ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

NOTICE: This is all a big IF right now, as I'm not staff and there are other priorities right now for them, but this is most likely happening at some point anyway.

Context

This site's official content is (and has been, for a long time) lacking top difficulty content. Death Piano and RATO have always been some sort of "remaining challenge" although because of their spikes and overall structure, they've never quite been files people like to put a lot of time into. Lately we've got Undici and Dreamin' Attraction, for a whopping 1 file breaking the ceiling in 8 years.

Yesterday RATO was AAA'd. That leaves the new best player with a single file with a higher difficulty. This is not how we keep the best players interested in pushing the limits even more. Now one could say "Well why should we care about top tier players, they're like 0.01% of the player base". Well check this out: Why not ? Here's the thing, news like RATO AAA are some the most captivating news because it's an achievement that goes beyond what most would expect to be possible. By building a wider repertoire of files that are such an insane challenge, we give an incentive for the best players to achieve other feats like that.

Lets say I'm 100% wrong here. What could happen ? Nothing except we have more super hard files ingame.

Idea

Obviously, there is the batch system. However that gives no incentive to the stepartists and many have become tired of waiting forever for their content to be released. This problem is not really someone's fault: there is a lack of judges and motivation overall.

The suggestion here is something that's been done already. A stepwars contest where stepartists have a deadline to chart 1 or 2 files (of their choice, as long as we have permission) and the best files are kept and put ingame. The requirements would probably be a bit different (plus I'm not staff so I probably wouldn't be allowed to host this but I assure you, it Will happen).

Here's what we need:

• Judges: Any player who wants to judge very hard files (Difficulty 102+) raise your hand.
• Stepartists: Any stepartist who wants to chart files in the range 102-115, raise your hand.

The best I can do right now is gathering people who are willing to create content. The next steps would of course be in the hands of staff members.


As an incentive, I'm willing to offer 100$ as a donation to the event to divide between the winners & judges, however the splits are done.


STEPARTISTS:
DarkZtar
Pizza69
Wayward Vagabond
Patashu
samurai7694
Aquellex


JUDGES:
gold stinger
DossarLX ODI (?)

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

I want to point out that the judges would need to be willing to provide actual thorough notes since I believe in rewarding judges too, not only stepartists. Otherwise, we'd miss 50% of the necessary people.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Give me the opportunity and tools to run & lead a 100+ batch right now, and I will gladly open one up within the next 24 hours.

I've had a hand in both of the current active batches, and the first pass on judgments have already been completed for both of them. They are both waiting for fixes to be sent in & approved, which for the most part, is slower than the deadline (in the community aspect of 'tired of waiting for release' side of things) of just getting the initial judgments & notes out on them.

Been pondering of a much higher difficulty range than 115, closer to 130. Imo there is not enough merit for Death Piano & Undici for their difficulty, as well as the difficulty can easily go up to a point where FC becomes a problem for D8 players.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Judges for something like this couldn't be just anyone. There's a lot to think about when it comes to super hard files for FFR. What you see on SM or whatever program you're stepping on isn't always going to translate well when converted. It takes someone with that knowledge for this.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

And you are very right. Which is why this thread is all about seeing the general level of interest. Judges would definitely Not be picked randomly, but anyone can raise their hand and say they'd like to. The goal here is to get a pool of people, and then see what can be done with that.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

I think we need to establish what D8 or whatnot would be in terms of accuracy, because ye speed and acc are different limits



as an example, light 300 bpm smooth jumpstream is accable

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Remember that FFR uses AAA equivalency for difficulty rating. No matter how good/bad that metric is, that's what we have for now. Nothing stops us to rework that later if it's deemed too bad, but for now that shouldn't affect the problem/idea at hand here.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Well, what I mean by that is that files are designed to be AAA'd on FFR and thats the basis for their difficulty, which is different compared to etterna/stepmania d8, so its the root of the problem at hand, because its important to define what d8 actually is in terms of patterns, bpm, nps etc, imo

just using rato as an example, if FFR was based around going for AA rather than AAA, then im sure it would be rated much lower than 100+, winter wind etude as another example would probably be lower, etc

my point is that its hard to chart files in that range when you don't know the difficulty that file should be

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Designed to be AAA'd is false. Rated on their potential AAA difficulty is right. The difference is important. Like I said, the difficulty metric is another topic (an important one though). It is definitely harder to aim for a specific difficulty in that high range, but we do have ingame files which can provide a good comparison basis. Things Will need to be discussed and doublechecked, but that's not the point of this thread/step. Here we need to know if people want to participate or not.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

The part I bolded here is important. We'd have to make sure the files aren't hard for the sake of being hard. Undici, for example, was a collaboration that went through several revisions and even then I had to go in and do some frame fixes after its conversion.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Step this one for D8

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

I'd be willing to submit more hard files to the batch in an attempt to help get more high-end difficulty files into the game. Though I already have tried sending in stuff in the 105+ range and my track record with those submissions has been... pretty terrible.
I feel like the sort of unwritten status quo was to have Undici always be the hardest file available in the game, but with the RATO AAA being achieved, the perceived skill ceiling palatable within the game may have changed.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Due to the nature of ffr i'm willing to bet every 101+ file to be as intended will need frame fixes

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

Idk if a batch will open or if this contest idea will become a thing, but no matter what we do need files of that difficulty. I'm hoping we can have at least 2 judges check each file to reduce bias (which at this difficulty is very real) but that might be a bit of a dream.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

By releasing many files you can lower the quality threshold by a bit since the average can still be sufficiently high. When you release a single file, you have no choice but to make it a very high quality file. I'm not saying we should let trash ingame, but being too perfectionist does it no good either. As long as the files stay in the general FFR vibe where ghost notes should be avoided mostly, there should be plenty of space for files within that high difficulty range.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

I'm totally down to chart some crazy stuff for this. I've already got one suitable file sitting around, and it would be exciting to see new hard stuff in FFR.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

chart toes pls

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

I have a half finished file that could be used for this.

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

when is wv presents [W] gonna come out

Re: ATTN Stepartists & Lvl 100+ players: high difficulty contest ?
 

First I gotta make wv presents [O] and [O²] so I can release wv presents [OwO]