Quote:
Originally Posted by Lain_Iwakura
3) doesn't take criticism, that's wrong but its his choice
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I have a question about this, which I hope anyone will answer, not just you, Lain: what good does criticism really do? It's to my understanding that criticism is basically one person sharing his opinion with another, right? If you took someone's criticism that your file was... say, too easy, too hard, not technical enough, or not fun enough, and you changed it accordingly, you would then be altering it so that a set of people who disliked it now liked it, but in the process, a set of people who liked it will now dislike it... right?
The thing about criticism in art is that it only really helps people achieve a standard set by whoever is critiquing it, and whoever shares that opinion. If somebody is happy with the way her file turned out, then that person doesn't really need to change anything if they don't see it fit to, because doing so only compromises her own style and expression. Sure, we can throw around the cliché that it helps a person "grow", but all it really does is help a person please a bigger audience. If you want to please the most amount of people, then you should take people's criticism, but if you want to have fun and express yourself, then I argue that you really don't need to listen to the opinion of anyone else, because it's just that: they're opinion. It's no greater than yours.
Imagine if Van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Picasso listened to all the people that told them their art could have done _____ differently. It would have only made their art "better" by a different set of people's standards; you may not have appreciated them as much. Or, if you're not into paintings so much: imagine any music artist changing their style based on what's popular. Oh, wait, music artists do that all the time, don't they - and isn't it disappointing when they do? Don't you feel that the artist had something unique that you really liked before? Then you are in that group (that is most likely the minority) that can appreciate their different sound. Similarly, what if all the stepfiles adhered to just one rule, and they were all stepped the same? Then, we might as well ask only one person to step them. Stepfiles are great because they come out differently depending on who is creating them.
I mean sure, we have standards now, and those include all the basics like "get the BPM right, sync the arrows with the music and don't make everything a quad", and I'd hope that most people would at least adhere to those, but even those are really only standards made up by people about how an open-ended game "should be played". To be honest with you, I've played the Big Blue in this game over 100 times now, and I don't find it fun despite the fact that it's "technically sound". On that same note, I found Hellbeat oddly enjoyable, and if you asked me which of the two I'd rather play, I'd pick Hellbeat any day. By most people's standards (even the ones I listed there), Hellbeat is garbage, but I found it more fun than some "sound" levels.
Yes, if you put down random arrows that have no relation to any sound played in the song whatsoever, you may consider getting some advice on the very basics, because there are basics. But at a certain point - especially for someone who has such a following for their stepfiles, like QED - I'm really just wondering what criticism improves, and more importantly, for whom.