A good deal of this has been covered in the other thread already. I'm glad further discussion of unresolved topics such as price and other things are taking place.

I want to reiterate that while I do feel a 12 cap is appropriate, I've always felt a 12 allowed for first round may be too intense. As much as i love 12s id never pick it in 1st round or my first set playing on a normal basis. But It seems lots are misperceiving the notion of modifying the difficulty cap. The fact is, on the first draft, the round 1 cap was 9, not 12, 11, or even 10. But I won't discuss this much more since KDDR already mentioned that will probably be revised. Doing a 10, 11 on first round though isn't unreasonable, I myself also train at the gym, pick a certain pair of clothes and ESPECIALLY have my Kraft Mac n cheese before coming to acme. Practice & prep the way you feel will best suit you for the tourney.

My outlook on hard charts is quite neutral. While I prefer expert charts, I wouldn't be angry if one wanted to pick it on me. Though like Gerrak said, we don't want this to be a stomping DDR tourney, if one picked a hard chart on me, I'd feel good about myself knowing the other player needed to use strategy of some sort to compete with me. Sempai also made a valid point that one shouldn't fear the person flailing through 13s /14s but the person who just quads a 9.

I hope our discussion won't beat dry what was already discussed in the other thread though.

Rainault + Neempoppa: good points about warming up.  I generally try to warm up ahead of time myself, but with all of the wait time, etc., it's pretty easy to cool down in the beginning of the tournament and I definitely agree with blocking 12's for a round or two - I had advised minimal shifting of the caps, and I think this is a necessary accommodation.  I don't know if I'd put the cap at 10 or 11 for first round based on the idea of warming up, but honestly, I feel that 9 is a bit too restrictive as a first round accommodation.  Drilling into these details will segue into irrelevance, since Kevin has promised a revision to the capping rules being discussed, but I'd glad to see general willingness to identify tangible reasons to set caps, rather than picking magic numbers and dealing with argument after argument about why it's not perfect.




To be fair, choices should generally be made by evaluating yourself and the other player, so strategy would always be an element, but there is a difference between knowing general weaknesses of a player and memorizing how to handle the gimmicks on a very unpopular chart as a trump card.  I do have to agree with your sentiment, though, and if something beyond my ability is picked against me, it was within the bounds agreed upon ahead of time, and I acknowledged that by entering.

At the last Acme tournament, this lead to me messing up my knee pretty badly on a 12, I honestly feel it was my fault for not backing out earlier in the song - the rules did not cause me to forfeit the entire match by failing one song, so the responsibility to decide fell entirely on me, since I could make a comeback between my song and the tiebreaker.  IIRC, said player admitted he was trying to make me hurt myself, throwing sportsmanship to the wind, so I am willing to openly label him a douchebag, but I honestly feel that the you-pick-it-you-pass-it and forfeiture-by-song (as opposed to losing the entire match by quitting one song) combination is sufficient.

Basically, I don't want to infringe on anyone's ability to prey on my weaknesses (barring the above discussion regarding early tournament warmup concerns), but if I'm going to allow that, it's only fair that I can prey on their weaknesses.  Since I hold to the notion that the game is not restricted the narrow subset known as single expert, I feel that rules trying to enforce this notion aggressively are inappropriate.  Personally, I will be training for both timing and stamina, will pick songs according to my opponent, and will try to be ready for anything - I ask the same of other players, and most seem willing to abide by this concept.

Sigh, i'll ignore all of the 'What is/isn't an expert player' discussion and chime in on something here.

Okay, everyone wants to 'have fun' while being able to 'play to their strengths' and 'keep it fair'.  Basically all three of these things happening at the same time is impossible.  Fair to one person will never be fair to everyone else.

