02-Jan-2015, 5:18 PM
I'd agree a bit more if we were talking about a gap between CCLP4 and CCLP5, but I'd venture to say that the gap between CCLP1 and CCLP4 could be viewed as a gap between CCLP3 and CCLP4, precisely for the reason you mentioned - because CCLP1 was such an exception. We haven't had a community-produced set where people could offer up their levels into the submission pool without any real limitation other than ruleset compatibility (barring any changes to the call for submissions) since CCLP3. Sure, people could technically submit whatever they wanted for CCLP1, but the stated purpose of the set heavily played into the culling of levels prior to voting, what some designers submitted, and how the community voted. Many designers who produced a lot of difficult content in the wake of CCLP3 felt a bit left in the dust. I'd be the last person to ever suggest producing CCLPs like an assembly line process, but there comes a point where, at least in this specific case, we have to recognize that too much will make the set far more difficult to construct.
I've noticed the trend you've mentioned as well - I've even made levels with the next CCLP in mind too - but I think this past year has also just happened to bring about a huge wave of levels from some very active designers, including some who have either been far more interested in CCLP4 than CCLP1 or missed the CCLP1 cutoff point entirely. Even so, there are quite a few levels in the submission pool as it stands made pre- and post-CCLP1, and though many "play it safe," there's quite a breadth of expectation represented for what CCLP4 could be. Perhaps a more comfortable solution that would inspire some designers to avoid playing it so safe and inject novelty into official set releases would be to produce a different kind of set during the long waits between future CCLPs - something like what Miika listed in his "Future Community Sets" blog post, or something else that's not nearly as general-purpose as the CCLP series.
I've noticed the trend you've mentioned as well - I've even made levels with the next CCLP in mind too - but I think this past year has also just happened to bring about a huge wave of levels from some very active designers, including some who have either been far more interested in CCLP4 than CCLP1 or missed the CCLP1 cutoff point entirely. Even so, there are quite a few levels in the submission pool as it stands made pre- and post-CCLP1, and though many "play it safe," there's quite a breadth of expectation represented for what CCLP4 could be. Perhaps a more comfortable solution that would inspire some designers to avoid playing it so safe and inject novelty into official set releases would be to produce a different kind of set during the long waits between future CCLPs - something like what Miika listed in his "Future Community Sets" blog post, or something else that's not nearly as general-purpose as the CCLP series.