Genre-biased difficulty standards?

[Zaevod]

I'm sorry if this thread doesn't follow the template of a normal difficulty thread. I'm not talking about specific songs, but several.

I've been playing quite a few songs in the 60/70 range and I have noticed something (hopefully, I'm not the only one): Some genres have songs rated in certain difficulty ranges that are much harder than songs from other genres in the same range. I'd guess that is because they tend to be compared mostly with similar songs, and that causes the scale to have different meanings for different groups of songs.

As an example, I'd like to point out the Arcade genre: practically everything rated in the late 60's/early 70's is MUCH harder than similarly rated songs in the Dance genre. Songs like Phalanx (with insane bursts that are beyond anything on that level), Can't Hide Your Love (with an extremely long and tiring jumpstream in the end), and that super mario bros theme thing ((hate that song, lol) with the extremely nasty ending), feel several levels of difficulty harder than things such as Distorted God
(with very few actually troublesome sections, such as the second 24th stream) and Future Destination (a fairly difficulty jumpstream song, but that still feels adequate for the level). It would take really long to actually name all songs that I think fill the criteria, but, in general, this is what I perceive:

- The Arcade Genre is the hardest in the FMO range, by far.
- On the other hand, Dance is the easiest, especially in the pre-70 levels.
- Miscellaneous completely dominates all other genres in the low FMO range (with a single exception: Frictional Nevada), but is not that disproportionately hard earlier.
- With the sheer speed of many songs in that level, Rock tends to be quite hard in the FMO range in comparison to most others, but feels a little lighter in the low FMO range.
- Classical feels fairly average overall.
- No idea about Hip Hop or Funk.

It's hard to elaborate everything in one post, but am I the only one who feels that way about genres and difficulties? It could be a skillset thing, too, as some genders tend to be centered around specific patterns (Dance with jumpstreams, Misc with bursts, Arcade with EVERYTHING) so I'm not entirely sure.

[One Winged Angel]

Approved for discussion.

In response to this thread, all songs from the old 1-13 system (FGO, FMO, VC, etc.) were originally alphabetized and rated 1-99 without taking the genre into account. It's possible that subjectively some 74s in Arcade, for example, seem/are harder or belong in the upper echelon of 74s in comparison to some of the 74s in another genre such as Classical, but I can assure you no genre bias was taken into consideration during the overhaul, as that metric wasn't looked at at any point.

Would like to get other players' thoughts on this though.

[emulord]

Often I find that if I stick to playing one genre I do better because I get acclimated to one specific skillset.
Misc -> bursts
Rock -> jacks
Dance -> Jumpstream
Classical -> Stream
etc. That's probably why you're noticing this effect.