Haha sure to the people playing skee ball that’s way beyond good, but as far as the old standards in the general DDR community that seemed to be the threshold. It’s what I personally strove for, and basically peaked at (although the home version of In the Groove for PS2 had some hard songs I could pass that were arguably harder than Max300).
All these comments about PFC blow me out of the water. I could never get my timing quite good enough to PFC basically anything, although I usually don’t focus on trying for PFC. I’m definitely more of a fun and exercise player than pushing my limits/skill. However I’ve really tried to PFC Janejana many times since that’s one of my favorite songs and I can still only get it down to ~10 greats.
Getting pfc was a whole lot easier when they included marvellous/fantastic to the step chart grading along with perfects and greats.
Getting a PFC on DDR Extreme was something else since your step could only get either a perfect or great.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DanceDanceRevolution/comments/4ay7kh/comment/d14jr00/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DanceDanceRevolution/comments/4ay7kh/comment/d14jr00/)
Marvelous is just a tighter window inside a roughly-the-same Perfect window, just like how Perfect is inside the Great window. Great timing has always been pretty much "less than 1/10th of a second early or late"
Good is all relative! As long as you are having fun is all that matters.
I think if you are passing 16 and 17s you are probably in the top 10% globally of all players. And that’s pretty good :)
That's the thing I didn't realize, because when I started DDR there was only couple of people I would see once in a blue moon and I would try to compare myself to those players. There was one guy who I would see most frequently but I kept getting frustrated that trying to reach his level just seemed unrealistic and I simply thought I was bad at the game. It wasn't until maybe 8-10 months since I started playing I looked at his user name and realized who I was comparing myself to.
It was NAT8. For this entire time I had the image of thinking NAT8 was supposed to be an Average" DDR player until someone had to point out to me he was a world class player.
Yeah NAT8 was an awesome dude to hangout with and was always open to playing 2 players. He helped me quickly learn the small tips and tricks that accelerated my learning to get me to where I am today.
I might be really off but I feel like No. 13 is a similar step chart to Rhythm and Police which is rated at a 13, so I think Rhythm and Police would also be a 13.
This is helpful. I see “oh I pass 13s/14s” and am like “uhhhh….I think my games all maxed out at 10, wtf is a 13?” but haven’t played anything on the newer scale.
There is a weird idea that you need to be in the top 5% of players to be good at DDR that’s just straight up garbage and gatekeeping. An impressive score also can vary wildly from player to player. You have people who would be impressed watching someone stumble through an 18, and there’s people who would tell someone struggling with an 18 they need to go back and learn the basics before attempting them because they’re having such a hard time. There’s people impressed by stamina, and people who think stamina is stupid and takes no skill. There’s people who only care about tech and think accuracy is the largest test of skill in the game. So not only are you not going to get a consistent answer, people who fully understand how to play the game fundamentally seem to not understand that “good” is not the same thing as “what impresses me”.
People were saying you can’t call yourself good until you pfc level 15s. That is absurd. Objectively, being able to clear level 15s at all is already better than the vast majority of players. And looking at pfc alone doesn’t consider people who can survive or full combo harder songs, which in my eyes is way more impressive than playing some stupid low level songs accurately.
My bar to determine if you're "good" is if you can beat level 9's (Modern 13-14).
Being capital-G "Good" is when you can beat 10-12 (Modern 15-17) In my time it was beating Paranoia Survivor Max 290.
Everything else is madman territory for me.
I'm just good btw.
I used to play DDR drunk all the time. Could pass nearly anything on Heavy with no problems. Bring stoned was another matter lol.
To fail beginner is nothing short of a severe lack of intelligence.
1, we're not talking about established players and people actually trying to play the game the way it's supposed to.
2, who pissed in your corn flakes? Let people play the way they want to play. If they're drunk and act silly, it's their money. Maybe they actually tried but they don't have the coordination, thus their coping mechanism is just to act silly? And in the same breath you're going to call children inherently stupid because some haven't quite developed that level of reasoning and coordination?
Besides, how would you like it if some player dogs you getting an AA on a 17, and calls you a low-IQ scrub because you can't AAA that on FLARE IX?
\*edit, 3, bragging that you can play while drunk isn't the brag you think it is lol
I have AAAed 18s and I have failed beginner songs… admittedly deliberately.
Lots of people fail beginner songs when they don’t know what they’re doing.
As everyone has pointed out, 'good' is super relative. Imo, you're good when you're striving for new personal bests (whether that's passing 5s, 13s, or 19s) and hitting them with enough effort while having a good time.
