DDR X3 VS 2ndMIX (AC) (Japan)

Well, idk, they haven't really been doing that as of late

Fun is subjective. If they really want shock arrow charts, they could always make another difficulty for them. A 4 footer isn't challenging and should therefore not be under the "challenge" difficulty. I find 15s fun. Don't I get some fun charts out of this? DDR X2 took a giant step toward catering to the players that like harder charts. Uni3 did the same thing, but that's only because most of the oni charts were written by an ITG player. I'm not asking for 20 18 footers in every mix, but just a balance in difficulty. ITG players nowadays find the equivalent to DDR 16s to be good warmup songs, and DDR needs to catch up to this standard to be successful again in the states (if this is even possible). Not all of us like 7 footers anymore. By adding more spread to the difficulty, you're catering to the people who like harder stuff while still catering to the people who still like to play easier charts. It's a win-win as long as the charts are good.

My biggest problem with shock arrow charts is only a select few are unique. Most are just copypasta with steps removed. Laziness for an old gimmick done right with stepmania.

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AFAIK only smooooch was unique.

But I like smooooch, BALLAD THE FEATHERS and Melody Life. Most of the Shock Arrow charts in X2 too (except PTF).

IMO, in general Shock Arrow usage greatly improved in X2 (PTF doesn't count). And apparently, it gets somewhat better in X3. Because in X it sucked.


This. Agreed. I'd rather play my version

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Shock arrow charts should be their own difficulty, called "shock" or something. I agree with NIQ9 that a 4 footer should not be on challenge. I also agree that X2 did a good job in catering to high level players. I was hoping X3 would do the same, but if you find 16's fun you have no new charts to play.

It's true that not everyone loves 7's anymore. For the people that like 7's(X scale 9's-10's), they will still be available on Difficult and Expert. If you warm up on 16's X scale, piles of 9's and 10's will be boring.

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Got the soundtrack for 2ndMIX today and uploaded some pics:
http://imgur.com/a/VNeyE#0

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yeah, I got to hear the remixes today, they sounded pretty good.

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Can I get a source on this? I'm not challenging you about it. I just think that's a really cool fact.

The thing I AM challenging you on is the "DDR needs to be ITG to be successful in the US" statement. I feel that that statement embodies everything wrong with a lot of players I know in regards to their utter hatred of DDR. Just because ITG players are used to 3 minute long streams for warm-ups doesn't mean that DDR has to cater to them. Konami is getting way better at making "ITG-level" charts (I'm So Happy , 888 , Conga ), so they are getting there. What they AREN'T doing is inserting retarded streams into every song to justify a Challenge chart. And what constitutes success in the US? We keep getting the machines, the Wii CS titles are selling spectacularly (HP5 is being heralded as "The best game since Extreme 2"), and while DanceEvolution pretty much flopped, the sea of licensed rip-offs is showing that there IS an audience for dance games in the US. I'd also like to see a couple of tougher charts in DDR, but not every songs warrants them. I swear to God, if I ever see the DDR equivalent of Do U Love Me , HEADS WILL ROLL!

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Not every song needs a challenge chart. Challenge charts would not be dumb streams that go to nothing, they would be harder charts that follow the song. For example, the song Rainbow Rainbow from Supernova has an easy 7-footer chart when there's a lot more going on with the music.

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Unlocks...?

Anytime soon :/?

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That kind of chart only deserves to songs that deserves to have a harder chart than the set of charts it have been received. Not all of the Challenge charts with SA are ridiculous. smoooch is one of those Challenge charts with SA that is full of fun. So, Challenge chart can be used for a bag of fun, too, not just about harder charts that are ridiculously ridiculous.

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Wow.. Y&Co.. DJ BOSS & REMO-CON?
It's new to me.

DukAmok

Well, the upgrade cabs have only been out since Nov. 30th (give or take a day at some arcades). Not counting the new dedicabs which are just basically a head start on everyone else, I wouldn't expect to see unlocks or events that are not eAmuse Enjoy Level related until the end of the year. Who knows, it may be earlier but the issue right now is that even though the game is out, there are huge lineups at some of the arcades that have them and thus players that really haven't had a chance to explore what is there by default yet.

