DDR Series Official Arcade Re-rating Project 20F, 10F

Me. (Although I'm fine with it being a 16, I get that it's mostly because of step-jumps and janky BPM changes.)

In an ideal world 15s like the MAX-EXTREME boss songs wouldn't be rated the same as entry-level 15s like many of the ones in A20+.

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I am looking at the whole picture. What makes 17s and 18s isn't what makes 15s though.


You can bypass a lot of technical stuff, like you can do some weird double stepping and just pound away at arrows and pass Paranoia Survivor but you really can't "cheat" with Max 300. Like the other day a bunch of Kon's stuff came up in my youtube recommendations and he doesn't do a any crossovers in his Paranoia Survivor PFC video. On the other hand you can't not do stamina in Max 300. If you can bypass what makes one chart hard but not the other one then there is a good chance they're not actually the same difficulty. But there is still a degree of stamina needed for Paranoia Survivor so 14 is the lowest it can go. Like my current best on Konoko, a 14, is 970k 22 greats. I would argue it should probably be a 13 with Sakura, I have 902k 40 greats on that right now. You talk about me thinking gaps are smaller than they actually are, but there isn't a big gap in difficulty between Konoko and Sakura. There is a big gap between Konoko and Paranoia Survivor, and between Paranoia Survivor (my current best 780k fail) and Max 300 (my current best 570k fail).


I mean, Konami rated them not me. I'm just saying that in reality Paranoia Survivor could go either way as a 14 or a 15 for various reasons. As long as Konoko is a 14 and Maxx Unlimited is a 16 the rating is fine at 15.

Really, what it boils down to is we all have a handful of songs that we think could be rated differently and its all of those relative to each other (the "whole picture") that lead us to think this. Like look how long this post got just from me bringing up Konoko and Sakura. Now imagine if I started from 10 and went through 16 with songs that aren't necessarily the wrong rating but I thought could be a different one, I could write a novel. I'm absolutely looking at the whole picture I just don't want to make a bigger wall of text than I already am to explain it lol

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Also side note, idk how the hell you re-rated all of 1st-5th Mix and decided to keep RHYTHM AND POLICE (K.O.G. G3 MIX) as a 12 and BOOM BOOM DOLLAR as an 11...

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KONAMI is sometimes just inconsistent when it comes to chart ratings, and even among adjustments, they sometimes don't follow through properly. In the case of Qipchaq, that is indeed a case of "both charts were misrated but only one of the two got adjusted for some odd reason". In a similar case, Valkyrie dimension D- got rated down to 14 but S- is still a 15.

I can think of counterexamples to this, though, where the Double chart is more straightforward than its single counterpart but has a higher rating for some reason:
sakura storm - 10 and 11 respectively
SILVER☆DREAM - 11 and 12 respectively
Triple Journey -TAG EDITION- - 16 and 17 respectively

I feel the best way I can describe what I think is KONAMI's approach to DDR chart ratings is to first rate double charts and then evaluate the single counterparts as if they are also double charts (as if players will for some reason focus on the entire screen even if they're just playing single and will not use stamina conserving foot techniques to make things easier to clear). This often makes double charts of the same level quite a lot harder than their single counterparts.

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My bad, a lot of the first ratings were mis-informed, I fixed that in V1.3, you can think of my first re-ratings as a "Rough Draft" of what I wanted.


I just looked at Sakura and Konoko and can say they are accurately rated, let me explain. Sakura has a lot of consistency and simple patterns with low voltage and simple 8th note triplets that lead into more simple 4th note patterns and doesn't really have an 8th note triplet into triplet like Konoko does, the ending drill slows down making it shorter and more technical than Konoko. Sakura is a high Stamina 13. Konoko is a borderline 14 because of its spike in difficulty in a few parts, The Triplets onto Triplets is very fast, that CAN'T be a 13, The voltage is too high to be a 13 (the 10 BPM is a big enough difference because keep in mind 16th notes are 4X the BPM) and that long drill section right after another that lasts much longer than Sakura, makes it a 14, Konoko is an easy 14. again I think you are putting too much value into stamina instead of technicality.

