One Step Closer To Heaven

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to step beyond the 3-foot songs I’ve been mastering so far, and stretching my wings/feet further to the 4 and 5 foot categories. This has been an interesting challenge because it has involved getting much faster, as well as learning a few of what I call “special moves”. My own terms for some of these (since I don’t know the standard DDR slang) are half-beat triplets, forced foot-switches, and sequential diagonals. Half-beat triplets are when three steps need to be taken in the time normally taken for two. Forced foot-switching is when a holding step with one foot means you’re left to use the other foot for steps on all 3 remaining buttons (which can mean, for instance, having to use your left foot on the right button). Sequential diagonals aren’t particularly special – it means jumping on two buttons in a diagonal a few times – but on 4-foot and higher difficulties you’re expected to do this faster and more frequently, sometimes with many in a row. Maybe these don’t have terms in the DDR communities since they’re seen as being easy and standard anyway – if so I don’t care; I’ve named them now, and they’re still special to me. My precious babies…

So, progress wise I feel I’m doing well. I can get As in quite a few 4-foot songs now, though admittedly not always reliably. Since I don’t have that many songs with 4-foot available I decided to try and do some 5-foot songs too, and was quite surprised with how well I could do – a couple of As and Bs, as well as a few Cs, and most surprisingly an AA on one song. So either I’ve got some very easy 5-foot songs, or I’ve been doing some pretty fiendish 4-footers (I think possibly the latter given the trouble I had breaking into this level, though the AA 5-foot song is obviously very much simpler than others).

However, this progress has come at a price, and that price is hard work. After the first 30 minutes I spent solely doing 4-foot songs my legs felt like jelly and I had to take a rest before I could continue. I’ve gotten a bit more used to them now, but the two hour sessions I tend to do have still been very exhausting, with need of frequent breaks and breathers. And it’s not just physical exhaustion either – the concentration on timing in this game can really exhaust you mentally. By the end of the two hours I find that although I could maybe keep going physically, mentally I’m just incapacitated. I can’t concentrate on the steps enough to time anything right or prepare for different moves, and the arrows just flash by whilst I whimper pathetically. I’m going to have to give up on my habit of writing up a report right after playing – I just can’t gather my thoughts properly, let alone try to think of interesting or witty comments (that’s hard enough for me anyway). My left ankle’s also been playing up a bit. I sprained it a few months ago trying to learn to ice skate – that was an even more embarrassing and pathetic event than trying DDR (it doesn’t help when 8 year olds pick it up in seconds, whilst after an hour you’re still clutching to the barrier in mortal fear). Sometimes after heavier gaming my ankle starts aching again, but (un)fortunately this shouldn’t get in the way of continuing to play.

I’m still making what I consider to be silly newbie mistakes, like mixing the up and down arrows, and completely mis-timing certain jumps. I’m also really terrible at songs where the arrow speed is frustratingly slow, or where the speed changes dramatically at several stages in the song. But in spite of these troubles I am still pleased with how far I’ve gotten to date. I’m now doing well in songs that looked utterly impossible ten days ago. Sometimes I find myself not needing to concentrate as much on the game, and just let my feet glide over the buttons themselves. The game’s coming a lot more naturally to me now. Lyrics have been getting stuck in my head a lot, and some mornings I wake up seeing arrows and imagining steps in my mind, which is perhaps a sign I’ve been playing too much. But it’s getting me one step closer to heaven (baby), which is one step closer to you. However, Billie Jean is not my lover (she’s just a girl), and as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will survive, in the gay bar, gay bar. Mah-na mah-na (do do-do do).

