DDR Difficulty?

I don't think there's been a thread made about this (at least, none that i could find) so i decided to make one.

I got this idea from the DDR Online Community forums but basically that turned into a huge 15 page argument between like 5 people. Hopefully this won't turn out the same way...

So yeah, my question is this, what do you think of DDR's difficulty? is it too hard? is it too easy? what do you think could make it better?

Personally, my biggest issues with the game is the difficulty curve, the insane "boss" songs, and (i don't have a very big problem with this, but just thought i'd mention it) the slightly odd choices in music for a dance game.

Difficulty Curve-

I got into DDR when I believe Extreme CS was fairly new, but I started out on DDRMAX, and i found it relatively easy to work my way up from light to heavy to MAX 300 because of the wide variety and smooth change in difficulty. Now it seems that it goes from super easy beginner, to average, to suddenly needing to be an expert to be able to play FAXX or Relinquish. Basically, i think they should rethink the current changes in difficulty, add in some harder 8s (Captivate ~Chikai~), easier 9s (Afronova or Break Down), and easier 10s (Uranus Oni) to make it easier to get to the harder 10's.

Insane "Boss" Songs-

I've noticed that when i'm playing some of the recent "boss songs" that they feel more like...a chore or a task that has to be done more than a game that is meant to be fun. when i first beat max 300 or maxx unlimited, i was proud of myself for beating it cuz it's a hard...yet fun(ish)...song, and i keep coming back to those because they're fun to play yet still give me that sense of accomplishment/satisfaction. yet when i'm playing SN2 i tend to stay away from the boss songs just cuz they're so obnoxious and awkward to play, i don't even WANT to play them (TMP is an exception, that was a superbly made chart).

Music Choice-

Pre-Extreme releases definitely leaned more towards techno-y/computerized music than some of the recent licenses or *cough*NGO*coughcough*. A lot of the music that has been in recent games isn't anywhere close to being "dance" music which...seeing as DDR is a DANCE game, it feels really weird and awkward to be dancing to songs like NGO or Jerk It Out (pretty disgusting song by itself). When i was first introduced, and got addicted, to DDR the music in the games was in a seperate genre of it's own for me...it was just "DDR Music". but in recent games (SN1 and SN2 specifically, but a little bit in Extreme 2) it's like they're trying really hard to blend in with what's popular right now, regardless if it works well with the game at all.


anywho, those are my thoughts...what are your's?

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Difficulty Curve-

I believe that the Difficulty in DDR recently have been odd in some choices. Case in point: Pluto Relinquish. But I think its just a way to introduce some ITG elements without adding Mines/Hands to it. When Extreme came out, it was the only machine from oversees that stayed for a while till we got SuperNOVA. Between those years, ITG & ITG2 was showing how difficult it can be. For alot of my friends, they got spoiled from playing ITG2 till SuperNOVA came out. No one wanted to play it and just by looking at it, Everyone voted to get rid of it...I welcomed SN with open arms, But I was the only one who did.//

Insane "Boss" Songs-

I agree with you that they feel more like a chore or a task that has to be done more than a game that is meant to be fun...But isn't it suppose to be somewhat a chore? We call it a "BOSS" song for a reason...//

Music Choice-

My opinion is that from what I've seen in DDR, anything is dancable...//

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Haha I read through that whole thread on the DDR Online Community forum. It was pretty hilarious how immature some people were and how one person basically wouldn't let it get back on subject and insisted on making the whole thread about his mad ITG skillz and how DDR is terrible.

anyway...my opinions


Difficulty curve-

I mostly agree with everyone that there is an obvious problem with the difficulty curve. Theres basically masses of easy songs and then a handful of freakishly hard stuff. But instead of adding more 9's to smooth it out, I would rather Konami divide the 10 rating into 10, 11, and 12 and bump some of the harder 10's into the higher numbers. For example, Max 300 would be the ideal 10, Max 300 SMMM Oni would be the ideal 11, and Paranoia ~Hades~ Oni would be the ideal 12. This would help the difficulty curve because in future releases they could add a lot more 10's without the highest possible rating going stale because theres so much of it. It would also make the 10 rating much less inflated. Future mixes would include a lot of 9's, quite a bit of 10's (a lot more than SN2 at least), a handfull of 11's, and only a couple of 12's. Overall, the songlist would be much harder on the highest modes like many of the more serious players want, and it would get rid of the huge spike in the difficulty curve. Of course they would still include a good deal of songs that are 7-8 even on the highest mode so that not every song has to be a stressful 9-12 (even though i guess people could still play light or standard if all the songs became 9-12, even though that just feels...demeaning).


Insane boss songs-

Yeah, the boss songs are getting pretty stressful to do. I like it that way, boss songs are supposed to be freakishly hard, as hinted by the red text. But some of em are kinda stupid and not fun at all, especially HDVO. They should work to keep the boss songs difficult, but still keep them fun. Something else, they should make sure that boss songs aren't the ONLY hard songs on the mix, like in SN2.


