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I’ve recently seen a couple of posts bringing up alternative levels for play and I wanted to start up a discussion on core level selection that’s been in the back of my mind for the past couple weeks. Personally, I get bored playing the same levels over and over again and I typically try to suggest something less mainstream in my games to see if people will branch out a little bit. However, since joining I’ve run into a population of players who largely refuse to play any level that is not explicitly listed as a core ladder level, which brings me to my point about how core levels are selected. My understanding as of right now is that core levels are selected using several criteria that is all based around how often and by how many players a game is played on that level. After being selected as part of the core set, these levels pretty much automatically get a boost in playthroughs both because of the core designation and the above mentioned players who rarely stray from them. The problem as I see it, is that this creates a self-reinforcing loop that the core levels are the most played ones because they are core, and therefore don’t get rotated out.

As a means to promote level diversity I’d like to suggest instituting a rotation of core levels where at the end of each season a certain proportion (say the bottom third based on some measure of popularity) of core levels are automatically rotated out for at least one season. This sort of change may make more sense if accompanied by an increase in the core level set from the current 10 levels to maybe 15 levels.

This sort of change would in no way prevent people from playing levels that were previously rotated out, but may encourage others to branch out into new levels they may not have experienced before. Now as to how to select the new levels, a simple poll instituted among active players would probably be the easiest way. Allow any active player to submit a potential map for core and have the community vote whether or not to include it in the core set for the following season.

Just wanted to throw my thoughts out there on the matter to see if anyone also had similar feelings along these lines.

Great idea, Vainiac.

There has always been some concern that core levels are self-perpetuating, even back before they were part of promotion challenges (which would make the effect much stronger). The effect is impossible to measure, but in practice, I don't think it's too large. It doesn't take much for a new level to bust onto the scene if it's good, or if a group of players suddenly decide they like it! Our early core level sets included Neptune and Nocturnal, which have since fallen away and don't seem likely to make a comeback. Mindtrix and Crimson are both relatively recent additions, in the last season or two, after the promo challenge effect. The game seems to me to be evolving perfectly well.

And in fact, Wrath -- which has been out for all of a week or so -- is already at #12 - #15 on the lists that you have to get to #10 on to be considered for core, and it's a niche style that shouldn't be all that popular. So the effect can't be all that strong. It's definitely possible for a new level to bust in.

I would be hesitant to measure anything other than popularity with the core levels, primarily because their main purpose is to serve as common ground. The set does evolve, but not quickly, and I wouldn't want to try to force it to evolve any faster than the game itself does naturally. At the end of the day, getting people to try new levels is not what it's for. It's supposed to be a set of levels that everyone already knows. And in a set of good levels that everyone already knows and likes, levels like Athena or Logic are just . . . great, and aren't going anywhere, anytime soon, and shouldn't.

I'd be concerned about making the list longer, too. One of the reasons to keep it short is that it's a list of levels you have to make it a priority to learn when you join the ladder. At 11 levels right now, it can already be intimidating for someone new, especially since only four of them (Athena, Black Rose, Vamped, Fuzed) are levels a returning player would recognize. The rest are modern. It's a lot to learn under fire.

I share your feeling of ennui at playing the same thing over and over, but I don't think the heart of the problem is the mechanics of the core levels. For me, the "levels I play over and over" list includes things like Untitled and June Bug and Junior and Blubird, and core can't have anything to do with that. I feel the effect mainly in that, even with an opponent willing to try something new, I find it difficult to offer suggestions. A lot of levels I remember loving, I go back and play now and they're just . . . really meh. I'm willing to play a lot of things! But the list of what I love has gotten shorter over time and is nowadays uncomfortably short. It wasn't always this way. I think the root cause of the problem isn't opposition to diversity, and it isn't the mechanics of core being self-sustaining . . . it's that we lost DKH.

If you have a level that you think should be more widely played -- shop it around. The unreasonably positive response to Wrath has led me to suspect that a lot of us are hungry something new . . . but it has to be good.

