DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

I made the spreadsheet. I still need to tweak it a bit.

EDIT: Updated a lil bit. I feel the 14s and 15s are probably going to need the most overhaul because I'm pretty biased towards 8th note stream.

I've played it numerous times on the DDR A 20 minutes from my house.

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I should probably take the time to appreciate your efforts on even trying to write that, since I never did that when I first saw the list. Making an accurate difficulty tier list even in terms of clear difficulty is practically impossible. If anyone plans to do this on Double mode... hats off to you. I have a feeling it'll only be *more* impossible.

That said, I'll just write out a few relative comparisons that stood out to me.

Single Lv14
ÆTHER S- (14.6) vs. POSSESSION S- (14.4)
These two are otherwise very alike, but POSSESSION's jumps are in general more rapid and are more persistent. I'd expect the ending of POSSESSION to be significantly more difficult.

888, 妖隠し -あかやしかくし and 放課後ストライド S- (14.5) vs. KEEP ON MOVIN' (Y&Co. DJ BOSS remix) and Right on time (Ryu☆Remix) S- (14.5)
I believe the first three are very relentless and hardly cut you a break, to the point that they come pretty close to a 15 in terms of passing. I felt the other two are much slower and tamer in comparison.

Adularia S- (14.3) vs. Sakura Sunrise and Strobe♡Girl S- (14.1)
I felt that jump streams at 180+ BPM are hard to connect compared to everything in Adularia; in Adularia, there are a few 16ths toward the end, but almost all are arranged in triples or in simple trills of up to five. Aside from that, it is pretty scant on notes and the 8th streams do not contain much twisting, either. In Strobe♡Girl's chart in particular, the 16ths come even faster and require more movement.

I'll get to 15s in another post.

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Here's some of my thoughts.

14s:
-I second the notion of rating Sakura Sunrise as harder than 14.1, although that may just be because I'm one of those players that's god-awful at jump-step-jumps.
-I would rate Punisher as lower than 14.4 because it's very straightforward imo.
-Both "specials" of AM-3P and B4U I think should be rated as easier - they're not the easiest 14s, but I don't think they're at the upper end either like the spreadsheet says. AM-3P only has ~300 notes and runs at a very slow bpm which makes the 16th stream managable, and B4U only has that one BS part and that alone won't prevent you from passing the song.

15s:
-Paranoia Hades and Unreal are definitely higher than the ratings listed on the spreadsheet for me, but again, I suck at jumps (although I do think Paranoia Hades could be brutal for someone without good stamina, too - it's relentless).
-Night of Nights should be much lower than 15.6. Even though it has abominable amounts of double steps, everything is pretty easy overall and the only difficulty comes from quick groups of 3-5 16ths which are still straightforward.
-I disagree with all the roppongis being quite that high, although I guess I'm slightly biased towards thinking streamier charts are easier. Also, am I the only one who thinks roppongi D isn't any harder than the other versions? Once you learn the stops, that part of the chart is definitely easier than all those 16ths in ver A, and the 340bpm part doesn't even have very complicated patterns. The only part that may be harder is the ending stream, but even that has easier patterns than that long 16th stream with candles in ver C.
-Imanoguilts is harder than 15.5 for me. Those candles kill me every time.
-Flower is much easier to me than 15.9. Sure, the rhythm is very tough to get down, but if we're just talking about passing, it's nothing too difficult to get through since all the patterns are pretty simple.

16s:
-For passing, Illegal Function Call is not 16.0 for me. You need pretty strong stamina to make it through all the merciless 8th streams.
-GAIA seems much easier than 16.7. Patterns are pretty straightforward (mostly bursts of 16ths) and there's a lot of downtime in the chart, giving players time to catch their breath.
-I'd rate Max (period) slightly higher than 16.6. For me, the jumps + extended 8th streams in the first half definitely test my stamina, and then of course that death stream at the end is killer (I also have a hard time actually reading that fast).
-Snow Prism I would say is harder than 16.0. Lots of jumps and tricky patterns wear a player down.
-I'm So Happy I think is a lot easier than 16.5. The only challenge there is the few fast 16ths throughout the chart, but those aren't too hard to get through. It's a bit concerning to me that Luck-ga-kist is also rated 16.5 when it's nearly 200 steps longer, has quite a bit more 16th trills, and is 20bpm faster.
-Revolutionary Addict I can definitely understand being one of the harder 16s, but when it and Triple Journey are the only two rated 16.10, it pales in comparison.