There are frustrations though. Many of them are to do with problems revolving around the Stepmania program itself, and though I won’t let that interfere with my overall rating of the DDR genre, permit me a little rant. I was told there was an “Event Mode” whereby you wouldn’t have to play 3 stages at a time, you would just keep selecting songs endlessly (otherwise it takes you to the high score and credits screen after 3 songs and you have to go through the very poor menu system to start again). I figured this would be a popular option, and searched in all the usual places – general options, gameplay options, machine options, miscellaneous… Where did I eventually find the damned thing? “Coin Options”. Why for the love of god is there such a things as coin options?! Why is such an important gameplay feature in there? Coin options has other things in it like how many “coins” you need for a “credit”, and how many games you can have per credit (coins are “inserted” simply by pressing a button – thankfully this whole system can be turned off). There’s even a book-keeping screen so you can keep track of how many “coins” you’ve “spent”. Why, I ask? Why?! Who the hell would want to play at home pretending that they have some slot machine on their computer? Or are there weirdos that actually build a whole DDR machine in their houses with full metal pads and coin slots and everything? If so, are these people allowed to breed? What is wrong with people that they would actually choose their game at home to have all the stupid set-up quirks of an arcade game? Do they get some sadistic pleasure from this, or are they actually imagining themselves in an arcade area surrounded by adoring fans as they play? I’m reminded of my original biased conceptions from three weeks ago of what home-playing DDR fans “must” be like…

Also, the difficulty ratings are so very poorly laid out. I can understand that some 4-foot songs are like 5-foots and so forth – I can excuse some subjective ratings on that. But on top of that are the game classifications of Light, Standard and Heavy difficulty areas. It would be logical for the game to simply put all 2 and 3-foots into Light, 4 to 6-foots in Standard and 7-foot or above in Heavy, or something along those lines at least. Instead the people designing the step-charts have to choose which foot level goes into which difficulty ranking, meaning even further confusion over difficulty levels. There are 2-foot songs in Standard and 5-foot songs in Light. To confound the issue even more, although you can switch difficulty levels within the music menu, what songs are currently displayed is purely dependant on which songs fit the difficulty you’re currently showing. So if you’re in Light mode certain easy 3 or 4 foot songs won’t show up unless you switch over to Standard. This makes it a giant nuisance to navigate through the music looking for ones you’re able to play – in the end you have to try and memorise what foot ratings the songs are given on the different difficulty levels. This isn’t easy with several dozen tracks. It’s all so frustrating when it could be solved with a far simpler system!

On a final note, I went out to a danceclub last night for a friend’s birthday. The DJ was playing lot of 80s stuff, and at one point Billie Jean came on. I was pretty shocked – it’s not a song often played in clubs, but more importantly it’s the song I’ve been playing the most of by far in Stepmania, and the first 4-footer I got an A in. So after getting that A I was wondering just how good my dancing to this song would be. I didn’t have my dance mat with me unfortunately, but I tried dancing to some of the steps I remembered – doing my half-beat triplets and forced foot-switches. I avoided doing any sequential diagonal jumps, since that sort of thing might have drawn too much attention… Overall I’m sure I looked very silly, but thankfully the club was dark and the few people that knew me there were already quite intoxicated. Also, I’m guessing it’s just as silly looking as my normal dancing. I did get some compliments for my dancing that night actually, but I think it was more for effort than style.

Positives: Still improving my skill at this. Y’know, that’s been about the only positive there’s been to the genre so far. Oh yeah, and my mat doesn’t stink as much any more (even though I probably do – so sweaty!)
Negatives: Frustration with Stepmania itself aside, and ignoring the current pain in my ankle, the biggest negative has to be with how this game creeps into you when you play it too much. I’ve generally been doing 2 hours every two or three days, with extra hour sessions when I get the chance. Any game played this often will get into your dreams and subconscious thoughts, and it’s not particularly nice. For people playing this game every day it must simply be a part of their life, always somewhere in the back recesses of their mind, and that’s pretty freaky from my perspective…
Overall so far: This game still hasn’t gripped me, and I still don’t see the general appeal behind the genre. It is no longer an interesting peculiarity and is more and more becoming hard work. I’m toiling at it purely for the aim of achieving better scores. Could someone point out where the fun is?

It’s Not Over Yet

All right, folks, it’s confession time. After my abortive attempt to log in on Monday, I have steadfastly refused to log in to WoW at all. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the other ways in which my life has gone to shit in the past two days.

