While I was playing Playlist 3, I noticed something. All of the maps were created by the developers. And what do these maps have in common? They are very vertically oriented. Three rounds out of these new rounds have great ideas, but they are very vertical. AND WE CAN'T TURN THE CAMERA UP, which is their fatal flaw.

Another thing I've noticed in these maps is that in certain parts of these maps, they are very well thought out, but in certain parts, it feels like they were either done last minute, or weren't finished and just had rudamentary elements put in. In certain parts of all of these maps the camera just clips through the objects, and in important parts, it's impossible to see where you are going.

Because when I was in the show select menu, I noticed a row at the bottom called "Creator made rounds". And wouldn't you know it, these maps are all made by the devs as well. Why would they completely ignore the giant pile of user created maps that keeps getting bigger?

Put two and two together, get that noggin joggin.

All "Creator maps" are made by the devs, certain parts of these maps are well made, the camera keeps clipping through objects, certain objects in levels feels like they were put there just to fill the space...

My suspicion is that this is all just unreleased and unfinished content from previous seasons. There are no new major obstacles besides one. Last season added the sliding ground and sliding mechanic with it. But this season added nothing besides the creative mode.

S2 for example had 8 new maps, but S3 had only 5 new maps. My suspicion is that this season is just made entirely out of maps that were cut from previous seasons that weren't finished in time for their release. That's why they are throwing them all out now, even tho they have fatal design flaws- they don't have any new maps.

They delayed this season because the creative mode wasn't yet ready, and S3, which was extremely disappointing, was already ending. This forced them to delay S4, because they had no real content available for it besides putting out Creative Mode. They would have put it out sooner, but couldn't, because it wasn't ready yet. When they finally had it finished, they were already late with the new season.

That is also another reason why we don't have seasonal challenges. Because they didn't plan it out. That resulted in the battle pass being as terrible as it is- it's too easy, has only 40 levels of real content with 80 levels of crown shards and bonus skins. They didn't have the time to do the challenges.

I think that they are either too busy making new skins, lack the staff to make new content, they are busy making a new game, or they just decided to buy some time and threw us the garbage they had on the backburner for a long time while they work on actual content.

What i believe is this that with the level editor the devs can make levels more easily and faster. Normal levels are more or less handmade. But with this level editor it requires less effort and time. Thus resulting in more new levels and keepeing the game fresh for players. But the downside to this is that the quality of the levels are lower cause the level editor is limited at this point. A pro for is that you can pump out levels faster and even have the community create levels which costs the devs even lesser time and effort. It will become way more interesting when they add more stuff in the level editor which will happen eventually. Most likely when the new famepass arrives.

Its a small team i guess but in the longterm this is a good way to keep the game alive i think but they gotta add more stuff to the level editor and maybe reduce the costs of the items from the editor so u aren't as limited then we are now. People will be making great levels but also ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ones but all the devs have to do is let een team of devs play user created levels and pick the good ones and put them in a playlist rotation what still has to happen. They also should make it so that user created levels show up for everyone. So people can rank them and play the most popular ones ingame instead of the hassle thats sharecodes. But im pretty sure that will happen

Let's be honest the playerbase is declining but lets hope the editor keeps the people playing but they gotta add more stuff in it and dont take to long doing so else people will quit again. If this all will keep the players interested enough we will have to see, time will tell i guess

its not unfinished maps, its lazy maps. these maps were made for this season but lazy

The maps in playlist 3 feel like they have the most empty space so far. They do feel like Season 4 maps though. I can't imagine any other season they'd fit in as they don't look anything like past themes.

I think my real biggest issue right now is that racing is one of the least interesting map types to begin with, and becomes more tedious when it's the only map type as they haven't added other map types yet to creative officially. Most of my favorite maps in the past were survival maps. Racing gets boring since once you find the optimal quickest route you just kinda need to repeat the same tactic over and over with little to no variation in what's going to happen that round. It's even worse when it comes to finales since a race map is such an anti-climactic finale type. It feels like you're just playing another race map for most of these finals, and not something that feels like a finale.

