- Joined
- Jan 25, 2013
^ I think one easy thing we could do is specify "difficult body position on turn" and specify a number for each level. I just fear for the kind of things this would do to steps, and the loopholes some skaters might find lol. Or a time limit for body position in turn, but then I fear it will turn into one of those very obnoxious spiral sequences.
I love the idea of killing "complexity" as a hard requirement for level 4. That one's definitely arbitrary (like all the other numbers in the features, but this one is for me one of the main things that makes footwork look unmusical and cumbersome - and nearly everyone tries a level 4 so nearly everyone tries Complexity), and is one of the things that has kept changing. Still needing 4 features, but allowing level 4 with Variety is what I'd love to see, too. Your set of 8 features is something like what I'd love to see.
We did pick the more difficult things, I guess, but we still did exclude some things and include some others. Like the double threes you mention, those can be included in at least the lower level requirements (it's not rewarded at all I think!). There's just some room for improving the rules, like they added the loops in at some point for instance. I agree the simpler things should at least count for levels 1 and 2.
I would try to word the "creativity" requirement in a way that doesn't let the skaters get away with doing something easy or half-baked and still get equal level credit - which I find happens in spins, but I suppose that's on the tech panel. For the record I didn't say "360 turns on toe picks" in itself is worthy of a level, it's the combination of that with turn that I think could be used in some way to obtain an additional level. I agree it's hard to do with "creativity" without making it into something prescriptivist, though. We can try to say "hybrid turns for this number for each level" and then clarify what a hybrid turn is. Or maybe just say "difficult variation of a turn" to combine this with the body position.
The funny thing about griping over level 4 footwork being so restrictive and meticulous ... the level 4 complexity just gets you 0.6 higher base value than a level 3 sequence without complexity. So a skater can probably do a step sequence the way they want to and sacrifice that 0.6. A level 3 StSq with +3s across the board will score the same as a level 4 StSq with +1s across the board.
Your creativity requirement is super complicated and so subjective for a technical specialist. As karne said, it's making the sequence more complicated to assess among the hordes of other things the TP has to worry about. And as I said, there is nothing stopping a skater from incorporating a "creative" movement into a step sequence. Not everything a skater does has to earn a base value point or be graded as a feature. Some skaters go above and beyond and do movements outside of the rules. It's like saying skaters should get 0.1 bonus for an ina bauer incorporated into their sequence, or 0.3 if it's hydroblading held for x number of seconds... or saying entry transitions should have a bonus if they're harder - 0.5 for a cantilever, 0.2 for a counter, 0.05 for a bracket, etc. It just becomes a mess to assess.