Half asleep it came to me… Responsive scale.
10= does not sleep/ knotted axle
0= unresponsive
-1= super wide gap/no response system
Deep state would be a 3?
Loop 720 maybe 7?
Just as a easy example for one easy to understand numbers
Then there’s spin time.
Loop 720”s have a bearing which will out spin a fixed axle. Another easy number to figure out a 0-10 scale.
How about 0= knot - 10= Draupnir or Inception type super bimetal whatever is tops? I don’t even know.
The concept isn’t geared towards us forum junkies, I know. But how much help could this be to beginners looking to get started and where to go from there.
I think this idea is super cool. I think alot of people getting hung up on it being an exact “science” rather then a slightly subjective scale. Could be a good way creator to show there vision of what they were going for with the yoyo. We all know generally you can look at a yoyo and see shape weight and size and compare to something similar you might have, it’s just a way of putting a value to it. I see it like example
Speed. 7
Spin time. 8
Stability. 8
Float. 3
Ease of play 4
Something like this would be an advanced level competition throw. As apposed to something slow and floaty
I have developed a system based on recent popular trends in yoyos and their terminology.
Floats - a pass/fail test to say if a yoyo floats in a body of water of sufficient size Speed - Velocity in m/s, of the yoyo after 5 seconds of rolling from a stop on a 10 degree incline Cap - Capacitance measured in μF Dishwasher Safe - This is probably important to know for the upcoming 2023 yoyo models
Yoyos are way more complicated then how they play in my experience. My favorite yoyos may be someones most hated even if they like yoyos that play similar to my favorites. It is very difficult to classify (especially numerically) how yoyos play, because its too subjective. There’s been multiple times i have bought yoyos that seemed like they would fit my preference based on other words and i simply disagreed. Of course that doesn’t mean i don’t enjoy the yoyo, all yoyos are different and that is why i enjoy owning many different yoyos.Though I feel like were at a point where almost every yoyo being released is great, and if we get to the point where we are so entrenched in yoyoing that we need very specific types of yoyos to fit our style or tricks, then we would likely of tried enough yoyos to know our prefrences well enough to not even need a number system.
Theres also a mental aspect to this, i feel if we have a system to classify our yoyos were going to forum a bias towards how it plays that could only be in our heads. Havin an authority on how a yoyo plays (the manufacturer in your case) in a way de-validates the aspect of opinion in yoyo play and creates an objective rating to something that is subjective.
I’d of course love to see other opinions though, i might be missing an entire aspect to it.
It doesn’t have to be a number based system. You could use charts or other visual aids.
I’d love to get @DocPop and @yyfben2.deactivated opinions?
Anyone else?
I’d love to help with ideas, but I’ve never really had any good ideas for contests or judging. That’s a whole area of yo-yoing that I try not to think about. There are probably folks who are really into contests that might have some worthwhile thoughts.
This has nothing to do with contests or competitions. It’s about a rating system for each yo-yo so that you can understand how it feels and plays. Basically specs for performance and feel.
Gosh I’m really sorry, I’m really spacey today and thought this was about something else. Sorry again for typing without understanding. I’ll try to read this thread when I feel better and chime in if I have any thoughts.
Yoyo shapes defined by the big four letters are a largely outdated concept imo. Ask people what classifies as an H or an O and you’re going to get a lot of conflicting answers. The line between V and W also gets very blurry. I think yoyos have evolved to the point where outside of very extreme examples of the traditional four shapes, most yoyos can’t really be labeled as a certain shape in an objective way.
When even shape labels are subjective, I think that just further pushes the point that trying to quantify and label play feel as a concrete metric is a fruitless endeavor.
For someone as familiar with so many yo-yos it won’t make a difference. But the idea is to provide more information about the yo-yo to the potential buyers that aren’t as familiar as you. When someone goes looking for their second (or 100th) yo-yo where do they look? Some come here. Great! Some can’t and or don’t know anyone for guidance. This just provides extra information for comparison.
This is just an idea
Couldn’t we get all the information by just looking at a 3D model of the yoyo (the CAD thing that yoyodesigners use)? So we look at the 3D model and then we do some maths on it to get all the numbers we want.
So for example the response in a loop yoyo depends on the amount of starburst teeth and how far away the left and right starbursts are from each other (idk I’m no yoyo expert lol, and I’m ignoring the bearing as well, it’s just a simple example). We then could take the amount of starburst teeth and divide it by the distance that the left and right starbursts have from each other.
