My Audition Next Level Journey.

With the 14th anniversary of Audition coming up, Audition Next Level, the successor of AuditionSEA has come up with a bunch of events to celebrate its birthday. One of them is to share our Audition journey and I thought it will be great to share how I feel about the game. If you didn't know, I wrote my SEA journey when they closed down the SGMY server. You can read it here.

But before I go any further, Happy 14th Birthday to Audition!

The Return to Audition

I believe I created my account right when they were migrating to ANL, but I didn't truly started playing the game until the world was hit by the pandemic. With more free time at home, I've heard lots of friends jumping back into the game. Thanks to nostalgia, I did too.

Did I pass?

 

Getting back into Audition was like meeting an old friend. Since the SGMY server closed down, I thought I had completely given up on the music game, but somehow it came back into my life in unexpected ways. And the return to it felt right, as I don't think anything can truly replace Audition in my life.

I got to play the modes I love again, listen to songs that made my childhood, and most importantly, meet my friends again in the Audition world.

The World is a Tiny Place

I'm not a popular player, but I like to think that I'm part of the community of a few game modes. But I think it's safe to say, I wasn't much how an insider as I thought.

With everyone returning to ANL due to the free time in their hands, it gave me another opportunity to meet players who I have previously not known very well. And an example would be my current ANL couple, ShiroYukki.

You see, I am pretty sure I've met him in AudiSEA, but we just never talked to each other then. I later learned that he has great connections in the BU community (and others), but I guess fate only allowed us to properly get to know each other in ANL.

My Artist of the Month entry, featuring me and Shiro in the two panels on the left.

It made me realise how small the Audition community is. Because unless you have locked yourself and played alone the whole time, you're bound to notice the same old players or at least heard of the more well-known players.

Besides meeting players I should have known, the revival of ANL's popularity also gave me the chance to meet new players and make new friends. Some of them came back after years of inactivity, and some of them are truly new players stepping into this world for the first time.

But I think what I'm trying to say it is thanks for Audition that I managed to meet others who share my interest in this game. For an introverted person like me that isn't chatty in real life, Audition is a platform for me to make friends with people I would have otherwise passed in the street.

Same Same, but Different

Although there's technically no difference in the gameplay experience between ANL and the SGMY server, thing's aren't exactly the same as they were.

First of all, majority of the players in this server are from the Philippines. But besides the occasional language barrier I face during games, I think the SGMY team and moderators do a good job keeping us listening to needs of the players from my area.

There's a bunch more cash-spending events going on in ANL, but they also reward players that play more with free items. My friends and I will often joke that ANL is more of a PPDM-simulator, especially towards the end of a month.

Team SQuishySQuidSQuad participating in the Audilympics BU category.

Flaws and Imperfections

Unfortunately, other less-popular modes in ANL such as Beat Up, Block Beat and Guitar are severely neglected. Not only do these mode receive no new songs every patch, but they didn't even place some of the original songs such as With You, Euro 2005, and Destiny into these modes. Basically, they removed some of the most fun songs from these already sad, sad modes.

The BU songs are disappointingly not challenging, so much that AudiSEA's top BU FAM, IMPERFECTION, doesn't exist in ANL because they thought it isn't worth the time playing in this server. I honestly miss seeing their FAM name in this server.

The Guitar community is almost non-existent, partly because there is no Guitar arena to motivate players to improve themselves. The skill ceiling is so low that I rarely see players play above Level 2 songs, and most of them are just playing to complete stories. Gone are the days where you can see Guitar players experimenting with different leveled songs to figure out the perfect flame out sequence.

Block Beat isn't treated well either. Besides the lack of challenging songs, one thing that pissed me off about BB was it only available to couples in the Audilympics. So by limiting to married couples, ANL is saying that strong but coupleless players don't deserve to compete and show off their skills? And that players can't compete with a teammate that increases their chances of winning but settle with the only choice that is their couple? (I'm lucky that I have a couple that plays BB well T_T)

I'm can only speak for these three modes, but I think other modes such as 1 2 Party and Shooting Star also deserve some attention from the developers.

I'm biased towards the server where I came from, but there's so much room for improvement for ANL I believe ANL players can achieve higher standards, the modes can be improved, and the ANL team can work better in managing events.

Look how horrified we are by this bug.

AudiSEA>ANL>???

Honestly, I don't know what it is that always brings me back to Audition. Is it because of childhood nostalgia? Or is it a curse that Audition cast on me so that I have to play with it forever? I'm not surprised if I'm still playing this game until I'm 80.

What will ANL bring us next in the decade? I don't know. I don't think it takes much for me to keep playing the game. It's just that irreplaceable in my heart for unknown reasons.

 

In this decade-long journey in Audition, I think the biggest impact the I received was the relationships I've made in this game. I made friends that mean the world to me, but at the same time, I couldn't save all my of my relationships.

 

Regardless of who you are to me or who I am to you, I hope my presence had at least left one positive memory for you. I'm not the most smartest in dealing with people and relationships, so forgive me if I ever did anything to make you upset.

 

Here's a shout-out to my SquishySquidSquad pals: Eamon, Joyeux, Kapoooof and Daptomycin. And a thank you to other players that played with me before, you know who you are.

 

Thank you to the ANL team for keeping my childhood game alive. Although it may sound like I'm dissatisfied with the server, it's only because I'm kinda passionate about this game (I don't know if that sounds sad...). But please moderators, if you are reading this, PLEASE TAKE MY CRITICISMS INTO CONSIDERATION.

 

Anyway, may Audition have many more birthdays ahead and never close this server down so I don't have to say goodbye to my ring again. Cheers.