Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

This song is crazy hard for a 28. It is fast (166 BPM) and has big 16th streams at this speed.


As you can see, it contains very consistent 6-7 NPS with big spikes of 10-12 NPS (the long 16th streams).


This is Cruel Whole, a 38. Granted, it is much longer than Desperation, but it is the same speed, and in terms of density, it's equal at best.



NeoMAX (a 39) is slightly faster, but only has short bursts of 16ths.

With these comparisons, there is just no way Desperation should be a 28.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

thread approved

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

Alright, time to breakdown the file. Starting with the stats:

Starting off with Desperation:

Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~
Musician: Dr1010
Step Artist: BEN.(SPEIRS) 7.5
Level Number: 632
Song Genre: Dance
Song Style: Techno
Difficulty: 28
Release Date: 10-21-07
Song Length: 1:44
Number of AAAs: 560
Number of FCs: 2,665
Number of Players: 29,787
# of Times Played: 108,930

Cruel:

Cruel Whole (Abelcain Remix)
Musician: Venetian Snares
Step Artist: ~Zero~
Level Number: 589
Song Genre: Misc
Song Style: Noizecore
Difficulty: 38
Release Date: 10-18-07
Song Length: 3:56
Number of AAAs: 278
Number of FCs: 1,562
Number of Players: 9,045
# of Times Played: 28,024

So currently just by basing the stats from these two songs, it would be gravely illogical to bump up the difficulty of the file to match the difficulty of other files like Cruel. Also, Cruel has significantly less AAAs than Desperation so therefore we eliminate the possibility of the file becoming a 38.

Now let's see how NeoMAX compares to Desperation in the stats department:

NeoMAX
Musician: DM Ashura
Step Artist: Jello
Level Number: 111
Song Genre: Purchased
Song Style: Hardcore Techno
Difficulty: 39
Release Date: 04-20-04
Song Length: 2:18
Number of AAAs: 307
Number of FCs: 3,209
Number of Players: 70,889
# of Times Played: 1,077,202

This also follow suit to the ascending difficulty scale. Although this file does have a lot more FC/AAAs than Cruel does, the length plays a major factor in the difficulty of the file in my opinion. Also, since its release, the file has clocked over a million plays, and the fact that its a purchased song, which may hint to a lesser extent of AAAs than comparatively other 39s and other lower non secret/purchased/token songs but so far, just by the NPS data and the stats, it seems to be logical to leave it as a 28.

I'll fill in more later so I'll leave this as a placeholder. But so far, it seems that the safest thing to do is either leave it as a 28 or MAYBE bump it to a 29, but a 37 imo is too drastic to bump it to.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

If you're going by AAA count, you also have to look at player count. Cruel may have only half the number of AAAs, but it also has only a third of the players, and a quarter of the plays. If you scaled these numbers up, they would be higher than Desperation's.

Granted, NeoMAX does have a significantly lower number of AAAs and FCs when scaled down, but it is also one of the popular songs that a TON of people want to play, and obviously not all of these will be anywhere near capable of AAAing or FCing the song.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

Neomax is MUCH harder than Desperation. I realize I AAA'd Desperation easily, so it might be hard for me to judge this file very well, but I always thought it fit well with the other songs of it's difficulty.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

Just watched a replay of this, and yeah - this file definitely needs to be bumped up.

While the streams are unlayered, a person frequently playing files in this area will get absolutely murdered. If something like Brightone can be rated a 39 and have more than 1.5x AAAs and DOUBLE the AAA count in comparison to this song with only a seven month difference in release dates, then I'm sure this file can go up in difficulty. I mention Brightone because it has a lot of short and broken index-friendly runs (while this one has longer, but still index-friendly runs), with a multitude of jumps at only 11 BPM less.

I don't quite believe that it should be a 37 - that's a bit TOO extreme. However, I could definitely level with this being a 32/33.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

I'm for a bump on this.

May as well threadjack for a bit to explain my reasoning: there is a fundamental difference between the difficulty of AAAing a file, and the difficulty of FCing it.

Most of the lower-level files (like, anything below mid FGO) are generally rated on the former scale, since the raters themselves are of that particular skill level where neither FCing nor AAAing poses a challenge to them - and since it's really much easier to imagine the difficulty of a file based on AAA rather than FC, that's what happens.

It's not that this is wrong, or anything - it's as good a method as any of subjectively judging files. The problem, however, happens when players who are actually of that particular skill range try to FC the file.

As the rating system currently stands, long, streamy files of a certain difficulty are generally much, much harder to get a decent FC (say, a teen or high SDG) than bursty files.

And therefore players of a certain level will do a lot worse on streamy files than bursty files of a certain difficulty above the weight he's punching currently. There's no other explanation for why Vertex BETA, a 3 1/2 minute song with 200bpm stream all over, is ranked the same difficulty as something more bursty like, say, Humanism. Speaking from personal experience - although I wager this applies rather generally across the playerbase - in that particular difficulty range (low-mid 60s), BETA blows everything else out of the water in difficulty.

I'm not saying to completely swing the pendulum and judge based on decent-FC difficulty, but some kind of medium should be made. Maybe two ratings could be made for each file - "decent-FC" difficulty and "AAA" difficulty. The trouble of course lies in the fact you have to find someone who's just about that file's match in terms of FCing, and therefore has a keener sense of its difficulty...for each file. It's perhaps possible to "imagine" this difficulty, or for streamy files, scale up the difficulty a little. 3 points seems fair.

So, back to this file - it's a streamy file, and therefore appears much more difficult than other files in that difficulty range until one becomes numb/indifferent to that particular speed, when it makes no difference to him/her whether a file is 156bpm 16ths, or 166bpm 16ths. Therefore it's underrated, and I'm in full support of a bump to low-mid 30s - 32-34 - not 37 - it's nowhere near as hard as Neomax, with the note colours and 16th jack stuff in that file.

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

I don't even remember playing or rating this file, I'll go check it out and get back to you guys, but good discussion glad to see people actually using BPM and patterns to argue points. Good work guys

Re: Desperation ~Pandemic Day Mix~ (28 or 37)
 

stream flows well, but agreed, too fast for a 28. this could be bumped up to 30 or so