DDR Life Gauge is Weird (how to CHEAT lv.18 clears)

[@coolguy02536]

This dope announcer said "LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, FOLLOW THE BEAT" on NGO

[@dwaterson21]

YIKES

[@Patashu]

I legitimately think this is going to make getting my first 19 clear easier. the trick was to Suck UPDATE: I now have a 176 miss clear on paranoia revolution CSP, it worked \o/

[@sbubby_d7206]

Yeag

[@Sha10n]

This strange behavior became a hot topic among Japanese DDR players around December 2021. The amount by which the life gauge increases or decreases depends on the player's MAX COMBO. This is probably a feature for beginners, and for playing higher level scores, a fixed amount of increase/decrease, such as in IIDX, would be preferred. Incidentally, the amount of increase or decrease in the dan certification course does not depend on the combo, but seems to fluctuate at a fixed value (with correction by DANGER). (Translated using DeepL)

[@ErrorDDR]

Are you suggesting players commit DDR crimes? I'm reporting this to the FBI

[@sbubby_d7206]

My personal FBI agent knows what I've done already, he was like "DAMN IM BOUT TO PASS AN 18"

[@Wrswest]

Okay a while back I actually figured out how the lifebar works by looking at the reverse-engineered psuedo-code that replicated a lot of the functionality and it is weird as hell but there is an explanation for how it works, and basically here's the rundown: It's, at maximum, 10 misses from full to zero (as determined by empirical lifebar testing, though pseudo-code testing gives a range of 8-13, depending on a 'strictness' value that's left unknown), and about 100 steps from nearly empty to full (again, probably strictness value dependent? IDK lol). However, how much life you lose for missing is scaled by a local maximum combo that resets at ??? (this is some internal thing that I'm not sure about, the logic isn't complete at all), which means as long as you are deliberately messing up and never actually hold a combo for very long, the lifebar is actually way more lenient, which is pretty lol, but at the same time if you're playing the game well at all this will never matter since you'll probably be holding combos long enough to keep the lifebar at maximum harshness (oh, and this maximum combo does not include goods, so goods reset this combo despite the actual combo not being broken by goods anymore) - maximum harshness (with maximum strictness) is 8 misses from full to zero, but if you somehow have a maximum great combo of zero it's 27 straight misses from full to zero on the same strictness value (note that this is an impossible situation to be in since you don't gain life on goods). Empirically testing the code seems to net that a max combo of 120 is where lifebar strictness maxes out. To compensate for this weirdness, steps hit around 10-20 seconds in are actually doubled in their life gain/life loss, and scale down back to normal after that. When everything else is removed from the equation, life gain is accuracy-based, i.e. get Marvelous and avoid Greats to gain life faster, a.k.a. the only intuitive part of how this godforsaken lifebar functions For even more fun, there's actually internally four different lifebars, of which one is the standard one, another is the deprecated "No Recover" lifebar (yes that's still internally there, just unused), and two more lifebars, one of which always gives Marvelouses life wise and the other of which always misses life wise, and I have no idea what those other two are for It is super janky but it has a really neat effect where on really really easy stuff, the lifebar is very very lenient since beginner charts don't typically have enough arrows for maximum life difficulty to be active for very long, especially since beginner players are very unlikely to actually hold combo long enough for it to scale up very fast. This also has the weird effect of making "one-section" charts deceptively hard to pass because you're more likely to enter the hardest part with maximum life difficulty, whereas something that goes out of its way to ensure you never hold a combo long are actually potentially easier because of exactly that reason.

[@ArchangelTirael]

DDR: Merciful lifebar to the beginners, allowing you to head-start the track and give you some time to feel the music before getting strict. Pump: Drops hold right after the beginning and fail track which not even started.

[@muhammadluqman3158]

In osu, the hp leniency is following the difficulty of the chart (or you can adjust it yourself if you're feeling evil), but this is such a janky one throw solution. I like it

[@Wrswest]

@@muhammadluqman3158 Osu is the one and only rhythm game to have lifebar mechanics that might actually be MORE jank than DDR's heh.

[@FalconPunchInDaFace]

I don't think OP would mind me sharing, but I saw OP pass Valkyrie Dimension double challenge. There may or may not have been 200+ misses.