Music Choice-

Nah, for the most part i like the choice in music, even stuff like NGO. Variety is good, it makes the game feels like theres more to do in a way. ITG is a little boring after a while cause the songs are pretty much all KaW techno. More people will play DDR too, because eveyone has their own taste in music and not all like dance style techno music, though I think most of the songs should definately still be techno.


Yup

Aw, what? Jerk It Out is awesome for dancing! =P

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AND for snowboarding. Don't forget snowboarding.

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touche, my friend, touche indeed

and, fyi, no one has to follow my layout of "difficulty curve, insane boss songs, and music choice" you can say your own things about how DDR can improve and what not. those were just the areas i think need some improvement.

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Someone's been playing SSX3...

Anyway, I didn't like Jerk It Out's steps. When we got it (in Unleashed 1, 2 years before SN - ha!), I though that they felt a lot like the other UNL1 licences : a bit sloppy and inconsistent (Up the Bracket was even worse: 182 BPM ULR 16ths in a 7-foot chart!)

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God are you kidding me? I love that game. Though I liked Psymon better in Tricky...

As for what DDR could improve on in difficulty, all I really have to say is stop raping jumps. Unreal is not fun. It will never be fun. STOP DOING CHARTS LIKE THAT. You can make a chart difficult without spamming it with jumps! >_>

Oh, and this song should totally be in DDR.

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What I hate is that the foot ratings are sooooo freakin loose. For example: Karma Chameleon and Break Down (World Ver.) are two opposite ends (one being easy, one being hard) even though they are both 8s. Also, some of the foot ratings are just plain wrong (PH is more of a 10).

About boss songs, while the ACs have gotten ridiculous, save for some awesome ones (Pluto, et. al), the CS exclusives have some awesome boss songs. Tsugaru (OR-IF-IS) is pretty awesome, same with tokyoEVOLVED and SUPER SAMURAI . Not easy, but not ridiculous.

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I agree about the difficulty curve. Among the new SN2 songs, there are mostly 8's (most of which should be 7's), only a few 9's, and so many gimmicky 10's. Why does every 10 have to have super-fast step jumps or crossovers? What happened to using a song's natural ability to be used as a boss song?

Quote: Oni-91
Anyway, I didn't like Jerk It Out's steps. When we got it (in Unleashed 1, 2 years before SN - ha!), I though that they felt a lot like the other UNL1 licences : a bit sloppy and inconsistent (Up the Bracket was even worse: 182 BPM ULR 16ths in a 7-foot chart!)

Well, it's the European counterpart of UM1, so you couldn't expect much (Size of a Cow a 6? WTF?)

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I don't understand. The stepchart editor from Konami has miswrite the foot rating or they too lazy make serious and realistic stepchart? For example, Witchdoctor (Giant Toon Version) Single. Do You think that a 8 footer song? Wrong. That is 9 footer song. And What do you think about Ain't No Mountain High Enough Single? 8 Footer song? Wrong. That is 7 footer song.

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Quote: RoyBoyCF
I agree about the difficulty curve. Among the new SN2 songs, there are mostly 8's (most of which should be 7's), only a few 9's, and so many gimmicky 10's. Why does every 10 have to have super-fast step jumps or crossovers? What happened to using a song's natural ability to be used as a boss song?

i think it would be alright to have one gimmicky 10 per mix...or every other mix, just for fun. on SN1 with Chaos...that is still one of my favorite songs of all time to play cuz of all the pauses that fit perfectly with the song, and the steps are still challenging yet fun.

but yeah, it would be nice if they went back to using straight-forward 10's....not ones that are spammed with crossovers, jumps, or 1/8 note jacks at 400 bpm (i'm looking at you faxx).

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Quote: DDR Addict 5690
on SN1 with Chaos...that is still one of my favorite songs of all time to play cuz of all the pauses that fit perfectly with the song....

I disagree. In order for the pauses to fit perfectly, most of them would need to be half a beat shorter. The steps are supposed to start back up when the song does, not the scrolling (although the 64th's in Poseidon were clever).

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well, maybe i'm a little biased...since Chaos was so different from everything else i'd ever seen, i immediately fell in love with it...so i may overlook it's imperfections, hehe.

and yeah, Poseidon's freezes still get me every time...

EDIT: when i said "the freezes fit perfectly" i just meant the freezes matched the song well...not that their timing was perfect...just by the sound of the song, they made the freezes work really well with how the song sounded...if that makes sense.

