As someone who just started LPing level packs about 2-3 weeks ago, perhaps it's best that I offer my 2 cents and how my experience has been. Before I started, I made a new topic asking this community what would be a good first level pack to LP. Two members, Proxima and Strato, both said that Nessy's Lemmings Migration is a great first pack to do an LP, citing its relatively short length (40 levels), as well as how it's not too difficult. After some thought and waiting for possibly more suggestions to come in, I decided to do Lemmings Migration for my 1st LP. Despite some levels stumping me badly and how a few levels needed 2 or 3 videos, I must say that it was indeed a really good first level pack to LP, so I'm glad I went with their suggestion. I absolutely enjoyed the pack and the challenging puzzles. The levels were extremely satisfying to figure out, especially the later ones in both the Headache and Migraine ranks, the final two ranks of the pack.
Indeed, like Icho, I thought I would be able to breeze through the pack quickly, especially since I have recently solved all of United, but that was not so! Not a bad thing at all, though. I still eventually figured out all the levels out on my own. Indeed, some of the early levels that surprisingly stumped me in the 1st rank, I can definitely say that I was just a dummy. And yes, except for the first 5 levels of the Irritation rank, where I unfortunately don't have the original recording due to either I didn't have OBS open or I might had and I simply didn't press the correct hotkey to start recording (probably the latter), all of the LP is a complete blind playthrough, meaning I have never seen any of the Lemmings Migration levels beforehand, and so what you're watching is me seeing and playing the levels for the very first time in real time for a very authentic LP experience. The LP ended up being 11 parts, but I can honestly say that I had an absolute blast and enjoyed myself doing it so much
Because I had such a positive experience with my Lemmings Migration LP, I decided definitively that I will do more LPs of level packs in the future. So, for my 2nd pack, I decided to LP Doomsday Lemmings. This was also a great experience and yet another one that I thought would be a much faster solve due to being a much shorter pack (21 levels), but that turned out not to be so. This LP also ended up being 11 parts, largely due to the Apocalypse rank, where pretty much the entire rank stumped me good. Both LPs are similar in that I did all of the first two ranks in each pack in 1 video each, meaning the entire 1st rank in 1 video, and the entire 2nd rank in another separate video. Near the end of Doomsday Lemmings, I had wondered if I made a big mistake of LPing the pack. I eventually did finish all of the pack with my LP, but I realized that I made the decision myself to LP Doomsday Lemmings without asking the community for a 2nd level pack to LP, which was probably a mistake on my part.
So, for my 3rd level pack to LP, I decided to dial back and ask this community for suggestions/recommendations. See this topic and my post:
https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5180.msg87012#msg87012. So far, I haven't gotten any suggestions/recommendations, but I will wait for some before I start another LP. Regarding Lemmings Migration, both Proxima and Strato brought up a good point that I didn't bring up in my OP of the topic I made, and that is the short length of the pack. I agree that for one's first few LPs that it shouldn't be a really large pack. For the next few, I've decided to do a few more small packs before moving on to much bigger packs, by which I mean probably packs with 80 or more levels total. Here, I'm thinking maybe one of WillLem's packs or possibly maybe one of grams' packs. What do you guys think? As for the recommendations/suggestions, post them in the link I provided above instead of Arty's topic.
Anyway, that's been my LP experience so far with the two packs I have LPed: I've had a lot of fun doing both. At the same time, there are some things I noticed that I can do better and change for future LPs. The biggest offender right now is that I have so many of my videos of my LPs running about an hour long. Along with this, I don't like how most of the time when people are watching my LPs that a huge portion of the game/level is on pause while I'm thinking of how to solve the level. Be honest with me here.
For those who have watched my LPs, it's not any fun watching when a lot of the time it's on pause, right? Guess I haven't quite found an effective way to do my LPs. I guess that's what happens when I'm really into the LP and just enjoying myself doing it so much. Since I usually don't know how long I've been recording, I should probably try running a stopwatch/timer so that I will definitely know if the videos have been running long. Nevertheless, let me make it clear that
for sure you guys will be getting many more LPs from me in the future. I just been having so much fun doing them that I figured why not? I'll do more and entertain this community with more of them. Plus, I figured that the community could use more LPers and people can possibly learn some things on how I approach level solving and my thoughts.
Ok, as for the topic itself, I'm also in agreement that difficult packs wouldn't make for good LPs. Indeed, I nearly had that with Doomsday Lemmings and ended up spending some time off camera to try and solve the final level of the pack, yet I still enjoyed myself doing the LP. If you been watching the LP, I don't even rage.
I guess I just have a high level of patience compared to others when solving Lemmings levels. I believe the max for any level in the LP maxes out at 3 or 4 videos for just a single level, that being the final level of the pack. Even when I did come back to record the final level, it was still a no solve off screen, as can be seen in Part 11 of my LP, but I felt like I was really close to a solution that I felt that it was worthwhile to capture it on camera, even if it still ended up taking me 25 minutes to solve it. Even then, I believe there's currently no LP of Doomsday Lemmings, so I think I'm officially the first person to have a complete LP of this pack of namida's.
With United, it's definitely not a friendly pack to LP at all. So, for that I simply followed Icho's format of it being post-commentary, where I show off my solutions via my replays and explain my solution and provide my thoughts on the levels. As I can recall, so many of the levels ended up taking me days/weeks. The worst offender was the rank finisher of the second rank. Believe it or not, that level ended up taking me the longest to solve out of any other level in the pack: 4 months! Too many videos just for that level, but I would had decided after a few videos to solve it off screen anyway.
Finally, to close off, for my LPs I have decided to try all 3 approaches: silent LPs, LPs with commentary like I did with Lemmings Migration and Doomsday Lemmings, and post-commentary like I'm doing with United.