Howdy!
I've been making SM stepfiles casually on-and-off since about 2002 and have a collection of a few hundred files I've made. Quality has increased over the years, abilities have improved and my work has gotten more and more fun to play...
Yet one question still plagues me to this day - one I keep wrestling with every time I make a stepfile:
What factors do I consider when setting the song's difficulty?
There are 2 points that I'd like to say up-front:
1) I work on the old DDR difficulty scale (1-10+), not the DDR-X scale, which is new to me, my friends don't know it and I'm just not getting involved with it. I have ~14 years of songs based off the 1-10+ scale so that's what I'm referencing throughout this post. I'm not changing now. :P
2) I only make PAD steps. I don't do keyboard steps.
90% of it has become pretty intuitive to me and I'm comfortable with the obvious ones of:
* How fast the streams are
* How technical the streams are
* How challenging the rhythms are
* Gimmicky stuff, etc.
-----------------------------
But then there are some other factors that I simply cannot decide how to weigh them when setting a difficulty:
* How much should a difficulty rating consider the PHYSICAL FITNESS required to do well at the song?
* How much is the song's LENGTH a factor?
* Is difficulty rating PRIMARILY a measure of how hard the song is to PASS, how hard it is to FULL-COMBO or how hard it is to AAA(A)? How strongly do the other measures come into play when deciding on a difficulty?
* If the song varies strongly in difficulty throughout, what should the difficulty be set to? The peak? Close to the peak? The average?
-----------------------------
EXAMPLE 1:
I recently completed the steps for a song with these properties:
5:05 in length
~190 BPM all the way through with easy parts and hard parts.
Five difficulties, as set by myself: 4/6/7/9/10
When I look at that 10, my first thought is:
"It's not a REAL 10. I know what 10s look like and this just isn't quite there. This should be a hard 9."
BUT I flagged it as a 10 because it's basically between 8 and hard-9 for 5 minutes. I'm factoring in the fitness aspect of it to the point where it reaches over the 9 threshold and into the 10 range according to my judgement. On my feet, it's just as hard to pass as an official 10 because of the long duration. Therefore I went with 10.
In other words, I'll set the difficulty of a song higher, depending on its length. If you grabbed 1:30 of the steps from that song, the resulting steps would NOT create a 10 no matter where in the song you grabbed them from. The fact that it's basically a 9 for 5 minutes straight is why I flagged it as a 10. The max combo is about 1700. A song with a 1700 combo in 5 minutes is asking a fair bit from a player. I feel like a 10 rating is at least moderately-reasonable.
Does the community think that song should be rated as a 5-minute-long 9? Or should I stick with the 10 rating because of the high level of physical endurance required to play a hard 9 for 5 minutes straight?
I'm curious because the Music Wheel's interface SHOWS the player the song's length. Therefore, does the difficulty rating need to ALSO consider it? If it was rated a 9, the player could see the 9, see the 5 minutes and put 2+2 together in their head, right? A 9 rating makes more sense in that aspect, right? But when I play the song, my gut still says "hey, this is a fricking 10" even though the ONLY trait about it that's 10-worthy is the stamina-intensity, due to the 5-minute length of the 9-style steps.
It's also worth noting that the next difficulty down is 9. It definitely still feels like a 9 but it's just a little less technique and a little easier on the stamina. Just a little more forgiving all-around. My other thought is that's definitely still a 9, the next one up is significantly harder so it's a 10.
---------------------------
EXAMPLE 2:
3:44 in length
~130-142 BPM
2/3/5/6/8 difficulties.
Lets look at the 8 again:
In this case, I still considered the length (3:44) when determining the difficulty, but it's much less of a factor.
This time, the question comes from AVERAGE difficulty vs PEAK difficulty:
Most of the song feels like a hard 6 / easy 7 maybe. Then there are a couple of tiny sections that reach into the hard-7 / easy-8 range and one small section which reaches into the hard-8 range.
As a result, I tend to consider it an "easy 8" so the "hard 8 stuff" doesn't throw people off. If a song flagged as 7 had ANY "hard-8-style" steps, they might be a little frustrated. That was my logic behind flagging it as an 8.
The problem is that 90% of the song plays like a hard 6 to easy 7. Changing that isn't working very well with the music. The contrast is part of what makes the song interesting and I feel like it plays well. The only problem is choosing a difficulty for it.
How would the community handle this scenario? Is it a 7 or an 8? I tended to use the logic of:
"It's a 3:44 7 with some 8-ish stuff in it. Between the tiny bit of 8-ish stuff and the long length, I'm marking it as 8."
-----------
Another example would be a song that's very fast (say 280 BPM) with quite a bit of stream but very very little technical stuff.
When considering fitness and speed, it would easily be a 10-11.
In ALL other ways, it's easier than Max300 and belongs more in the 9 territory. The ONLY hard part about it is having the stamina to get through it. Is that enough to make it a 10, just on its own?
I tend to say "yes". If a song is stamina-intensive, that's the top indicator of difficulty in my mind, at least in the 8-10 difficulty range. Once you get into the 11s+ you need a lot of stamina drain AND a lot of technique.
