"It raises the difficulty curve for players who are otherwise new or trying to improve, especially w.r.t. repeatability above. That's possibly the worst thing you can do for a niche community."

How?

I don't see how it'd raise the difficulty curve for new players...If anything it should be easier.

To which my counter-point is: how would it be easier? New players tend to have trouble with feeling out where the arrows are and developing foot-eye coordination, not with 200 BPM sixteenth streams. I shouldn't need to point out that flush modding will make that initial period much worse.

That said: if you seriously think tuning our public ITG machine for the minority hardcore segment of our community will somehow help the community as a whole -- by alienating roughly a fourth of it by your own poll and discouraging newcomers from starting at all, possibly making maintenance much harder to keep up and hurting the people who want it in the first place -- then I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying to point that out.

vyhd, you lost me here...  for the past few years it seems like the majority of what I hear of Acme and see posted on the accomplishments thread are indeed from the hardcore ITG segment, and I'm not sure how you are classifying them as a minority when they were the largest group of my poll.

I'm trying to help not alienate anyone here; but we do have to acknowledge that the people asking for the mod are a large portion of our community now.

Edit: and as for new players learning on the machine, our current evidence is in the form of KLOC (Lil Kevin), who is in favor of the mods and by most of our terms is still a new player looking to get better. Again, small sample size, but it's the concrete data we have right now instead of "what could be".

Maybe our definition of community differs, then. I'm talking about the people who play the games in this area on a regular basis, and it seems like you're talking "people who post regularly on PNWBemani".

On one hand, I guess they don't "care enough" by your words. On the other, you have to admit that the die-hard players are the ones who are going to post on a forum and there's going to be an inherent bias in that representation.

What alternative do we have to get their voices heard?  Put flyers on the machine and host a public in-person meeting at Acme on a Saturday?

I'm honestly asking here. Yes, there is bias that the hardcore people are the most active, and I cannot be at Acme 24/7 asking people what they think; however the players who are there frequently are more likely than not the hardcore players, which is why I asked if people have been talking and seeing casual players often.  Gerrak was wanting to get a sign back on the machine (has anyone done that yet) to encourage them to talk about the machine where we all can take part.

We've had at least 3 new comers to ACME over the last few months. As BLueSS has mentioned, KLOC is one of the new comers, Tmangamer and Bauregaurd are the other two. I remember watching KLOC play DDR struggling to pass most of his songs, he understands what the difference between a flushed and a none flushed stage feels like.. He transitioned over to ITG and learned very quickly how to adapt to the flushed stage. He is now passing 15's regularly, and pushing into 16's! We see him almost everytime we go and he always speak of how much he enjoys the flushed stage.

This kid went from barely passing 10's on ITG to passing extremely difficult Pendulum/Sharpnel charts in under 6 months.

I remember watching Bauregaurd playing 10's and 11's when he first joined the ACME arcade scene. Not once did he say, "the stage is to flush, I can't feel where my feet are" and quit. He is now passing 16's regularly and is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Tmangamer has openly stated in these forums that the ACME stage has worked wonders for him. Not 1 complaint about the stage being flush.

All these new comers are/were new to using a flushed stage and not once did we hear them say anything negative about the stage. Not once did we hear them say that it is hindering their play. If anything, they've grown to be such amazing ITG'ers and I am honored to be a part of their growth.

Trying to stay neutral, both in my capacity as a moderator and because I don't want to make any drama personal, but to be clear, my stance on the machine is that flush pads don't really suit my playstyle and I think it's pretty obnoxious that we can't agree that tech and stamina should meet in the middle and figure out a way to mod the pads not to be completely recessed or flush as so many others have done. We don't wanna make you guys reach into the grand canyon to hit arrows, we just want to be able to feel whether our foot is on an arrow without looking.

I also think it's kind of ridiculous to state that they need to be flush to pass harder stamina charts. All recessing them a bit would do is require those same stamina players to develop slightly more stamina to pass those same charts. Isn't that the point of being a stamina player? To develop stamina?

I had a feeling you were going to say that vyhd. Do you honestly think new players will know the difference? Let's say they've never played DDR and started on itg instead (with moderately flusher pads). It's less work to hit the arrows and finding the arrows should actually be easier because you have more room to work with (I'm not talking about 100% flush here, maybe 70%). The pads are not in a state where new players would fail out due to the modded pads. I'm not talking about being able to stream 200 Bpm 16ths. As you can already see, we have about 3 new players, and their progress and growth have surpassed that of mine. I wasn't even able to do half of the things they're doing now with modded pads. Even though I'm in favor with modded pads, I'll play on any pads whether they're super recessed or not.

We're not trying to alienate anyone, we're simply trying to find a common ground here. I don't post much, just giving my two cents. Don't know why you're so defensive lol.

Just because a stage is flushed doesn't mean the capability to do technical charts are removed. Take for example Bauregaurd and KLOC passing Cups, Invincible, Centipede, Somebody Loves You (doing the spins), any footswitch chart, and a variety of different technical charts on the flushed stage. I for one love playing charts like Gargoyle, and Funk Factory to work on my cross overs! Technical charts are all possible!

To us, it isn't ridiculous to state that a flushed is necessary to play difficult stamina charts. Take for instance the chart Hunter's Anthem (17) in the Sharpnelstreamz V2 pack. It is a brutal 213 BPM streamy chart that requires extremely precise and minimalistic movement to pass. When the stage is recessed, it requires us to reach into the "grand canyon" to hit our notes. This also poses a variety of different problems with our feet getting caught on the brackets as well. When you play songs like Hunter's Anthem, you have to rely on sliding more than stepping. This is why we want to retain the state of the stage.

