Make Stepmania Great Again

[Celirra]

Originally Posted by Hakulyte

tl;dr: Most of the information you could potential want as a new player is already here, it's just a matter of pointing them in the right direction.

Do you think the front page on FFR should have some sort of "First time playing StepMania?" link with explanations pointing out to all these sticky threads for the sake of conveniency?

The crux of the argument really boils down to, contrary to most "popular" games you do kind of have to use your research skills to find what you want; there's not a good megathread/textdump/google doc/whathaveyou (maybe I should make one or something...) that would make it easy. Sure you can point people in the right direction, but having a doc you could just link easily, say with an embedded link to the newest version of xwidghet's build or whatnot.

Originally Posted by MooMoo_Cowfreak

Naw but really, I would like to see this game grow but this game is incredibly niche, and rhythm games have really left the public eye. I don't think it's going to get much bigger anytime soon, and I'm fine with that!

I agree to that much; I really don't expect massive growth. It's more maybe having the ability to keep a steady stream of people to counteract those who leave so it doesn't shrink.

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

Make stepmania come with xwidget, work with Mina and make til death the default them, integrate the game with online play so it's basically like osu in terms of profile, leaderboards etc - If I were to design it, I'd make someone configure their profile first time the sign in, set your key binds, speed mod, scroll dir, note skin (include lots of the common noteskins) etc - I feel like the most logical thing would be to encourage spread play right off the bat, rather than having arrow keys be default.

Of course, to implement a leaderboard, there would have to be a standardized song list.. Ive noticed that stepmania online is working on a pack search/a way to index individual files I suppose, from the news post, so perhaps it would be possible.

That's the kind of thing that would be great if done right, but I feel that much development is beyond the scope of most people here to really pull off to an extent where it would be good unfortunately. Ideally, yeah that would be perf.

Originally Posted by Staiain

Basically I need to put up even more effort to get new people to try out the game (AND STAY) when they stumble upon my strim, sure thing man I'll be putting more effort into that than ever

Didn't intend to blame/push pressure onto you in any way, apologies (it did somewhat come off that way, oops); I more used you as an example of the kind of thing that is helping the game and community and what we really need. I'd say you're the primary source of new players actually playing Stepmania, so massive props for that!