PIU in United States? - Page 2

*Kσn* · 08-11-2008, 08:32 PM

you need to advertise like crazy, but the only ads I have seen for a music game were for Guitar hero, Rock band, and even a little DDR.

They dont make a 2nd release of PIU in the states because it would fail. Guitar hero/rock band is popular because of the song list, people can pick a song they know and play it, and DDR has been popular since it was the first dance game released in the states, and since then Americans seem to still love the game, and even on the CS game, they add songs people know.

Sure on Exceed for PS2 they added a few songs, but nothing that would make more people play the game, or ditch DDR. Not to mention the learning curve is also much higher then DDR's.

squeethehobo · 08-12-2008, 01:20 PM

There is a problem with the learning curve on Exceed, true, but that has gotten significantly better since NX. With NX2 they added a training station which is actually reasonable, and in nx/2 they re-rated the lower difficulty songs to make them more accurate, and the newer songs are generally easier.

Where Exceed Home really tanked was that 1) The advertising campaign was absolutely horrible: the 'pump girls' thing was offensive, and the freestyling aspect scared the crap out of people, 2) Random Americans only know like 5 of the songs that are on that mix: Granted, these were excellent choices, but you need a lot more than that, 3) there was no reasonable way to teach new players, the tutorial was horrible and 4) You had to have an experienced player SHOW new people what few songs there were they could play without being destroyed (a simple difficulty sort would have fixed that). Even games with completely ridiculous learning curves (read: iidx) with a decent tutorial and beginner mode are reasonable. I took IIDX Gold to a graduation party, and 5 people had a blast with it, such that they want to go buy it, going through the tutorial and playing some beginner mode songs (These were at best casual music gamers: some liked guitar hero, others hadn't even played that).

I think in the more music game friendly atmosphere existing now, it could potentially stand a better chance, along with the improvements made to the game since then. However, music games are also expected to contain a large quantity of songs that people know: The great majority of GH/RB songs are "real songs" and the DDRs other than the playstation lineup have at least a quarter 'real songs'. While this is true of PIU in Korea (kpop is what... half?), to Americans its just all this wierd junk. And pop station has shrunk even more since exceed. (150 songs: i think in NX2 there are 12 pop... and 5 of them are just ITG2-3 songs). Andamiro is not well positioned for another release, unfortunately.

BanYa4eVr · 08-12-2008, 03:39 PM

Seeing as Pump it Up's "songwheel" has stuck to generally one format (stations), I don't think it will change any time soon (I could be wrong).

And implementing a "Sort by:" function would most likely be added in as a mod, via panel code that no random new player would take the time to check.

While I have no problem with the difficulty scale (which has also been changing a lot recently), numbers and shapes don't mean much to someone who stood on the center panel the entire time, (accidentally) skipping the "How to Play" animation. And not just completely random people do that either.

Not to mention arcade mode is geared mostly towards players who are already quite familiar with the gameplay. Especially when the average "NORMAL" difficulty is a 3 to 5. And "HARD" has been warped to the point where it ranges from 3 to 15+. For example: A new player sees "level 10" and then a "level 5" and thinks the level 5 will be easy enough.

The only thing I can think of, is either adding Easy Station charts into Arcade Station as "EASY" difficulty, or just creating more "inbetween" charts. At the same time refining the scale itself to be easier for new players to understand.

Perhaps a "bar" like this:
Going from green to red (left to right)

_____________12_______________
EASY[||||||||||||||||__________]HARD
____________CRAZY_____________

_____________3_______________
EASY[||||__________________]HARD
___________NORMAL_____________

etc.

EDIT: And changing the scale would maybe go something similar to...

Easy = levels 1 - 2
Normal = levels 3 - 5
Intermediate = levels 6 - 9
Hard = levels 10 - 15
Crazy = levels 16+

I wont even get into how messed up Freestyle and Nightmare are...

But it's not up to me :P
For now all we can really do is wait and hope they do the best with whatever they decide to do.

LOL I wrote a book again.
I'm done now.

*Kσn* · 08-13-2008, 10:48 AM

ya... the ratings are very confusing. I mean even I am confused about what ratings go to, and I am pretty sure some of the charts are impossible.

Like bee... I want to see anyone pass it on nightmare.

BanYa4eVr · 08-13-2008, 01:45 PM

I assume you're talking about Bee Another NM...

But yeah, seriously, it's a shame that some of the more appealing songs have harder charts that new players would have trouble with. Sure, maybe the Normal chart is somewhat easy enough for someone completely new to the game, but after that it seems to take off into a direction that only tries to challenge the existing fanbase.

I don't know what stops AM from making more charts for some songs, making stepcharts (especially easier to moderate ones) doesn't take very long at all. I would know, I make 5 panel charts to lots of songs. Perhaps they are low on staff for that sort of thing.

I have no idea.

Going out on a limb, but, if AM needs more people to create charts, I am quite sure there are a lot of talented people out there who would volunteer.

m-force · 08-13-2008, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BanYa4eVr

...Going out on a limb, but, if AM needs more people to create charts, I am quite sure there are a lot of talented people out there who would volunteer.

*stares at Windeu*

I'm pretty sure AM is fine with the current staff since most World Max's missions have pretty amazing charts. IMO, I think the reason some songs don't have a full set of charts because of the time restriant. Look at the release interval between NX and NX2: they were about a year apart from each other. Of course, it could be World Max. :/

cj iwakura · 08-14-2008, 04:25 AM

Pro did a fairly good job of converting the chart difficulties to DDR/ITG scale, even if I'm not used to that system at all.