Amount of teeth divided by distance. If we have more teeth the quotient will be bigger and if we have less distance the quotient will be bigger too which makes sense because if you have more teeth the yoyos response will be more aggressive and if you reduce the gap width the yoyos responsive will be more aggresive too.
And for every value like “float” or “horizontal ability” we could develop math formulas to calculate a number that represents said value.
There are already solutions in other communities how to objectify subjective impressions in order to make them comparable and usable for research and purchase decisions. For example, the whisky community has created the whiskybase to exchange tastingnotes. Whiskies can be rated in a point system in three main categories from 1-100, an overall rating and even free impressions in a text can be given. From all the ratings received, an average value is then calculated for each bottling (= how “good” is the whisky). At the same time, however, all individual impressions remain. Of course, the system is not perfect and prone to trolls and fanboys, but in my opinion goes in a somewhat useful direction.
At the end we also could accept that discussing about how a certain yoyo plays (or a whisky tastes!) might be part of the hobby.
Btw: The longer I think, I realize that whisky and Yoyos have quite a lot in common
Definitely a neat concept, a YoYo YouTuber used to use a fixed system for his reviews. This was nice enough because although it might not fit what I think, you can compare other yoyos to that person’s baseline.
Having played with a lot of throws, having had a hand in designing lots of throws and discussing it with various people I am always surprised on how much we all feel differently about similar concepts.
If you look at a lot of popular Japanese throws they lean towards 67+ grams as an average. For me this is too heavy but others the norm.
I know nothing about disc golf, but it seems like it would be possible to design a test rig/environment that allows quantifiable comparisons in how they fly after identical throws in identical conditions.
For yoyos, spin time based on identical (mechanized) throws, force required to tilt, tolerance to off plane landings etc. could probably be tested in the same way.
Some of the more subjective qualities would be harder to quantify, but it would be interesting to see how the people’s impressions of a yoyo compare to what is reliably quantifiable. (I actually wonder if some of the really divergent opinions on certain yo-yos would tend to fall into a single line once the numbers were established).
I’m curious whether manufacturers would be resistant to having their products (potentially) pigeonholed in this way, vs. people forming (and debating) their impressions based on play.
Spin time as a lone metric doesn’t mean much. A yoyo can sleep for 10+ minutes but that doesn’t mean you’ll always be able to get 1+ minute worth of tricks off of a single throw. All yoyos sleep for so abhorrently long anyways now.
Different yoyos will also lose different amounts of spin time based on the tricks you do. How wide the gap is/grippy the stock pads are will change how much spin is lost when doing tricks against the spin, doing tech tricks that just straight up require more layers of string in the gap will lose different amounts of spin based on the previous factors + how flared out and wide the effective trapeze width is, how much spin is lost just from being horizontal at all, how much friction there is during rejections will slow down the yoyo different amounts based on the shape and finish of the yoyo.
This is kind of rambling with no coherent focus, but the point is different tricks will tax the spin of the yoyo in different ways. Different yoyo designs will be able to handle different forces being exerted upon them better than others. Different people just straight up do different tricks. You’ll get radically different amounts of spin time out of the yoyo just based on what tricks you’re trying to do with the yoyo, and just a baseline “sleep time” is zero indication of how a yoyo will be able to handle the stress of doing tricks.
All of this is basically just to say even spin time (in the practical sense of “spin time while doing tricks”) is still very much a subjective metric based on different people doing different tricks.
Any kind of quantitative analysis would be limited by the test apparatus and the results would only apply to the combination of bearing, pad, string etc. that is actually tested (any any change here could potentially have more influence on the yoyo in play than it’s relative “score”.)
But imagine a machine that could be calibrated to throw a simple trapeze with precisely repeatable characteristics of force, release etc. Perhaps a standard string and bearing are used. The plane would be also be adjustable both before and after the yoyo lands on the string. This would allow some kind of standard measurement of how long a it will spin, how it will react to string drag, to being landed off plane etc.
As far as spin time, maybe a more useful metric is how much speed is lost from the standardized throw after 10, 30, 60 second, or due to a certain amount of contact between the wall and the string.
I don’t know that any of this would prove anything about how a yo-yo would play in the hands of a given player. It would be just as interesting to learn that quantifiable attributes have very little influence on whether a yoyo is widely regarded as, e.g., “floaty”. Or whether yoyos that are considered comparable in play have very different scores. Or whether yoyos designed “to the test” are received as intended.
I think you hinted at what might be a good metric here - is it suitable for a 1-minute prelim one-throw? That’s at least possible to test, and captures a bunch of other factors all at the same time.
