Make Stepmania Great Again

[Reincarnate]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

mina summed up my sentiment waaaay better than i did.

and like, yo, i do not want to play an rpg.

there's a point to it all being the way it is. stepmania is, in my opinion, amazing in its simplicity. that's why simfiles and keyboard play have developed so much over the years.

gimmicks won't make stepmania better

edit: furthermore, it's not the community's fault that not many people took interest and stuck with it. it's that the vast majority of people just don't see the appeal in getting into the game - the people that do get into stepmania, though, get into it real heavy, and that level of play and commitment isn't worth sacrificing for lower standards or more gimmicks. so like, if the masses don't get it, fuck em :/

sorry if this all sounds pretentious

love u guys

I agree that it could be considered a gimmick -- but my overall point is that I think you have to do something new and interesting if you want to expand past a point of saturation / plateauing.

If the goal is to focus on Stepmania alone, the most important piece IMO is to have a centralized online experience with multiplayer support, as well as a dedicated pathway for newcomers. Without those two things, I have no idea how you'd get anywhere doing anything else. There are way too many barriers to entry with steep learning curves otherwise.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

So let's address this point by point.

First off, I completely, vehemently disagree with your first point only based off of the way to preface your explanation for it:

- We don't need to give a shit about new player retention rates of our game

This community is never going to outdo osu at convincing a bunch of 12 year olds that playing 3 star maps to anime ops all day is the singular focus of their lives.

Just because there is a huge community of players that will automatically flock over towards osu! and what it entails does not mean, under any circumstance, that we should be giving up in acquiring and keeping players in our sights and waiting them to stay around. Yes, you'll have a bunch of the players that you've blanketed and stereotyped, but that doesn't mean that there's literally nobody else who plays the game. Assuming as such is ridiculous.

Sure stepmania has a lot of draw to new players it's just masked by the incredible barrier to entry the game currently possesses. I have frequently talked about the concept of specifically creating a pack that mimics ffr's 1-10 difficulty level designed to handhold new players through the introductory elements of the game and I've wanted to see this done for years now but while everyone agrees that it's a good idea nobody has once stepped up and said to me hey why don't we get rolling on this.

Being very point blank here, and it's going to sound harsh, but I honestly don't care: with you indicating and being very visible, first-hand proof of this begin the case -- you of all people know that inaction leads to nothing, and the fact of the matter is: no one has to ask you to get something done if they don't want to. Nobody requires your approval to do anything. With regards to beginners not being targeted, they have: in fact, if you're talking about FFR's old-scale 1-10 difficulty (which could arguably be at the beginner/intermediate levels of play), there are two packs (Stepping Stones of StepMania 1/2) that have been released that help to cater to these people. Additionally, since patterning at this level is highly trivial, it's very easy to link out to official DDR/ITG packs, because they're at the level that patterning is not going to matter nearly as much as gaining the foundation of the game is. There is no lack of playable content -- the fact of the matter is that StepMania is HORRIBLY fucking segregated amongst a million different places and not one person wants to go and make a legitimate hub that caters to everyone. There hasn't been a focused effort, in the slightest.

And before you ask me why I don't just do it myself I want to be 100% honest about something. I really, really don't give a shit how large this community is. I'm going to keep playing until I don't think the game is fun anymore and then I'm going to go do something else. As much as there are people here who I like and respect and have forged friendships with, the nameless faceless concept of a massive community full of dawdling fawning preteens does not appeal to me. It seems from my perspective that very little gets done unless I do it myself (with respect to the 4k kb community) and I've honestly been doing a lot of that and the natural consequence of this is that I only end up doing what I want to see done, and an effective introductory experience to new players is just not a priority. It would be nice sure, but so would a lot of things in life. So let's talk about why we shouldn't give a shit about new player retention rates.

