# Make Hard Mode default **URL:** \ **Category:** Ideas\ **Created:** [November 13, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262 "2026-11-13T00:13:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/1 "2026-11-13T00:13:04Z")
Hard mode should definitely be the default. And honestly there’s little use for “easy mode”, since people can mark as manually complete for the case of e.g. very wide 8-lane highways where you might run the edge and miss the middle. ---
**Author:** ![AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/u/AndyS)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 1:20am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/2 "2026-11-13T01:20:23Z")
Strong disagree. I play a lot of video games and any decent game with difficulty options will say normal mode is recommended and hard mode is there for a greater challenge. A lot of people never touch hard modes because it doesn’t interest them and I assume it is the same across the userbase here. There are also issues with safety and not everyone knows how to go into OSM to change things. I do not think most users take the site as seriously as you seem to. ---
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 1:32am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/3 "2026-11-13T01:32:36Z")
I’m confused, you want to complete streets without running the entirety of them? It’s like someone said in another post, if you don’t run 100 % of the city, you don’t get 100 % completion. What’s the issue with that? > issues with safety Again, you can mark streets complete manually. ---
**Author:** ![AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/u/AndyS)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/4 "2026-11-13T01:48:23Z")
I do want to complete streets by running the entirety of them and I do my absolute best to do so. But sometimes the GPS is wonky and I miss nodes even though I ran the street. I don’t want to manually complete the street but I can’t be bothered to go back for 3 nodes in a 302 node street. ![image](https://d25dflut6m8e53.cloudfront.net/original/2X/8/89e2ce59805d681b9d8c1a971103dcfd1a0dd22b.png) I just set my own personal goals for the site and don’t care where I rank on the leaderboard or what other people do. It’s not a competition. ---
**Author:** ![JamesChevalier](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/jameschevalier/32/2_2.png) [@JamesChevalier](https://community.citystrides.com/u/JamesChevalier)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 1:51am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/5 "2026-11-13T01:51:34Z")
I’m not likely to do this. Technology is imperfect and the default processing tries to acknowledge this in the small way it can. ---
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 2:03am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/6 "2026-11-13T02:03:22Z")
I agree with your example, but that’s the perfect use-case for manually complete. Edit: my last argument to deprecate hard mode (while retaining manual completion) is that in the olden days when data was really poor, it made a lot more sense. Now with highway filtering, better OSM data (pedestrian=no) etc, it’s unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![liz](https://community.citystrides.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@liz](https://community.citystrides.com/u/liz)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 4:40am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/7 "2026-11-13T04:40:58Z")
I don’t really understand your argument. I thought the main differential for hard mode was that you can’t manually mark streets as complete. If you want to retain that ability even within hard mode, why do you think it should be default? As far as I know (I don’t use hard mode), the only other differentiation is that you only have to complete 90% of the nodes for a street to be recognised as complete. I suggest that, in most cities, there are relatively few streets that are long enough or curved enough for this to come into play, and the most common reason for missing an occasional node is wonky GPS. Given some people (Pacman players) collect nodes by walking the ends of cross streets, without actually walking those cross streets, something that (to me) represents cutting corners far more than not going back to walk a section where the GPS track hasn’t picked up every node, it seems a weird thing to be worried about. Especially since you seem perfectly fine with people just manually marking those streets as complete anyway. ---
**Author:** ![petje](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/petje/32/2348_2.png) [@petje](https://community.citystrides.com/u/petje)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 8:44am UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/8 "2026-11-13T08:44:08Z")
Imho, if i have wonky gps on a run, and ist doesn’t reflect the reality what i have done in my run, i adjust the gps track to what i know it is correct for the run i did in real time. If people want to adjust gps for manipulating tracks for their own benefit (and cheat), i don’t care, each their own ethics. It’s not a contest but your own. You could do the same ‘cheating’ with manual completion if you want to. ---
**Author:** ![JamesChevalier](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/jameschevalier/32/2_2.png) [@JamesChevalier](https://community.citystrides.com/u/JamesChevalier)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 1:49pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/9 "2026-11-13T13:49:06Z")
> [@liz](#): > > I thought the main differential for hard mode was that you can’t manually mark streets as complete A while back, I changed it to let everyone mark as manually complete. Some people were taking it to an unintended extreme & some people couldn’t/wouldn’t make OSM edits where needed & the fact that OSM doesn’t accept edits based on safety kinda forces my hand in allowing manual completion. ---
**Author:** ![kevincharlespels](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/kevincharlespels/32/2536_2.png) [@kevincharlespels](https://community.citystrides.com/u/kevincharlespels)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 2:27pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/10 "2026-11-13T14:27:52Z")
The first rule of tresmapping is you don’t talk about tresmapping 🤫 ---
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 2:30pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/11 "2026-11-13T14:30:07Z")
Based on the chat, and the ability to manually complete in hard mode (which I assumed was the case) this topic would be more accurately named “Remove 90 % feature” as redundant w/ Manually Complete feature. ---
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 2:50pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/12 "2026-11-13T14:50:45Z")
> [@liz](#): > > it seems a weird thing to be worried about. Just to be clear, when I make ideas threads, it’s not because I’m “worried”, it’s because I like volunteering & contributing. These are ideas to improve **and simplify** the site, because I think it’s amazing. And speaking as a software developer the **simplify** piece is greatly undervalued. ---
**Author:** ![AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@AndyS](https://community.citystrides.com/u/AndyS)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 3:36pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/13 "2026-11-13T15:36:05Z")
But what if I don’t want to manually complete streets and I don’t want to feel forced to get 100% of the nodes? It’s weird to me because in another thread you’re asking for manually completed streets to show up on the city leaderboard (which in my eyes is a way to judge them for not completing via GPS) and here you’re presenting the manually complete option as equivalent to a GPS completion. It’s obvious there is a different connotation between the two. I believe manually completed streets don’t get a completion date on the street page which is something I also like seeing. ![image](https://d25dflut6m8e53.cloudfront.net/original/2X/8/80c61dac0ffb7d3e94b83fa4a1144bafe135a4ed.png) ---
**Author:** ![awetts](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/awetts/32/3731_2.png) [@awetts](https://community.citystrides.com/u/awetts)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 3:37pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/14 "2026-11-13T15:37:00Z")
I would suspect if people aren’t willing/ able to update OSM, they’re not going to being willing/ able to adjust their GPS track. (heck, I don’t know how to do that, but I do know how to make some basic OSM edits. Guess I should look into it) ---
**Author:** ![supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/supermitch/32/4329_2.png) [@supermitch](https://community.citystrides.com/u/supermitch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 3:50pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/15 "2026-11-13T15:50:53Z")
Yeah I’d be curious if there’s a nice visual tool/site to do node edits in a GPX track. That would be pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![kevincharlespels](https://community.citystrides.com/user_avatar/community.citystrides.com/kevincharlespels/32/2536_2.png) [@kevincharlespels](https://community.citystrides.com/u/kevincharlespels)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 6:49pm UTC](https://community.citystrides.com/t/make-hard-mode-default/30262/16 "2026-11-13T18:49:13Z")
Runkeeper is the best/easiest for this and is web-based, but if you hunt around the forum you’ll find old threads referencing other editors. One that is application-based I used to use but have long since left behind is RouteConverter.