Challenge mode and it's missing potential // 10 suggestions on how to improve the challenge mode

Presidenten

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#1
Can we all agree on that challenge mode is a great feature on parkour, but executed so damn poorly that it's barely playable? There is a reason why most players play normal mode even though challenge mode should be the better one. I personally love speedrunning and competition in parkour, challenge mode has great potential for this but isn't getting enough attention, therefore I have came up with 10 suggestions and improvements how challenge mode actually should be.

Please read these suggestions and comment your own opinions about this :)

1. The timer shouldn't be server tick dependent.
This is one of the reason why challenge mode sucks balls. The timer is tick dependent, which means if the server has a low tps (lag), the timer will slow down. Leading to people doing maps in a few seconds. That's why most world records are impossible to beat. Because they abused the lag in order to get a low, unbeatable time. Why don't make the timer the same as champion maps? Where it is based of the real time and only the in game clock lags. The plus side with champion map timers are also that it's always on and counts, even after reboots. Then you can do maps in challenge mode without worrying about you time to disappear because of the server reboot. Which has happened me quite often.

2. Give the timer milliseconds.
Isn't this pretty obvious? Most of the maps, especially easy - hard are completable within seconds. This means that many maps will have a shared world record. But (from what I know) it is alphabetical so the one with the first letter gets the wr. And if you want to take the world record you have to shave the record down with a whole second which is pretty much impossible on most of the maps. Giving the timer milliseconds would make speedrunning so much better in every way. And I know it's possible to implement, many other servers has done it.

3. Challenge Mode should be the normal mode, or maybe combine the 2 modes.
You will probably disagree with me (because you are a noob) but what I mean is that I wouldn't mind seeing challenge mode as the standard mode. This is because more players should play challenge mode, being the first thing new players will choose and it being renamed to normal mode. This will probably bring more competition into manacube if more people know about the ability to speedrun maps. The current normal mode could instead be renamed to easy mode, where speed, enderpearls and jump boost are allowed etc.
Another idea is instead to combe the two modes into one. Meaning that everyone has a chance to time the maps but also use speed or epearl if it's too hard for them. But if they use helping items their times will be invalid and gone. This will probably be too hard to implement so I understand if this can't be a feature.

4. Add official map leaderboards, not only top 3.
To bring more competition into challenge mode I think we need to give more motivation aswell. If you know your position on the leaderboard you might wanna continue to grind for the world record or a better position. Or maybe you will be satisfied seeing yourself in a top 10. Therefore I think expanding the leaderboard on every map would be a great idea. You should be able to perfom a command to show the leaderboard for example /leaderboard luckyblock 2 will show the 2nd page of the leaderboard on lucky block.
The message you get after completing a map in challenge mode should also show which rank you have. Example:
1602274013819.png


5. Replace the world records stat with a new point system.
The world record stat is kinda unfair since it's being dominated by the most skilled person on manacube. It might not be possible to balance it out. But at least we could make it more fun. So the new point system only works with the leaderboard suggestion above. And it should be called something like record points or speedrun points. And basically it gathers points for your overall placement on the new map leaderboards. So for example
Top 10 gives you 1 point.
Top 5 gives you 2 points.
Top 3 gives you 3 points.
World Record gives you 5 points.

These points would then be combined and replace the world records stat and leaderboard in spawn, and they could also be showed on the sidebar and on your name when you hower over it. This could also be a cool way to give away new titles, by having x amount of record points.

6. Update the style of map descriptions in the log.
Together with the other suggestions above I think the layout of map description on the log has to be redone as it does feel kinda outdated and clumsy. Here is an image on how it could look if all suggestions were implemented, ignore the italics, I couldn't fix it..
1602277038324.png


7. Announce world records in chat.
This is a small one but would be a nice one to have, and maybe encourage more people to compete for the world record aswell. Simply announce when someone gets the world record by having a chat message. This could also be a method to catch hackers in case their time is suspicious. Example:
1602270927579.png


8. The diamond should let you choose mode.
Simple quality of life suggestion, the diamond is a good feature since there is so many maps, it picks one random for you. Though it only picks normal mods which is very annoying. Would certainly help if it let you choose between normal or challenge mode.

9. Completing all maps in challenge mode will give you another reward.
To show you are the real pro it could be cool to flex. People (including me) has suggested another color of the checkmark if you complete all maps in challenge mode. Or maybe a title or some other kind of reward. Just something to give it a purpose.

10. Fix the broken challenge mode maps.
Some maps broke in challenge mode, making it impossible to complete them all. This is just unsatisfying, the maps i know of are airballoon], minygolf and tropics.
 

GamersDecision

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#2
This thread sums it up perfectly. Please Manacube Parkour staff read this properly and at least consider if some of these changes could be possible. They are desperately needed.
 

jacobsfunparty

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#3
+1 to this. Manacube is mainly known to be a speedrun server within the parkour community so expanding that aspect of the server could bring some old players back. Maybe just maybe I don't know. (I am tired of getting bullied for playing manacube on other servers lol)
 

balls_12

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#4
This is good
 

zzykrkv

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#5
8. The diamond should let you choose mode.
Simple quality of life suggestion, the diamond is a good feature since there is so many maps, it picks one random for you. Though it only picks normal mods which is very annoying. Would certainly help if it let you choose between normal or challenge mode.
YES I NEED THIS
I only ever play random maps so its a bit dissapointing that i have to play them in normal mode. I NEED THIS SFHGHIOAGIOehgiehgisdh
 

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#8
Sounds really good. Some good improvements should do it to make more fun. ^^
 

SpiroTech

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#10
I love all these ideas! obviously, the biggest one would be the timer glitch, as that makes records impossible unless TPS is really low. If challenge mode was changed, what do you think should happen to the records? should they be reset? there are plenty of actual records but it is so hard to tell for some of them if the timer glitched.
 

