1.50 Leaderboards - GarageGames marble

Hey all,

The Platinum Team is dedicated to give the Marble Blast community the best that they can. Since its creation and release we always wanted to give the community what they wanted and make the experience of Marble Blast Platinum the best that can be.

One of the discussions we have had was related to the GarageGames marble. We were discussing among ourselves whether we want the marble to stay in, or drop it altogether, but ended up deadlocked.
Since we want to give you the best experience, we will let you decide.

You can choose any of these options:
- Leave the GarageGames marble as-is. Instead of having 131 levels, you just have 120 with the fixed levels implemented.
- Leave the GarageGames marble + the extra ones as-is, but remove ratings. Compete for top scores.
- Remove GarageGames marble and ratings altogether. The GarageGames marble skin will remain as a regular marble skin choice.

To help you make the decision, here are a few Pros/Cons that were discussed.
Pros - Keep the GarageGames marble
Cons - Drop the GarageGames marble.

Pros:

- Players worked hard to get the top times and the ratings.
- Scores alone is good, but not as fun when ratings are involved.
- Gives players an extra marble to play on all the levels, giving extra content.

Cons:

- Levels weren't designed for it, and it's disabled in Custom levels anyway. Bigger marble doesn't belong here.
- Gives an illusion of extra content.
- De-compliates the game, makes maintenance more bearable.
- Adds more work on both Phil and Matan to change the levels, and both are very busy as it is.
- Adds more work in the background on HiGuy, Jeff and Aayrl to accommodate the additional leaderboards.

I love the GG Marble, but if it is too much work to modify the levels, I understand removing the ratings. Let's not get rid of the gg marble entirely, or any other sizes for that matter. It is too much fun to use the Temple of Doom Boulder to see what new routes you can come up with, as well as pull off crazy edge hits. Perhaps we could come up with a level pack specific for the GG marble (maybe ported MBU levels???

As always, thank you for all the hard work from the MB community

I didn't particularly care for the GG marble, I feel that it's unnecessary and I wouldn't want to play a level again, especially a hard one, just for the sake of using a bigger marble.

I don't like the GG marble, mostly because of practical reasons; I have a hard time controlling any size marble other than the default, so I really hate having to replay levels with a marble size that's hard to use.

With the GarageGames Marble, more paths are available than with the normal marble (e.g Byzantine Helix sub-7 shortcut is easier to do with a GG marble for some marblers) so it would be useless to remove it...

The GG marble always seemed useless to me...playing every level again with a slightly larger marble doesn't seem to be all that rewarding or fulfilling.

I feel that the GG marble is a hindrance to my playing. It is pretty useless IMO.

I don't like it, and it would take quite a bit of time to modify levels for it, wouldn't it?

Remove it (not just because of more work) but because mainly I think its rather a gimmick. I'd like to see the skin kept though as you have stated.

GGMarble.setStatus(Useless);

Getting rid of the Garage Games marble is like getting rid of Stewie from Family Guy.






In other words, no.

see IMO its like getting rid of the character that everybody hates

I never really understood the point of GG marble stats in LB's anyway and never really tried to accomplish at that part so id say keep GG marble but remove LB's stats. Sometimes messing arround GG marble is fun but certainly not completing all levels.
+ Less maintenance for something that wasn't really necessary in first place.

I agree 100% with what jroni is saying.

I say keep the GarageGames marble, but only for offline purposes. Remove the online ratings for GarageGames marble as I feel it doesn't really add much dimension to the gameplay. Feels kind of redundant, if you ask me.

jroni posted
The GG marble is pretty useless. I really just use it to gain more points in general rankings though I like doing tricks with the GG marble that are not possible with the regular marble so maybe just take it out of the Leaderboards.

GG marble's got a better balance, otherwise it's not something special and it doesn't fit on some levels, also I don't mind about my ratings. I will create a new LB account when MBP 1.50 Beta comes out.

Agreed with Jeff. I always liked using it, but to simplify the leaderboards I don't see anything wrong with removing it from online play.

When removed, will it still be available in Singleplayer?

Nov 27, 2013, 11:14am, davidskanal wrote:When removed, will it still be available in Singleplayer?

Obviously!

Well then the answer is clear, remove it from all the online activities and have it available only in offline mode. Problem solved!

I chose 'Remove ratings, leave it all as-is otherwise', because the GG marble is just a different way to play, like an Anti-Gravity modifier to the other side of the interior is just a different way to play. It's fun, competitive, and different (but not to the point where it's a whole new game).

On that point, what are ratings? Are they just the points you get when you complete a multiplayer match, or is it something else that I missed out on?

What's the point of keeping the GG marble there without any rating reward, please tell me.

I think the GG marble should stay on the LBs with the rating as well. If you don't want to modify the levels to fit the marble, remove the regular MBP / MBG levels, but add new Custom levels specifically for GG marble. So, there will be Custom regular marble, and Custom GG.

Removing the GG marble entirely from the LBs is like removing hours and hours of hard work for the online players, especially the high-ranked ones over 125,000,000 points. For the record, I have 34,500,000 points in MBP GG Leaderboard and 12,363,000 in MBG GG Leaderboards. Do the math. That would be a load of rating removed from my profile. So would it be for the others.

Nov 30, 2013, 5:35am, xelna wrote:What's the point of keeping the GG marble there without any rating reward, please tell me.

I think the GG marble should stay on the LBs with the rating as well. If you don't want to modify the levels to fit the marble, remove the regular MBP / MBG levels, but add new Custom levels specifically for GG marble. So, there will be Custom regular marble, and Custom GG.

Removing the GG marble entirely from the LBs is like removing hours and hours of hard work for the online players, especially the high-ranked ones over 125,000,000 points. For the record, I have 34,500,000 points in MBP GG Leaderboard and 12,363,000 in MBG GG Leaderboards. Do the math. That would be a load of rating removed from my profile. So would it be for the others.

Good point, good point. I think the normal levels should be able to be played with the GG-Marble, it's just a little bit easier in the most cases then. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. I don't really use the GG marble that often, but as Xelna pointed out, removing it would pretty much ruin most of the ratings.

To you, Xelna, what do you mean with Remove the MBP/MBG levels? I don't want the core of the game to be removed, that would be pretty sad if all levels were gone.

Regardless, I still say it should be removed. Xelna if you lose points others will too, its not just you. And you'll still be number 1 so ya.

Just add the lost points back to the score

Nov 30, 2013, 5:35am, xelna wrote:hours and hours of hard work

Sorry, but those hours and hours of hard work you speak of are only all for the honor and the no. 1 ranking. Unless those hours are for making a living (like professional e-sports players), they mean nothing significant.

Besides, you don't need the leaderboards to prove you're no. 1. Everyone knows you're no. 1, like Jeff/Tusky mentioned (And you have the videos to prove it).

If you keep it, you have to change it to be the Jar Jar marble.

Sorry guys, but can somebody explain all of this to me? I'm kinda lost. I have no experience with Marble Blast Platinum Online whatsoever, so can somebody please explain to me, what all of you are talking about?

I'd just remove the GG marble altogether. I agree with the opening post when it says it creates the illusion of extra content, and the points Xelna kept bringing up are like my MBG Revamped project: Pretty to look at but nothing more than a luxury.