Has the Evolution of FFR Engines increased general skill?

[_Zenith_]

Noticing through recent years vs the first five years of FFR, has there been a general spike in skill from all players happened due to the new engines?

Back in the day, you only had the Legacy engine to play on, which runs iirc on a constant 30fps, has less reading space, but works on nearly every computer. There were only 6 divisions competitively, not near as many songs, the 1-12 scale (later 1-13), and less of a player base.

Nowadays, there is still the Legacy engine; but now there is also the Velocity engine, R^2, and R^3 engines. They each have their perks and downfalls, but what can be noticed between each engine and general skill in the population?

R^3 is more advanced with creating a very personal setup that a player can use that contains options for rates, noteskins, speedmods, etc. There is more reading room, screencutting ability, and even the option to play FFRMania (as well as different engine playlists that certain Teams use, for example Team Indeed's engine).

What can be said about the skill increase from then to now; excluding the fact players are adapting better than previous. Are the engines a main benefactor in increasing skill, or have they already made a substantial impact on the community as a whole's skill and can be further experimented on?

I'd like a clean discussion; and if anybody could fill in the blanks I left with the options in Velocity/R^2 engines please post them. Originally posted on a phone but when I get on a computer I will clean up the OP.

[One Winged Angel]

As an aside, six divisions became a thing well after the start of FFR (the first instance of which happened in the 6th official, post-downtime). The first official tournament only had three divisions, with (roughly) every subsequent two officials tacking on an additional division.

[gold stinger]

I think there may have just been a general increase in skill overall because FFR started around when rhythm-based games were becoming a thing, and people naturally started pouring more time into it with fingers on a computer.

I think if there was any chance of actually telling if there was a skill difference based on what the latest available engine was at the time, someone would have to make a graph detailing the average difficulty to skill levels from 2004 to 2015, and then define the zones of which a certain FFR engine is most commonplace, and see if it's a linear graph, or it contains curves/steps with the beginning of each new engine and curving outwards during the span of dominance for each engine.

[Mourningfall]

I feel as though it has less to do with the engines themselves and more to do with those who pioneered these sorts of games.
As the best became better, difficult files became more readily available for others.

If it weren't for Icy and Hi19's abundance of high quality Jumpstream files engaging the elites to become more proficient, the median jumpstream skill would be significantly lower. If it weren't for people like Mina or Midare, there would be fewer people able to read less othodox patterns. Kaiten pushed boundaries for speed etc.

Basically it was the community that paved the way for improvement and gave others a better understanding of what constitutes a skilled player. When the hardest files are conquered, new challenges arise. It's been a progressive thing and I doubt people would be half as good as they are now without the variety of files covering every playstyle, or the combined experience and methodology of those who were able to transcend the boundaries of whats possible.

As the ceiling rose, it gave room to jump higher.
That's my 2 cents.

[_Zenith_]

Very interesting points; now I'm happy I made this thread.

@OWA, I never knew that to be honest (I started in 2009). Maybe I should look towards the older community when it comes to factoids pertaining that era. ATTN: Tosh.

[Dynam0]

I ordered these factors in descending order of how much effect they had on general skill:

1) Engine changes have definitely opened up people's potential (speed-mods and av-miss fix really helped in this regard).
2) File selection; if you thought you had mindblocks now, imagine having only 10 FGO+ files to choose from.
3) Hardware, this was a huge deal for me because my skill went up by leaps and bounds as soon as I got a mech kb (everyone seemed to use bulky rubber dome keyboards early on), others don't find it a big factor but I do .
4) Standalone players really help the game run more smoothly and I don't think anybody was using those pre-2009 but I could be wrong.

I don't think the bar for accuracy has gone up much since 2007-ish.
Speed/stamina is tricky to say what increased it, whether it was simply happen-stance that insanely skilled players picked the game up or a mixture of harder song choice + hardware improvements were the cause.

