Geometry Dash Rating System
A major part of Geometry Dash is the editor, allowing anyone to make custom
levels. Once a level is released, the developer can incentivize players to play it
by rating it. This will put the level on special lists in-game that get a lot of
attention, thus leading to a drastic increase in downloads. It will also reward
players certain statistics upon completion and give Creator Points to the
creator. How all of this works is not clearly apparent in the game itself. As
such, this document will cover how the Rating System works in more detail.
Table of Contents
Basics
2
Requesting Difficulty 2
Unrated & Rated Levels 3
Difficulty Voting 4
Stars & Moons 4
Difficulty After Rating 5
User Coins 6
Rating Types 7
Creator Points 7
Updating A Rated Level 8
How To Get A Rating 9
General Tips 9
Upload Guidelines 10
Getting Feedback 10
Sent Levels 11
The Moderator Team 12
Moderator Types 12
How To Get Moderator 13
Final Note 13
1
Basics
Requesting Difficulty
When you finish a level and upload it, you have the option to request a
specific amount of Stars or Moons, ranging from 1 to 10. See figure 1 below.
This is a good place to start if your goal is to receive a rating on your level.
Other players and RobTop himself, the developer, can see the value you have
requested, as seen in figure 2. This gives everyone an idea of what your
intended difficulty is.
2
Note that requesting a value is not required to get a rating. If you are unsure
what your level deserves, for example, you can leave it empty. To get a good
idea of how many Stars or Moons your level deserves, we recommend playing
recently rated levels. This will show you how hard levels of certain values are.
Naturally, a higher value is supposed to indicate a harder level.
For more information about the uploading process and creating in general:
https://www.boomlings.com/GDEditor
Unrated & Rated Levels
Once a level has been uploaded, it will be in an unrated state initially. This
means that it does not give any rewards upon completion. The difference lies
in whether rewards are shown or not, which can be seen in any list with the
level, as well as the level pages themselves. Figure 3 shows how an unrated
and a rated Normal level looks respectively. On the left, there is only a
Difficulty Face, while the right also shows rewards in the form of 3 Stars and
User Coins. These are rewarded upon completion. Note that beating a level
before it is potentially rated also leads to rewards, but you have to go to the
level page to refresh it to its rated state.
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Difficulty Voting
When a level is unrated, the Difficulty is decided by community voting. This is
done by clicking the button with a star on it, seen in the bottom right in the
figure below. Using this menu, you can vote for how many Stars or Moons you
think the level deserves. With enough votes, the Difficulty Face will update to
reflect what the community thinks. Exact values are tied to specific Difficulty
Faces, as we explain below.
Stars & Moons
Stars and Moons have been mentioned several times so far. The only
difference between these is what Game Type the level is. Classic levels, where
gameplay goes progressively from left to right, reward Stars. Platformer levels,
on the other hand, reward Moons. Both are statistics shown on a user's profile.
The exact amount of Stars and Moons per Difficulty are listed below. As seen,
some of them have 2 possible values. This means that voting for either 4 or 5
Stars in figure 4 would be to suggest the level for a Difficulty Face of Hard.
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● Auto:1 Star or Moon
● Easy:2 Stars or Moons
● Normal:3 Stars or Moons
● Hard:4 to 5 Stars or Moons
● Harder:6 to 7 Stars or Moons
● Insane:8 to 9 Stars or Moons
● Demon:10 Stars or Moons
The faces for each Difficulty, referred to as Difficulty Faces thus far, are shown
below for illustration. Here, NA is also included on the far left, which means
that the Difficulty is unspecified as the level has not received enough
community votes yet. A rated level will never display a Difficulty of NA. The
face should change from NA to another relatively quick with some votes.
Difficulty After Rating
When a level is rated by RobTop, he specifies a specific Star or Moon value
based on the difficulty. This locks the Difficulty Face to the value he chooses
and disables future community votes. For example, if he rates a level 7 Moons,
it will show as Harder moving forward.