BanYa4eVr · 08-14-2008, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by m-force

*stares at Windeu*

I'm pretty sure AM is fine with the current staff since most World Max's missions have pretty amazing charts. IMO, I think the reason some songs don't have a full set of charts because of the time restriant. Look at the release interval between NX and NX2: they were about a year apart from each other. Of course, it could be World Max. :/

A year is more than enough for someone to create Normal Hard and Crazy charts for that many songs. Freestyle and Nightmare take a little longer I would admit.

Not just new songs, but songs that have been around since Zero that beg for Normal/Hard charts. eg. Phantom, Moonlight, Witch Doctor... sure, adept players might not be the ones wanting easier charts for more songs, but at this point IMO, AM should try to break the habit of challenging the current fanbase (if that's even what they're doing)(Indirectly or not) and make the game a little more inviting to new players.

squeethehobo · 08-14-2008, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BanYa4eVr

A year is more than enough for someone to create Normal Hard and Crazy charts for that many songs. Freestyle and Nightmare take a little longer I would admit.

Not just new songs, but songs that have been around since Zero that beg for Normal/Hard charts. eg. Phantom, Moonlight, Witch Doctor... sure, adept players might not be the ones wanting easier charts for more songs, but at this point IMO, AM should try to break the habit of challenging the current fanbase (if that's even what they're doing)(Indirectly or not) and make the game a little more inviting to new players.

...They did break the habit of challenging their current fanbase with NX2. The only song on there thats 'new & OMG' is ONE REMIX [I can't come close to passing Chimera NM, can barely pass FAE2-2 NM, and sightread all of the new charts. they don't push the difficulty bar up at all, even though i'm relatively bad at them]. WorldMax is just "Uh... have a ridiculous amount of content! Weeee!". Training Station is AMAZING. No matter what skill you are, if you play it, you will feel trained. They've been adding more reasonable Normal charts, more reasonable Hards as well. They also filled in a lot of the difficulty gaps as you approach the peak of difficulty of the game.

They very, VERY easily could have made EZ(normal)/HD/CZ/FS/NM charts and filled in the gaps. They did it for 3 whole mixes. And they stopped because they decided that certain songs should only have certain difficulties. With the exception of some worldmax charts, some songs are 'freestyle only' (w/ a normal), completely on purpose.

MixMasterLar · 08-14-2008, 05:08 PM

See, Ive always hated that songs where missing some difficulties in PiU. I would love to play the song "forever young" if it had, you know, a harder chart? or a freestyle chart? I see it as laziness that AM wont go back and step the songs. Amazingly, That's the 2nd biggest diffirence between Pump and DDR/ITG and it might be why their footing in the united states isnt that strong.

Oh and back to Pump not being popular in Florida: Im in Pensacola and we have quite a few machines here---granted they dont work as well as they should and only attract Normal/Hard players most of the time but at the same time there's like 3 Pumps to every DDR around here. I also noticed on my trip to Daytona that Pump was at any arcade that had a DDR or ITG that I stopped at or heard about. So if there is one state that I know of where people know of Pump it's Florida.

Now if there where easier charts/harder charts for a few songs....then they would play it more

cj iwakura · 08-14-2008, 11:00 PM

Do you mean Forever Love? Because it has an NM chart, and it's pretty difficult.

***June.H*** · 08-15-2008, 02:02 AM

Another problem with AM is that they DON'T know how to market to a massive audience like the U.S. They're too comfortable with a market like South America and Korea that they don't understand how North America works.

They rely on word-of-mouth.

They rely on Supporters to do the job for them (uh..yeah, less than 20 people to cover 50 states with a population of a country of how many million, 99% of whom have never even heard of Pump?).

They think the game will magically get popular without any marketing.

No one is doing their homework in Korea because they really don't understand how much more work needs to be done in America...and why bother? It's cheaper and easier to do it in South America.

*Kyosuke Kagami* · 08-15-2008, 10:11 AM

Iono about South America :P But in Mexico, the fact that the machine is cheap to buy, the credit can be offered at very low prizes (between 20 and 50 cents, usually) and there's a supporter for each state (like... more than 30) surely helps. Also, arcade business is still very active (sprite of crap like all those bootlegs of KOF2k2).

Only S.A. country I know that PIU is massively popular and also with a lot of supporters is Argentina.

AM should really do better. 20 supporters for the US sounds like a very stupid decision.

squeethehobo · 08-15-2008, 10:17 AM

AHAHHAHA!

There are still people out there who think that Andamiro gives a crap about PIU in the US?

AHH HAHAHA

...*snickers*...

Sorry, thats not a very constructive comment. They really don't care about this country. Not since PREX3, when they had gotten like 8 great licenses ready to go (they were in the beta) and then backed down on all but one of them (LGTPS by Pink) because they were too expensive.

AM disbanded the supporter system for the most part in favor of the club system.

I'm going to put this out there, because its true: They expect their players to promote their game, enough that they don't do it themselves, to the point of "Go! Preach the Gospel of Pump!". Seriously, they want their players to be Andamiro's Witnesses (Playing off of Jehovah's Witnesses. I would know. I was a PIU club leader, and stopped in due to 'why am i preaching a video game?'. I'm also part of the aforementioned group.)

Kuhazan · 08-15-2008, 12:13 PM

I'd like to toss in my two cents... it is not popular here because of horrid interfaces (Exceed-Zero) lack of an easy mode in normal arcade play (1st DF - NX2) Neglecting to have split difficulty selection until Zero... (which also suffered from a horrible interface)

And yeah... most it has to do with how poorly past mixes have been handled... there are still poor choices (Training Station is one player? WTF) and since NX2 features few English songs it isn't going to get anywhere with the kind of audience it needs in the USA.... so don't expect it to explode any time soon with a song list that is 99% Kpop and Instrumental.