A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Feedback greatly appreciated.

As the Hard Songs Batch nears completion, I would like to migrate from the 1-99 difficulty scale to 1-120 in order to expand and create additional breathing space for the upper echelon of files that will queued. In combination with this, I would also like to reinstate the 1-13 title scale, and attribute range AAA token unlocks (Otaku Speedvibe, Scarhand, Derby) to a complete title range.

A few questions for players:

I am unsure as to whether or not there is enough of a substantial gap from current 79 (beginning of FGO) to 89 (high FGO, min range for Derby unlocks) in order to reclassify 89 as the start of the 13th title (formerly FSO). Some players I've spoken to believe there is, others (myself included) believe there isn't. FSO is planned to be anything 100+ after the expansion occurs.

If you agree, let me know. If you disagree, please state where you believe current FSO should begin. I am torn between current 92 (minus AQD, which should move down) and current 93. Ideally I would like to attribute the Derby token to the entire FSO range and nothing more, so if most players agree that 89s are enough of a gap to start the new title at, that would prove optimal. Otherwise, current 89s will probably shift to 95ish with either 92 or 93 becoming the FSO start at 100, and the Derby range will remain at 95+ (kinda shitty for my OCD because I'd prefer no overlap in title ranges but eh). Please let me know which starting point for the 13th title makes most sense to you.

Current 79 (the starting point for FGO) will shift to 85. Current 66 (the starting point for FMO) will shift to 70. Both will remain the minimum unlock difficulties for Scarhand [Heavy] and Otaku Speedvibe [Oni] respectively.

Very Challenging and Challenging ranges are what I'm currently toying with, and whether or not Scarhand [Standard] and Otaku Speedvibe [Heavy] should be awarded for AAA'ing any file in those respective ranges. Currently, Scarhand [Standard] is awarded two difficulty points ahead of where the VC range begins, and Otaku Speedvibe [Heavy] is awarded about midway through the C range. I would like feedback as to whether or not players would be alright with extending those unlock ranges slightly downward to the beginning of each title range (for reference, Scarhand currently is awarded for 58-65 and [Heavy] 50-57...after the shift it would look something like 56-65 and 46-55 using the current ranges [and 60-69 and 50-59 after the difficulty expansion]).

Again, any and all feedback greatly appreciated. If you could touch upon all points discussed that would be great, but I could understand some lower division players not wanting to provide feedback on the high end and perhaps vice versa.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Wouldn't it be easier to work with the 1-99 difficulty range and move down the difficulty of everything to compensate the lack of space for the 89+ ?

Doing the difficulty for 1900+ songs from zero makes me want to faint because just playing each song once takes literally a month at a pace of 60~80 songs per day.

I'm just curious of the reasons behind extending 1-99 to 1-120. Afaik, the less difficulties, the easier it is to properly judge them as well because the margin for error become smaller.

e.g:

Beginner/Easy/Very Easy: 1-20
Standard/Tricky: 21-30
Difficulty/Very Difficulty: 31-40
Challenging/VC: 41-50
FMO range: 51-60
FGO range: 61-70
FSO range: 71-99

Of course, you pick the numbers of how you want to make it work.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

We're going to be getting a good handful of songs that are more difficult than RATO.

The only way to slot them appropriately is to expand. At the moment, RATO and Death Piano are not rated appropriately, they should rightfully extend into the 100s.

If we were to extend downwards instead, the low end would become incredibly compressed in order to slot the very difficult files appropriately. It's more work this way of course but it will make more sense at the end.

I also want a somewhat normal distribution of files over the range covered. Most files in the game are in the C-VC range and thus that's an excellent midpoint for the scale. Shifting things downwards would result in the most populated difficulty being slightly ahead of the first third of the range, which is pretty ugly (and would result in a pretty barren upper half compared to an incredibly populated lower half)

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

With charts becoming not only more technically difficult as the skill of the general population of players increases but structurally more unique, the difficulty scale increasing would further provide more accurate ratings.

