Race is not the same as trickjump...

[mand1nga]

div0 you mentioned a way to classify race maps before, maybe we can do something like that in the near future. This could be a new value on the mapinfo telling the difficulty level normal/hard/very-hard plus a new cvar for setting the server difficulty. Then only maps with difficulty <= server difficulty will be chosen by the server in the map cycle.

[FruitieX]

div0 you mentioned a way to classify race maps before, maybe we can do something like that in the near future. This could be a new value on the mapinfo telling the difficulty level normal/hard/very-hard plus a new cvar for setting the server difficulty. Then only maps with difficulty <= server difficulty will be chosen by the server in the map cycle.

Or perhaps show this difficulty value in map votes.

[Ed]

I don't know if many people have played the Trackmania series but they have a similar kind of race format where you just keep looping over something.

This means there are some servers where maps tend to be more about getting through them fast and others that are more trick oriented. As it happens the trick jump circuits generally aren't so good for competition as it's not such a good test of speed and can be won by chance rather than skill.

[nifrek]

I can understand how those maps seem impossible but at this point I don't think it can be helped. Altho, Race seems to become more and more popular so maybe having a way to "rate" difficulty of each map would definitely help, so that we could have different servers with maplists based on difficulty.

What I'd like to add tho, is that for some players, those maps actually ARE race maps. Even the harder ones, doing the tricks for them is not that hard so it still is about getting a faster time and not just doing tricks. But, I can't really think of more than a few players at that level, and mind you, they actually can spend 2+ hours on the same map learning and finding ways to do it faster and faster (hi red dragon). If you spectate those players they make it look very easy. Obviously, the harder maps were made for those players and not for new or regular players who just want some fun but atm there's only a few servers and a few maps so they pretty much all run the same maplist.

In any case, Race mode is still young, so who knows what mappers will do. Personally I've been working on a map and my goal is to make it possible for anyone to finish, no kill triggers or lava or anything, but a lot of different tricks that can be used to make it faster if those tricks are succeeded. Some of the tricks will look impossible for most players but it's those tricks that will reward you by saving a few ms here and there if you are skilled enough. A "normal" run by a decent player will take around 1min20sec but it definitely can be done in less than a minute. What's hard about this is to make it challenging enough for good players but still make it fun for everyone because it requires a LOT of testing to make sure all the tricks are doable, that distances between tricks are perfect for both faster and slower players, etc. It's actually much more testing than actual mapping. :/