17s:
-London Evolved A and B are easier than 17.8/17.9 for me. Just comparing the second halves of each version, A and B have a fair amount of "rest" time, since A has the slowdown, and B has a few seconds of freezes both in the middle and at the very end. Both of the "death run" parts are also not too bad - A has pretty simple patterns until the afronova walks it throws at you at the end (which you can just BS since it only lasts for a second), and B just has a couple 8th streams at 420bpm but with easy trill patterns; compare this to C, which constantly has 8th crossovers and afronova walks for the entire last part of the song and many more notes than either A or B.
-Max 300 X-Special shouldn't be rated quite that high - yeah, there's what should be an illegal amount of footswitches, but if you're just looking for a pass, I don't think it's 17.8-worthy.

18s:
-FELM is harder than 18.1 to me. But, once again, I suck at jumps.
-Possession seems somewhat harder than 18.5 to pass. The last third of the song is just downright cruel - those continuous 8ths with Afronova walks leading straight into the jumps which lead straight into the notorious jump-crossover-jump patterns are sure to destroy any player that doesn't have the proper stamina or footwork.
-Max (period) makes you do so many weird crossovers in the part leading up to the speedup that it isn't even funny. Then, of course, you have the speedup. Having 12ths with candles at that speed is unprecedented in any other 18. Should be up in the 18.8/18.9 range.

19s:
I've never actually tried any of these on pad yet so I don't think I can say anything about the relative passing difficulties of these.

I think you actually highlight something very important in that player strengths play a huge role in how difficult something to pass is after a certain point. FELM was not one of the easiest 18s to pass for me as i struggle with jump streams while something like Elemental Creation (18.7) was not that bad. At some point this list is almost more about trying to judge difficulty of certain elements (jumpstream vs faster stream vs crossovers vs etc) and I think people tend to have well defined enough strengths and weaknesses by the time they are working on 18s for the passing list to be too useful.

Storm_x8's post definitely provides a good example of why precise ranking is simply impossible - both score and pass difficulties can vary significantly from player to player.

Moving on with more examples of personally "striking" relative comparisons:

Single Lv15
Again, thank you for attempting to rank 15 footers; trying to rank this folder was probably the hardest. Once again, I won't list all the trivial ones, just ones that stood out to me.

Unrankable: PARANOiA ~HADES~ S-, Unreal S-, Arrabbiata S-, Horatio S- and
The aforementioned charts test one particular skill so extensively that they can vary all the way from being among the easiest to clear for a certain group of players while being among the hardest for another group of players.

KIMONO♥PRINCESS S- and SILVER☆DREAM S- (15.2) vs. Cleopatrysm S- (15.2)
While similar in speed, Cleopatrysm S- does not nearly have as many parts that could kill players. Unlike the other two, it is low on all of these: (1) quick jumps, (2) multiple 16ths, (3) jackhammers, and (4) relentless and long streams that require complicated footwork. For every difficult or broken parts there are in Cleopatrysm, the chart supplies an adequate recovery zone.

Magnetic S- (15.4) vs. SPECIAL SUMMER CAMPAIGN! S- (15.3)
Both of these charts follow a rather complex rhythm in places, and I agree they are both on the lower tier when it comes to just clearing. However, SPECIAL SUMMER CAMPAIGN! does have one part with several 16ths in a row, and most of the 8ths are arranged as footswitches or some sort of complicated turns. Magnetic is a slower song, and its chart has smooth patterns all around and does not have anything that could really kill you.

Spanish Snowy Dance S- (15.4) vs. Windy Fairy S- (15.5)
I'd go as far as to say Spanish Snowy Dance dominates Windy Fairy in virtually every aspect. Spanish Snowy Dance in comparison has a lot more jumps, steps that are arranged as jackhammers and trills, and yet it still contains the main reason Windy Fairy S- is rated a 15; 180 BPM 12th crossovers and footswitch jackhammers (and even more of those in number). Windy Fairy is probably suitable as one of the first 15 passes for many, but Spanish Snowy Dance is probably one of the last 15s that one would try to clear.

バンブーソード・ガール S- (15.4) vs. ZETA ～素数の世界と超越者～ S- (15.4)
I find Bamboo Sword Girl to have way more crossovers and jackhammers, and at 208 BPM, it gets much more difficult to keep up than anything that ZETA throws at you. Even when you consider that there are two 11-note 16th streams toward the end of ZETA, Bamboo Sword Girl throws an even harder-to-step ending (8th jackhammers forming a crossover, then actual crossovers, and then 16ths that require twisting, followed by jumps).

Go For The Top S- (15.4) vs. ナイト・オブ・ナイツ S- (15.6)
The two share some similarities, but Go For The Top has much longer trills and some 16ths that need to be crossed.