The stretching of the spectrum as well would relieve misplaced people on the leaderboards for getting a score on a chart that isn't on par with its rating (This happens more frequently around D2-D4). In other words, the increased scale would put players more accurately to where their skill is.

FSO should be 100-120 in my opinion as the current 92-99 is where the upper percentile is currently at and those ranges would be stretched if/when the scale increases. 92s would not be stretched above 100 whereas DiS, Husigi, Miku, SoS, and Hetero would be imagined above 100 at the end of the increase (I cannot confirm this but I would believe those charts would definitely make the cut above 100 compared to Unconnected or System Doctor).

I have more to say but I want to finish what I'm working on before I do so.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

This difficulty overhaul will definitely improve the accuracy of leaderboard standings. Since skill rating and levels are difficulty-based, Trumpet and I are planning to release a skill rating algorithm update, which combined with the overhaul will mean lots of shuffling around in ranks.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

but listen here u lil shit answer my questions (heidy)

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Well, I agree with that system then. Looks like you're already a little ahead implementation-wise as well with leaderboards. I think you will be able to answer your own questions while working on it tbh.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Is 1-99 for 2k songs REALLY not enough to work with?

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Potentially extending AAA token ranges downwards slightly compromises the skill level needed to have obtained them previously. I would much prefer getting feedback as to why this may be a bad idea now instead of just making the shift and having people complain after the fact (which would be an inevitability).

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I think it would depend on how far downwards they were shifted, if it's something like 1-2 points or very close to, I don't think it's a big deal.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I agree with your assessment of the current 92 being the start of the FSO range in the new system.

Also, leave the home run derby requirement where it is for 20 minutes after you release the new system so I can quick go and unlock it. Thanks

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

1-999 or bust

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

in terms of division placements for tournaments, heavy, scarhand (both) and oni tokens are sort of heavily tied to division placements for d3+, like getting the token has always been sort of the benchmark measure. if you move the unlock requirements down a bit you have to decide whether or not you want to keep it like that (i.e. you'll be moving the division boundaries down a bit too), or whether you want to keep the division boundaries where they are and instead argue that the new-fangled leaderboard thingamabob thingy-thing is enough to determine division placements accurately enough without using those tokens as a yardstick.

having thought about it for a bit, i wouldn't be too opposed to moving the division boundaries for d3 and 4 down a bit, since in official tournaments in the recent past, d2 and d5 have always been by far the largest divisions. so if you move unlock requirements down a bit, d3 and d4 get bigger and d2 gets smaller, which evens things out. you still have the problem of what to do with a highly over-inflated d5. incidentally i feel like the d1-d2 boundary could do with a bit of a bump upwards

oh and finally: i've read about the phenomenon of grade inflation, which is exactly what it looks like you're doing. here's my prediction: by 2060, it will be considered socially acceptable for humans to use robotic implants in their fingers for video gaming. in light of this, ffr difficulties will have expanded by then to include the full 1-999 scale with vrofl at the top.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Agreed. VROFL is lonely up there. :(

-o24

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Expansion proposition seems fine but I think derby range starting at new FSOs (100+) would be more appropriate. Because reasons.

1-999 seems good too.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I wish it would've been like that from the start as it's quite a considerable bump in difficulty to shift from 89 to 92/93 now.

For reference, there's around 25 players that have an 89+ AAA but only 7ish with a 92/93+ AAA. I don't think it'd be fair to make the requirements significantly harder without removing the token from players that don't qualify for the new reqs, nor do I want to strip the token from anyone.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I don't really see a downside to expanding other than the amount of work needed to do so. Also the possibility of "expansion" becoming a norm.. kinda like what zap mentioned. In time we will thirst for harder files, and eventually expand again, and again. But tbh that seems fine.

