[AC] StepManiaX produced by Kyle Ward

Apologies, didn't post last month's update:


Get Busy / KOYOTIE
Ievan Polka / Quiqman feat. Chihiro Kawakami
Lemmings On The Run / E-Rotic
Orbit / Ellis
Perks / Bibi Gold

And speaking of content updates...

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This came outta nowhere.

🦀🦀🦀🦀

Finally got to play this today and read back over this thread...

Thanks to people involved with the game for sticking around and providing us with updates. I wanted to share some feedback since the devs are apparently reading.

I have to say a lot of the criticism from earlier in the thread still stands. The doubles charts were extremely unimpressive, compounded by my confusion at playing a few and wondering why on earth there were no up or down arrows. Then once I figured out why that was and went to the full mode the charts were still unimpressive. I am not really sure of those purpose of the non full panel doubles mode? You could probably just lose that entirely, I can't really imagine anything too fun with purely left/right/center, even across two pads.

I did find that the difficulty curve was bizarre, too. Everything I played on hard from 15-20 felt like a bland DDR 13 and switching to wild felt like I just dove headfirst into a DDR 16 or 17 with mines. I know that the dev statement in this thread was that the game was carefully balanced, and I'm not sure of the methodology used, but this seems to be something that is not translating to your player base. Please consider re-evaluating how the game has been charted. I don't really have the stamina to go all out all the time on wild (I don't think most people do - DDR fans are kind of an aging group) and the hard charts are not interesting enough for me to really want to play them.

The center panel also feels very misused in almost every chart I played. It feels like an afterthought whenever it shows up in a chart and I'm not really sure how you can make it more engaging. I'm not a huge PIU fan, but it feels very natural in that game. It does not feel natural here - I don't know if it's the charting or what, but it isn't meshing with the cardinal direction arrows. There's also something about the indicator for the center panel just doesn't really trigger a response in my brain when I see it. I'm not great at PIU, but I never have a problem with recognizing the center panel steps. I would love an option to disable the center panel completely.

Finally, you guys really should encourage operators to offer more songs per credit. I had looked up locations on Zenius before and noticed a lot of them were set to either 1 or 2 songs per credit. The machine that I played on replaced the DDR X3 that was at Bowlero in Lakewood that Kyle posted about on Twitter a few days ago and it's set at 1 credit per song.

This absolutely sucks - obviously it's up to each operator to set the amount of songs, but why are so many operators defaulting to so few songs? I get that it's a big investment for smaller arcades but the cost on some of those garbage Raw Thrills games is so much higher than a StepManiaX cab and even small arcades don't seem to have a hard time shelling out for those. So.. why on earth am I only getting a 2 minute game on a machine that's probably half the cost of one of the Raw Thrills Jurassic Park games that are everywhere? Aside from being extremely costly, it just sort of makes the game feel cheap. There's kind of some excitement that builds across multiple songs in any rhythm game, playing one song per credit you never get that moment of "I'm a bit tired from that last song, can I push myself to pass this next song or should I dial it back a bit?" and that's one of the most fun parts of dance games, I think.

I do wish the game had a bit stronger identity for originals as well. It was fun to see a lot of those Dancemania songs again and that is certainly a draw to go back and play some more, but I noticed a lot of "this isn't the DDR original but it's close and legally distinct!" which... not particularly the way to anyone's heart, I think. I have to imagine it's sort of hard to forge your own song list and identity in a time where everyone just streams whatever they want on Spotify and there's not really many big hits or interesting genres breaking through frequently, but there at least needs to be some personality to it. Granted, I obviously didn't get to play every song there and I'm hoping I'll find some gems but there wasn't a lot of stuff that jumped out at me.

I really wanted to like this game a lot and I think there is potential, but this used to be my nearly every day spot and with the charting issues and cost (not dev fault, obviously) it's honestly more worth it to me to make the drive out to the Puyallup Round1. My fear is that we're going to have a lot of fairly nice StepManiaX cabinets around but there's just going to be no one playing them.

Thanks for reading and please understand I don't mean anything in an inflammatory way, I'd really like to see this game succeed.

They really cannot do anything about this. When people complain all they can really do is send suggestions and there's no way to *force* an arcade to listen.


welcome back to 2019 we're going to bring back a classic "opinion" because fuck it

SMX has such a better songlist than other dance games out there right now, mostly because it has a lot of *actual fucking dance music*. Yes, we can complain all day about how mayyyybe 8-10% of the songlist is Dancemania (and Naoki) or we could actually finally acknowledge the majority of the songlist as something you don't find in any other game out there. Sounds like you just don't like the genres actually represented in SMX and would be better off playing DDR or Pump. It's okay when something isn't for you - you don't have to always think "it's not for me... how do I pretend this is critcism that needs to be addressed?"

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You should chill out. I never suggested forcing operators to do anything and my opinion on the music is mine.

You looked at 5% of a songlist and based your entire opinion off it. I thought we stopped lying about this years ago.

