New FFR Features ?

[TheSaxRunner05]

Re: New FFR Features ?

When this came up as a discussion in the TCG discord, I was suggesting opening a submission batch for courses so they'd be new charts and designed to flow from one song into the next.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: New FFR Features ?

also, absolutely yes to anything that is of ascending + mixed difficulty but freely open like the dan system; it works super well in other rhythm games and would work nicely here too

honestly, the tier point system could also use a bit of a refresh (not necessarily just song-wise but also with graphics that makes it work - hell, something like that could even be "seasonal" of sorts)

EDIT: another system to look at as well could be something similar to what Life4 does, where you could have various named courses and assign a dan/rank based off of overall performance on that course so that players can appreciate all different types of songs/varieties but be rewarded based on their performance - example of the idea can be found here

EDIT 2: also to be approachable to newer players, you could adopt a sequence of "kyu" level courses before the dans, which could lead considerably lower level players into playing more to increase their overall ability -- i'm not sure what the scaling will be but splitting over a larger set of ranks makes the curve a bit easier to handle earlier on (you can let loose further up since players at that point are already engaged and likely training to continue on)

[devonin]

Re: New FFR Features ?

So if songs have a relative numerical difficulty, and based on your scores on those songs, you have a level which is used to compare your skill to others, your whole issue is in saying "Let's put this particular range of those people together into a group"?

I mean, in a perfect world where we had 1 million active players, wouldn't it make sense, for example, to have all players of one single skill level compete against each other? That's literally divisions, just 110 of them.

their placement in an arbitrarily defined ever-shifting group of players

Every system of assigning difficulty/level/division/etc to anybody is arbitrarily defined. And the lines are only "ever-shifting" if we keep deciding to shift them around.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: New FFR Features ?

So if songs have a relative numerical difficulty, and based on your scores on those songs, you have a level which is used to compare your skill to others, your whole issue is in saying "Let's put this particular range of those people together into a group"?

I mean, in a perfect world where we had 1 million active players, wouldn't it make sense, for example, to have all players of one single skill level compete against each other? That's literally divisions, just 110 of them.

Every system of assigning difficulty/level/division/etc to anybody is arbitrarily defined. And the lines are only "ever-shifting" if we keep deciding to shift them around.

skill ratings can be used as a metric of comparison against other people, but it's literally no different than any other game that has an arbitrary rating scale for assigning players based off of performance. we don't have thousands of divisions for people involved in ELO-like scaling.

moving on to your bolded point: no, it absolutely doesn't. i'm literally advocating *against* all players of similar skill levels simply competing against each other. that's not how competitive circuits work for any game whatsoever. there's concepts of qualification and seeding. there's even events that have splits between "open" or provisional and those who are "ranked" but there's no arbitrary subdivisions. if you face someone who is substantially higher up, that's just how it is and it's the end of that.

if you're interested in competing deeper in an event, you have to train so that you can.

the point about "ever-shifting" was also missed, likely due to me not conveying it the way I intended: the system of assigning difficulty is arbitrary, but that's going to be the nature of anything that is not algorithmic in calculation (and even that is erroneous). the ever-shifting point had to do with divisional cutoffs and song selection with regards to them.

- forcefully constraining content to arbitrarily growing difficulty that users inevitably complain about being incorrect over and over again

the point that i was making is that the existence of divisional lines adds additional strain by not only constraining difficulties to a certain floor/ceiling per round. the more divisions we have, the tighter those constraints get for being used appropriately in competition. this is ineffective utilization of content.

you could easily and more effectively judge overall player competition using the same number of songs and even grouping them in similar ways so long as the songs themselves had ascending structure per round. this would force higher level players to task themselves with easier songs, but honestly: they can suck it up if they want to play in a competitive environment.

imagine having the ability to use 64 songs in a divisionless tournament in ascending difficulty per round, with 8 songs per round -- starting around your traditional D1 level start and transitioning upward per round to where the final round essentially tosses the highest content out into the game. all of the players that are in the middle-ground divisions would perform well until -- you guessed it: the middle of the tournament, where ideally songs are at a level that would challenge them.

by having an ascending, scaling difficulty like this, you could also more effectively test players by getting a cumulative score per round on charts of multiple skill-sets that are also in a reasonably close difficulty range (a range that would likely encompass a traditional range within a player of that division that would also be interested in moving up into another division). no more getting eliminated because you drew an unlucky song that plays against your skillset (alloyus comes to mind as someone who was crushing D7 this tournament up until the round that they abruptly got eliminated). difficulty would ascend in such a way that players would have a tournament placement of out of the entire pool of entrants and that would be their finishing position for the tournament.

no sandbagging. no shit given about divisions - you harm yourself by trying to underperform. you get a ton of content to play, it ascends in difficulty in a way that is mostly logical and you have motivation to try and climb the ladder.