About the token thing... it's kinda like pianocore. and that other token.. I don't remember them quite well, but they require % amounts of fc/aaas and as we add more files to the game, the amount of charts needed to be aaa'd/fc'd increases, and if you aint played ina while you will fall under the required amount.
I'm not sure how that's being handled currently, or if it's even still an issue BUT

1. I wouldn't mind losing a few tokens if I no longer deserve them. Times are changing, ffr is becoming more and more challenging and the average player's skill cap has increased with it. It'd be an incentive to keep playing and eventually become a better player to achieve those lost tokens once again. It also wouldn't be fair to newer players who have to work harder for the tokens that I got before the new requirements.

2. I worked hard for those feats.. You think I wanna AAA club again?
There have been no indications of the tokens we unlock having the potential to be locked once again. it wouldn't be fair to those who have already proved themselves worthy.


I'm gonna stand by point 1. here. i know most of our community consist of vets, but we do need to cater to future players, and not give older players any "special" treatment.

;;;

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I'm not too concerned with how many levels are in ffr tbh. Like I think you can make a reasonable scale starting from 1-10, 1-40, or 1-120, or 1 for every single song rated in order of how hard each song is. You do you, I know that you'll take good care of the difficulty system <3

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Regarding range AAA tokens being benchmarks for division placement:

Yeah, they feel awesome when you get them, and the fact we still refer to C and VC, artifacts from before the 1-99 system was a thing (hell, Oni get still explicitly uses the FMO title in the pop-up) tells me that we'll continue to be using them as rough groupings for a while.

However, with advancements in ranking algorithms being what they are, I'm in favor of the current plan to expand up to 120. The possibility of songs that are objectively harder than DP and RATO blow my mid-D5 mind (namely, HOW), but I'm against bumping the D4 skill window lower because it's already infamous for being AAA or die in the early going.

Regarding Frankie's post:

I see no reason to lock tokens because the requirements have changed. Imagine my surprise when I AAAed Makiba before it was added to the list. Then about 2 hours of whoring later, Oni was finally mine. Just because a song isn't on the unlock list anymore doesn't mean we didn't get it fair and square. Besides, only a scumbag would pull a douche move like "I got the AAA on this song, but now it gives a different token instead, so can I have that manually unlocked?"

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Is the situation with the Makiba example that:
-you aaa'd makiba.
-2 hours later makiba was added to the oni-get list
-you in turn unlocked oni from the makiba aaa beforehand?

that seems fine and understandable but isn't what i discussed.

I feel i'm misunderstanding all this because these two sentences express your preference,
"I see no reason to lock tokens because the requirements have changed."
"Just because a song isn't on the unlock list anymore doesn't mean we didn't get it fair and square."
essentially : I want to keep the tokens i unlocked even though i no longer meet the requirements.
-if you kept the token(s)/benefit(s) of something when you no longer have the required feats for them it would no longer be fair, or square.
-I believe you should not sustain any benefits until you meet the requirements again, just like everyone who must succeed you

compared to these two examples which don't really compliment your preference
"Imagine my surprise when I AAAed Makiba before it was added to the list. Then about 2 hours of whoring later, Oni was finally mine."
"Besides, only a scumbag would pull a douche move like "I got the AAA on this song, but now it gives a different token instead, so can I have that manually unlocked?"
they express a situation where : you achieved a feat on a file before the feat was accessible through the file, and in turn you want to be rewarded the benefits.
-that is fine, it's understandable with reason of you met the current requirements, so you get the prize.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Yeah, that's not a minefield worth threading on considering the whole harder songs thing is supposed to cater to that population.

In any case the distribution of AAAs in the 92/93+ range should increase a bit with the increased number of songs due to the hard batch.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Anecdote:
Back when I was a wee lad, the requirements for unlocking Oni kept changing and becoming harder. Back in 2011 or whatever, None Would Escape and Novo Mundo were valid unlocks for Oni and I had flagged them both, but could not AAA, despite my best efforts. Through gradual change of requirements, it kept "running away" from me, and I was trying my hardest to chase it. By the time I AAA'd Novo Mundo and None Would Escape, they no longer unlocked the token. Eventually I caught up with it on a lucky Largiloquent Dithyramb run two years later, and many other qualifying AAAs followed in the next few months. (There is a similar story for Scarhand [Heavy] btw.)

