Questions about voting for new multiplayer maps

I'll quote #announcements to give context:

Yoshicraft224 wrote: Attention Multiplayer Enthusiasts!
Voting for the new multiplayer map pools is coming to a close soon! ...ish. The deadline comes in 3 months on Sunday, 31 December 2023 19:00. There's a lot of them, so here's ample time to go and play them all!

Here's how this is going to work. This first vote is only for the maps to be included or excluded. Unlike the singleplayer custom packs, we have no cap on the number of multiplayer levels to be included, so instead, custom levels above a certain score threshold will be added to the official pool, and official levels below a certain threshold will be placed in a "Director's Cut" category. These thresholds will be decided on at a later date based on what the community deems fair.
After this deadline is over comes a second vote to decide on changes to make to the included levels! A new spreadsheet will be created for people to make suggestions, and for people to vote on those suggestions. The most popular suggestions will be taken and applied to the relevant levels. The deadline for this will likely be around Sunday, 31 March 2024 20:00, but everything is subject to change.
That's right, everything is subject to change! Past the initial voting deadline, which will remain concrete, ⁠#suggestions is always open for anyone that may think they have a more elegant solution.

Events may be hosted in the future involving playing through some of these multiplayer levels, so keep a lookout!
As always, voting is available on the Marble Blast Community Master Sheet linked here #⁠info⁠, under the "Official Multiplayer Level Pool" section of the Landing Sheet.
Now go out there and get to building and voting!

(Times are in US Eastern time because that's where I am.)

Let me break this down into sections that I'm confused about.

[C]ustom levels above a certain score threshold will be added to the official pool, and official levels below a certain threshold will be placed in a "Director's Cut" category.

What will happen to the official Custom category then? Isn't this the "Director's Cut" that you're describing? Will the Custom category be renamed to Director's Cut? What about the levels that are already in the Custom category now? Will they just stay there, or will some get moved to official depending on how the voting goes? That would make sense I think.

I really like this idea that even if a level does badly, if it's already on the leaderboards, it will stay there, just in a Custom or Director's Cut category. And the same should be true of all the PQ SP hunt levels, and hunt levels in custom level packs in SP, which I see you're doing on the sheet. So that's good. Those levels in the Custom/Director's Cut hunt category should also give the same amount of XP as regular levels, instead of just 10%.

After this deadline is over comes a second vote to decide on changes to make to the included levels! A new spreadsheet will be created for people to make suggestions, and for people to vote on those suggestions.

Does this mean that we'll suggest changes like with gem spawns and map length? That sounds good, although again, I'd advocate for the option to choose multiple different levels of gem spawns and map length for every map, but that could happen further down the line. This sounds like it would be choosing the defaults for those aspects. So I approve of that, but doing it with a spreadsheet seems a little odd—would we have columns for 1:00, 1:30, ... , 5:30, 6:00 and then everyone just put their name in the column that they want the length to be? That's what I imagine would be the most similar to how the voting is currently set up.

And if this isn't what I think it is (voting on level time and spawns), then what is it? Level difficulty? Placement in Custom or Director's Cut?

#suggestions is always open for anyone that may think they have a more elegant solution.

I'm assuming the forums are also always open, which is why I made this topic. Discord threads are still unusably laggy on Mac, and I prefer the elegance of the forums anyway. I guess before I make a suggestion about a "more elegant solution", I'd first like to understand what exactly will be happening with this whole process in the first place, with regards to what I mentioned above.

[G]et to building and voting!

This reminded me that people are always making new MP levels, and there's no way to know which ones are new in the sheet. Maybe they could be highlighted with a certain color or something.

Okay that's all until I get a response clarifying everything. Thank you for doing this at all—I'm really glad to see MP getting some love, and hopefully this motivates more people to play in general, and to share their opinions.

NF wrote: What will happen to the official Custom category then?

Custom is being renamed to "Bonus" to be less confusing. Having to differentiate between "Custom" and "Official Custom" sucks and is dumb. The Bonus section will be used for levels that are too wacky to be very competitive like Sphere Plates or The Dragon Room, while Director's Cut will be used to archive old MP levels that were voted out.

NF wrote: What about the levels that are already in the Custom category now? Will they just stay there, or will some get moved to official depending on how the voting goes? That would make sense I think.

The levels that are already in Official Custom will be divvied up between Director's Cut and non-DC based on the first round of voting, and will be organized into sections in the second round.

NF wrote: I really like this idea that even if a level does badly, if it's already on the leaderboards, it will stay there, just in a Custom or Director's Cut category. And the same should be true of all the PQ SP hunt levels, and hunt levels in custom level packs in SP, which I see you're doing on the sheet.

Yep. Already all in the plans.

NF wrote: Those levels in the Custom/Director's Cut hunt category should also give the same amount of XP as regular levels, instead of just 10%.

I'll try to keep that in mind, but yeah, that does sound dumb.

NF wrote: Does this mean that we'll suggest changes like with gem spawns and map length?

Exactly. Among ඞ other things.

NF wrote: I'd advocate for the option to choose multiple different levels of gem spawns and map length for every map, but that could happen further down the line.

I've got big plans. Perhaps too big. But yeah, being able to greatly customize the multiplayer experience is something I'm aiming to do eventually.

NF wrote: doing it with a spreadsheet seems a little odd

Yeah. It's mostly to allow any kind of suggestions, but also it's just how everything else has been done, and keeping all the votes in one place is nice. Especially since things can get confusing. However, you raise a good point for times specifically. It'll just be similar to other suggestions, though, I imagine. Someone might suggest "change the time from 5:00 to 3:00" and people can vote on that, and people can also vote separately on "change the time from 5:00 to 4:00". A consensus can be gathered from there, as well as through discussion on Discord if need be.

NF wrote: And if this isn't what I think it is (voting on level time and spawns), then what is it? Level difficulty? Placement in Custom or Director's Cut?

All of the above and whatever else

NF wrote: I'm assuming the forums are also always open, which is why I made this topic.

Sure, though Discord is more organized, convenient, and also most importantly easier to look back at in the future.

NF wrote: [P]eople are always making new MP levels, and there's no way to know which ones are new in the sheet. Maybe they could be highlighted with a certain color or something.

You'll know which levels are new based on which ones you haven't voted on Unless there's a different reason as to why you want to know what the newest levels are. But you can always go on Marbleland and sort Hunt levels by date uploaded.

Adding on to the point about suggesting duration on the sheet, other suggestions such as gem spawn changes and difficulty placements are sure to clash as well. Duration isn't the only issue, and everything can be sorted out through voting and/or discussion.

Well, since the website is down, does the new deadline get extended past 31 March? Since we can't even play multiplayer until it's back up? I'm kind of confused on what the new deadline is even for, since there are two posts in #announcements about it.

Is the level list even finalized? I assume that what's on the sheet right now is the "final" list of levels being added/moved/changed. And are we allowed to just add new rows if we have new suggestions?

im guessing the deadline will be pushed considering current circumstances, it would only make sense that it is pushed imo

Oh, I didn't even see this conversation. I just delayed it anyway because it seemed like a good idea lol

Now that the website is back up, is there any word on a new deadline for this? I feel like 2024-05-31 would be reasonable, since the website went down at the beginning of February and the deadline was 2024-03-31, but I'm not sure. What are other people thinking?