bit rough. On an extreme track it is usually best to be pretty lenient on the platinum time. For example, I beat the platinum time on Way of the Ninja by about 80 seconds and it wasn't an amazing run or anything. 1:30 isn't way too hard, but it does require a pretty flawless run to get it. I think the best way to set the platinum time on an extreme track is to assume that the rider isn't going to transition flawlessly between each obstacle, and that they are going to have to stop between most of them.

[emcee]

I think at some point you are gonna nail it and make a 5 star track mate. I agree with the butt about the last 2 checkpoints, the huge jump over the explosives just killed me I couldnt figure out a way to make it over and I gave up there. Up to that point it was a really nice track man the obstacles felt good to get over and the double logs at the top of the incline felt sweet when I figured out how to hop them like they didnt exist. Keep trying man, you will get there! Dont worry too much about the lack of responses, this place can be very cliquey and if your name isnt known its hard to get it known.

I wonder if you might have more success aiming for a medium track (if you like those kind of tracks that is)...and then building up from there? Might not be your bag but its easier to pratice with consistent obstacles on lower difficulty in my limited experience. Keep building!

[Barrybarfly]

Deth: Its certainly not the best I could do, but I like to try and get a half decent run done asap so people have a replay to view in case thats how they decide wether to even try a track or not. But by the time I got back online I saw the low interest and didnt see the point in trying to beat RAC's time (3 faults) tbh! lol I have a plat on the first extreme track (truth is out there) but only silvers and golds on the rest. So the platinum time was really tough for me to decide on. I havent even managed to 0 fault all of the hard tracks yet (over half I have and the most faults is 3) so doing an extreme track was always going to really push my riding limits. I honestly think that was probably what caused the downfall of the track, I thought the last two jumps NEEDED to be that hard, when I should have either simplified them or dropped them altogether. Lack of extreme experience I guess. I think I'll stick to medium/hard tracks for the time being!

emcee: First off, loved ocarina! lol Secondly, some of my response to Deth also applys to what you said I guess. That feeling over the double logs is what I love too! But I think its possible to add in similar obstacles to that on a hard track and stay more in my riding comfort zone. Which is what I should probably bear in mind going forward. As for feedback, not only can it be a little cliquey (as any game forum can) but there is also a huge number of people asking for feedback (which is why it becomes cliquey I guess) so its easy to get lost among the masses!

I just felt a little downhearted only getting 8 ratings for a track I spent ages on when a track in this weeks top rated trials tracks has an awful driving line to it (cheers for the sarcasm Deth, I dl'd it hoping for a good driving line! LMAO). I've tried so many 4* tracks that are way better then many that get highly rated and just dont understand tbh. But I'm not alone in this, I know.

I think this track was a good experience. A lot went right with it, more than probably should given my riding level and I've learnt from it and from the feedback. So if nothing else, they're positives to take away from it! Next time I'll get it right. Or the time after that. But soon....and for the rest of my life!

Thanks again for the feedback guys!

[emcee]

haha no worries man, i was totally surprised to see they put one of my tracks in the picks and it wasnt ocarina lol.....but im stuck in 4 star land like yourself so you arent alone pal! And I defo agree about the feedback thing, everyone wants a rating but not many of them are prepared to rate.....just gotta take part and let your tracks speak for themselves

[Barrybarfly]

haha no worries man, i was totally surprised to see they put one of my tracks in the picks and it wasnt ocarina lol.....but im stuck in 4 star land like yourself so you arent alone pal! And I defo agree about the feedback thing, everyone wants a rating but not many of them are prepared to rate.....just gotta take part and let your tracks speak for themselves

Yep! I've been lucky to get at least one person provide feedback on most tracks. And I have a friend who tends to give them a quick run during construction for me (a fairly well-known community member). So I'm better off than some poor souls. I plan to keep plugging away at it. I spent a couple of hours screwing around on a flat area yesterday, just trying out some new effects/events to try and learn more. lol I think my driving lines good, obstacles are normally decent and the scenery is getting better. So hopefully I'll put all that together on the next track and even if its a 4* track, it will be a "4.5* track" in many ways! lol