It is pretty interesting to look at the statistics, though. Here are the four measures, for this (incomplete) season: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

To the right of the four measures, I've listed the levels that would be considered for core if we looked down the list to 15, 20, and 25 places. Nysa, Salute, Wrath, RIP, Neptune, and IO seem like the set your proposal would be drawing from, Vaniac, with Fuzed, Black Rose, Vamped, and Take2 automatically disqualified for being stale. Seems pretty dubious. Replacing Black Rose with RIP? Fuzed with Wrath? Vamped with Salute? Hmm. I don't like any of those three, but it's a difficult proposition to seriously get behind. They're classics for a reason, and the replacements are . . . less tested.

Though I'm cheering for Salute. I didn't realize it was that close. I've always wished Salute would make it.

I find it very odd that someone would choose to play only core levels, though. The only mechanical effects the core levels have is that someone can challenge you and force you to defend your rank in a random core level, and someone testing you for a promotion challenge can choose to have that test take place in a random core level. That's it. That sort of thing is very rare. It might happen to you, like, once in a season? Granted, it's usually a pretty high stakes scenario, so you do have to be ready to defend those levels, but . . . playing only that set seems like a serious overreaction to what it is.

I'm with Vainiac, but not half the levels, for sure. There needs to be a familiar core of levels that don't change too much.

Maybe more like take the top 8, drop the rest from this season that didn't make top 8 and disqualify them, and then take the next 2.

The best case scenario is we get new, fresh levels into the core once a season.

The worst case scenario is we have the same set of levels rotating in and out every season.

The point of "core levels" isn't to be fresh. It's to be commonplace. It's the set of levels that everyone plays, and therefore you might have to play if someone wants to see what you've got in a "normal" level that everybody plays and everybody knows.

If you intentionally try to mix it up, you're accomplishing something different than what core levels are meant to accomplish. You're sticking things in because they're "fresh" rather than because they're commonplace, and therefore requiring pilots to adapt to randomness rather than to focus on what the community has determined are core skills.

If you want to "freshen up" the core list, focus on playing levels that are currently outside of it but not far outside. Promote those levels. Don't promote rules changes that boost levels 11-12 in place of levels 9-10; that's not what "core" means and not what "core" should mean.

There is a set of levels that are actually pretty decent but, for one reason or another, never became super popular - things like Skunked, Valor, Converge. That becomes a self-perpetuating cycle because, if it doesn't have that much mindshare, you tend to start forgetting it even when you're looking for something "different".

I'd be interested in a way to improve discoverability of infrequently played but still good 1v1 levels (...actually this can be generalized to pretty much any Descent multiplayer, really) but I don't think tinkering with the core set is the way to do it.

I understand the point that you want core levels to be the most common ones. This is why I suggested expanding the pool a little bit to accommodate some different levels. One of the issues with using popularity as your defining condition for core is that in such a small community, one or two active members can very easily skew the numbers. You brought up wrath, and to me its a perfect example of this phenomenon. A quick glance at Jediluke's match history shows hes played 27 games in it against 13 unique players as of 3/17. This accounts for more than half of all games and all unique players. This is skewing the popularity for this level. If he keeps pushing the map in his games, he could probably single handedly bring it into the top 10. So is the activity of a single pilot enough justification to designate something as a core level? Because that's the way its heading now. Now extend this same trend to very active pilots who play primarily only core levels and its easy to see how the same levels stay in the top 10. Personally, I see the the fact that only 2 maps have been swapped out over the course of three seasons as a sign of stagnation as opposed to the system working.



If we're getting caught up on terminology of core vs non-core then call the expanded level selection spotlight levels or something similar, and maintain the core levels for challenges and promotions. My primary concern is raising the visibility of other levels to introduce some additional diversity. This would be a much stronger force if its introduced at the organizational level as opposed to me sitting in chat and suggesting alternative levels and constantly being met with responses like "trash" "deleted" or "how about something from core."