I've been making SM stepfiles casually on-and-off since about 2002 and have a collection of a few hundred files I've made. Quality has increased over the years, abilities have improved and my work has gotten more and more fun to play...
Yet one question still plagues me to this day - one I keep wrestling with every time I make a stepfile:
What factors do I consider when setting the song's difficulty?
There are 2 points that I'd like to say up-front:
1) I work on the old DDR difficulty scale (1-10+), not the DDR-X scale, which is new to me, my friends don't know it and I'm just not getting involved with it. I have ~14 years of songs based off the 1-10+ scale so that's what I'm referencing throughout this post. I'm not changing now. :P
2) I only make PAD steps. I don't do keyboard steps.
90% of it has become pretty intuitive to me and I'm comfortable with the obvious ones of:
* How fast the streams are
* How technical the streams are
* How challenging the rhythms are
* Gimmicky stuff, etc.
-----------------------------
But then there are some other factors that I simply cannot decide how to weigh them when setting a difficulty:
* How much should a difficulty rating consider the PHYSICAL FITNESS required to do well at the song?
* How much is the song's LENGTH a factor?
* Is difficulty rating PRIMARILY a measure of how hard the song is to PASS, how hard it is to FULL-COMBO or how hard it is to AAA(A)? How strongly do the other measures come into play when deciding on a difficulty?
* If the song varies strongly in difficulty throughout, what should the difficulty be set to? The peak? Close to the peak? The average?
-----------------------------
EXAMPLE 1:
I recently completed the steps for a song with these properties:
5:05 in length
~190 BPM all the way through with easy parts and hard parts.
Five difficulties, as set by myself: 4/6/7/9/10
When I look at that 10, my first thought is:
"It's not a REAL 10. I know what 10s look like and this just isn't quite there. This should be a hard 9."
BUT I flagged it as a 10 because it's basically between 8 and hard-9 for 5 minutes. I'm factoring in the fitness aspect of it to the point where it reaches over the 9 threshold and into the 10 range according to my judgement. On my feet, it's just as hard to pass as an official 10 because of the long duration. Therefore I went with 10.
In other words, I'll set the difficulty of a song higher, depending on its length. If you grabbed 1:30 of the steps from that song, the resulting steps would NOT create a 10 no matter where in the song you grabbed them from. The fact that it's basically a 9 for 5 minutes straight is why I flagged it as a 10. The max combo is about 1700. A song with a 1700 combo in 5 minutes is asking a fair bit from a player. I feel like a 10 rating is at least moderately-reasonable.
Does the community think that song should be rated as a 5-minute-long 9? Or should I stick with the 10 rating because of the high level of physical endurance required to play a hard 9 for 5 minutes straight?
I'm curious because the Music Wheel's interface SHOWS the player the song's length. Therefore, does the difficulty rating need to ALSO consider it? If it was rated a 9, the player could see the 9, see the 5 minutes and put 2+2 together in their head, right? A 9 rating makes more sense in that aspect, right? But when I play the song, my gut still says "hey, this is a fricking 10" even though the ONLY trait about it that's 10-worthy is the stamina-intensity, due to the 5-minute length of the 9-style steps.
It's also worth noting that the next difficulty down is 9. It definitely still feels like a 9 but it's just a little less technique and a little easier on the stamina. Just a little more forgiving all-around. My other thought is that's definitely still a 9, the next one up is significantly harder so it's a 10.
---------------------------
EXAMPLE 2:
3:44 in length
~130-142 BPM
2/3/5/6/8 difficulties.
Lets look at the 8 again:
In this case, I still considered the length (3:44) when determining the difficulty, but it's much less of a factor.
This time, the question comes from AVERAGE difficulty vs PEAK difficulty:
Most of the song feels like a hard 6 / easy 7 maybe. Then there are a couple of tiny sections that reach into the hard-7 / easy-8 range and one small section which reaches into the hard-8 range.
As a result, I tend to consider it an "easy 8" so the "hard 8 stuff" doesn't throw people off. If a song flagged as 7 had ANY "hard-8-style" steps, they might be a little frustrated. That was my logic behind flagging it as an 8.
The problem is that 90% of the song plays like a hard 6 to easy 7. Changing that isn't working very well with the music. The contrast is part of what makes the song interesting and I feel like it plays well. The only problem is choosing a difficulty for it.
How would the community handle this scenario? Is it a 7 or an 8? I tended to use the logic of:
"It's a 3:44 7 with some 8-ish stuff in it. Between the tiny bit of 8-ish stuff and the long length, I'm marking it as 8."
-----------
Another example would be a song that's very fast (say 280 BPM) with quite a bit of stream but very very little technical stuff.
When considering fitness and speed, it would easily be a 10-11.
In ALL other ways, it's easier than Max300 and belongs more in the 9 territory. The ONLY hard part about it is having the stamina to get through it. Is that enough to make it a 10, just on its own?
I tend to say "yes". If a song is stamina-intensive, that's the top indicator of difficulty in my mind, at least in the 8-10 difficulty range. Once you get into the 11s+ you need a lot of stamina drain AND a lot of technique.
Last edited: 23 May 2015 3:44pm
