Rationale for Difficulty Tiers?

[Gigakoops]

I've made a few songs I am interested in putting on Phase Shift. I went with how most RBN authors tier songs for Rock Band and ended up with quite a few final-tier charts. However, I just got done playing some of the Phase Shift in-game setlist, and I noticed some pretty insane stuff put on five dots on guitar, some of which was actually harder (in fact, there's no devil-tiered guitar songs in the main setlist thus far).

So what I'm asking is what exactly is the thought process behind the difficulty tiers? About how hard does a song need to be to get a certain rating on each instrument? Is length a matter, since I have a medley of five songs combined that runs at 15 minutes?

Thank you for your time.

[Gyoo]

I think that's done pretty random sometimes... each of us have our own "way" to judge difficulty so some silly songs can be dead easy to some players, and on the contrary some simple things can be hard for others.

My solution would be that the same person judges all songs difficulties for an instrument, or at least we should discuss about each case, but all together.

[knapman [FD]]

Im actually waiting for general feedback on the current song/career setup, these are beta releases. People just try to get things roughly right, then once released we refine over time based on the wider groups feedback.

If you have run into any specific issues or inconsistencies then let us know.

[Sinner]

I could put difficulty on guitar charts, I have plenty of experience with that.
(Be aware that I'm more of a RB player)

[JD2504]

i had the feeling since the first day that puppetz song should of been devil tier

About how to rate a song tier is a mix of things: Notes per second, chords intensity, chords complexity, amount of solos, solos difficulty,..... song lenght is a factor too, but a very small one.

[vandorb12]

Feb 16, 2013 18:35:46 GMT JD2504 said:

i had the feeling since the first day that puppetz song should of been devil tier

About how to rate a song tier is a mix of things: Notes per second, chords intensity, chords complexity, amount of solos, solos difficulty,..... song lenght is a factor too, but a very small one.

I think Rock Band might have a mathematical formula associated with chart difficulty. I come to this conclusion because in the difficulty tag in their version of the song.ini, it has a three digit number which seems totally random, and and many of the same difficulty tier levels have different values. JD most likely knows more about this than I do.

It would be cool to come up with some sort of formula to tier songs. Phase Shift could implement this logic to create automatic difficulty tiers for songs that do not have them set manually. Could be a cool feature...

[Gyoo]

Feb 17, 2013 10:23:24 GMT vandorb12 said:

It would be cool to come up with some sort of formula to tier songs. Phase Shift could implement this logic to create automatic difficulty tiers for songs that do not have them set manually. Could be a cool feature...

I approve.
If d&k are interested, let's make a thread to debate around criteria to have the most relevant difficulty meter

[Sinner]

Feb 17, 2013 10:23:24 GMT vandorb12 said:

Feb 16, 2013 18:35:46 GMT JD2504 said:

i had the feeling since the first day that puppetz song should of been devil tier

About how to rate a song tier is a mix of things: Notes per second, chords intensity, chords complexity, amount of solos, solos difficulty,..... song lenght is a factor too, but a very small one.

I think Rock Band might have a mathematical formula associated with chart difficulty. I come to this conclusion because in the difficulty tag in their version of the song.ini, it has a three digit number which seems totally random, and and many of the same difficulty tier levels have different values. JD most likely knows more about this than I do.

It would be cool to come up with some sort of formula to tier songs. Phase Shift could implement this logic to create automatic difficulty tiers for songs that do not have them set manually. Could be a cool feature...

Not sure if RB has anything like that. It feels like the song charters just put what they feel like.
Take Constant Motion for an example. That song's chart is ridiculous, but still it's tiered at 5, while Mr. Crowley isn't exactly too hard, it's tiered at Devil but it has no ridiculous overcharted parts.

[Gigakoops]

Feb 17, 2013 17:21:21 GMT Sinner said:

Feb 17, 2013 10:23:24 GMT vandorb12 said:

I think Rock Band might have a mathematical formula associated with chart difficulty. I come to this conclusion because in the difficulty tag in their version of the song.ini, it has a three digit number which seems totally random, and and many of the same difficulty tier levels have different values. JD most likely knows more about this than I do.

It would be cool to come up with some sort of formula to tier songs. Phase Shift could implement this logic to create automatic difficulty tiers for songs that do not have them set manually. Could be a cool feature...

Not sure if RB has anything like that. It feels like the song charters just put what they feel like.
Take Constant Motion for an example. That song's chart is ridiculous, but still it's tiered at 5, while Mr. Crowley isn't exactly too hard, it's tiered at Devil but it has no ridiculous overcharted parts.

That's exactly how it is on the Rock Band Network, and I wouldn't be too surprised if that's how Harmonix does it as well. I'm pretty sure the three digit number is supposed to place it between different songs when sorted by difficulty. For example both Through the Fire and Flames and Llama are devil tiered, but when the list is sorted by difficulty, the two songs end up at different spots on the tier, and it isn't alphabetical order.

[Oddbrother]

Yeah, it is pretty wide.

Didn't rayne collect and classify those numbers?

[Gyoo]

@koops : That's it exactly. I had the opportunity to check that with a tool to create customs on RB2Wii, there were even 4 digits !
After a few tests, I concluded that this was actually to have a better difficulty sorting between songs of the same tier.

[raynebc]

Feb 18, 2013 6:36:20 GMT Oddbrother said:

Yeah, it is pretty wide.

Didn't rayne collect and classify those numbers?

Unfortunately, I don't know what Harmonix's system is for difficulty ratings versus tiers. There's been one or two posts somewhere where somebody approximated it, but I don't know if it's accurate. I think the best somebody could do is sort by difficulty, and note the songs where each tier changes, and inspect the difficulty numbering for those songs.

[Kitsune Zeta]

Feb 17, 2013 17:21:21 GMT Sinner said:

...Take Constant Motion for an example. That song's chart is ridiculous, but still it's tiered at 5[...]

It was marked at Rock Band 1's Tier-9 (Impossible) at release, but Rock Band 2 changed the cutoffs for the different difficulty tiers (while removing 2 tiers altogether), which caused Constant Motion to now be classified as Nightmare (Tier-5, assuming warmup is Tier-0). Rock Band 3 did this again (notably affecting Rock Band Network 1.0 songs, as evidenced by the number of early Chaotrope songs that are in the Nightmare tier instead of the Impossible Tier)

The actual difficulty numbers on the charts themselves have never changed between Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 3, and it is those numbers that are used to do the initial sort by difficulty (which is then followed by an alphabetical sort for any ties and the RBN songs).

[SUSAltd]

As far as I know, in RB and RB2, the list of songs is just sorted in order of difficulty and then divided between tiers evenly. So the difficulty ratings would be relative to the other songs in the list.