Fair enough. My opinion on the matter, is that people just don't want to feel devalued, or lesser. And the easiest way to do that is to deny any sort of hierarchy in the name of subjectivity and relativism. ie, "there is no true best". It's a load of BS and against all actual human behavior that any person who claims this actually conveys. It's nonsense. "My map isn't bad, it just plays exactly how I prefer it to play. " In other words, nothing is ever really bad because it's doing what I wanted it to do, sound familiar to another discussion we had here about 6 months ago? Fact is, most designers here are still amateur to the point of not knowing 1: what their preferences are, and 2: how to even build a map that supports those preferences. And for the record I don't even believe people deep down actually have different preferences. I think we are all, 98% alike in our true desires for things, most people just haven't realized it.
Pretty sure fated just replaced the word verticality with heroism If everyone has different criteria for what the best entails, theres no way to determine who the best is, in a universal sense. We can only say what is the best according to our individual priorities. @MultiLockOn i can only speak for myself in saying that the idea of being worse than someone has nothing to do with why i feel the way i do about the matter. In Trials, you can determine whos best by time, and by how difficult the track is (and even difficulty causes some debate). Level design has no criteria that a leaderboard could be based on.
Neither of you are escaping the subjective well. Only Multi figured this **** out. Go back and read everything again. Hiérarchies are proof of some kind of REAL talent or ability, based in objective reality. As such, it is easy to figure out which person is the better designer, or even the best. There is a best designer - it depends on what is *important*. For example - I’m the best at overusing saturated lights (purple) and small primitives. Whether or not it is GOOD to be good at this is a separate conversation - if the idea is that good design fosters a certain kind of gameplay, then great! Next step is figuring out whether or not the game you’re not playing can even accommodate that gameplay. And vanilla Halo 5 is absolutely not capable of supporting .
Now this is just my 2 cents coming from an NPC, but I think it's more of ranking what works and what doesn't (at least as far as forge goes). There is no best in the terms of most proficient; it could be better described as most interpretive of the tools available. Sure there is art involved, but even that is converted into information. You could even study bodily reactions if you wanted to get creepy with it. The way the information given is interpretated is how the map is structured, and the person that has retained the most information AND has the wisdom to apply it consistently when it's needed will rest at the top in my book. I lack much information due to literally wanting to do it the hard way, so I'm probably not the best set of brains on the subject, but maybe one of yall can expound on any real truth in my words.
A very long, and intense subject matter that I'm not going to type up to be lost in the waywo. Because it wouldn't translate well through text, and because most people wouldn't even read it and the subject would be lost in discussion. This topic actually extends much further than just level design and it's very complex. If I do tackle it, it would be through video format.
If you understand a complex subject well enough you should be able to simplify it. Everyone knows there are qualities about art and design that are universally regarded. Problem is people have used it as a weapon rather than a tool to educate others, or those truths have been infected with personal preferences that deviate from neutral ground. And that’s the problem with this whole discussion - it is rarely done from an insightful perspective. It’s always “believe this or else” and not “believe this because it makes sense” Thus, until there is an actual level design book that someone can publish and not generate controversy, I am inclined to believe that looking for the best level designer is a waste of time. It’s impossible to find something when you don’t know what you’re like looking for.
"If you understand a complex subject well enough you should be able to simplify it" Right until people try poking extremely obvious holes in your logic through beaten questions that I don't have the effort to answer. It's the equivalent to having a debate between two studied theologians of differing beliefs, where one can make a claim and another can respond to it efficiently. The Christian says "I believe God is loving due to the reasons X, Y, Z." to which an intelligent atheist might respond with, "I find that claim incorrect because reason X doesn't hold up." If that same conversation were to be had on the street with an average Joe, a normal atheist might go, "But if God is loving why is there so much evil? I don't believe in God? Why did this person get sick then? Why is he such a jerk to be when I'm a good person?" And then you have to spend the next 6 hours explaining why those questions don't even make sense from a theological standpoint instead of actually continuing the discussion. Ive been a part of that and had to debate subjects with people that shouldn't even be up for debate because most educated people on EITHER side of the aisle have already established an agreed upon truth. Point being, this is a forum and we're speaking in text. If I'm going to bring up my true, actual viewpoint on level design it will probably cause a lot of controversy. And I'd rather not sit here and type a thousand responses to irrelevant and answered questions that attack the logic of something that has already been established as sound, instead of attacking it from the roots of the belief. I'm getting a headache just imagining the responses to my beliefs.
Thank you multi for explaining exactly why i'm hesitent to lay down the law on level design. Although goat does make a good point, i think is possible that design (not just level design in general) can be broke down into a simple and intuitive guide that anyone can pick up and understand I will attempt this myself. But it won't be here, i may have to make another thread so it doesn't get buried unde swarms of ignorant comments
You should probably get to answering my question now... If you can. I just wanna know how to be the "best" level designer
I didn't know what he meant when he said that and I still don't and yeah burnt things off the grill are pretty bomb
I would've gladly named names if you had asked genuinely, but you didn't. I can't quite tell why you asked, but it was very easy to see an ulterior motive at play On that note, this topic can go really deep, so long as both parties are willing to admit the truth of hierarchy. I had a lot more to say about level design being a set of hierarchies, which is really interesting, but we'll probably never get to that here on the ole chub
Again it's literally impossible for some to be better than others without a best to exist. also I haven't talked about this yet, but you seem legit salty about my cesspool shitpost and I don't even know what to say about that haha