The Future of Stepmania

[Jousway]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

you can only enjoy a game after playing the same thing over and over for so many times, stepmania is pretty much limited compared to other games like osu, so unless someone writes it to be like osu, having fun MP, and chat, it just gets dull after playing alone 20000 times

[Reincarnate]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

Once college / work rolls around, you've simply got other things to do. I don't even play Steam much anymore. The only games I can stick with are beautiful works of art (e.g. DX:HR), tricky puzzle games (e.g. Antichamber, Fez), or horror games (e.g. Amnesia) that are intentionally designed to elicit strong emotional responses. Otherwise I just get bored and quit.

I also don't like how most files are stepped nowadays. I understand that skill levels will rise over time, but everything feels and sounds the same to me now. IMO, the sweet spot was around VC/FMO level. Those files were always a lot of fun.

Another point I neglected to mention earlier: Stepmania / FFR is not very newbie-friendly. If I were a newbie coming into this community today, I'd feel overwhelmed. So many songs and files to choose from -- where do you start? How do you get set up properly? What are your options? If you have to spend so much time researching this kind of thing, it gets tedious and tiresome. This is another reason why it's important to have some kind of central hub with an organized structure. If you want to grow as a community, you need a way to draw in new members and retain them, and this can be hard to do if you're effectively throwing them in the deep end right from the beginning.

[intensez]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

stepmania el sucko domingo

[Ziemniax]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

I guess playing the game "alone" is an important factor. Key factor in games of this type is RIVALRY. If you have no rivals because you play a game alone, you quickly get bored because you don't have motivation to get better (than who?).

SM lacks feeling of community, both real and online. DDR was a hit because you could play with your friends, and it was fun. Osu is also popular (at least semipopular) because of good, advanced ranking system. SM has many flaws in itself that prevent it from being popular (pointed out by posters above), and one of them is lack of feeling the competition between players.

Not to mention people have better things to do than spending A LOT of time on mastering one game. In League of Legends, CS or other games most important abilities are teamwork and quick thinking, mechanical skill is also vital but not as much. Stepmania relies ONLY on mechanical skill which needs to be practiced slowly and painfully. That sucks.

Future of SM is rather dark, I'm afraid. That is so sad, because the day I got acquainted with Stepmania changed my life dramatically.

[Minion133]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

Mine Infested Files Killed The Game

[ilikexd]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

Mine Infested Files Killed The Game

[Walrusizer]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

Hack fox news and play one of staiains streams on it, people will be amazed and will play the game trying to get better than him. Problem solved. Now we just need someone to hack fox news.

[_Juli_]

Re: The Future of Stepmania

More mechanics to make files with less notes more tricky (Not having to get borderline cts and pump stamina to be skilled) and a central hub like osu! has.