So let's talk about QED stepfiles. (Let's talk about StepMania actually.)

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

Ah, you are correct. The problem is Jousway purposely leaves out details (such as what he initially PM'd QED) to make points that are very biased. I do apologize for that, but I'm glad that question got answered. Which gives the notion that Jousway may have influenced an opinion upon QED before the thread was even read, which I believe he did.

The problem is, and I will stand by it, he was incapable of answering some questions, even the ones I didn't ask. I would have a been a lot more considerate if he would have addressed that he is one of many steppers, and that no style is correct. But he made a point that you don't need to be technical, and it only makes sense that criticism will come along. Just like any argument, you need to address the counter arguments that may come at you.

I don't appreciate the representation he made of SM, as if he was the only one that knew what to do. I asked him specifically what other communities may help me, and he said something along the lines of "there are some out there, not really sure." You, QED, and I are well aware of what we say and what intentions we have in phrasing certain answers. For him to continuously present his email and youtube was a bit narcissistic. Even simple things like the program should have been credited. He didn't create the program, so what's the fault in saying "go to stepmania.com if you want to know more about the program" or something similar? I have a lot of issues in the way he conducted, all excluding the approach and organization (which I could go on for hours about). But plagiarism is never a good thing, whether intentional or unintentional. It's something you learn when you create your first history report in middle school (not meant to belittle yours or QED's intelligence, just a general statement). It's not accepted in music, literature, art, or any other expressive outlet of creativity. It's based on the ethics that taking credit for someone else's work is immoral. Whether or not it's right, we could debate for years. But the fact is if he wouldn't like someone taking credit for his work, then the same should apply. I don't mean simfiles, I mean programs, progress over the years in simfile creation, leaving out important information about communities, disregarding questions about pads because they don't interest you, etc.

This is where I have issues, and I'm going to stand by them.

dude stop that its like you are trying to kick me in the balls on purpose
the reason I didnt show the QED PM's is because it wouldnt be nice right, like you already were mad at me one time about what happened on SMO and now I should show them I dunno.
only you might see it as arrogant or whatever, but I'm just saying the way I saw things for the last year and an half, and look at my posts and what I said, its not like I'm trying to destroy ffr, I want it to improve for newer players because the join rate is really small, like srsly stop countering everything I say, its just my opinion.

[DossarLX ODI]

Sorry - I misread that post, it was talking about the possibility.

It's just that happening to have the person's name in your username isn't really a firm reason to confirm someone as an alt. The join date could also have been a coincidence - but that wasn't what his post was about

[Lain_Iwakura]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

To counter your point on the restepped files are made merely for attention, I'll bring up this statement you made. You have the right to your opinion, but in no way can it be made fact. Just like mine. But if you don't like the resteps, you don't have to play them. You don't have to play FFR/SM either.

Inconsistency in an argument can create broken points, so do you believe restepped files are made for attention or do you abide by your statement that if one doesn't like the way a file is made, then he/she doesn't have to play it?

I'd also add that the point to making that statement was to support the idea that there is no wrong way to step. Because of that, resteps are in no way wrong, and can have all kinds of reasons to be stepped. You're making two points here that contradict each other.

yep, I typically don't say something is my opinion because it is usually pretty obvious it is but apparently this was not the case here

my opinion is that restepped files are made for attention

my opinion is that if people don't like the way files are made, they don't have to play them

my opinion is that there is no wrong way to step; regardless if a file is restepped it is for attention

people do not have to play these resteps but people do, this is a fact

a lot of the time resteps make new, more interesting files, but a lot of the times people just ask why the file was restepped

resteps are not wrong, but they can be made for any number of reasons including attention.

i honestly do not see how these points conflict, people step files, people restep files, people play restep files, people don't play restep files, sometimes the resteps are bad, sometimes they are good, i personally think resteps are made for attention

[ddrxero64]

Message was deleted due to the length of time it took to edit a part in versus how much traffic this thread receives. I don't do this often, so I apologize if it bothered you. Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by Lain_Iwakura

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.

