As the title suggests, would it be possible to add a community rated difficulty level to songs in the database?

 

I believe that would help new guitarists like myself as well as more experienced players with finding new songs they can play on their difficulty level.

 

I also think it is a great idea, the only problem is that everyone sees certain songs at different difficulties. What might be impossible for me might be easy for you. I suck at playing chords, but I'm good at tapping, some people are the other way around. That's just my opinion, but I do like the idea.

Hmm. I don't think we will add this to search2, but it might be addable to search3.

Thank you both for replying, 

 

You bring up a good point making it community driving is somewhat my way to partly circumvent one person defining the difficulty.

But if we could split up the difficulty rating in several categories (Speed, Chords, bends, slides etc) and have the community rate each category would create a much more detailed search result. I believe this could greatly help any guitar or bassist of any level in finding a song that fits not just the right difficulty but it also allows them to select what type of song you want may it be a chord heavy song or a wicked note by note solo or anything in between.

 

Of course we must watch out not to over complicating things. I think 5 core techniques are the limit for a feature such as this.

 

I'm sure we could come to a top 5 core techniques and set the difficulty associated with each of them using community input. 

To ensure that everyone in the community uses the same definitions for rating I would recommend using a example driven feedback form.

 

Visual examples of each level will keep everyone on the same page when it comes to rating difficulty. 

Again, I personally think rather than difficulty which is subjective (or perhaps in addition to), an option for the charter to mark techniques used (and perhaps how much) in the song - bends/complex bends, slides/unpitched slides, vibrato, power chords/barre chords/open chords/WTF chords, two-handed tapping, harmonics/pitch harmonics, pop/slap, et cetera.

 

I think this information is more objectively useful because it's completely rooted in fact - one might not have a problem with difficult bass lines in general but might struggle with pop and slap - and thus could find songs to practice this technique better (or avoid it, like a baby). Just my two cents.

 

I know right now you could use tags for that, but given they max out at ten and you can also use them for genre/decade/multitracks, it's to a point where you generally have to make a choice about the information to communicate there.

This is exactly why I think it's important to get as many votes as possible, the goal is to get an average from a large pool of users so that the extremes are balanced out. But I will admit that I do not know if the custforge community is large enough to make this work.

It would be a great feature.

 

Complicating the data entry will surely cause lack of input. It should be as simple as

-easy 

-moderate

-hard

-extreme

 

Also data entry should be made by advanced players so that data variation could be minimized

I think any of these ideas would be a nice addition to the customsforge, but in my opinion Saito gave the best suggestion. Have multiple difficulty categories for different techniques, and the charter of the song should be competent enough to decide the proper difficulty levels.

To be usefull, the votes should be seperated by lead, rhythm, bass, scales and chords. For example, my John5 release is highly advanced in the lead scales, but not the chords, and in the rhythm part, level is low intermediate in chords.

I think any of these ideas would be a nice addition to the customsforge, but in my opinion Saito gave the best suggestion. Have multiple difficulty categories for different techniques, and the charter of the song should be competent enough to decide the proper difficulty levels.

 

The key in my opinion is to not put all the responsibility on the charter but actually get as many users involved in the rating process. 

The song difficulty is calculated automatically by the toolkit when the dlc is created.  having a difficulty rating based on this would be a nice addition to the search, and site as a whole. 

 

Since the difficulty rating is generated by the toolkit, and not a person, it would not be subjective.  However there would be multiple difficulty ratings, one for each track. 

I really haven't found the difficulty ranking in the game to be very useful. The main issue is that it calculates a single score instead of multiple scores for each core technique (chords, solo, etc).