DanceDanceRevolution WORLD (AC)

And why'd they have to get rid of arrow-based difficulty changing? They're messing with 20 years of muscle memory here.

Sometimes, I don't really understand these FLARE SKILLS accumulation because sometimes it gives you points and sometimes are not. Although I choose a new song for the first time and no luck. I always preventing to choose a same song with same chart because these won't give you FLARE SKILL accumulation unless you had beaten your previous FLARE SKILL points

This is definitely something major (in my opinion) that I agree with, and I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

But first, just giving my initial response to the live vids I just started watching. We do have a new announcer, so that's great!
As for other stuff, sorry, but I truly can't get past how much I do NOT like the UI: song selection screen, gameplay screen, etc. HOWEVER, I actually do like the initial song select option of choosing pop music, anime & game, all music, etc. I also like the flip animation when going through songs. But, I still think the better idea was keeping songs in their version folders to make them easier to find. If someone wants to play songs from DDR Extreme, then gimme an Extreme folder. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't seen it, but right now, that song select screen is all over the place.

As I was looking at people play and select or sort songs, my face was really frowned the entire time.... Like, yeah I see the songs, but I don't understand where things are. And song jackets and title being in a big white rectangle at the top of the screen seems very last minute thought. Hate to sound so negative, but DDR World right now, looks like a beta game that is not complete and things were just thrown together to get it out. This is the first DDR I'm confused by on looks alone and may deter me from playing (if one was close by), or take a long time finding where songs are in-game.

Okay, as for the quote above about the dancers and background movies. This also reiterates me saying the game looks just put together and very beta-like. DDR of course is a game for the players who focus on the songs, the steps, the challenge, the fun, etc. However, for all intents and purposes, DDR is ALSO a spectator game -- it's fun to watch as well as play. I've never been a fan of the dancing characters going back to earlier DDRs so I'll stay out of the discussion regarding them (though I have always said that it woulda been really cool if the dancers had actual on-beat choreography for every song kinda how early Hottest Party games were).

I always preferred the bgvids from MAX to EXTREME, and of course loved the dedicated vids from like EXTREME2. Players are listening to the music and paying attention to the arrows. But here, relegating songs that have dedicated vids to a little box in the lower middle of the screen.....really...what is the point of this? Spectators can't really see that, so there's nothing really to entertain them on screen. Having no dancers, and then a wee little box on screen for vids? That's just odd. Again, that's why this seems like an unfinished game still being fleshing out stuff. I could be wrong -- probably am. But overall, the game looks very unappealing and sloppy. I truly do not understand why they would make such a decision about the background visuals.

But what is left after removing the 3D dancers? Two black panels and a fixed dynamic background with the video zoomed to the middle is very boring It's no different from Stepmania.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement in 3D dancers, but KONAMI is not willing to invest more resources in developing DDR

How do you come to this conclusion though? It cost Konami more money to change to this than it would have to keep the dancers. Paying someone to design this cost money, keeping the same dancers would have been free. They definitely did this because they think it looks good. Given how many players love Simply Love for being pretty plain it’s hard to say outright that they made the wrong decision.

Although the 3D dancer is not important to most players, the video should not be turned into a small window at the bottom.

I also want KONAMI to pay attention to the development of DDR, but KONAMI focus is on IIDX. For KONAMI, DDR is now a game reserved for old players.

As someone who doesn't play IIDX, how is KONAMI putting their focus into them besides having more versions? It seems like it gets reskinned and the gameplay stays the same. I honestly don't know WHAT their focus is these days since they haven't had a hit game since 2018 lol. Maybe the online subscription ports which make them more money?

As for KONAMI's focus, I think it is on mobile games because it will bring him a lot of profits. People like Hideo Kojima who only want to do games well without making profits are not welcomed by KONAMI.

I haven’t seen anyone mention it anywhere, but multi-game filters filter by game now instead of alphabetical. So if you go to 1st-5th it will start with the 5th mix songs alphabetically, then 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st. Basically in descending order like the folders were in A3. I hate it.