Is "artificial" difficulty a good or bad thing? (continued from DDRX2 AC thread)

If the person only used the bar and was used to sliding their feet all of the time to hit arrows, I could very well see that they would have trouble with some 9s even though they could pass all 13s with their normal style. It was also stated that they couldn't do cross-overs/spins normally because they always slid their feet and such.
How about you try Sunkiss Drop without doing any crossovers, bracketing, or sliding your feet, just doublestepping? If you can beat it, I can just about guarantee your score won't be close to the same.

If hellrazor has been playing from at least around the start of ITG, and has the knowledge of syncing stuff that he's shown here and likely other places, then I wouldn't doubt that he's as good as he says he is. I've been playing since late 2004 and I didn't even remotely play seriously until maybe 3 years ago, and I can pass a few X-scale 15s. He plays for exercise, so I'm sure he was mostly playing nearly daily, or at least weekly, which is way more than I can say for myself.

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Yep, 13+s are impossible and everyone just brackets and slides their feet everywhere.

Even though bracketing or attempting to slide anything would result in horrendous accuracy and a shit ton of noncomboes.

Mmhmm. Gotta give it to hellrazor.

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And I can clear 10s!

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Also lolwat at people trying to defend that BS statement. You just slide your foot over the pad and pass 14s. It doesn't work that way. Anyone who can pass 14s would find 9s to be trivial, regardless of playstyle. Why would "not knowing how to crossover" (which is just your way of being mad that some people double-step certain portions of certain songs because they find it easier) affect that in any way?

Also, if there was some sort of SN machine in my state (or a functioning DDR cab), I'll play that any way you like. It wouldn't change anything.

And sync knowledge? WHAT? Did you ever play ITG Rebirth r1? It had hellrazor's sync (and maybe song cuts I don't know about that), and the entire community said everything was terribly offsync. The current, much better revision of ITG Rebirth has absolutely nothing that Hellrazor contributed. The team had to undo every mistake he made. It was a ridiculous ordeal.

My statements about Hellrazor being full of shit about his skills/scores is because of the blatant lack of knowledge about, well, anything involving ITG. He acts as though he has never seen ITG 13s, but then says he has passed some. He somehow pass V^2 and Pandemonium, but not the easiest one, Summer? He passes those 13s but can't get 30% into ReaF (as a comparison, I've only passed Summer once, got close on Pandemonium and V^2. I've FEC'd Reaf to 35% before, and come damn close to passing it)? And the whole "flat-footing = bracketing = cheating = impossible" thing is just laughable.


IMPOSSIBLE YOU MUST HAVE BRACKET SLIDED THE ENTIRE CHART

YOU FILTHY CHEATER I'M ON TO YOU

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I can pass 10's and some 11's but I can't pass Solina, a 9. D:

Append: Rev, put all those vids on a spoiler.

That's like saying it's unbelievable if someone can who beat some 12s in IIDX while wrist scratching barely passes some 11s while having to pinky scratch due to a bigger controller because there's a bunch of people who can AAA said 12s while pinky scratching.

I don't know which revision of ITG Rebirth I have, and I haven't played many songs on it anyway. I don't recall Pandemonium or Vertex^2's charts very well but doesn't Summer ~Speedy Mix~ have a long stream that's faster than the streams in either of those?
I can pass stuff like NGO, Saber Wing headshot remix and roppongiEVOLVED ver.C, which are 15s on the X-scale, but I can't pass Healing-D-Vision or Paranoia ~Hades~ (I think), and I can barely pass Paranoia survivor, and those are 14s.

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i love you guys (not hellrazor) so much right now its unreal

revolver, your post is EXACTLY what i have been trying to say to hellrazor from day 1 of this debate. i didnt know anybody who had said videos on youtube, so i never posted any, but god damn those guys make the guys here who can pass dokudenpa look like crap. and i agree with you 100% about foot sliding, its just not gonna happen. like i said before, the guys who bracket get very low scores. compare the bracketed a la menthe video to the non bracketed video i posted, theres a huge difference in scores there.

meseki, when ITG2 first came out people were saying summer should be a 12. yes, it has the streams at the end, but its nothing compared to pandy or V^2. also, how can you have passed headshot remix and roppongi C, but you cant pass HDV? thats just odd, there really isnt anything that bad about it compared to something like headshot, roppongi, or NGO. i can understand paranoia survivor, some people just suck at crossovers. but you're right in your first post on this page, if you can do 14s then under no circumstance will you have trouble with 9s. about sunkiss drop though, my best is 4 greats double stepping, i barely AA it crossing over. but thats because of playstyle preference. i'm not sure if you were trying to prove the point i just made or say its harder to double step a song.

