Hi!
I want to talk about the famous "Hp Drain" in the game and how i would like to see it change a little bit in the futur.
Before i go further, since this is most likely going to be a long post, a TL:DR is already written down of this post, skip it all if you want or stick around and enjoy (or not) my wall of text.
At first i just wanted to make a rant post buuuut someone pointed to me there is a Request forum and i should probably try that approche instead.... fine. Sorry if i may sound harsh/angry/unhappy/etc.... I know (and have read) there is a few thread of Hp Drain, but for some reasons they are all 3 years old. Time has passed, the game has changed and is getting bigger, the community has changed, let see if the minds have changed! I cant wait for the first person to say "NoFail /thread"!
I am fairly new to Osu, i started only in mid-january, and progressing slowly, at my rate, in the game. Recently i started to do some 3 stars songs and i saw for the first time the "real" hp drain.
We'll all agree that for 2 stars nomod map, hp drain exist but is of little to none effect to the game. And now i end up in the 3 stars and there are songs that leave me with a "What the hell..... is that s***???" when i try them. I'm talking about songs that have a slow (up to very slow) part in it, with very few notes and where you see your hp bar go down and down and down without been able to do anything about it. And god forgive you if you dare miss a single note (by miss i mean anything less then a 300) because thats will mean a guaranted failure.
So, my question (half-rant :p) is : Why is that in the game (so soon)?
Now, i have searched a little bit here and there, found a few threads from the last 4 years about peoples talking about the "bad" Hp Drain. Some comment and counter-argument i'll use here, that i saw in theses posts ( like this one or that one and judging by the number of plays done by OP, he's one of the people that left the game pretty early )
As said in my question, i really wonder why it comes to hit us in the face so soon in the game. We go from 2 stars (i did about half of mine with Hard Rock cause well... slow circle are slow, what can i say) where the HP Drain exist but has no impact on the game to 3 stars songs that just smash your face with the drain and while you are on the ground agonizing, come back to hit you once more to make sure you failed.
In other thread, some people (it would seems mostly map makers?) often comes and say things like "It's not hard, it's challenging!" or "You just need to get better at the game, duh!" and sometime "You dont like it, dont do it."
On that last point, i would like to say that personaly i like a map ( https://osu.ppy.sh/b/838103&m=0 ) and did it couple times in lower difficulty since it's a nice song, nice flow, somewhat relaxing compared to hard-rock-heavy-metal songs and all that stuff. It's a nice song. And now i reached a version of it in the 3 stars category that hmm.... yeah.... not fun.
For the first half of the song, you are not allowed to miss a single note and dont even think about having more then 4-5 100/50 because you will fail before mid-point! And that's the problem. Even with Osubot au Auto, he get past the first half of the song with half the hp bar depleted!!
As i said, im new-ish to this game, i dont have thousand of hours played, cant do 4 stars maps, cannot full combo 100% every single song yet, but i do enjoy the game and i keep playing. Yet that song (using that one for the exemple, no hard feeling to the maker of it :p ) that i really like, nop cannot do it.
Do i need to get better at the game? Yeah sure, it will happen on it own over time, but do i need to have a song that appear so soon in the game that i basicly need to be 100% FC right from the star without a learning curve what so ever? That should not be there. And as im progressing in my songs list (about 3000 difficulties over 900 songs, i kinda do them in order of star rating) im starting to see more and more songs in that line of "slow part where if you miss one or two notes, it's game over".
I play nomod, i dont play Sudent Death. Yet theses songs makes it look like i'm forced to play SD. I dont call that challenging, i call that plain stupid. Challenging should be with mods, not with the basic version of the game.
Ok Knaar, what's your point?
Little things like that makes new players feel like they are bad at this game and doesnt really encourage them to keep playing. It should be more along the lines of "Well, you are not a god at this game yet, just keep playing and enjoy the game!" not "Well, you need to be perfect at this new map from the start otherwise you will fail. And by the way, you cannot do shit about this! AH!" That's a perfect plan to keep new players away from the game by having them get frustrated at the game.
My aim suck, but even if i can "hit" the circle with a 50, that's fine, i'll improve!
My accuracy is not 100%, but it will get better over time!
I cannot read map AR10, but some day i will.
I cannot move my mouse fast enough to do 4 stars map yet, but i'll get used to the speed some day!
I dont want to have to do ALL of these at the exact same time over 100 times on one map just to be able to pass that damn map, i dont call that fun, far from it. But maps that have huge HP drain are basicly like that from the start, be perfect or get lost.
I can already tell some people will come here and say "Just skip it and come back later" Yeah well, when i'll be doing 4 or 5 stars map, i dont think i'll go back to "farm" 3 stars maps.
It's in the small details that makes a good game even better and get more people to join it.
Ok! After all that rambling, hopefully some people are still awake, here's what i was thinking about that whole shablang.
Remove HP Drain from NOMOD.
ONLY NOMOD.
If anyone comes here and say things like "You never saw HP10!" Well, to get HP10 you need Hard Rock and my suggestion doesnt affect HR.
