| [What do you think?] Medal Times | 13 Sep, 2015 |
| pfm | (5 comments, 3096 views) |
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Have you ever driven a track and been disappointed that the medal times were set too easy?
Or maybe they were too hard? Or maybe they were just unfair? =) I think one of the most fun things to do in TM is just to load a track in Local Play and hunt some nice challenging gold medals, and then try for the Author Time. I'm always a bit disappointed when the medal times are not setup with progressive difficulty. But I also realize that many authors don't know what to set them at. So here is my opinion and explanation of how I try to set my own medals. I would love to hear what you think, and how you do it for your own tracks. Or if you are not a track builder, I wan't to know the driver's perspective as well =) How I set my medals: 1) Setting the Author time I start by hunting for at least 1 hour for my Author Time, I think AT should be challenging for average drivers, because I am an average driver myself, I think I need to have really good run to make a good AT. 2) Setting the other times After that I do a few runs where I try to "unlearn" the fastest way I found to drive. This is very hard to do because you can't go back to not knowing how to drive the track. But I try to use my experience of watching other players drive online to understand how less skilled players might take some turns. So I basically then try to replicate these 3 types of run and set the medal times accordingly:  Bronze: A non clean run where you can touch walls/barriers a few times but still make a respectable drive without flipping the car.
I try to emulate what an average driver would do after only a couple of runs on a track when he is still learning the layout and maybe touching walls a bit on the hardest spots.  Silver: A clean run where you don't touch any barriers but where you drive a not very perfect line (loosing time sliding or releasing the throttle or picking a bad line).
Here I try to simulate a driver that has already learned the track layout, he can drive reasonably fast without touching any walls but still hasn't figured out a fast line.  Gold: A clean run where you drove a good racing line, losing very little time by sliding or releasing throttle, you should be proud of your replay if you achieve this.
Gold should be the first medal that feels like an accomplishment for an average skill driver. He should have found the fast line and executed it with a good degree of precision, including nailing the easy parts almost perfect, but with some margin of improvement on the harder sections.  Author Time: A clean run where you have spent a lot of time optimizing your driving line and taking maximum risk to get close to the apex on even the hard sections.
This is the one where I leave it more open to opinion and taste, because it depends on the driving skill of the builder. My Author times tend to be clean runs with a very optimized racing line (within my ability  ) A nice clean run will usually not be sufficient to beat AT, you will have to focus on the little details of the track to gain time on each spot.
If you are a builder that also has above average driving skills (riolu, div, etc) I think it is a matter of opinion if you should go for the fastest you can drive or if you should leave it a bit under your limit of skill. Because it can become frustrating for many players to go for an extra terrestrial AT. On the opposite side, if you are a good builder but a poor driver, I think you should ask someone more skilled than you to validate the track, it can definitely be worth it. Example track from one of my tracks: On this mixed surface track that I made for rounds / hunting you can see: Author Time (46.8xx) that I spent a lot of time on (maybe 1-2 hours). After a month only a few players (4 players so far) have beaten it, but I think it's within reach of all good players. The Gold is set at 48.000, which is challenging but I think fair. About 20 players have gotten it so far) and it should have given them a good feeling about their run =) Silver is set at 50.000. which will put you in the dedimania top 50 after 1 month. I think it was well judged. It is a nice run, but with lots of space for improvement. Bronze the lowest barrier is at 52.000. In retrospect I should probably have put this a bit easier (53.00 maybe) but still I'm looking at times done online under time / race pressure, and the dedimania sample is only about 40 races with 123 players, so there are still a lot of junk runs in the top 100. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, this is what I think, I hope you enjoyed if you read this far =) I would love to read your opinions in the comments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- thanks pfm |
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| s8ndm8n writes ... | 23, Sep, 2015 |
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I tend to agree with Voyager. I've always left the default values because it gives you an idea of how horrible you drove a track People have always complained about my Author Times being too hard so I generally try to leave some room unless it was meant to be a Pro Track where I only anticipated a few people would drive the track for a record and would want my best effort for the Author Medal. I had a situation once where people were unable to get the gold even with the default values.
