So I have been playing FreeRiderHD for almost two years now. I Love this game to death and have decided to start putting way more time into it lately. As I have gotten better, easy plain old jump tracks and smooth lines started to get boring. I dove into the world of trials, playing them all the time and even beginning to make my own. As tracks got more difficult, I got better and pushed myself to overcome challenging tracks. Along with this, I began to notice a pattern within FreeRiderHD:
Many very challenging or technical tracks have gotten horrible ratings and votes. Even when authors put loads of time into detail and presentation, if the track is remotely difficult, it seems to get tons of dislikes. I have experienced this with some of my own tracks, and even some of my friends such as
GamingHunter feel this as well. I am sure many of you reading this may have felt or noticed this too. There are many people out there who dislike a track just because they can't beat it, just because it is hard. They completely disregard the effort put into it by the author. A track should never be labeled "too hard", or even hard enough that you "dislike" it. If anything, you should just "not like it". There is a difference. It is often times the difference between a 60% rating and a 90% rating on a track. There is a solution though
I know this has been proposed by multiple people and has been argued many times, but you should have to beat a track to rate it. That is the only way you can give a fair judgment of how you liked it. If this hate for difficult tracks continues, would even think to go as far as proposing the removal of the dislike button completely, leaving only the option to "like" a track or do nothing at all.
Propositions like this shouldn't be needed though. They are drastic and unnecessary. They are an extra burden on the staff. More angry riders to deal with, and more work for
Char and
Eric and
Stig . So why don't we solve this ourselves, as a community. I challenge every rider out there to start judging tracks fairly. View them not by their difficulty, but rather by their style, by the effort the author puts into them, by the detail and thought behind the lines you see. I dare all of you reading this to begin a new age of FreeRiderHD!
(Okay I may have gotten a little too inspirational now, but seriously, listen to me)