purchased isn't broken anymore

[Xx{Midday}xX]

I don't support losing the accuracy of levelrank.... I guess.


EDIT: Excuse my half broken head at 7:54AM.

[y0ttabyte]

Well if they cleaned up the vROFL scores, everyone who doesn't have it would be ranked 73 (assuming all the token-holders have played it at least once), which I would not mind at all. This would only affect some people who have very low average ranks, but if you have such a low average rank I don't see why you wouldn't have a decent chance of getting it in official tournaments... (and a lot of people with double-digit average ranks have vROFL already)

[qqwref]

Well the thing is that they already *did* clean up the vrofl scores. There was one day (April Fools '07? not sure) where it was available for anyone to play, and then after that it became a skill token... so the way that they cleaned it up was by deleting any scores which were newer than that day and by people who didn't have the token (that is, scores gotten through challenges). Of course if it became public I'd prefer to see all of those other scores archived and removed, since it's unfair to everyone who wasn't around then.

Even though vrofl is technically possible to FC since the avmiss fix, the criterion for being a public file shouldn't be whether it is FCable/AAAable (since back in the avmiss days there were a few public files that you couldn't FC, such as Crowdpleaser). I think it's more important to consider whether a typical user has a reasonable chance of getting it. Anyone can get the purchased and secret songs by just playing the game long enough, and the skill and cleverness required to get skill tokens or regular tokens can be acquired through practice and dedication. But for vrofl the only way to get it is to basically be in the right place at the right time - either be in the top 8 of FFR when a tournament comes or happen to be in a division that you're one of the best in. I think it would just be unfair to have it make a difference in public levelrank, because a typical user basically can't get it.

[y0ttabyte]

That's a pretty good point. Par from the high divisions, getting vROFL is highly luck of the draw IMO (and one of my main gripes with the official tournaments).

[dean_machine]

What about just removing all secret songs and purchased songs from levelranks? Any problem in doing that? They never really were "public" anyway.

[MrRubix]

How much do subbies cost credit-wise?

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

everyone celebrate by spending 5k credits on this new R8U (Another) song

unless you don't have that many because you GAMBLED THEM ALL AWAY LOL

Anyway, this is great, very glad this is finally fixed.

The fun in losing all of it is that it's like starting over. It's nice to see the fix, but did they have to wait till after gambling to do it?

[Tasselfoot]

Originally Posted by qqwref

500000? Oh geez, that's gonna take like a year. Sucks for us non-lucky folks who can't make money appear out of nowhere Oh well, personally I've always gone towards purchased songs since they stay bought, so at least I can theoretically get those.

I don't think the normal and special levelranks should be combined together, for two reasons. First, it would just encourage cheating on riddle tokens, since people who wanted to decrease their average rank would have more of an incentive to get tokens the easy way rather than actually spending the time to solve all the puzzles and find them the legitimate way. Second, where would the subscriber songs go? You'd still need a second levelrank for subscribers to check their ranks on those songs, and it wouldn't make sense to put them on the normal levelrank because then non-subscribers would have a bunch of 0-score songs that they can't get rid of by any in-game means. So I think I'd prefer to keep the levelranks as they are.

for the ~6 subbie songs.... i think it could be dealt with with not having a levelrank for 6 songs. you can always check your rank on the song via the levelstats (if you're top200) or via the results screen in game.

Originally Posted by y0ttabyte

I'm not sure. That seems a pretty arbitrary reason to exclude it from the bars. I mean Death Piano doesn't look like it's going to be AAA'd any time soon (if ever) and it's included.

And to clarify my earlier point I should not be ranked 2,577 for vROFL if it is included. Due to the new challenge policy the unfairly obtained challenge scores should (ideally) all be wiped. However, I'm unsure if admins are highly enthusastic to do this :P Maybe some sort of score cleaning script could be devised, but this is way out of my league.

the reason to potentially bar vROFL from the profile bars is that it's the one token that isn't public.

Originally Posted by Xx{Midday}xX

I don't support losing the accuracy of levelrank.... I guess.
I don't know anymore.

Maybe if the rank number could be changed to the highest... like if two people have AAAd a song, and everyone else dont have scores, everyone else has rank 3.

Hence, people who never played vROFL would be like 300th place.

that's how it is......

Originally Posted by y0ttabyte

Well if they cleaned up the vROFL scores, everyone who doesn't have it would be ranked 73 (assuming all the token-holders have played it at least once), which I would not mind at all. This would only affect some people who have very low average ranks, but if you have such a low average rank I don't see why you wouldn't have a decent chance of getting it in official tournaments... (and a lot of people with double-digit average ranks have vROFL already)

i did fix it up somewhat. i removed about 70 scores from the vROFL list. but, also, it wouldn't be rank 73. it was public for 1 day. many users only played it on that day and did not get a challenge on it to play it since. it wouldn't be fair to remove those users scores.