On that note, Ancsik, even with regards to admitting he was trying to get you to hurt yourself, I really wouldn't consider one picking a 12 on you as a douchebag move.  That basically says 1 - He knew your playstyle and weaknesses and 2 - He knew you'd force yourself to do the song even though you didn't have to.  Basically he had a working strategy for you and you fell for it.  It's the equivalent of knowing someone is really bad at 'insert name song', and picking it on them, or having a song you're guaranteed to quad and picking it.  Most competitive gaming would call this counterpicking, as it's pretty much the same thing.  Yes, sportsmanship is all fine and dandy, but everyone's also playing to win at the same time.  If it was a dice roll between maybe beating someone on a 9 and a guaranteed win on a 12, i'd have done the same thing...The same way i'd have went with the obvious choice if it was possibly beating you on a 12 vs a guaranteed win on a 9.

On the note of hard songs vs expert songs, this is a perfectionist game, and unless you're just freestyling charts, the point of the game is to hit every arrow perfectly on time, regardless of how many there are.  Obviously, doing this in a standard tournament setting implies one would be testing each other with the more difficult modes in the game.  It's not that expert players IGNORE 75% of the game by playing expert only imo, it's that the game, like all dance games, were designed with a learning curve in place, so players can work their way up from the bottom of difficulty levels, to the top.  I've played through most of the ITG hard charts out of tournament necessity being that hard was a normal choice in Korean tournaments, but i'd deem it a waste of time in most instances...and that's not exactly a rare opinion by most expert players.  The only major purpose I see of ITG hard charts is tech training, or charts to use as a stepping stone to playing everything on expert.

And to quote Gerrak, 'I don't mean to be rude about it', but alot of the arguments posted in the stamina vs tech talk is pretty much 'The rules should fit my playstyle because..' which is silly.  Personally, I hardly see a reason for a standard tourney vs an expert tourney, being that the reasoning of 'uniting the community' seems to be going further on the backburner here.  I could see having an 11/12 capped tourney and a free for all tourney, but having a standard tourney with ignored-by-most-players hard songs and an exclusion of the more difficult songs for most of the tournament, along with it being the MAIN tournament, just seems like an excuse to please few, rather than many.

Just that going by what Gerrak posted, if true there's no way everyone's going to be happy about things.  It's near guaranteed that someone that doesn't want / doesn't think they can hack exp division will end up in expert division, and someone or MULTIPLE people that everyone thinks should be in exp division, will flub the qualifier and end up in standard and proceed to steamroll everyone.

...There are other ways to go about this, but I see problems arising if things stay the way they are.

The difference between legitimate strategy ("Ancsik sucks at hands so I'll pick Queen of Light!") and picking a song for the explicit purpose of injuring somebody is that the aforementioned legitimate strategy affects nothing but the tournament ranking.  Yes, Ancsik will be eliminated from the tournament... but it's just a game, and presumably both players know that. 

Picking a song to injure somebody affects the person the song was picked against long after the tournament is over - after this particular tournament, for example, Ancsik could not resume normal activities like "taking out the trash" for several days.  If he hadn't stopped at the right time, he probably would have ended up in the hospital.  Player responsibility does kick in at some point - Ancsik stopped as soon as he noticed something was seriously wrong, and if he hadn't, he would have had some part in his own injury, but the point remains that the guy who picked the song against him either a. didn't think about the consequences of what he was doing, or b. did think of those consequences and didn't care.  So basically, he's either self absorbed or sociopathic - either way, a giant fucking douchebag.

That said, I agree we should get back on topic.  Debating level cap is legitimate, I think, because Kevin hasn't posted what the new caps will actually be, and thus what we say might actually matter.  The more theoretical debates could probably stand to have their own thread.

Please just make this happen. Somebody, anybody, I don't care. Just make this tournament happen.

KDDR is working on it! A couple of days ago, he told me that he should have dates soon.

Unless there was a machine hooked up to each player that absolutely forced both of them to finish the song, there's no fault to this aside from the player who decided to play along.  If Usain Bolt challenges me to a sprint and I injure myself trying to keep up...What the HELL was I doing trying to keep up with Usain Bolt?  One should know their own limitations.