Targeting the red area of the post here, I initially wanted to lash out in response to this until I took a moment to read the second, and most important part of that. Let's get one thing clear: your optimizations and ideas to the game recently have been great for the really high-end players found here, between improving the performance of the game and making a much more logical score system. But your improvements are not going to bring anyone to play the game, let's get that thing clear. You actually acknowledge this quite well by saying that your work is not specifically done to make an effective introductory experience to new players -- this is important, because it shows that you're aware of the problem. You're not a part of the solution though. You have that capability, but as someone who is spearheading other things, it's not something that you should be focused on, nor is it your responsibility by any means - i'd argue that the actual developers of StepMania should be working on making the game more accessible for everyone, but when you have a hard-headed, overly opinionated, incapable-of-taking-any-sort-of-fucking-advice front facing developer who thinks his word is right and nothing else (looking at you: Kyzentun, don't think I've not heard what you've said about me) and no one else on the team really standing up to it, it's kinda hard to take things seriously/get things done.

But let's not take the time to forget about all of the people who have come to produce the game content that everyone plays. There are is a LOT of playable content that has been spearheaded by individual community members that are supported by content creators everywhere to make them a success. If the main community contributors who know how to leverage the tools to create content would stop focusing on catering to the main community and work on bringing new things for the players who might be trying to get into the game, we could see an increase in player retention. This is something that matters to me personally.

- Stepmania is one of if not the most matured kb community in the world.

This is inarguable at this point. We have a disturbingly long lineage of high quality playable (read: not stupid fuck promotional videos that exist to disguise the absence of playable) content. We have fostered the growth of dozens of the best kb charters in the world many of whom are still active and producing wonderful content to this very day. Despite constant declarations of death the charting community is as or more active than it was in 2007, and on top of this is exerting a large influence on the charting meta within communities such as osu.

As someone who has resided in the osu!mania community for a while and actually wanted to go through the ranking process, I will say outright that the influence of SM charting is absolutely NOT a large influence of the meta in osu! -- in fact, as of late, people are occasionally finding reasons to avoid the charting meta that came from StepMania because the charts are a.) too predictable and b.) absolutely do not utilize all of the potential that the game has. The charting community is not as active as it was in 2007 in the slightest: volume is not an indicator of activity when the majority of activity back then was contained within community packs and the activity now is (mostly) releasing featuring single or small numbers of stepartists to produce massive amounts of content. In both cases, neither are helping the solution because they continue to target the niche, and elite parts of the community (in terms of players/ability).

I also feel like the red part that I've highlighted serves to target those who spend time incorporating elements from the other game to increase the attention that they get: being perfectly honest, but that's the kind of content that has the highest potential in netting players in - sure, it gives a perception of the game that's not quite the same as what you'd expect, but the game also comes with stock files that are much more normal and give players an idea of what the game is like. Conversely, if someone wants to find more content that is heavier in mods and visual effects, they can look around a bit and find them.

Charting aside the sm kb community also has the greatest wealth and concentration of player knowledge in existence. I'm talking about real knowledge, not the whole fucking "hahhaha osu makes u better at league of legends because both game involve using ur mouse!!!! hahahaha 430xxxsniperwindowwipersz" bullshit. I'm talking the kind of knowledge that is the result of more than a decade of players breaking down and analyzing the game and how it's played and putting it back together from the ground up.

This I will agree with, personally. Though, I'd argue that the game's meta lately has devolved being that the front-facing and most skilled members play nothing but extremely fast shit or dumpy files. This also comes down to the fact that content creation is not as boisterous as it used to be -- it's more of the same kinda of super-high-end, playable-for-only-the-top that leaves lower players in the dust. The analytical abilities we have as a community would be immensely helpful... if we had players that we could pass our skills down to for them to improve and pass those skills down to, etc.

These are our advantages as a community, this is what we should embrace, and if we want the community to grow (and by we I mean you guys) you need to target the right demographic. And that demographic is the players in other games that have grown enough to realize that their respective communities just don't cut it outside of drawing players in. That's where stepmania excels, everywhere else we don't. We have the capacity to retain those players and once you get the ball rolling there they'll go back and tell their buddies "hey you know osu is actually kind of a total fucking dud in terms of literally everything outside weaboox factor I'm gonna go play stepmania you guys should too".

