Board 8 > Board 8 Ranks Trails/Kiseki Evolution Music

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello. Some of you may have heard of the Trails/Kiseki series of games. Some of you may have heard its music. Some of you may even enjoy its music! And some of you may know about the dark secret of Trails, a hidden, forbidden truth known only to a "privileged" few.

The secret of the Evolution ports of games... and their rearranged soundtracks.

The Evo soundtracks are controversial. To some, they (particularly Sky) represent the beginning of a fall from grace of Falcom music in general. To others, they are unjustly maligned, perfectly-acceptable reimaginings of the original beloved songs.

Fortunately, we will soon solve this dispute once and for all!

I present you to "Board 8 Ranks Trails Evolution"


The premise is simple: sign up and rate the original and evo variants of Trails songs. We'll look at the scores in the end and do some stats magic (=mean()) to draw conclusions (original wins).

My current plan for how it will run is that people can either sign up to do one of more full soundtrack rankings, or they can sign up to be assigned a few random songs. I'd want the latter method to have enough participants so that I can give everybody an equal fraction of the total number of songs (250-300) and have this amount be manageable for everybody who'd want to do it. Otherwise, I can give some people like 10 songs to do each and split the rest evenly between people willing to take bigger slices. Optimally, this should be set up so that individual tastes don't dominate the ratings (which may include eliminating the full-soundtrack option depending on how this shakes out). Please give me any suggestions that you have in regards to how to dole out songs.

For now, if you are interested, please post in this topic how many songs you'd be willing to rate. Say whether you'd like a small amount (~10), a moderate amount (up to 30), a full soundtrack (50-80 songs, may not be all from one soundtrack), or everything you've got daddy. Keep in mind that you have to rank every song twice, once for each version.

WIP Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13GiDj_8zg7lkg2Mn4hmR4ipNktbJlJ3kZr1nu2D7jGs/edit?usp=sharing
I'll eliminate some songs, like short versions of the OPs. Feel free to offer other cuts (like whether I should keep White Madrigal songs, and which versions of Amber Amour should be left in).


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I think I could do like 20ish
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its alright I guess
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Steiner posted...

its alright I guess

Interesting. How would you rate non-evo?

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Yeah lemme get seventeen falcom specials to go

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are we including zanmai

because if so this is #1 hands down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKuqzR-iMas

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Snrkiko posted...

are we including zanmai

because if so this is #1 hands down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKuqzR-iMas

You are correct but we are not doing Zanmai, Super Arrange, Vocal, We Love Sora no Kiseki or midi arrangement. I could be persuaded to include Sophisticated Slam, Jam over the Barrier and Seize the Hoop, however...

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Tag. Give me an amount of songs.

How quickly do you want these rankings to happen? (The answer to this will an inform how many songs I think it would be reasonable to try and take on)

Also do you want writeups? I could reasonably do 2-5 sentence writeups for at least some of the songs that I rank.
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Also if interest is high enough I think it would be good to have multiple rankings for each song, though I'm not sure whether or not that's likely to be the case.

(Or alternatively maybe this is feasible if the project goes on long enough such that a few people are able to work through significant chunks of the song pool)
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yeah forgot to mention. You'll probably have at least a month to rate songs. After three or so weeks I'll probably start bothering people for rankings, and enough time has passed that people are getting angsty I'll give away forgotten songs

Writeups are nice if you want to do them

I'm thinking that after everything is done, I'll present results in batches


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NFUN posted...

You'll probably have at least a month to rate songs

Ok uh...I will take a lot.

The way I'd prefer to do this is to take ~50 to start and then raise the number as things develop if I'm feeling up to it. (This is likely...50 is a pretty conservative guess I think)

If you'd rather have that all figured out ahead of time then I'll request more now, though that does run some small risk of screwing things up if my motivation tanks as I start getting deep into the rankings.
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Oh if we have a month Ill be willing to take significantly more
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Ehhh sure whatever give me a small amount (I still have another ranking topic I'm working on too )

also nothing too spoilery, I've only just reached the 3rd chapter of Trails SC

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I could certainly do the small amount. I can probably handle more. Really depends on my attention span.

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FL81 posted...

also nothing too spoilery, I've only just reached the 3rd chapter of Trails SC

Oh noes! Music spoilerz!!

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I'll bite and take a small amount (~15) for right now and see if I want more later.