To counter your point on the restepped files are made merely for attention, I'll bring up this statement you made. You have the right to your opinion, but in no way can it be made fact. Just like mine. But if you don't like the resteps, you don't have to play them. You don't have to play FFR/SM either.

Inconsistency in an argument can create broken points, so do you believe restepped files are made for attention or do you abide by your statement that if one doesn't like the way a file is made, then he/she doesn't have to play it?

I'd also add that the point to making that statement was to support the idea that there is no wrong way to step. Because of that, resteps are in no way wrong, and can have all kinds of reasons to be stepped. You're making two points here that contradict each other.

Originally Posted by Mrjonesw

holy shit there's no way the other profile could possibly be dj ossa now especially since he couldn't possibly have an alt. well played.

Well he could have made both back in the day. They have the same length membership, and it was used to post at the same time he posted on SMO. He could have his reasons for using that account, and it's no mere coincidence that his name happens to match the account from the same time his DJ Ossa account was made. Reasons it could have been used:

1) He has access to both, and had an alt for whatever reason. He has now decided to use this account for his own personal reasons, whatever they may be.

2) He has decided to stop using his old account for whatever reasons. Being last logged in April 21st and coming back to post 8 days later is signficant. Especially when his post on SMO was made hours ago, and he had the time to log back in to his FFR account and update his activity. There is a reason he has chosen not to use his other account, and it may be personal or beneficial. I could go deeper, but no need to.

At this point, I could name more. All speculations, but analyzing a situation is crucial before making a clear argument. Why would it be impossible for him to have an alt? I know I have one here as well, before ddrXero64 became my username. What it is, I will never know, it was probably used with an old email from a friend in middle school before I had one. It's lost in the sea of abandoned accounts. But yes, this is an example of analyzing all perspectives on an argument before making your statement.

Originally Posted by Jousway

the reason I didnt show the QED PM's is because it wouldnt be nice right, like you already were mad at me one time about what happened on SMO and now I should show them

You had no right to post information from a moderator's thread, and you had no permission. This can apply to QED as well, but you felt it was right to tell us he PM'd you, which that too is private, Only you would know if he PM'd you or not. You chose to say he did but you didn't release what he said to protect him for whatever reason. But of course, by asking permission, you could have been granted the permission to release it. Why you didn't ask, I'm not sure. You could have simply not thought about that, which doesn't change the fact you still should've. Or you could have opted not to on purpose, which is possible part of the way you styled your argument. I was mad yes. Do I hold grudges? No.

Originally Posted by Jousway

its not like I'm trying to destroy ffr, I want it to improve for newer players because the join rate is really small, like srsly stop countering everything I say, its just my opinion.

You aren't trying to destroy FFR, but you've been quote at least 3 times from my own view to want SMO to die out. Seeing that FFR isn't the only community that consists of "players," as used in this statement, it doesn't support the fact that you truly want to improve the join rate.

You have countered just about everything I've said, and I stand firm by my decisions. Yet your tone has shifted from repeatedly pessimistic, considerate, insulting, passive, and so on. And opinions aren't facts, so they will never be treated as so. They can be countered. Why would I counter a fact? Unless I could prove it wrong. But opinions are used to make informed decisions that will affect the future of what the results are of that decision.

If you want me to stop countering, I can't guarantee I will. But it's safe to say you'd have an easier time explaining why you want me to counter. You can't expect to tell someone "stop countering" and it magically happens, especially on a thread built on debate. If you truly want to avoid getting an opinion countered, don't post it. If you can't sacrifice that, then your argument has shifted from the original topic to why you don't want me to counter you.

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

You have countered just about everything I've said, and I stand firm by my decisions. Yet your tone has shifted from repeatedly pessimistic, considerate, insulting, passive, and so on. And opinions aren't facts, so they will never be treated as so. They can be countered. Why would I counter a fact? Unless I could prove it wrong. But opinions are used to make informed decisions that will affect the future of what the results are of that decision.

