Difficulty Consultant Applications

[psychoangel691]

Hello everyone! As I mentioned on the front page we're looking to add on a couple more difficulty consultants. Ideally, I'd like to find someone who spends a lot of time in the lower/mid-range and maybe another really well-rounded player to join the team and help us sort out these difficulties. If you'd like to apply, fill out the form https://forms.gle/cJQsoyxwNiUpSx2g7 and well be in touch if we think you'll be a good fit

[emulord]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

IMO triples are harder than they are currently rated until about FMO.
Easy to drop boos or misses on
For really new players using arrow keys can be unhittable.

I'm going to fill this out when I get home

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

IMO triples are harder than they are currently rated until about FMO.
Easy to drop boos or misses on
For really new players using arrow keys can be unhittable.

I'm going to fill this out when I get home

All difficulties assume spread play. It's the direction the game took and it's a necessity to stay coherent with that. The only reason index might be considered in difficulty is if a song's hardest section is cheesable by switching to index play (that would mean a fast isolated one-handed trill, which is extremely rare). One could make the argument that files like Disregard on SM got better scores from index (iirc) but really those are negligible.

[PhantomPuppy]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

By "mid-range" are we talking about D4-6? or would that imply D1-3?

If D4-6 sign me up, that's my shit :P

[XelNya]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

IMO triples are harder than they are currently rated until about FMO.
Easy to drop boos or misses on
For really new players using arrow keys can be unhittable.

I'm going to fill this out when I get home

As someone who used to be in this camp, I want to pass you my two cents.

One they're called hands, and two you can literally teach yourself to drop down an extra finger to hit these. (Think of how you'd play the intro section to Blooddrunk for example.) I would argue say Once Upon A December is a strong file to showcase this as well. They're certainly a learning curve though, but as OP said, the game changed directions a long time ago, and Index is very literally invalid as a play-style in the current game, unless the files are made for it.

Files such as Monstrous Turtles, Strangeprogram, Klung Kung, and Over The Frail Dream (and more to be honest) are files that fit that mold, their patterns are at least in my opinion, not ones that translate well to the main style of play, but it can be done. But on top of that - they're just not the types of files made anymore.

But to really cut this short, a new player these days is going to be someone who comes at a recommendation most of the time, this game is on it's last leg as it is. Hopefully they'll have someone teach them better.

Or there's a more simple solution, and that would be to set the current keybindings for guests to as kl, which would solve a lot of that problem. No one should play Index unless they're playing a file made for it in the current setting. Which is why it shouldn't be a factor in difficulties, you'd literally throw the whole skew off for it.

[Antori]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

the hands struggle is only because of how rare they're implemented in the lower diff files, as someone who went through having handstreams as my second worst skillset to being one of my stronger suits just acouple months ago i only got better on it from training and exposure, nothing is inherently hard about hands

(of course this is assuming the stepartist has some basic understanding of how to chart)

i also wanna point out this even if it's obvious, saying nothing is inherently hard about hands doesn't imply that hands are as easy to hit as jumps, that's wrong, any pattern implementing hands would be harder than it's jump counterpart but that's of course accounted for in difficulty and with that in mind it still stands that nothing is inherently hard about any pattern(this should be the case since it's a sign of a balanced game)

[psychoangel691]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

For the record, hands used to be considered difficult for lower players and were considered in difficulty. Then all of a sudden there became some weird shift in things.

The plan is to fix things to be more linear as much as possible. Obviously, this can't be perfect however, I think we can do much better than we have been.

So if you're applying for this, please be prepared for a fair bit of work.

[rushyrulz]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

hands used to be a big deal back when they weren't fucking everywhere. But now they're fucking everywhere and not such a big deal anymore.

[rayword45]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

People used to think OMGWTFT0K3N without the moving receptors was FMO-worthy which is lol-worthy to me. That shit is a VD at best.

[psychoangel691]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

hands used to be a big deal back when they weren't fucking everywhere. But now they're fucking everywhere and not such a big deal anymore.

That doesn't change it for new players coming into the game (not talking about other 4k players.)

[Precarious]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

I'm considering this. High end difficulty seems to get reevaluated all the time, but there's an enormous amount of inaccuracy elsewhere as well. Truthfully, the players best suited to evaluate any given range are those in that particular range. What's become the meta at higher difficulties is irrelevant to lower ones, but ultimately any file needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

I'm considering this. High end difficulty seems to get reevaluated all the time, but there's an enormous amount of inaccuracy elsewhere as well. (1) Truthfully, the players best suited to evaluate any given range are those in that particular range. (2) What's become the meta at higher difficulties is irrelevant to lower ones, but ultimately any file needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

Can you provide arguments to explain your claims ? It's not obvious to me that this is true or not.

I tend to think the opposite: high level players (with a decent amount of experience, and having played most songs or at least a wide variety of files) usually have a better understanding of what constitutes the partly subjective difficulty metric we use, like bpms, patterns, transitions, stamina, spikes, etc.

You have to remember that players with a level higher than a file's difficulty should also agree with the arguments used to pick a certain difficulty number, otherwise it's a bit pointless. That being said, we don't gain much by having a lower level player be a DC, other than they might play the easier files more often, which I think isn't a heavy weight in the balance.

[psychoangel691]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

Can you provide arguments to explain your claims ? It's not obvious to me that this is true or not.

I tend to think the opposite: high level players (with a decent amount of experience, and having played most songs or at least a wide variety of files) usually have a better understanding of what constitutes the partly subjective difficulty metric we use, like bpms, patterns, transitions, stamina, spikes, etc.

You have to remember that players with a level higher than a file's difficulty should also agree with the arguments used to pick a certain difficulty number, otherwise it's a bit pointless. That being said, we don't gain much by having a lower level player be a DC, other than they might play the easier files more often, which I think isn't a heavyweight in the balance.

High-level players tend to be too elitist and don't even bother to think about the little guy. Sorry but it's true.

[M0nkeyz]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

There are some outliers and I want to give an example:

Obscene amounts of steam is a level 77

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...php?level=1622

Flamingo is a level 70

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...php?level=1755

In my opinion Flamingo has more awkward patterns and is quite a bit denser overall. (this used to be worse in the old system where I believe flamingo was a 63 and obscene was a 72)

Overall I think when you move from level to level to AAA every song the difficulty curve is quite linear with a few outliers here and there.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Difficulty Consultant Applications

High-level players tend to be too elitist and don't even bother to think about the little guy. Sorry but it's true.

We can screen that easily in a few releases. If the DC doesnt seem to consider lower level difficulty structure, people will notice.