For each style of track I've become accustomed to receiving particular results. For Tech Tracks, a good effort usually results in being within 3sec of the top drivers and I've come to accept this and am satisfied. Of course if I "train" a track I can usually get within 1sec. Fullspeed tracks I expect to be competing for a top ten time. I can understand your position and generally agree that the times are a bit loose, but we have to keep in mind the style of track when tweaking the medals. I actually get annoyed when the Author sets them too high especially when it's clear that they are a Pro driver already. And it's also annoying when someone puts no effort into the Author Time and you get all four medals on your first run but then I always figure it's some young kid who simply lacks the skill to drive good times. You have to keep in mind that you tend to get quite skilled in whatever environment you build in and if you want broader appeal that you need to not drop ridiculous times for your Author Medals. If you only want to appeal to skilled drivers in a particular environment then adjust accordingly. In conclusion, I say for a: -ball breaker track where you know you are driving nearly flawless leave at least 0.25-0.50sec room for improvement -a track meant for everyone to enjoy 1sec room off your best efforts -a track meant for less skilled players 3-4sec room off your good efforts Tighten up the Medals a little I suppose just don't get carried away 
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| pfm writes ... | 14, Sep, 2015 |
Thrawn«¦ says: I agree so much with this idea =) Scenery, custom screenshot (even if is just a simple one) and some author comments, are things that I always thought make tracks more than just not another "disposable" one that looks randomly uploaded to mx. Unfortunately a lot of authors don't share this view. You end up finding a lot of hidden gem tracks that have no screenshot and no Author comments. Some examples of Valley builders with almost no screenshots and Author Comments but with some really creative Valley maps: Brago 62316e But i guess there are many reasons for that, which in a way is ofc a totally googd way of enjoying the game! =) |
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| Thrawn«¦ writes ... | 14, Sep, 2015 |
An interesting topic to be honest 
... says: Yes I had that happen to me more than once
Your approach of setting your own AT is very close to my own (Driving your own track for a longer time to get to know it and get a good run). This is of course easier for you as the author as opposed to some one who downloads the map because you build the track from scratch and probably drove it multiple times during testing. Now the second step is new to me. I never paid that much attention to the other medals, I only correct some of the times, because the standard values TrackMania suggests to you are really bad (Noone drives like that  ).
Do I value a good AT? Yes, of course I do. I am here on MX to have fun first and foremost and share my tracks with other users. But while doing that I like to appreciate the work of others and in my eyes the author time is an indicator how much time someone is actually willing to invest in his/her creation. It's much more fun to drive a map which has been created "with love"
Of course there are other indicators like scenery or even writing a short author comment here on the site
So yeah, it's a way of showing that you build these maps for other users, have them enjoy them and hunt your times (basically what MX is all about). That's my take on the matter
Cheers Thrawn |
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| pfm writes ... | 13, Sep, 2015 |
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Interesting to read your take Voyager =)
thanks for posting! I hadn't thought about that, that people expect to get the medals on the first run because that's the default. Good point also that different map types have different audiences, I agree with you that it should be taken into consideration. About posts around other similar themes, I'm not that much of an expert on the ones you mentioned (GPS, Outros, Screens) so maybe I leave that up to others to write if they want =) The only other thing I plan to write about is track design (route types, scenery etc) I'm very interested in track design as level design, pacing, flow, variety, what types of features make a track fun for offline hunting, online rounds, TA etc... |
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| Voyager006 writes ... | 13, Sep, 2015 |
Cool blog idea  I'd like to read (and express) opinions about other stuff such as GPSes, Outros, screens etc.
What I do is to calculate what the default medal times are actually supposed to be, as the game always round them up: : AT * 1.06
: AT * 1.2
: AT * 1.5
Why the default values? Because they're predictable and most often used. When I drive locally, I would get disappointed if I finish a 1 minute map, 5 seconds slower than the AT and not get a single medal. It would've totally been a silver medal by default!
The difficult thing is to guess how optimal the AT should be. You wouldn't want the AT to be the world record of the map for an extended period of time. It also depends on difficulty and target audience. League maps can be very different from online maps, and so can the times be. As for the latter, my thought is that the driver need to know all parts of the map (where to drift and not) and tricks necessary to make the run flow well - in order to get the AT. In general, being a rather decent racer, I think letting off 1 second of my PB per minute of track is good, but then again I build rather difficult maps.
Though I'd make some exceptions with fullspeed, trial, RPG and the likes... |
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