If you want me to stop countering, I can't guarantee I will. But it's safe to say you'd have an easier time explaining why you want me to counter. You can't expect to tell someone "stop countering" and it magically happens, especially on a thread built on debate. If you truly want to avoid getting an opinion countered, don't post it. If you can't sacrifice that, then your argument has shifted from the original topic to why you don't want me to counter you.

you tied to counter like EVERYTHING I said in my posts, every time I make an post you counter it, other people just read it an are like okey, but its like you try to counter my posts as a living in this thread, like srsly wth

[Chariot]

Originally Posted by Lain_Iwakura

Stepmania most definitely has a 'this is the level for this song', its called the foot rating/groove radar/number rating.

Sorry about this, I meant level as in stepfile, aka a level in a game. But, you see, Stepmania is so unconventional compared to other games in that it has no "levels" that it was easy for you to make this mistake, and that's my point: Stepmania has no "levels". A person is not chosen to make an "official" level (that is, stepfile) for any song. So, it's not like anything can only be "stepped once". Something can be stepped an infinite amount of times, and it's anyone's right to step whatever they want.

Originally Posted by Lain_Iwakura

they should be playing other simfiles, really

I gathered from this thread that this is the mentality we're trying to avoid. Trying to tell people what they should think is fun is what got us where we are now in terms of technical nightmares, elitism, and everything else about the "correct" way to experience Stepmania. People need to make that decision on their own, and they ultimately have to anyway. I am also extremely confused about this statement because earlier you said

Originally Posted by Lain_Iwakura

this is how i feel about QED at this point in time

1) his style of stepping isn't wrong

so I don't quite know what to think. Look, I can argue that people should be listening to better music than _____ or watching better movies than _____ or watching better anime than _____ or _______________ but at the end of the day, people will like what they like. Lots of people like files like QED's for whatever reasons, first and foremost probably being that they like the music because it's anime music, and then perhaps they think the easy nature of the files is enjoyable and the patterns are perhaps fun to them. Who knows. I also don't know why people like half of the music that's out there today, but it doesn't do any good to wish they would like actual "good" music because the music they like is popular, and they're in a majority, and it's never going to go away. I really think that many, many people will like "bad" files, across all the time Stepmania is around; it's what makes finding the people who like the "good" files much more worthwhile.

[Mrjonesw]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

wall of text debating my very obviously sarcastic comment to dossar which he seems to have understood very well

ok

[ddrxero64]

Originally Posted by Mrjonesw

ok

You know, I don't catch sarcasm sometimes lol.. I have a friend who can't catch it to save her life lmao

deja vu, I swear I made this post before.

Edit: Oh I see, I made my post before Dossar posted that. Then I edited it because I forgot something, and I deleted it and reposted it because of the amount of time it took me to edit it (read top of post). That's why I didn't see that post.

[Mrjonesw]

lmao gotcha. yeah i realize internet sarcasm kinda doesn't work but i figured no one would take me seriously.

[Lain_Iwakura]

QED's style of stepping isn't wrong in the sense that you can do anything in stepmania and no one can stop you but

it's what makes finding the people who like the "good" files much more worthwhile.

and finding those people who like the "good" files definitely become harder to find if exposed to the wrong element from the very beginning, which is why I have problems with QED simfiles in general

its hard not to be biased in Stepmania because everything is opinions and subjectivemanias but I do kind of understand how QED operates and while it's pretty much against everything I stand for, Stepmania passed the 'golden age' a long time ago where the 'age of Stepmania innocence' reigned and the only drama we really had were people getting called BS on and OMG USING CMODS IS CHEATING. This game will never return to that time.


in summation: i don't like QED or his 'stepmania values' or the way he steps, but I deal with it and voice my opinions as a result.

