Co-signing on that Betson thing.

I understand that Extreme was important to a lot of people in the competitive DDR Community, but people just have to let it go already. Let the game evolve, let the developers experiment with things. If they can implement mines well and keep the basic fun of the game intact, then where's the harm? The new charts are "garbage" only to those who have kept playing the same three songs over and over and aren't open to new things. Yes, I know we've all had a long argument over this in the last thread about difficulty, but there's just so much impatience and nostalgia running around that the community is giving the developers no room for creativity and experimentation.

It's so bad that if you took Extreme AC's interface in its entirety and changed it into a different color, improved framerate a little bit but kept some of the off-synch charts intact, added a few dozen songs and called it Extreme2 there'd still be an uproar. The more vocal of the community, not necessarily the majority, just want to play Extreme. 

I say let them. Keep going with the development of X and experiment with things, see how they work, take the good and improve the bad. The game WILL NOT GET BETTER if this doesn't happen. I guarantee you that's what the majority of players want, the game to get better. The new difficult charts were an okay start (take the criticisms and learn from it, improve on it), and the shock arrows, even though obviously borrowed from ITG, are a good direction, but only if they are implemented right as Freezes were back during MAX. Improving the pad quality and sound system of Dedicabs is also a great idea. The widescreen is also pretty cool just as long as lag doesn't effect the gameplay (which, with technology from recent IIDX/Pop'n/GFDM PS2 games, shouldn't be an issue). Running the game with BemaniPC will bring DDR back to the level it once was.

USB with e-Amuse. This is the best decision that could have ever been made. Kudos to that. :)

You, the developers, are about to be hit with dozens of forum pages of whining fanboys begging for Extreme, most of them by Arch0wl and hordes from BemaniStyle. That's not going to happen even though they won't admit to it. There's a giant ego complex involved with the community; the slightest touch to their beloved green interface, choppy FPS and 573 jokes is like genocide to them. If they're not going to be constructive with their criticisms and post nothing but insults to your hard work then ignore them. They'll threaten to never play DDR again or buy another Konami product but we all know that they're addicted to the game and their egos.

I, for one, am exited for X. I hope to be there for the testing and to try the machine out for myself, because I know I will enjoy it. I know this will be the mix that truly gets DDR back on track. Please keep working hard on this, and learn from the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism that is bound to happen. 

If anyone needs to get up to par with people who are playing 10+ charts, they can play the charts that came on the prior mixes. There are 300+ charts total on Heavy to choose from. Did you forget that?

So what's the bridge to the FAXX Oni? Pluto Relinquish Oni? HDV Oni? Nobody beat these without going through ITG or Stepmania first, and with the former out of the way how are gamers relatively new to DDR going to get to that level?

There just needs to be a bridge between the bottom and top-tens, even if it's only one or two charts.

4. Distribution?  Well, make sure the learning curve doesn't become a cliff.  But I would honestly go for about 8 new envelope pushing songs per mix (13's or 15's or whatever), 10-15 12-ish type things, and 20+ new 11's/10's.  Then just put in however many lower difficulty stuff you want.  I take that back, do whatever you want with other difficulties, but only make 8 5's or so. Have them be awesome.

Whoa there cowboy. This is assuming that these charts can help bridge the gap to the next difficulty, and other charts that can bridge the gap to get to them in the first place. Also that's a ton of charts. I'd be cool with this idea if there were maybe a little less than half of what you're saying, particularly in the "envelope pushing songs". Really there should only be one per mix, as we've been seeing this since 5th Mix and the tradition even carried over to ITG. 

If you redesign the pads though so that they aren't as recessed, I'll probably die from joy or something.

This is actually a good point. You can blame being uncoordinated all you want, but just about everybody has tripped over the brackets at some point in playing DDR. It's not only annoying but somewhat dangerous.

I believe the unreleased Neon FM had pads of this quality a few years back that worked fine and required little maintanence.  R&D should look into this while the stepchart artists are busy cranking away the new charts.

Moose and PYK know what they're doing.

Check your egos at the door and stop arguing already. 

6s: 5% (For those slow songs and such that just can't really be bothered)

7s:25%

8s:35%

9s:25%

10s: 10%

This is a pretty good distribution. I'd personally make 40% 8 footers and 5% 10's, and squeeze in one cruel boss song somewhere in there, but overall ideal. 

I'm honestly wondering if you've read any of my posts. Ha ha ha. I hate DDR, everyone here knows it, I'm trying to help them make a product that would be more appealing to the crowd that they lost to ITG. DDR isn't fun for me, there's no challenge to it, which is what made ITG so appealing 4 years ago.

I think you missed my point. Completely, at that.

There's a lot of arrogance in this thread and it's not constructive. Half the posts are listing accomplishments that the poster uses to justify their opinion, or simply listing songs without any merit to them. Saying WELL I PASSED SUPER BALLBUSTER ONI WHICH IS A 20 FOOTER USING R21 RAWR I HATE THIS AND THIS MAKE THIS just makes you look like a jerk who takes dancing games way too seriously. If I were the Admin or any of the developers reading on I would look at your post once, shake my head, and ignore anything you would say later on.

Treating the topic of difficulty in terms of keeping it to 10+ footers is inaccurate and getting completely off-topic from the original post. I mean, there was an argument about using the bar. Way to lose everyone there and derail the goal of the thread.

Post more like usamablackbelt. He used one sentence to describe where he was at in terms of his skill and then made his opinions that were constructive to the questions in the original post and some of the development in the thread. It's the only post in the past two or three pages to do this. The rest is LHOT and Archowl going on about how awesome they are. If you're going to respond to people, make it something that the developers can use. This is basic Internet courtesy.

