A Couple of Editing Questions

Jason the Echidna said:

I've had good design. Everyone (even you, Mystic) ignored that, remember? Then I made SPMoves with flashyness and stupid ideas that noone else wanted to bother with. And everyone loved it. I kept ahead of the curve by doing everything new before anyone else. I made map scripts, SOC edits, linedef executors, etc. before anyone else had a chance. That lasted less then a month and then was gone as Blaze released SA-SRB2, which everyone found to be better because of the cool little texture replacements and crap. I don't want to be the president, I want to be number 2: The vice gets most of the goods with much less work. My goal has always been to make cool stuff, yes, but noone sees the true beauty of my work most of the time. When they do, I am sure to listen.

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The thing is, SPMoves' flashyness will wear off eventually. People don't want to play a stack full of gimmicks for long. Overpowered moves are amusing for a bit, but then it ceases to be fun. You screaming "BOOM" into the mic is funny once or twice, but it ceases to be funny after hearing it a lot. The basic thing is that gimmicks or dumb jokes are only amusing once. While you say you want to be #2, gimmicks will not put you there. It will only put you there until it ceases to be amusing.

However, truly good design will not wear off. While a gimmick stops being amusing, a good stage with good replay value will not wear off at all. If everyone ignored your design, maybe they didn't think it was good design. Maybe you didn't promote it enough. There are a lot of possibilities of why you were ignored. Instead of just moving to gimmicks, try and find out what the problems were. If you can fix the problem, you can create something much better.

The most important thing, however, is that you need to listen when people DON'T see the beauty of your work. Constructive criticism is infinitely more useful than compliments. If I didn't listen to the people who give me feedback, I'd still be creating boring mazes like Verdant Forest with approximately 59 Jetty-syns in each room. It's impossible to improve if you don't listen to public opinion.

a441 said:

Here's what you do: Use that experience. Write the SOC editor. Write the tutorial. Help make it easier for other people.

Otherwise, not only is your work wasted, but so is everyone else's who has to do the same thing!

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Amen.