IIDX has been using the 12 system for three styles now, and it's worked out pretty good for that game. Sure, they change the difficulty ratings from time to time, but it's not like it's some sort of huge deal when they do.

IIDX, for the most part, doesn't inflate or deflate the difficulty of their songs and as a result has an extremely high ceiling. Even though IIDX is in some ways a "pyramid system" it comes closer to natural distribution in that every song (seems to be) made without consideration to its difficulty. Also, IIDX seems to choose its boss songs (most of them, anyway) the way I've been suggesting--by picking the hardest song that naturally came out that way as your boss song, instead of picking a song beforehand to be hard. If DDR did this, I think most of the dissatisfied players here would be happy because you would definitely have several 14s and perhaps some 15s that resulted from making the charts without considering the outcome beforehand.

new post, since you edited this in:

8s, maybe. 9s...are you kidding? SuperNOVA1 had FIVE new 9 charts on heavy and oni. SN2 had a larger number, but it was also pretty small.

The number of total 9s, however, remains in the hundreds.

This could easily be solved by implementing what we have been suggesting for some time--creating several hundred new harder oni charts for existing songs. 

If Konami expands their rating system to 11s and 12s, than yes, because 10s would be a solid difficulty rather than just a place holder for "DIS IS HARDER THAN USUAL LOL". If they expanded to 12, I would want Konami to distribute the difficulties fairly accordingly.

Your system is irrational and calls for re-scaling every time a song is created that's harder than anything previously seen before. I've made at least 75 charts at the 10+ difficulty level, and from a stepcharter's perspective it leads to charts that are forcefully inflated or deflated in difficulty to conform with the pyramid system.

separate post, since you edited this in:

Have you been reading my posts? I never said there was a slow progresssion. I said that there NEEDS to be. . . . The only ''progression' I've spoken of is the progression of 10s, and said that it needs to be expanded so that 8s, 9s, and 10s become more common.

Clearly for however many 10s you propose should be in the game you don't think 10s should be common; you think that having a ratio of 1:17.5 for 7-9s vs. 10s is a good ratio and how it's "supposed" to be.

8s and 9s are already extremely common. I don't know how you can advocate for them to get any more common than they already are unless you're extremely greedy and want the entire game to cater to your level of play. On SuperNOVA, 8s outnumber 2s and roughly equal 3s and 4s in their number.

Almost every other music game uses a pyramid system, and I don't hear IIDX, ITG, or most other music game players complaining about it. 

ITG used natural distribution for the most part and Guitar Hero uses natural distribution. IIDX players as a whole are very satisfied with the current state of IIDX, and they've never been known to complain about much of the game's gameplay features. (I did, but I was an anomaly.)

Arch0wl, that's because 10s are the hardest difficulty. They're SUPPOSED to be that kind of ratio, that's what makes them special.

A number of players here strongly disagree with you. You're essentially saying that those of us who play at the 10-footer level must be forced to play the same group of 10-20 songs every game while you, the player at the 7-9 level, have an option of 365 different songs only because the songs at our level are "supposed to be special." Have you read any of the earlier posts in this thread about boss songs and why a pyramid system is ineffective? No one here at the level of playing boss songs has expressed satisfaction with these songs being "special" and that is a major reason for the rampant dissatisfaction. Your view is not only selfish, but inconsiderate as well.

-The proportion of Heavy-Single 7's has increased over the last 3 games, from 33.48% to 36.04% to 36.39%.
-Similarly, the number of Heavy-Single 9's has decreased from 21.27% to 16.25% to 16.14%. Ouch!

I knew about the sheer number of 7's and 8's due to manually counting them once, but I never bothered to chart that data to see how it progressed. That's incredible.

One thing that's obvious but needs mentioning: in DDR SuperNova 2 there are 366 charts on singles within the 7-9 feet range and only 22 in the 10 feet range. In other words, there are over 17 times the number of 7 to 9-footers than there are 10-footers and players in the 10+ range have roughly 6% the number of songs at their level to play than players in the 7-9 range.

I hope piepiepie75, BigB and moose closely look at the bolded lines

Regarding piepiepie75's claim that there is a "slow progression" there has actually been a regression in terms of overall heavy/challenge difficulty. 9's, by definition, cannot get much harder because they are restricted to a certain level of difficulty; if they were too hard, they would be 10s, obviously. So when the "progression" that has occurred in terms of upper-end (10+) difficulties is restricted to roughly 6% of the options that players in the 7-9 range have, it is either not a progression at all or a progression not worth noting.

There's a version of eggman's Quasar (which is overrated anyway) that takes out all TWO crossover steps from it, and people prefer that version more.

I'm responsible for that, and there's a reason for it: when I was making my Quasar 1.5xmusic Stepmania video I was having to constantly replay the chart due to getting a great on those crossovers. Instead of playing the chart half-a-dozen times, I just removed those two crossovers. The lack of those two crossovers is due to practicality rather than a preference for or against them.

They were viable for me.

Maybe, but not for the people that are arguing in this thread causing it to become possibly the largest on this entire website. If it was as easy as switching to PIU the dissatisfied players here would have done that already, because they did switch to ITG when it came out.

I was simply giving the alternatives that were claimed to be nonexistent.

There are no viable alternatives, however.

The point of DDR isn't to pass songs

DDR is marketed as a game to work your body with, not as a song-AAAing game or song-passing game.

Agreed, the progression of the games (excluding PIU) is no longer available, but the games themselves haven't been wiped off the face of the earth.

