Okay fuck this I was going to be nice and not do it but that's it, R23 is going on there when we install the ITG3 theme and such (before July 11). People have clearly shown that playing long songs is not something that can be done responsibly. If you have a long song you enjoy playing, send me the file or provide a link to it and I'll upload to the machine. We're done with people playing three 10 minute songs.

Tricksy, hopefully this will fix the issue. It's pretty hard to depatch the machine and I'm thinking about putting a BIOS password on there or something to stop randoms from trying to hack the machine now that it's been done.

I was really hoping it wouldn't come to that.  People who don't know about the forums won't be able to submit songs for you to add.  Is there any way we could try setting up a rule and having it posted on the machine?

Then if that doesn't work, go with your solution?

ETA: Also, I would like to be able to play a 10 minute long song at 3pm on a Wednesday if I'm able.  I have to try "Heaven" about once every 6 months.  My soul yearns for it!!

I would just put a cap on the song limits.  People can just play stepamania at home if they want to play 10+ min songs.

r23. Sad . But wouldn't that mean that people could still play 4mins + songs if it was on the machine for one set? Also, people really need to put quarters on the side of the machine screen so we know if they are waiting or not.  Sometimes people just stand around and wait while the player keeps on playing and playing. I really wish that you(kevin) could apply some sort of length thing. Like where 2:30 - 5:00 songs would be long versions(2 rounds) and 5:00+ would be 3 like in stepmania. Oh well.

Thanks Kevin, as 10 minute songs tie up the machine way too long.  No cash flow. 

I think playing Heaven is fine - if it counts as 2 songs or something. We NEED that on the machine for sure; it's very popular. Also, One Winged Angel, Flower Forever, etc etc. There are also some shorter songs still longer than 2:50 or whatever that people like to play. I like Spinnin' Around, I know that miss Tricksy Disco is going to like her namesake... etc etc.

I want to note: AFAIK, the people being the douchenozzles aren't on this forum. Everyone on here seems to play responsibly. The problem is that it's hard to regulate people outside our community without the patch. :<

 I need to chime in here...

So now you plan to ruin all players' ability to play a little longer songs, even those players who do play responsibly? Sounds like the shaft to me. I think it should be in the hands of the players not only to play responsibly, but also to CONFRONT DIRECTLY those who are offending, not offhandedly fuck everyone over because no one wanted to tell the group of guys that they need to play reasonable sets.


Don't make it all about money
And frankly I and many people who play longer songs will likely go and play less because of the new restriction. It's a 40 minute drive and I make it so often because I can play really good songs that I hand picked as good to play on the pad. Sometimes I don't want to have to submit them to you for approval and wait for you to upload it, I just want to put it on my card and try it...
And moreover, my #1 reason for playing DDR is for exercise, and some of the very best songs to build your stamina and actually get a work out are a little longer; not necessarily 10 minutes, but 3 or 4. I know Bill you'd love me to pump 20 bucks into that machine to get a comparable workout to usual but it just isn't going to happen.
We appreciate your leniency on the issue, but it's one where I would just be forced to not go as often as I do now because it wouldn't be nearly as worth it anymore.

The point is - WE DONT NEED THE MOD. It fucks over our responsible players because those offended are afraid of confrontation. Just let me know when you install it so I can be there for you to tell me face to face why you're fucking some of us in the ass.


It looks to me like she just wanted to make peaceful compromise with the players she thought might be on here but as Laura said



So drop the and just leave it alone. Keep being nice, the machine is fine... Just confront the players yourself. It's not up to you Kevin to decide frankly, as good as you are at the game.

I have to agree in some sense here: it's not hard to tell somebody "Hey, what you just did was kind of messed up, playing three ten minute long songs when people are waiting. That's not really cool..." I certainly think that everyone could benefit from being a little bit more appropriately confrontational, for example "That set was very long, would you mind playing shorter songs while people are waiting?" or "Hey, Laura, I hate it when you sing along to Legend Of Max, can you please shut up?" This is something I endorse wholeheartedly!

However...


I can't agree with this. While these games are fun and exercise to us, they are Bill's livelihood. He has a wife and a fifteen year old daughter, and he needs to put food on the table for them. If this is becoming a financial issue, he has every right to be upset and to do what he can to mitigate it. Maybe some of us would be willing to play less often if we couldn't play long songs - maybe he would lose money from those people in the long run. But on busy nights when large groups who whore out 10 minute long songs come, there would be a lot more money going into the machine. I think that regardless of a couple of us on here, he would make more money in the long run by doing this.