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For Saber Wing headshot remix and roppongiEVOLVED ver.C I already knew the gimmicks/chart from playing them in Stepmania so it was a little bit easier. NGO just has that long stream at the end, and it's below 300 BPM; everything else isn't that hard at all. Healing-D-Vision is too fast for me to be able to do well; I can't really do the 8th mini clusters at the end, and I also suck at jumps. It also doesn't help that my best reading speed on the pad is probably around low 400 BPM.
As for Sunkiss Drop, one of my biggest issues when I was getting into 7s-8s (10 scale) was that I was unaware of how to hit crossovers as said in the DDR information sections. As I wasn't too great at double-stepping, stuff like Under the Sky and Sunkiss Drop seemed horribly misrated, and I couldn't really play them well. Also, I do not use the bar (or anything similar), as I've only played at an arcade once and only have soft pads (that work).

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You make alot of claims, now prove them.

14's are not trivial, but they are made easier by cheap play-style, my point in this thread is that song difficulties should be based on normal play style and that basing the difficulty on anything else is "artificially inflating the difficulty", 8-bit trip was a prime example since it's either an easy 13 or a hard 12 but it's considered a 14 because cheap play styles don't take into account dummied steps (same two arrow streams are much easier than streams that require movement).

I never said I have never seen an ITG 13, in fact I've seen many, including some 13's that existed before ITG, some of MJEMZERIAN's simfiles were 13's. What I am saying is that some songs aren't meant to be played without cheating, case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNS-TR1Nc-c and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBF5XHDl5sk should never be part of official dance games, those are artificially difficult because they can't be played normally (for instance hitting the hands with your feet is EASIER than bending down and using your HANDS).

I have played ReaF one time, and your score drops when you quit and fail, so 30% is not unusual, as for Mr. not able to play because of sliding, I think it was more of his frustration rather than physical limitation. He couldn't play in his comfort zone so he didn't try hard type of thing, he did have alot of pride since he is very good on the arcade pads so he was defeated mentally when he couldn't do nearly as well on my pads, I wanted him to play some of the Mungyodance files that I love.

And I believe 14's are paddable (some of them if they are stepped correctly), in fact someday I hope to be able to pass Summer ~Speedy Mix~ and hopefully some 14's (even though I'm 32 years old) although I rarely even try unfortunately. Playing for exercise means I spend alot of time playing a 40 random song course, so whatever pops up out of 7500 simfiles I play without breaks. Summer is the hardest 13 for me, the run at the end is killer fast, and because I actually step and turn to hit arrows it destroys me, plus I hardly ever pick it (maybe 5-6 times so far in all these years). I also had a really hard time with Bloodrush, I failed that song many times during the freeze arrow section because I have a hard time keeping one foot on the freeze while hitting multiple arrows with the other, my brain tells me to foot-switch. Over time I've learned the chart enough that I can now hit most of the freeze arrows without moving, once I finally accomplished that I was able to pass the song.

I also don't claim to know much/anything about machine dance games, I play in my own home, on my own pads, with SM4.0 and ITG PC as default and an ITG2 theme. I use default ITG timing windows, and I get a very good cardio workout at least 5 hours a week. I know how to sync (feel free to critique my simfiles if you doubt me) and I know what I like and what I don't like, and I am still on the ITG Rebirth team and will contribute to the sync of Rebirth 2, especially since I now know what the perfect ITG 2 AC OFFSET is. If anything get angry with the rest of the team and the play-testers whom I begged to critique and ensure perfect sync, I'm very open to criticism, but they said everything was fine even after public release Rebirth Rev. 1. I also had nothing to do with song-cuts, check my personal simfiles and you'll see I have never cut a song, I believe in full-length music. I was brought onto the team because of my ability to recognize minute song-cut errors and to compensate for them, even though they bug the shit out of me. Plus how many people can recognize that "Quasar" has a slight slow-down section, of all the "Quasar" files I've seen, not one of them was perfectly synched, but with my high level of detail to sync, there is a slight slow-down.

Anyways Revolver, sorry that I upset you with my criticism of some of your simfiles, it's just a dance game, if your files make you happy that should be all that matters, life is to short to whine / bitch / moan, grow up, set your priorities, and focus on what matters. Leave the emotional nonsense for the women.