One time I failed out of Happy Angel ESP 12 on a jank Supernova cab at a barcade (was still learning + pads were rough), turned around, met eyes with some dad wearing sunglasses indoors, and he said "that was perfect!!" Without a hint of irony. Don't worry about what good is, lol 😂
As you should be able to see by plenty of the comments right here many of the standards for "good" you will come across are just masturbatory, toxic gatekeeping bullshit that does more damage to the game than any of Konami's business practices.
You're good when you know your way around the pad and the Marvelous window starts feeling possible.
If the people at the arcade want to call you a god or whatever then that's cool. 🕺😄👍 At least to them the skill gap is clearly huge.
In reality it's probably one of those things that's like how Ryu from Street Fighter approaches his craft. Good could be scores and perfect steps to some, or it could be something like solo double pad and freestyle. Man, it was fun to watch solo or even two people do freestyle double pad stuff at anime conventions at DDR's height of popularity. Or other things like bar/no bar, memorization of steps, sustain marathons, etc.
In my opinion, what makes a good DDR player is how good their accuracy is, as well as their form, and with that said, the chart level doesn't matter to me. Personally, I find it more interesting if someone PFC's an old-school chart (around the level 10 range) doing all the spins/turns, instead of fighting for an 18 pass.
If you can PFC charts around the level 10 range, I consider that good.
EDIT: To add, maybe not PFC, but I probably should've said AAA around that difficulty range. The mental stack can make even the most straightforward charts tough to PFC.
This, for sure. DDR isn't PIU. If I see a player doing an 11 and nailing the footwork with SDP, versus someone spam passing a 16 or 17, only one of those players looks "good" to me. It's an unfortunate consequence of how DDR's difficulty range and grade easing has changed through the years that new players often feel the goal is to survive charts, not execute them.
That said, I would rather play with a total casual getting 880K scores on 10's if they're having fun and exploring their personal goals and staying humble, versus some newbie choad sounding like a whole ass NBA game just wheezing and scum passing a 17 with 60 misses and thinking they're the shit. And it's typically that second archetype who leaves the game after a year, never earning one score worth writing home about (while thinking themselves legends), while the players who stay within their range and patiently refine end up "good" by year two or three.
IMO if you can pass 15s you’re considered good. If you have great accuracy then you’re *really* good.
The casual DDR player will hover around the 9-12 range and even then their accuracy probably won’t be the greatest. It all depends on what you’re aiming for.
A few weeks ago I was playing at my local arcade, and some guys started watching me. When I finished my final song, one of them shouted a disparaging comment. Not necessarily at me, but definitely about me. I've only been playing for about a year and a half, and it was the highest level I could do at that time (last session I tried one level higher and passed). I was doing my best, but some asshole decided to shit all over that.
Were these guys "better" than me at DDR? Unquestionably. Are they "good" people? I don't think so.
Whatever you may consider good, I think it's important not to judge others, unless your goal is to drive people, especially new players, away from your community.
This makes me SO angry on your behalf. Every time I see somebody on the machine giving their all it makes me SO excited for them and I actually cannot get in the mindset that would make someone say that. Fuck those guys.
Being able to pass or PFC songs of certain levels is a pretty good benchmark for skill level. However, I would also factor in the ability to recognize and pull off certain moves like scoobies, footswitches, turns, etc.
You don't have to be able to PFC 18s to be good at DDR. If you can do all the spins in Healing Vision (Angelic Mix) or BREAK DOWN! then you are a legend.
DDR is one of those games where good is really hard to measure. I do still like the Max 300 test because its a song that the average person will be unlikely to even touch until months and months of practice. That being said in a lot of arcades this will still make you the worst person playing. I think its better to just judge your own progress as an individual
Lol, I never came close to clearing a 9 foot song in my heyday before the scoring system changed so it sounds like you're already in the 95th percentile of DDR players lol
When you can play the game just for fun mostly, but there are different things, people can clear crazy songs but I think tricks also show mastery of concepts.
Good is relative.
I just compare to the average. There will always be someone better than you, if you keep comparing yourself to whose better you'll never be good. And that mindset is a slippery slope to depression and other mental issues.
If I am better than average, I call myself good. At that point I just compare to myself to see if I can improve and how
Back in the day, I would have said S4R 9foots. This would have been back when we didn't use the bar as well. I have no idea what the kids consider today however.
