I'm a real fan of DJ Hero gameplay, if not necessarily the concept - it's fun and engaging, and I'm good at it. Like, really good. I was among the first to 5* everything on Expert, and for a long time was in the top 10 or so on all the DJ Hero mixes.
 
Eventually, as I had always expected, the novelty wore away some, and I found myself playing the game less, instead looking forward to the sequel as the point at which I'd eventually pick the game up again. It came to pass earlier this week - so I pulled out the old 'table and started work. After finishing the first two Empire sets, I decided I'd jump into multiplayer and see what'd changed. Besides noticing that you apparently can't create matches anymore, it seemed like a lot of new game modes were available... but you couldn't necessarily pick which...?
 
Anyways, I set my difficulty to Expert and set my opponent rank to Higher - hoping to knock out the "10 wins against higher-ranked opponents" achievement relatively quickly. The first match began shortly. "Accumulator match, five songs... wait, he's on Medium? So they  don't let you choose the difficulty of the opponent you want to face? Hrm." At this point, I didn't even know what an accumulator match was, but I figured it out pretty quickly. This match was mine - to the point that he dropped out halfway through. "At least they seem to have balanced it to give higher difficulties a good chance," I surmised.
 
But it kept on like this - me on Expert, my opponents consistently on Medium or Expert. Above rank 5 or 10, though, my opponents would consistently pick the hardest mixes, which made the "balance" disappear completely. Am I really supposed to outlast an opponent in a Streak Battle on Firestarter when I'm on Expert and he's on Medium - not having to do much but move the crossfader? The folly of not having played the song before aside, it's still preposterous to think that skill would consistently bridge that gap in what the game asks each player to do.
 
(Edit: The real crux of the problem is that there is no mode which locks both players to the same difficulty - no "Pro Face-Off" analogue - at least as best as I could tell so far.) Am I really supposed to play multiplayer only on Hard, to make myself basically unbeatable? Or should I just only play with friends and people who want, specifically, to play against someone on Expert? I'm considering burning through the rest of Empire mode and selling the game, at this point. Anyone else been stung like this?

Don't like multiplayer! Don't eat!
 
Reading this just reminds me of Guitar Hero 3 multiplayer, where the only song anyone ever picked was Through the Fire and Flames, because you couldn't fail in multiplayer. I can play the song and as soon as someone saw my score after the intro and they realized that I had like 13x their score they would just drop out. Occasionally you'd find people to play with who were good and didn't just pick Dragonforce, but it was rare.
 
My best advice is to find people at your skill level and just play friend matches with them. Next time someone you play also plays on expert and just doesn't pick the hardest mix, send them a friend request.

Yeah the whole other people playing on lower difficulties than me is lame, that's why I only played Pro Face Off. You can't play TTFAF on Expert with me then why did you set the game to expert difficulty and pick that song.

Right! But this game has no equivalent of Pro Face-off - which I suppose is the crux of my problem, and the thing I forget to phrase clearly in my opening rant.

Most of the game modes are largely dependent on the amount of "notes" that you are getting, you should be dominating medium players as they only get around half the notes that you do.

" Most of the game modes are largely dependent on the amount of "notes" that you are getting, you should be dominating medium players as they only get around half the notes that you do. "

I stopped playing online because I only like playing Expert and the rest of the world only likes playing Medium.

So if anyone was actually curious/caring, I have a little news to append to this whole situation!
 
First - for now, I just play the Accumulator game mode. This one lets you bank streak away throughout the song, maximizing the likelihood that, even withstanding a few mistakes, you'll still beat the guy who gets 100% on medium.
 
Second - I spoke to an acquaintance on the FreeStyle Games team, and he suggested that not only did these issues bother him, too, but that he expected that QA was considering some patches/fixes which could potentially address the issue.
 
Here's hoping.

Oh hey, I remember playing against you in the vVv Gaming tournament, can't remember if you're still on my friends' list. 
 
Yep, multiplayer in this is straight-broken. I don't think there's any mode that isn't favored towards a lower or higher difficulty. It's a shame, given the variety of modes, and the fact that you can't play 90% of the Battle mixes single-player. All they'd need to do is just have an option that actually locks you to finding someone of an equivalent difficulty. I know this game wasn't that successful, and the community is kind of small, but it's better to have a smaller pool of potential players than have every match be unfairly-balanced.