Difficulty of ANW10 Obstacles

[DeAndre]

What do y'all think. Honestly I feel like the regionals were nerfed way too hard - only Miami got a buff in City Finals, and Philadelphia remained untouched, but every other course was nerfed imo. Dallas replaced the insanely difficult Tuning Forks with the easy Broken Bridge; LA's would-be most difficult obstacle, Doorknob Drop, got nerfed to the point of being only a 3rd obstacle; Indy got the Fly Wheels over Cannonball Drop, and the Ring Jump got killed in Minny.

Honestly I feel the city finals courses are way too easy as of right now. In ANW9 every finals course would have at least 6 upper body obstacles; with the exclusion of the Steps (1), Track (2), Balance (3/4) or Warped Wall (6). In ANW10, the second obstacle has grown more intensive on the upper body, but not to the point of being a strength drainer, so now we have maybe 5 upper body obstacles, but the 3s got massively nerfed (Sky Hooks to FSG, Ring Jump to short Sky Hooks), plus three of the 5s got nerfed as well (Crank It Up got nerfed, believe it or not, what makes it difficult is as a strength drainer, the cranks make up a bigger portion than the laches; Battering Ram's most difficult components are not sliding the cylinder but making the jumps, the distance DID NOT CHANGE from qualies to finals; Doorknob Drop for obvious reasons.). What do yall think.

[matt723894]

Question. Do you want people on the back half in city finals? If not, I understand why you would be upset over this. However, I and many other people would prefer people making it to the new obstacles in city finals instead of half of all falls being in the front half. There is very little benefit to having a ton of fails on the first 5 obstacles in city finals. Like is that what's entertaining to you?

[Eclipse]

From my point of view, the City Qualifiers and Finals are less about clears and more about getting a distribution of skill to gauge who should move forward. You want the the obstacles to be approximately progressively harder, so it makes sense to save the harder, Stage 3 styled upper body for the back half. If the front half is too hard, all of the fails fall closer together, and statistically you run the risk of the results not accurately gauging performance as you'll have many fails around the same point and time.

[anime boy]

I get why people don't like nerfs, but sometimes they're necessary for the advancement of the ninjas. It's not fun for anyone when there's only 1 clear and when half the field doesn't get to the Wall. If we don't use nerfs when necessary we result in Venice 2015. Some nerfs are arbitrary I agree, but it's mostly for the benefit of the ninjas.

[DeAndre]

I don't like too many people failing the front half in City Finals, like what happened in Philly, but the thing that's special about having 1-4 clears is that the course seems beatable, but not a complete blow-over (eg: Minneapolis and LA this year, Dallas imo was only not a pushover because of the Nail Clipper).

But I don't want to see the cutoff at 9th again, that's not good as a distribution of skill, as Sierra said, because in a situation where all you have to do is take an infinite rest after 8, you'll be guaranteed to clear 9 as long as you don't get unlucky and draw Cane Lane or Stair Hopper - every other 9 this year was doable given you had enough left in the tank - you can rest for as long as necessary in CF.

That's also not good, removing the element of strategy. After the Wall, you then have a choice. Go fast to 8 securing Vegas OR go slow, but have the chance of clearing the 8. Here's the thing; when 9th is the cutoff there is no longer the risk because most of the time in such cases, in the first place there are only 16 competitors getting to the 9th. Going slow after the 8th does nothing anymore to harm your chances of Vegas, you only have to worry about clearing the 9th if you were in eg: Grant McCartney 10LA or Michael Stanger 7KC, neither of which obstacles were especially technical or slippery, but rather more of a case of how much strength you had left.

But also, with the removal of the Invisible Ladder/Elevator Climb, both of which are great obstacles - you now have the Spider Trap which only 1(LA) + 1(Indy) + 1(Phl) = 3 people were eliminated on, there is now no longer a variety of results going to Vegas. 'He got to the ninth obstacle back in LA people' like that means nothing at that point; comparing getting to the ninth obstacle in ANW8PHL to ANW10LA is like comparing apples to oranges, it just ain't work.

As a result, having such high cutoff points pisses me off. IDK