The new level caps will be interesting.  I'm just hoping there's no hissy fits when a 'tech player' accidently ends up with the big boys.

So it's big, huh?  As a small female 'tech player,' I think I speak for all of us when I say "pics or it didn't happen."  Otherwise, I might throw a hissy fit. <3

Edit: By this post I mean that you come off as kind of arrogant and might want to take it down a notch if that's not your intent.

Hey guys you can count me in for the tournament whenever the date gets announced. I just wanna enter a tournament in a new area. (Just recently moved from Texas)

Kind of curious about this discussion though in regards to the difficulty and pick selection. If someone physically can't do a song and I can, I'm not allowed to pick it? Bloodrush for example...like I worked my ass off to be able to pass and score that song so am I supposed to just pick Bumblebee whereas he might be able to out score me?    I dunno I guess it's a tournament mindset and a responsibility to yourself to not exceed your limitations.

I do look forward to seeing you guys at the tourney if it goes down. I'd like to reach out and meet players. 

Lol, if there's one thing i'd be more arrogant about than dancing game, it's the big boy.

I just mean that the standard rules everyone is trying to argue down cater to players like yourself.  That can tech but seemingly want no part of the harder side of the game.  And to determine who gets into the division that will likely involve stamina songs, we're using an 8 and a 10 *non stamina songs o.O* as the decider?

...So, what happens in theory if you or Suko or insert name player that hasn't really expressed interest in the expert division gets seeded 7th or 8th or even higher?  Will everyone take it as an honor of 'Yay, i'm good enough for expert division!' and then proceed to frown at the 11+s picked on you?  I mean heck, I like 11s.  And could literally play them all day.  Round 1 picking Monolith isn't me being a stamina whore, it's warming up.

This just doesn't seem all thought out well to me as it stands.

You could probably count me in depending on the date and how much notice ill be able to have to get it off from work

NekoSempai:

The fault is not in the action, the fault is in the intention - it's kind of the reasoning behind the idea of sportsmanship.

In this particular case, as I said, I do keep a close eye on my own condition, and I had chosen to push myself and did not back off soon enough.  In your example, you tried to hold out through a challenge above your known capabilities, and again, did not back off soon enough.  Blame in both cases falls on the player for not taking proper care of himself.

The difference in the examples is that Usain Bolt is a sprinter who challenged you to run against him, presumably because he's thought you would agree - he's faster than you, you will lose unless you do something drastic, so you do something drastic, but there's no intent to cause you harm, at least none that is out in the open.  In my example, the player held the intention to do harm and said so, explicitly and openly. Usain may have malicious intent in your example - maybe he just really likes humiliating people, maybe he has something against you specifically - but that's not known and not really fair to assume with the information presented, and as a result, I don't assume it.

Had this player not come out and told me of his intent, I would have been blissfully unaware and passed no judgement on him - his actions modified by intent still make him a douchebag, but I would not know his intent and would make no assumptions about his intent and therefore could not pass judgement.  Additionally, even though he was open about his intentions, he may have felt bad about it after the fact - people have a tendency to regret causing unnecessary harm. I honestly do not know if that was the case or not, but I would hope so as the lack of such regret is indicative of sociopathy; to rephrase a bit: a lot of people out there are douchebags, but it bears mentioning that most of them are fully aware that they are douchebags.

Many sports have a final rule in their respective books saying "just because it's not explicitly disallowed, doesn't mean it's proper."  If they feel your actions were meant purely to harm other players or slide through a few odd loopholes in the rules to achieve the same outcome those rules were intended to prevent, then it doesn't matter that you didn't break an existing rule.  The precedent is there to make rules about intent, but I am not advocating anything like that, I'm just saying that I did not appreciate the intentions of another player to the point that it affected my perception of the tournament itself.

