I was curious to understand what you meant by learning curve.
I'm still learning, and I've been involved in stage design for, hmm... 8 yrs-ish. I'm still a newb compared to some. I still learn things to look out for or do better in the future. This is why I try not to throw stones, because I live in that glass house!
There are many aspects of stage design that take some experience, not just "it meets the rules." Making stage interesting/fun for all divisions, and for all level of shooters, completely debugging/bulletproofing a complex stage, building in good options, watching out for safety issues and RO traps and shoot-throughs, etc etc. Then there's stage construction and how to keep a stage consistent for all shooters (got bit by that at our last match; now have new nugget of wisdom to store away), etc.
I remember one of my first stages got lots of grumbles. It was w/in the rules, but I learned a good way to PO a good portion of the shooters. Part of the learning curve. I did a similar stage a while ago but set up in a much better way that didn't result in any complaints.
And if you do anything other than a long course, making an interesting stage that fits w/in the allowed number of positions, number of rounds, etc can be be a challenge, also. There's a whole set of design rules a lot of folks never even look at regarding standards and short courses. I did a fixed time short course last month at our club. Lots of folks complemented on it (heard some grumblings, too, that I wasn't sure whether to take seriously or jokingly. I now know fuzz has stop-beep issues). I had several design iterations trying to get it w/in the rules...
Maybe I'm just showing how dense I am, and other stage designers have it all down right from the start...
-rvb
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