5
However, if the level is rated Demon by RobTop, community votes are still
available, but in a different way. By default, they are shown as Hard Demon,
but this can change through voting. A Demon button replaces the star
button in the bottom right, which opens the following menu when clicked:
This lets the community decide how hard a specific Demon level is. Note that
there is no difference in the reward given by the different ones, for example if
it is an Easy Demon or an Insane Demon. This voting only changes the visual
indication of the Demon Difficulty through the Difficulty Face. If a level is
Extreme Demon, you can be confident that the level is among the hardest in
the game, despite the same reward as Easy Demons.
User Coins
In addition to Stars or Moons, a level may reward User Coins. These are special
objects that creators can use in their levels, ranging from 1 to 3 in total. They
are supposed to be an optional, extra challenge when playing, similar to
Secret Coins in the main levels. Like Stars and Moons, these are statistics
indicated on a player's profile.
6
Before rating, User Coins are displayed in bronze, meaning that they do not
contribute to a user's statistics. If RobTop rates the level, he can choose to
verify the User Coins too, changing them to be silver. This means that they
count on your profile. Note that if a level's User Coins are too easy, for example
if they are free right at the end, they may not be verified despite the level
getting rated. This would leave the User Coins in bronze below a Star or Moon
value. To avoid this, you should use User Coins as intended. They can, for
example, be in an optional, hidden route that is harder than the normal path.
Rating Types
Not only can RobTop vary the reward given, but also what type of rating a
level gets. The different types are indicated by effects around the Difficulty
Face, as seen below. These are rating tiers in increasing order of how much
RobTop likes your level. From left to right, they are called Rated, Featured,
Epic, Legendary, and Mythic. The last 4 are displayed on the "Featured" tab,
which is the main place to find cool, new rated levels. To find a specific type,
go into the "Search" tab on the menu and apply specific filters.
Creator Points
When a user gets a rated level, they are rewarded with Creator Points. The
amount of Creator Points vary depending on the rating tier. For a Rated level,
a creator gets 1 Creator Point, and this increases by 1 for each tier. In other
words, Featured gives 2, Epic gives 3, Legendary gives 4, and Mythic gives 5.
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Creator Points are displayed on a user's profile, and are used for the Creators
Leaderboard, seen below. Here, users are displayed in order of decreasing
Creator Points. The symbol for Creator Points, indicated by a hammer and
wrench, are seen on the right. This list is in no way supposed to indicate the
best creators in the game, but rather creators who have contributed many
rate-worthy levels to the game.
Updating A Rated Level
After a level has been rated, it can still be updated freely by the creator. This is
to allow fixing issues or making other minor improvements. However, note
that big changes to a rated level, especially in terms of difficulty, are not
expected. If this is done, your level may be forcefully reverted to its original
rated state, and then locked from future updates. This is to ensure that they
stay around the difficulty and quality they were rated for. Older rated levels,
which means their ID is below a certain threshold, are locked from updates
automatically; it will show an error when you try to upload it. Contact anElder
Moderatorif you have issues with this.
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How To Get A Rating
General Tips
As mentioned throughout the document, levels are rated by the developer.
This means that there is no way for your level to be rated unless RobTop sees
it. There are no specific guidelines for what makes a level rate-worthy either.
This is decided on a case-by-case basis depending on various factors.
However, there are some general tips to follow if you want to get your level
rated.
First and foremost, it should be at least 30 seconds in length. To give your
level the best chances of getting a rating, though, it should display a length of
Long, which means that it is 60 seconds or longer. With tens of thousands of
levels rated throughout the game's history, this has become the length
standard for rated levels. For Platformer levels, similar minimum durations
apply despite no specific Length tag.
The level content itself is a lot more subjective. However, as mentioned,
ratings are decided by how much RobTop likes it. Thus, levels with clear
gameplay and decent visuals are more likely to get a rating. Whether
something is clear or decent is of course up to the observer, but RobTop has
rated a wide variety of styles of levels over time; there is no specific answer to
how your level should look or play.