To put it a little more clearly, we have a tentative ruleset, it contains no rule against any of the following:
1. Yelling at the other player mid-song
2. Attempting to obstruct the other player's view of the screen
3. Greasing the other players' arrows, or any other methods of modifying that player's side of the machine.  Recalc/replay rules might apply should modifications be made to the sensors, but anything else meant to impede peak performance or cause the player to injure himself is not explicitly banned.
4. Aggravated assault, murder, blackmail. (Is winning a tournament worth a felony and prison time?  The answer is, hopefully, a very firm no.)
5. Bribing a player to throw the match or bribing the organizer.
6. Resetting the machine after breaking combo and before scores can be recorded.
7. Wiping peanut butter on the menu buttons in case a player has a peanut allergy (see #5).

Obviously, these are utterly ridiculous and would require intentional action far outside the norms that would be expected at a tournament, but they are completely allowable by the rules of the tournament. The last one is a bit interesting though, as the player has the ability to protect himself against the damaged caused by a physiological condition, but only by completely refusing to play and thereby forfeiting.  If any of these had happened, the players and/or organizer would step in, and the player would be disqualified and I would hope that you would not contest that disqualification on the grounds that no rule was broken, so it was just a unique strategy.

Now, my example was more subtle, but the player made it explicitly clear to me that he had attempted to cause me harm; I did not say he should have been dealt with via disqualification, just that I think his actions were inappropriate and excessive.  The goals behind this tournament discussion have been stated as having a generally enjoyable event and fostering a fiercely competitive environment; sportsmanship comes at little cost to the latter, but the lack thereof is generally associated with large costs to the former.  I was not expressing an desire to codify strict definitions of good sportsmanship into the rules and banning those who don't comply, I was putting out a firm example of what I find reasonable (leaving the responsibility of backing off to the player and ensuring reasonable consequences as to encourage responsible decisions), and making a slight clarification that there are things a player can do within the rules that should discouraged in the spirit of good spirited competition, but that are not necessarily banned.


To condense it all a bit more clearly:

We've been trying to strike a proper balance here.  The rules may or may not block 12's from being playable in certain rounds, and there's debate over that.  There's further debate because , while many players heavily prefer highly rated charts, a subset of those players insists that a "proper" tournament is one that encompasses only highly rated charts, as that's the "proper" way to play the game.  When players cite that they play the game differently, they are informed that they are not "proper" players and should play differently.  Many players, on both sides of the debate, are pushing for varying levels of consideration for the distinct types of players, and the balance is damn hard to pinpoint because capping the choices too high or too low has different implications on what play style is advantaged within the game, but leaving it completely open is apparently not fun or not fair or something.

What is strictly in the rules is that, if you could pick Bloodrush and were to do so against a player who cannot and chooses to not even try, and you ultimately fail it, then that player beat you.  It's one thing to know what you are good at or what the other player is bad at, it's something very different to pick something neither of you can pass consistently and hope that you fail after they do.  The pure timing players tend to feel alienated being forced to play things they know they can't pass or having to forfeit (and think that stamina players are self-centered and refuse to step out of their comfort zone for fear of realizing they aren't good at some part of a very expansive game); the pure stamina players feel like playing anything below a 9 is a waste of their time (and hold a belief that if you aren't a stamina player already, you clearly don't want to be and don't want anyone else to be and hate fun); some players from each side are relatively moderate and don't care as long as the rules don't keep them from picking the charts they want to pick; I write extremely long, detailed posts attempting to justify my own opinions with something other than my opinion itself, but the people who would benefit most from taking a minute to separate opinion from fact tend to not listen.

Splitting the competition into two divisions after the qualifying round has been proposed as a solution, but this has led to its own problems wherein players from both ends of the spectrum are guaranteed to place in the standard division, so the rules still have to be carefully crafted.  This is further complicated by the fact that at least one, but inevitably half of the players in the expert division will be self identifying timing players and the expert rules are biased heavily toward stamina players as they are now.  This is yet further complicated by the idea that a timing player could just bow out and switch with a standard division player, because then it is explicitly condoning the notion that certain players play the game "correctly" by making it a special badge to play with the rule set tailored to stamina play; holding separate "timing" and "stamina" brackets also fails, because there would be no reason to force players to not enter both, and inevitably both brackets would have almost every player enter, and at that point, we should just have a single tournament into which all of the organizers' effort can be put, rather than having to split it across the two events.

