How would you compare PIU scale to DDRX scale?

Is there a rough estimate of where PIU difficulties stack up to DDRX difficulties?

one has no real rating scale, the other has a rating scale and doesn't use all of it and doesn't use it correctly and goddamn it konami

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you don't

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You can't compare them just because there are different game mechanics. You can, however, compare DDR and ITG because there are only four arrows. The issue is that you can be better at one than the other. For example, I can probably beat 15s on DDR but I can't beat anything like that on PIU because the five arrows throw me off.

I find them about the same, judging by their respective learning curves. PIU's can feel a bit easier at times though. PIU also throws in triples, the hold arrows work differently, and there are visual gimmicks that are represented in the song rating as well.

It is a bit hard to compare them at times due to being more comfortable with one, but I tend to think DDR songs are harder for the same rating and noticeably so by the time the scale reaches the upper teens. Then again PIU has some major issues with ratings once you reach this point in the scale.

The two are very different things designed for very different games. I can only really speak for the learning curve that I experienced with both regarding their difficulties.

Let's start with the DDR X Scale. The learning curve is graduated but in a more-or-less consistent fashion. Going from 1 through 10 seems pretty smooth all the way through, and it curves a little starting at 11, and everything starting from 15 felt like a pretty huge jump, even from song to song.

The PIU scale, on the other hand, felt very different. Going from level 4 to level 5 and level 6 was an extremely steep jump in difficulty for me. They seemed to start adding 8th notes and a lot of jumps en masse between the difficulties there. But past level 6, difficulties between levels seemed quite gradual, and more or less in a linear fashion. Charts that felt like a 7 or an 8 on the DDR X Scale were actually quite hard to come by. That "wall" was probably tall enough to have kept quite a few new players from actually advancing. The day I cleared my first S7 was the same day I cleared my first S13.

Personally, I feel that up to about level 13, Pump It Up charts are noticeably harder than charts of similar levels in DDR. They were somewhat comparable between 13 and 17, at which point DDR charts started becoming seemingly harder than PIU charts. However, PIU songs have ratings that are incredibly inconsistent; some 14s felt to be routinely harder than 16s! Moreover, Original Tunes and some tunes released in games like Fiesta seemed to have much harder charts than those released in Prime, even if they were rated the same. Because of that, I honestly don't even know how they rate songs on this game these days.

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It is fair to mention I never really played much of any PIU charts below about a 10 or 11 and should probably not comment on them. I also find it a bit interesting that you say through 17 they feel even when I felt that 17s are when DDR started to pull a decent bit ahead. I completely agree on the inconsistent ratings, especially by the time the scale reaches about 18-19 with anything 20+ being even worse.

DDR does have some easy 17s, and I did feel they're like the PIU 17s as far as footwork difficulty went. Somewhere along a 17 is where I thought DDR started to race ahead of PIU. It's worth watching some videos of charts rated below a 10 to get a glimpse of how hard they actually are. A DDR Single 11 is like a PIU Single 8 or 9 (almost like the classic scale!), and I was actually worried about how much harder the charts would get at that kind of progression when I first learned.

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I thought about this a while back, but I only have like an ITG <-> PIU sorta conversion scale. You'd need to translate from ITG to DDR X later, but I can give some thoughts about this. I'm going to mostly refer to singles difficulties because doubles is a whole new can of worms across the series.

I started with Fiesta so the way I felt about the scale was this:
PIU -> ITG
1-8 -> 1-8 (same, linear scale roughly)
9 - 13? -> 9 but with increasing difficulty in crossovers
13-15ish (maybe 16 too) -> 10
16-17 -> 11
17-18 -> 12
18-20ish -> 13
20+ -> 14 to ???? (honestly at this point it's harder to say because ITG also goes in a completely different direction involving difficulty - at this point it's probably not fully worth it to translate)

PIU PRO used the ITG scale and the PIU PRO charts that made it onto Infinity eventually had rerates into the Pump difficulty scale.

There's never a really clear conversion because Pump is weird and the crossover patterns can really throw off people for the first time if you're not used to it (even with simpler rhythms, crossovers involving the center panel can look really confusing). Also there's been more emphasis on hitting 3+ arrows with your feet so there's new difficulty to learn in reading and executing those.

In addition, ratings have been all over the place. PIU: FIESTA 2 is generally known to have lots of charts that should be rated 1-2 lower than it says. PIU: PRIME seems to have introduced a bit more standardized charts to help players ease into the game more, but then you have old charts that can throw a lot at you within the same rating.

At the same time, DDR 18+ is weird as well and goes a different difficulty direction from Pump It Up.

I dunno follow your heart~

The parts in bold are similar to how DDR X ratings would compare to ITG ratings, along with levels 1 through 3. Quite similar to how I felt the scales were like. Pretty cool.

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X-scale 17s translating to ITG 12s? Boi.

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Charts like Go 60 Go, July (Ocho-8-bit-Remix) and a small handful of others are like higher 17s. Although yeah, most 12s are either like the 18s or aren't comparable at all.

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I'd honestly say you'd be lucky to find a 13 that wasn't a X-scale 19 or harder. (Summer not counting because literally everyone can agree it's overrated)

And the PIU is its own bag entirely, I wouldn't try and compare them.

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True. I was comparing only the numbers Excel posted on my last post. Some of the custom files rated 13 are easier than pretty much all the officials but it's true 13s are rarely like DDR 18s, and when they are, they're in a similar tier with IX .

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Yeah eventually they do go their own direction and it's all weird, but I actually sorta also did a DDRX <-> ITG conversion back in the day where like
12-14 -> some sort of 9
15 -> 10
16 -> 11
17 -> 12
18 -> 13

I didn't actually notice it was similar to the PIU <-> ITG thing I did up there so good catch haha

It probably didn't work out all the time especially with new charts but that's how I generally thought of it to introduce familiarity and have a reference to a scale I somewhat understand

This depends on what you are looking for with the grade, passing or scoring?
DDR healthbar generally seems easier than ITG bar, and you can mash through patterns becuase there's no longer a punishment grade for that. I don't even know how non-pro PIU health works, sometimes you pass things becuase it has just one long hold at the end and that's enough but PIU difficulty numbers are jokes anyway and adding SP and DP to same grade folder in PRIME was worst idea for a while

Yeah, passing hard stuff in DDR is now basically trivial.

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Pump "difficult" are a big joke, you can basically pass any song with a long hold.

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Well, yeah, with Stage Break off, sure. That's like saying "it's easy to pass with fail turned off."

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