That's also how I play Be In My Paradise and I'll Make Love to You and bag and all them slow songs.
I count Be In My Paradise as a 126bpm song at x0.5, and I'll Make Love to You as a 150 bpm song in 3:4 at x0.33

I was the one who suggested using DARK or DARK & HIDDEN. My reason for this is because after 4-5 years of playing, I have been on the same plateau for ever. I use these mods to train myself to not just watch the arrows, but play with a balance of visual and audio inputs. Right now I'd say I play about 70% visual with regard to hitting my arrows on PERFECT, which I do very good with, but what I've found by playing with DARK is interesting.

If I play using the mods I mentioned for a week or two, then go back to playing DDR without the DARK mod, I notice a significant improvement in my overall PA scores. I guess it's like the kung fu movies where they make the guy fight blindfolded. It isn't meant to be the PRIMARY way he fights, but by increasing those 'senses', he becomes a superior fighter on the whole when he can see again.

Also, you are very correct that some songs you will do horribly on with the DARK mod. One that always comes to mind is Ska a Go Go, Memories, or Crash. Some of those songs just have horrendous sync and almost need to be played entirely by vision. I would suggest that people give DARK a shot and see what it does for you. If you've been playing even half as long as I have, I'm sure that you could spare a week of DDR to try playing with the DARK mod on all the time. So what if your scores aren't as good? Next week you can go back to normal, perhaps with even better accuracy than you've ever had?

okay, that makes more sense, and yeah, i can see how that helps.

for a while i did something similar with always playing on Blind/Hide Judgement on stepmania/ITG.  when i first started playing ITG, i told myself i would never play on anything other than hide judgement.  i think it helped as a start, but again is the sort of thing that you can't rely upon to be consistent across songs or even within a song.  If you have the ability ot have the frame of reference there, you should use it and any tool that will help you perform the song better.

But as a means of trying to work on some of your weaknesses, i agree that playing on dark or blind and using those handicaps to change your thinking will ultimately benefit you once you go back to what is normal.

to something you said, about not being able to get good grades on harder songs if i cant tristar+ the easy songs

well the last time i played i tried some easy chars on itg, (2-4 step) well, i couldnt manage to even get an S, S- was the highest i could get, and thats was on a 2 step, so i think im going to start playing beginner songs liike that a bit more to try and up my accuracy, as for what everyone else said, thanks, my accuracy is just killing me

I don't want to start a fight here. But the turtle shell/blindfold/Dark/Blind comparison doesn't improve your accuracy nearly as much as you might think it does. Yes, ultimately, when you go back to playing normally, your PA will have improved somewhat, but it won't have improved as much as it would have if you -get this- JUST PRACTICED YOUR PA. Why? There's a curve that you pick up when you start playing on a new style or modifier that can last as long as it takes for you to master it. In the best case scenario, you pick it up quickly and it becomes a piece of cake. The worst case scenario is obviously where you never fully master the modifier and there's no point playing on it in the first place. There's a catch though: the best case scenario still sucks, because ultimately the period of PA improvement comes from tackling that modifier. If you get it in a cinch, all that really means is that you can also PA on that modifier, in addition to being able to PA normally. (which you should be able to)

I have never played on any visual modifier on DDR to practice my PA ever. At most I use solo most of the time, and shuffle or left/right for songs with heinous double-stepping. I have 53 AAA's, as many flags, and a few zero great/one combo break score. About this same time last year I had no AAA's and virtually no SDG's really. My improvement was obviously dramatic, not to mention sudden, and to reiterate, I have never used visual modifiers to practice my PA EVER, and I can almost certainly assure you that most of the top-tier players like MegamanX and Blue Mystic never did either. It's simply more practical to do it the old-fashioned way.

Now that's not to say in other contexts this doesn't work; on the contrary, I'm sure hindering your ability somewhat as a means of practice works very well in things like martial arts or other physical exercises. When it comes to DDR though, PA in visual terms is 100% mental and not physical.

ethan -

you're an individual and only one particular case.  dark/blind stuff doesn't help every type of player.  using it as a tool isn't always the most useful.

me, when i'm not playing for score, i prefer playing on blind because i can read the patterns more easily with the text out of the way.  that was one of the big reasons i started playing on blind in the first place.  especially when i'm playing on alternate.

ultimately i don't think it does a whole lot of good for long term, but it can help force some people to think outside of their regular "box" if they've hit some sort of plateau, force them to concentrate on something else that they should devote more energy to but haven't.  by playing on blind and still trying to get a good score, i ended up forcing my timing to be more consistent overall in order to get good scores without relying upon judgement, and that provided a more solid basis for me to stay consistent so that the judgements could become more solid fine tuning.

that's just me, though.  playing on alternate reguarly helped my FA as well, as playing marathons, and i don't think that's the case for everyone either.

No, that's true enough, I know when I hit a plateau, I try out different modes. I suppose it's really the same thing, huh?

I think playing Caddywhompus can be good for accuracy.

I was one Excellent off for getting a double star for Utopia Medium.

heh.  except that i learned how to tell if i was getting a fantastic or an excellent from caddwhompus by tracking exactly how much my percentage was going up, so judgements might as well be on on that for me.

