Ever since seeing that the map completion achievements save what stages you have beaten, I was thinking that for any map you haven't beaten it could save the highest stage that you completed and then when that map is selected again, you'll be able to return to that stage.
We have had encounters with this one before. It seems like a good idea and again its up to teddi and kaiden just (my opinion and what ive heard) It isnt fair to the others who keep getting stuck or the people who are good but cant learn the whole map. Theres also another problem where its a 30 min run and u have 30 mins to complete it but u complete it in like 5 minutes well i bet you, you or someone is gonna be like want it to only be 5 minutes or something (my opinion) I had better points but as im typing this my brain is completly flushed by all work and other problems so sorry. Hope this makes sense and i bet kaiden or teddi will help state a better point on this sense as i said im super tired and feeling bad.
I feel it'd make beating maps fairly easy is the only thing, and people may get bored quicker. Say you get 80% through Kitsune2 in 30 mins then map change, when it's next selected you'll join and think "oh I only have 20% of the map left". If you basically luck through a stage you probably aren't good enough to beat yet, it means you won't have to face that again until you beat the map, and that sort of takes some of the challenge away out of beating a map. You have 30 minutes to get as far as you can, and if you don't beat it, you try again next time. Not sure what @Teddi thinks. One thing we're looking at which may be better is an extend option in one form or another, as some of those longer maps like Kit2 some players would probably beat with a few more minutes, but naturally most of the server would also need to want to extend.
Thank you for pushing more on that Kaiden as I said I couldn't think of more to say and this makes more sense then I did. Teddi will hopefully reply but I agree with u I don't really think it will help us surfers or make the time limit all that more special.
This was something a while back that was prototyped and tested; generally we found that once a map was "unlocked" for good the replay-ability value tanked. We appreciate players tend to want more map variation over time but this effect actually ended up exacerbated because it was like a cheat or a skip, why bother practising and go over it again and again when you can pick and choose your stages? That said, there might be something we can do for 'sessions', ie when the map is currently being played. If you get disconnected for whatever reason we could probably have it so it saves your progress for that 'session' to reduce the frustration of a disconnect or crash. All in all this means you might see some sort of system like this go live but it'd be more of a recovery option as opposed to an actual gameplay feature.