The upper limit of human possibility in DDR

Before we potentially get the game-breaking 20, I have a question for the DDR OGs: When the first few boss songs (300, Unlimited, TLOM) were introduced to the game, did anyone ever question the human possibility of the charts? I've seen ancient discussions suggesting that "Maxx Unlimited would never be FCd," which of course is laughable today. More recent boss songs (namely Egoism, Endymion, and Lachryma) have been FCd despite being exponentially harder.

Are we approaching the upper limit of human possibility yet? How many more notes per second can we add before even Chris himself can't keep up? Obviously, there are limits to how quickly humans can move. How close are we to this limit? Is 20 going to be the final?

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Well we still have ITG difficulties and Stamina charts so theres quite a bit left that Humans can do beyond Lachryma, Endymion, etc.

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I always envisioned a 20 being around 250 ( or 500 bpm) with 16th (8th) bursts and streams. If 12ths can be done at 360 bpm, than 16ths can certainly be done at 250 bpm. I think perhaps just pushing the streams to be a bit longer and a bit more technical could make a playable 20. But I'm pretty sure that would be very close to the limit, since I don't think sustained streams are possible much faster than 20 notes per second. Of course DDR has short bursts of faster streams. And due to the nature of the timing window, these short bursts can be achieved. But the timing window forgiveness does not apply to longer streams so I think around 20 notes per second is the fastest attainable with DDR-like streams.

But still, what was the opinion of past players? They claimed that the older boss songs were "impossible to FC," but did they ever argue that it was coming close to the maximum physical capability of a human? Did they imagine it could possibly get any harder than Maxx Unlimited at the time?

I'll accept the stamina charts argument when I see every one of them pass Endymion.

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I'd have to see the exact posts to know for sure, but I remember the argument about Maxx Unlimited being more about the timing of the last down arrow into the end jump. The speed of the notes in 7th Mix and Extreme combined with the timing windows made a lot of "impossible" 599 max combos happen because people had trouble hitting the down before the jump, but the miss didn't register until after the jump. I don't really remember anyone saying the FC was impossible, just that so many people missed the down press.

FELMO was at one point claimed impossible to FC on CS because of the timing windows, I'm not sure if that was ever actually done or not. But again that's just because of timing windows, no one claimed it to be impossible on AC it was a CS specific "bug" because of the larger timing windows. Basically anything I've ever seen claimed to be impossible was because of the engine and not because of human ability.

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I'm pretty sure people have passed ITG 27s. Which using the extremely accurate and never-failing ITG-to-DDR rating scale guide, means that the upper limit of DDR play should be a 42 instead of a 19.

Jokes aside, I don't think anybody ever serious about learning DDR was like "this is physically impossible" when songs like MAX 300 came out. I think MAX 300 had been PFCed quite a lot even before EXTREME came out. I think a lot of people downplay the mental aspect of DDR/ITG/PIU/SMX/Whatever. Being able to process exactly what you're supposed to do is half the battle before actually executing it, and that's often where upper level charts mess people up. We are a LONG way away from the limit of physical possibility.

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max 300 was PFC so fast the guy went place to place doing it to show it was real also drop out was 260 and folks beat that so

Cool bump

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it's a relevant bump leave them alone

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Stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HbKGpA7_-M ITG 29 has been passed.

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If we added crossovers to those streams, I wonder how much that would change things.

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Well, things would look much closer to singles pump charts

And here is a video of the crossover spectrum pack which is what one may expect when stamina intersects with crossovers.

It amazes me that people can see stuff like this and think that anything official is going to ever be the upper limit. The highest level of stamina play involves barely moving. I'm not hating, that's just the game, the results screen doesn't give a flying fuck how you got there so neither should we, but bracketing like this is just going to make all kinds of insane charts passable. The stamina game is not the same concept as what we normally think of when we think of DDR or ITG.

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I would like to see someone passing something about the difficulty of that "ITG 29" (whatever 29 means, official scale was to 13, I can understand 14 or 15 but 29 is abstract number tbh) but instead of single pad - double.

While I'm not trying to lower the achievement of passing something of such difficulty (as I know those songs are hella difficulty) I would rather see something where the person moves around on pad/s.

Also me being timing player, I do wonder what would be the highest passable stuff at 4* / Full Marvelous Combo. Let's face it, mashing with bracketing isn't the most optimal type of play for timing.

In terms of playing for score/accuracy, I think we're not that far from the human limit. But just for passing charts, can't say for sure until we look up research/studies in human physiology...

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The highest ITG chart I've seen passed on doubles is an 18, those were marathon charts (s34nVideos) although they're nowhere near the speed intensity of something like EGOISM 440. But I'd also really like to see what kind of limits could be pushed in doubles.

AFAIK the hardest quad star done in ITG was either on an ITG 18 or a 19. The bar is a lot easier to push and push and push when a game has the benefit of so much custom content to play on, whereas in DDR we've had 18s for about 15 years now and we still only have a few 19s today, so it's not nearly as easy to find just where the upper limit is.

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