[devonin]

Re: New FFR Features ?

starting around your traditional D1 level start and transitioning upward per round to where the final round essentially tosses the highest content out into the game. all of the players that are in the middle-ground divisions would perform well until -- you guessed it: the middle of the tournament

And given we had 371 competitors in this year's Official Tournament, how deep into that 371 player base would prizes of significance (things like Fractured Sunshine/vRofl/the headphones/keyboards and cash prizes of previous OTs) pay out?

[TheSaxRunner05]

Re: New FFR Features ?

You could also have a tournament where there are multiple song choices, but the harder songs produce a higher score. Then everyone competes in the same round at the same time without being bored with super-easy files until you get to the round you can't handle.

The structure can always be tweaked to satisfy a wide range of skills in a single tournament - divisions are certainly not a requirement for that. We just have to think outside of the box. For hardware prizes, maybe you could have 1 entry into a prize pool with each round you survive? Rewards for most levels gained during a tournament? I'm sure there are other ways we can think of without being bound by divisions. For the tokens, maybe they should be locked to top 50, top 100, top 200, top 300, etc. If the token charts are of a difficulty appropriate for the skill to attain them, it would make more logical sense. Meme files like vRofl maybe have other, more imaginative requirements.

I don't know what the best solution is, but I think there are ways to ditch divisions and have an engaged player base. Every OT, Round 1 new Files get like 250 plays and that halves over the course of four rounds. And 8 weeks is super long. Maybe a shorter, division-less non-elim with a ranked final standings would be more engaging?

[Antori]

Re: New FFR Features ?

i dont have my hopes up that the divisions system is ever gonna be changed even though it's alot more optimal for competitive gameplay, as fun as it may be competing in the top of your division nobody likes play against sandbaggers(me) or being that one rusted player who can't even hold a candle to people in his division. it would be great to remove it all together and have a full song pool each round

as for dans i dont think forcing people to play specific course just to be placed next to other players in skill is a good idea for an actual mechanic of the game, it's a nice community addition but it would be really odd if it became official. maby if enough people come together and create those courses and make minor changes to the engine to fit it in it would be nice but anything beyond that i can't get behind

Edit: (+1 TheSaxRunner05) i also wanna add that removing eliminations from tournaments is a good change since some players have very unique skillsets such as being able to vibro very early on or manipulating hard patterns or just general speed and lack of consistency, these few players also need some recognition
-in other words make Official Tournaments into Devonin Blitz Tournaments cause that system is much more fun and player friendly(while also removing divisions)

tl;dr: division-less system is great idea and dans only work as a community held standard for skill ranking

[SputnikOwns]

Re: New FFR Features ?

What's the alternative to divisions for tournaments?

[Antori]

Re: New FFR Features ?

What's the alternative to divisions for tournaments?

-tournament starts
-all songs are released as one big pool or they get released in portions either way works
-all players play all songs and set best scores they can on all of them no matter the rank they are cause it's irrelevant for this tournament system
-depending on how the tournament is operated there will be or wont be weights on songs and adding all the scores will rank all the players by their true skill(no point in sandbagging) at the time
- ???? spread prizes evenly somehow ???? will take a lot of reworking but next OT isn't until next year so there's plenty of time

[SputnikOwns]

Re: New FFR Features ?

Songs released in portions like they are now is hype. Looking forward to the next round preview.

[Fantasticone]

Re: New FFR Features ?

Note scale past 100% would be nice.

[MarioNintendo]

Re: New FFR Features ?

Why is this not in Bug reports and Suggestions? :P
Otherwise, great thread! SDG bar would indeed be super neat!

[Psychotik]

Re: New FFR Features ?

Question: will the FC bar fix retroactively count past overwritten FCs? I'm guessing no, but I can dream.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: New FFR Features ?

Why is this not in Bug reports and Suggestions? :P
Otherwise, great thread! SDG bar would indeed be super neat!

I initially meant this as a thread to have suggestions for things I could work on for the FFR dev site. It turned out to be general suggestions, but I'll be working on something that was suggested here, which is to get away from flash.

Also this hype cant hurt, especially during the development of the next version

[devonin]

Re: New FFR Features ?

What's the alternative to divisions for tournaments?

The idea that only the top players should win tournaments, and not people who are currently at the top of multiple subdivisions.