Originally Posted by
greekphysics
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I like the dances to be challenging and not too repetitive, but I also like it when:
(A) the dances don't wear out my knees, hips, back, or neck unnecessarily after dancing every day for months, keeping in mind that the dances may come in random order on the dance floor. In 2018, for example, several dances seemed to really wear my knees and a couple involved back bends. In Unlimited, Applause can really wear the hips if dance to it regularly. Then there are a few dances that really shake the head quite a bit. I like to use all of my body parts in different ways in the choreography, but some dance moves tend to stress out certain body parts much more than others. There are dances that challenge me physically, provide a good workout, but which don't tend to create the same sore spots. For example, Fight Club, Blow Your Mind, and Another One Bits the Dust (quartet) involve a lot of rapid and physical knee movements. In contrast, 24K Magic (extreme) seemed like a smoother dance.
(B) I feel prepared to go out on the dance floor. In 2019, I loved that there were 6 extremes, but if I took a week off, I had to spend a few days rehearsing a dozen or so dances before I felt comfortable returning to the dance floor. There is a lot to remember, and certain dances are not as intuitive as others. If you're going to include more hard or extreme dances, I hope you add a Song List Guide to the World Dance Floor, to show a dozen or so songs that are coming up next. This would let me take a few minutes to prepare for a reasonable number of dances, instead of trying to review all 52 dances (knowing that any random dance can show up in a Classic Tournament).
(C) the dances don't leave me completely out of breath after doing them in random order in Classic or Weekly Tournaments. For example, in 2018, I sometimes did Sayonara and the next dance was Footloose, or in 2017 I had to do Dragostea Din Tei (which is very physical once I learned to properly do it with Kinect) and that might have been followed by Daddy or Scream and Shout (extreme). Maybe the dance floor could be programmed to squeeze a less taxing dance after a more vigorous dance in order to prevent this. A good workout is great, but it can get a bit extreme in the worst-case song selections.
(D) the scoring seems reasonable. I don't mind when the challenge has to do with trying to pull off the move. For example, Bang Bang Bang VIP and Swish Swish VIP challenge me physically, and I understand that the reason I didn't score as well on these dances is that the moves are harder to do. In contrast, Something Stupid is very slow and seems like a very easy choreography, yet I hit Megastars in fewer attempts of Bang Bang Bang VIP than I did for Something Stupid (and my score is 500 points higher for Bang Bang Bang VIP). With certain dances, the challenge seems to have more to do with how forgiving or demanding the scoring is than on how challenging the choreography seems to be. (There seem to be too many dances where it seems to be too easy to hit 13,000 with Kinect, yet other dances that seem pretty easy and turn out to be difficult to score on).
If you could add more challenge and less repetition, but also keep these points in mind, that would be great for me. Though either way, I would vote for more hard and challenging dances.
I think the Just Dance team has done a good job of adding more extreme dances, while still trying to meet the needs of many dancers who want to dance recreationally so that they can attempt the dance without needing to rehearse and can score reasonably well on most of the dances with a few reps. It must be challenging to meet the needs of the top dancers and also meet the needs of everyone else. There have been more extremes in 2018 and 2019 than in previous years, which is nice. (There probably are many recreational dancers, novices, and young dancers who want the main version of the most popular dances to be fairly easy, so that they don't get frustrated trying to dance along to their favorite songs.) I wonder if the game could be split into Just Dance and Challenge Mode versions, separating those who want it easier from those who want more challenge...