October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Greetings keysmashers! This month brings with it a particularly large flurry of changes, so we have decided to create a thread for better discussion!

The many teams comprising FFR Staff have come together this month to bring you, the community, a wide variety of exciting new features and updates. This was an awesome site update for us to put together, so we would love to hear your comments and feedback in this updates discussion thread, or on our front page post. Thank you everyone for your ongoing suggestions and support!


Table of Contents:
• 1-99 difficulty scale expanded to 1-120
• Achievement Tokens replace Normal Tokens with new requirements
• Skill rating formula improved
• Division 7 cutoff raised
• Support Tokens unlock automatically
• New R^3 game modifiers
• Bug fixes


What's New:
• The 1-99 difficulty scale has been expanded to the 1-120 difficulty scale. This update will create additional breathing space for the increasing number files becoming more technically difficult, as the skill of our general population of players increases. The highest rated songs are currently Undici and Reluctantly Accepting Temporary Overexhaustion, clocking in at Difficulty 110. The difficulties of all 2,039 songs have been re-evaluated by the Simfile Difficulty Consultants team, to ensure normal distribution of difficulties.

• Normal Tokens have been replaced by Achievement Tokens, with all new unlock requirements and graphics. Normal tokens were unlocked by solving clues for hidden locations around the site. Since the last Normal Token release in 2008, many hints and locations have become nonsensical or impossible to find. Achievement Tokens can be unlocked by satisfying long-term requirements in-game. Players will keep any tokens they own, regardless of the updated requirements.

• The Skill Rating formula has been updated to reflect the new difficulty scale. The increased difficulty scale will significantly improve the accuracy of leaderboard standings, especially among upper-division players. Levels, ranks, and division boundaries have been recalculated for all players.

• The skill rating cutoff for Division 7 has been increased by two levels. Over the past three years, this requirement has relaxed significantly, resulting in a massive skill disparity between the low/high players of our most competitive skill bracket. The cutoff has been adjusted to reflect the skill level of the first D7 competitors during the 8th Official Tournament in order to maintain the initial intention of this division.

• Skill tokens with difficulty-range AAA unlock requirements have had their requirements adjusted appropriately. Otaku Speedvibe [Heavy] and St. Scarhand [Standard] have had their requirements relaxed by a few difficulty points to fit the new difficulty ranges.

• Support Token unlock requirements are now automated. Vertex BETA vrofl, Dendrite v2, Tell v3 (Extended Mix), and Coactive [Over My Shoulder Mix] will now be unlocked without the need to post proof of completion on the forums. These will unlock if the conditions are met upon visiting your levelranks.

• Reactive Tapping has been added as a new visual modifier to the R^3 engine. As a fun throwback to OMGWTFT0k3N, this visual modifier will make the receptors move in reaction to keys pressed. Force New Judge Mode is another new R^3 engine setting, that will force millisecond timing instead of frame based timing while playing on 30 FPS. In addition, a slider has been added for volume control in the R^3 options.

• Fixed a bug where judge accuracy would be hidden, and restarting a song would cause a crash. Fixed another bug where a framerate above 255 would crash older versions of Flash Player.


Closing Remarks:
In addition to everyone on the Development team, I would like to personally thank the following people in particular for their massive efforts collaborating on these updates. Thank you One Winged Angel, and _Zenith_ for overseeing the entire difficulty rework. Thanks to rushyrulz for coordinating the Normal token overhaul, and thank you noname219, goldstinger, and Nullifidian for helping design the new token graphics.


– PrawnSkunk, Velocity, Trumpet63, RenegadeLucien, Hakulyte, DossarLX ODI
FFR Development & Design

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

i don't say this often but i'd like to say that i really do appreciate every update that's made to the site. <3

ps. you guys do better than niantic when it comes to actually explaining wtf is being updated. +1 right there.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

"You must visit your levelranks to update Achievement & Event tokens!"

"Rank D Level Score P G A M B C Played
476 80 World Tour 2004 195,305 3878 60 1 1 18 3721 1"

"Hardcore of the North *
2000 Max Combo

Ride Out
2500 Max Combo"

Short version: achievement tokens don't seem to currently unlock pre-met requirements.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...token_info.php

So it says St. Scarhand [Standard] is now an AAA on a level 60-69 song. So many songs that used to be high 50's are now low 60's due to the update. Will the songs that where updated count for skill tokens? For example, I AAA'd Starlight [Macgravel] which is now a level 62 song and I didn't get St. Scarhand [Standard]. How will I know what level 60-69 songs will count for the skill token? How am I suppose to know what songs are "true" level 60-69's and not just high 50's that were updated to 60's? I didn't memorize every song in the game before the update lol. Thank you and sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining but I'm just curious to know how this is gonna work.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

just as I started getting close to D7...

These updates look awesome though! Millisecond timing especially seems nice, is that coming for all fps settings?

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I am looking into this.

Skill token unlock requirement descriptions have been updated to reflect the 1-120 difficulty update. Thank you for bringing up the trouble regarding the new token unlock ranges. In addition to your concern, the difficulty changes are not 1:1. For example, within the old Difficulty-66, there are some songs that will be a higher or lower difficulty value. Now that the new difficulty system has been released, we are planning to implement full retroactivity for skill token unlocks.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Millisecond timing is always on when playing above 30 FPS on the R^3 engine. This update just allows those who play on 30 FPS to toggle millisecond or frame-based judgements.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Good stuff as always, great work :)

Just a note that someone's gonna need to reorder the files in numerical order again, they're a little out of place atm

Also using this place to revive my suggestion to add more filters to R^3 beyond just Difficulty pls and thanks <3

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Thanks prawnskunk sounds good man, I'll look forward to the token reimbursement (both normal and skill). One more thing I noticed, the AAA/FC tracker block on mine and everyone's profile says 1844 but up above you mentioned there is 2039 songs in the game.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Ah! There are 1,844 public songs and 195 token songs, totaling 2,039 songs. The profile stat bars do not currently track token songs. :)

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

I was about to say I think the skill tokens/event tokens aren't counted, then I realized I unlocked scarhand standard a while back by AAAing Dazzling Destiny, which is a token song ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: it's weird how it would count in the game list as an AAA, and give me another token, but doesn't count towards my total AAAs... I feel u tho prawn I'll buy it this time ;D

Edit2: http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...nk_special.php

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Oh okay thanks for the responses dudes :)

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Thank you again for your report. This bug has been fixed!

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Thank you for the hard work, guys.
This update is amazing.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Thank you to everyone who worked hard on this. It's exciting to see ideas come into fruition! :)
Also since RATO and Undici are 110s, I'm a bit afraid to see what a 120 would be...

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Check out vertex Beta vrofl, it's a 255 difficulty song lol

I wonder what rank you would be if your #1 score was a AAA on vrofl :p

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Probably the level of BANNED in all caps

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

If we have reactive tapping, can we make OMGWTFT0K3N and The Wises Were Wrong playable on R^3?

Heck, even if the mod doesn't really apply that much to the latter, they should be playable even if it means disabling score recording or something.

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

you would be rank 1

Re: October 2016 Site Updates Discussion
 

Two questions regarding the new tokens system.

For Sifon/Fall/Happy Rainbow, are they based on Average Rank or Skill Rating? It says Average, but if that's the case, they don't appear to be unlocking properly.

The Coactive token still uses the 99-difficulty scale in its description. How is that going to work now?

Anyway, this update was fantastic. Glad to see everything implemented. :)