How can WE improve DDR A?

That implies any of those games are good outside of the small segment of players that can clear the hardest content. I'm lumping StepmaniaX here as well.
Just because you can make harder charts doesn't mean you can make a better game. ITG, Pro 1, and StepmaniaX have really bad lower-end charts.

I had to actually look for a post I read about Konami's thoughts on the difficulty scaling (and other stuff, interesting read that I don't recall anyone ever bringing up in the DDR A thread) and it completely makes sense. Adding in more difficult content benefits so few players and even including more of it doesn't mean more players are going to go play it when they aren't even touching what is there. I think my favorite bit is this:
This was posted in June last year and in that post that number is stated to possibly be around 400-450 realistically, but I'll be generous and say 500 given the time between then and now.

That's such a small number in comparison to the total number of players.

---

OK, maybe I have too loose a definition of expert, but since when is getting a PFC at the boss level the barometer for an expert? There are lots of hardcore players who focus themselves on stamina or passing hard stuff that have otherwise only decent Marvelous-Attacking, meaning they have few to no PFCs to their name, much less on boss charts. Counting on such a specific and difficult achievement-based statistic seems to indicate they wanted to justify their decision to shift focus away from hard players and just needed existing data that happens to lead in that direction at face value.

Also, saying Pro was bad in terms of providing low-level charts is as close to objectively wrong as one can get. Normal Pump games had 3 Singles difficulties when that game was released: Normal, Hard, and Crazy. Most songs had Normal charts that would be at least a 2, sometimes as much as a 5, on the old DDR scale. What Pro did was introduce Easy, which provided much more content on the 1-2 levels for Beginners to acclimate to while enjoying the majority of the library. It also forced C-mod while saving scores, meaning the more gimmick heavy Pump series was far more approachable as a beginner thanks to it.

I think it's worth noting that Konami's definition of expert is mostly the really really seasoned players. There's a lot of players that are clearing stuff in the 14-17 range and actively play the game, and while they're maybe not "expert," it's kinda unfair to lump them in with the 99.93%.

---

Clearing stuff in DDR is so trivial that there is no real merit in it, what most people of all skill levels care about are scores they get. Passing a 19 does not make you a good player, getting over 900k score on one does.
@DigitalBasic that link was a very interesting read. On more careful consideration a good way to ease low-level players into mid-level content would be splitting DDR songlists roughly in half, one being dedicated casual-friendly songs with Expert charts in 10-13 range, the other being Konami originals with also 10-13 Expert charts, but also 14-16 Challenge ones. Add the coveted Dan courses, and lower level players will have much more incentive to play mid-level material, prolonging their investment in the game. Throw the hardcore players a boss song with Expert/Challenge 17-19 difficulty range once in a while.
But that's a moot point. I still believe DDR is going to be axed in favor of Dance Rush sooner or later, those meeting notes are only supporting my prediction.

I'm sorry, what? Are you seriously telling me that there's no merit in clearing 18s and 19s? Because there most definitely is. Clearing 18s and 19s is a serious milestone for a lot of people, regardless of score. And honestly, that attitude is pretty condescending, considering you expect people to AA- a 19 to be 'good'. I can only pass a couple 18s (with an A) and can only PFC 14s, so I must be bad, right?

---

You think getting over 900k on a song like Funk Boogie is more meritable than passing something like Valkyrie dimension challenge with a B? I must disagree, once you get to the upper end songs, being able to get to the end of the song without failing due to lack of stamina is no small feat.
Accuracy is only one aspect of what makes someone good.

This is honestly one of the worst things that I've read recently, so I'm gonna continue and discuss the time commitment "bad players" make to this game to get better. I've been playing almost weekly for the past year and a half after a four year hiatus. When I started, I was getting AAs on easy 14s and eventually 15s. Now, I can get an A or higher on almost every 17, PFC 13s and a couple 14s, and clear a handful of 18s. A lot of other players I know are also in this boat and have made a real comittment to becoming better, so scoffing at that is rude and disrespectful. It seems to me that you're out of touch with the DDR community, and you have no scores uploaded so I can't tell if you can even clear the 19s you're talking about.

---

There's always one of these cretins in a thread like this who thinks they're the dogs bollocks. I wouldn't pay any attention to them.