Something that really worked for me over my Hiatus I took from December 8th to February 13th was to speedwhore on j7 on StepMania with the keyboard.  It absolutely killed my balance and endurance when I finally went back to playing DDR, but my PA between 300 and 400 on easy songs (8 or lower) improved by a ton, because I was able to just take my PA and work on that without thinking about waiting for the arrow to get to the top of the screen or how tired I was.

Marvs are good btw.

Wow, I totally lost all my balance and stamina too after working on accuracy.  I have trouble passing a lot of 9s without bar, forget getting any sort of good score.

It hampered my balance too, but not to the extent of failing 9's no bar. It did however make it impossible to pass 12's and 13's for a long while. (In fact, I've never really regained my ability to pass V2, which kind of sucks.)

I finally got to where my 10's+ were back to where they were in November about a month ago.  Since then I've seen nothing but improvement across the board though.

My ability to PA no bar was affected too, even on easy songs, but now I'm getting comparable PA on 8's and lower regardless of the bar.

Maybe less intensive PA training, such as playing normally, but also spending 30 minutes a day just working on PA, would eliminate the negative effects without taking away the positive effects.

well for the past while ive been whoring out itg2pc and working intensively on my fa, when i started this thread my average score on an itg 10 was 75% or less, now sightread i average 85, higher if i knwo the chart well (soon enough ill S a 10) 9's ive got lotso f s' and im working for a star, which when i posted this thread seemed almost impossible and i hadnt even gotten higher then 85 on nayhting at that point.

a few more questions

i cant do fast streams for shit now, delerium a song i could do fairly well now i have a hellova time witht he stream, and ive gotten worse at hardcore symphony and xuxa even gives me crap sometimes. i have been trying to cut down my foot motion ALOT and instead of jsut flat footing but still moving the majority of my foot to the arrow i heel toe now, its alot less tiring, but i get assloads of misses. i dunno any ideas on hwo i can improve my stepping on 16th runs? and i can read them jsut fine, tahts not the issue. never has been..

also, my accuracy on 11's jsut DROPS hard from 10's i havnt put much effort into it but my highest 11 score is less then 80 (i could 80 fairly easy im sure) question here is how can i up my 11 scoring abliity? its mostly scoring in harder parts, easyer songs helped my in the easer parts (the mid sections in destiny for example) but again, streams are hurting me.

thats really about it, thoo improvement sure is coming slower now >_<

The best way to practice your timing on hard streams is by playing a stream at the same speed with less complex steps, and playing a stream at a slower speed with the same complexity of steps, the first for the rhythm, the second for the coordination.

its probably me keeping beat on faster stuff, im great at slower 16th runs.. like fleadh my favorite game (orgasm) charlene, and tears in may to name a few, and if im warmed up i can combo though the first stream of destiny... its got something to do with the speed i think i dunno >_>

I hope that someone on here can offer you some better advice on this. I am an accuracy nut, but because of that (or perhaps my accuracy combined with my size) it makes it very difficult for me to complete 10+ step songs with a good score. Well, I suppose that it's all relative, I know that when I beat 10 and 11 step songs on a BAD day, they're still almost at 80% or better. I've got buddies who can spam a song and finish it "easily", yet they can barely get above 85% at their best.

But anyways, from what I can tell, the keys to keeping your accuracy going through those insane streams (i.e. Destiny) is to ;

1. Rape the bar for all it has (seriously, learning how to play with the bar PROPERLY is a big deal. Check out this thread for more info: http://itgfreak.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=300 )
2. Make sure to keep the beat of the song the entire time. Don't forget that, while it might be a huge mess of arrows, they're still to the beat of the song (or at least they should be).
3. Move those freakin feet! I really don't know what else to tell you. Practice will make perfect and with enough time, and practice, you'll find the most effective and efficient way to move your feet and body to maximize accuracy while maintaining a full combo.
4. (optional) Perhaps playing the song at a faster than normal speed can help? I play most 10+ step songs one speed modifier higher than I normally do. Why? I guess to me it seems to clarify the steps much more. Perhaps you can give this a try?

1. yea for the longest time i was bar raping horribly, i checked out that thread once, changed my style and am very glad i did, i saw an immediate 50+ more perfects the FIRST TIME i started playing bar like that (was on ddr)
2. for the most part i do, main reason i cant do delerium as of late is beat,  but i feel the reason i cant do summer. is because of foot speed, which is odd, because i can make it thought the mid stream of determinator, so i know my feet can move that fast, i think i jstu have a problem CONTROLLING my foot speed at 170+bpm 16th's or eqivlent
3. im kind of playing between foot styles right now, i can flat foot very very well and keep my accuracy and combo, but im trying to start heel toeing, and i think that is my problem, now that i think of it, whenever im playing hardcore symphony i do MUCH better when i just flat foot instead of heel toeing, i think i shoudl just work on my heel toe technique
4. i think thats because with more arrows they are more clutterd (at least 16th's) i play just abotu every song around 600bpm cept determinator, which i read much faster because of the 24th's.  ive done ALOT Of toying around with speed mods, im comfortable there.