Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

This was a topic I wanted to have a discussion regarding back from over a week ago and touched very lightly on in lemonguy's odd22 AAA thread...only for RATO to be AAA'd extremely shortly afterwards which further substantiated the argument.

Historically speaking, I feel like Death Piano has been viewed as the easier file given it was SDG'd by Dossar much earlier than any RATO scores were approaching SDGs. However, I feel DP's structure is extremely conducive with Dossar's skillset, and his ability to perform better on DP than RATO is an outlier compared to most high D7 or D8 players.

As the former staff member in charge of difficulty assessment, I was fine with RATO being rated one point above DP when most scores were still quite poor on both charts. It was theorized RATO's abysmal conversion leading to one frame jacks, single frame gaps in one hand trill dependent jumpstreaming sections, and tons of poorly placed pseudo-jumps within the 48th sections would make it significantly harder to approach AAA compared to DP. Simultaneously, several top tiers familiar with how much of a difference a good conversion makes for scoring on a hard file acknowledged RATO would have at least a small handful of scores approaching or hitting AAA if it had ever received frame fixes. RATO was very recently AAA'd, and while the conversion makes it much harder to accomplish, it certainly isn't impossible.

Looking at scoreboards alone, it's quite clear that more players struggle with scoring on DP compared to RATO.



RATO's top 15 scores are all contained within approximately 30 raw goods while DP's range begins to approach 70, and tapers off into 'very bad' a lot quicker than RATO does. They're vastly different files, and while DP's difficult sections hone in on a very specific skillset, it's a skill demonstrated less proficiently at top tier levels compared to 240bpm jumpstreaming and burst control.

Would like opinions from the community regarding this given they're both very popular files but I've felt their ratings should've been swapped for a while now and recent events only strengthened that.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

*All of this is my personal opinion, obviously*

What makes RATO hard in addition to its bad conversion would be the few jacks in the chart that require good wristjack control as well as being able to easily transition from a burst to jumpstream. The beginning jack has a 4 arrow 16th note jack followed by two jumps (4th/8th) so that one's not too bad, however the triplet jack later on is significantly harder as it is badly converted and then it is followed by a 48th note burst starting on that same hand. Everything else really depends on a player's ability to feel comfortable with 240 BPM jumpstream/handstream and proper transitioning of bursts and rolls which in retrospect are very simple patterns. The issue lies mainly with how the rolls converted which as a result requires very precise timing in order to avoid "non-perfects". Despite the anchor patterns, you don't really have to be good at one-hand trilling or even the best at speed to manage most of the chart.

Death Piano on the other hand is like the polar opposite. The music's mainly at 170 BPM (?) so the jumpstream is super easy. The challenge comes with slower but more persistent 12th note jacks, long trills (both one-hand and two-hand) with bursts in between, 16th note jumpjacks which are also converted badly in some specific areas, and really the part that makes this incredibly challenging to AAA (let alone SDG) would be the entire speed-up section in the last 30-40 seconds of the chart. In other words, this challenges more skill areas than just bursts/jumpstream. Not only do you need consistency with jacks, but you need to have control on two different speeds of jacks (first being 170 BPM 12th notes or 127.5 BPM 16ths, and second being 170 BPM 16th notes for the end trill) in addition to doing one hand trills with bursts in between (170 BPM 24ths or 255 BPM 16ths). I had an irl conversation with Dossar on how he manages the awkward BPM of 170 where it's almost like too fast to wristjack but too slow to vibrate, but I unfortunately forgot his answer.

I would like more samples from players that may have also done isolations/practice runs of certain sections from both charts (and I wish I still had my screenshots saved), but the tl;dr is that I was, in theory, more capable of SDG'ing RATO than I was with Death Piano. RATO I feel allows more room for pattern manipulation or in other words getting away with hitting certain patterns as jumps while Death Piano does not...except maybe the one hand trill section but that requires extremely precise keytaps.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

I think the answer is pretty clear

Switch the two already

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

If the switch happens, Dossar will get lvl 102 by doing nothing!

