DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

Yeah, if there's one thing I really like about this update, it's that a good portion of the community is buzzing about a single chart. That's not a bad thing. I'll have to give this chart a try once I can take a 16.

As much as I love Wadatsumi , I'm having a hard time approaching the gallop within the freeze part. A similar pattern occurs in MAX.(period) , and I did see how the player approached, but I can't seem to get it right. Either I miss an arrow or drop the freeze arrow.
Anyways, I can't wait to fully play Dadadada's chart, so I can figure how to approach that chart.

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It's a footswitch. Treat it as two 16th triplets. Imagine that the freeze arrow isn't there, and the third note of the triplet is on the arrow. You have to step off the freeze to hit the notes, but get your other foot back on at the end before the freeze breaks.

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the fact that Oboro and Dadadada got Challenge charts, I'm really happy.

aside from that one song that really deserves one, I also think DANCE ALL NIGHT(DDR EDITION) deserves a Challenge chart. This song is still more fun to play on jubeat at the moment.

When the vocals kick in, it's 4th notes for a measure before it does runs, similar to what the Experts did. And the part before the long DADADADADADA jack section is an 8th note stream of double taps across the pad instead of jumps to the vocals.

I think that's about it.

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Thanks for the advice. I'll try that approach when I get to play that song again.

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I see. It still feels tough for what it's rated. Thanks for analyzing that for me.

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It's a borderline 15/16 really. Could go either way.

Also after actually playing some more shock arrow charts on singles, I'm no longer understanding the hate for shock arrows. The charts I played this week (Captain Jack, Going Up, Theory of Eternity, Summer Fantasy, some others I'm sure) were good. Going Up was probably the weakest I listed but the rest were actually well done enough that I'll be playing them more often (Captain Jack I'd have to play on the X3 near me though).

Shocks are mostly just hitting the center like you would if it was an actual step. Theory of Eternity is definitely more manageable if you need to adjust to that.

I'll take more of those.

Also adding that Extreme has really shown its age. After playing it this weekend, I only played it twice before pretty much being completely done with it. Guess it really does show that SuperNova on was when a lot of the creativity came into play. Even the Dancemania stuff wasn't as fun as I remembered, and the doubles charts for those were nowhere near as clever. Ace has pretty much spoiled me.

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I tend to prefer Extreme's charts over most anything made since then (especially SuperNova 2). I'm not a fan of how saturated/stream-filled the charts in DDR have gotten since then. I can remember a ton of fun Expert charts in the earlier DDR days, whereas a lot of the newer charts I play once and seldom ever play again.

you play ITG dont you?

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To be totally honest, I find Theory of Eternity fun - I'm just bothered because it could've been a 14, because I like songs in that range.

The others I just don't remember in comparison; it's like "uh, what was Going Up again?", which happens; I personally find few of them that bad, but I also find very very few memorable.

I mostly play boss and event songs, so this may be why.

Many of the charts haven't aged that badly - The Legend of MAX and PARANOiA survivor MAX are still two of my favourite charts in DDR (yes you heard that right, I actually like PSMO), but I will say that Extreme's sheer old-ness in UI (Speed mods only being in .5 increments, not being able to use Speed mods in Oni mode, lack of screen filter, what I think is less space in the game screen for arrows) is what really aged badly in that aspect.

Also, as much as it's classic, the old DDR scale really started having issues, and EXTREME was where it first became problematic: PSMO was by far the hardest 10 footer, being miles ahead of The Legend of MAX (Then SN and SN2 completely shattered any argument that everything was still okay). Also, the complete lack of 14-footers made getting into boss songs annoyingly hard; the gap between a 9 (PARANOiA Rebirth) and a 10 (MAX 300) was a bit much (and they are now 13 and 15 on X-scale).

EDIT: Oh right, I forgot to mention, also Marvelous Timing wasn't a thing outside of course mode (i.e. the one mode I actually miss, courses were great)

EDIT #2:
I might be wrong but aren't ITG charts known for being stream heavy (as heavy as you can get away with, basically)?

Stream-filled? I'm talking outside of boss songs, in case that wasn't clear. And, as something I always say, Difficult on many newer songs are similar to Extreme-era Expert charts. Don't play based on difficulty label only. You'll miss out a lot of content. Even Basic is worth a look.

Pretty much everything else has changed from very basic patterns to adding spins, footswitches, and more clever patterns from SuperNova on. There isn't much of that in Extreme stuff, mostly counting licenses and originals that are no longer in Ace.

Songs can be good but the charts aren't something I'm crying over being gone. Except The Whistle Song EDP. That second pause is the best.

As I said, not counting boss songs. Those two have good charts all around, though, but I can play those in Ace still. Was mostly focusing on stuff that isn't in later mixes.

