: If you read MazaroX's description, he says:
: "... I designed this game to be hard for ME to beat,
: and I've been playing Marathon for a very long time..."
: In my opinion, this really isn't a fair thing to do. It's unreasonable to
: think that all Marathon players play at the same skill and level that you
: do...if you do, you'll only have your work appeal to a very narrow segment
: of Marathon players -- and you'll leave everyone else just pissed off and
: annoyed.
A point I tried to make very strongly with Marzo is that it's always much easier for the creator of a scenario to beat their own scenario. No matter how hard you try, you will always know exactly where everything is and where the monsters are. Sure, as he put it, he can beat part one in a half-hour on TC, but he knows exacty the path to take to avoid the most trouble. Only by playing this many, many times can other players hope to reach that level of familiarity with Lost Lands.
: It's easy to make a really hard scenario -- but it's difficult to make a
: *balanced* scenario. If there's one thing I've always observed, a
: scenario's difficulty level is not correlated with its intrinsic quality.
Strongly agreed. 3 tough levels without a pattern buffer is just plain unfair. OK, make the scenario hard, but give the player a chance to succeed. It can be done, and has been by many outstanding mapmakers.
One thing I should note about Lost Lands is that it does include some really innovative map designs and physics models. I commend Marzo for his efforts, but I won't be playing Lost Lands 3 unless he makes a significant effort to add some balance.