Targeting players in other games is effective, but I don't believe it's effective in the way that you say. This also kinda ties into the first response that I made to you: just because players have a perception of one game doesn't mean they're going to automatically take action to play another, much like you can't assume that a player is automatically going to stay with a game because the appearance of it is appealing -- mechanics may cause them to turn away. Word of mouth is a great way to get exposure out there, but when it's simply "hey you should play this because i do", you're opening up people who might just turn anyway from the game. Opinion does jack shit in keeping people around. Good experiences do keep people around. It's why I mention things involving mods and other cool visual effects that stretch the limitations of the engine: they can be used to incorporate characters that are familiar to them outside of dance games and bring them into the game as a crazy introduction to what this seemingly simple game can do.

Sadly the stepmania transitional experience here is also total dogshit. Sadly stepmania visibility is also pretty terrible, though admittedly not as bad as the transitional experience. People aren't going to realize how bad their game is unless they can see a better alternative and importantly that alternative is easily accessible. Stepmania also lacks a couple of key features that really add gravity to the draw. We're talking online rankings and leaderboards, a centralized nexus site where players can track their improvement over time and compete against other players. Centralized resources for newer players transitioning from other games to help get them started. Centralized resources on how to improve, discussions on different methods of approach to the game. Wow deja vu this is really starting to feel familiar, like I already tried doing this for everyone already. Anyway, for some people online play is a huge part of the draw. Smo isn't great but it's not bad and with a little work it could be much better.

I agree with this completely, and I'll be one to say that you of all people have the right to be annoyed about it. SMleaderboards could have been something great, but well... y'know. You're aware that there's not a hub for all of this, and your frustrations are definitely confounded. And yes, SMO could easily be improved. Fuckin' hell, you want to make StepMania more spectator friendly? Why not make a tournament-like client that looks somewhat like osu!'s? I think that's one of the great things they have: they make the competitive element of the game more appealing. In a discussion that Etienne had with someone else regarding a tournament that was going to be run (and eventually got cancelled), he mentioned this:



StepMania already has the capability of live tracking and online play; the people who are developing shit for the game could try to enhance the competitive element to be a bit better so that it's more appealing to watch. That's somewhat more for the niche crowd, but the appearance of competition at a high level might bring in players who are at the lower level that want to learn and get better (as addressed by sunn0glasses a few posts ago).

The reality here is this is the best shot stepmania has right now of expanding at any rate beyond what it is now (if it is indeed even expanding), if we can't do this. If we can't fucking convince the people just playing
osumania 4k
osumania 4k
osumania 4k
that they should be playing Stepmania instead, then we have no goddamn hope in the first place.

Nothing is hopeless if the community actually unifies and works in the right direction.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

additional post to tack to things: it's not like osu! and other games don't have a super high barrier of entry too. those games take time to learn and master much like any other mode. yet, players who are somewhat newer come in out of the fucking woodwork and start destroying the game - remember those 12 year olds you so callously attack? well one of them is #5 in the world in osu! standard, so... don't be so quick to dismiss -- age is only a number and some of the best players can come from a very young age.

EDIT: trying to find this video, but there's a -very- young PH player that i saw a video of doing Speed of Link [Extra] (don't think it was meatmap, could be wrong) that iirc, was only 11? again, age doesn't mean shit, so let's stop being condescending...

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

well obviously on the one hand not every 12 year old is a driveling sack of shit who only wants to play anime ops

but by the same token that i shouldn't apply that generalization to each one you can't really expect me to take one or two examples of not retarded 12 year olds and change my mind about them holistically

on the subject of an introductory experience what i'm talking about is a pack that is packaged with the game itself ideally with free music or public domain music so there aren't any issues with distribution that is specifically crafted for a new player experience. That is with a custom difficulty scale that is implemented and a very specific curve of progression. It's not even necessary that new files have to be made for it, it can just be a compilation of pre-existing files from pre-existing packs that just get reorganized. This hasn't been done. Stepping stones is great if you know about it and know where to find it, the problem is if you're a beginner stepmania player you probably don't. That and the average file difficulty of the stepping stones series is significantly higher than what I'm thinking of. Either way you're right, nobody needs my permission to do this. Shit I would be happy if someone would do it on their own but you're also right, in that nobody is doing anything.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

well obviously on the one hand not every 12 year old is a driveling sack of shit who only wants to play anime ops

but by the same token that i shouldn't apply that generalization to each one you can't really expect me to take one or two examples of not retarded 12 year olds and change my mind about them holistically

on the subject of an introductory experience what i'm talking about is a pack that is packaged with the game itself ideally with free music or public domain music so there aren't any issues with distribution that is specifically crafted for a new player experience.