They may be available, but they're not viable alternatives. ITG, for example, has a limited number of machines available and a limited amount of access to the game compared to DDR's plethora of home versions, in addition to its slowly fading existence to begin with.

Agreed, the progression of the games (excluding PIU) is no longer available, but the games themselves haven't been wiped off the face of the earth.

Hard songs are necessarily tied to competition, and competition requires some sort of standardized game to play on. There's not as much incentive to keep playing for higher scores when your scores are on a dead game

There's still a large portion of people here that don't want that kind of change. How is it their burden if nearly half of the posters that have posted here don't want that change?

A significant portion of the posters that have posted here do, Konami themselves has asked this question which means they're considering it more seriously than before, and the people that don't want that change will not be effected by the desired change.

It's not my fault people don't want to get into PIU. It's an existing alternative regardless.

An improved DDR is a more practical and much more viable solution, which is a significant reason why the people here would prefer to have the changes they want applied to DDR instead of having to switch to PIU. The burden is not on the people arguing for change but the people that have prevented change.

There are alternatives. Pump It Up still exists.

Very few of those posting here see PIU as a viable alternative to DDR. I do, but I'm a minority. Further, it's grossly ignorant of what players other than yourself want out of a dancing game. The differences between DDR and PIU are substantially different; far more different than DDR with most songs containing a harder oni chart, which is the desired goal of the arguments here.

It also doesn't mean they were looking for the same outcome.

What outcome they want is irrelevant, though I would say you should study politics or business and look for how frequently indirect measures such as those are taken to obtain a goal. They have used their influence to stop (or attempt to stop) the production of multiple competitors against DDR (PIU, ITG, Neon FM, a MadCatz game, and IIRC TechnoMotion), which currently leaves us with no alternatives. Please focus on the relevant aspects of the argument.

But those are two different lawsuits dealing with two different issues.

Irrelevant. Konami has consistently sued, or attempted to sue, any serious competitor to DDR. We have no alternatives so we can't play or make something else that suits our preferences better than DDR does.

Could you people just give up on your arguments. Only three people on this page have actually posted their opinions, which is what Konami wanted everyone to do. Everyone else has just been arguing.

Even if we stopped every current argument in this thread there would be other arguments that result from it. The very nature of the issue invites arguments because you're talking about which way the game should go, which will invite opposing views and thus arguments.  Expecting people to post nothing but "I think Konami should do [x]" and leave is an inaccurate view of human behavior.

The arguments do nothing to detract from the thread. They're fine; they are expressions of our views. I think your post is an overreaction.

Actually, they filed lawsuits because Roxor used software that required the gutting of patented machines and throwing marquees on it to call it their own.

They also filed lawsuits against Andamiro for making Pump It Up. Obviously these suits were designed to get rid of any competition. 

Darkmage, Konami doesn't owe you anything. Get over it.

There's nothing for him to "get over." I suggest you try not to draw implications from his post that don't exist.

If ITG is better then stop posting on a DDR forum. Go play more ITG.

No one here is arguing that ITG is better than DDR because that's irrelevant to the argument; you should instead address arguments that actually exist. Had you read the arguments posted prior you would avoid repeating something that's been addressed before. ITG is not a viable replacement or alternative to DDR because DDR is currently the dominant game and Konami's actions, such as suing RoXoR, leave us no alternatives.

My favorite songs are ddr are the hard eights easy nines.  I suggest making more charts with those foot rankings.  I think SN2 did a good job of heading in this direction.

Every game for the past several releases has contained hundreds of charts "with those foot rankings." DDR cannot "head in that direction" because it is already there.

If you want a game that has crazy expert steps that only range from 13-25, then make it a different game.

We did. It was called "In The Groove" and Konami used lawsuits to prevent it from existing further. DDR is the only choice we have currently, so the changes we want have to occur on DDR. Any game we attempt to make will be sued out of existence.

Don't ruin ddr for the rest of us who actually enjoy playing a songs that go with the music and are not pure stream.

The changes we want would not affect you because it would not change the number of hard 8s and 9s in the game. Most people here pushing for harder songs have argued for additional harder oni charts, which you would not have to play. Further, no one here is pushing for songs that don't go to the music. Don't make up strawman arguments.

DDR already has plently of 12s

No it doesn't. A handful of songs is not "plenty" compared to the literally hundreds of 8-footers that exist on DDR. Many of us here find such a statement not only extremely ignorant of our wishes but extremely greedy. If there were "plenty of 12s" we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I'm not against adding them, I'm against adding them right now. Like I said, I want a curve upward throughout the games, like it should have been doing since Extreme.

The "curve" you're arguing for is nonexistant and this argument would not be happening if players did not think the development in song difficulty was horrendously slow. If you plotted the chart difficulties on a curve virtually everything would stay the same except for a small number of 10-footers. Many of us don't think this is enough and instead prefer for equal difficulty distribution among new challenge charts as I argued for in the first page instead of the horrendously slow and uneven pyramid system that DDR has been using for five mixes.

most of the people I know who play IIDX very well and can AAA 11s and 12s still play it, even though the challenge is somewhat gone.

You're talking to the equivalents of those players in this thread and they are dissatisfied with the game.

You edited this into your post so I think it demands a new one:

I'm FOR more oni charts, and I'm FOR DDR evolving in difficulty. But I think it should be a slow progression, not a sudden spike in between games.

What you define as a "slow progression" is hardly a progression at all and would leave many of the current players greatly dissatisfied. A "difficulty spike" could be solved by merely changing the rating system because the idea of the difficulty spiking exists only because of the current rating system.