[Lain_Iwakura]

double post because holy god we're arguing about how to enjoy Stepmania

although come to think of it, the anime simfile community and the other Stepmania communities never really interacted with each other for the most part, we all just kept to ourselves back then

I guess it's kind of cool even a couple people care about this game enough to argue tooth and nail about it

[Chariot]

Ah, I see what you're getting at. Basically, you're saying that it poisons newer players into thinking that those stepfiles are the right way to play. I'm not sure how true it is, since I started with all sorts of terrible files having played way back in 2003, and to this day I enjoy a handful of the more complex stepfiles that have come out. But I see your argument and I guess a number of people will initially be averse to "good" stepfiles because it's not what they originally knew. I just have a little bit of faith that a lot of them will come around as they progress as players, should they choose to invest themselves that much in the game at all. And if they don't, then... no loss :P

By the way, I'm not sure how good a job I've done of it, but it's my intent not to argue about how to enjoy Stepmania; my argument is that there's no right way to enjoy it at all. The best way to do it is the way that brings the best experience. At least, that's my opinion.

[Typh00n203]

[qqwref]

Originally Posted by Shikari

I was thinking about a whole new Stepmania community, like ODI is/was back in the days. I know we have both KBO and FFR, but a full community, centered only on Stepmania, from playing to stepping, would be cool to gather new and old people. A place where we could discuss everything about this game we play, and come up with "solutions" to keep Stepmania alive and make it more popular, bringing even more people. I don't care if we are going to have pad files, keyboard files, anime files, just a place for Stepmania, with subforums for each file "category".

This would be really cool. I'm certain that the biggest reason FFR is so big and active is the centralized community. Stepmania could really use a huge forum community (and I don't mean Stepmania.com) which isn't poisoned by a bunch of aging retired players with disdain for everyone who still finds fun in a music game.

I had a good idea about creating this forum. Rather than starting with it blank, we could copy over a bunch of big, popular threads. The SM Scores thread, some of the more important pack threads from OD/ODI/SM/KBO/FFR/GS, some individual scores threads, and so on. This would be great for searching for stuff, but it would also give the community a kickstart. The usernames would have to be changed (so for instance a post by leonid becomes a post by _leonid) but we'd let someone "claim" their old posts if they create an account with the same name (although ideally the mods would check these to make sure you don't get some ass signing up as every famous player ever). So that way veteran SM-community members have a small incentive to join: coming in as your old username gives you a whole bunch of free posts.


PS: I've never really been in a huge SM community. I was part of the FFR community for most of the time since I started playing, and there was always an SM component to it, but I guess I only got the feeling of how big SM was from all the youtube videos and amazing scores out there. I'd definitely appreciate a place to talk about the game and share files and the scores that might not be even close to world-class.

[kommisar]

pretty legit read nick


The only standard we have here as an "elitist" group is what caters to our liking. I much rather play a file that's been very well thought out and has good structure, patterns, layering, relevance etc. but that's only to our expert level of play. Most new players only really look for structure, something catchy and that's really fluent and fun to play. It's a different crowd for sure.

Let's say we all went back to our roots and made harder pad files with full difficulties, bringin' 2004 in style again or some shit. Lots more people would probably make it to FFR and other communities instead of being shut down by hard dump files as we call them and discourage playing any further.


There is such a thing as a well-structured file with basic guidelines, regardless of difficulty. Just because we made a bunch of theories for harder "artful" simfiles, doesn't mean those shouldn't apply to easier files. Look at Macgravel's Cry for You pad file. Holy shit that file owns and it's fun as dicks; but it's piss easy. Structure wise it's spot on and has a bunch of elements that make it replayable which include some sort of pitch relevancy and consistency. I guess you could say QED's files don't have that structure.

[AsphyxZero]

I still play Macgravel's Cry for You file, owns so ****ing HARD

[lnick]

Well, i'm coming back to this thread now to talk about some things that i'm planning to do, and it's nice that people actually bothered to reply (Except Lain.) and people like Long-bowed Chariot appeared out of nowhere to voice their opinion which was good too.

