It's not really about how much of the objects are in how much of the map. It's about how much of the map is done, and knowing how far through the objects you are is one useful metric for that. It could be argued that the time display is good enough for that purpose, and I was pointing out that it can be flawed... the two can be very different, most notably if there are long breaks in one half of the map. But if you want to call an actual reason for knowing Max Combo "crap", then I'm willing to allow you to shoot yourself in the foot.theowest wrote:
The number of objects is easily accessible... it's what is currently displayed. So, no... not like that. What I'm talking about is presenting reasons for why displaying the max combo is important... not reasons why you might not get see it in the scoreboard (although, you could always use number of objects and the distribution of circles and sliders to estimate it if you had to). I was trying to get you to up you argument (I'm fine with showing Max Combo, but not at the expense of Objects)... what you presented is clearly a padded list of reasons. Properly presented, most of those items should be grouped as a single point: "sometimes it's not available from the scoreboard"... and it shouldn't be used in that list. First you present the reasons why it should be displayed, then you point out that it can't be read from the scoreboard as a separate thing. Because it is... there are reasons why it needs to be known, and then there are reasons why counting on the scoreboard to tell you it is inadequate (which are insufficient... I can't count on the selection screen to tell me the capital of Iceland, either, but I don't need that information there so it isn't important to guarantee that it is).bwross wrote:
Most of those aren't reasons where knowing the exact max combo would help... they're reasons why it might be inconvenient to get the value. Which are pretty much the same reasons you might want for displaying any stat that isn't easily accessible (like, say, AR). or the number of objects?But they're not reasons why it's so important to know and should be much more conveniently displayed (over a different stat that could use that space... like, say, AR). More people care about the combo than the amount of objects it contains. It tells you a lot more. Also, if you want to know the difficulty? Just look at the difficulty rating. Sure, it's not perfect but it will be more perfect someday and that's a whole new different feature request. No need to know the AR or CS when that's stuff that you're presented with the moment you enter the difficulty. The maximum combo however isn't always shown due to many different reasons when you first see the beatmap and the ONLY way to know the exact maximum combo would be to go into the editor and test it there. Clearly people don't want to do this. I'm sure it would be interesting to know by a lot of people now. I've changed my opinion about replacing it with the objects. Sure, objects might be all fun and shit and we might as well keep it.Most people haven't tried to get statistically good estimates of the max scores of the Ouendan maps using Max Combo (which is about all you have to work with, without a lot of work). It doesn't work, because Max Combo is quite flawed for that... although many maps work fine because they have similar properties and that puts them in the middle of the bell curve (especially when you're dealing with a set of maps in the same style). This allows for the illusion that you can always judge things like max score from max combo, because it often works. However, it does fail to correlate spectacularly at times, and I ultimately ended up using actual plays, both mine and ones I found on youtube. The thing is that Objects and the object type distribution data is actually more reliable for judging things because it's regular... if people don't use it, then they don't develop any sense for it. And it's not surprising that they don't... the scoreboard typically provides max combo together with max score clues, so that's where many people are looking. People will fall into patterns that work okay for them... they get used to associating max combo with things and stick with it because it works much of the time. But it's not the best stat to use... just a popular one.
As for difficulty rating: I don't use it. Gave up on it the first day, and the stars were one of the first things I removed when I got around to building my skin (they added clutter for no value). I do believe that a better difficulty system can be made using collected data and machine learning... but I probably won't use it unless it correlates strongly with Objects per second. OPS has always marked my limits the best... my main bottleneck being how tired my hands get. BPM is similarly useful, but it gives clues to burst rates, not the overall sustained rate.
The argument that you should have to start a map to get information isn't exactly a good one. That's a sign of bad design. It also leads to the argument that you should simply auto play each map before you play it... that way you'll get to see the max combo, max score, AR, CS, DR, OD, length of streams, amount of jumps, where the breaks are, etc. There's no end to what doesn't need to be displayed because you can get it from play or auto or the editor. Ideally, you want to supply enough information that people feel that they don't have to do such silly things.As for the two reasons that aren't that:: Yes, sliders can add more to Max Combo because of tick marks. Don't forget repeating sliders! This is quite important (as I mention above) in CtB. Don't you realize that osu! diffs are converted into CtB diffs? It isn't particularly useful in standard to know the tick rate unless you're looking for an easy combo achievement. Uhm. No. Sure, high tick rate introduces more opportunities for jumping the track on a slider... What has this to do with anything? but a lot of that comes down to the shapes and speeds of sliders in the map. You need to play the map to know if it matters at all... Exactly. You have to play the full difficulty in order to know the full combo. even then, I don't think people care I'm sure they would though. Currently they just look at what other people get but it might not always be there for them for MANY different reasons. Max combo tells you more than anything about a beatmap!, most people will play tickless sliders like they're made entirely of tick marks, unless they're dancing. again, what those this has to do with anything... The other place where this comes up is the other reason, which leads us into scoring potential.I often think of slider repeats as a special type of tick... they add combo, are worth a trivial (but larger) amount of points, and also result in a check to see if you're still on the track. Call them all slider combo adding checkpoints if you prefer.
