Thanks BlueSS for starting a poll! Hopefully, as a community we can move pass this issue and resolve this argument.

Considering we have a poll taking place. I feel it would be important to postpone the removal of the modding. So APHR and I should give it a little bit of time to see the outcome.

Maybe then we can actually play some dance games and dare I say it, have some fun

Hey so I'll upload the pic when I get home but FYI ACME has new dress code signs which specifically state that shoes must be worn at all times so I guess you guys can't play in socks anymore or something

To anyone questioning the questions I have in the poll, here is my reasoning.
My goal for this site is to encourage a healthy community of music gamers in the PNW. Healthy also includes profitable machines for the arcade operators in the area. Spending money at the arcade is one way to help foster our current community and ensure that 1) the machines stay in arcades due to making money and 2) the machine stays repaired due to the arcade operator having money to make repairs.

There are other ways of contributing to the community such as (but not limited to) helping run events, encouraging other people who are playing, or being a cool person to talk to about music games.

We all hurt our community when we discourage people from playing music games. Whether or not someone plays at ACME is EXTREMELY RELEVANT to the discussion about what to do with Acme's pads. If someone does not ever play at Acme, their opinion means little on this matter. On the flip side, if you are avoiding Acme due to this issue, you are someone who has been discouraged from playing music games in our community due to the changes.

The goal of the poll is to verify 1) who is playing at Acme 2) what their thoughts are. The converse of this is also to learn who is NOT playing at Acme and what their thoughts are.

If the Acme ITG machine makes money, the entire community is better off. More $ for the machine means 1) it stays at Acme and 2) it stays repaired. More people playing music games = what this community is about. The more that machine is there, the more people will randomly start playing it and join our community as a result.

TL;DR: Anyone or anything that hurts the number of people playing dance games in our community or the profitability of one of the machines that keeps this community alive is an offense to me and the welfare of this entire community.

Something else to consider is how the flushed pads might affect the learning curve.  All of us - literally ALL - started on recessed pads. I know that learning doubles on the flushed arrows was too frustrating so I switched to DDR only for doubles; what if new players are having this same experience and just giving up?

Not trying to add gasoline to the fire, just a thing worth considering. Pushing upper difficulties is all well and good, but we need to make sure that backwards compatibility exists for potential new players.

I never had issues with stock pads playing doubles.  I remember clearing 12s and one 13 (energizer) at acme.  No baby powder and no modded pads.  We will survive without it

No that's what I'm saying; doubles is way easier on stock pads with no powder. The modding makes learning difficult.

If the modded pads cause people to play less music games, that's an offense to the community too...

The hard part in all this is measuring anything of "new players" and "the people who probably play at Acme but we never see play". Also, ITG was never designed for beginners/new people to play. The evidence is entirely around how the interface was built, the songs the game uses, and the community it was marketed to.

The flushed pads does make learning doubles harder, I can admit that.

Question for people of ACME: how often do you see new people playing?  And how often are they playing doubles?  And how often are you saying "hi" to these new people to encourage them to be a part of the community?

To answer your question, I only ever see people I recognize attempt double. Double mode is not for the faint of heart, and never really has been. People don't casually walk up to the game and try double.

From my time here, I see quite a few new players at ACME trying out ITG. People playing songs with difficulties ranging from 5s and 6s to 12s on singles. I always encourage them, and refer them to the forums to be a part of the community (even though I never post). None of these players play doubles. In fact, I've never seen a real doubles player play on the ITG at ACME...

I mentioned doubles not because I think new players are trying to learn doubles but as an example of someone trying to learn where the arrows are and finding it difficult because the flushed pad mod caters to people playing 13s+ and not people learning where the arrows are. The same could apply to singles is all I'm saying, and it'd basically be impossible to measure aside from tracking the influx of new players over time or something.

Basically, I just want to make sure everybody thinks through all the implications.

I can only base my answer off my own experience. So as far as seeing new players at ACME I have probably seen three in the past 5 months. They have been going on a more consistent basis for me to consider them new players in the dance game community as opposed to someone playing a game, goofing off and leaving.  