This reminds of Max 300 DSP where at first I thought it was mis-rated and should be a 13 but I look at it and most of the song is easy its just the voltage of the 8th notes that has a 13 in it but it doesn't make it a 13.I've noticed charts that are very relaxed and then spike up to undoubtedly harder than their own rating would suggest, I think this is because Konami treats it like a training chart for what to expect from the levels higher than it without needing the stamina of the higher levels. like Healing D-Vision ESP has a 15 segment in it at the end but I wouldn't call the whole chart a 15 since most of the song is a low 14. this does introduce a weird paradox where a 15 can be easier than a 14. I find Max 300 to be easier than a few of 14s actually, mainly the high BPM 14s because those take much more stamina than a 150 BPM 15. oh yeah that reminds me of the difference in stamina of different BPM ratings. High BPM just tends to take more stamina than low BPM songs, even in the same level rating. that's why I think Konami doesn't value Stamina as much as technicality.
This also got me thinking about what the borderline 15 is and I think I want to do this keep is the closest to the border (yes, easier than paranoia survivor) and thats definitely a 15

Also I don't think Konami rates charts on the assumption that someone would cheat because you can't do that in doubles and you can also use a bar to make songs seem easier than they actually are.

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Out of curiosity, were these your own subjective judgments, or are these generally accepted as accurate? I agree with the vast majority of these but some of them seem a little bizarre to me.

The First re-ratings were done subjectively and on too little of a sample size to accurately rate them. I'm fixing them with my second re-rating which I have seen a bunch more charts to rate them properly now and will be done in a few months.

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Nooo I was asking xRGTMx, not you

Whoops, sry Im new to this Forum posting thing.

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No worries.

As a heads-up, the way you'd know I was talking to xRGMTx is because I quoted his message. That basically means I was replying to his message.

I agree with most of these lists, especially concerning doubles these seem pretty accurate. I'm especially glad you have DEEP IN YOU DDP as a 13 (seen someone else call that an 11 a few years back). For a 1999 chart, that one is something else honestly.

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Dude, 1/8 notes at 300 BPM are 1/16 notes at 150 BPM. Sakura as a song is actually half the BPM it scrolls at, its played as if it's always on a x2 speed mod. It does pretty much all the same things Konoko does and more. Things like "voltage" are worthless values, if any of that meant anything Konami never would have brought back foot ratings. The groove radar is really only there to look cool, if it worked then every game after 6th Mix never would have had foot ratings at all. The groove radar experiment worked so poorly that the US version of Max had the foot ratings added back in. Because the groove radar looks at things the way you do like 1/4 note, 1/8 note, 1/16 note, and so on, it doesn't work on certain songs and even then it doesn't give you any real idea of how hard most songs are. The fact of the matter is what Sakura really does is throw 1/16 triplets at you and go into 1/8 note streams. It does this at 150 BPM at the beginning and then does it again at 160 BPM in the ending, followed by a 1/16 stream ending that uses more than two arrows and wants you to crossover which actually makes that stream just as hard to do if not harder than Konoko's despite it being much shorter, and that's not even talking about the middle section. The reality is that Sakura requires everything of you that Konoko does and more, its just as fast in the last half too, its more stamina draining and more technical. Sakura should not be rated lower than Konoko, and Sakura is perfectly rated as a 13.

Also if you think at this point that Konami isn't factoring in things like mods and the bar when rating then I don't know what to tell you. Konami holds tournaments for this game, if using the bar was "cheating" they wouldn't allow it. Similarly early tournaments didn't allow mods and this was reflected in the home version Endless modes having an option for "regulation" rules, but that restriction doesn't exist now. And if you think you can't "cheat" on doubles by not doing crossovers you don't play doubles, at least not well. Yeah you might find a dope video like Kobayan's HVAM double stealth AAA where he does all the turn aways but foot switching and double stepping exist just as much in doubles as they do in singles. As a matter of fact, they're even more of a requirement for being able to play harder charts than they are on singles.

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I mean, as much as I agree with your overarching point, I can't get behind this. The groove radar is poor at evaluating overall difficulty of a song, but it's not like the values are meaningless. All else equal, a song with 80 voltage is going to be harder than a song with 50 voltage. We know this because voltage is a measurement of density of arrows, and more dense arrow packing makes songs harder.

I almost considered developing a regression model to try and predict song difficulty, and the groove radar values would have definitely been factored into that model. They wouldn't be close to perfect, but it would be pretty unfair to act like they don't have any sort of relationship with the song's actual difficulty.

Sure, there are a whole bunch of other factors that also influence the difficulty of a song, like crossovers/spins/weird techy shit, but groove radar values are a helpful place to start.

