Leaderboard D9 new name and color

[Wind0ze]

personally i think the titles associated with divisions could used a rework entirely. since after D3 divisions have kept being tacked on after players have gotten better and tournaments have required more divisions, each new division has been given a grandiose name, even if by modern standards the skill level associated with the name isn't particularly impressive anymore. D4 players being qualified as "experts" and D5 players as "masters" is not accurate in the slightest now considering how much further the game has been pushed since those divisions were the peak of player skill, and as a result of this the division names have gotten increasingly ridiculous as we've had to figure out how to make something that sounds more impressive than "master" 4 times now, and we've now reached a point where there aren't many more superlatives in the dictionary to run through

[ToonE156]

Originally Posted by Wind0ze

personally i think the titles associated with divisions could used a rework entirely. since after D3 divisions have kept being tacked on after players have gotten better and tournaments have required more divisions, each new division has been given a grandiose name, even if by modern standards the skill level associated with the name isn't particularly impressive anymore. D4 players being qualified as "experts" and D5 players as "masters" is not accurate in the slightest now considering how much further the game has been pushed since those divisions were the peak of player skill, and as a result of this the division names have gotten increasingly ridiculous as we've had to figure out how to make something that sounds more impressive than "master" 4 times now, and we've now reached a point where there aren't many more superlatives in the dictionary to run through

TBF people in D5 or D4 are much better than most average people at the game. So to an outsider a D5 player is most definitely a "master". Im just thinking with the same mindset of an outsider who's only seen that AGDQ Etienne Stepmania Showcase, I'm not 100% defending it

[xXOpkillerXx]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

TBF people in D5 or D4 are much better than most average people at the game. So to an outsider a D5 player is most definitely a "master". Im just thinking with the same mindset of an outsider who's only seen that AGDQ Etienne Stepmania Showcase, I'm not 100% defending it

Yes but going along with their idea, if an outsider sees D5 as a "master", shouldn't that still represent something quite close to "perfection"? Just thinking out loud. I'm not against a complete rework of the divisions/milestones names if they can better represent the progression. As for the "cringe" aspect, I think there's a fine line where we can make it not too cringe but still not unnecessarily get rid of FFR's history by using entirely different namings for every division for example.

[Wind0ze]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

TBF people in D5 or D4 are much better than most average people at the game. So to an outsider a D5 player is most definitely a "master". Im just thinking with the same mindset of an outsider who's only seen that AGDQ Etienne Stepmania Showcase, I'm not 100% defending it

considering the purpose of naming divisions is to give a contextualization of skill and an honorary title showing acknowledgement of skill by the community, i don't think basing it off the opinion of the least informed individuals makes much sense

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

As for the "cringe" aspect, I think there's a fine line where we can make it not too cringe but still not unnecessarily get rid of FFR's history by using entirely different namings for every division for example.

i don't think renaming divisions is erasure of FFR history, it will still be known in history that the names used to be different, so i think what you really meant here is current usage aka culture. i've never really been an ffr player so i don't think my take on this holds much weight, but i don't really see the division names used much in speech besides the fairly antiquated FMO/FGO terminology that i generally see used only by a handful of veterans, so i don't think it would be a significant loss of culture

i will say though i really don't care about the "cringe" aspect as much as i do the fact that it's inaccurate. i don't think the titles need to be professional like we're e-sports now (and i think doing so would be damaging to the aforementioned culture), they just need to get across the idea of what the skill levels really mean to the community better than the way the system currently works

[PaperclipGames]

I understand why the amount of skill levels per division decreases as you go up, considering it becomes harder and harder to improve to reach higher skill levels, but consider this theoretical argument. Suppose that in a decade from now, we will have a D12 for skill levels 120-122. And a D13 for 122-124 and a D14 for 124-126.

That would be absurd: why would you make a D13 when it is already such a huge achievement at that level to go up one or maybe two skill levels? Reaching level 122 would be a celebration, as well as reaching level 123 and so on. You don't need divisions anymore at that point.