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Amen! haha kinda joking.

this same crap again? would you mind backing your claim up with fact, because all you're doing is going around calling things cheap. examples of fact - flat footing isnt the same thing as bracketing. flat footing requires the same effort and movement as tip toeing. bracketing wrecks your accuracy. that last one makes it harder to play. "cheap" means the same thing in video games that it does in real life, more of something for less. explain how less accurate is "cheap".


do you even take time to read? that first chart is VERY paddable without bracketing, and the second one wasnt bracketed. you dont know what bracketing is. its resting your feet on the brackets and never moving. that second song requires a lot of movement to hit the notes and actually cant be bracketed. hitting a jump with 1 foot != bracketing.


if you're good enough to do 13s, unofficial hard ones and pandy, you should be able to do the 13 that a lot of people (tip toe and flat foot players, remember its the same thing except for which part of your foot you use) pass first and argue could be a 12. if you werent convinced that only your play style is correct and that crossing over is evil, you would have an easier time with the freeze section of blood rush.


and leave dance game discussion to those who know what they are talking about. i've responded to you several times with facts and you've straight up ignored me, i asked for videos of YOU doing songs in your play style and you said you couldnt find videos of others, i (and revolver) posted videos of people flat footing and you still dont know what it is (you post videos thinking they are bracketed and they arent because you dont know what that is either), and some how you tried to turn this into a dick swinging contest by mentioning your quads, your "old school" status, your stepmania set up, and knowing what YAS is.

you've 100% derailed my topic with your bull shit, you arent discussing "artificial difficulty" in any way because even if ANYTHING you posted was meant to be bracketed, you dont know what the hell that means. keep on topic. if you actually want to contribute, post. if not, let the thread die already.

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Remember the days when we could have a debate without drama? Good times.

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PMs are a lousy invention.

lol this thread

video of me flatfooting AND doing crossovers (lolwtf).
EDIT: The doublesteps you see are guided by freeze arrows, not just random spins that I'm too lazy to do. It was the intent of the step artist and is easy to sightread.


Tell me. How is that cheating? I DID cheat the hands at the end of the chart because I hate hands, but I'm talking about the flatfoot play style overall

I can't find a good bracketing video, but other people have explained it pretty well. There is a HUGE difference between bracketing and flatfooting. Also, there is a difference between bracket raping and bracket stomping. I DO bracket stomp hands because (like I said) I hate hands. If you say that's cheating, then I will say this:

using the bar is cheating
using 1x is cheating because it makes the song too easy. You should use .5x
playing visually is cheating and you have to play on hidden
Playing on your toes is cheating because it makes crossovers too easy

Your play style is cheating. Why? Because I said it is. I cannot back this up, but I said it, so it must be true.

As for foot switches, it's something that both ITG and DDR officials have done for years. It's just faster and WELL MADE now is all. In the DDR songs with foot switching, you never know when it happens until you study the chart a little bit. Even then, it usually leads into an awkward pattern.

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See, I never said "bracketing". Hitting a jump with 1 foot is cheating, it's a JUMP it takes TWO FEET. Maybe you misunderstood my comment that "hands are meant to be hit with your HANDS" and thought I was talking about bracketing vs. flat-foot again (not sure how you came to that conclusion).
And perhaps the reason I don't see the difference is because when you flat-foot you step on the brackets ALOT, where toe players step in the middle of the arrow. I would rather like to imagine a flat-footer stepping on the center of each arrow with their whole foot, that would make sense to me. How do you hit hands without standing on the brackets anyways? But if you want to continue on with the nuances about bracketing (I thought just standing on the brackets was called future for some reason), have fun without me because I really don't give a shit how you play. All I am saying is those charts cannot be passed without cheating and thus the difficulty is artificially inflated (it's a 15 because hitting all those hands would make it impossible and 15's are probably impossible, if you convert the hands into jumps and fix all those double-step patterns that would require a normal player to spin around ALOT, then the difficulty is much lower), thus my claim of artificial difficulty and step charts should never officially be designed as such (if someone wants to make their own chart like that go ahead, but I don't want to see it in DDR ).
)
I didn't say cheating (if I did I meant cheap or cheating the chart). Sure bar can be seen as cheating and some complain about speed mods, I know it can go on. But in your video you double-step alot rather than turn your body and alternate feet. My argument isn't about playing any way possible to get the best score or to burn the least amount of energy so you don't have to get in shape to pass hard songs, my argument is that charts should not be designed so that double-stepping is required to play the song, design the charts for normal play. But who cares REALLY DDR will go whatever direction they want to go (I heard this was the last mix ever anyways).

I feel like a broken record...

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al, can you lock the thread please? this is clearly going nowhere, and it cant because hellrazor doesnt know what he's talking about and is too closed minded to listen when people try to explain things.

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Alright locked.