[ItsOnlyDanO]

If anything its probably easier for people to get into the game, as since they now have a choice of engine as opposed to being forced to use legacy. This also means that a player can more easily progress in terms of skill as they have more options available (in the case of R^3/Velocity that is) to play around with and get used to the game

I mean if we look at the ffr playerbase as a whole, the majority of active users are using R^3 because it has the most features and overall better interface that makes it more appealing than something like legacy. In fact Legacy is pretty much dead amongst the top players (Bar a few of us, LEGACY REPRESENT RIGHT HERE) and as a whole there is almost no reason for a new player to use legacy because it lacks a lot of things that the newer engines provide.

Basically the newer engines make it easier for someone to get better because they have the features to do so. They also make it easier to get into the game for the same reasons. If everyone still had to use legacy, I would be intrigued to see how this affect overall player skill.

[Poison-]

I think step artists need some credit here as well. The general quality of files has greatly increased.

I attribute most of my skill increase to harder songs.

[_Zenith_]

@Poison, yes. The stepartists now and even the older ones who have refined and adapted to a newer era; where now skill is visibly greater than it ever has been deserves huge credit. Having the 1-99 scale increases how we have a visual representation on how to guage a player's skill. FFR has a healthy amount of amazing stepartists, with newer people who have gained interest in doing so.

@DanO, you bring up fine points that I myself would like to see, particularly how skill would be affected if the community had only one engine to use. I find Legacy's best quality to be that any hardware could run it; and I have never seen a frameskip or the halfnote situation I had a few months back with R^3.

@Dynam0, I agree with your entire post; but I have no clue on the changes visible in terms of accuracy. The addition to "Amazing" accuracy is an attempt to further guage how accurate a player is, although the frame window to get an Amazing is broken iirc. FFR players for the most part also play another Rhythm Game, predominantly stepmania and osu. As for o!m, I have no idea of the game mechanics, but for SM there is a great representation of accuracy with not only Marvelous Timing, but with the option of changing the tightness of the timing windows (Judge 1-7 with 4 as the viable Judge for competitive reasons, similar to being on 1.0 as default or 1.2 for challenge).

[badman7772]

To answer this thread's question, an astonishing yes. I think R^3 (for me) and a more dynamic song pool has made the game a lot better. Compared to like, 2008 (when avmisses were first gone) it was still hard to get Oni back then because of not only the limit on what songs unlocked it, but speed mods were nowhere near flexible.

I mean if 1.75x was too slow and 2x was too fast, you were screwed unless you got used to 2x. They added more later, but it still wasn't dynamic enough. After a while, custom mod input was added, making it a lot easier for players to adjust to their ideal mod. However, in legacy and velocity engines, you were still limited because certain mods simply didn't work. R^3 on the other hand doesn't have that issue, and I believe that alone made me get so many good scores.

To summarize it all, players that have to carve very little numbers of a speed mod to get the perfect feel for certain songs got it really good on R^3. If you stuck with one speed mod, never tweaked it depending on the song, then it could explain why those people still playing legacy/velo still play on those engines.

Some other things have helped players get better too.

-Screen cutting/expanding in their favor
-60 FPS for easier burst/glut PA
-Different noteskins and receptor spacing for readability
-Being able to hide whatever you want so nothing can distract you
-Making even the slightest tweaks to an offset so the file plays in your favor
-More things that I haven't thought of while posing this

Yeah. Too many things have made FFR players get better, especially with the booming of Oni/Scarhand unlocks lately.

[female]

Originally Posted by Dynam0

4) Standalone players really help the game run more smoothly and I don't think anybody was using those pre-2009 but I could be wrong.

You were just outta the loop

[Arch0wl]

I'm going to back dynam0's reply here with this addition:

ffr engine advances didn't increase skill directly, because you don't technically even need an FFR game to develop some of the muscles or muscular speed you use for it.

what the engines did do however is develop the measurement of skill and they did this fabulously. raw score rankings separate players more accurately now than they ever have.

[Gonads of Godric]

I can't get adjusted to R^3 myself....it feels like the arrows are floating by and I can't get the timing down, no matter what adjustments I do to it. I can definitely say Velocity is still my favorite engine.