fair enough on all fronts! it's a lot tougher now than it used to be before. it was nice when Newgrounds TOS basically allowed all of the music uploaded to it to be free for use -- revenue sharing programs prevent this from being possible now. still, there are still various songs around the internet with applicable CC-NC licenses.

EDIT: to your edit: it comes down to members of the community being even more thankless and basically making content that they themselves will really not have much use to play - instead creating for the future of the game, in hopes that other people will come and enjoy the game, gain the knowledge of the basics, and do for the newer group of newer players what we did for them, etc.

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

and with regards to the charting community maybe you're right and I'm wrong about activity, shit I don't remember specifics honestly I'm just going off my intuition there

but if people in osumania are specifically avoiding charting the same way as stepmania charters then that is by definition having an influence

but i think the real problem, which has been referenced or skirted around multiple times now, is that there are basically just a bunch of people with different ideas of what should or shouldn't be done to go forward and different concepts of what "stepmania being great" is and zero centralized authority to guide anyone or anything

[TC_Halogen]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

the problem then comes down to the fact that setting a person or group of people as "experts" with regards to charting brings the nasty word around: "elitism"

Catch-22. I'd say so.

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

you know i really don't get the stigma around that word, not necessarily just within the context of stepmania or even inside of the general concept of the term within gaming society

i just don't get what's wrong with leaving decisions up to people who know what they're talking about

where does the negative connotation come from

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

ok well I take it back I know where the negative connotation comes from, shitbads get butthurt when they're told they're clueless which is understandable

but i mean conceptually there's nothing wrong with elitism as long as it's functional and employed properly and the "elites" are actually people who know what they're talking about

anyway im getting off on a pretty hefty tangent there i think this thread drives home pretty much all the reasons why nothing really happens

when you think about it stepmania is in many ways in the same boat as ffr only with less incentive to do anything and fewer people with the capacity to do so

[DeadSignal]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

There were quite a few things I was going to say here, but Mina already covered most of them in a way that echoes my stance on this very well. However, I can't help but feel a lack of perspective in regards to the targeted demographic, as well as the (mis)perceived direction towards which the game should evolve as a consequence of that... so let's attempt to clear that out shall we?


Before asking yourself, "How can we make this game more appealing to newcomers?", I very firmly believe that it is definitely worth asking "What do newcomers specifically expect from this game in the first place?" before undertaking any sort of hilariously overzealous endeavor through blindly assuming that every single newcomer to the game automatically and invariably wants to become the next 30+ KPS button-mashing twitch superstar.

Which leads me to the main thing I want people to realize: perhaps people simply don't fucking know exactly in which direction they want to take their gameplay experience for now, and just want time to discover things on their own before making a decision of sorts?


In a multifaceted game such as this one, your experience is literally what you make of it - so given that fact it should only make sense to allow new players to develop and cultivate a sense of self-discovery as they progressively decide for themselves which aspects of the game they are drawn to as players. And then provided that they stick around for long enough they'll eventually come to a realization.

Maybe they just want to play anime OPs all day.
Maybe they just want to play Undertale xmod charts all day.
Maybe they are actually angling for speed, but refuse to play anything other than index/pad patterns.
Maybe they crave self-improvement and strive to aggressively push the game to its absolute physical limits as far as optimal pattern execution goes.
Maybe they want to experience moderately-challenging yet flavorful charts, and want to become just good enough to appreciate the nuances in their patterning.


