[RELEASE] FFR Community Pack 2025

[James May]

Recommended files to play

• Blood and Thunder
• Credits
• DESPERATE DEATHPARADE
• Gaspard de la Nuit - I. Ondine
• Kono Hoshi de...
• Petal
• slic.hertz
• Splash
• Story of Snowman and Sunshine Girl
• Sweet Witch Girl

These are files that I genuinely enjoyed from the pack.

My main complaints overall

Focus
If the pack was meant to be also played in a loader, then mines/fakes/holds should've been banned from the get go. If you wanted to have holds, roll freezes, mines, and fakes incorporated, then you should've had it just be focused as a pack for Etterna. The clash of FFR-ized files and Etterna-appropriate files clashes too hard and you could tell which files was catered to the FFR audience in mind and which ones were meant for the Etterna audience in mind.

Quality
A lot of the files in the pack from what I played up to Sunset Sky Garden were too varied in quality, and not in a good way. The biggest offenders were the dump files. All of the dump files that I played (Deception, Know Me, Los Angeles and song that plays when you encounter a caterpillar [I am counting caterpillar as a dump unless told otherwise, I played the pack blind]) all felt like I was playing the same file. There's no identity in these dump charts and a lot of the FFR-ized charts in the upper difficulties all suffer from having a rollwall of some sort shoved into the file and ruining the overall flow of the file.

Most of these charts (outside of the ones I recommend) all felt either middle of the road average and forgettable and given the sentiment of "this is a file" or just flat out horrendous to play because of a few key parts of the chart that had the dynamic ruined that should've been caught during QA.

Communication
The fact that there's also a lack of communication in regards to release and updates. This pack had several opportunities to keep the FFR Community Pack legacy going but this release ain't it. I, like many others, thought this pack was dead due to the lack of communication that was going on. And I get it, you got the tourney, the stepcon, and other stuff to delegate your focus on but I think that if you had delegated someone else focus on the pack itself, the reception would've been a whole lot better than this.

Overall Thoughts
This pack has a few gems in there, as I listed, that should honestly be given a chance to be played. I do thank everyone that participated in this pack, and the people that run this pack. I do sound harsh because the FFR Community Packs were some of the first charts that I had gotten my files debuted on and I want this to be good. But unfortunately, this felt like a "oh crap I forgot to release this" kind of release. I hope that if there's another attempt at reviving the FFR Community Pack series that it goes better than this.

Edit: I'm going to play the rest of the pack at some point

[Lights]

Originally Posted by James May

I hope that if there's another attempt at reviving the FFR Community Pack series that it goes better than this.

I do feel the need to clarify that this pack is not an explicit revival of the previous FFR Community Pack series. The title is, in its most literal sense, referring to "who", "what", and "when". I can obviously understand why there is confusion in this regard given how it was named, but this pack was never going to be 1:1 with or an attempt to follow in the footsteps of that older series of packs.

[ToonE156]

Originally Posted by XelNya

Is Zeta's post what I sound like to all of you?

yes but 40% nicer

[Lights]

The pack has been updated. 2 files removed, 1 file added. A few small metadata tweaks + stepartist submitted fixes. Files now have BGs for the sake of ingame menus, however gameplay BGs are still forced to black as a stylistic decision.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

yes but 40% nicer

Huh, lower than I thought it'd be tbh.

[Aquellex]

oh dear I've been here for 16 years

[kommisar]

As the creator of Flash Flash Revolution Community Pack 3 a whole 15 years ago I think it's important to remember there's like maybe 1/20th of the people left on here that still make content. Resources aren't as available in terms of gfx and chart making talent, so it's probably quite difficult to expect a pack of that quality today (i.e. FFRCP3, the seasons packs, FFRCP4 etc.)

also doesn't matter what you call the pack tbh