Not being good = being bad is one hell of a logic jump. There's a huge breadth of skill between total newcomers and modern top players. Problem is, said top players have set such high standards that you pretty much need at least one level 18 PFC or at least a decently high (that 900k benchmark was pulled out of my ass, but looks reasonable) level 19 score to be considered "good" these days. If you can clear 18s and are doing it the "legit" way, then you're most definitely not bad, but you're still not good.
Consider three simple facts: DDR's dancepad layout letting you cover all four panels with two feet, DDR's post-Extreme lack of Boo window to penalize panel mashing and an extremely generous lifebar that takes 18(!) misses to bring it down from start level to zero. I can't think of any other non-casual rhythm game that lets you simultaneously cover all inputs with whatever you're using to play (feet in this case) while not punishing players for misfires by draining their lifebar, yet DDR does both. To illustrate how brainless this strategy is, watch this video. You obviously still need stamina and footspeed to at least partially keep up with the chart, but assuming you've already passed several 18s the "legit" way, you could likely pass the rest by bracketing, maybe even have a shot at PRevo.
Although I've never played IIDX (yet), I've lurked their conversations among mid-level players and vast majority of them were about them pushing their max clear difficulty. Progressing in IIDX is a daunting task with its unique clear mechanics and with a difficulty wall after difficulty wall from level 9 all the way to the hardest 12s, presenting an immediate and difficult to overcome challenge. The way IIDX plays also makes perfect-level timing of an entire chart obnoxiously difficult, so barely anyone below top echelon cares about accumulating IIDX's PFC equivalents. By contrast, scores are what almost everyone in DDR's playerbase cares about the most, regardless of their general skill level and difficulty level of charts they play, for the opposite reasons to IIDX's state of affairs.
Sorry if my wording offends anyone. It's an analysis of general trends in the games, not of individual players and their accomplishments.
And if you're putting into question my qualifications for making these opinions in the first place - I played Stepmania on a cheap and terrible Chinese dance mat for a few months before having to put a stop to it for several reasons, then transitioned to a variation of index play on keyboard that somewhat resembles dancepad gameplay (if not being harder for several reasons). I'm still objectively bad at the latter by index standards and the farthest I got on dancemat was life 7 clearing one DDR 13, but I've gained enough personal experience in addition to tracking dance game scene for two years to formulate valid statements.

No, it really doesn't. I don't think even the most skilled of players use that kind of benchmark to determine whether someone is "good". This refers to both PFCing an 18 and the AA- or better on a 19, because both of those are incredibly steep challenges, and I strongly doubt there's anyone out there who actually considers less than 900k on a 19 or a single digit great (or even just a full Great combo) on an 18 to be "not good". Maybe in terms of performance on the song that isn't good, but being able to pull off high scores on 18/19s should not be the sole indicator of player skill.

Maybe it was sketchy to consider having the first 20 as an "improvement". I guess I felt like it would have been an idea to entertain...a suggestion. I just mentioned my viewpoint in detail...it's not like we need a 20 "badly." I feel like if that's one of the only things I'd argue we could have, then it seems like DDR A is not that bad of a game as a whole, 20 or not.


That's the sad reality with fans of any franchise. Nobody is truly happy. I'm not really even looking at my stance for the status quo, so if people complain about the 20, either the difficulty was stretched too far (exaggerating the chart of a song not as complex) or as we put it, "git gud". Besides, it's not like a 20 has to be played to enjoy the song. I still like playing Pluto Relinquish and Valkyrie dimension on every once in a while. At least DDR players have that sort of luxury, whereas players of Cuphead, Ninja Gaiden, and more have the equivalent to only being allowed to play Over the "Period" on .

I'm kind of assessing the differences in DDR to something like SDVX now, so I do see that even SDVX's 20 seems possible to 100% (PUC). If even the world champs can't even PFC a 19 on DDR, I can see how much harder it would be to even see a Good FC on a 20. Again, I'm under the impression that a 20 could be entertained and implemented...at least once for the occasion I mentioned, but that could be it for a long while. Just do that but then focus on making more playable 15-19s just to keep people hyped. If anything, even if not even 2% can even touch the hardest songs, it does make seeing someone pass or perfect one all the more exciting to watch.

Both those games have difficulty settings lol

---

I'm talking the original Ninja Gaiden games. You must be referring to the newer ones because none of the NES titles have difficulty levels. Also didn't realize Cuphead had difficulty levels. Showed how much I looked into the game and yet, I'm laughing at the fact that game journalists still found room to complain.

If you have a solid grasp of pattern flow and can follow dense/fast paced note patterns well, and you can score consistently well on expert (say AAs), i'd consider that being good at the game. Something like being able to clear a 15+, even if it's like a B or whatever, is still worthy of a 'hey, nice job, that's impressive." Being able to PFC stuff around 17s-18s and do it fairly consistently is something a very proficient player does, not someone that is simply good at the game. Good is such a broad term that you could group a mass amount of players in there, and honestly it does group a lot of people there, those that can clear expert charts with fairly high scores consistently but are typically not clearing stuff like 15s or 16s with the same results. maybe they can pass them, but not with AAAs or AAs, maybe Bs or even an A. If you're great, you're getting AAAs very often on almost everything you play, even the hard stuff.

tl;dr You know you are good at the game when you have a solid grasp of how to play and can score well consistently. You know you are great at the game when you can score proficiently on the harder content very consistently.