I also think MAX 300 has good charts all around, if that matters.

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After a while I feel like Extreme's non-boss songs just tend to blend together. A lot of Dancemania tracks largely sound the same, and the charts don't really stray from eachother too much as a result. Having been playing a bunch of Extreme all weekend at CEO, the charts are mostly just really simple patterns with one or two ambiguous jumps or doublesteps thrown in there to keep them from being too straightforward.

It may even just be a problem of how much skill has improved since Extreme. Most of the charts in Extreme would probably be <12 on the X-Scale, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a huge casual appeal. But personally I just don't find it fun to play samey sounding songs that are incredibly easy to almost AAA on a sightread. When playing Ace nowadays, no one I play with who can play past them ever really picks anything below a 12, which immediately disqualifies most of the songs in the 1st-Extreme folders that are still in Ace.

(Also how tf is My Summer Love a 9 on old scale lmfao)

PREACH

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at least the songs sound better back then :angry:

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For me, I think Extreme was the golden days for DDR, but from Supernova - DDR X, it was the era that turned me off from DDR completely. I hated the direction Naoki went with the music and music selection, and the charts used for a lot of the charts (especially the boss songs like FaxX, Chaos, Pluto series) felt very unpolished and unprofessional (really dumb BPM/stop gimmicks, green note syndrome for charts like FaxX, etc). There were still some decent/good charts like Xepher Challenge, but overall the quality definitely went down imo.

Then DDR X2 onwards is when the charting quality went up again, with charts like I'm So Happy being a banger. On top of that, they were starting to bring better crossover songs, at least imo because I'm a big fan of Hardcore TANO*C. They still have some...questionable charts (especially quite a few of the 18s and 3 of the 4 level 19 charts), but overall the quality has gone back up imo.

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How I look at it is that early on, carrying even into EXTREME, they usually understepped charts way too often. That's not to say some good charts or at least unique charts didn't come out of the first few mixes though. DAM DARIRAM had the fun little step-jump gimmick in it, RHYTHM AND POLICE had lots of crossovers, AFRONOVA is AFRONOVA, etc. but not all of them were interesting. When extra stages became a thing, they were usually overstepped, at least in some parts. Amusingly there's a few parts where the drums go fast in some of the MAX songs where the steps don't actually follow that, which just always baffled me. Anyway, I think the best charts from EXTREME and earlier as far as synchronization goes are SO DEEP, PARANOiA Survivor, and PARANOiA Survivor MAX.

As for the rating scale, I actually don't like the X-Scale as much as the classic scale, but that's more of a preference. What they should have done is made MAXX UNLIMITED and PARANOiA Survivor MAX level 11s, and expanded the rating scale. Then in SUPERNOVA they could have bumped it up to 1-13. This would have instantly fixed the issue of "THE TENS ARE GETTING HARDER WE NEED TO MAKE THE EASIER 10S WE MAKE 9S AND THE EASIER 9S WE MAKE 8S AND..." that made those games...a little less friendly if you don't know the charts. Also they needed to make charts get actual ratings, FELM as an old scale 4 is...just wrong.

DDR SN onwards does a better job of not being understepped...by being overstepped. I think that this was a direct result of the competition with ITG which is why they also suddenly went from what would later be 16s to what would later be 18s without anything in between to fill the gap. They just sort of kept to that after ITG died. I'd just prefer if they tried their damnedest to make charts with perfect sync to the song instead of overstepping or understepping.

Plenty of 9s actually became 12s. I look at 12 meaning "Between 8 and 9 on the old scale" since both 8s and 9s became 12s and some of them did feel more like 9s than hard 8s to me. To me the question is how is it a 12 on the new scale. There's one hard part but the rest of it feels like a 10 at most.

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You can't forget xenon as far as good synchronization goes! Now, if only the step placement on either mode was better thought out.

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You gotta remember the historical context. MSL is from 4thMIX, which is now known for its lack of speed mods. Of course it's possible to play the song on 1x, but the 16th streams can be a bitch to read. If it were released in MAX2 it'd probably be an 8.

I remember this debate a lot ten years ago. People were complaining when SuperNOVA came out because the only interesting songs were the boss songs. Nowadays, when I go back to SuperNOVA and SN2, they are the only songs I don't want to play. They're not necessarily homogeneous, but they're all hella boring to me because they feel like someone vomited arrows and gimmicks onto a chart to appeal to the crowd that wants a lot of difficulty and nothing more.

Yeah, there are some charts with inflated difficulties due to 1 tough section like Wicked Plastik and Under the Sky.

I feel a lot of the 7s and 8s in the Extreme era got misrated to the X-scale as well.

Love♥Shine is clearly a 10.
Blue Impulse is a 10.
Jet World is a 12.
Sync is a 10 if only for the crossovers.