I've been away for a really long time so I might be completely misjudging this, but I have the feeling that at the current top of the game, we have already reached this situation (or got real close): that going up even just one skill level is a huge feat on its own, and therefore no new labels or groups are required to make people at the very top feel a sense of progress when they improve. But I might be completely off here so take this argument with a grain of salt

[WirryWoo]

Originally Posted by PaperclipGames

I understand why the amount of skill levels per division decreases as you go up, considering it becomes harder and harder to improve to reach higher skill levels, but consider this theoretical argument. Suppose that in a decade from now, we will have a D12 for skill levels 120-122. And a D13 for 122-124 and a D14 for 124-126.

That would be absurd: why would you make a D13 when it is already such a huge achievement at that level to go up one or maybe two skill levels? Reaching level 122 would be a celebration, as well as reaching level 123 and so on. You don't need divisions anymore at that point.

I've been away for a really long time so I might be completely misjudging this, but I have the feeling that at the current top of the game, we have already reached this situation (or got real close): that going up even just one skill level is a huge feat on its own, and therefore no new labels or groups are required to make people at the very top feel a sense of progress when they improve. But I might be completely off here so take this argument with a grain of salt

This is also my main concern with introducing newer divisions for the leaderboards. It will get to the point where one player represents one division if we continue to extrapolate beyond what we currently observe and given that general player skill gradually increases over time alongside with everyone having more opportunities to inflate their skill rating as more files continually are added in game, this is bound to happen over time. In my opinion, this defeats the point of having newer divisions being added in the leaderboards. The smaller the number of representatives in one division becomes, the more meaningless “divisions” are.

I am also aware that there are disparities of skill in each division grouping, so if the primary motivator is to address this concern, adding a new division to better separate D9 from D8 is just a band-aid fix to the main problem (a decent one at least since it only impacts a very small percentage of the vocal minority). Low D7 vs high D7 is still an issue, low D6 vs high D6 is still an issue, etc. If this is the case, I’d rather see a redefinition of the current divisions using what we already have, since it’s clear that these problems exist beyond D8. No ideas on how to do that yet.

With my opinions stated (which I personally don’t hold too strongly to mainly because skill is just skill that will always be the same regardless whatever names or colors you choose to reflect that), to answer the questions posed here, I would prefer sticking with D(n) naming convention for leaderboards and for tournament purposes, introduce names there instead to remove the confusion for players thinking that D(n) in leaderboards => D(n) in tournament placements. Previously I made the recommendation of using “Bronze”, “Silver”, …, ”Diamond” for tournament divisions (similar to games like ranked play in League). To say that I am a D7 player in the Platinum division for OT15 sounds much more interpretable than, I am a “Legendary” player in D7 division for OT15.

In response to my “League”-inspired recommendation, I know some people are against borrowing ideas from other games to “preserve FFR’s unique identity”. But I honestly do believe that “the unique identity” of the game is primarily defined by the game itself (I.e. different timing windows compared to other rhythm games, different strategy to add new content with artist permission in game, etc.) A name borrowed from other sources isn’t going to make this game any more different (it’s literally just a name lmfao). Many games are borrowing similar ideas to Chess’s ELO system, so I don’t see the issue with borrowing ideas from other games.

[xXOpkillerXx]

The whole fear/concern for potential leaderboard divisions with too few players is easily avoidable by just not enforcing a strict decrease in division level range size, and allowing equality from DX to DX+1. On top of that, nothing forces us to make a new division right when a player makes it into the next logical level range... I mean we are literally making D9 right now when the ranges almost justify a theoretical D10, so it's not like we're creating a meaningless division.

I also dont get the argument of "low DX vs high DX". That only makes sense in tournament settings, not for leaderboard divisions which will now be simple static milestones. So no, the way divisions will be normalized is not a bandaid of any sort. Whatever you guys wish to do with OT related brackets you can address to Goldstinger as it is out of the scope of what I'm doing with this thread and I have no control over OT stuff.

Edit: @paperclip I think you also missed my point about how a player in low DX shouldnt ever have a chance against a player in DX+1 if they were to compete 1v1. A level 113 vs a lvl 114 wouldnt make that requirement hold if both were in divisions of 1 level wide.

[rushyrulz]

people are putting too much weight on the word "Master".


to sum it up, basically someone who has a pretty good grip on what they're doing. Master does not mean completely perfected. I've played other games where Master is a mid-level rating. When you look at games like League and Chess it's pretty high up there, but still not even close to the highest, and there's almost always a Grand-Master tier when a Master tier is present.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

people are putting too much weight on the word "Master".


to sum it up, basically someone who has a pretty good grip on what they're doing. Master does not mean completely perfected. I've played other games where Master is a mid-level rating. When you look at games like League and Chess it's pretty high up there, but still not even close to the highest, and there's almost always a Grand-Master tier when a Master tier is present.