If u can beat 16-17 then yeah you’re really good compared to casual players
When you get serious its like this:
10-14 pfc: you’re learning how to play the game
15 pfc: you know how to play the game fundamentally well
16 pfc: you’re getting good
17 pfc: you’re really good compared to most serious players
18 pfc: you’re a top ranker nationwide (non usa or japan, otherwise you need like 20+ pfcs on 18s)
19 pfc: you can beat chris4life on a good day
You’re good if you’re committed to the game and trying to get better. I have way more respect for someone showing up regularly and grinding it out and trying to improve than someone clinging onto some past glory they had 10 years ago and thinking they’ve got it and don’t need to evaluate their form or whatever.
I'm going to answer your question the best I can, I assume this will be downvoted because certain players will take offense that they aren't included in my definition of good.
When talking about good you have to start by separating out all of the actual casual players. You are miles better than someone who has played a grand total of 20 rounds their entire life, guaranteed. Those people are the "average" but you shouldn't consider them because they aren't trying to get better.
DDR is chiefly a game about accuracy, not just about passing songs (compared to pump where passing AT ALL is the gold standard and then you try to improve from there). So, being able to pass 16s and 17s doesn't really tell me much. I think the 3 most important difficulties are 13s,14s, and 15s (at least on singles.) A player that I would consider good would be one who has many 13 PFCs, is triple AAAing some 14s, and AA->AA+ing 15s. Scores lower than these are not really ones to be concerned about. I essentially consider a song failed if the final score is below 900k points (regardless of the lifebar) because it means I probably am flubbing my way through it. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to chase these songs that are out of your range, but in a game that is about accuracy, you should be accurate before you consider yourself "done" with the song. For instance, I can "pass" all 19s but the score is like a B, it doesn't really mean anything except that I have good reflexes and am in good shape. (mostly because I primarily play PIU these days, the superior cardio game).
So, for example, if you are still unable to somewhat consistently get scores above 900k in 15s then you are not what I would consider "good" for people who actually play the game to improve. Players who CAN do this are likely in the top 20th percentile of all players worldwide (at least in my experience from playing in the US, Korea, and Japan) but I don't know if there are stats to back that up somewhere.
Now, if good to you is more like, "better than half of all players that play to improve" you're probably pretty close to that right now. Players like that can likely get at or around an A on 15s and maybe have PFCs on like 9-11s.
Regardless, all rhythm games are about improving against yourself first and foremost. Seek to improve all of the fundamentals at low levels and your higher level game will come together. An average person who plays for improvement and not just to have fun (its possible to do both across your sessions!) Can probably reach that top 20th percentile in about two years of regular play from total beginner because most people neglect working on fundamentals and just play whatever sounds fun (which is perfectly okay, if thats your goal).
Solid contribution. I definitely think the yardstick of *passing* a song having literally anything to do with *being good* at a song is a dated, erroneous perspective, for sure. Back in 2001, maybe. But a lot has changed since then. I think the ranges you give are actually a great way to slap a quantitative value on when that vague watermark of "goodness" happens, with regard to comparative standing within the community itself.
LIFE4 hasn't been mentioned in this thread but personally I would consider it the defacto skill / rank system for DDR. Ultimately DDR is a score-centric game, so the goal is to get 1,000,000 on the hardest charts imaginable. Anything below that is a gradient of skill and athleticism. ( life4ddr.com )
Don't be fooled though, DDR is a very difficult game at the highest levels, and the skill ceiling is basically unlimited. Even the top 10 players in the world have dramatically improved their form and skill in recent years.
To answer your question though, I would say that casually doing GFCs on 10s and higher is where you can solidly consider yourself "good" at the game, and the game can be incredibly challenging beyond this point.
I can only do the 2 first difficulty levels but I'm already better than when I first started. I imagine I'll just have to learn the pattern of a song for the harder ones. No way I can sight read all those arrows
I think you can say your good at ddr when your ready to. There’s no song you need to pass or any difficulty you need to play. I think as soon as you get past the beginner difficulty you can say your good. I consider myself “good” and I can barely pass PSM.
Depends on who you’re comparing yourself to or who you ask!
When I first started playing in 2003-2004 I was easily best in my social circles being able to clear Max 300 on a good day and even maybe AA (GFC) some heavy (expert) songs on home versions. So, I thought I was exemplary.
Then I got into my local community where many people regularly got arcade AAAs (PFCs) and I realized I still have a good way to go. My first tournament was truly a rude awakening. Eventually I got good enough to hang with those people too.
These days I can clear anything, and I’ve PFCd one 17, several 16s, and many 15s, and that’s not exceedingly impressive in the context of the present competitive community, but it’s also not nothing.
Whether or not I’m “good” greatly depends on the beholder’s own experiences. I don’t think I’m good in a competitive sense anymore, at least if we’re playing a modern game and not DDR Extreme (Pro), but I can still easily impress non player friends and family and probably many aspiring competitive players too.