I know there are two regular players who are not on these forums who play Thursday nights and they play doubles occasionally. I hardly see any new players playing doubles.I am not sure of the reason for it but prior to modding I didn't see many double players as well. I'm not saying there are no new double players at ACME, it is just that I haven't seen them.

I do kind of notice that new are "randoms" tend to gravitate towards DDR. People seem more inclined to start out on DDR that ITG.

I find that I reach out to the newer player base especially if I have seen the person more than once. I try to be encouraging as much as possible. Although on the shyer side I do what I can to talk to other new players.

(What I mean by random players is someone who never plays and is trying the game out for the first time for fun or is just goofing off).

I'm glad it seems to have calmed down a little all up in here. I should really know everyone involved in this debate, since I've played all the time there for ever and ever.

Ok, the most important thing that I can possibly remind everyone of right at this moment... is that... the new sensors that we determined were the problem still aren't installed quite yet.

Guys we debated for years over a more flush pad. All the major other communities have done it because it's been shown to be more reasonable for high end play. I mean I've played in 'craters' for years, but it honestly really sucked to be limited by that at the high end. I hate to have to be the one to say this obvious fact, but real dance floors are actually typically flat. The indentation doesn't really make sense and isn't conducive to the level of play that the game has developed into. People who get to the 14+ level inevitably realize this. But with modifications, a much richer and more fulfilling end-game can be realized. I think the problem is primarily the sensors, and perhaps some people, which formerly included myself, need to maybe make just a slight adjustment and just not rest your foot where the bracket used to prominently be, since now it may false trigger another arrow.

These are good modifications when we get the proper hardware. It's what modern communities play on, and we should just keep working on it until we get it right. The few strong nay-sayers I honestly think hardly play there anyway, since I haven't heard their complaints personally about it, and I play there all the time, at all times of day, and so do both Chris and Abbye... The fact that this is not being handled on a more personal level like it always has speaks to the lack of real involvement in play there by those most critical of the current status.




As far as new play, there are definitely at least 3-5 new regular players, as in once or twice per week at least, at Acme that I have met. All of them I would confidently venture prefer the more flush pad, and at least 3 I can think of I have personally adopted played with to work on various aspects of their play and help them improve. There is absolutely still "backwards-compatibility", as Laura calls it, and the newer players are a refreshing change to how downhill things had been going prior to this last year.

I still see randoms play on the machine as much as ever before from my years' observations, because they're "randoms" and they don't even know the difference anyway! I also should state that I, personally, have felt reinvigorated by the pad modifications, and my play is as intense as ever, and I'm in better shape than ever because of the sheer epic-ness of doing the charts everyone else was able to do for years without such a handicap of the indents.

From my perspective on watching attendance at Acme also, it has seemed to be re-energized in the last year, has it not? And more community events and tournaments than we've had in a good number of years? This is greatly in-part brought on by the competition allowed by these modifications. In short, these are definitely helpful changes to the player-base overall, and we shouldn't forget this. We just need to make sure it finally gets done with the proper hardware.

I should also briefly state that I used to have to call in all the time to have a mechanic fix the pad. Since being put into Chris' care, it's been consistently better than ever, for me anyway. I've gotten several quads too, though I'm more into the hard stuff right now.




Ok, finally, doubles do in fact suck on the current pad. The sensors had to be put basically only on the inside, and since doubles uses a lot more of the arrow, especially the inside ones, it's been downright awful. HOWEVER, thats why we have the new sensors that have yet to be put in!    Which is supposed to fix this! Also we should just have doubles for single credits on the SN2 machine. That would make many people quite happy I'm sure, including me, and probably would generate a lot more revenue on it anyway! But this is Bill's call of course.

Anyway this is my 2 cents so far. Let's please keep the debate free of so much hostility! Put that RAGE on the STAGE!    Happy arrows, all

I really really think a valid compromise is "raise the arrows but not enough so they are completely flush." Players who learn by feeling the brackets can still feel them, but stamina beasts can still do their thing, and most importantly PLAYERS CAN ADAPT TO EITHER SORT OF MACHINE WITH EQUAL EASE!