I happen to fall in the timing category by necessity rather than choice because passing Delirium no bar a couple years ago is oddly correlated with the start of my chronic knee problems (and kept me from playing anything above an 8 for about a month after).  When I have sufficient time to take care of myself, I do train my knee to the point that I can play 12's to a reasonable extent, but, unfortunately, I do not have the abundance of time required to maintain myself so well, the rest of the time, I drill my timing.  I am not happy about having a bad knee and being disadvantaged in competition for it, but so long as the rules don't prevent me from holding my own by playing to my own strengths when the song choice falls on me, then I will enter and compete to the fullest of my ability, whatever that may be.  If another player knowingly chooses to exploit my condition against me, it's a dick move, but I don't see any need to cry foul, since that infringes on their ability to play to their own strengths; if they do exploit my condition while wishing me harm, they're a douchebag, and I wish them harm as well, but so long as the rules allowed it, I will go with it.  I'd rather avoid a rule set which induces a lot of forfeitures as 12's are constantly picked against timing players, since I think that would be unsatisfying to both sides, but, as far as I am concerned, if that's what it takes to get everyone to enter, that's what we should do.  A large tournament will be more interesting and better able to encourage competition (both during the event and when it comes time to plan the next one) than a small tournament, plain and simple.

Regardless, I think everyone can agree that greater turnout is a good thing, so welcome.  Most of us are trying desperately to avoid having the tournament scare away any player who feels they could be competitive and hopefully we'll be settling on rules that keep you interested too.

I feel the same way with Sempai (p.s. Usain Bolt is one of my heros) about doing 11's all day, I love em. KDDR should know around today/tomorrow a proposed date and with that revision should hopefully come a date also I'm looking forward to the new difficulty caps as well.

Totally agree with you Neko on the limitations thing, but that player facing Ansick really didn't have to say "I just wanted him to hurt himself". Thats different/more aggressive than "i wanted to do an intensive stamina drainer on him etc. etc." Playing to strengths will be on everyone's mind and it's totally cool for everyone to do so: playing the 12 wasn't the bad thing, but to say an ill willed statement is the bad thing (both players had responsibility in those events). BUT that was yesterday, I(and we) don't count on people hoping for others injury, while still using all the competitive edge they can. Regardless, I'm confident players in this tournament won't say such things, but also won't hold back from picking good songs and playing to each of their strengths, in good competition

Someone picks that 11/12 on you, or that 9 you've never seen, they don't mean nothing personal! but get ready and know what you're getting into, this is a tourney after all. :]

Personally I couldn't label myself one or the other of these style players, yes I love doing well 12's and cracking into 13's, but i also enjoy nearing the 99/100 on other songs also. Given that the rules are well made, I guarantee that the winner of both said divisions can be labeled both a tech and stamina, or as we call it in the ol days "a real good player!"  

To answer you Jacob: yes you can pick Bloodrush (in the rounds 12s are allowed). If the other player fails/quits, you just have to pass the song being that it is your pick. (as shown in the rule draft)

Now I'm looking forward to the cap revisions and especially the date. Cannot wait (like all) for this thing to happen. Is anyone else happy there won't be that crummy DDR in-game announcer?  
  

Neko, I totally get your point.  I think the consensus we reached is that if somebody seeds into that upper bracket but cannot pass the upper level songs, they are allowed to forfeit their spot in that bracket.  This will work because everyone knows and can vouch for the few people who could possibly seed in the top 6 but not pass 11s +.  

Jacob Blow: The point about players not being able to physically do songs is being made in the context of "what kinds of songs are permissible in a Standard tournament catering to those types of players."  Nobody is saying that you shouldn't pick a song the other guy can't do when that's your only valid win strategy.