Do I think that R23 is the best thing for the community here? Of course not, we're all generally responsible good people who occasionally want to play a three minute song. But we can't control what other people do and in this capacity, I do think the best course may legitimately be to load the machine up with songs people on here like and suck it up and pay the extra money for them because some people outside of our reach don't play responsibly.

As a sidenote, another thing that might be worthwhile is turning autofail on. A lot of the time I see said non PNW Bemani dwelling groups playing 8 minute songs, failing 2 minutes in, and continuing to let their friends mess around on the pads for the remainder of the 6 minute song. This may actually solve the problem to enough of an extent that R23 isn't necessary.

As far as establishing community rules goes, I say that if people are waiting, and you want to play something over four minutes, just ask if it's cool. I for one will never say no, but I will appreciate the respect.

I'll just note that the only reason I brought it up would be because I told a few kids the other night to try and shorten their sets, and they pretty much blew me off.  I don't really have the respect of random kids who come to play long sets over and over again.

I just wanted to figure out a reasonable rule that could possibly be posted on the machine.  So when people are being jerks and hogging the machine for 20 minutes, I can point to the rule and ask them to follow it.  It just gives me a little more authority to nudge these players off the pads sooner.

I'm not sure what the solution should be, or what the scope of the issue truly is.  I've just stated what I've seen, and what I think is reasonable.  I certainly don't want to rob anyone of their long songs, because they are a lot of fun.  However, I also don't want to wait forever to play when I've driven 30-40 minutes to get there myself.

You're definitely not the problem, Gerrak, so I hope you didn't take that the wrong way.  Boten Anna is awesome, and no one will take that from me.  Or there will be fire.  And burning.  Lots of burning.  I hope we can all come to a solution that works for all of us, so no one is put off.

I think this is a great idea.  I don't know if this kid posts here, and I don't mean to put him off, but I said ok to letting him play Dragonforce the other night.  I must've misheard him, because I didn't know it was a 9 minute song.  He failed, but continued to play the song for the full 9 minutes.  Needless to say, it was slightly annoying, and I kind of regret agreeing to it.  So autofail would've made Sara very happy there.

Honestly, it's not that hard to trim a song down to 2 minutes.  I do so with pretty much every song I write, and I'll be doing so with all the stepcharts I make this summer (assuming I make a few...might go make one now).  If you can't fit an entire song into 2 minutes, cut it up into phases.  That's what I do with my more complex songs.

Sure this means that you'd have to re-step the charts, but why can't people just be a little more proactive and not rely on the ability to take the machine for granted?  Maybe you are all just 120% focused on the charts and don't care about the songs; tbh I won't play a song I don't like even if the chart is perfect, so I guess this is just my possibly niche opinion leaking out.  This machine's there as an enterprise though.  To treat it as anything else would be foolish.  StepMania will play those songs fine without pissing people off, and if you want to hang out with your friends and play long songs, invite them over.  A $100 TX-1000 and a $15 bar made from plywood and 2x4's work just as well as the arcade pads for personal use.  Hell I'd say they're better because tapeswitches are so damned unpredictable.  I just can't see why people would play long songs at an arcade or would need to be able to. 

I do understand that it's not all that obtrusive to play long songs when nobody's there, but if nobody's there then I don't see much advantage to playing at the arcade as opposed to playing in the comfort of one's own home anyway.  The only reason I play at the arcade is to meet new people or hang out with large groups of friends.

Gerrak, as Sara said you're totally not the problem. The problem is the random fucks who come there and play 30 minute sets despite me directly telling them not to. Community rules are great, but we don't have the respect of everyone who goes to Acme and we may never have that. The reality is that the game needs to make considerable cash because it's simply not feasible from a business perspective otherwise. If the game doesn't make enough money, it won't be at Acme for very long. I'm not new to this entirely; the TGM cabinet at Acme will probably vanish soon. The reason why is because it's making something horrible like $15 a week. Acme is not like Narrows; they simply refuse to let poorly-earning games stay. When we had Pump Pro, the game randomly gave out free credits from time to time. People abused this to get more gameplay for their money. Regardless of the fact that you're still playing three songs, let's look at it like this:

