BlueZero4 said:
I don't like Mystic Realm. Despite the large amount of content, I don't like the difficulty and the sheer reek of making levels to fill up the seven zones. If I enjoyed Mystic Realm, I assure you I would be enjoying SRB2 more than I am now. It is truly my loss.
Mystic Realm was not created in this method. It was mostly created, one zone at a time, over a long period of time. Then, later on, I decided I wanted a full mod and made new zones, generally using the same method.
Jade Coast is a combination of two of my ancient zones.
Tempest Valley was created for MR4
Verdant Forest was an ancient zone I made quite a while ago.
Flame Rift was made for MR2.
Midnight Freeze was made for MR3.
Sunken Plant was created for MR4.
Aerial Garden 1 was a combination of two of my ancient stages from Demo 4.
Aerial Garden 2-4 was created for MR4.
Prismatic Angel and Mystic Realm were created for MR4.
All the emerald stages were created for MR4.
Of that, I'd say most of the stages of questionable quality actually WEREN'T made to fill out the zones, except some of the emerald stages. Tempest Valley, Sunken Plant, and Aerial Garden are my personal favorite stages in the pack, and they were made in the process where I was "filling in" the stage selection. The worst stages are generally my older work, since what Mystic Realm really is is a collection of my stuff, including some rather bad ancient stages. The only levels really made to pad out the stages were some of the emerald stages, Silver Cavern and Nitric Citadel, which is clear in their low quality, as by that point I was getting tired of making stages and wanted to get it completed for 1.09's release.
While some of the stages turned out rather meh, I highly encourage this method because it means you'll get a lot of stages of variable quality, instead of a lot of stages of terrible quality. While some MR stages are rather bad, there is at least a lot of content, some of which is very good.
BlueZero4 said:
Sure, arrows are a good idea, but I don't want to give too much away. It feels like you guys entirely missed that the button that opens up the door is forwards. Are you guys, like, not resourceful or something?
I think the issue is that there are so many dead-ends that nobody assumes that the obvious direction is the proper direction. Playing that stage I ran around in circles for at least 10 minutes until I stumbled across the jump across the water to the teleporter. You walk into a room, look around, see no exit and turn around and try another room. There is a lot of detail, but most of it is useless so the player is not really encouraged to check everything because he has no reason to assume that there is anything TO find if they look.
It's entirely possible to make FFZ good, but it would need more clear indication of where the player is supposed to go, and no dead-ends so if the player reaches one, he assumes that there is a secret here instead of just assuming it's another dead end.