Kiiview FAQ

Q: Why don't you wrist?

A: i find it way more interesting to play the game without a full 1:1 mapping. i need to clarify that iidx was my first rhythm game, i had already long decided that i didnt really care for rhythm games and ive always been a "hard video games" guy. the most i dabbled with rhythm games was like, osu!std back when i was 12 which barely counts, and like 30 hours of etterna in which i only played stream charts (i did it for a rhythm game segment in an iwbtg fangame). when i got into iidx, it was not through the lens of a "rhythm game" but rather a new hard game endeavor i wanted to pick up, and this in particular came from endgame analysis from a nonwrist perspective. i think playing this game, particularly nonwrist, has a unique level of depth that i cannot find in other hard game endeavors. as such, my entertainment and motivations with this game entirely stem from the fundamental idea that i am playing the game without 1:1 mapping.

i also come from playing a lot of games with very bad game design, and truth be told, i think bms at the upper level while nonwrist kind of functionally feels like a game with bad game design LMAO like to me its very very kusoge core. as a result it ends up feeling very at home trying to do shit like playing taka s at stella level. like it feels very very unintended and i love that

Q: So what you're saying is you think wrist is cheating and lame?

A: wrist is definitely not cheating. i dont think playing with wrist is "lame", but i do think playing nonwrist provides a more enriching video game experience, one that i certainly care about experiencing more. if you wrist though, i genuinely do not care, i believe everyone has the freedom to do whatever they want in a video game, and people have very stupid definitions for what they define as cheating. point to me in the rulebook—where does it say you arent allowed to wrist?

Q: Will you ever switch to wrist?

A: i dont think so, i think i will quit the game before i get to the point where im "capped" by nonwrist ability, i will continue trying to push this game and theoretically analyze/metaplan from the lens of being nonwrist, but i fundamentally dont find this game interesting if i am wristing. by the time im even thinking about switching to wrist, im probably already thinking of switching to a new hard game endeavor.

Q: Well you'll have to wrist eventually, you're just gimping yourself in the long run by doing this.

A: we are playing two different games, my friend. we dont have to pretend that by opening the exact same .exe, we are playing the exact same video game. we can treat the iidx/bms you play and the iidx/bms i play as entirely discrete and separate entities. when we do that, you cant say im gimping myself in the long run or shooting myself in the foot, since my metric for difficulty/progression is ENTIRELY based on a game structure that is nonwrist! itd be like telling a DP player that hes shooting himself in the foot by not using footpedals for scratches, because you are a footpedal scratcher who can hit muri scratches with ease. like, you are functionally going through a different video game experience with its own metrics of progression, and what you say does not apply to the other player.

Q: Trust me man, i used to be nonwrist, and it was awful.

A: i think the fact that i am writing this FAQ shows that i care about playing the game this way to a far greater degree than you did. if you switched to wrist, THATS OK! but this is exactly the game i signed up for

Q: What about ginky? It's still pinky scratching!

A: ginky is logically equivalent to wristing, it is a 1:1 mapping where every single input can be pressed by a unique digit of the hand, and as such i am not interested in it.

Q: Why do you switch profiles to play Taka S?

A: this question in particular astonishes me the fact that i get asked this since i feel like it should be a very very intuitive concept to grasp, the reason i use separate profiles is so i can track Taka S progression without having white noise from my main profile's scores. if i decide i want to go and play some st0s on Taka S, i dont want to see a folder filled with a fuckton of green or white lamps from my main profile, since that is not reflective of my progress in the playstyle. instead, i want to see a folder that is more empty, i want to see that i just achieved one of my first few white lamps in the folder on taka s, etc.

i also started using the taka s profile as the separation for my series The Journey to Insane Zenshiro, since it is more convenient for me to have an entirely empty insane table cleared of all other lamps for the series. it also looks better seeing the lamps slowly fill up more and more as the series progresses.

Q: Why do you even play Taka S so much?

A: the thing about taka s is that the logical conclusion of nonwrist play is that Taka S will have to be roughly as good as your main playstyle. the reason for this is that taka s is treated as the backup to use when scratches appear. however, bms is not designed to reduce density when scratches appear; scratches are treated as extra flavor on top of the density you are already doing. what this means is that, as a nonwrist player, you should be able to seamlessly switch to taka s and maintain the same level of density that you had already been maintaining.

now obviously, this is hard as fuck! this is actually the turning point that leads to a lot of people giving up on this playstyle, when scratches get so fucked that you actually have to REALLY play taka s with lots of thumbsliding. this kind of leads to two camps of nonwrist play: either you have people who aim to do VERY VERY QUICK scratch transitions (watch thom play insane kaiden, youll see he almost never does taka s anywhere, he tries to make the scratch transitions as quickly as physically possible), or you have people who try to ensure that their taka s is strong enough to fully switch gears (really good examples of this are Dr. Yuu, aka iidxlovers, or KUMARYO). i am of the latter camp, since it is very clear that this is the most balanced road to perfection when playing nonwrist without running into hurdles that force you to rely entirely on out earthpowering every single scratch that you see.

it is VERY difficult to maintain this, since you have to constantly play catchup with your backup playstyle, but...its fun! it really is satisfying watching yourself be able to catch up, and roughly match your performance while playing at about your peak and scratches appear.

Q: Why do you ONLY play on random? Like, you refuse to play nonran or r-ran or anything! You don't even use RANDOM TRAINER!