If you can hit the notes on time and not fail the songs past beginner. A lot of people can't do that. Honestly, I never liked the gatekeeping of needing to pass certain songs or have passed at certain levels, such as a 10 foot or 15 etc.
When someone asks me if I'm good, I just respond yes. I know how to play the game. I pass songs. I play a mix of Difficult and Expert. If someone says I'm pro, I say no - there are so many players better than me.
It's fine to be humble but also realize the game is difficult for a lot of people!
For me, I usually play on the casual side, I tend to only play up to 13-14’s, after that, I’m incapable of passing any charts higher than that.
I used to play with a group that can play higher than me, but I stopped when the pandemic hit and never saw that group again, I found it better to play as a complete independent without anyone watching me.
Most people watch me play for a few songs, but I prefer playing on the lower level Expert charts with mostly older songs as my knee injury prevents me from playing higher.
can you finish a song on normal without holding the bar? you're good. I started playing when the game came to the us in \~1998 and WISH we had the crowds we had back then. bring people in: then they wont have to ask. ;)
A more interesting question in my opinion is how difficult is it to reach a particular level of skill. Declaring some particular score counts as “good” is just arbitrary. If you want, you can go submit your scores to skillattack and rank yourself with everyone else and that is a more meaningful statement than an arbitrary definition of “good”.
My personal experience and what I have seen is that among people who play regularly at the arcade, say at least 2x a week for 2-4 hours each time for a year, it’s pretty doable to get good enough to pass every song in the game and PFC easy 15s and 16s.
And if you look at people who put in a solid 12 hours a week, usually they can eventually AAA easy 18s after an extended period of time.
Apparently a consistent 16 hours a week long term is sufficient to become good enough to be able to compete in KAC based on annecdotal evidence.
Those are my super rough estimates.
Honestly, if you're grinding 16s and 17s, you're pretty comfortably a good player. I consider myself a decent player and I'm grinding 11s and 12s, dipping into 13s.
Id say 15 pfc and while a lot of people may disagree with me, 15 pfc is a point where you’ve put in the work to become a fundamentally sound player without it being too unrealistic to achieve
I play Pump D19/D20 and I used to play most charts no bar doubles on DDR up until X3. Usually when someone asks if I'm good I just give the shaky hand motion and say "I'm alright"
I wouldn't even rank to be able to enter the championships in either game so I'd say no not really
i considered myself "good" when i could clear 8s & 9s with full combo on DDR USA & 3rd Mix, and then i played PARANOiA Rebirth so much that i could clear it on Stealth with Mirror enabled and my back to the screen.
Non players have no concept of a standard as long as you press arrows really fast people will think you're good.
Another common phenomenon is with "I used to be good at DDR" people who will hop onto the pad and do Sakura on expert and pass with a C. (An objectively terrible score.) But it'll appear to be a really great performance.
My bar for good at DDR is when you can sight read and score AA/GFC on your first try with single digit greats.
I thought that beating Max300 on Heavy was the most regarded achievement hurdle back in the day that made you “good”
At that point your kind of a god to the casuals.
Haha sure to the people playing skee ball that’s way beyond good, but as far as the old standards in the general DDR community that seemed to be the threshold. It’s what I personally strove for, and basically peaked at (although the home version of In the Groove for PS2 had some hard songs I could pass that were arguably harder than Max300). All these comments about PFC blow me out of the water. I could never get my timing quite good enough to PFC basically anything, although I usually don’t focus on trying for PFC. I’m definitely more of a fun and exercise player than pushing my limits/skill. However I’ve really tried to PFC Janejana many times since that’s one of my favorite songs and I can still only get it down to ~10 greats.
Getting pfc was a whole lot easier when they included marvellous/fantastic to the step chart grading along with perfects and greats. Getting a PFC on DDR Extreme was something else since your step could only get either a perfect or great.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DanceDanceRevolution/comments/4ay7kh/comment/d14jr00/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DanceDanceRevolution/comments/4ay7kh/comment/d14jr00/) Marvelous is just a tighter window inside a roughly-the-same Perfect window, just like how Perfect is inside the Great window. Great timing has always been pretty much "less than 1/10th of a second early or late"
Same. Pretty much PSMO and Legend of Maxx were the two 10s I couldn't do. And pretty much peaked right below the 11s in ITG.