And yes, most CtB play is converted standard maps... but that doesn't mean anything for what should be displayed for standard. It means that in CtB mode the display might be better changed to represent stats more relevant to it. Let's not get into that, because that would be a separate request.
You seem to be confused with this paragraph... this paragraph is about the difference between the max combo count and objects. And so it talks about ticks (and reverses by extension), because that's what makes that difference... because the information from Objects and number of sliders at the top covers everything else. What's hidden is in the difference between that and max combo is the number of intermediate ticks/reverses, so that's all you get for knowing it. The only benefits of which is finding maps where it's easier to get a big combo and knowing how often sliders are checked in the map. So when I say that most people probably don't care to know, I'm not talking about max combo. I'm talking about the extra information it gives you as a result of one of your reasons ("different from objects because some objects can create a lot of combo") . Most people don't care about how often sliders are checked... it doesn't affect play enough .
Even though I wasn't talking about max combo, I'll point out here that max combo definitely does not tell you more about a beat map than anything. For example, without anything else (no length, no difficulty description, no anything) max combo is a very poor judge of difficulty. A trivial map with 2 OPS can have the same (or even greater) max combo as an extreme 6 OPS map... without additional information like the length, and max score, and difficulty name, and the number of objects/circles/sliders, you can't tell (although you can make assumptions, you can never be sure to any reasonable margin... is the map 30 seconds of death stream or a single buzzer slider that you just sit on while the combo racks up to insane levels? It could be either or anything in between, there's no way to know from max combo alone). In the "nothing else" difficulty judging competition, the star difficulty is actually better than max combo. It puts many useful factors together (albeit poorly). It's not very good for general use, but in this case, when you're not allowed any other information, it is definitely better... it can at least capture difference between a map that is long and easy vs another that is very short and extreme.
And if you include length, Objects is definitely better... for example, take the Kuraki Mai Winter Bells map set. One map has a max combo of 1004, another is 994. Given that they're the same length, we should be able to make a relative comparison... so are they about the same with the first one a little harder? Well, no... the Object counts are 226 and 452. Now you can better judge the second map as the harder map... it has twice the key presses in the same time. It's also worth 3x points... something else that Max Combo plus knowing that they're the same length fails to tell here... you might assume that one of them was a hard and would be worth less, but probably not 1/3 given how close their combo counts are... when looking at the object counts this difference isn't as surprising. This is what I'm talking about... Objects is tied directly to real things, key presses and the big multiplier points (every key press ultimately results in one multiplied score evaluation). Max Combo is distorted, you don't have to physically hit something (only keep holding) to get tick/reverses, and by themselves they count for little (you need more Objects to really benefit from the combo they add).If potential score is the only real reason you want Max Combo, then it sounds like what you really want is Max Points being displayed. yes. but that would be too much for the beatmap information. How easy would it be to show 500 000 000 points in the small box up there? Not very easy. The variability that can come with high tick rate (the other reason) just further clouds things... long ticky sliders aren't real points unless there's a lot of Objects in there to convert the combo you built into real points. You essentially need both, as well as knowledge about the order of things in the map. I don't know why you're talking about sliders. Stop that. It doesn't really improve the ability to estimate that much over what you can do with the other stats (length, difficulty, objects, circles, etc)... displaying Max Points is simpler and much more accurate for that purpose.If things are truly important to add, then designs can be adjusted to provide space.
And I'm talking about sliders, because you're talking about Max Combo. Talking about Max Combo is ultimately all about sliders (if it isn't, then we would just be talking Objects), so of course that's what gets discussed.Here, let me try to give another real reason for having Max Combo displayed. There's no count during play of Objects... the count is Combo. Knowing what the Max Combo is gives a measure of how far through the objects you are in a map. There's a meter to show how far you are in time, but that's a separate thing... you can be 3/4 through the song's duration, but only 1/2 through the Max Combo, and that's (a) useful to know and (b) something that Max Combo is far more suited to than Objects, because it's in the unit you have available during play. True. But nobody gives a flying crap about if the most combo is 3/4 parts of the map or just 1/3 parts. And if you drop the Combo, Max Combo is also useful for the same reason, it's in the right units so you can estimate what percentage of the maximum score you can still get based on the Combo count where you dropped. So it's not entirely useless, it's just much more useful during play... when I can almost always read it off the scoreboard There are a lot of reasons when you can't.. (it's conveniently close to the Combo counter), Displaying it on the other screen won't help me with the special cases where it isn't easily available, unless I checked it on the way in (and I pretty much never do)... Like showing the difficulty rating? I can most likely already see that's it's very hard by it's difficulty name, it's amount of points per combo, the modes being used, which players have the top ranks, etc. You can even play the beatmap and just by a few seconds of playing, know the exact difficulty of the beatmap. (how hard it is to you, etc). but that's just me.
I was trying to help your position here.