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Post by dakohosu on Oct 20, 2022 13:06:18 GMT -5
Small changes, because big ones are too unlikely: 1. Stage 1: Replace the Rolling Hill with literally anything. I don't like "slow down" obstacles in Stage 1 to begin with, especially not this early in the course. The non-serious competitors should be knocked out before they get to an obstacle that requires slow and careful maneuvering, otherwise they eat up too much screen-time. 2. Stage 1: Bring back the Jumping Spider or Half-Pipe Attack or some other speed-oriented Stage 1 obstacle. Stage 1 feels too short at 7 obstacles, and many of the current obstacles are too slow and require competitors to stop before attempting them (Fish Bone to get the timing down, Silk Slider to grab onto the curtains, etc.). I want to see competitors race through the course, not move slowly through each obstacle. 3. Stage 2: Bring back the Metal Spin. It was one of the best Stage 2 obstacles and added a lot of suspense/tension to a stage that is currently lacking in both. Good option would be for the JS/HPA to replace the Silk Slider as that's the obvious remaining weak point after the Rolling Hill was replaced in your Number 1. Bear in mind this would have to be a replacement as for the JS/HPA to be slotted in towards the mid-point of Stage 1 would result in the entire rest of the stage needing to be pushed back, which isn't viable due to the supposed space restrictions (i.e. the reason the Lumberjack Climb got axed after the Dragon Glider was introduced) and the expense required to do so. Metal Spin may just about get away with the space issue provided as ahzoo mentioned it's located just before the Wall Lift; it doesn't add a significant amount of space itself and I wouldn't imagine it would cost that much to move the walls a few feet backwards. In conjunction with that I'd have also liked to see the Reverse Conveyer replaced by the Balance Tank, but following the Backstream that may or may not be a bit too mean, not to mention dangerous. For the Rolling Hill replacement, see my initial post. Ideally something like the Pole Maze which is a fast-acting eliminator of joke competitors while also preventing the slow and steady approach on the steps as momentum is required to make the pole move. Only issue being that with the Rolling Hill gone, the time limit of 100 seconds is going to be even more lenient now, hence why one of my choices was to reduce said limit significantly.
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Post by ahzoo on Oct 21, 2022 19:57:20 GMT -5
Thank you so much for the equally detailed and brilliant response, and I must admit that you did hit upon some really cool improvements and enhancements which I would just want to take a moment in adressing more fully most of the points and possible refinements which you've raised in it, as it's worth discussing them in further detail: - While it is true that the Rolling Escargot and the Rolling Log do run the risk of repetition, IMO, this repetition can easily be mitigated by simply taking the already-exteant differences in the obstacles concerned and simply exacerbating them to the fullest possible extent: The Rolling Escargot, as an obstacle, traditionally failed people simply because the basic physical action needed to complete the obstacle is physically demanding enough to sap your strength, and the spinning all-but ensures that the moment this happens is the moment in which you fail. The Rolling Log on the other hand, even when it was the Rolling Maruta, hiwever, traditionally failed people because of its unpredictable nature - the log could [and does] just flat-out stop dead in its tracks if you didn't mount your body correctly, the log likes to derail at the slightest possible provocation [so much so that I am willing to put very good money on this little factoid not playing nice with the typhoon actually being the true reason the obstacle was flat-out skipped in 37, Morimoto being there or not - the Second Stage was never buffed to stop him in particular, but rather because when creative rule interpretations are the only thing stopping you from having back-to-back 100% clear rates, something hath gone wrong with the design of it], and lastly, rather unlike the Rolling Escargot, the Rolling Log is designed to spin as fast as possible whenever it wants to, as opposed to the carefully-calibrated dizziness meted out by the former. Therefore, if one were to buff the RL [by way of added Sandan drops, further shrinking the diameter of the outer