I am fully aware of Sakura being a 150 BPM song and being doubled, I thought you would understand that through text but I guess I must speak more clearly, let me go over the main bullet points of why Sakura is a 13 in order to understand why a song like Konoko is a 14.
for the sake of this argument lets just say the BPM is 150 instead of 300. the 8th notes in Sakura are dead simple patterns which then transition to a drill and its like this for the whole song except for the ending and the steps at 313 combo, at that point in the combo, its still a simple pattern that only takes stamina to perform and not very skilled, for the most part there is always an 8th note into a lone drill, Sakura has Gallops that are not new to this difficulty, plenty of 10s and 11s have gallops in them so this is just an extra layer on top of this chart. There are enough Drills evenly spaced out for you to gain back some energy in between them with lower energy 8th notes. The ending is technically harder to score on then Konoko but its a very small segment of the song. Sakura is everything you've come to expect from a 13 and a little more which makes it a hard 13.

now for Konoko I'm gonna use a thought experiment to convince you of the point I'm trying to make, if this doesn't convince you nothing will. lets establish first that 8th notes can only make a song so hard, and that most of the difficulty that comes from songs 14+ comes from some amount of 16th notes, Agreed? now Lets say in this scenario a person who has never seen a 16th note in his LIFE decides to play a song with 16th notes. He's mastered 8th notes and they are not an issue for him what so ever, now lets completely get rid of 4th and 8th notes in this equation, only 16th note triplets drills and gallops are valid but a single lone 16th note laid out like a 4th note doesn't count, what are we left with? Both songs have a lot of dead air, In Sakura when a triplet appears you have enough time to react to it and enough time to recover from processing that information to hit the next triplet no problem, now you have to also think about the slow downs which is where Sakura becomes a higher echelon of 13s (apart from stamina) but slow downs aren't enough to make it a 14.

Now with Konoko the first segment has you immediately hit with 8 trips including 1 trip into another trip, the 6th trip also kind of acts like a mini crossover with how you have to move your whole body to execute that one while still having 2 more trips side by side to execute. I think the newbie would find this segment alone to be harder than most of sakura but we're not even at the hardest part of the song yet. Konoko features a 5 and 4 note 16th note runs that is uncommon in 13 foot 160 BPM songs, at 206 combo it begins the second hardest part of the song which features a gallop into a 3 trips with a 4 note run thrown in the middle and the transition from the second trip into the third one requires another full body rotation to execute all must be done in 1 go, their mind has to prepare for a big mass of steps in order to execute, no where in Sakura does it require this amount of concentration for 16th notes for this long and no, the slow downs are not as difficult as a 16th note, its a gimmick that can be thrown into any difficulty (like playing BAG on 5x Speed makes it a ) and then the long drill segment, I'd like to take the time to reference modern DDR songs charts like City never Sleeps and Drop the Bounce for proving Drills can justify the difficulty being higher even Vanquish the Ghost was Re-rated to a 16 after realizing how much energy a drill takes. now back to my point, the long drill (on a 160 BPM chart btw) just solidifies my point on this being a borderline 14, you can imagine now how without all the 4th and 8th notes that Konoko would be harder than Sakura to a new player in THIS aspect only. now the paradox I mentioned earlier is really apparent here since I'm used to 15s Konoko is easier for me than sakura but I'm not arguing for experienced players. this is about what a new person who wants to raise a level can expect from that level. Sakura is a harder song to master, while Konoko is an entry way into what to expect from 14s


I guess I made an oopsie in putting the word cheat and bar in the same sentence. I don't consider the bar to be cheating but double stepping can only get you so far in Doubles, sure you can double step all you want in single but when you transition to Doubles its like you have to re-learn the game again (also I searched a good amount and couldn't find any 17+ doubles gameplay where a person double stepped instead of crossing over for at least 50% of the total times it could've applied, if you can find a gameplay vid I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that.) I think you can double step "Most" singles charts but if you really think you can double step every chance you get in doubles you might be able to do it for 15s even 16s but 17+ your gonna regret having that habit. but if doubles forces crossovers on you and you have to do them, then isn't that right way to play the game? (Spiritually not competitively) DDR is all about moving your body and I think you are robbing yourself of that experience if you only play with the mindset of double stepping all the time. I'm not saying you shouldn't optimize your movements to use as little energy as possible, I'm just saying that its the truest way to experience DDR. don't knock it till you try it.

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If we keep quoting each other this will get ridiculously long, so I'm not going to. I'm just going to touch on certain points.

You say Sakura's patterns are "dead simple" but as I already pointed out, so are Konoko's long 16ths. They're only ever on two arrows at a time. You also don't bring up 16ths until you start talking about Konoko, you only mention 8ths for Sakura. Again, that's just a technicality of the permanent x2 speed mod it was charted with. There are 16ths all over the place in Sakura, all of the 8ths are actually 16ths.