Also, for anyone who cares, SN2 is now audible!

Has SN2 been moved, or is its volume just raised?

It'd be awesome of each machine could be heard just as well without drowning each other out.

also

My sentiments exactly.

Even I have trouble with the inner Left and Right arrows sometimes on Doubles, and I would very much like to learn to play some hard Doubles as well. I am awaiting for the outcome of having new sensors.

The volume has been raised but we tried very hard to make sure that each machine could be easily heard by whoever is playing it even when both are being played simultaneously.

Since it has come up in a few places that people like what flushed pads do for their scores, I do want to point out as nicely as possible that ITG doesn't exist in a vacuum; there is a national community, and if we are talking about improving at the game we need to reach some consensus on what the game actually is.

I've been all over the country to play and enter tournaments, and I will say that if players care about improving on an absolute scale, as in their passes and scores actually matter on a national level, playing on recessed pads is really the only thing that makes sense. Wherever you go will be varying levels of recessed or flush, and it is far easier to score on flushed pads after practicing on recessed pads than the other way around. Think about how difficult quads were at SPERGIN4 compared to ACME, and now imagine you just flew to Pennsylvania for an ITG tournament and their machine is more like Suko's, only all of their players have been playing on such a machine every time they practice.

This may not be relevant though since I think I'm the only Seattle player who travels for tournaments regularly.

Everyone I've heard of eventually moves to reasonably flush pads... It's not about 'raising scores' because it won't on songs that aren't like 14+, mine certainly havent. It's about not having to reach into a crater when theres aaaaaall the arrows to hit! We should be just modifying them correctly. It works better for everyone I've seen play hard stuff, and it makes sense to have a flat dance floor, like dance floors are. Or at least almost flat, I mean I believe there should be a slight indent so you can still feel where you are, but not enough to have to 'reach into'. The game wasn't originally designed with this kind of play in mind, so a retuning of the hardware is a natural progression, and should just be done right like we're trying to do. I can also remind people that there is another public ITG machine at Narrows Bowl, which those who want to play in a more old-school style can certainly use too. I played there for a long long time before playing at Acme.

I have to agree that it's foolish to make any decision before the new sensors are installed. The pads are currently not modded the way they likely will be when the new sensors are installed, and everyone might find that the pads are far more playable once that happens.

Note about the poll: the pads have been modded for waaay more than 3 months. The poll is unfairly biased toward people who put up with it/like it, because they would have played a lot more than people who didn't.

How about 2 years?

I'm very late but would like to weigh in on the powder issue.

I guess I'm what you would call a "casual" player (as I can barely pass 10s now and I'm fat). In my past experience, I've found the pads to be very slippery even when I was the only one there and there was powder on the floor and on the pads.

Dance games weren't as popular as they were several years ago, but there's still a ton of kids that go to Acme and may definitely get hurt because they're kids and don't expect a 1,000 pound stage to be slippery.

I haven't frequented Acme as much as I used to back when zzyzx was still a thing, but I think it would be good practice to try and clean up as much as possible.

*Edit

Forgot to mention during my most recent games, I noticed a lot of pad misses which weren't an issue before.

Played at ACME today and it was great!  It was nice that the pads looked clean without much powder on them...or so I thought. This was untill a random couple asked to play and chose one of the ITG2 songs. They were slightly heavyset and the very first step was a jump. When they hit it (and they jumped like 3 inches in the air), a powder geyser erupted and covered thier legs.

I guess thats one way to get the powder out from under the arrows!

Need a shop vac by the itg cab apparently.  Random question, does acme allow you guys to use fans while you play?  I dont remember having one ever.

Couple years back I remember fans. I don't know if the policy changed since then

I've never seen anyone called out for having a fan. Gerrak usually (always?) has one.

Our local arcade will not let us... or at least they wouldnt at one point.  They said it was dangerous with little kids around haha

yeah why was my post regarding this deleted, literally any post in that topic that isn't directly responding to the poll is being deleted and frankly reasonable points like this are going to be lost in a sea of other shit in any other thread.

can the official nick for pro flushed people be flushers