Easiest Song/Hardest Song Analysis - and a new winner | Forums

[JTCoop]

Seems like a while back somebody posted a thread about which were the easiest songs on RS. I can't find that thread now so I'm starting a whole new one. That thread inspired me to concoct a formula for determining how hard or easy a song that I've played is. I call it Coop's Rocksmith Easiness Formula. Patent pending. Described in painful detail here: http://myrocksmithjourney.blogspot.c...cientific.html .

It's a mathematically meaningless calculation that I invented just to get some rough idea of how hard or easy a song is to learn on RS. And, I think it's not bad as an informal indicator. Basically, just divide your highest score on a song by the number of times you've played it. Multiply that by your highest accuracy (as a percentage) and multiply that by your longest streak. Then divide by 100,000 and round to one decimal place to get a relatively convenient number. (There are some caveats, as described in my blog post. For example, I didn't use the actual play count on Surf Hell because after I mastered that song I played it every night to warm up. That inflates the play count aspect of the calculation. You should really divide by the a significant milestone play count - like how many times you had to play a song to reach 70,000 or to master the song. But, you'd have to track that manually, which even I haven't been doing. At least until now.)

No sooner had I created an ordered list of the songs I've played, from easiest to hardest, using my formula then I mastered I Want Some More and determined that it was in fact the easiest RS song of all. (Having seen some clips of the new Police DLC, Roxanne may take the honors when I download that one.) All of which makes my most recent accomplishment - finally mastering a song after over a month - sort of meaningless because it turns out the song I mastered Sunday night is - by my calculation - the easiest song I've played so far on RS! So, back to work. Gotta get Barracuda mastered!

[KilaRoach]

WOW! Talk about takin the fun right out of it... jk

No need for a matematical formula here. Previously the easiest song for me was Next Girl. But now Roxanne takes the title

I mastered Roxanne (single note) in 3 play throughs today. Probably shoulda had it done in 2 but I got fumbly during the second play.

I think the flaw in your matematical formula is that it doesn't factor in skill progression. For example; a guitarist may have taken 12 plays to get Satisfaction to 70k and only 8 plays to get Surf Hell to 70k. But between the time he/she played Satisfaction and Surf Hell they have played 12 other arrangements numerous times each and have progreesed their skill set significantly. Additionally your formula doesn't account for riff repeater work either. Both in skill progression and song leveling.

So yeah, great work on creating that formula. I know how much fun it can actually be analyzing and tracking stats. I am a cycling coach and am always looking at times and wattages and heart rates so I can understand the pleasure you got from creating your formula.

[muzac989]

Nice work, but, honestly, unless you're playing the full chart for a song you can't really know what your accuracy is because the game gives your accuracy based on the notes it throws at you, not accuracy based on full chart. Also, it's a lot harder to make the jump from 70k to 90k then it is to make the jump from 0 to 70k with most songs. A better way of tracking progress would be to just track individual riffs that you plateaued on, and track how many hours/days it takes you to get it up to mastery. That's how I track my own progress.

PS: the hardest songs in the game is Ricochet, followed by Hanger 18 and Star-Spangled Banner. I don't think there'll be much disagreement over that.

[SeattleSauve]

PS: the hardest songs in the game is Ricochet, followed by Hanger 18 and Star-Spangled Banner. I don't think there'll be much disagreement over that.

I think Hangar Combo might be more difficult than Ricochet Single Note given Solo 11 (though I haven't gotten either masterred - does anyone here have hangar combo masterred??). Not sure where Painkiller Combo resides, but I think it's up there somewhere. Then Symphony of Destruction Combo probably... And somewhere down the line is Free Bird, but it's an order of magnitude easier than the others listed here methinks.

[muzac989]

I think Hangar Combo might be more difficult than Ricochet Single Note given Solo 11 (though I haven't gotten either masterred - does anyone here have hangar combo masterred??). Not sure where Painkiller Combo resides, but I think it's up there somewhere. Then Symphony of Destruction Combo probably... And somewhere down the line is Free Bird, but it's an order of magnitude easier than the others listed here methinks.

You're probably right, Hanger 18 is probably the hardest in the game, especially because the song goes on forever. I hadn't really thought about Painkiller, even though I've been working on it a little bit, so I looked at the charts of that solo... the last part (solo 10?) looks like it might be the single hardest riff in the game.

[Typhoon7M]

You're probably right, Hanger 18 is probably the hardest in the game, especially because the song goes on forever. I hadn't really thought about Painkiller, even though I've been working on it a little bit, so I looked at the charts of that solo... the last part (solo 10?) looks like it might be the single hardest riff in the game.

Painkiller is harder than Hangar 18 IMHO

[Selurevad]

Very interesting JT. I think your analysis certainly helps rank songs by difficulty for you. But everyone is different of course. Personally, even if I was looking for a way to rank difficuly of just me, I'd throw out note streak in the equation. I'm not sure its a very good indicator of difficulty. In the end might just introduce some randomness into the equation.

We've recently started trying to do this as well over at rsevolve.com. We have almost 7k performances recorded but with 207 total arrangements in RS counting DLC that is still only roughly 33 performances for each arrangement on average. But of course, the reality is some arrangements have over 100 performances recorded and 1 has none so far (brand new police song). So even with almost 7k performance recorded I still think we don't have enough data yet. However, its fun to report based upon what numbers we have. So I am using Standard Deviation Sample formulas on both the score and accuracy. With so few plays for some arrangements, score is less than useful right now, especially with some of the chord arrangements, if you just play the arrangement once and don't bother leveling it up first, on quite a few of these songs you will have a very low score and very high accuracy if you are good player. Because leveling of the chord arrangements seem particularly slow at first. However, those same songs will show a high accruacy which shows they are easier than the score indicates. So right now standard deviation sample of accuracy is showing the obvious contenders on top in terms of difficulty, 6AM, Mean *****, Jules, Richochet, etc. Likewise on the bottom of the difficulty list.

What I would like to would like to do is combine these two standard deviation numbers somehow weighted by total performances (if there are hardly any performances, then standard deviation doesn't mean a whole lot yet) to produce a single better number for each arrangement. Now you've got me thinking... I'll have to see what I can come up with.

[dougoberle]

Painkiller is harder than Hangar 18 IMHO

Agreed. I made it through the Megadeath solos pretty smoothly, but the Painkiller solo is much more difficult in my opinion.

I am learning more from that song than any other song in the RS catelog.
(I am about half way through getting the first solo down, and my arsenal of techniques has grown much more deadly as a result.)

While I may be in the minority, it might be nice to have more challenging songs like this - they certainly help me grow as a guitar player.
Although the standard stock easier songs are a lot of fun to bang out - much more appropriate for a game.

[SeattleSauve]

Agreed. I made it through the Megadeath solos pretty smoothly, but the Painkiller solo is much more difficult in my opinion.

You made it through Hangar 18 Combo smoothly? Does that mean you fully levelled solo 11? If so, congrats!

[dougoberle]

You made it through Hangar 18 Combo smoothly? Does that mean you fully levelled solo 11? If so, congrats!

Don't get me wrong: there are plenty of areas in the instrument where I am quite crappy.

I am a native violin player, but switched to guitar after breaking my thumb. So after the violin and all the Paganini left behind, playing lead guitar has come pretty easily - I am mediocre at best with the rest of the roles like rhythm, fingerpicking, etc.

The Megadeath solos seemed pretty straight forward.
To me, the Painkiller solos, while not as clean in execution, have much more varried and challenging techniques than the Megadeath ones.

They also sound more emotive to me, and require a subtle touch on top of the monsterous technique.

I really love that download pack because I am learning so much from it.