PARANOIA survivor S- (15.4) vs. Chronos S- (15.5)
They're difficult for similar reasons, but I find PARANOIA survivor to barely let up in comparison to Chronos. Chronos's Challenge chart also do not have long strings of crossovers until later into the song.

PARANOIA survivor MAX S- (15.5) vs. MAX 300 S- (15.5)
Here they are, the two most step-dense 15s to this day. I'd agree they more or less fit in the same difficulty tier to clear if PARANOIA survivor MAX's streams were not crossover streams.

Destination S- and SUPER SAMURAI S- (15.5) vs. roppongi EVOLVED ver. A, ver. B S- (15.9)
I could reasonably expect players who can clear the first two to also be able to clear at least the first the two versions of roppongi EVOLVED on .

IMANOGUILTS S- (15.5) and †渚の小悪魔ラヴリィ～レイディオ† S- (15.6) vs. JOMANDA S- (15.8)
JOMANDA does have a fair number of BPM changes and sudden stops, but the chart does not throw a whole lot at you during those parts such that clearing is an issue. During the 195 BPM portion, the maximum number of 16ths in a row is five, and 8th crossovers are very sporadic. I think JOMANDA is overall a relatively weak 15 to clear (but not to score a grade of AA or higher). The two charts I put on the left, on the other hand, have lots of parts that can destroy players almost instantly; longer 16ths, candles, heavy uses of jumps, etc. at high speeds show up consistently.

エンドルフィン S- (15.5) vs. SABER WING (AKIRA ISHIHARA Headshot mix) S- (15.8)
SABER WING (AKIRA ISHIHARA Headshot mix) has quite a few BPM changes, but it has no quantizations you cannot read, nor does it throw enough arrows to destroy your gauge during the slowdowns. There are a couple of crossover streams, but they are not as difficult as that at the end of Endorphin's chart. エンドルフィン has much more to wipe you out.

TRIP MACHINE Phoenix S- (15.5) vs. TRIP MACHINE Phoenix S- (15.7)
Both charts' main basis of difficulty come at the ending crossovers, and looking at their endings, the Expert chart follows a more difficult pattern overall. Prior to the ending, the Expert chart also throws a jump stream that the Challenge chart does not have. The two are otherwise fairly similar.

MAX 300 (Super-Max-Me Mix) S- (15.7) and 灼熱Beach Side Bunny S- (15.8) vs. ずっとみつめていて (Ryu☆Remix) S- (15.8) and Another Phase S- (15.10)
I would expect anyone that can survive the last 25 seconds of MAX 300 (Super-Max-Me Mix) S- to be able to survive essentially every 160 BPM level 15 chart in the game, including ones with crossovers. Bonus points if you can survive the same thing after hitting more than 100 jumps.

紅焔 S- (15.7) vs. FLOWER S- (15.9)
I was quite surprised to see FLOWER be ranked the hardest of all the 15-rated Single charts. I would not say it's the easiest, but I would say it is the simplest in terms of patterning. The chart is fairly moderate on jumps, has no 16th candles, and no crossovers at all. Yet, its main difficulty is rhythm-based rather than endurance-based, and the song still gives you a decent break before it throws its 9-note 16ths (also mostly arranged as trills). It's one of the more easily passable Challenge charts. Compared with another song of a similar BPM, 紅焔 has a chart that is much harder.

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The spreadsheet is missing TRIP MACHINE -xac nanoglide mix-.

It's also missing New Century from Lv14 and Trim from Lv16. On Lv17, Magnetic is put under "Expert".

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Input like this is what I wanted and got very little of besides some stuff here and there so thanks.

I'm aware of the missing charts. Dunno WHY they're missing cause they weren't initially but whatever I'll add them soon.

Yeah I have a bias against stuff with jumps/8ths and rate them lower than they might be but I also here a very small minority that think otherwise about those. I have a HUGE bias about stuff like Elemental Creation/Anti-matter etc. because they're really straightforward and the easiest for me to score on but I tried to ignore that because of stamina requirements and if people are just trying to pass that kind of stuff it's probably pretty hard.

18s/19s are a weird area because there's a lot of stuff that the majority of people BS to get through so I tried to factor in that as part of the difficulty (how easy it is to BS through). The straightforward stuff would be a lot harder to BS which is why something like Triple Journey is rated really high vs Dead End GRS. Someone said Possession should be harder than 18.5 and I originally had it at 18.9 but I had someone discuss with me how it was one of the only 18s they could get through which is why I bumped it down a bit. Stuff like that gets really wonky and I highly doubt many people would come to a final agreement on those types of charts.

