Originally posted by DarkMattCan you really call the levels that go out of their way to not be a mario level good mario levels?
Absolutely. The thing is this: The Mario games, which I consider the best Mario games so far, are usually the games which tried something new and did something quite different from their predecessors. For example: Super Mario World for adding a rather open world and allowing you to break the game with the cape, Super Mario 64 for having a hub world and a very different overall game flow, Super Mario Galaxy for having all the funny gimmicks (like gravity) and crazy, weird galaxies, Super Mario 3D World for the multiplayer etc. The Mario games, which did everything just like their predecessors - in other words: "did everything like a Mario game" - were usually the ones I enjoyed the least. Like the whole NSMB series. They just make you feel like you were playing the same game four times.
In my opinion, the whole point of a Mario game is to try something new and, well, try "not to be like any Mario game", if that makes any sense to you. To put this into context: When they've shown the first trailers of Super Mario Maker, they've only shown basic Mario elements + enemy stacking. The maker at this point was barely different from SMB1, but at this point I considered it rather boring and wasn't all that hyped. I thought something like "looks cool", but that was it. It wasn't until the Nintendo World Championships, where they've shown a whole bunch of new elements and level design possibilities, that I got absolutely hyped by the game. This is the feeling the game should convey in my opinion.
If this is too theoretical for you, just don't think of Super Mario Maker as a Mario game (because that's really not what it is at all). Just think of it as a powerful and intuititve level design tool that just happens to feature Mario characters and elements. I don't think the levels have to "feel like Mario" at all, I think everything goes as long as it's fun. And anyways, just because something hasn't been in a Mario game yet doesn't mean it "doesn't feel like Mario". The "don't do shrooms" level for example. That hasn't been done in a Mario game yet, but I see that absolutely fitting into a hypothetical official Mario level. I still feel the Mario essence in it.
Something like "only Mario levels" would be impossible to enforce, anyways. I mean, how would you do that? Make official guidelines, stating something like "any level submitted must feel like a Mario level"? And how would you determine that? I think that wouldn't be practicable. The only thing you could do to enforce "Mario levels" would be to severly limit the possibilites of the level design tool, but what would be the fun with that?
On top of that, I don't even think this is solely a Mario Maker thing. I think pretty much any level design tool included in a game that gives the player a lot of possibilities leads to players making levels that don't feel like they were officially from that same game. In fact, Lunar Magic is the exact same thing. There are a lot of hacks that don't feel like an official Mario game, yet I still usually get a lot of enjoyment out of these. Like my favorite hack, TSRPR. It still has elements of a Mario game, yet is also different in many ways. Some more backstory, some well-hidden and fun secrets and a very different musical style. I love that hack, even though it doesn't really feel like SMW at all.
TL;DR: I really don't think having "levels that are unlike official Mario levels" is something wrong. I personally enjoy it this way.
Originally posted by DarkMattI want to like the metroid levels but death is costly and the level type can very, very quickly turn into a slog.
This I can agree with, although mostly for the one reason that the game doesn't feature checkpoints. A major oversight in my opinion. Checkpoints shouldn't really be too complex for a level designer to handle, yet having them would make harder levels a lot more reasonable and fun and would make it easy to balance your levels. Plus, they could give 1-UPs a meaning outside of 100-Mario challenges.
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