[Precarious]

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

Can you provide arguments to explain your claims ? It's not obvious to me that this is true or not.

I tend to think the opposite: high level players (with a decent amount of experience, and having played most songs or at least a wide variety of files) usually have a better understanding of what constitutes the partly subjective difficulty metric we use, like bpms, patterns, transitions, stamina, spikes, etc.

You have to remember that players with a level higher than a file's difficulty should also agree with the arguments used to pick a certain difficulty number, otherwise it's a bit pointless. That being said, we don't gain much by having a lower level player be a DC, other than they might play the easier files more often, which I think isn't a heavy weight in the balance.

This is exactly the problem I sort of hinted at in my application. In no way am I as fluent in the jargon of FFR as you are--and I mean that both in terms of the actual vocabulary, and in reading and interpreting a given pattern or set of patterns in a file. But that's precisely the problem with the current system. Difficulty is subjective, not objective. You literally have the current number 1 average rank on the site. You were a snipe away from winning D7. There are files you can AAA effortlessly that I can't even play--so of course you'd be infinitely better suited to judging such material than myself.

But by the same token, at some point you lose your ability to determine why something is hard when it no longer is hard. You can have two files that are superficially similar--comparable bpms, types of patterns, stamina requirements, and so on--yet feel completely different to a player at that level. If everything is easy for you, then how can you meaningfully distinguish between these files? You can't--other than to refer to those preexisting criteria. But nothing occurs in a vacuum, and incidentals that can't be so easily quantified exist. Evaluating difficulty is an art, not a science--otherwise we could just user an auto-rating system a la Etterna.

What you're suggesting is only true if you honestly believe that difficulty is completely, statistically quantifiable. And yet that clashes with our existing statistics--and mars the player experience anyway. Yes, it's obviously true that lower players will see greater variation, as they will invariably have holes in their skillset that lead otherwise comparable files to move apart. But I'll take that over dispassionately calculating from a spreadsheet. To argue otherwise is to suggest you're engaging with lower difficulty files in the same way as someone fighting against them, and that's simply not true.

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

High-level players tend to be too elitist and don't even bother to think about the little guy. Sorry but it's true.

Originally Posted by One Winged Angel

This isn't a fair assessment at all considering how the difficulty shifts transpired.

It's completely true--and has nothing to do with difficulty shifts. Look at Opkiller's response; it considers the DLow-Mid experience only from that of DHigh. This attitude, consciously or unconsciously, permeates the site, and I feel it's a problem both for player attraction and retention.

But that's not really what this topic is about. You've done more than anyone to make ratings here accurate (and I thank you for that), but even so your response is bound up in the assumptions born of your own considerable abilities.

So consider the following scenario. A new file is released, and ten D6/7/8 players all rate it a 52. Ten D2/3/4 players rate it 51, 54, 56, 58, 54, 60, 50, 61, 57, and 57. One might surmise that by quantifiable standards, it must be a 52. All of the more skilled/experienced players determined it to be such, likely by calculating backward from bpm and patterns, and comparing it against their own expectations for such a file. The lower division estimates were all over the place, but averaged to 55.8. I'd argue that assessment is closer, because the file is meant to be representative and demonstrative of their skillsets. Yes, the lower you go, the more gaps there will be in skillsets, and thus the larger the potential for variation and outliers. But difficulty itself is, by everyone's contention, subjective, and thus matters most of all by comparison to other files. Not just in terms of speed and length and stamina, but in how comfortable and playable it is for the player it challenges. At some point, playability needs to become the key concern--and that's something lost as one gets further from a given file presenting any sort of challenge.

I did read your reply, and I do think it's valid. Certainly, there's going to be a certain amount of give unless we revamp lower difficulty entirely. But that's the thing. We should do that. If your proposal for higher level difficulty/AAA equivalency revamp goes through (and I like your discussion, and I think it should, whatever form that takes), that seems to me a good excuse to revisit everything.