Difficulty - Who's serving?

At the moment, I'm hungry for something in SRB2 that's challenging. I'm looking for something that approaches difficulty kinda like N. Essentially, N tries to kill, and make you learn from it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure SRB2 sports any levels like that.

Let's start with Aerial Garden, which has always been my personal standard of end of the game difficulty. Upon close inspection, the platforming is extremely simple, and as a result, easy. There's only two reasons why this could be challenging, and the most prominent reason is that I die after making a stupid mistake. SRB2, sporting an archaic lives system, puts me back to the beginning of the section, in which I inevitably make that same simple mistake again. Repeat this process until I either succeed with the section and move on, or game over and re-start the level.

The second reason why AGZ is hard is that the Jettys provide an undue sense of urgency. As a result, I thok-thok-thok through the level, and inevitably don't have the control needed for the easy platforming. If nothing else, turning up the difficulty to Hard confirms this; the only thing Mystic changed was the addition of even more Jettys. After a bit of experimenting, turning on "god" resulted as AGZ being relaxing at best.

So, are there any levels that provide difficulty that's actually fun?

The way I see it, even if something is hard at first, it becomes easy very quickly, once you learn how to do it.

You could try Metal Flower, though I'm sure you already have.

EDIT: Thanks, :SonicMaster:

Uh, you mean Metal Flower? BTW, Metal Flower also has some overuse of Jetty-Syn Gunners.

Kaysakado said:

The way I see it, even if something is hard at first, it becomes easy very quickly, once you learn how to do it.

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You know, there's a difference between skill and using the same strategy every time you encounter the same situation.

BlueZero4 said:

Kaysakado said:

The way I see it, even if something is hard at first, it becomes easy very quickly, once you learn how to do it.

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You know, there's a difference between skill and using the same strategy every time you encounter the same situation.

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Yeah, but with most "hard" level designs, you usually do end up using the same strategy anyways.

At the moment, I'm hungry for something in SRB2 that's challenging.

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Make it yourself! You would be good at this.

Egg Rock Zone

Thank you, SSN, but I don't think I'm going to see it soon, because 1.1 isn't done yet.

Metal Flower isn't exactly "challenging." Some parts are rather frustrating, and the more conventional parts are kinda average.

Also, I think I'm going to look through my entire SRB2 folder now.

I was considering making "I Wanna Be The Hog" and giving 35 extra lives at the beginning in an effort to motivate the player to actually complete the level rather than give up. But I canned it pretty quickly due to aesthetic issues I ran into.

Try morph's level pack.(In mods)

Wow, Robodome was awesome. I've come to realize that all of my gripes with Morph's pack stemmed from the fact that I wasn't the targeted audience.

You guys can expect Pillarris to be intense difficulty-wise, though I doubt any of you remember what I'm referring to.

s_bmcdrz2.wad is quite clearly the most sadistic SRB2 pack ever. Specificially, Snow Forest is the pain inducer.

Of course, everyone who has played this knows exactly what I am talking about. :)

SSNTails said:

Egg Rock Zone

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Seriously. You are going to get raped by this stage.

BlueZero4 said:

Let's start with Aerial Garden, which has always been my personal standard of end of the game difficulty. Upon close inspection, the platforming is extremely simple, and as a result, easy. There's only two reasons why this could be challenging, and the most prominent reason is that I die after making a stupid mistake. SRB2, sporting an archaic lives system, puts me back to the beginning of the section, in which I inevitably make that same simple mistake again. Repeat this provess until I either succeed with the section and move on, or game over and re-start the level.

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I don't think there is actually any established standard for that kind of *real* difficulty. Perhaps if someone was able to make a level that sets the standard, we would see more. I don't consider the whole death-pit thing a fair difficulty because it relies more on carelessness killing you. Prismatic Angel Zone is only hard because its nearly impossible to judge the jump distances because of the 1unit tall fofs.

Metal Flower is challenging, but while the hazards are generally quite ingenious, the fact is that we still have Jetty-syns providing the bulk of the danger in many areas. We need new enemies, and we need to be able to provide difficulty in other ways than spamming the player with bullets.

Shadow Hog said:

SSNTails said:

Egg Rock Zone

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Seriously. You are going to get raped by this stage.

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Stop making me even more impatient.

Of course, if I'm going to get raped by this level, then it's not really something I would want to play.

By the way, you can amuse yourself for a while by trying to get through levels only by turning and thokking, getting to Tails/Knuckles's emblem area as Sonic, etc.

You could also frustrate yourself trying to beat sb's Prismatic Angel speed run time.

Alright guys, you can stop hyping Egg Rock now.

JEV3 said:

I don't think there is actually any established standard for that kind of *real* difficulty. Perhaps if someone was able to make a level that sets the standard, we would see more...Jetty-syns [provide] the bulk of the danger in many areas. We need new enemies, and we need to be able to provide difficulty in other ways than spamming the player with bullets.

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In any case, making damage-based difficulty doesn't work most of the time, thanks to the ring system employed in SRB2. It feels like most people *aren't* bothering to create something new. I hate to be cliché, but Robodome is a great example of new gimmicks blending together to create a new kind of experience. It's just that most mappers have their sights set on making something average, not something unique.

Beautiful Katamari is a wonderful example of difficulty. The game is founded on simple, easy to play principles, which makes the foundation of the game. However, the introduction of a timelimit, as well as a goal, makes the game much deeper, because it requires the player to rethink how they approach each task in order to complete it more efficiently.