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One thing that I'd like to see, and I know I'll be in the minority on this, is a super-easy difficulty level. I mean added to the game, not in place of an existing difficultly level. Something akin to Easy in DDR Mario Mix. Easy in Mario Mix means only left and right arrows, and not very many of them. And in fact I'd want then another level between that and the current easiest PS2 DDR level. Essentially it has a frequency of arrows similar to Mario Mix Easy, but with the addition of forward and back arrows. All the PS2 DDR games are too difficult for my 5 and 7 year old boys. They've literally made them cry. I'd like to be able to play DDR with them, and they'd like to play with me, but the only one we can play together is Mario Mix. Mind you, I like Mario Mix, but I'd like more options.

Quote: RoyBoyCF
Quote: DDR Addict 5690 on SN1 with Chaos...that is still one of my favorite songs of all time to play cuz of all the pauses that fit perfectly with the song.... I disagree. In order for the pauses to fit perfectly, most of them would need to be half a beat shorter. The steps are supposed to start back up when the song does, not the scrolling (although the 64th's in Poseidon were clever).

Chaos is well done, but there is some part who can be better. (and i don't talk about the end of the oni chart, who is RIDICULUS).

Watch this : Dream to nightmare this is a song with lots of bpm changes and stops BUT who are very linked with the song. This is one of the most awesome stepchart so far.

Anyway, let's back to the topic "DDR Difficulty".

I have noticed a lot of problem (like some of you) but the 3 most big problems are :

- JUMP ! Wtf ? Why is there so MANY insane jumps is new boss songs ? I think konami don't know how to do hard ans well done boss songs, so they put insane jumps everywhere (like destructo-bot said for Unreal).

- Miss rated songs : we all know that there is too mush miss rated song. I think konami should ra-rate ALL the songs with the ddr players advise. They have already re-rate some songs like Sakura, Mind Parasite... but i think it's a bad idea to re-rate only 2 or 3 song.
Sakura is now a 9, right ? I think it's really a 9, maybe a 9.5. Frozen Ray is a 9 too, but this song i a lot easier than Sakura. And now we can find Parania Hades who is a 9 ! This song is harder than Sakura >.<
So for the moment songs rating means almost nothing.
They should change the system, and go to more than 10 feet. 12 maybe 13. It's ridiculous to see a song with 10 feet for heavy chart and 10 feet oni chart when we know that the oni is a LOT harder.

- Shity Stepchart / Off sync and Off beat song : This is the kind of thing that we whould NEVER see in a ddr game. I mean when people like you or me trying to do edits, if we do some mistakes it's not a big deal. (but often the edits are well done and are better than some ddr stepchart).
But DDR... -_- playing DDR cost money, so we want to play good songs with good stepchart and on sync ! Ballad for you is unplayable on SN1 (off sync). I hate Break Down because of the bad Heavy chart (patern who force you to play 2steps in a row with the same leg). 5.1.1 is a huge crap. The ending of Healing-D-Vision Oni is crazy. Crossover are too fast... It's just some exemple...

Don't pay attention to all my "english mistakes". I just hope that it's not hard to read...

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As for boss songs and 10's, there were only a few horrible charts in SN1 and SN2 which to me are:

FELM
FAXX
HDV
NGO:
Unreal
Pluto Relinquish

MAX 300 (SMMM) was perfect as is. I love what they did with it. HDV is slightly odd but not that difficult. FELM is difficult yet so fun and delicious at the same time (mmm...FELM...) ;D

FAXX was only nonsense with the 8ths in the beginning and the gallops in the 200 section. PR is fine. Simple in the beginning and a nasty high speed "staircase" run at the end.

CHAOS...is... nothing... short... of... awesome... on... and on... . (u c wut i did thar?)

PH makes sense. It's just ridiculously hard.

Dream to Nightmare was awesome but the song itself made my ears bleed.

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Really, all the SN1/SN2 boss songs (including SMMM) are a bit too gimmicky. The only one I like is Pluto .

Quote: crunc

Have you SEEN the kind of steps Konami used for SN2? If anything, we need to focus on the game becoming overall harder, not easier. Mario Mix basically have three Beginner to Lightish difficulties was unnecessary, but I don't expect much from a spinoff game.

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Quote: RoyBoyCF
Really, all the SN1/SN2 boss songs (including SMMM) are a bit too gimmicky. The only one I like is Pluto . Quote: crunc Have you SEEN the kind of steps Konami used for SN2? If anything, we need to focus on the game becoming overall harder, not easier. Mario Mix basically have three Beginner to Lightish difficulties was unnecessary, but I don't expect much from a spinoff game.

He was referring to 5 and 7 year old boys, whose legs aren't really long enough for dancing easily on a mat the size we're used to.

Crunc: They should be able to do just fine on the 1 footers on beginner though. Just have them play those.

Anway, I side with RBCF on this one. Having beginner and light for every song is plenty for low level players. What Konami needs to do is use the challenge difficulty, and make challenge 9's and 10's for a higher proportion of songs.

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Yeah, or at least provide more mid-level 9's. >_<

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