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I’m glad that you like this game, but this is not the way to show that you do. I’m sure this thread sucked for you since you do like it, but I’m not here to just dump on it. I wrote my post as neutrally as possible because I didn’t want to work anyone up and I wanted to share feedback with the developers. I’m not lying about the song list, either. If you read my post instead of just freaking out about it, then you’d notice I even admitted I obviously didn’t get to check out all of the songs and that I hope to find some good ones. I’m not going to engage with this anymore, I’m sorry that my post set you off.

Yes, it is rather irritating when people say "it's just Dancemania and DDR stuff" and then when it's pointed out that's like 25-30 songs of a around 350 track songlist they go "whoaaaa don't get aggressive!" That's not "not checking out all of the songs", that's deliberately only playing stuff you recognize from DDR and then going "why is it all from DDR". I don't know why so many hardcore BEMANI fans are like this. What's the point of complaining about a songlist being full of the only songs you played? It's like going to a resturant and ordering one thing and then complaining it only has one thing on the menu when it has like 40. It's just blatantly bad faith.

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Music discussions aside because lets face it, it's not going to be everyone's choice and some people are going to make opinions up faster than others/than they should. One thing I DEFINITELY agree with is the lack of quality on the doubles charts. There's some truly good charts in there but those are absolutely in the minority. I saw JBean commenting the chart quality was bad because they'd had complaints about charts being a bit too difficult/technical which kind of explained everything but made us all feel sour because there's a good dozen of us that have been frequenting a cab near me now for 6 months who all play doubles on other games that are just disheartened by the whole thing Shame really because there's loads of us out there who play doubles and would be willing to write/edit/provide feedback on this but the answer we heard just kinda made us feel like there's no point even discussing the issue!

We've actually started keeping a list of charts that are actually worth playing vs so bad we can't understand how they were let through because they clearly weren't play-tested/feel like they were just made as a last minute after thought with no polishing, and shockingly the latter half seems to be growing a lot bigger than the first...

But to at least put a positive spin on the end of this, the game looks great and is extremely accessible to new people we've noticed. Plus there's zero excuse to not have a cabinet connected to the internet as we've seen ours run updates over someone's mobile data on one occasion just to get it caught up before they set it up properly!

I will say it's pretty funny that while DDR often nails doubles charts but stumbles on singles charts, SMX stumbles on doubles charts and nails singles charts. It's like there's a cosmic force preventing us from getting both our way.

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To be fair as of late, 90% of the doubles charts on DDR now appear to be carbon copies of the singles charts so even those aren't that great anymore! But yeah it wouldn't be a difficult thing to fix if they were willing to do so!

This is why the new "Plus" charts exist. This gap will be retroactively filled in over time.

^That's great to hear, I'll look for some of those charts when I next play.

Can anyone recommend any songs that are original to the game?

I don't have any off hand (not at home at the moment and running around town), but you can find the entire full song list (Minus the latest update since we're cleaning this spreadsheet up to accommodate for plus charts) here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X3p6XL499I_U7CO1eXQ-fyJfQ5eWA-usS6Lr1SBDIvA/edit#gid=1548706328

Can't speak about double charts, but I personally feel single Hard and Wild charts are poopoo. Which is weird because I find Jbean's ITG packs to be incredibly well stepped. The songlist is great and has music the majority of rhythm games don't have, but the quality of the charts just doesn't do it for me.

Quickman has always been an abrasive and rude annoyance on this site and others. This is why I love the ignore function. Got tired of coming into threads to see his BS hot takes and "I'm better than you" attitude about every single F'ing thing. Dude needs to get over himself already.

Anyway, I agree with you and the couple other people who have the courage to speak up on the quality of charts/music in SMX. I feel it's a big reason why the step "artists" tend to use fake names. They don't want people criticizing them directly. I feel like they need to branch out and acquire more step artists because it feels like they keep the same 6 people (is that too generous of a number?) on rotation and use pseudonyms to mask this.

What happened between ITG, PIU Pro, and SMX? ITG had incredible official charts that were a breath of fresh air compared to the staleness of DDR that we had known for years at that point. PIU Pro was the game where PIU finally clicked with me and that's because the charts were actually good and made sense compared to a lot of the older and original charts they had up to that point. So what is going on with SMX? Obviously certain step artists that worked on ITG and PIU Pro are not working on SMX, so there's that.

Doubles/Full mode charts are severely lacking in quality. For one thing there is nowhere near enough stuff on the lower end of the difficulty scale for Full mode and that's a shame. Some charts like Dreaming are INSANELY difficult from the poor charting. With a lot of these charts, it's as if they get charted with very little attention to how it will actually feel to play these on a pad. I'm sure stuff gets play tested before release. I hope so. But if that's the case, why do so many lackluster charts still get released?

Something I've noticed is that there are very few SMX charts that have an identity. If you look at DDR, ITG, PIU, etc...there are a multitude of charts that are original and do their own unique thing whether that's patterns, gimmicks, visual stuff (the patterns/arrows sync up in a fun and visually pleasing way with the music or lyrics), etc. That's why people still say "Afronova walk", "Daikenkai steps", "Tell step-jumps", etc. I can't think of a single SMX song/chart that has introduced a unique enough pattern or gimmick to where I'd refer to it specifically by name during a discussion.