I'm going to be leading the next big community pack for Otaku's Dream which will be the 7th Anime Mix but i'm going to be doing it a bit differently this time in a sense that, there's no longer going to be a judging panel for the songs (In other words, no "quality control" but I don't really think that's the right word to say for this, since the mix is still going to be quality none-the-less.), but basically anything past sync will be up to the simfile author to step.

Because if you think about it, it seems kind of silly to be taking other people's OPINIONS as a factor on whether this person's simfile (which they submitted with the intent that it was fun for them, and it met their standards for what an enjoyable simfile would be) is good or not, so i'm going to abolish that.

Obviously this means that the mix will most likely end up with a bunch of files that may not exactly be up to the "standards" of some of the people here who have been stepping for many years, but to be honest, that shouldn't really matter. And as Chariot said, I think it would be a better idea to be able to introduce new people to this game by virtue of their own decision, so if they want to figure out how to make their simfiles like we do, then that's good, and if they don't, then that's fine too. Also there is no rush for them to start making simfiles like ours anyways, so it's quite possible that they might end up curious to find out how to change their steps in the future as well as they keep playing the game and improving.

But remember, this whole idea is focused on getting new people interested, so even though it is evident that there will be simfiles in the mix that nobody HERE will play, i'm sure that the people who submitted them will be happy that they did, in addition to putting it out to the public as well, meaning that it might attract the attention of another new person of relatively similar skill level, but either way, this will encourage new people to participate which is the ultimate goal that I believe I(we?) are aiming for.

And also, there's a lot of things that need improvement in terms of program-wise features as well like lots of people have said (Ex. Osu style song database and what not), but I think this pack idea would probably be a good start to attracting new people. I'm not saying for all future packs to adopt this admission style but I do think it's a decent idea to consider if you (the pack creator), wish to increase your pack's popularity.

There's a lot of other things i'd like to or could write on this also (About QED in particular, and song subjectivity) but right now I don't feel like doing it so i'll leave this here for now and hopefully

[JenovaSephiroth]

I'm not really going to hop into the ongoing back-n-forth debate, but I'm just going to comment on the OP. This is pretty much the reason why I moved over to pad files. There is a degree of freedom available in the pad community that isn't necessarily available in the keyboard community. Things don't have to be super-technical or rainbowy---they just have to be fun, and following the song exactly is not a requirement. The current state of the keyboard community is just too restrictive for my tastes.

Now for a mini nostalgia rant. I really miss the days of KBMP, F4, etc. Things were less stressful then. I don't know how likely it is to bring those times back. We've advanced too far, really. The perfect time to get into SM was five years ago. Today, not so much.

[kommisar]

gotta bring back community index packs

it's nice people are willing to try and bring back simplified stepmania, but are we really able to at this point? We've all gotten so stupidly good at the game those kinds of files aren't fun anymore.

[ddrxero64]

Originally Posted by kommisar

gotta bring back community index packs

it's nice people are willing to try and bring back simplified stepmania, but are we really able to at this point? We've all gotten so stupidly good at the game those kinds of files aren't fun anymore.

1st part: Yes. The problem is every person who steps index has their own definition of index. And the problem with that is they disagree with others rather than be open to newer definitions. I love stepping index and I play all kinds of files that are "indexable," whether they are technically fast pad files, old school index, or files that people claim aren't index. People need to realize that there is no right definition to an index file, and that there's a difference between an index file and an indexable file.

As for your last sentence, you speak for yourself. I myself along with others still enjoy files from 2007 and 2007, and some may even find them more fun than the new ones. We're trying to stray from the idea that there's no right way of stepping. You are speaking in terms of skill though. Who said a file has to be hard to be fun? I know plenty of pro players who still find enjoyment in playing relatively easy songs.