I understand that not feeling your feet sometimes can be an issue while playing on a flushed stage, and we will work to address this issue. Keep in mind that flushing a stage will limit feeling where your feet are and it does take a little bit of time to get used to. I also wanted to emphasize that our stage isn't 100% flush, it is roughly 75% flush.

A friend of mine named Sean Hanson has his stage 100% and you literally feel like you are stepping on the floor. We at ACME tried to mod the stage so it has some give when you step giving you the feel aspect of playing. Unlike Sean's stage, our stage has far less tape and more foam. The compression of the foam allows for the panel to give, thus giving you an idea where you are stepping.

Again, we will try to modify our stage to give more "feel" to those who prefer it that way.

Hey Chris, and other pro-modded players,

Once the new sensors are in and people test the results out, if there's still an issue with feeling the arrows can we try recessing the machine a little more to try to reach a compromise that will make everyone happy? (and by everyone, I mean almost everyone; since inevitably someone will still be unhappy)

Laura even suggested having a day we all test them out and give feedback in-person at Acme, if people would be up for that.

I know that since the modding at ACME, footswitching charts have been much more difficult, but I suppose it could be the sensors?

What I do know is that the best pads I've ever played on were in Dallas, maintained by EvilDave. They were probably roughly 50% flush and I could definitely feel my feet, tech charts were super easy, and I also saw a guy whore out baby powder and get a full excellent combo with like 30 excellents (a high 99) on a 16.

What we can do is bring the stage down about 5 layers of tape on each panel. This will effectively lower the stage to about 65% flushed. Again, with our current sensors this will cause a lot more miss triggers so we will wait for the new sensors to apply this change. We will have to completely redo the stage once the new sensors are receive anyways, so this is when the change will take place.

It won't be a half-half feel, but it will be noticeably lower than what it is now. This should give players the "feel" they are looking for while allowing the flush stage players the ability to beast 17's.

Please keep in mind that this process will take some time. It is a "trial and error" kind of situation and will take the participation of all players to help find the perfect balance for this machine.

It is most definitely the sensors at the moment. Because the sensors at ACME are uber senstative, the tinniest portion of your shoe touching the up arrow will trigger it, we've split them and added electrical tape inside to lessen the sensitivity. It is extremely difficult to alleviate this problem at the moment, but with new less sensitive sensors, this shouldn't be a problem.

This sounds like a really fair plan to me, and it makes sense to wait until the new sensors are installed.  Then, everyone can try it out and give feedback.  

Does anyone have objections to this plan?

The last time we had upgraded/new sensors installed was back in August of last year. Not to mention, I only received 4 new sensors to work with. Also, these sensors were DDR sensors not ITG/Andamiro sensors to my knowledge.

I thought that ddr and piu/itg sensors had different connectors? 

They do. I don't know the exact terminology for the process but this is what I had to do:

I cut the connector off of the DDR sensors and then had to remove the insulation (not sure if this is the proper terminology, forgive me) to expose the wires. I then tied the exposed DDR sensor wires to the proper ITG connectors which already have been cut prior to me working on them. After that, I placed wire caps to keep the exposed wires from touching anything. I'm sure this is probably where the bulk of the ghost/miss triggers come from, but that is the only way for us to actually play. 

Yeah sounds a bit ghetto lol.  Uhhh im pretty sure you can buy those molex (2pin) connectors.  Might save the stripped ones and get them fixed for use in ddr or whatever else.

Edit: smartphone typos :/

Hey y'all, I usually never check the forum, but I've been playing with my friend Yuri exclusively at Acme every Thursday for... I dunno, five or six years now? We go by D0S and MIU on the charts, but we both suck so you'll probably only see us on the double charts. XD

Anyway, the poll thread got locked, but I'll forget to post in it once it gets unlocked, so I'm gonna dump my vote here:

I really like the flush pads. I don't think I could currently be in the 12s and 13s without them - in the previous 12 years, I'd pretty much topped out at 11. (Yes, I'm an old fart who's been playing since 3rd mix.)

Amount spent on games at Acme in the last 3 months: $6.00/week * 13 weeks = $81

I live in Seattle.
I obviously don't avoid Acme.

------------------------------------------------------

One additional anecdote: As far as I know, Yuri and I are two of the only people who regularly play doubles. We haven't been doing it for a while now, because the lack of the two middle-most sensors made doubles really frustrating.

However, APHR let us know that those two sensors are hooked up again, and I beat "NB Rangers" about as well as I ever have (EDIT: and got a personal best for "longest no-great combo" on Perfume), so the pads are back in business for doubles as far as I'm concerned.

Someone needs to say it:

Come. Play. At. ACME's. Pads. At. Least. Once.

Then judge the modding.

I like your font. 

:|

i should repost this in comic sans so that it'd get more attention

Hi vyhd, I'm going to respond to your questions and concerns to the best of my ability with our current situation.  

Besides the pads being flush or not, I have some other concerns about the ITG machine.

Is there any way of safely resetting the machine when it gets frozen? I have experienced this a few times and it is very frustrating to drive all the way down and have it be frozen.

Also, I can't believe I am asking this but maybe there could be an upgrade to the coin slot? About every 3 or so sets one of my quarters will fail to be recognized and the return slot doesn't work.

Just some observations.

Typically, when the machine freezes you can find the switch behind the machine on the lower left hand side to turn the machine off. Just simply turn it back on and let the machine reboot and you should be good to go! I wouldn't suggest pulling the plug and plugging it back in. I've accidentally unplugged the machine while pushing it back closer to the wall and when I plugged it back it, it gave me some sort of error and had to call a technician to come fix it. 

As far as the coin receptor goes, its been bad for ever and a day. I know Bill and his techs have done many repairs on the receptor but it still isn't functioning how it should. Just understand that the game actually costs $1.25 and if you are lucky it costs $1.00.