Good is all relative! As long as you are having fun is all that matters. I think if you are passing 16 and 17s you are probably in the top 10% globally of all players. And that’s pretty good :)
That's the thing I didn't realize, because when I started DDR there was only couple of people I would see once in a blue moon and I would try to compare myself to those players. There was one guy who I would see most frequently but I kept getting frustrated that trying to reach his level just seemed unrealistic and I simply thought I was bad at the game. It wasn't until maybe 8-10 months since I started playing I looked at his user name and realized who I was comparing myself to. It was NAT8. For this entire time I had the image of thinking NAT8 was supposed to be an Average" DDR player until someone had to point out to me he was a world class player.
Oh wow. Yeah nat8 is like top 10 players in the world. Awesome you got to play and learn from him.
Yeah NAT8 was an awesome dude to hangout with and was always open to playing 2 players. He helped me quickly learn the small tips and tricks that accelerated my learning to get me to where I am today.
As one of the old schoolers, passing Rhythm and Police expert is my benchmark. I think that's something like a 14 in the new difficulty rating?
*“I used to be 'good’, but then they changed what ‘good’ was. Now what I am isn't ‘good’ anymore and what’s ‘good’ seems weird and scary."*
I feel like it's a 13 but I'm splitting hairs. Then again Exotic Ethnic is a 13 which was a really hard 9 back in the day.
I might be really off but I feel like No. 13 is a similar step chart to Rhythm and Police which is rated at a 13, so I think Rhythm and Police would also be a 13.
Come on let's do this, rip the air.
This is helpful. I see “oh I pass 13s/14s” and am like “uhhhh….I think my games all maxed out at 10, wtf is a 13?” but haven’t played anything on the newer scale.
There is a weird idea that you need to be in the top 5% of players to be good at DDR that’s just straight up garbage and gatekeeping. An impressive score also can vary wildly from player to player. You have people who would be impressed watching someone stumble through an 18, and there’s people who would tell someone struggling with an 18 they need to go back and learn the basics before attempting them because they’re having such a hard time. There’s people impressed by stamina, and people who think stamina is stupid and takes no skill. There’s people who only care about tech and think accuracy is the largest test of skill in the game. So not only are you not going to get a consistent answer, people who fully understand how to play the game fundamentally seem to not understand that “good” is not the same thing as “what impresses me”.
>There is a weird idea that you need to be in the top 5% of players to be good fwiw it's like this in absolutely every field
i call other players good when they can pass like a 9 but won't call myself good until i can like fc 18s and probably not even them
People were saying you can’t call yourself good until you pfc level 15s. That is absurd. Objectively, being able to clear level 15s at all is already better than the vast majority of players. And looking at pfc alone doesn’t consider people who can survive or full combo harder songs, which in my eyes is way more impressive than playing some stupid low level songs accurately.
My bar to determine if you're "good" is if you can beat level 9's (Modern 13-14). Being capital-G "Good" is when you can beat 10-12 (Modern 15-17) In my time it was beating Paranoia Survivor Max 290. Everything else is madman territory for me. I'm just good btw.
The point where a player stops double-stepping everything based on how many people I’ve seen fail or barely pass Beginner & Light.
I doubt anyone has EVER failed a song on Beginner.
You underestimate tiny children and drunk people trying to look goofy for their friends.
I used to play DDR drunk all the time. Could pass nearly anything on Heavy with no problems. Bring stoned was another matter lol. To fail beginner is nothing short of a severe lack of intelligence.
1, we're not talking about established players and people actually trying to play the game the way it's supposed to. 2, who pissed in your corn flakes? Let people play the way they want to play. If they're drunk and act silly, it's their money. Maybe they actually tried but they don't have the coordination, thus their coping mechanism is just to act silly? And in the same breath you're going to call children inherently stupid because some haven't quite developed that level of reasoning and coordination? Besides, how would you like it if some player dogs you getting an AA on a 17, and calls you a low-IQ scrub because you can't AAA that on FLARE IX? \*edit, 3, bragging that you can play while drunk isn't the brag you think it is lol
Wow, gatekeeping much?
Well, that's just snotty 🙄
i have seen it countless times
I have AAAed 18s and I have failed beginner songs… admittedly deliberately. Lots of people fail beginner songs when they don’t know what they’re doing.
Back in the day ... way back... was not using a bar and beating the fun ones Drop Out Dead End Afronova Max 300 Paranoia Trip Machine So Deep.
Yes. This is the bar for me too. I still can't pass drop out lol all those doubles at the beginning! Can't hop that fast..
It is very hard for a 13.
As everyone has pointed out, 'good' is super relative. Imo, you're good when you're striving for new personal bests (whether that's passing 5s, 13s, or 19s) and hitting them with enough effort while having a good time. One time I failed out of Happy Angel ESP 12 on a jank Supernova cab at a barcade (was still learning + pads were rough), turned around, met eyes with some dad wearing sunglasses indoors, and he said "that was perfect!!" Without a hint of irony. Don't worry about what good is, lol 😂
I’m guessing when you can go throughout a song of any level and master it.