I'll pull stats from thin air because i'm not Peppy and cant have access to these stats, but i'd bet that most new players that are 3 months and less in the game usually play Nomods with a few HR/DT here and there after they learn a song.
Removing HP Drain from Nomod would only help them on theses slow song without having to worry too much about failing a song because they missed less then 5 notes. You know, help them enjoy a game while still learning it, as it should be for any newbies?
Im not going to talk about song with HR that are impossible to do because of hp drain killer spinner, thats another subject and i think devs are already kinda looking into it, and that's not the subject of ths post!
What about bigger songs! The 6 stars +! (Nomod)
Well, obviously i dont play theses songs and will most likely not do them in the coming 6-12 months. So my only insight for this is when i watch streamers on twitch.
Magic stats again, I'd bet most people that can do theses 5-6+ stars map are close to the 50k+ ranks with multiple hundred of hours played and thousand upon thousand of song played.
And watching them, i have yet to see anyone fail a such high song because of hp drain. They seems to usually fail in stream parts or jumping parts, but i do agree that once every blue moon someone somewhere probably failed a song because of Hp Drain (most likely on a long spinner :p )
In short, for what i can see, Hp Drain doesnt affect 0-3 stars map and doesnt have any huge impact on 5+ stars map. Between theses, Hp Drain is having way too much fun.
In a previous thread, 3 years ago, Peppy said something about how he didnt knew how it would affect rankings if HP Drain was to be removed. With my suggestion of removing it only for Nomod, it would change a few ranks in the 5 stars+ song yes, but most songs will eventually have a full scoreboard of people completing the song with 1-4 mods. And i even doubt most of theses high song have huge failure because of Hp Drain.
One of the fear of Peppy and a few map maker was that removing Hp Drain would make many "Hard map made with Hp Drain in mind" easy. Exactly, thats one of the point, a positive one, that could be a result of that.
Just think about it : If people fail songs because of HP Drain, they cannot practice it (unless using No Fail/Easy). Now, if they can complete the song in Nomod, that mean they can practice it in full. That mean they can try to use some mod on it. And theses mod still have Hp Drain in them.
The devs could even add a "new" mod to turn on/off Hp Drain and having it On by default so all players that keep saying how much they love Hp Drain can keep it, while people that dont like it can turn it off (yeah yeah, i know what you will say, that as been already talked about, by that was many years ago). As soon as you click on another mod, it get turned on (kind like the same idea, currently in game, where you cannot have Hard Rock and Easy at the same time)
You can complete the song, you can practice it, you can get better and go in the more "Challenging" part of Osu that is the world of Mods. Just let us newbies enjoy the game, we're not there yet, farming a map 1000+, but someday we will.
One last point that needs to be adressed, if the Hp Drain gets removed, how it goes with the +life -life? (when you miss or get a 100/50). Dont change them! They are already there, somewhat calibrated for the various Hp ranks. Might requires some fine tuning in the long run, but i would say to try it out first and then see if anything needs to be done with the numbers.
Annnnd i dont know how to close this long post so... i'll just leave it like that and hopefully people dont send me to the pyre because im suggesting to change something in the game!
Random thinking while editing, for people that are not happy with my suggestion, how about removing Hp Drain Nomods for songs under 5 stars? I dont think i have a single song under 5 stars that is only completed in Nomods, but thats only me.
(Damn, did i really just wrote 3 pages worth of text? I'm surprising myself! Now, to calm down, play some osu, come back and try to fix the over 9000 errors in my text! and now i've been at this way too long, im tired, i need to sleep!)
TL:DR : Remove HP Drain from NOMOD and keep it for all other mods that increase the score. Help the newbies to enjoy the game more!
I want to talk about the famous "Hp Drain" in the game and how i would like to see it change a little bit in the futur.
Before i go further, since this is most likely going to be a long post, a TL:DR is already written down of this post, skip it all if you want or stick around and enjoy (or not) my wall of text.
At first i just wanted to make a rant post buuuut someone pointed to me there is a Request forum and i should probably try that approche instead.... fine. Sorry if i may sound harsh/angry/unhappy/etc.... I know (and have read) there is a few thread of Hp Drain, but for some reasons they are all 3 years old. Time has passed, the game has changed and is getting bigger, the community has changed, let see if the minds have changed! I cant wait for the first person to say "NoFail /thread"!
I am fairly new to Osu, i started only in mid-january, and progressing slowly, at my rate, in the game. Recently i started to do some 3 stars songs and i saw for the first time the "real" hp drain.
We'll all agree that for 2 stars nomod map, hp drain exist but is of little to none effect to the game. And now i end up in the 3 stars and there are songs that leave me with a "What the hell..... is that s***???" when i try them. I'm talking about songs that have a slow (up to very slow) part in it, with very few notes and where you see your hp bar go down and down and down without been able to do anything about it. And god forgive you if you dare miss a single note (by miss i mean anything less then a 300) because thats will mean a guaranted failure.
