Bracket 2 - Discussion

[jammitch!]

I wrote most of this before hellrazor's last post...

Yeah, the system I suggested was quite off-the-cuff, and it was only to cover the double-step aspect of the file - you could definitely go below 7/10 after considering other factors. But it's really more that a file with 8 double-steps should not be an automatic 2/10. There's a lot of ways those double steps can be expressed - some really bad, some neutral or even possibly good. And there's probably 350+ other steps (assuming the common 8+ footer) that need to factor into the scoring too. You can tell the difference between slop and design decisions. Yes, they could be forced with a freeze or mines (although I hear ITGers actually dislike this too), but they don't always need to be.

strict pad play

I'm just speculating, but I think this is the key right here - it's the strict, rigid, and seemingly one-dimensional nature of your judging that caused problems, whereas Excel and I are talking about "caveats", "exceptions" and the like.

Case in point: I hate short freezes - ones that you can't possibly miss even if you tap and immediately release. They throw off the scoring and don't add anything to a chart. The ITG community disagrees strongly with me on this - they're commonly used to accentuate notes that are held for that brief time. In reviews, I will note my distaste, and it might swing a file that's on the fence between points towards the down, but I'm not taking off a point per short freeze. I'm much more concerned with evaulating whether I enjoyed the file, and trying to determine why I enjoyed the file (or didn't). I don't always succeed on the last part, but I at least try. You can call it "favoritism" but I don't really think you can objectively judge creative works like this. And even when you define objective criteria, the ones you're choosing are subjective.

So when there's so few judges, and you weight one criterion so heavily, it ends up turning the competition into a "fewest double-steps" competition.

At least, that's where I speculate everything came from.

You can even have some really crappy straightforward streams that have you facing the screen at all times, but force you to go 219 bpm 32nds all over the pad.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

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Also, in Greg's original post on the topic, without the freeze, I would hit the down and right arrows both with my right foot. This avoids a crossover entirely. With the freeze, I have to cross my left foot over. It does restrict a two-way play down to a single play, so it is marginally different.

[Zounder]

I pretty much agree with everything jammitch! has been posting. (Especially about short freezes, including the way he deals with them for scoring purposes. Case in point: The Call Disconnected)

[BLueSS]

So when there's so few judges, and you weight one criterion so heavily, it ends up turning the competition into a "fewest double-steps" competition.

At least, that's where I speculate everything came from.

This is exactly right.

The quickness of the decision was to course-correct the affect it had on the scoring before releasing bracket 2's scores, and I was limited on time. I also didn't have time to fine-comb through the reviews during b1 to notice the "fewest double-step" judging when it first came out.

[hellrazor]

Take what jammitch! said with caveats as well. He was just suggesting a different grading system at that moment. You don't necessarily need to adapt to it fully (or you don't even need to adapt to it at all) and there are always going to be exceptions, like in a case of where there's a double step every 2nd note. Now clearly that sounds pretty bad.

Also FYI, it's impossible to have a backwards causing double-step every 2nd note, it takes about 8 notes or more to get in an awkward position, so a song with 10+ out of only 250 notes is really bad as in there was no accounting for pad choreography. The caveats should have been more along the lines of # of double steps / # of total steps because my judging was harsher on longer songs or songs with more notes and easier on shorter songs and easier charts with fewer notes. That means LONG songs that got a 10/10 had a STRONG focus on choreography and standard songs with few steps that got low scores had a very poor understanding of foot placement.

As much as it could be awesome for judging to be objective, sometimes we need to take it in as a holistic kind of manner. Let's take a random stupid hypothetical example. Let's say a chart has six double steps. That doesn't sound good by itself. But then we probably need to ask ourselves, why the crap were those six double steps in? Do they seem random? Do they seem like they go along with a certain melody? Is it for instrumental purpose? Do they ruin the general playability of the stepchart? Were these double steps really sticking out/really really crappy? Other various random questions?

The double-steps I deducted points for were ONLY the ones that ruined the playability of the stepchart so it's a YES to that question. If there were six and they were all in the same melody all that means is that the simfile author copied/pasted/mirrored the chart over and over, sure that makes the bad steps follow the same section of music again and again but it doesn't make the chart better just because it's a repetitive bad pattern.

So when there's so few judges, and you weight one criterion so heavily, it ends up turning the competition into a "fewest double-steps" competition.

At least, that's where I speculate everything came from.

This is exactly right.

The quickness of the decision was to course-correct the affect it had on the scoring before releasing bracket 2's scores, and I was limited on time. I also didn't have time to fine-comb through the reviews during b1 to notice the "fewest double-step" judging when it first came out.

So the decision was made because I caused significant sway in B2 with one or two specific files, I understand that happened and I'm sorry but in reality that was due to the low voter turnout and when my scores were removed there were as few as 1 judge remaining in some brackets (a judge who plays on keyboard). It also doesn't explain why my approval votes were removed nor why I couldn't participate in the rest of the competition just because I have an unfavorable opinion of playing backwards and others think it's not a big deal (or they play on keyboard where foot placement doesn't matter) which means it's simply a conflict of opinions and mine was obviously the unpopular opinion (I find it sad that so many good stepfile artists feel that way but if I at least encouraged thought about choreography then I've done something positive IMHO and I did promote all the artists who focused on good choreography especially those who used complex turning patterns and executed them perfectly) and yes I used 1st round judging to emphasize that detail but you should at least give me credit that I spent the time and effort to fine-comb the charts sometimes playing sections over and over in order to give an accurate rating, it took me several hours to do that.