Also, with regard to the Ancsik/injury story, the reason that guy is a douchebag isn't that he picked a 12.  It's that his justification for his pick was "I was trying to hurt him."  Doing anything with the explicit intent to injure another player intentionally is douchy, regardless of your stance on personal responsibility.  Even if Tony had simply chosen not to play the song at all, the guy who had the thought process "maybe I can get this guy to hurt himself so I can guarantee a win for the set" still thinks it's okay to hurt people for personal gain, and therefore is a douchebag.

EDIT> Also,


Not really.  Somebody once paid me $10 to seed on a song I'd never seen before (we had two options, and I was confident in my ability to play the first one) so that he could see the chart before he chose what to play.  Largely as a result of that, I seeded last and he took fourth.  Granted, he didn't bribe me to LOSE so much as to do something helpful for him that HAPPENED to disadvantage me, but hey! 

I haven't really read a book in a while, but this thread sure does do the trick >.<


I'm rooting for Rudo to win just so you all know

Wow, I've never seen a player base so intend on writing essays as posts lol 

No I was just a little fumbling about song selection but yeah no malintent involved here.

I do see alot of talk about not passing songs and yes that person should DEFINITELY lose for picking a song and failing it if the other person quits. kinda the norm there.

But I do see one thing that is confusing the balls outta my blow: why are you guys explicitly separating the terms tech player and stamina player? have you all never seen both? like where I'm from a "tech player" meant you generally tried to get 99's on whatever regardless of the difficulty. stamina player was reserved for the crazy folk trying out 14's and looking like they jumped outta the shower when they were done with the song. i never saw someone doing 11's or 12's as stamina players...

it just seems be a controversy over who considers what as an expert around here. i think to ease the tension you guys should just have a pantsless round and the players hold hands. how could you NOT smile during the round hahah

We've discussed the "tech player" VS "stamina player" thing at length.  We do have players who do both - the dichotomy there refers to the fact that at the STANDARD level, players are usually better at one or the other, hence not being expert level yet (if they were, they'd be good at both).

As far as 11s/12s not requiring stamina or whatever... this depends a lot on a wide variety of factors, some of which are out of a player's control.  I'm pretty sure anyone can do anything they put their mind and all of their money and time and effort to, but the amount of energy one needs to expend to play the same song as somebody else is going to be vastly different.  Women move differently than men, because we have more body fat.  A player who's 5'2'' is going to move a lot differently than a player who's 6'5''.  Some people just need to work harder to play the same charts that others can play effortlessly.  I would argue that the vast majority of people in the area would probably consider a 12 "stamina intensive" but not a 9, even if they can quad star both.

Also, it looks like we have a lot of new people from out of state, and that's awesome and we like you guys, but one disturbing trend I've been noticing is the whole "Well, where *I* come from, people play Dragonforce like it's nothing" attitude.  Seattle may not be the Midwest, but our community has a lot of history and I for one am very proud to be a part of it.  If not for Chris Danford, (UW CS graduate!) Chris Foy, and Kyle Ward, there would be no ITG - hell, there would be no Stepmania. 

*gets ready to add a chapter to the book that is this thread*

@Laura - Don't take this as a personal or even area attack, and this will probably come off as elitist,  but that 'out of state' attitude you speak of basically comes from your area of players simply not being as developed of players as other areas.  I'm in no way biased, as i've played dance game tourneys all over the US/world *hell maybe some of you have too*, and certain areas..due to popularity, machines, community, or competition, simply get better than others as almost a whole.  Sure there's always the amazing potentially tourney winning player from bumf@%! nowhere, but it's how competitive gaming as a whole has always been.  In the DDR days you had CA, MD, NY, NJ that each had a good dozen plus players that were simply better than most people...and even now, 5-10 years later, it's still pretty accurate. 