The current set should theoretically last 15 minutes at most. 3 songs or not, the agreed price is $1 for roughly 15 minutes of gameplay. If the average game extends to three 6 minute songs, we end up with the average set lasting around 30 or 35 minutes.  This leads to a maximum of about $2 per hour in terms of income. That's if you have 2 players playing versus constantly. At this rate, the game's only going to make $24 per day assuming the machine is CONSTANTLY PLAYED FROM OPEN TO CLOSE. If we make the average set 15 minutes, we either need half as many players or half as many play hours to make the same money. Do you know how much sensors cost? Cheap ChannelBeat shitty sensors that last about 2 months cost $17 without shipping. We have an issue here. If we assume that on average 16 sensors need to be replaced per year, that's a bit more than $250. If anything else dies, you can bet that parts are expensive because ITG machines aren't produced or supported any more. Those ITG USB port hubs that everyone keeps complaining about? Not cheap at all. In addition, the cabinet cost over $10,000 at launch. If the machine at most makes $500 a month, this means we're making $6000 in a year. Subtract $500 for pad parts alone and that's 2 years that it takes to just break even. If an arcade game takes two years to pay itself off, that's a tricky situation. The game is getting less popular, and the money needs to keep coming somehow. If the game doesn't make enough money, it's likely going to be sold or disappear to Narrows just like IIDX and Beatmania III.

Here's a proposal:
Let's make a really concerted and focused effort to stop people from abusing long sets. If Bill sees the income in the machine go up in the next month, I won't install R23. If Bill doesn't report any change, I'll install R23. If I install R23, I'll give it a month. If the income increases, I'll keep it on there. If the income doesn't increase, I'll swap back to R21 (this can be done).

Bill, are you up for this? You don't need to give me any numbers or anything, just let me know whether or not you're seeing an increase.

Also R23 re-adds working BGChanges so not sure why people think it's all hellfire and brimstone.

Keep in mind I don't want to have to do anything either; I like cheap games. I really like cheap games. I'll admit that I abused the freeplay on Pump Pro a little when I was low on money. Unfortunately, this just doesn't work out. Bill's livelihood entirely depends on his arcades making money and by not paying what you should be paying, Bill ends up hurt in the end.

I think this was an absolutely excellent post.  However, we've agreed that the people abusing it aren't on this forum.  They don't know what's at stake when they play long sets.  Should we inform them that if they continue, R23 will be installed?  Should we post something on the machine so they know I'm not just making an empty threat when I tell them that?

P.S.  For the music game-challenged, what are BGChanges?  

ah kevin you good. I admit, i used to be one of those "fail after 2 mins in then play the rest of the song whores" but then I couldn't tell whether people were waiting to play or not so I'm sorry if i did that to one of you people. But usually when I go, i never see anyone play extremely long songs while others are waiting to play but then again i can't tell if someone is waiting to play or not. But Kevin's proposal is a good one. Do it!

This is a quick post, without reading all of this:

BGChanges = animations/BackGround Changes, and that's the name of the tag for them in the Stepmania .SM file.

A sign on the machine is something some of us have been wanting to get on it for a while; mostly to let people know about the machine updates and request additional songs.

I believe a sign would be the best way to go, with both the song update stuff pointing them to this site, as well as the info about the song limits.

Kevin, sounds good, thanks

Heh, I always thought some noobs just left extra cash in the machine for me to spend. =D


And I arrived late to this post-party, so here's my thoughts:

Seriously Gerrak, I hate to be a dick, but you really gotta calm the f*ck down about this. I understand you don't want to loose your ability to play the longs songs, but it isn't a "right", it's a privilege. Roxor gave us that privilege when they closed their doors, then the arcade owners gave the players the "privilege" by installing r21. Then Roxor obviously decided that maybe r21 was a bit too much privilege, so they released r23. Since then, it has been the owners / operators discretion on whether or not to apply r23.

I just don't see how you can get so pissed off about something you have been getting for free. It's like always buying 6-packs of soda that came with 4 extra cans for free. And now that the company isn't giving you those 4 free cans, you're going ballistic. I think you just forgot what you used to get for your dollar, because you've been getting more for so long. In DDR and ITG you generally pay for a set of 3, 2 minute songs, not 3, 6 minute songs (unless it's an ONI course). If you decide that the new price point is no longer economically viable for you, then perhaps you need to look at alternatives to arcade play.

