Board Thread:Wiki - General Discussion/@comment-3225604-20170818103935/@comment-26235098-20170819144801

PowerCrusher04 wrote:

Although EH and Variable are different things, I think it should still be counted in the episode mean, but since the variable difficulty means it varies from person to person and one can find a variable level as easy as a "very easy" level and the other can find it as hard as a "nearly impossible" level, I think it should get the middleth of all the difficulties and get 4 mean points, like a medium level,

If a variable level is not counted for the mean, then the mean will be taken on fewer levels for that episode.

If as you suggest it were used in the mean calculation by using a mid-value, we could use the exact middle value as we do not need an integer for sole purpose of inclusion in a calculation.

That said, this arbitrary 'middle' value added to the mean would have a balancing effect on the mean produced by the other difficulties: an episode with many hard levels would have a slightly easier mean, while an episode with many easy levels would have a slightly harder one.

While I see some merit to this idea, the merit is largely premised on the idea that a 'variable' level's difficulty, albeit not fixed, has as an even distribution, meaning we presume it will be easier about 50% of the time and harder about 50% time. But this may not be true.

If we have assigned variable, the difficulty could not be decided, and the difficulty distribution maybe variable as well: a level may be harder or easier more often than 50%' of the time.

Therefore, excluding it from the episode mean makes the most sense, IMHO.