Survive [60 or 44]

[Zapmeister]

I'm gonna hate myself for doing this, cause it makes one of my best scores ever seem far less impressive, but there's no way this is a 60. It's basically a longer and slightly slower Dimensions with less jumpgluts and a bit less 16th stream. The only parts that are that difficult are the jump pattern with grace notes at 1080ish combo and the bit of stream at the end at 1600ish combo, and they certainly don't merit a rating in the 50s or upper 40s. Any resemblance of this paragraph with Guest15937's post in an earlier thread are completely accidental.

Let's examine the comparison in more detail. I'm going to start with Dimensions, which is 3:57 long and has 1741 arrows. Most of it is red/blue slow jumpstreamy stuff with some jumpgluts in it at around 540, 1030, 1630, a few others. There are some jacks/anchor jumps at around 370-460, 860-960, 1200-1290, and they're the same speed as the rest of the song. There are little bits of 16th streamy things at 200, 360, 850, 1100, and a longer stream at 1510-1570 and also right at the end. This is a 49.

Survive is 4:35 with 1789 arrows, pretty similar. Again, most of it is red/blue slow jumpstreamy stuff, and there's some yellow in it at 900ish but the tempo halves there, so it's pretty much the same thing. Except, there are no jumpgluts at all. There are similar jacks/anchor jumps at 50-260 and 1280-some number I forget, but the music slows down here, so they're much easier than the patterns in Dimensions. Finally, there are similar 16th streamy bits at 260-350, as well as 450, 820, and again a longer stream near the end at 1600. The only thing this has that Dimensions doesn't have is grace notes, which get slightly harder to read at around 1080 with the jumps there, but there's no question that this is the easier song.

Let's do some more comparisons: Inside the fire [ffr chart] has that trill thing at 600 and those jumpgluts at the end, it's a 46, and I find those patterns far harder than anything here. Umlaut Ampersand is a 44, and is kind of similar with the anchor and the short streamy bits, though it's shorter. Doomsday is a 43 and has a similar nps diagram and broadly similar patterns.

I'd put this in a 43-44-45 range - maybe it could be bumped up a point because of length, because you could conceivably fall asleep during it, but certainly no higher. The only thing that I can see keeping it higher is the AAAs/times played statistics, but maybe that's just because it already has the "60" label attached to it, which is a turn-off. Finally, I have no 50+ sdg's (I think closest would be 11-1-2-7 on Song of the 2nd moon in TC_Halogen's Christmas tourney but I'm not sure) and I got 19-0-0-1 after a few goes on this.

[bmah]

thread approved

[yo man im awesome]

I'm sorry, I'd just like to point out the strange similarity between your first sentence and Guest's First Sentence.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by yo man im awesome

I'm sorry, I'd just like to point out the strange similarity between your first sentence and Guest's First Sentence.

I feel this was intended.

Also, rofl 60 might be a bit high, but anything lower than like a 57 would be hilarious.

[RNGRX]

Yup 44 is way too low I would say higher 50s at most.

[TheSaxRunner05]

There is a really retarded spot right around the 90% mark that is god awful.

There are a couple sets of 16ths, and that Js I think would put it about a 52, there's no reason this chart should be a VC. It's retarded and long, but even Max Forever is a 47. Length is the only reason I'd put Survive over 50, if a file was in the game just as that final minute or so there's no way it would be a VC.

[VisD]

Yeah I remember this as one of my very first VCs. 44 is way too low lol, but the song is hilariously underlayered and deserves something lower than 60.

The fast 16ths are actually VC-level, but too brief to justify the song as a VC on their own. From what I remember though, there are quite a few irritating patterns in the song - they are not fast, but really jackassish in their design and quite easy to muck up.

Also we all know any song on FFR above like 3 and a half minutes automatically gets a difficulty rating ~bonus~ because of how easy it is to lose focus on it. That applies doubly to this song, which iirc alternates between really slow and really fast without warning.

My conclusion is that this is probably a mid-50, probably a high C or low VC (so 54 - 57). I'll play it when I can to give a more specific rating, but it likely should be around there.

[thesunfan]

I think a 55-56 is in order. 44 is way too low in my opinion, haha. It was one of my first 60+ AAAs, and I remember feeling like it wasn't really that difficult. Haven't played it since, but I do remember it well. Hell, maybe even take a few more points off since I tend to overestimate anyways.

[VisD]

ok it's actually more like a 51 solely judging by isolated difficulty of individual patterns lmfao. the brain of the moon is of similar length and is generally faster and denser - I'd say it's about par with ehhs2.

But to keep FFR's difficulty premium on long spiky songs, I'd suggest a 54. It's too easy to lose focus on just one part and get a good on any of the slow anchor chains or jacks or runningmen and 16th (lol) bursts. Anything higher than that is quite indefensible though - the whole thing together isn't as hard as any of the bursts in Mute City, for eg

[Zapmeister]

Ok so I played MAX Forever and it's just red/blue stuff with a bunch of slightly annoying trills for 6mins and it's a 47, like sax runner said (thanks for the 130k credits by the way :D ) so if that's a 47 I can see this more as a 47-48... However there is absolutely no way I'm putting this above Dimensions. As I pointed out the patterns are basically the same, but faster - and the lengths are pretty similar, and it's a 49, so I can't see anything in Survive that would make it harder than that. I'm confused. Enlighten me guys, maybe you think Dimensions should be bumped up by a lot, or I just have some sort of oddly extremely specific skill set in particular. I can't even fluently read ehhs v2, let alone hit it, so I'm not going to compare those two.

also maybe things like Inside the fire [ffr chart] could go up a bit? maybe I'm just trying to compare Survive with the wrong songs or something.

[EzExZeRo7497]

I can understand your argument by comparing Dimensions to Survive (They're long, for starters), comparing Dimensions to Max Forever is hilarious, it's obvious that Dimensions is much harder. I feel that that file should be bumped up to around 53 or 54, based off the anchor jumps alone. Though, the reason why your score is significantly worse than say Survive is because they're pretty different to begin with. Dimensions has a greater emphasis on anchors (which are harder to score on if you can't keep up and judging from your replay, you do have that issue) and Survive has a greater emphasis on 16th bursts and dense (albeit slow) jumpstream. Those aren't hard to keep up with, which is why you have a clean score on it.

I do agree that Survive is overrated though, but dropping it to 44 is ridiculous. Max Forever's difficulty is high up because of its length and its trickiness when it comes to the one hand trills, Survive is also high up because of its length. The 16th bursts are VC difficulty for sure, especially due to how frequent they are, but definitely not in the high 50s range. Add that with a couple of parts (they don't necessarily have to be hard, the fact that you have to nail multiple parts to get a good score on it means that it's easier to mess up a part to begin with), it's probably within the mid 50s range. 54 or 55 sounds fine by me, but I'm not really good at determining difficulty at the lower end admittedly.

That being said, the lower end of the difficulty spectrum is rather flawed to begin with (mainly because every difficulty consultant is D7 at the current moment, we have difficulties assessing difficulties in the lower area, which is why we tend to overrate/underrate things at that difficulty range) so it's great that you've made a thread for this, wouldn't mind seeing more threads coming from D1-D4 players for files in the 40s to 50s range.