Update New campaign tracks (yesterday's news) and more

hey all, yesterday we pushed 5 new tracks into Campaign 2. We had a shortlist of tracks that we were going to push into campaign 3 but until we have a full set of 2 stepping into 3 may be a little challenging.

we selected tracks based on a number of things, but one of them was "Completion Rate" which we used to help decide the difficulty of the track, you can view a tracks completion rate under the "Show More" link under description. Completion Rate is unique first completes / unique first plays which will give a percent. So take Road to the Star I that has a completion rate of 0.83 which essentially means that 83% of the people that play it can complete it. Compare that against one of the tracks we shortlisted for Campaign 3 based on difficulty (may even still be too difficult for 3) Royalty which has a completion rate of 23%. This is a new stat so for older tracks may not be reporting accurately until they get some more plays. But all you authors out there keep an eye on your completion rate, challenging tracks are awesome and I enjoy them but we don't want to get players frustrated too early in the game.

And to remember what it is like as a new player scan through this players play through of the game where they get stuck on SLD EASY shore trainer in the campaign:


Other than that, keep the Campaign 2 + 3 entries coming and for those that have already entered your tracks may be shortlisted but just didn't make the first cut for the release we did this week, we will be adding more next week. We want to see the types of tracks the new curve tool can lead to, along with the zoom improvements. If you have any other track editor improvements let us know!

have a great weekend everyone!

 

Strats intro has a 0.93 completion rate, which means that people fail to complete a straight line? :v

 

Oh and maybe my track should be in the third campaign instead of the second? It's a lot harder and has a 69% completion rate with the second hardest track having like a 77% completion rate. I think a lot of players are going to rage there :/

 

Click show more under a track, eric just said that in his post ^

 

That's strange, for me it's under average time...
I'm using chrome, maybe you're using a strange browser or something haha.

 

That is correct, 7% can't figure out to press accelerate which is really on us to provide clearer instructions / objectives on the early tracks. It is difficult to remember what it is like to play Free Rider for the first time, but for many players controls are not intuitive and objectives are not clear.

 

I have the same problem on some tracks. It doesn't seem to appear under every track. I don't know why ?

 

Ya, it is definitely a difficult track but thought it would be a nice one to cap off the second campaign. We will wait to see what other tracks will make it into campaign 2 before adjusting but we will be watching the numbers carefully. Aiming for 70% to be the most difficult track in Campaign 2, others would be good to have a mix of +80%.

One thing is we may need to revisit campaign 1 to add some easier tracks to ramp up the progression a little slower than it is now.

 

we just added the stat recently so new first time plays / first completes would have to come in for the stat to start to register.

 

Yeah having hard tracks in the campaign seems cool to me but if the difficulty curve is too steep then people will just rage quit. Right now the 16th track you play is quite a difficult one. You only have ~20 min of gameplay untill you're supposed to be able to beat it. Having more tracks before that should make it a lot more fun for new players. I sure like a challange but if you're completely new to this game then you may struggle a lot.