Point being: shit changes, just gotta roll with the punches. I'm not necessarily in favor of revoking someone's token that they legitimately earned during a time in the past, and I would not lobby for removal of Oni from some D4 yokel that unlocked it on NWE in 2011. To be quite frank, token requirements shouldn't be screwed with that much anyway. Leave derby where it's at relative to the new system, and if you want to come out with some 100+ shit, make a new token for that. (And I'm going to regret saying that because it will be yet another one that I will never earn...) After all, there is a significant skill gap in AAA-ability between the two difficulties in question (25:7). I'm ok with making some tokens slightly easier and screwing with the division system a bit, since it's obviously not a perfect system anyway, but anything that would cause dramatic changes should be handled differently.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Here's my question: do the tokens really matter THAT much, that you have to sort them out before anything else?

If you want to expand the difficulties (which I still don't think is necessary, but everyone ignored my first post, w/e), why not just make your changes, figure out the new divisional cutoffs, and set the tokens based on those cutoffs? Especially since everyone uses token X = division X for all divisions 3+.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I agree with Rushy that Token Requirements shouldn't be touched, however, with the difficulty expansion I must ask; Will Division 8 become a thing in the future, after the expansion?

Even if 10 players are qualified for it, I think it would be appropriate to have it because I do not think that D7 should be split from 87-120 (depending on where the 13th title would be placed, 92/93-120). In lieu, that should warrant a new divisionary/skill token that passes Derby (requiring 98+ AAA, for example).

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

No token with a AAA range higher than Derby is going to be added, at least not for quite some time. For Derby to have an unlock range comparable to the other range AAA tokens, the new unlock min for the hypothetical token would start at Death Piano (even Derby itself is too low imo). That's asking people to AAA a song difficulty that no one's even gotten close to AAA'ing since difficulties of that caliber have been live on this site.

If one day there are players at that hilarious of a skill level, then that could be open for discussion. For now, it looks like the most fair thing to do would be keeping the difficulty unlock min as it was prior to any difficulty conversion because it would be such a substantial jump in AAA difficulty (although I'm tinkering with the idea of throwing Drunk Optimus up as lowest FSO, so that could've been the 'harder Derby' freebie lol)

It's crappy because I really like attributing one of each of those tokens to an entire title range, but again I don't think it's right to remove the token from anyone that's earned it previously nor should the unlock requirements be so drastically changed.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Honestly I don't think more divisions should be added. The more divisions you make, the higher chance there is of "misplacing" someone and the more issues you will run into with sandbagging and such.

Back in the day it was beginner, intermediate, advanced...plain and simple. The qualifications for making it into these groups I feel should change over time, rather than the number of groups.

On the topic of difficulties however, in other disciplines the "rating" aspect varies across the board. Some sports like competitive diving maintain a strict difficulty rating system that, as far as numbers go does not change; however what constitutes a difficulty of 4.1 from year to year may change. I'm noticing that you will rarely see the scale itself get larger, rather the difficulty of a certain element may change its rating within the established scale.

One thing is for sure though, pretty well every sport will go through an overhaul of difficulties if the need is there and old standards just don't cut it. I would think this to be the case with FFR since as Rob mentioned, there will be a ton of files that are harder than Death Piano and simply assigning a 99 to them won't cut it.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

So...what exactly is wrong with say, moving DP to 90 and RATO to 95 (or whatever will be appropriate with the new files coming out), making the new hardest file the 99, and just scaling everything currently back by 10%? Speedvibe Heavy unlock would go to 45, Oni would go to 60, etc.