When you win it just doesn't give that same rush. As janky and buggy as it could be I like that the two older race maps Fall Mountain and Lost Temple had a crown you physically have to grab at the end of the map. It made it have a more final feeling to it and gave opportunity for last minute game upsets where several people can push and grab eachother at the end and take it from someone who got ahead during the racing part. With some of these finals you can pretty confidently win with no one able to catch up so there's less tension when you're winning. I have had multiple times during maps like Firewalk final where I could just taunt at the end of the map near the finish line for several minutes before anyone eventually caught up to me, which is a complete tension killer when you can get so far ahead that no one has the slightest hope of catching up again, and makes rng moments more annoying when they can make it impossible to win cause one little mistake can make you respawn too far behind.

you cant even compare new maps with old maps. sure we got lots of new maps but all these new maps are far from good

In addition, for many people they are difficult because they have parts that deceive and make them deviate from the correct path and get lost to reach the goal. It can't be that in the 10 person test maps only 1 arrives. This takes people out of the game.

I think they were delayed by building the backend of creative. I agree the maps don't feel good to play. I would rather they stuck to making new maps but maybe this was a way to limit the number of new maps they needed for new seasons.

The building blocks are too simple looking and it makes a lot of maps harder as you can't tell gaps quite so well. Not sure if that's art department not having enough time or constrained by performance on Switch platform.

Originally posted by Cringe Guy 2086:

its not unfinished maps, its lazy maps. these maps were made for this season but lazy

Creator Playlist 2 had great maps, but some of them felt like they would perfectly fit into the last season. Yeah, there were a couple of spots that just didn't work (the camera issues), but overall, those maps played really good. CP3 feels like it's made of maps that had problems with their entire level design beying too vertical, as the camera can't point up to the sky.

Originally posted by LenartNotFound:

you cant even compare new maps with old maps. sure we got lots of new maps but all these new maps are far from good

I'm not comparing new maps to old maps. If anything, my favorite maps came from S2, and I have more than enough issues with how they treat Legacy maps.

This game was at it's peak in S2. Best maps, best obstacles, most players, best events, best season pass, best EVERYTHING. Sunken Secrets was like: "Yeah we have a bunch of skins done, we have a few maps with a new sliding mechanic, but we need to rush this ♥♥♥♥ out so cut the maps, cut the obstacle updates to Legacy maps done in S2, and ♥♥♥♥ it out." Satellite Scramble was S tier, Sunken Secrets was D tier AT BEST.

Originally posted by (｀▽´):

I think they were delayed by building the backend of creative. I agree the maps don't feel good to play. I would rather they stuck to making new maps but maybe this was a way to limit the number of new maps they needed for new seasons.

The building blocks are too simple looking and it makes a lot of maps harder as you can't tell gaps quite so well. Not sure if that's art department not having enough time or constrained by performance on Switch platform.

This is pure speculation, as I have NO INSIDER KNOWLEDGE, but I guess that ever since Epic Games bought them, they were forcing them to put out more and more skins, and they wanted them to Fornite-ify the game. I mean, ♥♥♥♥, this game already is like Fortnite with it's skins, Creative, Solo / Duo / Squad queue, and probably with a couple of other things (idk haven't played Fortnite in like 3-4 years).

Epic probably knew that they had Creative in the list of things they wanted to do, and forced them to start working on it around the time S3 came out. That's why they cut the new obstacles and updates from Legacy maps all of a sudden, they probably ran into issues with build limits or into some problems with the engine. When we compare S2 and S3 in terms of content, it's the polar opposites- a total nosedive in quality.

And, by the time they had Creative ready, they realized that they didn't really make any content for S4. So they just took the unfinished maps, and started putting them into game. When you look at these maps, they are clearly unfinished content from last few seasons, as their structures are too similiar to what we've seen already. Maybe with time we will get true user-created maps and more of a community driven experience with Creative.

Still, there is one question hanging in the air. Why wouldn't they just keep these maps in their catalogue and use them for future seasons? And why would they? They just introduced the Creative, might as well just make building blocks for that for each new season. They wanted to get the unfinished maps out so that they can finally start working on new ones, or on fixing the core issues with camera and networking that we are experiencing right now. They are buying themselves time to work on the game.

Frankly, if I'm right, then there was no good way out of this situation. Epic helped them out, and the game is way more popular than it was in Legacy, because I remember how dead the game used to be, and how it would take sometimes 10 minutes to even start a round. If they just kept releasing new seasons with new maps every couple of months, the game would get stale in about two years. But with the user created maps, we get a lot more community driven content down the line at the expense of not having a quality season in the meantime.