Come on, guys, DDR needs this, can't you just go back to BemaniStyle or DDRFreak and argue about it back there? Just give the game this one thread to make a difference.

Moose, I'm getting **** tired of your ****ing arrogance. Us bar players have more stamina than you can DREAM of. You know why? With exceptions, we don't FUTURE/Bracket ****/Heel-Toe/whatever the **** you want to call it. Take a look at this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNQ0qGqVOO4 That's me and Rynker playing Strange Program, (He is on Expert (16), and he moved me up to Hard (14) even though I said easy in the video (an 11, which I have passed) (and if you listen closely, you can hear me say, "****, I'm on the 14") So, that's stamina play. Look at your beloved Mad Matt (No Bar) He does less than half of the streams actually flat footing. If he had to use the bar, and wasn't able to bracket ****. I would DESTROY him. Not mention the fact that I have extremely heavy shoes, designed to be extra supportive for Parkour (Urban Ninja like stuff) so I don't break my ankle

Mmmm... kay... here's the deal. Yes, it's a good chart, but it's not worthy of being an Oni chart, I didn't see the difficulty in the video, due to youtubes low quality. But, that's a 9 at the most. The heavy chart is an 8 if I recall correctly. So, the casual players should get twice the content, while us hardcore get very little, and the stuff we do get looks like it was made by monkeys ****ing on the developers. (ala FaxX Oni, FelmO, DEGRS, etc) Seriously, why don't you at least get the Devs to PLAY the game. You can't make a spanish to english dictionary without know spanish/english. Here, the music is english, the stepcharts are spanish, you need to have someone who is fluent to make the dictionary worth a ****.

Looks like someone forgot to take their happy pills this morning. Or ever. Getting rude and arrogant around here is not going to make Konami cater to the desires of the community, it will only give them an excuse to stop making the fun games we like. 

Someone brought up the idea of licensed songs not getting the correct treatment in terms of quality and difficult charts. The Way You Move on Universe 2 is a great example on how to do this right. Just because the song is primarily there to hook in new players doesn't mean it can't be fun for the established base. Most DDR players skip over the license songs not just because they're too easy, but because they're not fun overall. Stuff like I'll Make Love to You and La Bamba (Double's chart) are the rare exceptions of tough licensed charts, but both of them are garbage and not fun. Make more charts like The Way You Move, think back to previous mixes' licenses and their charts, particularily the 2Unlimited songs on 5th Mix and most of the Captain Jack songs. Use them as examples on how to do licenses right.

Just keep to the regular opinions around this thread. Fix the rating system, take it easy on the ridiculous difficulty charts for the next few mixes, and if you make a song tough try to make it fun also. 

A concert would be awesome but impractical. Unless you wanted only a few people to show up, you'd have to convince people to drive/fly all to one city, find food and lodging, and deal with the same problems everyone faces when traveling. These days, that's tough to do. It works fine when coupled with BowlmaniFest, but that doesn't seem to be happening this year. Oh, and you'd have to convince the really popular Bemani artists to go for it also, because bringing some of the lesser-known/popular artists to a concert here in the States probably wouldn't work well.

An touring arcade tournament with SN2 on E-Amuse would be more feasable and successful, plus get the word out about Bemani games. I voted for this.

TL;DR on the bottom. 

There isn't a problem with difficulty in DDR, there's just inconsistency with chart difficulty values and their quality. There's plenty of stuff on SN2 that should be rated tougher/easier than what they should be, and there are simply some garbage charts like Arabbiata. As much as I like crossing over and figuring out different ways to step on the pads, going 220+ BPM with step-jumps is not the way to go. NGO is like this as well.

It seems to me that DDR is trying to up the difficulty to keep up with ITG players while they're going a completely different and unbalanced path. As opposed to adding simple 16th streams there are faster BPMs with step-jumps that go into awkward crossovers. It's difficult but it isn't fun. I enjoy playing some of the tougher 10's and some 11's on ITG because their charts provide the right amount of challenge and enjoyment. I like charts like Maxx Unlimited, Xepher, and Paranoia Respect for the same reason. FELM is superior to FAXX not just because it's easier but because it's better made with respect to the player's ability.

There's nothing wrong with trying to make things harder, just make them fun. Sure, you could always add a chart that's just cruel like PSMO did to Extreme, or HDVO did to SuperNOVA, but you can't just dump arrows into a chart with ridiculous crossovers like what Paranoia Hades is like. Pluto Relinquish Oni is a good example of how to do this the correct way.

Imagine playing IIDX 16 BURST (or whatever name it is) and all the new Anothers are 12's (13's?) that are built like Mei, Nageki no Ki, and Icarus that have Sense 2007 scratches...and all the Hyper Charts are in the 6-9 range. Nobody would want to play it anymore because the difficulty has become so skewed and there's no way to work to bridge that gap unless you've played simulators. It's become that way with DDR. For the next mix there should be just one ridculous boss song and any other 10's should be playable like MAX 300 or Unlimited. Hell, make them like Sakura if you have to, just make them fun.

I've mentioned this in other discussions, but the 1-10 scale just doesn't work well with DDR. I'd recommend bumping it to the 1-100 just to make things sane for the current hardcore players, but I think 1-15 would work best for everybody else.

On a side note, when do we get to see the Oni charts for Ecstasy, Candy*, Maximizer, basically everything that was in the Universe games put into the arcade versions? I certainly hope they'll show up for the next one, as they're good charts and will add value to the overall game and competitive scene. I agree with some of the above posts and add Oni charts to some existing, easier charts. It doesn't have to be right away and you can add them over time, keeping them fun is a bigger priority than making them hard.

TL;DR feel free to make charts hard but don't forget to make them fun.