"Fascination MaxX" and "Fascination -Eternal Love Mix-" also deserve mention for tempo changing weirdness. "Fascination MaxX" is particularly nasty as a IIDX song... Transitioning from a section where HiSpeed 5.0 is suitable to one where even HiSpeed 1.5 is uncomfortable is extremely difficult. I think the easiest solution would probably be to have use a real towel (not the Sudden+ cover) and toss it off during the roll leading into 400 BPM. Even riskier would be to start the song on HiSpeed 5.0 and hold start through the roll. All the notes in the roll are white, so holding start through all 8 would bring you down to a (relatively) more comfortable HiSpeed 1.0. This made me realize how much harder it is to handle speed changes in music games than it is in Tetris, haha. If you want to slow down, you stop manual locking or you reset the lock delay by sliding down steps. You have no such luxury when the tempo is going at a set rate. The "newb vs. post-newb" viewpoints are spot-on. The 200 slow-down used to be a breath of fresh air when I started playing -- I can hardly remember when that was now. Today, the 200 slow-down is certainly a hiccup in the speed ramp. It is a manageable hiccup, but it is enough to present a minor annoyance to the player. In regards to ARE cancelling: Personally I'd think that it would present a greater interruption. Suppose you release the key for the previous piece after it locks. The next piece would then be unceremoniously dropped into play without much time for you to react and shift it to its intended destination.
The only problem that comes to mind with a continuously dropping ARE given the fact that there's a cancel is the fact that skillful use of the cancel would be a necessity to get a rhythm going. That would be the same as the issue of lock except that the figures for ARE get so much lower; I'm really not worried about the idea until the ARE and lock times get very low, say, Death 300 and beyond. Once that point is reached, though, cancels may be impossible and ARE drops could hurt rhythm severely. It could work, though; it's all about how it functions in that territory. I'll admit, for the record, an ARE over about 20 frames starts to piss me off and over 25...gah. That plus no hard drop makes it hard for me to go back and try for GM on the original TGM again...and believe me, once I get GM, that version is just GOING...as an aside... Oh yes, Kitaru: Fascination Eternal Love Mix came to mind also as something that's just annoying at times; you know the Chaos-like part in there (around 170-220 combo on Heavy, if I'm not mistaken)...steps stop for a minute when it looks like straight eighths...no. Somebody at Konami needs to pay for that
Masochists should try the original Tetrinet: 60 frame ARE, pure randomizer, and random initial orientation.
just an idea: make the ARE dynamic with respect to the fall time: ARE is now bell shaped: in low gravity situations, no are, then are is rising and then its dropping again.