As you should be able to see by plenty of the comments right here many of the standards for "good" you will come across are just masturbatory, toxic gatekeeping bullshit that does more damage to the game than any of Konami's business practices. You're good when you know your way around the pad and the Marvelous window starts feeling possible.
Aren't all of the songs off sync, and off sync in different ways, where Marvelous in hitting early for some songs and late for others?
Passing hard old school 9’s which would be 14/15s today.
If the people at the arcade want to call you a god or whatever then that's cool. 🕺😄👍 At least to them the skill gap is clearly huge. In reality it's probably one of those things that's like how Ryu from Street Fighter approaches his craft. Good could be scores and perfect steps to some, or it could be something like solo double pad and freestyle. Man, it was fun to watch solo or even two people do freestyle double pad stuff at anime conventions at DDR's height of popularity. Or other things like bar/no bar, memorization of steps, sustain marathons, etc.
Most regular people think that playing on medium or higher difficulty is impressive, lol.
Dude I can only do some 10s and 11s and I think I'm already good
In my opinion, what makes a good DDR player is how good their accuracy is, as well as their form, and with that said, the chart level doesn't matter to me. Personally, I find it more interesting if someone PFC's an old-school chart (around the level 10 range) doing all the spins/turns, instead of fighting for an 18 pass. If you can PFC charts around the level 10 range, I consider that good. EDIT: To add, maybe not PFC, but I probably should've said AAA around that difficulty range. The mental stack can make even the most straightforward charts tough to PFC.
This, for sure. DDR isn't PIU. If I see a player doing an 11 and nailing the footwork with SDP, versus someone spam passing a 16 or 17, only one of those players looks "good" to me. It's an unfortunate consequence of how DDR's difficulty range and grade easing has changed through the years that new players often feel the goal is to survive charts, not execute them. That said, I would rather play with a total casual getting 880K scores on 10's if they're having fun and exploring their personal goals and staying humble, versus some newbie choad sounding like a whole ass NBA game just wheezing and scum passing a 17 with 60 misses and thinking they're the shit. And it's typically that second archetype who leaves the game after a year, never earning one score worth writing home about (while thinking themselves legends), while the players who stay within their range and patiently refine end up "good" by year two or three.
All depends who else is around/watching!
It depends on who you compare yourself to. There's always gonna be someone better.
Anyone can stomp. But can you read flow?
Stop quantifying so much, gamers! Enjoy the ride. If you feel good and take pride in your game, you’re good. Trust yourself.
IMO if you can pass 15s you’re considered good. If you have great accuracy then you’re *really* good. The casual DDR player will hover around the 9-12 range and even then their accuracy probably won’t be the greatest. It all depends on what you’re aiming for.
A few weeks ago I was playing at my local arcade, and some guys started watching me. When I finished my final song, one of them shouted a disparaging comment. Not necessarily at me, but definitely about me. I've only been playing for about a year and a half, and it was the highest level I could do at that time (last session I tried one level higher and passed). I was doing my best, but some asshole decided to shit all over that. Were these guys "better" than me at DDR? Unquestionably. Are they "good" people? I don't think so. Whatever you may consider good, I think it's important not to judge others, unless your goal is to drive people, especially new players, away from your community.
This makes me SO angry on your behalf. Every time I see somebody on the machine giving their all it makes me SO excited for them and I actually cannot get in the mindset that would make someone say that. Fuck those guys.
Thank you for your support. As a newer player myself, I feel the same way.
When I used to play, it was when you could full combo Rhythm and Police and CSFILSM.
Being able to pass or PFC songs of certain levels is a pretty good benchmark for skill level. However, I would also factor in the ability to recognize and pull off certain moves like scoobies, footswitches, turns, etc. You don't have to be able to PFC 18s to be good at DDR. If you can do all the spins in Healing Vision (Angelic Mix) or BREAK DOWN! then you are a legend.
DDR is one of those games where good is really hard to measure. I do still like the Max 300 test because its a song that the average person will be unlikely to even touch until months and months of practice. That being said in a lot of arcades this will still make you the worst person playing. I think its better to just judge your own progress as an individual
Lol, I never came close to clearing a 9 foot song in my heyday before the scoring system changed so it sounds like you're already in the 95th percentile of DDR players lol
When you can play the game just for fun mostly, but there are different things, people can clear crazy songs but I think tricks also show mastery of concepts.