Having said that, lets look at your thought experiment. When Sakura is viewed as the 16ths they really are you have a similar chart to Konoko in the first half, it's the half way point where they diverge. Sakura has the slow down and Konoko has the long 16ths, but what's after that? For Konoko, it's just 8ths (I don't care what color they are, this is how they're played) with some gallops thrown in. Sakura retains it's intensity from the beginning after it's slowdown, however. The 16ths in Konoko stop being a problem after the first half, once you get past the long 16ths in the middle anyone good enough to get that far has already passed the song and it's just about MA at that point. Sakura does not give you this luxury, take it from me as a 300 pound man it took me 5 tries over the course of a few weeks to get through Sakura. Once I did I was able to repeat it, my leg strength is starting to come back, my arms are getting used to supporting my weight again, and my lungs are getting used to regulating my breathing again, but it's still not an easy song. Out of a few passes I've only managed to just squeak out an A. I got an A the first time I played Konoko after just a week back on the pad and did this a month ago my second time playing it after just a month back on the pad.


It's their endings that really set them apart, Sakura wants you to keep doing the same things you were doing in the beginning of the song with 16th triplets followed by the longish stream with crossovers and decreasing tempo. Konoko's long stream in the middle has no crossovers and is only ever on two arrows at a time, then after that it's just 8ths. Sakura is a harder song both technically and for stamina.

As for doubles, at one point in time I ran our local ITG2 machine leaderboard. I have passes on most of the 12s (ITG 12s) and ! under my belt from back in the day. It's not a matter of not knocking it until I've tried it, I know how to crossover/under and I know how to crossover/under while changing pads at that. I know how to play doubles pretty well. As such I know when I should be crossing over/under, double stepping, and foot switching. Even on singles, talking about moving your body, basic foot switching was something I was doing on songs like Still in My Heart and Dynamite Rave's Oni remixes playing courses back on Extreme. Back to doubles, there are a lot of charts that expect you to spin/turn your back and some even do it on transitions. I wish I could remember some of the songs but having not actually touched a machine in years I mostly just spot it when the odd video shows up in my recommendations and I almost always see that done with a foot switch. For stuff I have played, Exotic Ethnic expert on doubles is doesn't necessarily do any of that but it's still one where foot switching is both the best way to play it AND adds to your movement like you were talking about. Tsugaru has some spots where if you don't do a crafty foot switch you're walking backwards across the pads which can be awkward to pull off. I'm not going to be able to give you more recent examples, I'm just not playing that many of the newer songs and certainly not on doubles to have that first hand experience but it really just depends on the song. CSFIL Speed Mix is one where you just want to cross over/under, Tsugaru and Exotic Ethnic are better with foot switching. At no point I did say to double step every chance you get, I'm not sure where you got that. I said that double stepping and foot switching are still part of doubles. Here, watch Kon foot switch like a motherfucker to see what I mean.


And man, once you have that ability to know when to cross over/under, double step, and foot switch and you're firing on all cylinders doubles is so much damn fun.

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Sakura at passing difficulty is practically a 12. At scoring difficulty, it's a mid 14. Make of that what you will - I recommend splitting the difference like Konami did and calling it a 13, much of a pain in the ass it is to play. (note: talking about Doubles here)

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It's so weird that we're calling Konoko a borderline-14 or even a hard 13 -- that's something like CARTOON HEROES or the X-Special charts, which are mostly just more draining 13s. Konoko is a mid-14 IMO because it's a PAIN to read and time, and because of the drills in the middle of the song.

Edit: If we're comparing songs within the same game, I think Flow (True Style) CSP and Drivin' are much better examples of 13s that linger near the border of 14s.

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Cartoon Heroes is way harder than Konoko. I can’t even pass Cartoon Heroes yet, I feel like if it got revived it would definitely be a 14.

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Actually they did rate Cartoon heroes a 14 (kinda) the Cartoon heroes (20th anniversary mix) DSP actually just copied the step chart from the original and rated it a 14. I just noticed it when re-looking at the step chart, oh boi and the comments are saying its more like a 12/13 :/

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The DSP of the 20th anniversary mix is actually slightly easier than the original ESP. I don't think the original ESP is a hard 14, but it's definitely a 14 -- the remix could go either way.


It's just more draining than Konoko since Cartoon Heroes doesn't have any breaks, where Konoko's difficulty is a lot more inconsistent. Both should be 14s, though (same with Witch Doctor and So Deep if either of those are revived).

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