It's all about area differences.  Like, this whole 'tech vs stamina', 'standard vs expert' conversation would be laughed at in the MidAtlantic or even Midwest.  There'd be one expert division *with some fun random other divisions like sightread or challenges* period and may the best player win, not coddle a second division for players who aren't as good for insert-name-reason like it's a junior division.  I mean really, I became an 'expert' player because I was surrounded by expert players and wanted to beat them, not become the champion of the B league.  I played strictly no bar for awhile and stamina trained so I could have the endurance to tech 13+ without too much issue.  And I enjoyed the whole thing.  Everyone likes fun yes, but no one is going to argue that winning is pretty fun.  I basically relearned how to play pump in korea because the techniques of 100lb 5'3 guys that were S'ing 20+ songs were beyond me. etc etc etc

And sure.  A 12 would be more stamina intensive compared to a 9.  But that's like saying jogging 2 mile is more stamina intensive than jogging half of one.  It's obvious, but that doesn't mean that some people still won't find the former all that difficult.  And sure, physical limitations and gender are handicaps in most things physical.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't limits that can't be overcome.  I wouldn't say I have the ideal body type for dancing games, nor would I even be able to describe to you what said body type is...but I work with what I got.   Hell I remember quite clearly when I was staring at crap like Orion Civ Mix and COMPLETELY POSITIVE that it was a joke chart that no one could possibly combo.  Now it's like '..plays a 14....sips water....plays a 15..'.....And I don't have much doubt that most players, barring physical wall, could do the same.  Hell, there are 14 year old girls in Boston AAA'ing 10s these days.  Times have changed.

Ah, all this arrow stomp talk has me wanting to play now.

You nailed it sir. It's the reason why I'm not complaining.

Totally agree once upon a time some 9s were viewed at how i see 14's now, even now i like to put a few 12's in a set. other times ill throw in all 9s, whatever song sounds fun.

Quite novels indeed. At this point I'm just looking forward to further details like the revisions and most importantly the date!

@Neko: I totally get that, because back in the DDR days, Seattle was one of those places that was better.  We initiated bar raping.  Lith went down to SoCal and owned the everloving fuck out of their tournaments.  We were on top.  We have all kinds of history here.  That's why it's so hard for me to watch people treat Seattle like it's some ridiculous ass-backwards place. 

And by the way: Seattle has always had "Standard" division tournaments in its history, and some of our best players worked their way up that way.  All of the DDR Magic tournaments at Illusionz, the original home of ITG Alpha, included a division played entirely on charts rated 7 and under.  Nobody thought of it as "coddling" players, but rather as encouraging them to get better at their own pace without missing out on fun.

I agree that you could argue that songs requiring any level of stamina are challenging to people who just haven't improved yet or whatever, and I suppose I have to concede that point.  I guess the main thing that makes a "stamina" chart to me is when it's far enough obscured from actual dancing that the motions no longer flow.  There are a lot of 10 foot charts with awesome spins and gallops that are a blast to play; there are no 12s that, realistically speaking, feel like they could be dancing.  Along with that: I play dance games because I like the "dance" element combined with timing, so I will never want to be a Dragonforce player; it's just not my thing.  How is having a group of players like me have their own tournament/league coddling?

Essentially: I agree with some of what you've said but fundamentally disagree with the fact that 14s and 15s are the end goal that everyone is working towards.   

@Neko: Honestly, we had this argument plenty of times in New England.  We had several tournaments with two divisions.  No one was laughed at and they were very enjoyable for those involved.

All I want to see is the cap lowered down to 11 for the Standard division.  That's it.  Low enough so that the community isn't too intimidated to enter, and high enough that stamina songs are still a valid strategy.

And for those who can't do stamina (like myself), you lose one song.  Then you get to pick the song and beat them out at rhythm songs or gimmick songs or slow songs or songs no one ever plays.  There are plenty of strategies and stamina is merely one of them.  It doesn't mean you'll lose the tournament.

That's my 2 cents and that's all I'm going to say.  I just don't think lowering the difficulty on the standard division by one is that big a deal for anyone involved.

Chapter 15...

