Friday, 1 November 2024

1/11/2024: Lv19 and more


Why do you need...?

Exactly what I thought when I was hanging with 5% HP with the last stream coming on Paranoia Revolution CSP.

Or Valkyrie Dimension CSP.

Or Hou CSP.

And then I proceeded to fail all of them again and again.

Of course Lv19s are gonna be like that, no?

I wrote an analysis on a personally rated passing difficulty across Lv18 and compared that against 3IC's scoring difficulty rating, but scrapped the whole thing because the 'personally rated' thing is a bit too stupid, but allow me to simplify the idea here: there is a clear pattern that separates Lv18 and Lv19.

Let us ignore anything below 18.8 that are clearly not 19 at the broadest sense, and anything above 19.2 for the same reason. Among those marginal charts, they are classified Lv19 only if they have a significant, Lv19 worth gimmick that almost surely blocks most players away.

Max 360, Volaquas, Egoism 440 all contain hyper-long streams at high BPM (BPM210+ 1/4 equivalent). Paranoia Revolution contains (twists and) vertical steps including jumps (from the X3 perspective those vertical steps are unique to this level, less so these days but still). Valkyrie dimension contains a BPM240(480) long stream on top of extreme change in speed.

On the other hand, top Lv18 are mostly Lv18 content but strengthened. Can you find anywhere a hyper-speed long streams like those Lv19s? Not really. IX, Max Period and Avengers are the closest and were considered some of the top Lv18 of their respective time, yet they were never considered Lv19. Beach Side Bunny on the other hand, has very long stream but it simply isn't fast enough (BPM153).

In fact, most top Lv18s consist of segments of broken streams in 3 or 5. That includes Endymion, New Millennium, Possession (20th mix) and The World Ends Now.

What about hard to read charts? Hou, Neutrino and Over the Period in particular -- but they are "easy" without speed change (vs VD csp, or Hou Csp for example) cf. hard to read Lv19s are tough even without speed change.

We ignored Dead End and Pluto the First who are clearly not 18.8+ in terms of passing difficulty, but there is still one left: Linduwum. Together with New Millennium, this is actually the new category of super hyper BPM charts (BPM240+) that we can't separate between Lv18 and 19. These two are both regarded at 18.9 if not 18.99, but what does it take for a similar chart to become Lv19 instead? We will see...

But yeah, I just wanted to celebrate the clear of Paranoia Revolution and Volaquas here.

Paranoia Revolution does not actually feels like Lv19 with its gimmick much less gimmicky in the 2024 environment and is much easier by ignoring a few notes intentionally (e.g. FA+steps @ 62combo and ↑↓s @416 combo). To me it really feels like a 18.99 more than a 19. That is, unless actual 19 is lower...but that's a topic for another day.

For Volaquas, the point is not only to survive that stream, but to fill the health bar beforehand. And what's before the long stream? Two 1/3 streams, the first one very smooth and the second one filled with jumps. Sounds familiar right? The same pattern appeared in many other charts like Hou and Varja. Hou is of course Lv19 but I always wonder why Varja isn't even 18.8. At the end of the day those 1/3s aren't real threats and the only reason for Volaquas to be Lv19 is the 9 seconds long BPM212 1/4 stream.

Clearing Lv19 has long been a dream since 2019, and it's finally here. But when the time arrives there is no overwhelming joy, everything feels so natural to me because the progress is huge despite the lack of Lv19 clears.

Like, would you imagine a 850k on Possession 20th mix casually back in the days? Absolutely not. Shock arrow are much better read in 2024 than in 2019 where passing Megalovania is painfully hard. 

Or like getting 800k on A4A csp or full comboing Pluto csp? With the help of constant and higher speed (oh yeah I am doing 480boost again) charts are clearer than ever.

Getting the first two Lv19 clears is just the beginning and I will not stop here (`・ω・´)

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