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What is your preferred method of level selection?

I've been thinking about this sort of a lot lately. I used to think the Megaman games were the coolest because you could choose which order you do the levels in, but lately I've been thinking that this is a flawed approach. All 8 levels need to be equally difficult if you want the game to be balanced no matter what order the player chooses, so you don't really get a sense of progression. Of course, Megaman games always end with the Wily stages that go in a specific order, and some of them (7 & 8) split the 8 main stages into two groups of 4, so that's a great way to fix that mini-dilemma.

I've been considering a variation on the Megaman method that gives an illusion of choice to the player. Let's say you have a volcano stage, a jungle stage, a desert stage, a city stage, and a graveyard stage, and the player can play them in any order he wants to. But no matter which stage he picks, the layout is the same. The only difference would be the visuals and background music. So if the player picks the volcano stage first, the second screen will have lava on the bottom and if the player picks the jungle stage first the second screen will have a river filled with pirahnas on the bottom, etc. It's probably a bad idea, it woud be a lot more work to implement for not a lot of trade-off, but it's just been something I've been kicking around.

I guess another way to tackle the same basic concept is to have the same 5 motifs for stages, and at the end of every stage you get a treasure or something. There would be three versions of each stage: if you choose a stage with only one or no treasures, you play an easy version of that stage. If you have two or three treasures, you play a harder version, and if you have 4 treasures you would play a very hard version of that stage. So that would let you have a progression of difficulty as well as the freedom to choose which order you play the levels, and as an added bonus the game would have more replay value, because playing the levels in a different order would give you a different challenge every time.

So yeah, I'm just wondering what people think about different methods of level selection, and why one method is preferable to another.

The same level more than once would make me just quit the game.

I hate choosing different levels/paths, so I'm missing out on some games that are meant to be great (Megaman series, Shatterhand, Castlevania 3, and so on). Not quite sure why I don't like choosing them, but maybe it's because: I don't want to have to figure out which is the optimal order, not as much suprise/interest in seeing what the next level is, doesn't feel like the designers put much thought into the flow of the game or the "difficulty curves".

I don't have a problem playing a well designed and beautiful level more than once. I like when there is a variety of tactics that can be used during the levels though.

I don't mean that every level is the same with a different skin, I meant that every FIRST level is the same with a different skin and every SECOND level is the same with a different skin, etc. So if you played the game twice you would see the same levels again but the first time through it would be mechanically identical to a game like SMB that just gives you the levels in order. The only difference is the player would choose the "theme" of the level. But the level select screen wouldn't say that, it would just say "CHOOSE YOUR LEVEL!" So the player would think they are in charge of the order, when really they are just in charge of what the levels look like.


I can tell you right now that with MM 7 and 8, it doesn't matter which order you play the stages in. There's an optimal order for each one but you can easily play it out of order, and there is still a good difficulty curve. It's just a little slower because you'll have 4 stages in a row that are the same difficulty.

But basically I am trying to think of ways to give the player control over what order they play the stages in while still appealing to players like you who don't want a stagnant difficulty curve and etc. The idea I posted in the original post deals with the difficulty curve problem but you also mentioned a lack of surprise at seeing what the next level is, and that's also an issue I never thought of. Maybe the player can only see a collection of "Stage 1"s, and each one has another two stages after it that are played in the same session before he can choose a new level? Like, if we use the 5 cliches I posted earlier, the player can choose the desert level. The first third of the level would be a desert and a pyramid, in the next section the player could go underground to some caves from the pyramid, and in the last section the player could find an underground forest utopia ala "Journey To The Center of the Earth".

This reminds me of Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars. There are 6 paths you can choose from, and 3 stages in each path, so the six paths are each of the ways you can arrange the three stages. Each of the stages has different versions with different levels of difficulty, so the difficulty level always scales upward despite there being different paths. I'd say it worked fairly well and was a nice touch to add replay value, but beyond that it didn't really add to the basic gameplay (though it certainly didn't hurt either).

Regarding your other idea (different visuals/music for the same level), I don't think it would be worth the effort to come up with different visuals for every object/enemy/etc. that you add to the game. As soon as people realize that the game they play is the same no matter what path they choose, the whole path-selection system would seem meaningless to them. Besides, no matter what path they choose they're going to see all the different visual themes anyway, just applied to different levels. Ideally the level elements of a level should somehow be unique to the specific setting (by which I mean stuff like slippery surfaces in an ice level), so it would be pretty impractical to make every level element, especially enemies, work with all the visual themes.

If you allow the player to choose the order of the levels, I would try to take advantage of that as much as possible by adding "hidden" areas that can only be accessed with objects you get from other stages, so as to add some meaning to the choice.

Hey, this is the sort of thing I was talking about! I need to check that game out.

You're killing some potentially terrific experiences there, alastair. And it's not about optimization - the most that many Megaman games optimize is the boss battles, you can find plenty of the secret junk just with proper use of stuff like the Buster and Rush Coil. At worst case, there's one or two "easier boss AI's" that give a fair starting point, but even the more difficult ones can be taken out Buster-only. Figuring an order out that works for you personally is actually half the fun.

