markings for arrangements

[dahans]

I know this might sound stupid, but what about making markings for the arrangements? For example : difficult, medium and easy or something like that. In my opinion this would be a great idea, because it allows more interpretations of one song. What do you think?

[Palagerini]

I remember this was orginally suggested before but it was overuled because not everyone as the same easy and hard and some people do and that it would cause every single sheet to be reupdated, which could take a while.

[Cobraroll]

On the site, you mean? Like, labelling some songs as easy, some as medium, and some as hard?

I think it's a great idea, and it opens up for more versions of the same song (see UGC's topic, we can't deny those), but also, it requires quite a lot of work...

First, the coding. It's not falling out of the blue, such, but I guess an easy solution would be to change the background colour under the song's name. Here's an example:


Where red is hard, yellow is medium, green is easy, blue is puny, etc. Note that the colours are not very accurate, all the ones I were unsure of are listed as yellow.

Second, it would require us to go through about 1000 songs, and decide how hard they are to play. Some would be decided very quickly, others may balance between two degrees. And there are extremities as well, look at, say, Break the Targets and SM64 File Select and try to find sheets to compare them to. Where should we put the border? What should the colour of a not-reviewed sheet look like (obvious answer: white)?

On the plus side, it would allow newbies to find sheets on here easier, and it would help inexperienced people to see which sheets are the hard ones, and which they could safely print and play without wasting paper and ink.

Ultimately, I think it's possible, and the site would benefit from it, but it would require work and may spark debates. And to some, it may be pointless. But I think we should go for it.

[dahans]

that's what I think

[SirIngusBingus]

Let's worry about getting updates back up and running and fixing all our other problems first, then go into stuff like this.

[Nintendude73]

Difficulty is entirely dependent on the skill/ability of the player.  While we could say "Our rating system is based on a player with average skills" or something, then we end up in a debate over what signifies average skills.  Not to mention how would you rate a song where the majority of it is easy, but there are a couple of difficult bits... there are, as you have said 1000 sheets to rate, which is a nightmare... there are just a ton of things that would make this hard to implement and it could never be a perfect system.

If it were to happen, it needs to be after the site is back to stable updates, we are actually bored enough to implement something like this, and there's nothing better we could be doing.  That could take a very long time.

Oh, and that colors thing is absolutely eye-gougingly unattractive.  It would just not be pretty.  Ever.  At most I would say change the color of the text, but even that would look bad.  I think an additional column would make more sense.

[SirIngusBingus]

Well, we could mark some of the insane sheets with some kind of symbol, and we could offer a 'Simple' and 'Complex' version of some sheets, but otherwise, the user can always open the file and judge for himself/herself whether the sheet is too difficult for them to play.

[dahans]

Yep that's a good idea. But, is it possible or realistic that there are two or maybe three ( I think this is the interesting about music and especially game music: the interpretations of the songs) arrangements on the site? We shouldn't implement a marking for every arrangement, but if we do, just for those songs, we have already twice on the site. Or maybe three times. Is that a good idea?

[ALPRAS]

Normally, I rate my arrangements according to everyone's skill average. But normally they are Hard or Medium difficulty

[GreekGeek]

Like it has been said before, it depends on the player's skill. But also, it depends on what you think is hard. I have large hands, so I'll find Approaching Cynthia less difficult than someone with small hands. However, my left hand could be less functioning than someone other's. So the difficulty rate is individual.

I'd say, just mark the semi-impossible sheets with a symbol and leave the rest to decide for the player himself.

P.S. Let's just focus on gettin' those damn'it sheets back on for the time being.