I was around for those Seattle being a solid DDR state days, when no one had heard of ITG and Chris Foy was just FoyBoy.  Maybe I missed something *which is possible as I was a traveling east coast player* but I don't recall Lith ever beating Tigger, or JSB, or Gay Goblin, or Footz, or.....but that's neither here nor there.

I see it as coddling players these days because really...look at the current ruleset.  Let's take the top 6 players from a normal qualifier and put them in their own 'hardcore' division.  Let's allow those that don't have the ability / don't want to play harder songs to bow out of the harder division if they want to, regardless of if they have the skill to qualify for it.  Let's contest the ruleset for the standard division to basically make it a 9/10 footer tech tournament due to the nature of the rules pretty much assuring that any 'stamina only player' will be eliminated before they can play an 11+.  No one has still thrown the logic of 'lets determine who's in the more stamina heavy division by having everyone play non stamina songs'...as I still don't see that.  You can 99 a 10, seed like..4th, and willingly drop down to the standard division due to not feeling like playing 11+s?  That's debatable sandbagging.  If one can build up the stamina to play a 10, they can build up the stamina to play an 11.  God forbid one put in more work barring physical limitations.

I won't even get into the truth of Jacob Blow's comment that Stamina Player to the rest of the ITG community = playing 14+ songs...not 12s.  ***'ing Destiny?  Still a tech Player.  ***'ing Uber Rave?  Stamina player.  It also gets me back on the 'not as developed' player base thing I was getting at, roots aside.  It's one thing to have a standard division.  It's another to make it the prioritized division.

So why should your player base feel to push themselves to the harder spectrum of this game when everything says there's no real reason to?  That's why I see this as coddling.  And I wouldn't at all say that 14s and 15s are the end goal that everyone is working towards.  But the accepted point of the game is to 100% songs.  Passing aside, when I could 100% 9s, I went for 10s.  Started getting 10s?  Went for 11s.  11s?  Vertex started looking easy.  It might just be my playstyle, but training up to pass 14/15s made 12s/13s easier to do/score on for obvious reason.  ITG has always been a by players/for players game, and the major player base entirely agrees that good = be good at everything from 9s to 15s.  There's a 0% chance that anyone that's solid at 9-10s but crumbles beyond that would even get through the 2nd round of like, fort rapids or rocky mount.  Everyone has their own reason to play sure, but general community consensus *see AIJ* would agree.

I mean, what would your end goal be?  Suppose you could Quad everything below a 10 tomorrow...then what?  I get the 'dance' element thing sure, but then I realized that my proper teching looks NOTHING like a dance, regardless of stepchart, and saved dancing for clubbing and bboy practice.

Note: This isn't me on some high horse.  I just do love a good debate :3, and will happily concede a point when someone gives me a reason to.

Lith did go down to California and beat JSB.  It was sometime in 2002 IIRC, and it caused a HUGE stir.  They ended up photoshopping the Space Needle raping a giant bar and sending it to us.  We still won. So yeah, you missed something.  No worries, I didn't pay attention to the East Coast at that time either.

And speaking of FoyBoy (I knew him back then too; he used to watch me when my parents went out of town, actually,) he was the exception on Team Seattle, as he was mostly a freestyler, not a tech player, and designed his part of the ITG charts with hands and such largely for that reason.  One could argue the point of the game was not to get 100 on everything at all when many of the charts were designed by freestyle players, though I never asked him what his intent was so I won't push that argument.

For me, getting better at timing is just a function of playing a lot.  If I could quad all of the 10s and under, playing them would be exactly the same for me as it is now... which is to say, sometimes a lot of fun, and other times exceedingly boring because I've already played everything.  So I'd go and download more charts of the variety that I like to play and play those.  I enjoy competing with others on timing, but it's not my primary motivation or fun in playing the game.  I woud like to be able to compete with others who have similar goals - do as well as possible on these types of charts and then continue to find more, new interesting charts of this type to keep playing and working on - but have absolutely no interest in being part of a giant stamina pissing contest when I could be playing Spinnin' Around.

tl;dr.