How Does YouTube Perceive Difficulty in Rhythm Games?

i was browsing youtube the other day and came across a video by clone hero player amy g dalla or more commonly known as senda the main topic at hand was about perceived difficulty and how more casual viewers of clone hero or people that simply stumble upon clone hero videos perceive top level scores i'll provide a link to that video if you all want to check that one out this video is going to cover that principle but also what exactly goes into how rhythm game score videos become popular how you can educate others on some of the fallacies that casual viewers can accidentally fall into and why these can actually harm some players in the long run this will not cover the more random cases like talent show and reaction videos since those more or less just have to do with the youtube algorithm so with that let's get started the common viewer tends to try and find the most concrete numbers or the most aesthetically pleasing aspects that are readily available to them in order to assess how difficult something is and can shape how a viewer views that player skills as a whole let's just get the biggest one out of the way first and talk about notes per second or nps and why casual viewers flock towards it so easily well it's because it's a very easy concept to understand and it allows viewers of all types to be able to even participate in discussions about the game as a result on youtube and twitch the more notes that are on the screen the harder it is right absolutely not and just about every experienced rhythm game player knows us but we have to keep in mind that a grand majority of audiences that indulge in some of the more popular rhythm game videos are completely unaware of concepts like this and the ones that stick around and explore more players tend to spread these comments on lesser-known videos or streams the most popular example that comes to mind is the infamous of full moon knight play by jhlee 0133 where he is hitting seven key core jacks at 138 bpm which results in a keys or notes per second of 70 which sounds insane on paper and is guaranteed to impress most people at first but wait a minute here he is struggling to keep up with 50 notes per second on ascension to heaven double time patterns you can't mention notes per second without mentioning patterning the 70 notes per second video is him just simply doing what are called jackhammers or jacks which is when the same note reoccurs multiple times such as 1 1 1 1 or 2 2 2 2 in their most primitive form but jacks are much more intricate than that when you start throwing different variations of patterns and densities in at the same time that i won't quite get into in this video specifically this clip however is the most basic form of a jack as he's simply just moving his hands up and down on all seven keys and while it's still impressive to an extent it's nowhere near as difficult or impressive as him keeping up with super dense 300 bpm chord stream on ascension to heaven double time i'll demonstrate a personal example too look at the nps counter as i hit this jump drill and hand stream at a pretty fast speed and compare to this extremely technical file that i'm struggling to keep up with pretty much night and day to some people but casual viewers will not be able to understand the difference and will find the high nps section more impressive if we just take some screenshots we can see a lot more going on in the technical file than the jump trill here as there's much more variation than the patterning different quantizations and more while the ladder is simply just one repeated motion with both hands going back and forth at a moderately high speed which again is known as a jump trill in the end the best course of action is to simply tell people nps is not equal to difficulty this sounds easier said than done however because new players or players that can't read high caliber gameplay efficiently won't be able to differentiate patterns that well for the most part but the main principle that you should understand is that the amount of notes a player is hitting per second is not directly correlated to the difficulty of the song the player is playing it's one thing if you know the pattern that is being hit and use nps as a measure there but using it in such a vague sense and just simply asking how fast something is is normally not a good thing to do and if anything can be a bit disruptive and discouraging to a player or streamer at hand difficulty systems and leaderboards can play a large role too but what a lot of viewers aren't aware of are that difficulty systems in a good majority of rhythm games are well decently flawed at measuring what is intended to measure and not many people understand what exactly these systems are meant to measure either some are passing oriented some are scoring oriented or some spit out a different number entirely from the original difficulty of the song it just gets very messy for in the groove the difficulty system is primarily based around how hard it is to pass something so viewer can have trouble differentiating a 23 footer pass and a 99 on a 21 even if the 99 is more impressive in the end in osu the entire leaderboard on chicago chicago is full of hidden double time scores most of which are over 700 pp meanwhile wolf wolf set one of the most impressive scores this year with a 3 mod fc on crazy motorcycle chase a map from 2008 with tons of awkward linear patterning and small circle jumps the score however is worth 609 pp and unless the score had a number one attributed to it i bet even less people would understand how absurdly good the score really is accuracy scores can vary in popularity from game to game too but there's some version of it that's very easy to comprehend throughout them all whether it's a 100 or fc in clone hero a double s in all the osu games a pfc or mfc and ddr a lot of games have a very quick and fast way of summarizing certain accomplishments like these even if the song is much harder and the score is more impressive anything like a -6 and clone hero a 98.6 and a miss and osu two greats fc and ddr they will all fly somewhat under the radar especially if it's a more obscure song viewers won't exactly understand the full scope of the raw score itself rather they gravitate towards whatever the highest number is in the end whole numbers or perfecting something is just very easy to understand overall in this case it's best to educate viewers that