A: part of my philosophy from this comes particularly from my background in my previous hard game endeavors. i played a lot of bullet hell based stuff, where the shit you dodge is all random. to me, the idea of playing by choosing a specific random kind of feels exactly like choosing your own rng seed. to me, i like pretending that this game is actually fully random and that i have to play whatever absolute bullshit it throws at me!

i will say, i do only kind of apply this to """canon""" BMS, so like, insane table and overjoy and stellaverse. why? honestly its kind of arbitrary, i just hold these tables at a much higher degree of importance than other tables and kind of treat them as their own "regulated" entity, while playing on some shit like joverjoy is like, the absolute wild west.

Q: What the fuck is "kiiview gauge"?

A: im sorry, LOL. i dont think i came up with this name, its just referring to the way i approach playing. it stems from a friend of mine, who doesnt allow themselves to play past flatline in iidx since they believe that it isnt a good metric of skill to let yourself achieve a clear when you clearly arent good enough to maintain performance on a chart. i agree with this, but i adopted this same mentality only because i think it has more aura LMAO, i think if you die you should die. that would be so cool.

as it applies to bms, "kiiview gauge" is basically just...i have GAS on. when my hard gauge dies and im on easy gauge, suddenly the flatline rule applies. if i see that i hit 2%, i instantly quit out. to me, the most ideal world would be as follows: easy gauge - a survival gauge starting at 100, the hp drop is the same and you have no hp parameter to meet. groove gauge - the current implementation of easy gauge hard gauge - the same

ultimately "kiiview gauge" is just my loose way of implementing what my ideal vision of easy gauge would be. whenever i get to the end of a song without clearing, i refer to it as a "kiiview clear", since it itself is a new milestone for me when i dont allow flatlining. and thus, when i flatline in the middle of a chart, we say i failed "kiiview gauge".

Q: Why did you go for Nageki kaiden? It wouldve been easier if you played (x) Kaiden!

A: i think by asking this it kind of shows that we fundamentally view kaiden differently. to me, i do not tie the dan courses arbitrarily to what they are named as. if you change out the songs in a course, functionally that is an entirely different course. sure, you might be able to give them the exact same name, and sure you might be able to get the exact same badge, but that doesnt change the fact that you literally played something different

this is also why i dont understand people who very specifically care about dan "ranks" rather than dan "courses". people who get stuck on a course and are looking forward to the next version in hopes that its an easier course that they can do instead. like, i dunno, i dont and never will care about the rank. dan courses are literally just very long charts, and you get a fancy badge for beating them. i feel like you could understand the logic by me telling you to go and beat IIDX GOLD CS kaiden and say you beat kaiden. you can arbitrarily state that "its different because its way easier", but this can never be grounded in logic and only on subjective views on when it is "too far".

all this to say that i really do not care about the rank, chuuden could be 10.2 dan or kaiden-, to me what i care about is experiencing a collection of 4 charts that have a really cool progression and a satisfying climax. to me, the dan courses are kind of like a "story mode", and i just followed the story from the beginning of what i had experienced. to me, nageki kaiden is the canon kaiden, and as such it is the only "course" named "皆伝" that i truly care about.

this is also why i like the bms courses so much, the insane courses havent updated since 2018 so you can kind of treat them as a universal canon, a universal story mode that everyone experiences. i dont care what "Insane 9th Dan" means, i just really find it cool that i have to beat the level that ends with CHMR. this is also why ive stopped caring about the new stella courses lol, since the v3 courses are far more infamous and i think universally experienced.

Q: Why don't you play for accuracy?

A: honestly i think this just stems from the fact that i didnt come into this as a rhythm game, i came into this as a hard game, and my background is entirely based on "clear based" games. the goal is to pass or fail. i am very much so not used to scoring elements. i dont really have as much care for hyperoptimization of an existing gameflow and refining the same gameplay, i think i care more about pushing the bounds into new gameflows and trying to enter new realms of gameplay. i do try to not play in a scummy way though lol

Q: Why do you always care about such silly matters? Just play more, get good at the game!

A: if your only way of having fun in the game is by getting as good as possible as fast as possible, do you really enjoy the game or do you enjoy the feeling of getting better? i dont care about pushing bounds because i want to see myself ascend the ranks. when i see shit like, sp24 peace breaker, im like, "dude that has so much fucking rizz and aura what the fuck? i want to be able to play that!" i play the game so i can get to the point where i can play shit like that, and thats the actual thing that always keeps me going. this has been a universal constant for me in all endeavors in any game ive pursued. its never about caring about numbers, its never about caring about progression, its never leaderboards, its never ranks, its never skill growth. its so i can experience absolute cinema. cinema that is unique to this game.

Q: You talk a LOT dude

A: if it means anything you can always ignore my ramblings tbh i just have a fuckton of shit to say about any topic. im kind of like ryukishi in that id rather beam all the information from my brain into your brain than try to focus on abstracting and summarizing points, since i think thats lossy

Q: Litone5? Dude, get OFF that shit, its so ugly

A: honestly i understand, i just wanted a iidx skin and it was the easiest available without any setup so i just kinda went with it. sure its clunky but honestly i kind of like something thats clunkier more than something thats more minimalistic i guess?

Q: wait WTF IS UR PLAYSKIN bro your keybeams are so bad WHAT

A: honestly you really dont notice them when youre used to them, my settings are literally just the raw iidx defaults lmao, i genuinely do not notice my own keybeams. its also better because i use such a low WN