Public Review Complaints/Suggestions

[0rion]

I think your assessment of the situation is quite fair. And while I myself am particularly lenient on graphics, I'm certainly not saying that it's the only way to judge things.

[Krazy]

djJRun pretty much summed up exactly what I was trying to say but couldn't because I am bad at explaining things. Obviously a 5 with many 16th notes would be bad, but I don't think you should really fault anything if it's only 1 difficulty off, especially when it's kind of on the line between one or the other. When you get to higher ratings things seem to get more ambiguous as well, compared to the differences between a 2 and a 3 for example, because there can be more variation in harder charts.

[BLueSS]

OK, people need to chill out.

I completely disagree, the banner is the first thing a person sees and leaves a lasting first impression. The art doesn't have to be amazing, but if it's ugly it makes the file feel really unprofessional.
Same can be said about song volume, sample start, song wheel, etc. It all has to do with professionalism.

Yes, but they're all DETAILS. Little bonuses here or there that when you get down to it have nothing to do with the most key aspect of the gameplay itself. At BEST, it can indicate the thought put into a file. But again, if someone can't tell that by playing, they're probably not a very good judge of that anyway.

No. They are an important part of the file, and due to the way grading has *always* been setup and (since you're going to argue that just because we did it before that doesn't mean it's right) people have always preferred it this way in the competitions. Most people here feel that graphics are a very important part of the file, but notice how I only give them 20% of the points. While they're important, the steps still are 80%; showing where the majority of the score should be; but a song that has a bad presentation while having great steps should not win if the points taken off for presentation cause it not to. If that doesn't make you happy; I'm not sure this is the tournament for you.

Shit, it's not even spelled right on the song wheel. A song with all these things wrong with it absolutely does not deserve to win, even if its steps are perfect.

You also JUST ADMITTED that no matter how good the chart is, you wouldn't let it win if the visuals were sub-par. It bespeaks a lapse in priorities.

No. It's again, following the established criteria for judging the files in this contest. And his priorities weren't lasped, as he's stated the while time that professionalism is important to him.

However, I think docking someone for a misrating is somewhat meaningless.

NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO NO, NO!

If I'm a person that's just starting this game and I see a file rated a 1 that has step-jumps, corner jumps, and crossovers in it, it's going to automatically turn me off when it comes to the chart and possibly the game in particular. Likewise, if I see something rated a 7 or an 8 with candle runs at ridiculously high speeds, I'm going to wonder just what the hell the author was thinking.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.... etc.
The difference between someone rating their chart a hard 7 vs a easy 8 IS INSIGNIFICANT. DDR has screwed this up a ton, and heck - they're supposed to be the pros here.
I do not want anyone marking down for very slight misratings. If someone does, their reviews will be thrown out.
Why is this so important; or should I say non-important? Because the standard is so screwed up for us to use. If we had some clear set guideline from Konami, sure, we could throw it into the judging. BUT IT'S NOT. We can all sit here and list a crapload of files that should have different ratings from various DDR mixes.
If you see something that's an 8, when it should be a 4; ok, mark it down - but from every file I've looked at, there aren't any files like that here.

Take Disconnected Disco's Expert Doubles chart on In the Groove. Some bonehead gave this chart a 10 rating when it has some of the most outrageous and ridiculous handplants and BS combinations in the game. Not only did this ACTUALLY bespeak the quality of the work (or rather the lack of forethought put into the step positioning), but it also meant that anyone that beat a song of that level was only good enough to beat a 10.

ITG sucks all around, and should never be used to make points about a DDR competition. Moving on...

I don't mean to be a hardass but that's a problem I have with your reviews. Just because something is rated slightly off doesn't make it a bad chart, the chart is still exactly the same whether someone typed the number "7" or "9" into Stepmania. It seems like for a lot of things you took off points just because the rating was off.

So, let me get this straight. You would ENSURE (by your own words) that a song with sub-par visuals would be buried, but don't like it when I dock points based on something that actually has something to do with the chart itself?

Again, if it's one grade off; give it a break and move on. Difficulty rating shouldn't take off more than a point, either. The grading is for the STEPS, which should be where the points come from.

I don't time to make a huge response right now but I hope someone can back me up because I don't think I'm wrong about most of the things I said.

Please don't go appealing to other people to back up your statements. Not only does it not add any credibility to what you say, it's also irrelevant.

I'm doing you the courtesy of addressing your points frankly and directly. While you don't need to go into the same amount of detail as I did, I would appreciate the same courtesy in return.

The fact that you didn't have an immediate response says to me that you don't dislike what I said because it's "wrong," but because it's a different, new idea. I'd beg you to give this some more consideration rather than simply looking for a way to write it off.

0rion, stop being an ass again.

Your post was entirely unnecessary but you felt like personally attacking him. This won't be tolerated again.
He said he was busy, you should have let him reply later. You keep coming into every thread (and your pm's with me before the tournament) with the opinion that everything you think is the truth/the right way to do things/anyone who disagrees is wrong.
The majority of us here have been perfecting the way we think simfile competitions should be ran for a long, long time. Being new here, while you may think you can just come in and say how things should be; you aren't going to. Your argumentative attitude on almost everything has greatly annoyed me, almost to the point that I couldn't care less about your points, even if they're right. Why? Because you don't shutup until you win; and that's not the attitude that's welcome here.

[MarsPhoenix]

I would actually say that I agree with 0rion quite a bit.

I would quite viciously stand that graphics should not make a winner. If anything, they should break a tie between two or more songs with charts that put them with a near score. What I don't believe should happen is if Person A has 20/20 in charts but the graphics aren't perfect and Person B forgot his Light chart but had the best graphics in the world and 15/20 in charts overall that Person B's file should somehow be saved by the graphics it has.