To my personal understanding and experiences, the content-based elements quintessential to Stepmania are the following - this is obviously coupled with the undeniable fact that the game itself allows you to fine-tune your playfield to a far greater extent than just about every rhythm game out there that I personally know of (scroll speeds, noteskin size, receptor positioning/spacing etc).

- Older keyboard packs/charts (FFRCP, Red Fraction etc)
On top of having generally-engaging music, patterning tends to fit well and can even get challenging at times due to fun trilly/anchory stuff among other things.
The level of nuance expressed in such patterning is simply not something I can find in any other rhythm game at all. FFR Community Packs, Piano Minipack of Elegance, Red Fraction Pack, and Untitled Stepmania Pack are excellent examples of this.

- High-level spread gameplay
Essentially an extension of the former, but with more content such as dump charts being more prevalent here.
Again, the kind of patterning present in certain instances of the latter just cannot be experienced to anywhere near the same extent in other rhythm games.

- Xmod courses/gimmicks
Straightforward, not much else to say here.
- Index/pad content
Straightforward, not much else to say here.


So now that we have established what makes Stepmania unique, it is worth bringing up that overall I do feel that it is ultimately pointless to aspire to cover aspects outside of the quintessential zone for the most part. If people just want a music game to play on their keyboards and a bunch of social features to play with friends, they're almost bound to favor osumania over anything else. There is simply little to no point in trying to cater to that demographic when osumania fulfills that purpose better, and the developer team absolutely lacks the initiative to implement something of the sort to this game.

Furthermore it goes without saying that the community has been suffering from a general lack of direction in regards to how a progressive yet realistically feasible future for this game would go (not saying that absolutely no effort has been made, just stating that it has sadly not amounted to much really). And it's not like someone here is going to magically come up with a solution out of thin air either, let alone one viable enough that would convince enough people to contribute to it as to grant it the momentum required for it to actually work. I'm aware that I'm certainly not helping here aside from restating facts, therefore you are more than welcome to prove me wrong.

Therefore ultimately, as mentioned previously - the solution lies in making sure that the Stepmania experience is a rewarding enough one for the players that are already committed to it, in addition to any disgruntled players from other rhythm games that are willing to transition towards a better world.


Of course, I do realize there are probably quality-of-life improvements that can be made to the game itself in order to make things more convenient for players almost regardless of the stepmanian walk of life they choose to follow. However when taking that factor into consideration there are only two major improvements to be made as far as I can tell. Maybe someone out there is better than me at figuring those out without resulting in compromising the self-discovery factor, I dunno.

- Cmods on by default, set at a reasonable initial value of 400-500 or so.
- Making important resources such as this thread even more visible and easier to access (also e.g. things like telling new 4k players that noteskins go in the dance subfolder).
- There is also a guide aimed at new players that is currently in the works, hopefully that works out well.

People that desire very optimized self-improvement driven gameplay will eventually end up looking up xwidghet's build + Mina's theme anyway. They're already out there, and if people really angle for that level of optimized gameplay they'll almost surely have the determination to find those in the first place.



TL;DR: The main benefit of playing a multifaceted game such as this one is that your gameplay experience is literally what you make of it.
If you're going to carry out any sort of effort into improving this game, make sure that it will actually benefit people almost regardless of the aspects of the game that they are drawn to.
Also, pretty much everything Mina said.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

just worth noting (and i'm not ignoring your post DeadSignal as much as I currently lack the capacity to respond because i'm exhausted from earlier today):

the gameplay experience -and- community experience are what we all make of it. the game is also very much open source and can be modified to our heart's content, granted that we require people who know how to make the game even more of what they want

[DeadSignal]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

- There is also a guide aimed at new players that is currently in the works, hopefully that works out well.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zKRjjaf1KxQLDWdk_wp4OwC2aQYS_ggxda6Mx1BNmdA/edit

there it is, still very much a work in progress so there's more to come

[Nano Desu]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

shout out to halogen for joining the server for working on that doc then leaving when he sees me and toby :^)

[Toby1018]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

cool doc dude

[Dynam0]

Re: Make Stepmania Great Again

itt brainstorming ways to grow a community centered around something as niche as pen-spinning