League Discussion/Recruitment/Information

**Barfo** · Joined: 10 Oct 2006 Posts: 2596

Well performance mode is in no matter what. Enough people like it and its entrenched enough (has its own cheat code) that its not going away, and i say that as a person who cannot pass a single song on perf mode and has no idea how to even work hard enough to do it (i rely on the visual cues for timing, as i have no ear for either pitch or rhythm).

"Ends in xx" is my baby so im naturally going ot defend that one. The thing that is exciting and fun about the ends in "xx" twist is that it is open ended enough that it can be approached multiple ways and there is a clear strategic trade-off between quality of score and how much lee-way you decide in advance, as well as a very clearly trainable underlying "skill". I guarantee that anybody here could get ends in xx every time if they , approached it in advance witht he idea of simply stopped hitting all held notes in the entire song as soon as they got the right modulo 50. Except for the few songs with <20 sustains (YWC, RTT, FixIt, a few others), thats simply a fact that if you get the usual 50-100 sustains to try on youd eventually get it (1/50 chance even if you are doing it by blind luck). But your score is going to have a very low chance of being anything but suck. Whereas on the other hand, you can get an awesome score every time by going into it witht he plan of playing the song normally and then planning to try and get the exact score on the last sustain of the song, but the chacne you'd get the right score would be very low.

And of course you can generalize the strategy to basically divide the song into two halves (A and B): play the song in part A normally, and then in section B only hit holds witht he goal of getting the right modulo 50 (hitting at 1x helps control it) and then miss all other holds int he song. As part A gets larger in size, your guaranteed score goes up, but the chance of getting the exact score goes downl, and for people who are better at being able to reliably get an exact score they can have a larger section A and a smaller section B and have the same reasonably close to unity chance of getting the right score every time. For ex on slow BPM songs while doing proofs i usually get the modulo 50 score i want in much less than 10 sustains, for faster BPM songs i need as many as probably 25 or so, and there are various tricks that definitely help you to do this, tricks that can be learned (or taught).

The best thing i like about the "ends in xx" twist is that it is one of the only strategic twists (as opposed to physical or distraction types) that is inherently an open problem with no single optium solution (path-wise). For ex, <x ns or <X% the 'best' path through the song exists, and given both infinite path strategizing ability and infinite path execution ability, there is a single 'optimum' route that each contestant would get to, however for "ends in xx" there is no way to completely take probability out of the equation. For ex, i did collide ends in 66 on week 4 of ssn3/A, and i only had one run to get it right in (i was rushed that week), so i parsed up the song with 75% of it in section A and got a good SP path through that, and then i left the rest of the song (~30 sustains) as the time to get the mod 50, and of course i got it. However although that was the right path for me at the time knowing that i only had one shot and knowing that at the highish BPM of Collide i'd need ~30 sustains to get the right score, if id gone into it knowing i was goign to have enought ime to work on it for ~10 tries, i had theorized a plan to try and get it on the last 10 sustains or so which would have let me get like 95% of the song into part A.

EDIT:

**tinytimFTW** · Joined: 15 Apr 2007 Posts: 44

I'd like to run this idea by someone. I was thinking of sort of a rewards point system for the leagues. Lets say, in a league of 24. First place would get 12 and last would get -12. If you reach enough + points, you are moved up. If you get enough - points, you are sent down. If you get enough + points on AAA, you are retired and placed in a League Hall of Fame. If you get too many - points on C, you are suspended until you prove worthy of playing in the league. This would be a good way to keep skill levels even.

Also, I'd like random steroids testing.

**Barfo** · Joined: 10 Oct 2006 Posts: 2596

Thats more or less what happens already, except theres a more complex (secret) formula at play than just a linear reward based upon order of finish. I (We) put everybody's scores from the league (and other db scores when a league score is not available, and qualifying scores for new people) into a common normalized rating scheme format and then divide it up evenly (technically a more flexible solution to parse one individual pool than to divide it up first and then move people in between in fixed increments) so that people are (hopefully) somewhat evenly matched. I think mainly fixed leagues with only a few movement after each season are impossible (or at a minimum undesirable in terms of keeping competitive leagues) because there i too much turnover form season to season with some people droppign out due to time or general "been there, done that"-iveness and a whole bunch of new ppl coming in each season that its better to look at each season as a blank slate in terms of how to raw the assignments (but basing the results off of the previous results for returning people) even though having very fixed motion criteria would be superficially satisfying.
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Watching her, these things she said / "Time," she cried "failed to wait, this time"
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Hush now / Let it go now / I know it's time to go / Time to let this fall / From my hands

**tinytimFTW** · Joined: 15 Apr 2007 Posts: 44

Ok thanks for explaning. I just wanted to throw my idea out there.

**sixcarwinsagain** · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 57 Location: west crazy, ny

i was thinking that for a twist u could play upside down like when u were a little kid and u would put your feet up where your head goes and play that way.

**JR626** · Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 1622 Location: Minnesota

Alright Barfo I hear what your saying about the "ends in xx" score and I understand the strategy involved. I guess I wasn't really thinking about letting off holds at the right time and stuff.

Anyway, I'm over that. It's fine with me now. Although I do still prefer twists that involve things like <xx% and <x note streak. But that's just me.
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psxfreak101, regarding jaimeclaude's 1st place league score on BttW wrote:

<psx> not our fault she can squeeze balls to the wall

**RyuBlitz** · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject:

**sixcarwinsagain** · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 57 Location: west crazy, ny

Yea i thought that might happen but it sounded like fun. Maybe next time i should try something before i suggest it.

**rkcr** · Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 2518 Location: Minneapolis

**Barfo** · Joined: 10 Oct 2006 Posts: 2596

**Twilight42** · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 50

I have a few twist ideas I'd like to share.

1) Small/Large Notes - If you're playing on a widescreen TV, turn off wide display. If you have a regular TV, turn ON wide display.

2) Guitar Flip - Play with the guitar controller's frets and strums facing you. I found this kinda easy, actually.

3) Guitar Behind Head - ...

I <3 this idea the most. >_>
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From there, you play a game of extreme checkers. What's extreme about it? The checkers are on fire, and if you flinch when you touch a checker, a ninja beats the shit out of you. - Alakaiser