---

First off, I had a stroke reading this. Second, I'm just gonna rebuff your points one by one because holy god.

No, you need a level 18 PFC to make it to KAC. That's it.

"Pulled out of my ass" and "looks reasonable" do not go together.



Well, yes, it's called symmetry. If the pad was any bigger the game would be way harder.

Almost and Boo got changed to miss. The good window got slightly expanded. But other than that, pad mashing still results in a lot of boos.

Yeah, to help people make it through songs a little bit more often. It helps players trying to move up in difficulty by rewarding them for making it through the hard parts of songs.

One: You still have to hit the panel with your foot. That requires effort.
Two: Using your feet is way harder than using your hands. I can PFC 18s on stepmania all day with a keyboard. Using your feet requires actual skill.

Yes, we like to see the shiny gold PFC clear lamp on the song wheel, but building up speed, skill, and stamina are also incredibly important. Again, you can't compare DDR to IIDX because one uses your hands and one requires actual physical activity.

By your own standards, only clearing a 13 makes you a casual or "bad" player. Two years is also nothing. Anyone on here that actually seriously plays has put in way more time than that. I've been playing off on and for 11 years, since I was 7. Lots of other people have been playing for just as long. So please stop coming in here and acting like you know what you're talking about.

/End rant.

---

At this point we're arguing about semantics and arbitrary definitions. I have a personal preference to restrict the term "good" in video games to players who have at least a few notable accomplishments in whatever they pursue.
@Mr.Music I'll talk this through via PM.
As for the main topic, which we've derailed to ridiculous proportions, the best DDR playerbase can do to improve DDR is pretty much just play the game to prove there's still demand for it.

The irony here being you're saying this in a game where 3 adjectives act as judgements that are better than "good". Seriously, what you're calling "good" is what most people, here or otherwise, would call "top-tier" or "exceptional".

By the way, since I let this one pass me earlier:


So...what exactly stops that first half of songs from getting Challenge charts in that range? A lot of songs really do have the potential, and gradually with each passing mix, 15 and 16 slowly shift further and further away from being thought of as "boss" levels (think of how more licenses are getting charts in that range, like Luckgakist, Disappearance of Hatsune Miku, Night of Knights, BambooSword Girl, and Zutto Mitsu Meteite, in addition to more charts in that range being introduced in relatively mundane events like the Movie Challenge for DaDaDaDaDaDaDaDaDaDa and Vol. 2 of normal Extra Savior for S!ck).

There's a few dozen people in the world with at least one Level 18 PFC. Not even all of them made it to KAC, or even attempted to, like Dr. D for example. <irrelevant to main discussion>

I've tracked the scores of Japanese regional finals on 19s and decided on 900k benchmark based on that. It's an arbitrary number, hence the term "pulled out of my ass", but not entirely baseless. FYI you can clear Egoism 440 with well over 100 Greats and still be over 900k. <irrelevant to main discussion>

That's not the core of my point. What matters is it doesn't take considerably much more effort to hit two panels with one foot than one panel with one foot if you do it consciously and don't change the foot position. Refer to video of FEFEMZ cheesing PRevo on Stealth to see what I'm talking about.

This is complete news to me. I admit I've never seen an arcade game in my life, let alone actual DDR, and never will because the concept of arcades is completely alien to place I live in. I've simply assumed this window no longer exists along with the entire concept of "your lifebar drains if you hit this note too early" because that's how I interpreted what Fungah said in one of his SF Evolved podcasts when explaining differences between DDR Extreme and DDR A. Maybe I've misunderstood what he said. In that case I stand corrected, take back all my opinions made so far and leave in shame.

Half of the argument is based on my possibly wrong knowledge, the other half on semantics. "Players who strive to be good" are not "good" in my textbook, but exactly what they are. Not that your effort is to be ignored, congratulations on making it this far and good luck in the future.

EDIT accidentally posted it here instead of PM because I'm an idiot. Can some mod delete all my offtopic chatter?

Can’t think of other rhythm games that let you hit every input at once without penalty? Ever hear of every other bemani game ever?

Also there are 4 buttons and you have two feet. Bracketing on ddr isn’t as easy as you make it sound.

Saying you're only good when you reach the near top of the mountain is stupid.

Are you going to say a game you'd give a 9/10 is only "good"?

In my opinion once you've started legitimately passing 13s you're good at the game and once you've started legitimately passing 16s you're great. Making it to the 18s is The Big Boys Club, ofc.

---