I don't want to sound impatient, but...is the Hard-Insane issue something peppy is currently considering? I think it's a serious issue that's somewhat undermining the purpose of the system right now. Getting better at the game and increasing pp should be synonymous, but I've found it's infinitely more pp-efficient to rank Hards than to actually play difficult Insanes. I've been trying to ignore pp and do what's best for my skill, but it's frustrating when I get 0-1 pp from spending an hour on a HD FC of an Insane or even a nomod FC of a more difficult Insane, then turn around and get 20 pp from spending 5 minutes on a HD+DT FC of some random Hard.
I think a potential contributing factor is that the skill distribution on the Hard leaderboards is a lot different than any other. Few top players waste their time with Hards, so with those scores conspicuously absent, ranking Hards is trivial for any decent Insane player. Furthermore, people who spend their time 3 or 4-mod SS'ing songs far beneath their level are mostly ranking Easy/Normals, and similarly don't waste time on Hards. So not only are there not many people playing Hards (making it far easier to rank at least #500), the people who do play Hards are mostly players who are actually at that level of play. I suspect that the ratio of "high-skill" plays on Hards (FC's with at least 1 mod) to non-FC's is a lot more skewed than any other difficulty, so when someone throws together a HD+DT FC, the system erroneously thinks they're really good. And even if the Insane distribution is similar, because there are so many more Insane scores, even if I do better than 95% of them, it often won't get me anything due to the hard #500 cap. I know peppy said not to think about it, but honestly, as long as it's there, it's impossible not to think about it. That's like telling an Olympian not to worry about other athletes' scores.
7 of my top plays are random of Hards I did on a whim. As someone who considers himself an Insane player, that's honestly kind of embarrassing. A re-balancing of the system will probably hurt my pp considerably, but I wouldn't care. I just want to know that doing harder things is giving me more pp than doing easier things.