[Dronak]

Originally Posted by Tasselfoot

Dronak: i've been tossing around the idea of making secret songs go up to 500,000 instead of 100k. again, for the reasons of making them more valuable and making people make decisions. i want it to be the case where the vast majority of users can not access/play every song. it makes them more valuable.

Yes, that could certainly be done. It would probably mean I'd be more than only 1 or 2 secret songs behind though. It takes me a while just to earn the ~10k between songs now.

I think the skill tokens, and maybe the achievement ones, are a pretty good way of keeping everyone from getting every single song in the game. Of course there are some excellent players who can probably get every single one of these, but I imagine most players can't. I've pretty much resigned myself to not getting all of them. At least they're not affecting my average rank.

I suppose that no matter how high the secret songs go, people will be able to get them *eventually*. Similarly with purchased songs. Given enough time and enough playing, you'll get the credits for them. But skill tokens that require you to do specific things may never be obtained by some people. I guess that's why I always saw skill tokens as the main way of keeping (some) songs out of everyone's hands. *shrug* Just my thoughts.

[Tasselfoot]

Definitely. I feel like there is currently enough content for those users first starting out and enough content to challenge the vast majority of users. It becomes a tough balance between listing to the loud voices on the forums, which usually come from the more experienced players and understanding the unvoiced opinions of the newer user or casual user who isn't posting. It's also tough for me, because I'm near the upper echelon of players myself, so my vantage point is a bit skewed.

So I recognize the need for more easier levels... most of what we add now are Very Difficult or harder, which is a byproduct of the fact that simfile authors step what's fun for them, which is usually harder songs/charts. But we also have plenty of users at the upper spectrum, who are vocal, who want more challenges. We'll see what can be done to please everyone.

About the average rank concerns... the one thing I can point out is that generally those that can access the songs that you can't are also the ones who would be getting a better score than you. So having a 0 likely wouldn't hurt you anymore than having the song be easier to acquire and having you and more users play it. At least, that's one way I think of it.

[Dronak]

Originally Posted by Tasselfoot

It becomes a tough balance . . .

I understand the points you made, and I think they're all valid. In particular, I can understand how once you get to the highest levels of play, you only really want the challenge of hard songs. The easier songs are boring at that point. But as also noted, easier things are needed for newer player and one who aren't among the best players in the game.

FWIW, I tend to think of myself as being around the middle in terms of ability, an occasional poster on the boards, and generally pretty good about being fair and balancing both sides of things. If you think I can provide you or others help with anything, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

[Shashakiro]

500k secret? What? That's 25 bil grand total assuming optimal credit gain. That's just too much IMO, almost no one has that yet so the only people who would get to play that are people who lots of credits from transfers/contests/gambling. Especially if you're going to have expensive songs in Purchased.

I think max should be 250k, and even that's an awful lot.

[Tasselfoot]

shash: they'd still be incremental. and, yes... i'm aware very few users would be able to access the songs. ~20 users have 500k+ credits currently. that is precisely the point... that basically NOBODY can access them.

i just added a 90k secret song for subbies... so, we're still a bit away from 500k. plus the desire of purchased songs. still need 100k at least. then unclear how i'll proceed on adding beyond that. whether it'll go to 110 or jump to 120/125. not sure.

[Commandersa1]

Originally Posted by Tasselfoot

shash: they'd still be incremental. and, yes... i'm aware very few users would be able to access the songs. ~20 users have 500k+ credits currently. that is precisely the point... that basically NOBODY can access them.

i just added a 90k secret song for subbies... so, we're still a bit away from 500k. plus the desire of purchased songs. still need 100k at least. then unclear how i'll proceed on adding beyond that. whether it'll go to 110 or jump to 120/125. not sure.

You should come out with 10,000-30,000 credit songs in the shops also. 5000 is not that much to decide whether you want secret/purchase songs. :/

[Tasselfoot]

it is when there are 20 of them... for most people. plus 100k+ in secret. now you're talking 200,000+ credits total.

only 105 accounts with 200,000+ credits as of right now.

[Shashakiro]

It's fine to make it so that almost no one can access all songs, but not so much to make it so that it's almost impossible to access specific songs, IMO. I don't think there should be files rarer to have than vrofl is now, just for a sort of benchmark.

unless they're joke files or something.

[y0ttabyte]

Ah yes, completely forgot about the vROFL public day.

[Xx{Midday}xX]

When those higher up secret songs come out, people are going to become desperate enough to pool credits. For instance, 10 people with a decent amount of credits would all send their credits to one person to achieve the, say, 500k secret song. Then that person will play the song as much as he wants, then transfer the 500k credits to someone else, who will play the secret song as much as she wants, and so on. How will you prevent that from happening?

You can't possibly delete all the scores that would come from this pooling effect. Nor would it be fair to have an automatic system where if you lose the ability to play a song, you lose your scores for it.

[Tasselfoot]

midday: what will wind up happening is 1 person out of that group will screw over everyone else and keep the credits. as such, i'd advise everyone against doing something like that.

and shash... i kindly disagree.