part of the log so as to make it spin even faster, reducing the amount of scaffolding beneath the track to make it more prone to shaking about as it spins, or ideally some combination of the above], I would like to think that the differences between the two would be clear enough to see, even if such thinking is truly quite a few steps beyond TBS Inui's known playbook lol. - Re: the Drum Hopper Kai -> Bar Glider transition, I actually pictured it as having the bar be at the same level as the last of the drums, albeit about 50ish cm behind it. The transition should therefore be one where it's fairly easy to grab on to the bar, and the majority of the actual difficulty involved in the transition would be in making sure that your lower body doesn't obstruct your drop down from an upright dip to the monkey-bar dangle, nor does it knock the Bar Glider pipe out of the way as you do so. Hopefully such a transition is far more doable, though if its mechanism causes a competitor to fail the last Drum Hop by dint of their needing to be careful with how they swing their body, all the better in my book; the DH badly needs to have claimed a victim in the record books IMO. - The moving Body Prop ledges are a really cool idea, though part of me wonders if another route we could go down to further buff the obstacle is with a layout based on the Cliffhangers of old, where instead of a single straight 5m panel with gaps, you'd've three 2m panels with 25cm gaps between each placed such that the second set of panels is located 30cm higher than the first, and that the third panel set is located 50cm lower relative to the second. Furthermore, because people in the Golden Age have been known to grip onto the top part of the Body Prop as they attempted it, I would also be curious if slightly rounding off the tops of the hand panels [slightly, say, the top 2.5cm is curved outwards in a way that makes trying to grab onto the top impractical, if not outright impossible] would also help to raise the difficulty enough as to clearly make it a harder obstacle than the initial version to the average viewer. - The T-Junction at the end of the VLK is such an amazing idea that I now truly hope that somebody will someday recreate it, even if it's not as part of a formal course, as it's truly the perfect heart-stopper ending, esp. considering that the transition onto the T-ledge would be every bit as difficult as the Devil Balanço transition was pre-Bunpei, to say nothing of the difficulty of a VL jump itself, and as the DB+Pipe Slider era taught us, more spectacular the build-up to the final jump, the better it is for the actual spectacle. - Lastly, the paradoxical nature of the Spider Trap is honestly one of the things that I would love Ninja Shows all around the world to fully embrace. The whole concept of making each successive stage require a completely set of skills that may in some cases end up being partially mutually exclusive should IMO be the exact perfect way in which we truly identify the best of the best of the best, and ensure that the course is in no way biased towards one group of people in any real fashion - As long as you have the skills, the drive. and the athleticism to suceed, you truly should never be locked out of a Kanzen don't because you lack the right body type, or did not train in the correct disciplines prior to your teaching to the hobby. Indeed, if I were in charge of creating a Sasuke version from scratch, I would almost certainly reimagine the whole course to lean into this paradox more fully, though given the fact that we all know what this show and its M.O. is sadly, the least we can do is to try and minimise the damage it causes in terms of results stagnation. The Final Stage and the Body Prop, however, are only a basic start. As for the widespread appeal of such a change, I'd like to think that is possible; you just need to sell people the belief that they too cold be able to do all those things if they are fine spending stuff movers to a year in a gun training up their body and most of the obstacles lol. Gone may be the days when a fisherman could do all of his training on a boat, but that doesn't need that he shouldn't believe that he could very well try once in port. If nothing else, such a marketing stunt cacy be any worse than forcing Joke Competitor Oshi Number 78 onto the starting list. Those people are best served as audience, and maybe an informal trial-run of one or two obstacles during taping that you use to make content for online consumption. The dream, however, won't ever go away.