Yes of course, but dont you think it's a bit odd to have 4 more names past "master"? It makes "master" feel like middle of the pack/intermediate.

[rushyrulz]

I don't think it's odd at all when we're throwing around words like Godly. It's more a question of do any of the titles above Master seem like they actually belong below it?

And as someone else said, D5 takes a lot of skill and work so Master seems to be a fitting title there.

[rushyrulz]

We're already using the title "Elite" in user titles, so that might be another option to explore.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Tbqh, I'm not opposed to any of that. It's hard to coordinate things here however.

[WirryWoo]

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

The whole fear/concern for potential leaderboard divisions with too few players is easily avoidable by just not enforcing a strict decrease in division level range size, and allowing equality from DX to DX+1. On top of that, nothing forces us to make a new division right when a player makes it into the next logical level range... I mean we are literally making D9 right now when the ranges almost justify a theoretical D10, so it's not like we're creating a meaningless division.

Defining divisions without enforcing a strict decrease in division level range size will run the risk of the resulting divisions being poorly representative of player's skill, right? For clarity, I'm referencing number of players in a division (i.e. settings were only one or two players are categorized as D9, etc.).

Also, what does "ranges almost justify a theoretical D10" mean when ranges were already arbitrarily defined to begin with? Specifically, what does "theoretical D10" mean and what does it exactly mean for ranges to "justify" that? From that statement, you seem to be making an implication that there are already predefined conditions to warrant someone with a D10 classification. If that's the case, what are these conditions?

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

I also dont get the argument of "low DX vs high DX". That only makes sense in tournament settings, not for leaderboard divisions which will now be simple static milestones. So no, the way divisions will be normalized is not a bandaid of any sort. Whatever you guys wish to do with OT related brackets you can address to Goldstinger as it is out of the scope of what I'm doing with this thread and I have no control over OT stuff.

When you introduce any sort of tier based ranking system defined by some numerical value (either hidden or not) that ranks all players within a given division, there will always be low DX and high DX (regardless if we're talking about divisions in leaderboards or divisions in tournaments), right? For example, my current skill rating is 96.91 and I'm D7 (ratings between 94 to 101). Wouldn't it be fair to say that I'm just below mid-D7 on the leaderboards because mid-D7 is assumed to be ~97.5 (median of the two boundary points currently predefined for D7)?

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

I don't think it's odd at all when we're throwing around words like Godly. It's more a question of do any of the titles above Master seem like they actually belong below it?

And as someone else said, D5 takes a lot of skill and work so Master seems to be a fitting title there.

We could make this entire thing easier by just going:

D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
D8
D9

Stupid meme-worthy extra shit isn't needed and you're all overcomplicating something that doesn't need this level of work put into it.

Also, Master would probably have to be reserved for the highest tier, because mastery of the game is better than anything stupid you all could suggest.

[sff_writer_dan]

I think the fact that people keep getting caught up in discussions about divisions in terms of tournaments just highlights what the actual top level discussion should be here:

What is the point of categorization beyond Skill Rating?

It is already obvious to anybody that somebody with "Skill Rating 100" is better than somebody with "Skill Rating 80" and MUCH better than somebody with "Skill Rating 50"

So if we completely disregard separating people for competition, why do we need anything beyond Skill Rating, which already exists and is very clear as an indicator of "who is better than whom"?

It sounds like Opkiller's position is "To give milestone goals for people to aspire to and feel a sense of progress when they achieve them" but I feel like that can be easily met by simply making a more visual production of increasing a skill rating. A little one line thing when you update your dashboard is pretty milquetoast as these things go. If the game could pop up a screen like it does when you unlock a skill token, to say "You achieved skill rating 87, great job!" that would give people that spike of "Oh cool I made progress!"

The other element that seems to be important here is for public bragging / acquisition of status. This is done by giving people things like "D7 Elite Keysmasher" as a role, to be a passive indicator to other people that you've achieved something impressive.