Faudon

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#11
Hallo!

I am loving all the suggestions and points that were made on this thread. I am sure this would bring more playability, wanting to perform world records and play maps aswell. With the upcoming and current updates on Parkour this would make a great addition, bringing new players and encouraging them to interact with the Parkour community.

I do have a couple questions/statements that I'm unsure about after reading through the comments made and the post itself. Hoping someone will clarify these or at least read through what I have said. <3

1. The timer shouldn't be server tick dependent.
This is one of the reason why challenge mode sucks balls. The timer is tick dependent, which means if the server has a low tps (lag), the timer will slow down. Leading to people doing maps in a few seconds.
I am not sure how this would be fixed but I definitely agree with you. I normally don't play in challenge mode due to the lag that there is when playing, making it impossible to beat other records or be placed on the TOP 3 leaderboards, as most of them were partly achieved thanks to the lag and the timer stopping for a few seconds from time to time.

5. Replace the world records stat with a new point system.
The world record stat is kinda unfair since it's being dominated by the most skilled person on manacube. It might not be possible to balance it out. But at least we could make it more fun. So the new point system only works with the leaderboard suggestion above. And it should be called something like record points or speedrun points. And basically it gathers points for your overall placement on the new map leaderboards. So for example
Top 10 gives you 1 point.
Top 5 gives you 2 points.
Top 3 gives you 3 points.
World Record gives you 5 points.
These points would then be combined and replace the world records stat and leaderboard in spawn, and they could also be showed on the sidebar and on your name when you hower over it. This could also be a cool way to give away new titles, by having x amount of record points.
Will the points gained from getting on the leaderboards or having a world record be removed if someone else beats you? So let's say I have a world record for the map Creeper with 8 seconds, giving me 5 points and granting me a title, then you come and get 7 seconds. Will I still have 5 points earned from it and able to use my title? Or will I get taken those points away from my stats and given them to yours?

9. Completing all maps in challenge mode will give you another reward.
To show you are the real pro it could be cool to flex. People (including me) has suggested another color of the checkmark if you complete all maps in challenge mode. Or maybe a title or some other kind of reward. Just something to give it a purpose.
I believe this has been brought up in the past and has been suggested that a red checkmark could be added in replacement of the green one for those who completed all maps in challenge mode. Would love to see this added as it will encourage those who have made all maps to re-do them with timings included, possibly getting themselves world records!

Even though some staff have seen this already, I will forward this thread so other staff may see this and also make suggestions with the ones already made. I personally thank you for creating this post and letting us know your thoughts on how map completions/progress is made on Parkour. I agree with all the points and suggestions that were made, I really hope to see these added in the future.

faudon <3
 

EvanTech

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#12
Love this! Everything was very well said but I'll have to agree that I don't think the modes should be combined or challenge mode be the normal mode.

But fleto!
The biggest problem is the timer. From what I know (I write some plugins on the side), there's no way to make a timer NOT tied to TPS in some way, since TPS represents the core time clock of the entire server, and thus governs things like instructions per second and the passage of time in the server. Maybe this could be solved by polling time from an external source (such as NIST) within the code of the Challenge Mode plugin.

Here's some of what I mean in the logical order of execution:
  1. Get current time from time server (Let's say it's 00:00 when the player steps on the plate)
  2. Use regular timer code to display time to the player (Since pulling data from a server once per second could be problematic for performance)
  3. Once player finishes, get the time from the external source again and check the internal completion time against the difference between the initial and final external times.
    1. (You'd use the completion time derived from the external source for leaderboards, the internal timer would just be to show an approximate time to the player without damaging performance).
You summed this up perfectly and (by the looks of it from a fellow dev's perspective <3) that's exactly how champion maps do it. It looks like they find the start and end time using the Java provided current time function but the timer is displayed wrong because there's seemingly no way to make it separate from TPS. I think the only way to do so would to be like this
Commence confusion of non-programmers with pseudocode
main():
set var time to current time;
While the player is in challenge mode:
if var time is not current time:
set var time to current time
display timer to player
I'm not sure how efficient this would be but hey it should work xD
 

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#13
Thank you for liking and forwarding it <3

I am not sure how this would be fixed but I definitely agree with you. I normally don't play in challenge mode due to the lag that there is when playing, making it impossible to beat other records or be placed on the TOP 3 leaderboards, as most of them were partly achieved thanks to the lag and the timer stopping for a few seconds from time to time.
Fleto already gave a great answer in a post above you!

Will the points gained from getting on the leaderboards or having a world record be removed if someone else beats you? So let's say I have a world record for the map Creeper with 8 seconds, giving me 5 points and granting me a title, then you come and get 7 seconds. Will I still have 5 points earned from it and able to use my title? Or will I get taken those points away from my stats and given them to yours?
Maybe I should have clarified it a little more but, What I was thinking is that the points will actively be updated when losing and gaining ranks. Similar to how you win and lose world records. In you example, if you lose the world record on creeper you will lose 2 total points (but still have title) and if I was 2nd and got first I will gain 2 points.