I'm not really sure where to post general opinions that don't apply to a specific bracket so I guess I'll just post here.
I played through the DDR finalists on pad (well not Groundhog heavy, that one is a little beyond my ability but I can see how it'd go) last night in preparation for lodging my vote in the finals. Overall they were pretty good (Love Symphony was probably my favourite, awesome job Juub!) but one thing I wanted to comment on was this: stepfile authors, please,
please stop abusing the basic figure-8 patterns (LDURDUL and LUDRUDL). They work occasionally, but most of the time they are just boring and scream "I couldn't think of anything interesting to do here". Monster oh Monster was especially guilty of this, which I thought was a shame.
It is tempting to just go with basic, safe patterns (I should know, I used to do a lot of it as well) but ultimately I believe that thinking outside of the figure-8 is one important mark of truly great steps. I would recommend playing files by
sanchny or the
nDDRo if you want some excellent examples of great step positioning.