There's a lot of stuff that's really disconnected from scoring vs passing difficulty as well. Some of the higher end stuff in each rating can be some of the easiest stuff to score on. Egoism 440 is probably the hardest 19 to pass yet definitely the easiest to score on. Same with lower stuff like Revolutionary Addict, Flower, Rising Fire Hawk etc.

And I can see why. It took me longer than an hour to write out my second last post on this thread. So you're welcome.

I find that jumps are extremely critical as far as passes go, although not as much if we're going into scoring. They can really throw you off and put you out of rhythm if you are not prepared. Jumpy charts, such as Unreal S-, THE REASON S-, Fascination ~eternal love mix~ S-, NGO S-, etc. would not be rated what they are if you took out even half the jumps.

I'm fully aware of individual differences, which is why I won't argue with someone about them finding Chart A harder than Chart B (when I find it otherwise), provided the chart structures are different. While few in number, I do believe there are some charts that can arguably dominate another; e.g. PARANOIA survivor MAX's charts dominate PARANOIA survivor's charts; POSSESSSION S- dominates Healing-D-Vision S-, etc.

In short, this is pretty much why we don't rate charts based on Groove Radar measures.

While this is not always true, given two charts with the same difficulty rating (assuming neither is misrated), a chart with a lower notecount tends to be easier to clear but more difficult to score than a chart with more arrows. It's basically a tradeoff between stamina requirement and footwork complexity. On any mix newer than SuperNOVA2, NGO and DEAD END ("GROOVE RADAR" Special) S- are among the easiest 18s to clear by BS footwork or by deliberately dropping certain arrows. However, I believe they are also the least frequently AAA'd because of how hard it is to play them as intended. This does hold on lower difficulties as well, although perhaps to a lesser extent.

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The 14s list is also missing Chikuwa S- and neko*neko S-, just wanted to mention that since the existence of those charts is pretty forgettable.
Since you also include removed songs in the list, you may want to include Xmix5 S- from DDR X in the 15s list. My personal rating for it would be 15.10, as it is long, tiring, and consists almost solely of all the hardest parts of the boss songs it samples from.

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Tomorrow's BEMANI live stream will cover DDR A with new song info.

This would explain the update that happened today updating the version code to 20160912:
https://twitter.com/echospherics/status/775601910753562624

was only including removed songs from 2014 and anything that gets removed from A as well

Bug fixes and step fixes for next songs:

Anti-Matter / Orbit1 & Milo (RDA)
Chronos / TAG
Elemental Creation / dj TAKA meets DJ YOSHITAKA (BEMANI Academy)
Go For The Top / U1 overground (KAC 2012)
New Decade / Sota F. (RDA)
tokyoEVOLVED / NAOKI underground (EVOLVED EXTRA TOUR)
Trigger / sonic-coll.
Xepher / Tatsh

Remember: step fixes only applies on MDX:x:y:A:2016091200 and next updates!

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Looks like DDR A is getting tons of love this month, and I thought last month was amazing.

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more love than ddr 2014 got for sure,

it seems like reflec beat is taking a rest in exhange for more updates to DDR and stuff

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Jubeat taking a rest? nah. On the contrary, imo jubeat is getting more love since saucer (saucer fulfill was awful and prop feels too short). Instead i put on the list RB and pop'n (gladly RB is getting less content. From groovin' to VOLZZA i felt it was the BEMANI machine with more KO and cool stuffs instead of the others, except for SDVX)

For DDR, i think they will announce a new EXTRA EXCLUSIVE song (maybe the last KO announced in the setlist made by TAG). But i still crossing fingers for a new cool event

RB is good
dont fucking diss it
i wont mind dissing SDVX, too much weeb shit in that one imo

also i want to see the TAG song as well, and how about more normal KOs?
Boss songs are nice, but I don't want to clog up the songlist with too many 14's and 16's

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Not really? This is basically just a stream with a focus on DDR A. It doesn't mean everything else has nothing, especially since Sound Voltex, Gitadora, and Beatstream have some more content this week.

Sort of like how two weeks ago there was a stream that didn't mention DDR at all yet we still got Illegal Function Call.

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Sorry that this is kinda off-topic, but does anyone understand how to manage rivals using e-amuse? I have 7 of my ten rival slots filled up, but only the top three are actually recognized and marked as 'rival 1' 'rival 2' and 'rival 3,' the rest just have a purple box next to their name. Also, I can't seem to move around my rivals, such that the top 3 are always the 'active' rivals and hitting 'make active' on the profile does nothing.

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