Difficulty standardisation

[dong]

I saw this thread: Highest foot rating in a simfile?

...and so my curiosity got the better of me. This question will be a little more complicated than it appears so bear with me:

How would you normally assess how difficult a song is from its foot rating? Conversely, if you write stepfiles, how would you normally assign it a foot value?

This is, of course, discounting joke difficulties.

I have a few observations to make myself- as somebody who doesn't own a pad (yet), I see a difference between people who assess difficulty by pad as opposed to keyboard. Hence something like AAAA being rated Oni- 15 isn't nearly as difficult as, say, Vertex Beta (13...I stand corrected, DJ Taka)...at least in my opinion. Point is, there is a discrepancy, but it's systematised to the point that it's not merely "arbitrary".

Assuming that people have some kind of rationale (or simply intuit the difficulty from previous exposure), I'm asking more for personal accounts here, not really attempts at generalisation (as hopefully this thread may reveal one or several points of consensus).

[ZanasoBayncuh]

It is simply this. Most people grade songs based on their own degree of difficulty or the difficulty that they hope to cause others. This usually leads to really bad difficulty grading.

My personal opinion is that one should ALWAYS grade based on pad difficulty and in accordance to many official grading (not including things like Witch Doctor on heavy being an 8, wtf were they thinking). But as far as the fact that Max 300 (Hvy) is a DDR 10, then Walking on Fire (Ex) is an ITG 10, then considering I can full combo either without a much of a problem (on the pad), then I'd grade what the actual difficulty would be on the pad compared to other consistently well graded songs on the official games. In other words, I kinda try to think about my sims from more of an ITG view. As far as keyboard simfile grading, yeah... I think that if your simfile is not passable on the pad then it should recieve a 14+ because there are 13s that are passable. Of course I've had a habit of taking keyboard only stuff and proving it wrong (I've done it before...) then it deserves a difficulty downgrade :P.

At any rate, basically your question is, "when grading difficulty, wtf were they thinking?" And the answer is simple... "*shrug*"

[dong]

basically your question is, "when grading difficulty, wtf were they thinking?"

It's honestly not. As I'm aware of my own biases (keyboard player who wishfully thinks he should get into the pad scene if not for his cranky neighbor immediately below him), I'm thinking this question could provide some insight into the, um...demographics of sim players. This is because to a degree, the premise and the mechanics of the game is simple enough that trends in behaviors are strong enough for profiles to emerge.

There is also the questions of definitions- since they are by nature arbitrary. The phrasing of your initial claim is a good one- what I really want to find is how people might perceive this.

I would comment in detail on the nature of keyboard only sims, but it would take quite a while and I'm hoping to garner more feedback first.

[koa5001]

When I finish writing my simfiles, I normally assign a rating based on what Stepmania gives me. For example, if Stepmania rates one of my simfiles as a 8.3 I just round it down to 8 and if it's a 8.6 I round it up to 9.

[john11]

Originally Posted by koa5001

When I finish writing my simfiles, I normally assign a rating based on what Stepmania gives me. For example, if Stepmania rates one of my simfiles as a 8.3 I just round it down to 8 and if it's a 8.6 I round it up to 9.

That doesn't work for keyboard sims and some pad sims given that SM rarely predicts a difficulty over 11. To give my sims foot difficulty ratings, I compare their difficulty to other sims.

[ZanasoBayncuh]

Originally Posted by koa5001

When I finish writing my simfiles, I normally assign a rating based on what Stepmania gives me. For example, if Stepmania rates one of my simfiles as a 8.3 I just round it down to 8 and if it's a 8.6 I round it up to 9.

Yeah, my Scars sim is certainly not the 8.4 whatever shens that it said... in other words, don't judge like that, it's highly inaccurate.

[koa5001]

Well john11 my sims are mostly geared towards the pad but I see where you're coming from. I just remembered one of the Max songs from DDR (it was either 300 or period) which is actually a 10 but Stepmania rated it as a 9.4 so I definately see your point. I'll try some other methods and see what works.

[dong]

I actually wasn't aware that Stepmania did that for you! Is anybody familiar with the algorithm/mechanics?

[「dj.TK」]

There seems to be 2 grading systems used, pad and keyboard, but sometimes you cant tell between the two. Usually a 10 foot pad is a hell of a lot easier than a 10ft keyboard rating, such as vertex Beta (which is a 13) would be near-impossible to pass on foot than a pad 13 (eg Summer Speedy mix).

I just use pad ratings on mine.

[ChaosMaster]

if i were to make a keyboard sim (i currently only do pad ones), i would do the difficulty based on how difficult the official songs are on keyboard. for pad sims, i compare it to the official songs.