The compression thing might come up, but if the site lived on 1-12 for so long [whose textual rankings persist even to this day], I don't see the problem. Moving from 1-99 to 1-120 seems to me like adding 21 more unnecessary labels, especially since this would require a complete overhaul of most of the game's songs just to accommodate about 25 incoming super-difficult files.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

what you just described also involves a complete overhaul of most of the game's files for it to be done accurately

it just, in addition, makes poor use of the upper half in the scale

edit: I should note at this point, this thread wasn't created to decide whether or not the scale will be expanded to 1-120 from 1-99. That is definitively happening as I've stated numerous times in the past in multiple threads. Nor was this thread created to discuss new divisional boundaries (although I'm sure those are most definitely going to be shifted a bit when the tourney begins, and of course range AAA token discussion will lead to division discussion as those have been commonly used in correlation with one another for a while). It was simply to discuss where the the 13th title should start, and if players are okay with Otaku [Heavy] and Scarhand [Standard] unlocks being lessened by their current difficulty minimums slightly. I can understand other questions having arisen during difficulty discussion, but barely anyone has answered the questions articulated in the OP, which just leads me to believe no one read it.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

This is the current distribution of files per difficulty range.
1-10 = 152
11-20 = 145
21-30 = 169
31-40 = 202
41-50 = 255
51-60 = 290
61-70 = 372
71-80 = 231
81-90 = 122
91-100 = 26

If you increment the difficulty range you might solve the cluster in the 51-70 range, but the FSO category would have ~20 files (+ the ones coming) in the 100-120 range. That range would be too empty tbh.

Since we are discussing tokens as well, I feel like the requirements for Here We Go should be changed a bit. With the increase of harder files and the introduction of the raw score system, this token went from difficult but fair to almost impossible.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I'm on my way to work now and will look at this thread later, but with the expansion 1-10 will have significantly fewer files in that range. Currently files that breached Standard (the 5th title in 1-13) start at difficulty 10. That's going to be stretched out considerably.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Alright. Well then.

I'm of the opinion that Otaku Heavy/Scarhand Standard actually NEED to be lowered, especially if they're so closely tied to the divisional system. Right now, D3 = 46, but Heavy is 50. Likewise, D4 is 55, but S[s] is 58. No other division have gaps of this size--D5 and D6 have gaps of 1, and D7 has a gap of 2 [but that is being changed by the new system.]

It seems quite weird to me that you can be well into D3/D4 without getting their respective token.

So either the divisional cutoffs need to go up or the tokens need to go down, and since we're talking about shifting the tokens, I'd go for the latter.

As for the 13th title, I can't say anything about this. I'm nowhere even close to good enough to be able to tell a 92 from a 93, or even an 89 from a 92.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

dude you made my day you have no idea

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Tokens in general could use a rework, but that's a discussion for another thread.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

YAY PURPLE IS COOL

your example can't be representative of all sports or rating systems. grade inflation happens, and individual sports or whatever make their own judgements as to how to deal with this. let's take the example of British rock climbing grades, which is an extreme case the other way, but is my favourite example to discuss when the topic of grade inflation gets mentioned.

back in the early 20th century, when the sport of outdoor rock climbing (with ropes, not just bouldering) was first introduced over here, British rock climbing grades went: Easy, Moderate, Difficult. fair enough, right? just like when you said ffr divisions were beginner, intermediate and difficult. but then people got better and better, along with climbing equipment getting better as well. and by the era of the end of world war 2, the grade system was: Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Very Difficult, Hard Very Difficult, Severe, Hard Severe, Very Severe, Hard Very Severe, eXtremely Severe, Exceptionally Severe.

in the '70s, people started thinking ok this adjectival system is getting ridiculous and we need a better way of adding levels to the top of the scale. so they renamed the last 2 levels to Extreme(ly severe) 1 and Extreme 2. i think you can tell where this is going. at the moment, the highest difficulty level is Extreme 11. this site gives more details about the british system

it's not just britain that does this, although i picked the best example because the adjectives are funny and they make it sound like they really didn't know what they were doing. take a look at other countries' grading systems and you can see how every scale is deliberately left open-ended to make more room at the top.