Anyways, small point, but some late bloomers in terms of arcade upgrades like one in Takadanobaba plans to get theirs from tomorrow, as will the rest of the arcades in the country with multiple machines that don't yet have all their upgrades yet. I think all 5 of Akiba Leisure Land's machines are now X3.

I'm still slightly annoyed that many arcades are charging 200 yen a game (no joint premium in some places) though places that only charge 100 yen have impossibly long lines (read: 30+ people at their busiest). You just can't win right now.

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Lol i can't agree more on the 2 last post of NIQ9 (and also braeden's).
I said countless time that at least 20% of the songs out in ddr could have something harder, better, faster , stronger.
I don't say we need more 16/16+ but use the full potential of the song. If it's a 13, do it. We have enough 9/10.
Also, even if we have a lot of songs like this : 2 5 8 11 15 what's the problem ?
If 15 is too hard go play the or chart.

Problem is you can't do the oposite. When you have a song with a 10 that deserve a 13-14 you can't play it if it doesn't exist.

Stuff like Conga are awesome. It's a little 15, have crossovers and not full of streams.
People have to stop saying that itg players only plays streamy stuff, i can find you 20+ chart in the 9-10 range (old scale) that are great, fun and use potential of the song (artists like jayce and mandodo for exemple have some stuff like this and i'm sure a lot of other people here on ziv and there on the interwebs).

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It's not all ITG players. Mostly that impression/stereotype comes from the vocal minority, the over-zealous ones mostly. I see that personally when once in a while there are links posted on random J-players' youtube channels, blogs, facebook, and even twitter and mixi in rare cases. These are the ones, the foaming-at-the-mouth zealots that are not only off their nut and doing things like blame the Konami artists for the actions of the legal team's decisions (read: lawsuit), but in a strict stepchart design sense, completely shun all crossovers, double-stepping, foot-switching, and BPM changes and focus their attention (or design if they make stepcharts themselves) on optimizing for footspeed, which, if you remove all elements of the former, very often leads to forms of streams here and there, and in extreme cases, they can go on for a majority of the song and comprise a significant portion of the stepchart. As a result, there is an overall impression that ITG=streams. It is an unfair association but it doesn't help that the most extreme of the vocal minority are pushing charts and ideals that typify this same stereotype, and at the same time blasting other "stepchartists" that are trying something different because it has elements they don't like. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the underdogs in that respect, actually.

However, KOJ and the majority audience of DDR (read: the casual players) probably don't care at all about this since ITG isn't even a factor in Japan and this mix was designed for the Japanese/Asian market. I find X3 decent fun for the moment, though I find the default songlist on X3 comparatively easy to what was in X2 at the beginning (the RDA stuff in X2 didn't happen until later; maybe there will be something similar in X3). I won't pass judgment on final difficulties until all the unlocks are finished, though. Who knows, there could be an completely insane form of RDA for X3 where everything is at least an 18...wait, that wouldn't be so great, either.

I mentioned this to a few people over the years in chat, blog posts, etc., but the thing about Japanese DDR player skill level is that you have the beginners, the intermediate level ones that can barely clear an Expert song and might do so with an A or bare AA (but never seem to improve), and ones that can AAA nearly everything in the game, but there is a *huge* gap in skill between the intermediate and expert players and nobody in between. Furthermore, there is another class of player that only plays light/standard songs even though they can play harder songs because they are playing specifically to try and MFC the easier songs; they find it relaxing and a fair challenge to keep so tightly to the marvellous window. I don't have a lot of patience for that but there are quite a few here, even ones I play with, that are like that.

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What I'm talking about in terms of difficulty is this:
: Most songs are 8-13 X scale. 14-16 for boss songs.
: Most songs would be 12-17 X scale. 18-19 for boss songs.

