I played everything on Full! (StepManiaX)
I played everything at least once on Full! That took a while. Shout-out to the developers for 2.0x Music Rate to help me stay engaged playing the hundreds of lower difficulty Full charts. I'm not really a huge fan of playing them because they aren't particularly fun for getting intense exercise, and they count for less points than the uppers. But the 2.0x Music Rate settings makes them really fun to play because of how insane they are when sped-up. 😂
The way that StepManiaX's All Time Rankings are currently structured (as of the time of this writing, 11/06/2025), incentivizes players to play absolutely everything at least once.
I think this is good on one hand, because it motivates new players to try everything at least once to figure out what concepts they're strong at, and what concepts they're weak at. It's also really good for operators, because it incentivizes players to burn through credits to achieve an external goal that is not that hard to achieve other than spending all the money.
On the other hand, it does leave a lot to be desired from competitive players who aren't completionists. Pump it Up's "Pumbility" rating system is really nice for competitive players who aren't completionists, because it gives you a rating assessment based on your top 50 scores, prioritized by difficulty, then score for said difficulty.
SMX's current rating system already takes difficulty into account when calculating how many points a score is worth, but the problem is because SMX has an ever expanding library of content, the rankings are not very accurate at generalizing players' skill ceilings because not much upper-end content is being added compared to the lower end content.
I know for a fact that I would not be as high as I am if there was a separate leaderboard based only on players' top 50 Full scores (prioritized by highest difficulty)-- there are a lot of impressive Full difficulty players who have outstanding records on the individual song leaderboards on the upper end of Full content. There are also many players who cannot commit the time (for various reasons) to the SMX All Time Rankings grind the way that me and many other SMX diehards do, but are talented in their own right.
My own personal experience is that I don't get as much of an intense cardiovascular workout when I play lower-end content, so if I start to grind lower-end content too much my physical performance falls off. I like to push myself because the rush from the physical exercise is what makes me come back, and score-chasing on difficult content is how I keep myself mentally engaged.
Recently I've been making a lot of my own Full difficulty edits that are challenging physically and give me the meat that I've been looking to chew on. I feel like I'm getting a lot better at writing charts, so keep your eyes peeled for more in the future!
Here are some of my recent upper-end Full difficulty edits:
https://edits.stepmaniax.com/4Z5-377
https://edits.stepmaniax.com/1VQ-T39