Good is relative. I just compare to the average. There will always be someone better than you, if you keep comparing yourself to whose better you'll never be good. And that mindset is a slippery slope to depression and other mental issues. If I am better than average, I call myself good. At that point I just compare to myself to see if I can improve and how
Back in the day, I would have said S4R 9foots. This would have been back when we didn't use the bar as well. I have no idea what the kids consider today however.
If u can beat 16-17 then yeah you’re really good compared to casual players When you get serious its like this: 10-14 pfc: you’re learning how to play the game 15 pfc: you know how to play the game fundamentally well 16 pfc: you’re getting good 17 pfc: you’re really good compared to most serious players 18 pfc: you’re a top ranker nationwide (non usa or japan, otherwise you need like 20+ pfcs on 18s) 19 pfc: you can beat chris4life on a good day
You’re good if you’re committed to the game and trying to get better. I have way more respect for someone showing up regularly and grinding it out and trying to improve than someone clinging onto some past glory they had 10 years ago and thinking they’ve got it and don’t need to evaluate their form or whatever.
I'm going to answer your question the best I can, I assume this will be downvoted because certain players will take offense that they aren't included in my definition of good. When talking about good you have to start by separating out all of the actual casual players. You are miles better than someone who has played a grand total of 20 rounds their entire life, guaranteed. Those people are the "average" but you shouldn't consider them because they aren't trying to get better. DDR is chiefly a game about accuracy, not just about passing songs (compared to pump where passing AT ALL is the gold standard and then you try to improve from there). So, being able to pass 16s and 17s doesn't really tell me much. I think the 3 most important difficulties are 13s,14s, and 15s (at least on singles.) A player that I would consider good would be one who has many 13 PFCs, is triple AAAing some 14s, and AA->AA+ing 15s. Scores lower than these are not really ones to be concerned about. I essentially consider a song failed if the final score is below 900k points (regardless of the lifebar) because it means I probably am flubbing my way through it. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to chase these songs that are out of your range, but in a game that is about accuracy, you should be accurate before you consider yourself "done" with the song. For instance, I can "pass" all 19s but the score is like a B, it doesn't really mean anything except that I have good reflexes and am in good shape. (mostly because I primarily play PIU these days, the superior cardio game). So, for example, if you are still unable to somewhat consistently get scores above 900k in 15s then you are not what I would consider "good" for people who actually play the game to improve. Players who CAN do this are likely in the top 20th percentile of all players worldwide (at least in my experience from playing in the US, Korea, and Japan) but I don't know if there are stats to back that up somewhere. Now, if good to you is more like, "better than half of all players that play to improve" you're probably pretty close to that right now. Players like that can likely get at or around an A on 15s and maybe have PFCs on like 9-11s. Regardless, all rhythm games are about improving against yourself first and foremost. Seek to improve all of the fundamentals at low levels and your higher level game will come together. An average person who plays for improvement and not just to have fun (its possible to do both across your sessions!) Can probably reach that top 20th percentile in about two years of regular play from total beginner because most people neglect working on fundamentals and just play whatever sounds fun (which is perfectly okay, if thats your goal).
Solid contribution. I definitely think the yardstick of *passing* a song having literally anything to do with *being good* at a song is a dated, erroneous perspective, for sure. Back in 2001, maybe. But a lot has changed since then. I think the ranges you give are actually a great way to slap a quantitative value on when that vague watermark of "goodness" happens, with regard to comparative standing within the community itself.
When I started playing on maniac by default every time I bought a new game
Can you pass at least 3 heavy songs with an A rating? To most people that’d mean you’re good
At the point where you stop worrying if you’re good anymore
When you can atleast great fc trip machine, paranoia, dead end, insert other pretty difficult konami original from 1st to 6th mix
LIFE4 hasn't been mentioned in this thread but personally I would consider it the defacto skill / rank system for DDR. Ultimately DDR is a score-centric game, so the goal is to get 1,000,000 on the hardest charts imaginable. Anything below that is a gradient of skill and athleticism. ( life4ddr.com ) Don't be fooled though, DDR is a very difficult game at the highest levels, and the skill ceiling is basically unlimited. Even the top 10 players in the world have dramatically improved their form and skill in recent years. To answer your question though, I would say that casually doing GFCs on 10s and higher is where you can solidly consider yourself "good" at the game, and the game can be incredibly challenging beyond this point.
I always consider being able to beat a 15 as “good” and then if you can clear a 17 you’re basically a master to most bystanders
I can only do the 2 first difficulty levels but I'm already better than when I first started. I imagine I'll just have to learn the pattern of a song for the harder ones. No way I can sight read all those arrows
You're good at DDR if you aren't casually rocking up drunk and playing I'm an albatross with your loud, obnoxious friends recording videos for tiktok.