grade inflation is definitely a thing that exists everywhere where people don't suspect. as another example, the introduction of the A* grade at british gcse and a-level exams comes to mind, since it was much easier to introduce new grades than redefine old ones.

this post has no relevance at all to ffr difficulties but i felt like typing it anyway because i thought some context would be interesting

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Well, it somewhat does have some relevance and I think this sort of approach is much more easy to adapt when the sample size of elements you're dealing with is quite large. For instance in diving, gymnastics, acrobatics etc. the number of distinct maneuvers you can choose from is much more limited than the complex variation in say climbing routes or in our case note charts. It's easier to keep the rating on 1000's of carefully rated songs and up the ceiling than to overhaul everything which is why for us I think truncating at 120 is good. If the need calls for >120 then I'm sure we can add to it no??

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

My personal thinking is that there is not much gap between 80-85 but for 86-90 it's quite one. However, currently (in-game) difficulties are not that consistent (There are lots of "easy" 85s comparing to a few "extremely-hard" 80s.) So we may need something like a "80 standard, 85 standard and 90 standard" to further discuss this.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

difficulties are already being reworked

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

To add more only somewhat relevant junk:

Has anyone noticed that songs on the edge (e.g 50s, 60s, 70s) are harder than the level above? Like I find 71s easier than 70s...

Maybe I'm bad tho

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

A 99-point, soon to be 120-point system is definitely gone have a few errors made.

Right now I still think the 76-80 range is worst, though 64-67 can be pretty dumb.

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

The struggle is real.

As for the OP, I just wanna touch on the lower-ended portion -
I'm for the difficulty shift downwards on unlocking Speedvibe [Heavy] & Scarhand [Standard]. As stated before, it makes sense to have the token unlock at the lower-end of the division cutoff and not in the middle. That'll at least give players something to aim for once they reach (or even prior to reaching) that plateau.

Mentally speaking from personal experience, even though I'm Lv. 58, I don't feel like I'm really a D4 player. That's mainly due to me not having St. Scarhand. Even if the changes are implemented, I still won't have the token... (that's another story for another day.) I think that knowing that you have the skills and capabilities of getting a AAA to unlock a 'division determining' file will help with your overall confidence.

/endrambling

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

I don't have the argument points to make a thread, but (opinions of course)

1. There is no way that OppIrish is harder than You're Gonna Love My Nuts
2. There is no way that OppIrish is the same difficulty as Stress Free Style
3. There is NO GODDAMN WAY that Powerflux is somehow the same difficulty as Metro

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Heh (ok)

Re: A Few Points Concerning Difficulties
 

Imo you guys should change the ranges for certain divisions.

I personally feel like D5 is too large (lol cause im in it), like when I was in D3 or D4 I could see my progress... D5 -> D6 is like a freakin mountain to climb, like damn better get me ice pick and snow shoes ready boys lets gooo (don't get me wrong D6 -> D7 will be like climbing up from the bottom of marinas trench, can't wait ;D)

I think you all over estimate how "this entire community is high level players".. like yeah, maybe the ones active on the forums are...

However, if you are a nerd like me and you like to parse http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/arc/recent.php and collect data on it, you'd notice that a LARGE number of the players that play are actually lower division, like a ton ton ton of people - you'd actually be surprised at how many people play. (Velocity if you read this PLEASE don't hide the results of the recent games page ;_; bro I love you <3)

Don't wanna release any data until I actually have a decent/accurate amount, but it generally takes approx 5-10 minutes for the entire recent games page to reload with new games

In terms of unique players I'd argue that FFR has at least 2000+ daily players, which is solid.

EDIT: Shit this is about song difficulties, not tiers... i figured FGO etc was tied to div tho