Dump Batch Discussion Thread

[bmah]

Originally Posted by Tru

FFR's content niche, at least since the end of the widget era, has focused on well-polished, quality charts made by some of the best steppers in any vsrg.

FFR's content niche, with the addition of dumps, will focus on well-polished, quality charts made by some of the best steppers in any vsrg.

Many recent file submissions have included some elements that one might have associated only with dump files. These files pushed the boundaries of what FFR would accept. And we've accepted many of them. Because they're well-polished, quality charts.

So this batch just reduces FFR's boundaries to more thorough dump charts -- rather than a handful of elements like in wubdumps, you can make the whole chart have interesting elements to interpret the music to. We're really just allowing another style of well-polished, quality charts.

Just because the boundaries have changed doesn't mean you can't still push them further. Just because we're allowing more explicitly dump charts doesn't take away from traditional "tech" charts. If it's a well-polished, quality chart, it'll be equally appreciated.

BUT as I said earlier, FFR risks becoming just another analog to other rhythm games with these similarities. "High-quality dumps" are not something I dispute as mentioned earlier, but it'd be great if further innovations can be conceived in turn to combat a lack of differentiation. Is community (every game has a community) and a more curated list of charts alone good enough for the site to thrive through years to come?
I'd hope you'd address this with a holistic perspective of FFR and its overall outlook and growth through what makes it stand out from other games, something it has less and less of as time goes by. I'm not here to dispute the nature of dumps themselves.

Originally Posted by _choof

do you remember when you posted a video of lcd soundsystem performing on saturday night live in the ffr discord? you seemed completely blown away by the fact that people liked this band lol. you said some shit about not being able to "get it" lol.
hate to break it to you bub, but the casuals, the general public? they aren't listening to idm, or breakcore, or glitchcore, or any of the rhythmically wild music that currently sits in the highest levels of ffr. they are listening to the artists that show up on television shows like saturday night live.
the way that folks like you and me listen to music after nearly 20 years of playing vsrgs is completely different than how casual gamers in the general public listen to music.

Yeah I remember that and still think that band is shit lol. But I digress.
You actually present a potential argument to have such "casuals" be interested in listening to new types of songs they would otherwise not be aware of. As you mentioned, casuals listen to those latest up and coming bands. FFR could be an introduction to other types of music, and not necessarily "rhythm game music" either. There's a large number of folks here who appreciate stuff like ambient, idm, etc. as you said. For a while, especially in earlier years, FFR made a greater case to promote artists. Actually, as recently as a few months ago, we're trying to bring back this emphasis via detailed front page posts.
tl;dr yes casuals don't listen to breakcore...but why not let FFR be an avenue to promote new music. Get that curiosity of new genres of music going through the medium of a fun game.

Originally Posted by Lights

Hi, Non-native fifferian here! allow me to share my experience coming to FFR from an outside source and why I tend to stick around- The community, the (relative to other VSRGs) unique take on scoring via raw goods, the events such as the OT, FFRMas, and previous OWL tournament, and all the different systems of tracking progression. (equiv rating lifetime / seasonal, AV-rank, skill tokens, even tier points). Those are ordered from most to least relevant btw.

By far, the most appealing part of FFR is the community. When compared to similar rhythm games theres no contest, the people here are generally rather friendly and mature and quite frankly the game could be like it was in 2005 and i'd still at least be here to hang out. But beyond being full of good company:

Raw goods is a fun scoring metric thats a lot less ambiguous than some seemingly arbitrarily calculated osu!mania score value or a wife3%, it feels like every error has a lot more weight to it and it introduces, to me, a different way to approach playing. Or at the very least, a different way to set scoring goals.

Obviously I don't need to explain why the events around here are appealing, nor all the different numbers FFR chooses to track, but I can summarize it as FFR having a lot of "minigames" built into the same overall gameplay. theres a deceptively diverse set of things going on. maybe this week youre equiv grinding, then you have a session working on token unlocks or tierpoints and now hey, new tournament / event is starting soon. Sure, osu!mania has its fair share of tournaments, but honestly I think FFR does them better and certainly has more variety in format.

All of this is to say that theres more to FFRs outward appeal than the charts on the engine. A lot of the content on FFR I had previously been exposed to before I really knew what FFR was via etterna packs and to me they just came off as just another file to be played. I never came here to experience this unique set of content because, to me, it already wasnt that unique to begin with and i didn't realize that the content on here was of a very specific type and grade until someone eventually told me. With the benefit of more time and playing more files, sure, theres a strong tendency to some more technical content which is less common on some rhythm games, but I cant say it was ever an influencing factor in what initially prompted me to pick up the game. It was those things I mentioned above, there being dumps in the list of charts wouldn't have even factored into the decision making process.

Sure, I'm only one person, everyones experience and priorities are going to vary- If nothing else, I hope it at least contextualizes the angle I'm coming at this from.

I'm very stoked to hear this. I can only hope that new folks have a similarly open outlook as you.
I think what we're missing are tools to more accurately measure the opinions of the general populace of FFR, NOT the "perceived" populace of FFR (the vocal, active community). Tools such as polls built into the site that pops up for every single user, so that even "quiet casuals" can participate.
Do you remember the time a couple months ago when the FFR game was down? Players I've never seen before suddenly started popping up in the Discord server asking for help. These are folks who would likely have never made a visible presence otherwise - I think this is proof that there are a lot of folks out there who just play the game and don't say a word. It'd be great if we could reach out to everyone on various subject matters and get a truer overall opinion of the site as a whole.
(and I think it's a mistake to assume that only the people who speak up matters)

Just to reiterate, the reason why I'm putting so much emphasis on this holistic perspective is because it ties back to FFR's growth and identity. Just trying to keep a perspective to have the site and community healthy for years to come. Dumps? Great. But let's continually try to come up with other new things while we're at it.