Until there's similar scores, I believe the only thing that should make a winner is a chart.

That being said, I would also disagree with your thoughts on ITG. It's got a different taste and isn't for everyone. But I like the extra difficulty it throws in and quite honestly, DDR charts sometimes bother me at how much they ignore things in the songs. I think the 7-8 area is too high.

At the same time I agree that thoughts on ITG shouldn't be used in this competition since it is a DDR-based competition. But I should also unrelatedly note that there are some DDR charts that have the feel of an ITG chart so there shouldn't be anything getting shot down as long as it can be compared to something in DDR and rating isn't too off. I say that when in doubt, use a higher rating. If I was doing DDR ratings, Captivate and Blind Justice would have been 9s.

[BLueSS]

That being said, I would also disagree with your thoughts on ITG. It's got a different taste and isn't for everyone. But I like the extra difficulty it throws in and quite honestly, DDR charts sometimes bother me at how much they ignore things in the songs. I think the 7-8 area is too high.

I was just throwing my ITG opinion out there. Yeah, lots of people really enjoy ITG (most of my friends); but Disconnected Disco shouldn't be used for any argument except "how hands can make/break a chart".

[Hiryuu]

Disconnected Disco also sucks.

[lrxevan]

Why does the ITG crowd always have to crash our parties, anyway? =/

On ITG: everyone knows how I feel about it, but in case you don't, the stepcharts are all pretty bad. Following every little noise in an electronic song to justify an 11 rating is silly.

The idea behind DDR has never been to be a IIDX-style challenge and the game was never designed to be that. There were challenging stepcharts to a degree (10s) for those who wanted them, but they were few and far between and playing them never mattered that much. There was never supposed to be a focus on accuracy (notice the huge perfect window in DDR), there was never supposed to be 700+ steps in a >2-minute window, etc.

There were a lot of good things about ITG, and I enjoyed it when it came out. The "hard" level charts were sometimes very fun, among other things. But it took DDR and warped it until something unfun and unnecessarily difficult and didn't retain any of the spirit the games are known for in the process. It's soulless and created for the IIDX crowd, not a DDR one.

[sanchny]

I don't know. It goes both ways. What it boils down to is that people have (narrow) focuses on what range Maniac should be, and don't find anything outside that fun. It's frustrating to present something that tries to push that focus a bit, only to be met with resistance or some sort of hostility.

Every file in the tournament is a 7, 8, or 9 on Heavy, with the exception of one 6 and one 10. Those numbers are messed up.

[Hiryuu]

You're also dealing with DDR purists that think nothing's been good since Extreme or MAX. :\

I knew that going into this and I'm also very limited due to this fact of people not accepting that those good times are over. In fact, I don't really know what those people are going to do when they have to deal with upwards of 20-footers and all their songs being changed for grading with the advent of DDR X.

They're going to have to move on from this 'it's too ITG' at some point.

[lrxevan]

You're also dealing with DDR purists that think nothing's been good since Extreme or MAX. :\

I knew that going into this and I'm also very limited due to this fact of people not accepting that those good times are over. In fact, I don't really know what those people are going to do when they have to deal with upwards of 20-footers and all their songs being changed for grading with the advent of DDR X.

They're going to have to move on from this 'it's too ITG' at some point.

ITG was bad because its steps were bad, not because the steps were too hard.

[Hiryuu]

That's a given, though I failed to mention it, but what I was trying to dig at was people only submitting '7, 8 and 9 footers' because no one wants to make it to where it's considered 'too ITG' to be the equivalent of 'too crap'.

There are people that are going to look at an 11 and go 'it's above a 10, it's unpaddable and it's ghey keybored'. Some of these people are right. It does take some skill to make exceedingly challenging pad steps and there is a certain unmarked threshold of what you should consider pad and what you should consider keyboard. Anyone knows that there are people that have padded 'keyboard steps' before but what's the line you cross when it goes from 'challenging (but still fun)' to 'just plain stupid'? Does it come with a number?

[Kamek]

I struck most of my comments regarding misrated files in my reviews, so that there isn't any confusion. The ratings didn't change any, because I didn't really dock any points for it.

[lrxevan]

That's a given, though I failed to mention it, but what I was trying to dig at was people only submitting '7, 8 and 9 footers' because no one wants to make it to where it's considered 'too ITG' to be the equivalent of 'too crap'.

There are people that are going to look at an 11 and go 'it's above a 10, it's unpaddable and it's ghey keybored'. Some of these people are right. It does take some skill to make exceedingly challenging pad steps and there is a certain unmarked threshold of what you should consider pad and what you should consider keyboard. Anyone knows that there are people that have padded 'keyboard steps' before but what's the line you cross when it goes from 'challenging (but still fun)' to 'just plain stupid'? Does it come with a number?

It doesn't come with a number, per se, but 6-9 is the traditional DDR range for heavy charts (there are a few 5s, and sometimes, someone will submit one for a tournament here).

The issue is that the author sometimes pushes it for the sake of making it difficult. There is such a thing as being too hard for a song, something most of us can agree about. When this happens, it seems forced and arbitrary (Euphoria comes to mind, though there are others and Euphoria isn't a very good chart, hard or not) and to me that's what ITG has always been about; forcing every ounce of stream, air, and voltage from songs just for the sake of doing it.

[Sir.Rendr]

All of us DDR purists here are just ticked off about stuff like PARANOiA (Hades), which is obviously inspired by ITG.

[sanchny]

(there are a few 5s, and sometimes, someone will submit one for a tournament here).

And 4s!