[Lain_Iwakura]

Originally Posted by Chariot

I have a question about this, which I hope anyone will answer, not just you, Lain: what good does criticism really do? It's to my understanding that criticism is basically one person sharing his opinion with another, right? If you took someone's criticism that your file was... say, too easy, too hard, not technical enough, or not fun enough, and you changed it accordingly, you would then be altering it so that a set of people who disliked it now liked it, but in the process, a set of people who liked it will now dislike it... right?

criticism is exactly that, opinion. if QED doesn't want to listen to criticism, like I said thats his choice. but when you act like a douchebag to anyone who gives criticism, this is where QED has a problem.

The thing about criticism in art is that it only really helps people achieve a standard set by whoever is critiquing it, and whoever shares that opinion. If somebody is happy with the way her file turned out, then that person doesn't really need to change anything if they don't see it fit to, because doing so only compromises her own style and expression. Sure, we can throw around the cliché that it helps a person "grow", but all it really does is help a person please a bigger audience. If you want to please the most amount of people, then you should take people's criticism, but if you want to have fun and express yourself, then I argue that you really don't need to listen to the opinion of anyone else, because it's just that: they're opinion. It's no greater than yours.

if QED wants to make simfiles his way, that's his choice. when he pushes his style and ideals of stepping onto others as the only 'right' way of doing things like he did at the stepmania panel he run and the way he conducts himself online, hes no better than an evangelist. when QED advertises his simfiles and brings even one person into believing his simfiles are good, it takes away from all other established simfile authors.

Imagine if Van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Picasso listened to all the people that told them their art could have done _____ differently. It would have only made their art "better" by a different set of people's standards; you may not have appreciated them as much. Or, if you're not into paintings so much: imagine any music artist changing their style based on what's popular. Oh, wait, music artists do that all the time, don't they - and isn't it disappointing when they do? Don't you feel that the artist had something unique that you really liked before? Then you are in that group (that is most likely the minority) that can appreciate their different sound. Similarly, what if all the stepfiles adhered to just one rule, and they were all stepped the same? Then, we might as well ask only one person to step them. Stepfiles are great because they come out differently depending on who is creating them.

It took a very long time for any of those artists to be considered geniuses of their time. Their art was considered trash for a very long time before popular opinion moved to their favor. This may happen for QED as well, but as it stands now, his files are bad, by vote of popular (majority) opinion. The music artist point is kind of irrelevant, producing music and putting arrows down to music already made are so wildly different it is kind of pointless to compare the two. If you were attempting to refer to how stepfile artists were to change their stepping style to what's popular, QED, while not changing his stepping style, has always maintained a style that is popular to some. again, this is all subjective. most of the time when a file is stepped and stepped well, it doesn't need to be stepped again. I believe the only reason people restep files that already were really good are merely being attention whores. There are a lot of current simfile authors today that do this, some of whom are in this thread. While not inherently a detrimental thing, most of the time the question 'Why was this restepped' is asked.

I mean sure, we have standards now, and those include all the basics like "get the BPM right, sync the arrows with the music and don't make everything a quad", and I'd hope that most people would at least adhere to those, but even those are really only standards made up by people about how an open-ended game "should be played". To be honest with you, I've played the Big Blue in this game over 100 times now, and I don't find it fun despite the fact that it's "technically sound". On that same note, I found Hellbeat oddly enjoyable, and if you asked me which of the two I'd rather play, I'd pick Hellbeat any day. By most people's standards (even the ones I listed there), Hellbeat is garbage, but I found it more fun than some "sound" levels.

Syncing the arrows with the music is something QED does not do, he puts arrows to sounds that are not there frequently. If you don't like how the simfiles in FFR are made today, don't play them and don't play FFR. The standards of FFR (and stepmania really) exist because the majority of the community abides by these standards. if someone doesn't want to abide by these standards we're not stopping them. but you would be asinine to think you wouldn't hear a lot of both negative and constructive criticism if you don't follow these standards set by these communities. hellbeat still exists because it was made in a time where standards were different. Some people want to return to this time but we're past that and we probably won't ever return to that age.

Yes, if you put down random arrows that have no relation to any sound played in the song whatsoever, you may consider getting some advice on the very basics, because there are basics. But at a certain point - especially for someone who has such a following for their stepfiles, like QED - I'm really just wondering what criticism improves, and more importantly, for whom.

QED puts random arrows that have no relation to any sound played in the song whatsoever. Does he need to consider getting some advice on the basics? He doesn't seem to want to listen since all criticism is ignored with a harsh attitude. Just because someone has a large following doesn't make them good.