the goal of your rhythm game is not to simply perfect something all the time but that there are different types of scores one can get along with the difficulty system not being the end-all-be-all determinant and that the viewers should not feel ashamed to ask any questions they may have pertaining to it titles are a big deal believe it or not and can definitely make or break whether a person clicks on a video high caliber players will sometimes have stuff in their titles like world record first ever all caps tons of exclamation points or in the more egregious cases the classic god mode that's been making waves in the osu 2 landscape there's nothing wrong with most of these as the only one i take issue with personally is the god mode one but these are all very valid attributes to put in the title of a video especially in instances where you truly believe a score were at that title that he worked extremely hard for and earned it it's intense it can be historical and makes people want to watch the video titles like first ever and world record in particular however should be reserved for scores that are truly difficult and have had some degree of top player competition around it as it can be very misleading to viewers who don't know much about the game or how the competitive landscape works if used recklessly over saturating the actual meaning of the term as a result and making it not as useful as it originally was song selection ties into this as well freedom dive soul is four or five any of the ten thousand camellia songs that exist people are much more likely to click on these and also will sometimes go the extra step and research into who has done the best on these popular songs as well this either creates intentional or unintentional competition between various players and becomes one of the primary ways viewers understand how well a player is doing giving them an adequate benchmark to go off of if player a beats player b score by 5000 points a clone hero that's enough information for them to comprehend how hard something is to an extent even if it's within the boundaries of a single song and they have no clue what's going on in said song as long as they have a score to follow that's all they need to understand how hard something is there's not a whole lot you can do about this one they will understand that other things you are playing are difficult but they won't have a baseline to work off of if they choose not to dig around for other scores or simply can't comprehend the difficulty of the song lastly we will touch on what the score actually looks like sometimes the score doesn't even have to have almost any of the things i mentioned before aesthetically certain things just come off as much more mesmerizing whether it's crossover runs in ddr tapping in clone hero or jump after jumping osu these are all very easy to take in and most certainly entertaining especially with the right production value and camera angles not many people will pick out weird rhythmic changes in something like avadori from ddr technical strumming songs and clone hero or awkward old-school mapping in osu most of the time you're just looking for fast hands or fast feet nothing more nothing less the faster they move combined with the patterns being relatively easy to follow or more flashy the more impressive it simply comes off bonus points at the song is catchy or sounds intense enough too so how do all these things become an issue well it's because to an extent the viewers that only go by these principles are mainly only going to digest content that fulfills those needs it feels satisfying to the viewer that they're hitting something fast very accurately or that it's the first time someone is doing something and they feel like they truly have an understanding of what's going on in a genre of game they don't typically watch or have very little experience with however this can put pressure on up and coming players to more or less provide that easy to digest and familiar content only and can make them feel flustered and not want to play the game as much if they're more interested in more technical and not as straightforward aspects of their respective game sendit expresses these concerns very prominently and despite everything i've noted in this video i am not encouraging players at all to adhere to only what the casual viewer wants players should be comfortable with expressing their unique skills and should not feel pressured to play anything asking someone to play popular song number 85 just because another player did is very unnecessary to someone who is just trying to have fun and push themselves in their game in their own way and if that's the way they want to grow that should be highly respected i think that this is a reality that will cycle throughout rhythm games forever but i think it's better late than never to try and educate as many people as possible about the fallacies brand new players can fall into and perpetuate throughout rhythm game communities and try to prevent the one-dimensional landscape popular rhythm game cultures have turned into as well the common viewer is detrimental to the growth of rhythm games there's no doubt about that as it has shaped the landscape of mainstream rhythm game youtube today and is quite literally the reason why rhythm games have been on such a surge recently while clickbait is not a strange concept to the site and is harmless in moderation i think it has reached a point where it becomes outright misleading in some games and is doing more harm behind the scenes to some players than people think but those are just my thoughts i'm really interested to hear all of your thoughts so don't hesitate to leave a comment letting me know what you think and drop a sub if you're new to the channel thank you to all my patrons for supporting the channel and if you'd like to see more rhythm game content like this feel free to check out my patreon along with my other links below i'll see you on whatever video i upload next and take care [Music] you

Channel: Etienne

Views: 245,421

Keywords: Rhythm Game, Rhythm Games, 70KPS, Notes Per Second, NPS, YouTube, Difficulty, Osumania, Guitar Hero, Clone Hero, Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, DDR, Etterna, Stepmania, World Record, First Ever, Clickbait, Discussion, Algorithm, Handcam, Godmode, Aesthetics, Music, In The Groove, ITG, Dance Games, Viewers, Viewer

Id: eipmimFKzxA

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020