Edit: On a more serious note I do agree with DP taking over RATO's difficulty: Death Piano's patterns and skill types are vastly targeted towards jack-control, trills w bursts, chordjack, and vibro (at the end). Let alone the vibro trill being responsible of over 50% of my raw good count. Seriously I think it's quite clear that there are people who can successfully FC every section of DP and aren't fast enough to vibro the ending. Even so, one single miss during the trill will cause an unbeatable chain reaction of goods. RATO on the other hand is mostly made up of jumpstream / roll mixture.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

I've stated this before in the thread & in SFG's chat prior to the AAA, that if and when it gets AAA'd, DP & RATO should swap difficulties.

My opinion remains unchanged.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

I don't think there are going to be many counter arguments if any. Looking at how the poll is progressing I think it's safe to make the swap.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

I believe that brendon has had AAA isolation runs of the ending 30-40 second speed up section of DP though.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

Death Piano 108 -> 109
Reluctantly Accepting Temporary Overexhaustion 109 -> 108

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

\o/

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

brendon is also able to vibro, which alot of people can't do, its a rare combo of being able to vibro and also being a top player in terms of speed that makes it possible

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

OWA moved up in %

Move this man to D8

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

i feel half bad for elah. that dude just got a 10-0-1-0 today on RATO and the difficulty was bumped down right after lol

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

hey i voted yes on this LOL

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

oh dw i only feel half bad, it was still a sick score my dude gz

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

Kinda late, also a post coming from a boomer, but:

I think more players have been capable of getting a very good score on RATO over the past few years because of how much 4K VSRGs have focused on speed-oriented skillsets (jumpstream, streaming, etc.). Players today wouldn't have any difficulties reading most of the chart (barring the 48th burst 75% in) and certainly wouldn't have any difficulties hitting 98% of the chart.

This wasn't entirely the case in 2012-2013, where most top tier players had issues hitting patterns that required split jumptrilling in RATO. There was also the fact that practically every top-tier player at the time had RATO mindblocked. Half of the top 15 scores on RATO (Silly, Ziltoid, jakads, Elah, Shxfted, brendon, Legend, SoFast, Snaggles) are from players who didn't play RATO before attaining the scores that they attained and were from other rhythm game communities.

Death Piano, on the other hand, hasn't gotten much easier despite players being much faster today. You've already mentioned why: most of the hard sections in the chart "hone in on a very specific skillset". I think top players today are far more capable of hitting the chordgluts in Death Piano, but I think most top players would still find the 24th trill + 48th burst section and ending 32nd trill to be very hard to consistently AAA or low SDG. The difficult sections in Death Piano are also sections where you'd bleed 6-12+ goods if you mess up just once, whereas you wouldn't be as severely punished in RATO for similar mistakes (barring the aforementioned 48th burst). I don't think that isolation AAAs on certain sections mean much if your average performances on those sections are much worse.

I also agree with Dossar's skillset matching Death Piano extremely well; his wristjacking was well ahead of his time, he could nail the 32nd trill fairly consistently, and he didn't have much issue with the 24th trills + 48th bursts because he was very used to the FFR engine. Most players today might have the wristjack ability, but they typically lack either the ability to hit the 32nd trill consistently or they're not familiar enough with timing on the engine to nail the 24th trills + 48th bursts consistently.

I don't really have a strong opinion on whether Death Piano and RATO should be switched because I think they're two completely different charts (and I think someone can get a near-AAA on Death Piano while still getting 40s on RATO), but if difficulties are based mostly on how difficult for the community to AAA certain charts, then RATO should be switched with Death Piano. The average high D7 player today is far faster and would have far less difficulty with RATO than with DP.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

sadly didn't take the screenshot directly before the switch, I took it from the wayback machine in August 5th, but here's a before/after



orange -1's because elah

EDIT: ok elah just got an insane you universe score so basically just imagine more orange -1's

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

i have had this convo before. death piano seems like a more difficult file. mainly because of the trills which are just ridiculous. i think it may even beat undici.

Re: Death Piano and RATO difficulty discussion
 

fuck curse you RATO for getting nerfed if that never happened then you univerise wouldnt matter !!!!!!!!!!!!