Finally, the level should perform relatively well. Levels with high density of
objects, for example, may lead to lag for players on certain platforms. If the
performance of your level is too bad, this may stop it from getting rated. Other
times, it may lead to a lower rating tier. We recommend following the object
limits and warnings shown in the editor when you create. Try to optimize your
level's performance by not wasting objects and using Triggers in a smart way.
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Upload Guidelines
Of course, following the Upload Guidelines is a given to receive a rating. By
uploading a level to the Geometry Dash servers, you agree to follow them.
These are shown in-game the first time you try to upload a level, but can also
be opened with the button in the bottom right of figure 9, indicated by an
exclamation mark. The text itself should be self-explanatory.
Getting Feedback
While RobTop himself does not give explicit feedback on levels, there are
many experienced creators in the community who are willing to help. You can
get started by joining theGeometry DashDiscord server,which has some
channels and links to other servers for this purpose. Additionally, you may also
get some feedback through comments in-game, so those are worth keeping
an eye on. If you improve your levels according to feedback from others, it is
likely that the chances of a rating will increase.
10
Sent Levels
Some users have the ability to suggest levels to RobTop directly, often referred
to as "sending" levels. They are called Moderators and are indicated by a
special badge on their profile. More information about the team is given
below. Figure 10 shows how suggesting a level as a Moderator looks. RobTop
will often rate levels suggested by Moderators. It is worth noting that your
level does not need to be sent by a Moderator to be rated, but it increases the
chance of it happening.
As with other community members, many Moderators are willing to help out
creators by giving feedback. You can find many of them in the
aforementionedGeometry DashDiscord server with aspecific role. Many
even have their own "level request" servers, which allows people to join a
queue to get feedback. If they like your level enough, they may choose to
send it. Other Moderators search for and find levels on their own. Either way, if
you are curious whether your level has been sent by a Moderator, you can use
the "Sent" filter in the "Search" tab in-game.
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The Moderator Team
Moderator Types
There are three different Moderator types, which have various abilities
in-game. They can be seen by an "M" badge on their profile, with different
colors indicating what type of Moderator they are. The different types are
shown in figure 11. From left to right, we have Elder Moderator, Moderator, and
Leaderboard Moderator. This is in order of priority. A single user can have
several of these positions, but only the highest priority badge will show.
The abilities of each type are listed below. As seen, only Moderators and Elder
Moderators can suggest levels to RobTop. Leaderboard Moderators focus
exclusively on the Leaderboards, which you can read about here:
https://www.boomlings.com/GDLeaderboards
● Elder Moderator:Moderates comments, whitelists Newgroundsartists,
unlocks updates for old rated levels, and suggests levels to RobTop.
● Moderator:Suggests levels to RobTop.
● Leaderboard Moderator:Moderates the Top 100 and GlobalLeaderboards,
as well as level-specific ones.
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How To Get Moderator
Many community members want to become a Moderator to be able to
suggest levels for a rating. Similar to rating, Moderator promotions are solely
done by RobTop himself on a case-by-case basis, so there are no clear steps to
getting it. Here are some general criteria:
● Be nice.
● Be active in the community.
● Be trustworthy.
● Be able to judge levels well.
If you display these qualities over time, there is a chance that other
Moderators may suggest you to RobTop. Of course, showing that you are
qualified may be difficult if you do not share circles with pre-existing
Moderators. If you are interested, you can apply to join the team using our
application form. Make sure you read the information in it clearly before
submitting. Here is the link:
https://forms.gle/XyRGtFzD3hshDUQV7
Final Note
Some users may be familiar with a special system for handling Demon ratings
before 2.2. This was handled by Moderators in our Discord server due to
various reasons. However, it was only a temporary solution while we were
waiting for the update. As such, it is now discontinued. Moving forward,
Demon-worthy levels are rated by RobTop himself in-game—the same way as
levels ranging from 1 to 9 Stars or Moons. Like any rated level, this may or may
not be due to a Moderator sending them beforehand.
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