Anyway, the details of why I’m not playing aren’t quite as important as the fact that I haven’t brought teh funni since last week. (Arguably it could be said that I have, in fact, never brought teh funni but to that I say– it’s my damn site and I’ll do what I want with it.) What this means is that, rather than cut the project short, or do both you and the game a disservice by not going through the full thirty days, I’m going to extend my trial period by one week; the new trial period will end on September 2nd, 2006. That’s right, Blizzard is going to get at least $15 out of me. I figure they deserve it, at least for not letting the Tauren Male dance be “the milkshake song”.

I do have real-life and personal stuff to take care of today, none of which is any of your business, so don’t ask. If all goes according to plan, I’ll at least have one twelve-hour Catass-a-thon to report on between now and the end of the month.

As soon as I have one more play session (normal length) under my belt, I’ll do up a “midway point” report. ‘Till then, En Taro Adun– damn, wait, that’s Starcraft. Meh, same difference.

Dance Your Cares Away…

…Worries for another day
Let the music play
Down in Fraggle Rock!

Okay, so I promised a more fun update, with the plan being to get drunk and play Stepmania with a friend who will make sure I enjoy it. Unfortunately that’s been postponed, but it should hopefully happen shortly. In its place here are some lyrics from the old theme song for Captain Planet:

‘We’re the Planeteers,
You can be one too,
Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!
Looting and polluting
Is not the way,
Hear what Captain Planet has to say:

“The power is yours!”’

Can you imagine that show airing these days? 5 teenagers of different racial backgrounds hold rings for each element (the fifth element being Heart!), combining their powers to stop pollution and save the planet from the evil corporations and scientists! Maybe that was totally gnarly when we were kids, but these days Bush would accuse it of being hippies trying to brainwash our children. Terrorist hippies!

Also somewhat disturbing was finding the theme tune to Alvin and the Chipmunks. The lines go something along the ling of “So get set to have some fun, We’ll bring you action… and satisfaction… We’re the chipmunks, Coming on stronger than ever before!” As I was dancing to this, hearing that high-pitched chipmunk voice sing about coming on stronger and giving me satisfaction, I was extremely creeped out. Didn’t stop me getting an A though…

But anyway, enough of such tomfoolery! Back to the game itself, which has gripped and excited me so intensely that I’ve taken a whole six days to bother shoving out another article about it. To be honest there’s not a great amount to report. This game is really starting to bore me a fair amount now. I’ve usually been playing 30-60 minutes a day, and gradually trying to improve myself. I’ve gone through all my 3-foot songs and gotten A rankings in the vast majority. I managed to impress myself by trying out a 3-foot song I’ve never heard of before and cranking out an AA grade first go!

But 4-foot songs are still an uphill struggle. Today, after going through all the harder 3-foot songs, I gave 4-foot Billie Jean another few tries. First attempt – fail. Second attempt, struggling, but for once I actually managed a D! That’s the first time I’ve been happy with a D outside of cup sizes! After that I felt on a roll, I went another time and was doing amazingly well. I got the health meter up to full, stringing along a very good combo, and was hoping for an A when I started screwing up near the end – resulted in a C overall. After that I was just too tired to do well (I’d been dancing for a good 2 hours straight) so I gave up.

But tomorrow is another day… I am determined to get into the 4-foot songs and do better. I’m also still perplexed by the grade rankings you get at the end. An AA seems only possible if you never miss a single beat. An A only seems possible if you get your bar to full, whilst a B is if it’s nearly full. C and D are obviously lower down the line (which is actually rare to get – either you have the song covered well and you get an A or B, or you totally cock up and fail). However, there seems to be some other factor here since sometimes you get a B if your bar is full, and sometimes an A if it’s not quite full. I’m guessing it must be the number of perfect steps, or how high a combo you can get.

I’ve messed around with the settings a bit and managed to turn the stupid menu timer off (who the hell would want that on?) though I still can’t find a way to disable the way it forces you into a 3-stage mode of play. Interestingly I found an option to turn off the “Marvellous” rating for your steps. I can only assume this means that in terms of points Marvellous is exactly the same as Perfect – it’s only something added on for display. Looking at the post-song statistics I can sort of see why – on the songs I’m good at over 50% of my steps are Marvellous, with a further 25-30% Perfect. Without that extra high rating I’d simply be seeing the same Perfect score all the time. I figure there must be some damn amazing grade for getting the highest rating on every step – something I’ll have to experiment with some time on an easy song. But I really can’t see what the heck is the difference between Great and Marvellous – that split-second variation just really ain’t obvious.