[@unhappyrefrain]

tried it for a 17 clear and it worked, can confirm

[@MikeTheEntei]

Extremely interesting. This deserves a billion views

[@michaellyga4726]

jeez I need to stop memeing on the ITG lifebar when DDR's lifebar is this bad

[@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme]

I think I may be very familiar with this without even knowing it existed, because while the game is already super forgiving, with 16 misses allowed from the very start before failing at the 17th miss, back in the early days I'd be able to clear 18s and sometimes 17s with old D rating scores (I was not great at comboing but I was good at trying to hit every arrow as possible), the most impactful being my first PARANOiA Hades clear at 666k iirc. Which also may explain why I sometimes suck now at clearing some charts, since I obliterate the easy parts with my usual PA but then get obliterated when the hard stuff (helicopter turns, 200bpm crossover streams, jump spam) comes around. Oddly enough though, I managed to see this with VOLAQUAS CSP, where I did particularly well at the beginning but faltered once the stream progressed and wore me down. Needless to say, I persevered through the chart since I got through the worst of it, but man, my legs were not having it and gave up at the very last stream that would have almost granted me the clear. 90 misses, and 156 max combo. Hopefully this info is insightful.

[@neferazure]

I did watch someone a while back barely get a C+ on Possession CDP 19. Something I recall is that he barely held like a 10 max combo streak lol. Looking back, wondering if he may have employed this strategy to be able to get the clear. I think about it now, and it def may have been intentional, all the misses/weird judgments. hmmmm 🤔 this gives me a lot to think about.

[@CaveyMoth]

This is lazy man's DDR. I love it! So the secret is to be bad..but in a consistent manner all the way through. I'm sure this doesn't apply to older DDRs where you fail after missing, like 4 arrows in a row. Now I really want to try NGO...just aim for the reds. I want to dance in the danger zone tonight!

[@DeshaunXD]

Sort of makes you wonder why the Little mod exists. This is super interesting

[@jasonmartinez5116]

Aka the Cut modifier

[@neferazure]

idk, but this is still good information for say, if you want to try for Kaiden, a situation where you cannot use the Little/Cut modifications.

[@NamedKid10]

how to cheese ddr

[@FUNKTION_04]

I really don't want to, but I might have to resort to this to get the Double 19's. Either way, very helpful information, thanks.

[@jebbushu711]

Interesting, doing good is making my 19 clears harder. I'll always give my best play even if its easier to clear like this, but its interesting to know that being able to combo a lot of the earlier parts of stuff like lachryma csp is part of why i cant clear the later parts.

[@NOCTACRY]

it makes sense, it rewards consistency

[@THENAMEISQUICKMAN]

Both grades and life have been made significantly easier over the series' lifespan. In my opinion it makes clears practically meaningless until you score around the 825k to 850k mark. Can't wait for DDR A4 where they artificially inflate scores to ruin that too.

[@StarLonging]

Heyyy are you taking requests? Because I'd love to see a cheese strat for Prey CSP 😅

[@UglyStru]

gonna try just not doing the blue jumps and see if i live :D although that might be too many misses. we'll see

[@StarLonging]

@@UglyStru I think part of it will also be skipping notes in the opening - this video makes me think I should fight the impulse to fill up the bar before and between the jumps spams

[@Cardmaster12]

the cheese strat is to not play it, ultimate life hack

[@DragonstoneWolfe]

I did this kind of strat for my first 18 clear. NGO. If it was jump-step-jump, it was just jump-jump.

[@Cublex]

The announcer is so mad about this

[@kolja783]

There's also handicaps in the game that remove some of the notes instead of ignoring them outright :P

[@Itashafan]

Training mode might just be the place for you homie 😂

[@MyCrazybomb]

I used this trick at DYNAMITE RAVE ("AIR" Special) and I cleared with combos less than 3...

[@neo9.0]

Do I hear a keyboard??

[@looz727]

my qeustion as well

[@creatine420]

jesus christ ddr is such a joke game now

[@NamedKid10]

are you playing stepmania? just asking.

[@sbubby_d7206]

DDR GRAND PRIX

[@darkmario66]

I don't approve of cheating in DDR because you gain nothing from this. A clear like this is worth nothing to me. Practice practice practice!!!

[@lolXD-gj1sv]

No.