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I love how pro-players believe they are the be all and the end all of dancing games. The community of people who play DDR on a regular basis wherever I go to play tends to be composed of 90% not-so-great players and 10% pro-players, so whoever seriously believes that saving DDR only takes making everything harder needs a reality check. I love 14s/15s as many others around here, but most people I know just want to play Holic, R3 and fail Daikenkai a few times and they are happy with that. At least in America DDR peaked LONG ago. Konami did the right thing by giving DDR a 3 year hiatus between Extreme and SuperNova, this worked wonders in Japan/Asia because of how popular the game still is over there, but in America this dancing game drought never happened thanks to the rise of ITG, causing the genre to become stale and void of innovation, pretty much in the same way Guitar Hero/RB caused each other to lose their place as huge sellers. It doesn't help that Betson has been producing those pieces of junk called ddr cabinets for a while now.

Also, it doesn't help at all that Konami seems to pretend to make DDR sell itself. Spend some money on promoting the game for fucks sake. I know it sounds lame, but, for example, if Konami bothered to get Justin Bieber songs in DDR II, why not make a deal to get Justin to play one of his songs in the game in a few of his concerts? You can be sure that at least a few hundred copies of the game will be sold each time one of those concerts is over. And you can be sure a few of those new players would become hardcore in the long run. I've seen Konami advertisement in MLB games, so of course they can afford some Justin Bieber (or any other kind of) cross-promotion if they wanted too.

As much as I love some of Konami franchises, I can't believe they fail so badly to spread the word on how good their games are. Metal Gear Solid 4 is SO much better than any of those CoD games, so why does CoD gets those HUGE sales numbers every new release instead of MGS? Making every song to have a lv.18 challenge chart won't save DDR, promoting the game will!

Overall, I've always been under the impression that at Konami, the Bemani games are considered games that don't cost a lot to make (since they don't have to invest in ridiculously high-end graphics engines to satisfy graphics-whores) but they will be profitable most of the times, look at what happened this year with DDR II. It was only released on the cheapest console to make games for (Wii) and it mostly had recycled material from X2/X3, which in my book translates to "you better support this because we are running out of resources to make this any longer". Once they stop being profitable, you can be sure Konami will pull the plug on it; Activision wasn't afraid to do that with Guitar Hero after all, it's what companies do to survive.

/end rant

That would cost them a lot of money, way more than licensing his music.

Of course I know that would be expensive, but it would give their game the exposition it needs to sell as good as they should. I'm just going to the other side of the spectrum, showing how far they could go if they REALLY wanted to, but they still decide to rely on word of mouth to sell. But of course, why bother if Just Dance is getting absurdly huge numbers JUST by word of mouth? This is why Konami, in my opinion of course, needs to step up their advertising, or they'll lose whatever they have left of the dancing games market. Even I sometimes find myself playing Just Dance instead of DDR with newbie friends because I know I'll save myself all the "OMG THIS IS SO HARD!" or "I CAN'T HIT THE ARROWS" or "OH YOU HIT THE ARROWS WHEN THEY REACH THE TOP?!"

Maybe if Konami used their Facebook page once in a while to post professional-looking videos of advanced playing techniques by "professional" players, they could motivate those who are "just fine" playing Holic, R3 and Daikenkai to get better and stick with the game, instead of giving up on it just because they can't figure out the Afronova walk, specific parts of tricky songs, how to improve their timing, etc. I remember that the older games even taught you how to "butterfly spin" in training mode. Some songs become much more fun after you figure them out, I know for sure that back in the day I hooked a few people on "sorrow" songs after I helped them figure out their rhythm and that using Rainbow/Note helps with songs like those. By doing this I added lots of new songs to their frequently played songs. Konami needs to realize that DDR is not-so-simple anymore and they can do more to make the game more accessible to newer players.

Most people I know rarely complain about "chart-quality", that's mostly "elite" internet talk. Most people who play even somewhat regularly at arcades are just looking forward to get better at the game. If Konami could find a way to capitalize on that I believe they could market their product as a more competitive-oriented alternative to Just Dance, since their attempt to imitate Just Dance (Dance Masters/Evolution) flopped terribly.

The reason DDR isn't selling as well as Just Dance has almost nothing to do with marketing, it's the fact that Konami is peddling a product that has gone through virtually no gameplay changes for 13 years.

By the way, another increase of sales for DDR II this week

Last week: 6,638
This week: 7,487

The sales are getting good now.