Whether that's the purpose you want to foster or not is its own decision, but assuming you do, the question ends up being at what point do you want to start marking people out as being exceptional like that?

Do we reach a point where D10 and D11 exist, where you no longer want to set D7 players apart with a special role? D6 players don't get one. Are D7 players more or less better than D6 players than a D9 player is better than a D7 player?

If you don't want to start removing special status from people as their relative accomplishments get less exceptional, do you just want to automate the assigning of a role to everybody upon reaching certain levels, so -everybody- has a "special role" showing their current progress?

There's definitely the option of re-doing the system into two separate systems so they could each be handled more appropriate to their situation. You could easily justify taking everybody under the Oni get or the Scarhand get and putting us into one ranking system that was similar to the existing divisions, just lump us into like 0-30, 31-50, 51-60, 61-70 since most people who will ever be in the top divisions will blow past these levels quickly, and then look at the people over 70 or 85 and give them a whole divisional system that works like the current global one. If you were fitting 8 divisions into just 85+ you can be a lot more precise.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Originally Posted by XelNya

We could make this entire thing easier by just going:

D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
D8
D9

Stupid meme-worthy extra shit isn't needed and you're all overcomplicating something that doesn't need this level of work put into it.

Also, Master would probably have to be reserved for the highest tier, because mastery of the game is better than anything stupid you all could suggest.

You're asserting that people's preferences on division names (or even just having names) is "overcomplicating things". That's pretty close minded ngl. Calling it "stupid meme-worthy" is even worse. Good luck convinving people that way.

[sff_writer_dan]

Originally Posted by s1rnight

well it is the opposite that is happening... (wrt your second paragraph) - there are people who can AAA a few 96s and 97s getting fortuitous low-raw good scores on 101s and 102s...! if even four songs are scored on that way, it accounts for over 60% of the equiv weightings. "one or two spiked scores" is already over 40%! that caveat is no joke!

Also to come back to this: There is just absolutely no way around this "problem" unless the difficulty of a song is carved out individually into certain skillsets and then aggregated after that.

Like...objectively songs that are very X will be harder for people who are bad at X, and easier for people who are good at X, whether that's jacks, jumpstream, bursts, whatever. So assigning one single difficulty is always going to be aiming at being an "average" difficulty and so some people will find it easier/harder to "farm equiv" from them than others.

Even a system that went song-by-song and assigned equiv based on milestone scores like how tier points work still leaves that problem. A song that has one extremely tricky spot meaning getting a 4-0-0-0 is WAYYY easier than a AAA, compared to a song that is just generically hard throughout, where a 4-0-0-0 is easier than a AAA but not hugely so is going to be "better" than if both of those are the same difficulty, but if that extremely tricky thing is keyed to your skillset, you'll AAA it more easily than everybody else.

I don't really know what the solution there would be, or if there even is one.

A thing to do would be to automatically scale/adjust the difficulty on a song based on the scores obtained by people on that song. The more people who AAA it, the lower the difficulty.

Obviously the fact that the number of people playing songs varies wildly between old and new songs, and very few people are actually playing songs now makes that not really workable, but that's really the only way you could avoid this problem.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

You're asserting that people's preferences on division names (or even just having names) is "overcomplicating things". That's pretty close minded ngl. Calling it "stupid meme-worthy" is even worse. Good luck convinving people that way.

What I'm actually doing is disregarding their opinion entirely because like I said, it's a dumb waste of time. I do this with the AntiPA / Tier Point discussions as well.

Sucks to suck, but you're all wrong. It's actually that simple.

[xXOpkillerXx]

@sff_writer_dan

I personally wouldnt mind if all divisions had their own user title. I think the more rewards we give per division, the better (even if just aesthetics). Current division rewards are pretty much all over the place anyway.

I disagree with your idea of multi-system for multiple reasons (complexity, not the point of the thread, ppl already complain that "precision" is too fine when you have 5 players in a division, etc). Maybe I wouldnt disagree if it was more detailed and established, but it's too big of a step for now.

[sff_writer_dan]

Originally Posted by XelNya

What I'm actually doing is disregarding their opinion entirely because like I said, it's a dumb waste of time.

Sucks to suck, but you're all wrong. It's actually that simple.

Do you enjoy things like this? Or are you like...suffering for your art?