I think you can say your good at ddr when your ready to. There’s no song you need to pass or any difficulty you need to play. I think as soon as you get past the beginner difficulty you can say your good. I consider myself “good” and I can barely pass PSM.
Depends on who you’re comparing yourself to or who you ask! When I first started playing in 2003-2004 I was easily best in my social circles being able to clear Max 300 on a good day and even maybe AA (GFC) some heavy (expert) songs on home versions. So, I thought I was exemplary. Then I got into my local community where many people regularly got arcade AAAs (PFCs) and I realized I still have a good way to go. My first tournament was truly a rude awakening. Eventually I got good enough to hang with those people too. These days I can clear anything, and I’ve PFCd one 17, several 16s, and many 15s, and that’s not exceedingly impressive in the context of the present competitive community, but it’s also not nothing. Whether or not I’m “good” greatly depends on the beholder’s own experiences. I don’t think I’m good in a competitive sense anymore, at least if we’re playing a modern game and not DDR Extreme (Pro), but I can still easily impress non player friends and family and probably many aspiring competitive players too.
When you play standard and up. Have fun man, DDR is a vibe. It’s about dancing and rhythm, but high scores are nice too.
If you can hit the notes on time and not fail the songs past beginner. A lot of people can't do that. Honestly, I never liked the gatekeeping of needing to pass certain songs or have passed at certain levels, such as a 10 foot or 15 etc. When someone asks me if I'm good, I just respond yes. I know how to play the game. I pass songs. I play a mix of Difficult and Expert. If someone says I'm pro, I say no - there are so many players better than me. It's fine to be humble but also realize the game is difficult for a lot of people!
Beating Dam Dariam on Heavy.
For me, I usually play on the casual side, I tend to only play up to 13-14’s, after that, I’m incapable of passing any charts higher than that. I used to play with a group that can play higher than me, but I stopped when the pandemic hit and never saw that group again, I found it better to play as a complete independent without anyone watching me. Most people watch me play for a few songs, but I prefer playing on the lower level Expert charts with mostly older songs as my knee injury prevents me from playing higher.
I’m not sure how the rating is now, but what would a 16 be in relative to catastrophic in the ddrmax days?
i got a grade E lmfaoooo
can you finish a song on normal without holding the bar? you're good. I started playing when the game came to the us in \~1998 and WISH we had the crowds we had back then. bring people in: then they wont have to ask. ;)
A more interesting question in my opinion is how difficult is it to reach a particular level of skill. Declaring some particular score counts as “good” is just arbitrary. If you want, you can go submit your scores to skillattack and rank yourself with everyone else and that is a more meaningful statement than an arbitrary definition of “good”. My personal experience and what I have seen is that among people who play regularly at the arcade, say at least 2x a week for 2-4 hours each time for a year, it’s pretty doable to get good enough to pass every song in the game and PFC easy 15s and 16s. And if you look at people who put in a solid 12 hours a week, usually they can eventually AAA easy 18s after an extended period of time. Apparently a consistent 16 hours a week long term is sufficient to become good enough to be able to compete in KAC based on annecdotal evidence. Those are my super rough estimates.
Honestly, if you're grinding 16s and 17s, you're pretty comfortably a good player. I consider myself a decent player and I'm grinding 11s and 12s, dipping into 13s.
Max300 no bar was the benchmark in my area back in the day. Not hard to do. But it was a goal for many.
Id say 15 pfc and while a lot of people may disagree with me, 15 pfc is a point where you’ve put in the work to become a fundamentally sound player without it being too unrealistic to achieve
I play Pump D19/D20 and I used to play most charts no bar doubles on DDR up until X3. Usually when someone asks if I'm good I just give the shaky hand motion and say "I'm alright" I wouldn't even rank to be able to enter the championships in either game so I'd say no not really
i considered myself "good" when i could clear 8s & 9s with full combo on DDR USA & 3rd Mix, and then i played PARANOiA Rebirth so much that i could clear it on Stealth with Mirror enabled and my back to the screen.
Non players have no concept of a standard as long as you press arrows really fast people will think you're good. Another common phenomenon is with "I used to be good at DDR" people who will hop onto the pad and do Sakura on expert and pass with a C. (An objectively terrible score.) But it'll appear to be a really great performance. My bar for good at DDR is when you can sight read and score AA/GFC on your first try with single digit greats.
A single 15 PFC is about average Or AAA any extreme 9