There's a problem that rhythm games that are made For Rhythm Gamers often have where, the game is for people who are very familiar with the genre and very good at it, so the hardest difficulty is really hard. And they want to make some effort for other people to be able to enjoy the game too, so the easiest difficulty is really easy. But because of that, the steps have to be so big that playing the easiest difficulty doesn't prepare you for the second-easiest difficulty at all.
vivid/stasis manages to avoid this problem; playing enough songs on Opening genuinely prepares you for going back to them on Middle. You feel a real sense of progression that's often just not there in other games.
Now, does Middle prepare you for Finale? Absolutely the fuck not
@The_T @amy in fortnite festival, specifically, it feels very difficult to go back from expert once you start playing it because it is clear that the expert chart always gets the most love, and the other charts feel like afterthoughts.
it feels like expert is the "real" game. which is not good for accessibility reasons, obviously
@wallhackio @The_T That's fair but I think it's probably always going to be the case in that style of rhythm game, where your inputs are literally mapped to an objective thing about the music
(As opposed to more abstract games like, off the top of my head, osu! and vivid/stasis, where they can just make you input whatever they want)
The only real way you can do difficulty is undercharting, and undercharting is less fun
@amy @wallhackio @The_T part of what makes things even harder is that in my experience, the more inputs a game has (compare vivid/stasis having 4 inputs with something like beatmania iidx which has 8), the easier it can be to make easier difficulty charts that don't just feel like shit
but then, like, you've got more inputs which inherently makes the game have a higher skill floor to begin with anyway and thus still has the problem of not being great for people to get into unless theyre already big rhythm gamers
@amy @wallhackio @The_T also i feel like difficulty names (instead of just levels) just fucks with everything anyway like thinking in terms of "OPENING vs MIDDLE vs FINALE" is very very very very bad but like
the game very explicitly is trying to FORCE you to think like that!
@norikawa @wallhackio @The_T To be fair
I feel like even if they didn't intend to do this, they made a lot of finale charts with low numbers harder than middle charts with high numbers
@amy @norikawa @wallhackio I hate when games do that, Taiko does that... I want all charts to be rated on the same scale...
@norikawa @wallhackio @The_T I don't know if it's like, an approach to design that I'm just not ready for or what. Like, maybe once you're good all the 9s feel the same. But for me, the finale 9s feel harder than the middle 9s
@amy @wallhackio @The_T i highly highly doubt it given that level is automatically generated based on the stats of the chart itself for v/s
@norikawa @amy @wallhackio I dunno what this means!
@The_T @norikawa @wallhackio It means I'm full of shit and all the charts are rated on the same scale
@The_T @norikawa @wallhackio I can't explain what I was feeling, never mind ha ha
@amy @The_T @wallhackio its the psychological trick of giving it a higher difficulty name thats happening
which is why it sucks when games do this bc it makes it feel artificially harder!!!
im not mad at sound voltex for this at all DEFINITELY NOT THAT GAME DEFINITELY DOES NOT HAVE THIS FUCKING PROBLEM AT AL-anyway
@norikawa @The_T @wallhackio I'm actually immune to psychological tricks so it can't be that
@norikawa @amy @wallhackio I like the early days of DDR where the difficulty levels were called BASIC, ANOTHER, and SSR (which stands for "Step Step Revolution"). Completely fucking meaningless words.
@The_T @amy @wallhackio SDVX has four tiers of difficulty but the name used for the fourth tier changes depending on both which game the fourth tier chart was released in, and whether that was the same game the song was first put in the game or not (:
@amy @The_T @wallhackio tbf internally they have a decimal point of precision so it might say "10" for two different songs but one could be 10.0 and another 10.4 (10.5 bumps you into "10+")
@norikawa @The_T @wallhackio Sure but it doesn't explain why I've struggled more with finale 9s than middle 10s
@wallhackio @amy totally. As someone who has never played Expert in Rock Band... I get that.
(Except for like We Will Rock You on Expert Drums, which is the easiest song in the world and anyone can FC it.)
I think... I do struggle to commit to rhythm games, especially because I play so many; so generally it is hard for me to advance beyond the Medium difficulties...
@wallhackio @amy yeah, that's inherited from Rock Band. Expert songs have to match what the instruments are actually playing to 100% (although I hear Festival doesn't adhere to that quite as strictly?) and then lower difficulties are just going to handle it a little lighter.
That said, I've always felt like even Easy still makes it feel like you are playing "all" the notes, even when you clearly aren't; it feels like you are still playing the song.