What to do when user track isn't playable

[DareM]

As we get more user created tracks there will be times when some user created tracks aren't really playable. Gates could be placed the wrong way, order mixed up, gaps too big and so on.
Not trying to offend the creator, it becomes a question on how to handle these situations.
Should every player be able to rate tracks, mark good ones and eliminate non playable tracks?

Any suggestions?

[burns]

Giving everybody the ability to vote down maps will could lead to abuse - this is the internets afterall.

Rather check everything yourself, or only allow players with flawless conduct to rate (e.g. Biggles, Primus & Horsti) and maybe reward them in some kind for their "work".

Talking about flawless conduct: my next map will feature double gates, so that intentionally missing gates for better times will be penalized harder

edit: reworded will to could. Would´ve been rude otherwise.

[DareM]

Thanks, it didn't come to my mind people would bother abusing the vote system for that.
But extending your idea to fix the problem, maybe only higher licence holders could upvote/downvote (remove) the track?
We will soon add new tracks & more licenses, maybe only this advanced player group could reject tracks.

In any case this is not a big problem yet but something to think about.
Also looking forward to seeing your new track and new idea in action.

[burns]

Having only higher license holders is a good idea too! Have´nt thought about that.

In the same context, being able to tag certain tracks with "only for professional controls" might become useful too, either from creators side or done by the community.

I´m suggesting this, because as of yet all let´s plays i´ve watched are playing in "easy mode" (which is funny as i actually find flying that way 1000 times harder) and i certainly cannot understand how those people are able to bear with it - they probably think pro controls require some mastery in keyboarding or whatnot lol

[DareM]

Advanced or arcade controls that is the never ending question with Altitude0.
We learned during development that many players are just not used to, or ready to handle advanced (pro) controls. Certainly Altitude0 is not the first airplane game that has more than 1 control set trying to fit wider range of players. Honestly sometimes when I'm testing the game, I use arcade controls too for convenience sake

Regarding your idea to let track creators setup more participation rules, we were thinking about giving more control to creator to decide on extra track rules - maximum flying height, collect certain number of aerobatic points and so on.

On top of that planned feature for multiplayer mode is to let users create online competitions with even more precise rules: pick tracks and create a championship, allow only certain planes to race, pick time of day, exact race rules and so on.

[DareM]

Hi guys, this is a short post regarding custom player created tracks.

Most of user tracks are fun to play, but some are not so playable. We don't want to bother players with those tracks.
We will feature or remove tracks based on player suggestions manually until we implement some kind of voting system. That part is not clear yet, one possibility is Steam Workshop where players could rate tracks.

For now we removed 2 tracks - one was way too short and the other one had wrong gate layout.
We noticed these tracks make some race statistics skewed or just plain meaningless - for example, pilot's clean race or low flying count.

As mentioned, in the future we will let players vote on tracks to help us find good tracks.
Also we will still add more obstacles to the track editor. Some dynamic objects that are already on license tracks are still coming - and more.

[abeha]

Not trying to offend the creator, it becomes a question on how to handle these situations.
Should every player be able to rate tracks, mark good ones and eliminate non playable tracks?

---

emma