I feel that timing or accuracy should be a category (maybe not for a song, because as you said, that's a core part of the game by default), but as a player statistic. Obviously, some people have much better accuracy across the board than others.

Also, I feel there are too many different technical aspects in a song to group them all into one broad category. Some technical hurdles involve only your feet (Afranova, B2U Orchestral Groove, etc), others involve gameplay gimmicks (Chaos, POST, etc), and still others involve freestyle-like use of hands (Queen of Lights, Eternus, etc). Personally, I don't see all these songs being appropriately combined into a single category. Someone could be great at technical foot challenges like Afranova, but then fail Queen of Light or get utterly confused by the gimmicks in a stepchart like Chaos.

That's my 2-cents.

There's really only 3 aspects to any song: Speed, Stamina, and Technicality (hands/stomps, crossovers, tricky rolls, foot switches, slowdowns/gimmicks, mines, etc). Timing permeates all songs, so can't really be considered its own category.

A song like Determinator isn't really technical or Stamina intensive, it's just very fast. Queen of Light isn't fast, nor stamina intensive (relative to other 10s), but it's technical with hands. Half of Flash's charts aren't really technical or really that fast, just really long and stamina draining. Then you have harder songs like Dragonforce which are both fast and very stamina intensive (and for some 15/16s can be technical at parts too) or something like Nemeton, which isn't really fast but so technical with foot switches that it's somewhat stamina intensive.

I really don't think it would be hard to categorize all songs based on this (and I've already thought about this before this thread). I'd even say just rate each aspect individually on the same scale as normal and say the overall difficulty is about the average. So Determinator might be Speed 13 (or 15 if you're me -.-), Stamina 11, Technicality 10, so it's about a 12. Something like Nightmoves is like a Speed 10, Stamina 11, Technicality 12, so it's about an 11. Other songs like Utopia might be more well rounded, I'd say it's about 11/11/11.

Anyway I already pretty much watch what people are good at according to this scale (though I of course pay attention to different types of technicality, i.e. I pay attention if someone seems to suck at crossovers vs. hands vs. whatever). Makes for good picks in a tournament setting, and it keeps me aware of my own strengths and weaknesses relative to other people. Just my thoughts

If there was some reasonable way of categorizing charts (even with just 1-3 and Rebirth, that's a lot of content and some of the categories are somewhat subjective), it wouldn't be hard to parse USB profiles to get scores and match them up with those categories.

Actually, I'm about half way through writing a profile parser, since I want to edit Acme's machine profile and move/merge scores for songs that aren't in the same pack they used to be.  That said, I could easily write a program that would mash a players' records (machine and player stats use the same exact file format, I believe) up against a list of categories and calculate all kinds of useful statistics by category.  It'd be a little more work to compare players with one another, since that requires gathering profile data in one place, but it would be entirely doable.  It'd definitely be a fun project, but I honestly don't know if/when I'll get to it; it's just important to note that it's not all that impractical a task.

It would be interesting if players could be rated and graphed relative to how good they are at playing certain kinds of charts. It could have categories based on the content of the stepchart (similar to the groove radar in Max, Max2 and Extreme but with hands, accuracy, stamina, endurance, doubles, complexity, etc). Each player could be rated on how well they score on charts that reflect different levels of the aforementioned categories.

Something like this would work well in the situation Tricksy describes in her first post; where some players can do fine on a chart that would give other player some serious trouble and vice-versa.

I'm mostly saying all this 'cause I think it'd be awesome to be able to see all of our playstyles in graph form.

You are a styler so it's fine. Good to see another heavy stepper on here.

oh nice, I am stuck on exorbitants 

maniac mode, all catas

Well Keby, if you can breeze through Karma Chameleon.. the "13-footer" [cough] from FlashExclusives& FriendsV2 then I personally think you were pretty accurate with Lead14 : )
as said several posts back.

He and I have talked about it as well. It does make more sense than one would initially think.

In all honesty I think I would be leading 13's or 12's though. Maybe you can grade me better than I can haha xD

Absolutely.  Trying to climb around your limit right off the bat is a great way to tear tendons and be out of the sport for months.  It's amazing how many people don't warm up on ITG considering how physically demanding it can be.

I suppose I would lead 11's.

I'm sure there are a few out there that might cause me trouble on a virgin run, or if it's an incredibly gimmicky/stupid chart, but otherwise I can usually handle it.

I'm also assuming I'd be attempting said difficulties after warming up. I don't know how it would relate to rock-climbing, but obviously in ITG most people don't just start off on their hardest level they can play.

I too thought the difficulty ratings in ITG were more based on those of (pre-X) DDR, though ITG is usually about 0.5 blocks higher (i.e. a hard 9 on DDR would just be a solid 10 on ITG).

I'd say I lead 11s no-bar.  The only one I remember not being able to pass yet is Battle 2 (from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest) which has 1/16 note foot-switching, though I've since passed that.  With bar, I'd say I lead 12s.

Back in my heyday, I could lead 12s. These days, I'm out of shape, so I'd call myself an 11 leader. But I'm pretty darn close to getting back to nailing 12s.

It was something that Foy told me at some point.  I couldn't go into anymore detail as far as how extensively he meant it, but it makes a lot of sense to me.  Rock climbing goes from 5.4 - 5.15 and possibly higher, except that at the 10 level and up, you add a letter grade of a-d as well with 'a' being the easiest and 'd' being the hardest.

In my personal opinion, I don't feel like ITG and DDR directly line up with difficulty rating.  ITG 9s and 10s feel more difficult than DDR 9s and 10s.  And DDR stops at 10s while ITG continues up to at least 13s on officials.


Since ITG doesn't divide up 12's at all, I think you'd have to say that you lead 11's if you can pass any 11 that came your way.

low 12s

hmm I thought the ITG difficulty ratings were based on DDR difficulty ratings, which is just pretty much a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the hardest...

If you're referring to only official ITG charts, as opposed to Edits or DDR charts.. Quasar & FascinationMaxx don't joke around, for 10s.

I suppose I'm comfortable with passing any 11-block, including Monolith, while I have no such luck with Bloodrush still.


Lead 11s :3

14's trolololololololo