100% blind to everything Trails/Kiseki related outside of maybe four or five tracks so this should be a fun, pure, experience.

Yay an excuse to check out more Trails music, I should be good with 30 to start

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I'll take 30.

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Bump.

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I'll do all of them let's go.

Rating them all on a scale where ten is strepitiso fight and the great works of Singa.

I'll take just a small amount ~ 10. If I take any more, it will delay my rankings topic.

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@banshiryuu @Toxtricity @dowolf

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Bump?
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Bump.

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Whoops.

Anywho I'd be willing to do all of them, since we'd have a month. Would help me get around to calibrating a number-based system anyways >_>
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alright fuck it gimme a whole soundtrack, i don't care which one but if you want me to do FC i'll do two because i already have all of base FC rated comfortably LOL

OKAY GIVE ME A WHOLE SOUNDTRACK TOO preferably one with lots of Wataru Ishibashi on it
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Any objections to me killing the White Madrigal songs?

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I would like a moderate amount please.

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NFUN posted...

Any objections to me killing the White Madrigal songs?

No objections from me, kupo.
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do you know what the white madrigal songs are?

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azuarc posted...

I could certainly do the small amount. I can probably handle more. Really depends on my attention span.

Just give me however much you think is reasonable. It's not like I'm working right now. I generally like the Ao Evo tracks, but I don't have much exposure to the other games' versions.

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NFUN posted...

do you know what the white madrigal songs are?

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I can do like 50 or so

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greengravy294 posted...

I can do like 50 or so

Will you actually do this and take it seriously?

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Bumpo

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Bump.
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I need a few more volunteers and then we'll have enough to rate every song twice

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I don't really want to rate 200 songs myself. No other takers?

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Leanansidhe posted...

I'll take as many extra songs as we need to start.

That's a lot of songs. I appreciate your enthusiasm though.

You know what? We'll start tomorrow, and if people finish their set and are willing to do more, we'll farm them out then

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You can increase me from 50 to 100 with a reasonable level of safety.
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How many do you have me for?

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*checks spreadsheet*

i mean if you want me to give you a number instead of infinite just put me down for 50 for now i guess.
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azuarc posted...

How many do you have me for?

25 ("something reasonable")

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I just assigned the songs for the slots we have now and I got some that I am excited to rank. I'll send them out tomorrow.

Last chance to sign up!

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I want to try to set a couple of requests on the basis of scoring:

1. Please rate on a scale of 0-10, and try to center your ratings so that a score of 5 represents a song you are neutral on. A score greater than 5 is a song you like more than dislike, or think does more things right than it does wrong, or something along those lines (not a song that is better than some ephemeral 'average'). This is recommended

2. Please try to use the full range of scores available to you if it's applicable. Some people (like me) tend to rate high on average. I'd usually give a song that is ok to listen to but is completely unnoteworthy and doesn't stand out up to a 7. In this system, it would be more like a 5.5. This is recommended

3. Please try to have a flat scoring curve. You should like a song that gets a 3 as much more than a song that gets a 2 as you do a song that gets a 10 compared to a 9. This is highly recommended

I know these rules are annoying to work with, and perhaps contradictory (which is I specified that the third rule is the most important) but they necessary to help make scores comparable between different users to get a consensus rating of the games' soundtracks (which is in principle the purpose of this project). Most of you aren't rating too many songs and you have a month to do this, so I'm sure you'll be able to try to follow this guidelines.

Feel free to include in your score report your ratings of the songs according to your preferred system and I'll include them at the end. Writeups are also, of course, more than welcome.

I'll be sending out songs now (over Discord if applicable; let me know if you'd prefer it over this site's PMs). My final request is to refrain from sharing what songs you received with other people, or the scores you gave. I want these rankings to be a surprise, and I'm going to present the results like a normal user ranking topic. Return the rankings in the same file I sent you, or a new spreadsheet or Google sheet. If you can't access the sheet, of course let me know.

Please message me "Olivier is the hunter of love and he has captured my heart" or some message stating you have read the rules before rating any songs. I won't count them if I don't get some kind of confirmation that you know what I want for the scoring system

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Full transparency: I assigned songs completely randomly, except I didn't give FL anything past halfway-through SC and I didn't give myself any Ao songs

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Wow, my laptop posts enormous screenshot snips.

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