It's strange to me that they refuse to implement a groove radar equivalent. Heck, ITG laid it out by literally telling you how many steps, jumps, mines, rolls, hands, and holds a chart had before you chose it. It's a regression to not only take that away when a game from 2004 introduced it...but to also just not even feature any sort of real indication of chart info beyond the rather inconsistent numbering system. I know PIU Infinity from 2013 featured the ITG style way of listing what sort of steps a chart would have and it's such a small and basic quality of life improvement that I really don't know why it isn't in SMX.

I will admit that the inclusion of a visual preview showcasing your speed mods is nice. But it's dang near pointless because it doesn't even display the speed properly. It ALWAYS appears way faster in the preview before picking your song. I don't know if this is due to faulty coding or due to the preview window being tiny (which in turn gives the illusion of the arrows moving much faster) but if it's the latter, this can easily be fixed by having the speed mod preview be full screen with opacity so it doesn't obscure the menu. As it currently stands, it's very unreliable especially for newer or inexperienced players attempting to use that preview to help decide which speed mod they should use.

Full mode charts are just terribly stepped and they do NOT flow well at all. Full mode charts lack anything that would make them actually fun. It's mostly just awkward patterns that force you to painfully crossover both pads quickly or double step at the worst times. Where is the flow? I dare the devs to go play Doubles on PIU. THAT is how you make Doubles charts. They are fun, have great flow, and the steps just make sense for nearly every chart in the game. Even the gimmick Routine/Couples charts in PIU are amazing and fun to play. The Team mode in SMX is just plain 'ol boring.

Once of my biggest criticisms of SMX is the center panel. It is entirely way to underutilized. I think this is for two reasons. First, the step artists just aren't very good at implementing them, especially in a natural way that flows well or adds fun or challenge. Second, I feel like the devs have realized just how finicky it is to have a center panel with up/down/left/right arrows surrounding it and a player base that has grown accustomed to minimizing foot movements over the last 20+ years. This means most experienced players tend to step on arrows using the outer parts of their feet such as toes and heels. We don't take our entire foot and step into the center of a panel like a DDR tutorial demonstration.

Because of this play style, center panels just don't work well at all in SMX. PIU does it right because it uses diagonal arrows plus the center panel so it flows incredibly well and feels great to stretch your legs out and get some actual movement going. With SMX, your entire body is crammed in the center of the pad and charts that are heavy with center panels do nothing more than give massive amount of pad Earlies. It's a problem they still have clearly not been able to fix. They're going to have to alter timing windows or something to truly fix this issue or maybe focus on the coding of how the center arrow itself gets triggered in relation to how close it is with previous/upcoming arrows in the pattern...otherwise they will continue being misfired during streams and stuff and it's very infuriating.

As far as SMX originals is concerned, there are definitely plenty of those...but you do have to sift through a ton of ITG 3 leftovers, revivals/remixes from classic PIU and ITG 1& 2, crossovers from Re-Rave and of course...classic DDR songs that have been brought back (along with spiritual successors to some of those, thanks to Naoki Maeda!). I personally enjoy most of this stuff, though there's a bit too much Quiqman and Jenna Drey type stuff for my liking.

The devs, including Kyle Ward, don't seem to take criticism too well. They are passive aggressive half the time, dismissive the rest of the time. The SMX Discord is filled with almost nothing but Step Revolution boot lickers so in the rare instance where someone goes against the grain to speak up on issues they're having or even if they simply offer suggestions and ideas to the team, these people get told they're being "cynical" and how the game and its devs are apparently immune from constructive criticism because everyone is "just being mean" and the dev team already knows exactly what its doing. Maybe they shouldn't involve themselves with the community if all they're expecting are Kyle Ward worshiping zealots who either see no flaws in the game or are wiling to look past any shortcomings.

For the record, I absolutely love SMX. But I cannot, with a straight face, sit here and claim that the game does not have a LOT that can be improved, fixed, or added. I know it's heretical and blasphemous to do anything less than kiss the ground Kyle Ward walks on but I'm not about that life. You won't find me being fake or sucking up to anyone.

Watch my entire post get deleted and swept under a rug. I'd be very surprised if it doesn't get altered or deleted outright. The SMX community has become insufferable as of late and part of that is aimed at the dev team, customer service (or lack thereof), and the elitist mentality some players have which plagues every rhythm game community. The devs also showcase favoritism which is hypocritical when they try to spout how SMX is for everyone and they wanna see players of all sorts enjoying the game. Funny how you'll only ever catch JBean and Lightning and the rest watching top players like Daaanty or Dimo, even showering them with Bits on Twitch and subbing to them. I guess if you wanna gain the attention of the dev team and have your opinion heard, you have to APC Wild/Full charts on the regular otherwise you aren't worth their time.

smx more like smh gottem

now post it on your real account

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