As a bunch of you know already, I've taken it upon myself to manage and organize a list of world record scores for StepMania; predominantly for 4-key spread scores. Of course, the current system has a number of flaws, but I'd like to take one flaw and spin a train of thought around it:
The world record tables only list the "best" score obtained on a particular file and difficulty setting.
This doesn't seem like much of a problem when you consider that the goal of the tables is to list "World Records", but this is a huge flaw in that there may be some scores worth mentioning or even subjectively* better than the current world record but simply are not calculated as better. I believe that some type of leader board system much like FFR's high scores lists is a great idea to get rid of this. How can we make a comprehensive high scores list for StepMania in the best possible way?
The ideal situation would be to have a leader board system much like StepmaniaOnline; the server will keep track of when arrows were hit and automatically recalculate scores to fit Judge 4 timing windows, regardless of what judge the player is using. These recalculated scores are recorded in the database and are organized into a list much like FFR's (I'm not gonna lie, this is probably the biggest plus FFR has and it is a damn big plus if you ask me). Not only is this important for eliminating cheaters, but it allows scores to be tracked in real time.
This seems great if not for the fact that there are scoring discrepancies on StepmaniaOnline. There is some amount of server lag associated with playing online which can vary depending on the player. The assumption is that a player will be penalized with false perfects due to lag, so the server attempts to correct this problem by having a marvelous window of 0.22550 seconds instead of the normal 0.22500 seconds. This translates roughly to having a Judge offset of 3.999. Although this seems incredibly minor and we can be comfortable in saying that we are still comparing apples to apples (since this offset is applied to all players who play using SMO), it still doesn't account for the fact that server lag can affect players in different ways. Some players can get negative perfects while others may get negative marvelouses due to this issue, so in essence we are not comparing apples to apples. Do you see where I'm going with this??
I was going to make a list of other flaws but they all seemed easily correctable and are little more than nuisances that require time and effort to work around. The problem that I wasn't able to solve was always to do with scoring in general:
What makes score 'X' better than score 'Y'?
Classically we associated a higher DP (Dance Point) value with a better score and this still holds true, however we've modified the weighting of judgements to fit what we subjectively (key word here) believe is accurate. The method for comparing StepMania scores eligible for world records uses the DP-Marv scale. This gives dance points according to this scheme:
Marvelous: 10
Perfect: 9
Great: 5
Good: 0
Boo: -20
Miss: -40
O.K.: 30
N.G.: 0
Does everyone agree with how things are weighted? The majority might, but to say that someone who gets a AAA with 29 perfects is better than someone who got marvelous on the entire song but dropped a single hold is a little strange to me. So lets decide we all agree on an excellent new weighting scale for DP values given to judgements. Can we accurately tell which score is better? Well let's consider something else first...
Players A and B each achieve a AAAA on Ageha using Judge 4.
Since we judge a better score as one which has higher dance points, Players A and B both have identical scores on Ageha. I'm not so sure this is the case and we can prove this by introducing stricter timing windows. This situation now becomes:
Player A achieves a AAA on Ageha with 40 perfects using Judge 7.
Player B achieves a AAA on Ageha with 37 perfects using Judge 7.
Well obviously Player B has the better score than Player A since his accuracy was better. But what if we tighten up the timing window even further? The situation now becomes:
Player A achieves a AA on Ageha with 278 perfects and 40 greats using Judge 'X'.
Player B achieves a AA on Ageha with 312 perfects and 37 greats using Judge 'X'.
etc.
tl;dr
My question to you all is, at what point do timing windows become redundant and is there a way to actually ascertain what is the "best" StepMania score for a given note chart?
The world record tables only list the "best" score obtained on a particular file and difficulty setting.
This doesn't seem like much of a problem when you consider that the goal of the tables is to list "World Records", but this is a huge flaw in that there may be some scores worth mentioning or even subjectively* better than the current world record but simply are not calculated as better. I believe that some type of leader board system much like FFR's high scores lists is a great idea to get rid of this. How can we make a comprehensive high scores list for StepMania in the best possible way?
The ideal situation would be to have a leader board system much like StepmaniaOnline; the server will keep track of when arrows were hit and automatically recalculate scores to fit Judge 4 timing windows, regardless of what judge the player is using. These recalculated scores are recorded in the database and are organized into a list much like FFR's (I'm not gonna lie, this is probably the biggest plus FFR has and it is a damn big plus if you ask me). Not only is this important for eliminating cheaters, but it allows scores to be tracked in real time.
This seems great if not for the fact that there are scoring discrepancies on StepmaniaOnline. There is some amount of server lag associated with playing online which can vary depending on the player. The assumption is that a player will be penalized with false perfects due to lag, so the server attempts to correct this problem by having a marvelous window of 0.22550 seconds instead of the normal 0.22500 seconds. This translates roughly to having a Judge offset of 3.999. Although this seems incredibly minor and we can be comfortable in saying that we are still comparing apples to apples (since this offset is applied to all players who play using SMO), it still doesn't account for the fact that server lag can affect players in different ways. Some players can get negative perfects while others may get negative marvelouses due to this issue, so in essence we are not comparing apples to apples. Do you see where I'm going with this??
I was going to make a list of other flaws but they all seemed easily correctable and are little more than nuisances that require time and effort to work around. The problem that I wasn't able to solve was always to do with scoring in general:
What makes score 'X' better than score 'Y'?
Classically we associated a higher DP (Dance Point) value with a better score and this still holds true, however we've modified the weighting of judgements to fit what we subjectively (key word here) believe is accurate. The method for comparing StepMania scores eligible for world records uses the DP-Marv scale. This gives dance points according to this scheme:
Marvelous: 10
Perfect: 9
Great: 5
Good: 0
Boo: -20
Miss: -40
O.K.: 30
N.G.: 0
Does everyone agree with how things are weighted? The majority might, but to say that someone who gets a AAA with 29 perfects is better than someone who got marvelous on the entire song but dropped a single hold is a little strange to me. So lets decide we all agree on an excellent new weighting scale for DP values given to judgements. Can we accurately tell which score is better? Well let's consider something else first...
Players A and B each achieve a AAAA on Ageha using Judge 4.
Since we judge a better score as one which has higher dance points, Players A and B both have identical scores on Ageha. I'm not so sure this is the case and we can prove this by introducing stricter timing windows. This situation now becomes:
Player A achieves a AAA on Ageha with 40 perfects using Judge 7.
Player B achieves a AAA on Ageha with 37 perfects using Judge 7.
Well obviously Player B has the better score than Player A since his accuracy was better. But what if we tighten up the timing window even further? The situation now becomes:
Player A achieves a AA on Ageha with 278 perfects and 40 greats using Judge 'X'.
Player B achieves a AA on Ageha with 312 perfects and 37 greats using Judge 'X'.
etc.
tl;dr
My question to you all is, at what point do timing windows become redundant and is there a way to actually ascertain what is the "best" StepMania score for a given note chart?
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