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Post by dakohosu on Oct 22, 2022 15:44:19 GMT -5
Yep that was my thought about the Escargot vs. Rolling Log. I think it could work provided the Escargot is positioned as a straight up Ninja killer while the Rolling Log maintains its role of being a hindrance for forthcoming obstacles due to the dizziness factor, rather than both being the latter which would result in said repetition. This could work so long as the Escargot is angled steeper on a shorter track (maybe Sasuke 28-style) while the Log gets un-nerfed back to its Sasuke 38 iteration, which really seemed to knock the judgment out of unsuspecting competitors. On the topic of the DH->BG, that would work a lot better. Something I think would be unexpectedly challenging would be to ensure that competitors, when transitioning between the two obstacles, don't thrust forward so far such that they end up forward rolling over the bar into the water. The transition imo needs to be the hardest aspect of said combo, given that they each work different muscles so it needs to be more technical and failable if not a strength drainer. I always thought the Drum Hopper was a wasted potential; the idea is so cool but it was effectively unfailable given the meagre distances between each set of drums (they say it was 1.2 metres but that was probably between centroids, so realistically it was more like 2 feet between edges), nor was it really a strength drainer given that it was the only obstacle to use the triceps rather than grip or back like everything else. Biggest issue is that if you make the obstacle significantly harder like raising each set of drums even higher, then it could potentially be dangerous. A lot of the near-fails seemed like shoulder dislocations waiting to happen, and it's almost impossible to 'miss' without banging your elbows pretty badly in the process. The Body Prop also has a lot of potential to be significantly buffed; I don't know how they thought the Planet Bridge was supposed to be 'harder'. Something like a inverted U-shape could work wonders, so up-across-down. The down portion of the obstacle would be absolute killer towards the end, where you're already fighting to stay in position let alone preventing your body from just collapsing while slowly navigating downwards. From what I remember no one actually grabbed the top of the handholds of the obstacle, rather they'd hold on to the sides of the panels whenever there was a gap. I'm not sure how you'd account for that. Another wacky idea, which I'm not sure if this is too hard or dangerous or not, would be to have the handholds of the Body Prop as a either a really long horizontal rollers, or loads of adjacent vertical rollers, which would encourage careful weight distribution and hand placement. They would obviously have to roll nowhere near as violently as the Rolling Hill, like only if someone makes a really bad or uneven transition or something, but it's always been something on my mind. I honestly feel bad for guys like Yoshiyuki or Yuuji (less so for Yuuji as he's already won twice but still). Both have dedicated their lives to training non-stop, only to be effectively stopped at the final hurdle, which I feel like both are capable of reaching, because they're not skilled speed climbers. Non-climbers have a hard enough time navigating Stage 3 given the increasing gravitation towards technical grip-based movements, rather than upper body endurance which imo have been the case for the best Stage 3s (e.g. 26). It's just another example of grandeur and hype over practicality, which I don't blame Inui for as it's an entertainment show first and foremost, but I'm naturally biased as I obviously have a profound interest in Sasuke well beyond how badass a tournament comes across. I also agree that the recent joke competitor trends have been unacceptable, especially in the last two tournaments. Even as someone who understands the role they play in ratings etc., 37 and before were fine, 38 and 39 were insufferable. 60% or so of the field being celebrities, half of them having their runs artificially drawn out at every single possible opportunity, about 20 adverts, resulting in a 3-hour Stage 1 full of boring samey obstacles and results that I just couldn't wait to be over towards the end. Surely at this point its a law of limiting returns, like wouldn't 20 or 30 big names be enough? Inui forgets that new faces who just about make it on to the show have ended up being the show's biggest mascots (Yuuji spent 5 years trying to get selected, Yusuke got rejected a fair few times as well), instead sacrificing their chances for RAMPAGE Exile who for some reason I reaaally don't like. Not sure why, lol.
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Post by sackeshi on Nov 3, 2022 17:20:56 GMT -5
1. Remove the quadsteps.
2. Replace the silk slider with the Rolling escargot
3. Fishbone replaced with something else its getting old and boring.
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Post by cactustiger on Nov 6, 2022 13:35:47 GMT -5
My standards are so low by this point 1 Dome steps or step slider 2 Replace silk slider with Log grip of something 3 Any new obstacles in stage 2 im desperate
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