Classic Pump: I dunno?

Well I promised you bastards an article, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make at least some semblance of an effort to deliver.  I just got back from a tournament in The South, specifically North Carolina and Virginia.  I had previously acquainted myself with Raleigh during other traveled.  Virginia was new to me.  If there is ever a state that could be accidentally mistaken for a golf course, Virginia fits the bill.  Other than that there isn’t much I can say.  I flew 6 hours to Raleigh, and then hitched a ride with a local furry chap for the 4 hour drive to the location.  Immediately after we crossed the border we were severely accosted by local authorities.  Ostensibly for excessive speed and driving in the median, but such a pretense is ridiculous.  This was quite plainly an instance of fursecution, and also clearly of athletic intolerance, as speeding is the name of the game for Pump players.  (cue worlds faintest rimshot.  Seriously, wikipedia will be necessary to understand the humour of the last sentence fragment.)

Anyways, this tournament was supposed to be a shot across the bow for all the bastards of the classic pump community.  I have been involved in a number of high profile quarrels in the past, both over my tournament record and over my involvement with Pro.  It started with the pretty dramatic botching of the MMSD pump tournament way back in the summer of 2007, in Omaha.  To explain further it will be necessary for me to deliver some context.

Music games other than guitar hero and rock band have something called a timing window.  This differentiates between different levels of accuracy when hitting a note, as opposed to simple hit and miss.  In classic pump, it is extremely easy to hit notes with the highest level of accuracy.  However, there is also something in dance games called machine score.  For the longest time I thought it operated through some sort of voodoo magic, and to a certain extent I still think that plays a role.  In pump, the machine calculates score something like this:

Perfect = +200

Great = +100

Good = 0

Bad = -100 and combo break

Miss = -200 and combo break

In addition, everything good or better increases combo and every combo over 50 adds something like +200 per note.  A combo break resets this, essentially making a bad worth as much as -11,000 and a miss worth as much as -12,000 (from optimum score, being an FPC or full perfect combo.)

In contrast, music games like DDR, ITG, and more recently Pump Pro have not included combo in their machine scoring mechanisms.  Tournament organizers have also made no effort to stress combo play.  They have, however, made efforts to remove it from pump.  This is what happened at MMSD.  It happened badly.

Let me elaborate.  A system where minus points are delivered for certain levels of innacuracy is absolutely necessary to PA (perfect attack) play.  This was not done at MMSD.  Instead, 1 point was awarded per perfect, no other factors were considered.  This makes a miss of exactly as much consequence as a great.  This means a player such as myself could literally ignore the more technical parts of songs, focus on getting perfects on the easy parts, and win.  The technical patterns in question are what classic pump players center most of their training around learning how to hit.  They determine who the winner is in any sort of high level play, and rightfully so.

There were other sins committed as well, but none of them quite so egregious.  Anyways, way back in the day I took second (of 6) at the tournament in question.  A list of winners of the tournament went up.  My name was omitted.  About a year later I revisited the topic and complained.  Apparently this was taken as a sign of an ego problem, triggering a drama cascade which continues until this day.

So there’s a whole load of rather specific context.  More broadly, classic pump players tend to hate PA based systems and prefer combo based systems.  Why?  I can’t be sure.  As far as I have been able to discern, combo play only makes accuracy less important to the extent that sliding is easier than turning.  This is profoundly ironic given the stated emphasis classic pump players place on turning.  The real epiphany for me came when playing a song called Love is a Danger Zone, which is filled with rather complex turns.  I had learned them all, and in the process I had raised my score on Pro to a 96%, which I’m told is in roughly the top 6 recorded scores in the world.  I had 5 misses.  Asking Jboy if this was a competitive miss count for classic pump, he flat out told me no.  Then he showed me how it was customary to play it.  He comboed the most technical section without turning, finishing with a dramatically low percent score.

PA based pump play incorporates turning, and it incorporates comboing by necessity except in very specific cases, those ironically being difficult turns which can be better comboed by sliding or double stepping than by turning.  That much I have learned, and am confident of.  Hence from experience I have concluded that the classic pump purists do not actually understand the game.  Their issue can only be the lack of applicability of combo-based strategy to PA systems; It is my firm impression that PA-based strategy has greater applicability to combo-based gameplay than vice versa.  Certainly more than the purists would care to admit.

This tournament was supposed to be a test case.  Instead, it ended up being pretty close to Omaha all over again.  About 18 people were supposed to show up.  It ended up being 5.  I took first, but I can’t even begin to claim any sort of consequence to it.  I did not even perform to my own satisfaction, picking up misses on songs I am accustomed to FPC-ing consistently.  In the entire tournament, I believe there was only one song I lost.  It was Bemera CZ, and as far as I know I only lost because I gave up halfway through the (5 minutes of 200 BPM drills of the) song.

I wanted to consider the importance of strategy on PA vs combo systems, as opposed to simple skill.  I cannot really evaluate that at present.  My hypothesis was that it would be harder to consistently combo a song than to play it for accuracy, and that this would lead to players being strong on certain songs and weak on others, hence making information about other players more important.  I suspected this because of some of the more eccentric pump charts, and the techniques they required for comboing.  I realize now that to the largest extent, PA techniques translate to comboing techniques, and there are not enough eccentric charts to lessen the importance of simple skill.  The tested skill set just broadens to incorporate sloppy techniques like sliding.

Foot alternation does not change in utility.  Hand use does not change in utility.  Turning decreases in utility.  That is the only discernable difference I have so far encountered.  The only other issue I could possibly consider is which style of play requires greater consistency.  It seems to me that combo based play might, and that this would stress the importance of stamina more than usual.  Given the higher priority of sliding techniques, and the lack of sufficient evidence to examine, it is hard to rule either way.  My intuition tells me that stamina and consistency are marginally more important in classic pump than in pro.  It also tells me the difference isn’t enough to actually make a difference for a high level player.

I lost my opportunity to shut them up this time, but I have a renewed sense of dedication to that purpose now.  Classic pump, by all measures I can yet see, is an inferior game for an inferior player.  Also, all I won for my troubles was a copy of Fallout 3.  They didn’t even give out door prizes as promised.  So yeah, now I have a $400 dollar copy of Fallout 3.  Maybe I’ll review that sometime.

- Kilroy