The alterations I made to my pad are getting a little worn – the polystyrene on the left and right buttons has developed a groove in the middle making the buttons a little less responsive at times. I’ll have to look at reworking these with harder materials. Still a few slipping problems too, but not enough to interfere with play – the mat just needs a little adjustment in between stages sometimes. It will be interesting in future to see just how different the proper arcade machines are to my pathetic little patched up cheapo dance mat…

Positives: Well, I guess I’m still improving, albeit very slowly… I don’t feel like a complete pillock playing any more – just bored really.
Negatives: Forget embarrassment or shame, this game is just turning out really really dull. The initial joy from something new has quickly worn off and I’m left really struggling to want to play.
Overall so far: The thing I’ve never understood, and that I understand even less now, is that there are people who play this regularly, on a daily basis sometimes. There are forums with tens of thousands of users dedicated to Stepmania. Why? Just why…? To keep this up I’m going to have to try and add a bit of spice…

Nothing To See Here

My server is down– both of them, now that I think about it. Both Anvilmar and Dark Iron are down. I am Jack’s quivering little ball of hatred.

Of course, Anvilmar is listed as down on the server status page; players are directed to the Realm Status forums where we’re greeted with a list of servers down for “emergency maintenance”. DI is on there (even though it’s listed as online on the status page) but not Anvilmar.

SO FULL OF IRRATIONAL RAGE.

You Have The Right To Remain Silent, Not The Requirement

Session Time: 2h30m. Progressed to Level 9, cleared out quests, made money. Note a distinct lack of anything that requires other people.

All right. Maybe it’s something I missed when the server was started up, but is Anvilmar one of the Eastern European servers or something, where nobody speaks English? Oh, wait, it can’t be, because the incessant and irritating prattling in the General Chat and Trade channels is in (extremely poor, when it wasn’t indecipherably abbreviated) English. I’m not looking for Dickens here; I just want some of you WoW elitists to make like Coldplay and talk to me! Nobody said word one to me during the entirety of the Interrogation on Wednesday. For two hours. Complete and total silence. Even when I sent whispers asking general questions– in polite, phrased, well-formed English– I was completely ignored.

Hooray for the WoW ‘community’!

So, what did I do during that time? What the #@$% else is there to do? I ran the grind. Killed monsters, completed quests, and managed to get some rather interesting drops. None of which I could use AT ALL. Right, a Shaman has a whole hell of a lot of use for a Short Bastard Sword of Stamina. So, once i was done, I decided that the Auction House would be an excellent way to make more money than selling the item to an NPC. I put it and three other green-tagged items (green meaning “Uncommon” quality) up for two-hour auctions and went to bed.

The next morning, they were no longer on the block, I hadn’t received the money, and there was absolutely no indication that they were in my mailbox save for a small icon near the (now almost perpetually-ignored) minimap. After scouring Thunder Bluff for a mailbox (and asking, in vain, other people where it was), I eventually found it and got my items back. In spite, I sold the stuff to an NPC anyway because I was not about to throw away more money listing the items again. For the record, this is exactly the first time that the manual provided with my copy of the game has proven to be accurate in its representation of how the software functions.

So, to sum up, there are apparently six million people playing this game and not a single one of them can be assed to stop grinding for ten seconds and answer a simple, polite question.

Of course, you know, this means war.

The Good: Brother, are you looking at the wrong post…
The Bad: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the deafening silence.
Opinion Change: Way, way, down. The gameplay is what draws a player to an MMO, and in the case of WoW that’s all right. Nothing special, as I’ve said, but it’s all right. The community is what keeps a player paying his fifteen green a month, and so far as I’ve seen here there just ain’t any. We’re halfway through the trial, and things do not look good for Blizzard in the “getting me to continue playing” department.