Possible Game and Website Improvements

Hello.

I've come up with a few ideas that I think would make the site and the game more enjoyable. Some of these ideas could be useful to have while others could just be a fun addition. I'll begin with my ideas for the game and then move onto the ones for the site.

Game Improvements
Multiplayer Showing Display Names on Name Tags
Two things to mention here. First, I think that the name tags that hover over a player's head should show their display name since it can be irritating to know who's who when there's a difference, big or small, between someone's display name and username (Example: rdsempire and RDs.The-dts-guy). The second thing is that usernames are shown on name tags, but display names are shown on the scores list. That's a little strange...


.rrecs Start Recording At Different Times (Depending on the Situation)
This is more of a bug than an idea, and it's been said before on Webchat and Discord, but I think I have a couple pieces of information that can help clear one or two things up and no one else has actually posted anything about this on the forums yet.
So I think I've figured out when .rrecs actually start recording and when they don't. Here's what I have at the moment.

If all you've done is select a level to play, then pressing the menu button followed by the record button and then the menu button for a second time with start the recording... assuming you enter the level straight afterwards.

If you close the menu with the record button by pressing the marble, search, achievements, or statistics button (right after you activate the recording), the recording will start as if nothing goes wrong. However when you beat a level and press the next button, the game will record every level you complete after that until you exit the level before you complete it or until you press the menu button after completing a level. Same goes for replaying the level.

Here's where it gets a little strange. If you activate the recording system by the procedure listed above (by closing the menu with one of the other four buttons), and then you exit the level while you're recording, the recording button will still be shaded darker as if the recording system was still activated. In this case, the recording system will actually not activate until you finish a level because you will not be asked to name the recording. When you play another level and complete it, you will be asked to name the recording.

That's all I've figured out so far.

Hints for Other Levels
It would be nice if there could be hints for completing, getting platinum time, and getting ultimate time for a level. I understand that there are 552 levels on the leaderboards excluding the PQ levels (691 in total), but people will need these hints down the road.

More Categories for Singleplayer Achievements
There are a lot of singleplayer achievements. There are 15 for MBG, 11 for MBP, 15 for MBU, 4 for general singleplayer/multi-mod, and 29 for PQ. That a total of 74 achievements, and putting all 74 achievements into one list is kind of annoying. You have to scroll down quite a ways to get to some of the later ones, and it can be hard to find one particular achievement since the MBG and MBP ones are mixed together. I'm proposing that tabs are inputted for MBG, MBP, MBU, and PQ achievements so they can all be separated. As for the 4 general singleplayer ones (Timely Marble, The Dragon Awakes, 30 Million, and The Dragon's Destiny) they could probably be either removed from the leaderboards entirely, placed in each of the other four categories, or put in an entirely new tab called Miscellaneous (or something like that). Along with that, the requirements for Timely Marble (currently "Beat any MBG/MBP level with a specified par time.") can be changed to "Beat any level with a specified par time."

Just a quick note. The description for the requirements of the Timely Marble achievement are different in-game and on the website. The website says "Beat any level with a specified par time." while it says "Beat any MBG/MBP level with a specified par time." in-game.

Website Improvements
Scores: Custom Level Packs Total Times
Looking at the fact that MBG, MBP, MBU, and PQ all have total times listed for each difficulty, I don't think there's any reason not to do the same for each set of the custom level packs. I personally enjoy total times showing for each difficulty/category so I know where I need to improve my times.

Scores: Leaderboards for Achievement Points
The current achievements leaderboards only show the rating you get from achievements (along with player names, of course), and only having two lists is pretty bland and there's a LOT of unnecessary space. I don't think there would be any harm in adding another list for achievement points.

Scores: Better Mobile Support
There's no need to say anything else.


Profiles: Custom Rank and Rating
I don't understand why someone's custom rank and rating don't show in his/her profile. It's a little silly in my opinion.

Yeah that name tag discrepancy, would love it removed but then we'd never see spaghetti78 again so

also, my suggestions:
remove ramp matrix! and hunting around while you're at it, no one wants them in mp

and PLS rename one of the skate battle royales lol

Would it be too much trouble to bring back sorting users by when they were last online in Scores? Also you can no longer see what someone's last level played was on the website, I don't know whether that was intentional or not but I liked seeing that.

And how hard would it be to import old register dates from Proboards or even from the GarageGames forums? It's a bit irritating to see so many people who registered on 03 January 2014.

Oh and during spectating the box on the lower left that tells you the keys for certain spectating options is still in Marker Felt and it clashes with the rest of the game. (Also I think the timer in game should be changed to Whitney or at least that should be part of the High Readability option but probably no one agrees with me. And maybe having two exclamation marks on "Downhill and Out of Here!!" looks bad but again I'm probably alone here.)

Here's one I've been thinking of for a while. In my honest opinion, the "Community Highlight" thing has become a bit stale. Not only that -- my point is that why have an everyday display of the PQ logo on the front page that we all know about, when we could replace it with something like a weekly World Record speedrun, or any kind of gameplay video for display on the front page? Not only would it be interesting to community members, but it would show outsiders what kind of value comes out of playing this game for 6, 7+ years. Unfortunately many of my friends from school who I've told about Marble Blast don't appreciate the idea of the game since they think, or rather assume, it lacks the strategy of other games. But displaying something like a "World Record of the Week" would definitely show otherwise in terms of speedrunning, and would surely entertain many oldies who are experts in playing MB.

A couple of these are actually bugs, namely the nametags with usernames (dedicated servers somehow still don't know) and the rrecs not starting on certain occasions (should be fixed in the next patch).

Hints for other levels, while a possibility, would require a large effort to add. Not something we can do easily.
Achievement categories - possible to do, but would need some interface reorganization

Custom pack times - surprised we don't do this already. Well we do now.
Custom rank on the profiles - same.
Achievement point leaderboards - isn't a thing mostly because everyone already had all of the achievements. So it would just be a bunch of people with the same rating.
Mobile support - Difficult to do without lots of overhaul on the site theme (which frankly is rather old). Unfortunately for us no one on the staff is a web designer.

Removing / renaming MP levels is a long discussion, but I at least agree with renaming one of the skate battles [Edit: apparently Matan will be doing this shortly]

Sorting by last time online may be possible, but would be somewhat more effort involving the webchat.
Importing register dates is a lot of effort for not much benefit (other than bragging rights for some people). I don't think it's necessary.
Spectate box.... auuuughhh *makes issue*
Ingame timer font - I tried a few months ago, couldn't get anything that looked good.

Community highlight could use more updates. Not much I can say about that right now.

Just wanted to chime in regarding Website changes.

I've been building a new site template for deployment since our current product is a version behind. Due to professional reasons, I've had to limit my time on this front, so I'll take responsibility for that.

I'm aware of several mobile site issues, the forums are not very well optimized on mobile either and I plan to address that.

I'll prioritize this for Q3/Q4 of this year so we can get a facelift in the coming months.

I'll also discuss the register date import from proboards. It can be done, but as HiGuy indicated it's a lot of work to verify accounts and someone has to manually transcribe the register dates in.

I'm enjoying the suggestions thread. If anyone else has any thoughts, concerns, opinions or suggestions please continue to post here.

Thanks,
~Aayrl