For instance, where most people start MegaMan 1 with CutMan, I start off with BombMan instead. ;) Although if you really want decent learning curve, I'd suggest starting with MM8, playing through the series backwards, and then playing MM&B and 9-10. The first two are clearly the hardest, MM&B (as MegaMan) being pretty doggoned close to as hard as 2; and 9/10 being almost similar, but a little more balanced/polished, although 10 is clearly harder in some respects.

I've played the first Megaman like a million times, and I always ALWAYS start with Gutsman. I didn't even know that people usually start with Cutman until like two years ago.

Man, I hated 8, and I thought 7 was waaaay harder than most of the NES series, mostly due to its Wily.  I'd probably go 6-1, 9, 7, 10.

Anyway, I like the level hub structure of Megaman.  The ability to play the levels out of order, or to defeat one particular boss first so you can get his weapon early is really fun.

Let's take Megaman 9 for example.  If you beat Jewel Man early, the game suddenly becomes MUCH easier.  The Jewel Satellite, his weapon, makes you effectively invincible against most projectiles and weak enemies in the entire game.  You can play the game differently, though, and not get the Jewel Satellite, and have a much more challenging experience.

How about this?  You could suggest paths to the player based on their desired difficulty.  There's the easy path, the medium path and the hard path.  The levels are totally same, but perhaps the items you get in them make some progressions easier than others.  This is a really Megaman way of doing things, but would help those players who are paralyzed by the freedom of a level hub.  Yes the game wouldn't be "balanced", but I actually think that helps the Megaman games more than it hurts them.

Here's another thought, this time derived from Megaman X.  What if beating levels in a specific order changed things in subsequent levels?  In Megaman X, there are two stages that are linked.  Chill Penguin's and Flame Mammoth's.  Chill Penguin's weakness is Flame Mammoth's weapon, but if you beat Chill Penguin first, it extinguishes all the fire on Flame Mammoth's stage making it considerably easier.  This gives the player a choice in how they want to shift the difficulty around, and is a pretty cool mechanic.

You could do something similar.  Beat the fire level first?  Well now the forest level is on fire and like 10x harder.

Your original pitch of making the levels the same and reskinning them seems like it would be a nightmare to execute, honestly, and my gut says players wouldn't be thrilled by it.

This sounds like a good idea to me!

Also, having an intro stage to teach the absolute basics is probably a good idea, before you get to the freedom hub, though its not something the megaman games did until the X series. (Seen this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM&) by egoraptor that goes over how awesome the intro level of Megaman X 1 is? fun and educational!)

There's another Megaman X level that changes - if you beat Storm Eagle's level, then the plane crashes into Spark Mandrill's level and messes with the electricity, making it easier because the lights don't go off as much if I recall...  I was sure there was another one but I can find no evidence right now.  But yeah, it's certainly a good idea for a game where you can choose level progression.

The intro stage for Megaman X is SO well designed.  It makes you feel like an incredible badass while you're playing it and brings you up to speed on the new mechanics of the game (wall jumping, for instance).

I never knew that about Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill.  I always beat Storm Eagle second, I think, so I never tried Spark Mandrill's stage before beating him.  Pretty cool.

Edit:  Now that I think about it, Megaman X's level design is far more complicated than I thought.

It has a three-tiered system of "optimal paths" you could choose from by providing three incentives within the levels.

1)  Armor upgrades
2)  Boss weapons
3)  Changing later stages

The beauty behind it is that they spread these rewards around such that they didn't lie all within the same level.  The optimal armor upgrade path is different from the optimal boss weapon path is different from the stage alteration path.  This gives the player 3 different optimized routes that they can choose from depending on how they play the game best.

I always chose a route that prioritized armor optimization early, with a secondary focus on boss-weapon optimization.  My typical Megaman X run goes like this.

1) Chill Penguin: Dash Boots
2) Storm Eagle: Helmet Upgrade
3) Flame Mammoth: X-Buster Upgrade

At this point I'm functionally complete.  I'm missing the chest upgrade, but it's only a defensive option and I'm not super concerned about it.  So then I follow a boss-weapon optimization route.

4) Spark Mandril
5) Armored Armadillo
6) Launch Octopus
7) Boomer Kuwanger
8) Sting Chameleon: Chest Upgrade

I never thought about it consciously, or decomposed how the levels have these three separate tracks in them, but I was able to pick up on it without even thinking about it.  Yes, I had to trial and error my way through the stages many times to develop my personally optimal route, but it did happen.

The integer value might get an overflow to count your retries here:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA0j4tteZ7Y&feature=channel_video_title

On a related note. I think to add a world-map like in mario in TrapThem, because the variety of play is just mind-blowing in TrapThem. And people do have different preferences. Some love action while others take it slow and want to have time to think. Then very likely you will get stuck in some caves. I do want to give the player an opportunity to skip some levels so that his creative flow in another place might make up for his flaws in the one place.