Easiest has to be Go With The Flow Combo. Mastered and played Master Performance for 247k points the first day I got the game.
Hardest is prolly Hanger 18 or Painkiller. Can't put either one over the other in difficulty as they're both beyond my ability atm in certain sections. Haven't unlocked SSB yet, and now hat i'm getting freezes again i may never. <_<
Can't (and won't) disagree with anything any of you have pointed out. But, I will throw out a couple of the caveats that I included in my blog post (but not my OP): 1) I took one statistics class in college and hated it, and 2) I only ranked songs that I've actually played (my formula sort of required that. . . ). As I said in my blog, I wouldn't submit my analysis for a PhD dissertation, but I'm pretty comfortable with it as a rough gauge of relative song difficulty.
I just mastered I Want Some More in a relatively short amount of time and thought it might replace Go with the Flow as easiest of the easy. But, using my super secret patented formula, it didn't. Go with the Flow seems to be almost universally accepted as the easiest of the bunch. By a wide margin.
You sound like you have the opposite strengths from what I have; I played upright bass and bari sax for most of my life and I'm pretty comfortable with my right hand technique and my ability to carry a rhythm section, but I have always been frustrated by lead guitar playing because of my lack of dexterity and accuracy with my left hand when moving from string to string. TIme to do some woodsheddin'.Originally Posted by dougoberle
That being said, Painkiller is now on the top of my summer To Do list.
I geeked out today and was determined to try to find a way to figure out difficulty ratings for these arrangements.
I dived into snooze fest topics as classical test theory and item response theory. Leading me down a path and eventually to the concept of item difficulty, which is basically a formula to determine the difficulty of a single question on a test based upon a sample population.
Its an easy formula. Simply average score of population divided by (max score - min score). Trouble is you need to know the highest possible score and lowest possible score. Unless I have missed it, Ubisoft is not divulging their black art of how they figure out scores/bonuses. So I am messing with this and see what kind of numbers I get with RS scores.
In order to determine a max score for purpose of the equation, I am either grabbing the highest posted score for the arrangement OR if its not greater than 115k (NMM) or 215K (MM) I am using 115k or 215k. For lowest score I am grabbing the lowest posted score for the arrangement. I know zero is technically the lowest, but its not very realistic, but I am going to run the numbers using zero and compare against what I am using now and potentially other low numbers.
Not knowing the true highest score for any particular arrangment or in some cases not having enough data still leads to some abberations but I think the results are very interesting so far. In particular in the NMM side where we have way more data points.
Top NMM arrangements by difficulty based upon the set up I described above.
Brian Adam McCune Ricochet - Combo
Brian Adam McCune Ricochet - Single Note
Blues Brothers Soul Man - Combo
Judas Priest Painkiller - Combo
Lynyrd Skynyrd Sweet Home Alabama - Single Note
Seth Chapla The Star Spangled Banner - Combo
The Yellow Moon Band Chimney - Single Note
Chris Lee Boss - Single Note 2
Megadeth Hangar 18 - Combo
The Rolling Stones Play with Fire - Single Note
Megadeth Symphony of Destruction - Combo
Later I am going to tweak the lowest and highest score factors and see how that changes things around.
You can see all the numbers on the Stats page. I removed the standard deviation stuff, it just wasn't helping because we don't have enough meaningful data for many arrangements.
FYI - I'm cross posting to the Rocksmith Forum to see if it generates any new ideas over there.
Why is "I can't hear you" in this list?Hard: (keep in mind that this ranking is from easy to hard, so the hardest song is at the bottom)
Play with Fire - combo
In Bloom - combo
Higher Ground - combo2
Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Play with Fire - single note
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - combo
I Can't Hear You
It only has a single note version, is played with the exact same hand position the entire song, and has only two varied parts (the main riff and the chorus). I found this one of the easiest songs in the game by far, and it was the first song I ever mastered (and got the master mode 200k achievement with)
*edit*
I also believe difficulty could be better assessed by using varying factors-- like:
Hand position (how often one needs to change it)
Leveling perfection required (sunshine of your love, anyone?)
Riff Variation (how many sections do you have to learn? is it the same riff most of the song ((go with the flow))? )
those 3 seem solid concepts that will generate a common opinion
another i could see would be "how low/high you have to go on the guitar" (is the highest fret the 12th fret, or the 22nd?), but reflecting on it makes me think some people may be comfortable that low on their fretboard and it may be my own personal difficulty
Last edited by xxalucard; 05-04-2012 at 01:02 AM.
So, it somewhat depends on what you mean by hardest. My definition is 'hardest to master'. Meaning if a song has one section that is really really difficult, but the rest of the song is trivial I would call that harder than a song that has a lot of difficult sections, but none as difficult as the first song's difficult section (if that makes sense).
Meaning... You can't really use score to tell which is the hardest song, though it can give you a basic idea. I can tell you that Play with Fire is a much easier song than Symphony of Destruction Combo for instance. Hangar 18 combo is way more difficult than Boss. Painkiller Combo is clearly more difficult than the blues brothers song.
In order to really tell which is the hardest you have to have someone capable of masterring one, yet not capable of masterring the other, on the score tracker site my guess is nobody has masterred the hardest arrangements listed above (Hangar 18 Combo, Painkiller Combo, Ricochet Single Note, and SSB)... So just because you have a higher score on Painkiller than SSB doesn't mean it's an easier song to master.
Isn't this entire thing completely subjective, though? I'd guess each of us have strengths and weaknesses that mean we have trouble with different things; what one person considers trivial may be difficult for someone else of about the same ability, and may have trouble with something the latter finds easy.
Really not one person said Carol of the Bells-Single Note? The 2nd solo in that song makes it almost impossible to get into master mode. I only got it at 80% and a score of 92.6k and I have worked my **** of to get that score.
I wouldn't say it's completely subjective. You name me one person that can master hangar 18 that can't master go with the flow and then I'll say it's completely subjective
Because, using the formula that I devised, that's where it ranked. You can argue that the formula is bogus, but I pretty much said that myself. It was purely a means of trying to put an objective spin on "difficulty." The fact that this song is where it is on my list pretty much addresses the fact that we all have our own individual strengths and weaknesses. Apparently lots of people managed to master this song pretty easily. I've played it a BUNCH of times and I just can't get it leveled up. (I hate the song, to be honest - it's sort of boring and it's very long - so that may also play a role in my inability to master it.)
Actually, with few exceptions, it appears to me that this ranking has met with general agreement. But, I hasten to add that - as I clearly stated in the blog where I originally developed this whole thing - this is based solely on MY experience and my scores. No pretending that my personal experience or data constitute a statistically valid sample!
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