I'd suggest using the hacked r23 patch, which lets you determine what length counts as "2 songs". Make it 3:00 and be done with it. 3 min is a gracious chunk of time for any one song and anything more definitely deserves the 2 round cost. DDR did this in 5th mix with 3 minute songs and I don't recall people going nuts about it then. Either you opted to play the song that counted as two, or you didn't. I really don't think it's that difficult.

Alright, the official date for the "campaign" is July 1st. For a month from that day, everybody try really hard to stop people from playing too many long songs! If we can do that, R21 might stay! Let's do this!

Tricksy: If you can summarize my post, feel free to post a sign up on the Acme ITG detailing it.

I kind of had a stick up my ass the other day I'll admit, so I apologize. I had thought the issue was kind of settled as just fine and was just pissy that night.
And yes

Just wanted to agree and disagree with a couple things
Being that I'm a mathematician you won't be able to slide any sly number manipulation by me. I put $12 usually myself into the machine when I go 3x per week and I play for roughly 1.5 hours or so straight, 3 hours at most if others are playing. Assuming there are 2 players like me per night, which there roughly are, that's $24 in 3 or so hours each night, not including any income the rest of the day or any other players that might be rotating in in that time. I imagine the machine makes significantly more than $24 per day, and since upkeep costs don't increase in your figure, if say we made a more reasonable estimate like, say, $50 per day now you've actually made that $12k on top of your costs over 2 years. I think even the possibility of that machine not making money is extremely far fetched.
This is a fairly sound plan to assess the actual nature of the problem numerically, however the next month won't have any change because you won't have done anything yet. It would only do good to see if you gained or lost more money after the patch was installed, which is a financial risk that Bill would have to assess whether or not to take, and in my opinion we really don't need it and we should solve the problem by other means. Perhaps we should just put a sign on the machine that says "please be respectful of players waiting to use the machine" and that would be enough leverage for tricksy to tell those bastards off.

Lastly
I agree wholeheartedly, this is a good idea. And truth be told, no one who plays there has the stamina to pass 3 of the long songs in a row. People good enough to actually pass these tend to play a lot more and shorter, more reasonable sets. I've seen a lot of the pad whores and they do indeed tend to just fail and keep hopping on and off, which yes is lame as fuck. I say we just start with this though and see where it gets us.
edit: I'll do my best to vocalize the issue more at Acme for sure and try to keep people more respectful.

I'll make the sign and post it next time I go, which will be sometime this week.  I'll convene with Jon and see how he would like to phrase it too, as he is my moral/business compass.   

Also Kevin, could we put on autofail?  Pretty please?  With sugar on top?  I want the n00bs to fail.

Gerrak, thank you for admitting to this; it's huge when people can say "I said something, it came out wrong, I'm sorry."

My opinion is that the combination of a sign on the machine and autofail going on will solve the problem, as long as the more intimidating members of PNW are willing to point out the rules. Sara and I can say whatever we want but we look like fourteen year olds who just came fresh from a Hanson concert so nobody cares what we think.

This is the sign that is going on the machine later today.


http://pnwbemani.net/flyers/ITG3-SIGN.jpg  (if the pic above doesn't want to show for you)

Before anyone yells "WHAT 10 MINUTES?!", remember that 10 minutes a set is 6 games max for Bill per hour. Most ITG songs are about 2:20, making a set maybe 9 minutes (adding 2 minutes of song selection). Since we are the only ones who will be reporting this abuse, we don't care if we go over maybe 2 more minutes, or if nobody is in the arcade and you play a little longer once in a while.

This sign is intended for the people who do not see this thread / do not visit the site. This gives us justification for asking them to limit their sets, and chances are they will play a few minutes above whatever the limit is set to be anyway. If we were to have a higher limit, it would not stop the random people who keep abusing the stuff right now.

Again, since we are the only ones reporting to Bill regarding people breaking the rules, we know if someone accidentally went over or if they are intentionally abusing it. This does not mean that we can choose to abuse this if others are waiting either.

Sexy sign

That better not be sarcasm, because I wet myself a little when I saw that sign.  I am damn attracted to it.

I'll be printing it out today and bringing it down to the arcade with me tonight.  I hope it works!

I'll just bring in my east coast attitude with these punk kids and their long sets.  It's gonna get fierce.