So, my question (half-rant :p) is : Why is that in the game (so soon)?
Now, i have searched a little bit here and there, found a few threads from the last 4 years about peoples talking about the "bad" Hp Drain. Some comment and counter-argument i'll use here, that i saw in theses posts ( like this one or that one and judging by the number of plays done by OP, he's one of the people that left the game pretty early )
As said in my question, i really wonder why it comes to hit us in the face so soon in the game. We go from 2 stars (i did about half of mine with Hard Rock cause well... slow circle are slow, what can i say) where the HP Drain exist but has no impact on the game to 3 stars songs that just smash your face with the drain and while you are on the ground agonizing, come back to hit you once more to make sure you failed.
In other thread, some people (it would seems mostly map makers?) often comes and say things like "It's not hard, it's challenging!" or "You just need to get better at the game, duh!" and sometime "You dont like it, dont do it."
On that last point, i would like to say that personaly i like a map ( https://osu.ppy.sh/b/838103&m=0 ) and did it couple times in lower difficulty since it's a nice song, nice flow, somewhat relaxing compared to hard-rock-heavy-metal songs and all that stuff. It's a nice song. And now i reached a version of it in the 3 stars category that hmm.... yeah.... not fun.
For the first half of the song, you are not allowed to miss a single note and dont even think about having more then 4-5 100/50 because you will fail before mid-point! And that's the problem. Even with Osubot au Auto, he get past the first half of the song with half the hp bar depleted!!
As i said, im new-ish to this game, i dont have thousand of hours played, cant do 4 stars maps, cannot full combo 100% every single song yet, but i do enjoy the game and i keep playing. Yet that song (using that one for the exemple, no hard feeling to the maker of it :p ) that i really like, nop cannot do it.
Do i need to get better at the game? Yeah sure, it will happen on it own over time, but do i need to have a song that appear so soon in the game that i basicly need to be 100% FC right from the star without a learning curve what so ever? That should not be there. And as im progressing in my songs list (about 3000 difficulties over 900 songs, i kinda do them in order of star rating) im starting to see more and more songs in that line of "slow part where if you miss one or two notes, it's game over".
I play nomod, i dont play Sudent Death. Yet theses songs makes it look like i'm forced to play SD. I dont call that challenging, i call that plain stupid. Challenging should be with mods, not with the basic version of the game.
Ok Knaar, what's your point?
Little things like that makes new players feel like they are bad at this game and doesnt really encourage them to keep playing. It should be more along the lines of "Well, you are not a god at this game yet, just keep playing and enjoy the game!" not "Well, you need to be perfect at this new map from the start otherwise you will fail. And by the way, you cannot do shit about this! AH!" That's a perfect plan to keep new players away from the game by having them get frustrated at the game.
My aim suck, but even if i can "hit" the circle with a 50, that's fine, i'll improve!
My accuracy is not 100%, but it will get better over time!
I cannot read map AR10, but some day i will.
I cannot move my mouse fast enough to do 4 stars map yet, but i'll get used to the speed some day!
I dont want to have to do ALL of these at the exact same time over 100 times on one map just to be able to pass that damn map, i dont call that fun, far from it. But maps that have huge HP drain are basicly like that from the start, be perfect or get lost.
I can already tell some people will come here and say "Just skip it and come back later" Yeah well, when i'll be doing 4 or 5 stars map, i dont think i'll go back to "farm" 3 stars maps.
It's in the small details that makes a good game even better and get more people to join it.
Ok! After all that rambling, hopefully some people are still awake, here's what i was thinking about that whole shablang.
Remove HP Drain from NOMOD.
ONLY NOMOD.
If anyone comes here and say things like "You never saw HP10!" Well, to get HP10 you need Hard Rock and my suggestion doesnt affect HR.
I'll pull stats from thin air because i'm not Peppy and cant have access to these stats, but i'd bet that most new players that are 3 months and less in the game usually play Nomods with a few HR/DT here and there after they learn a song.
Removing HP Drain from Nomod would only help them on theses slow song without having to worry too much about failing a song because they missed less then 5 notes. You know, help them enjoy a game while still learning it, as it should be for any newbies?
Im not going to talk about song with HR that are impossible to do because of hp drain killer spinner, thats another subject and i think devs are already kinda looking into it, and that's not the subject of ths post!
What about bigger songs! The 6 stars +! (Nomod)
Well, obviously i dont play theses songs and will most likely not do them in the coming 6-12 months. So my only insight for this is when i watch streamers on twitch.
Magic stats again, I'd bet most people that can do theses 5-6+ stars map are close to the 50k+ ranks with multiple hundred of hours played and thousand upon thousand of song played.
And watching them, i have yet to see anyone fail a such high song because of hp drain. They seems to usually fail in stream parts or jumping parts, but i do agree that once every blue moon someone somewhere probably failed a song because of Hp Drain (most likely on a long spinner :p )
In short, for what i can see, Hp Drain doesnt affect 0-3 stars map and doesnt have any huge impact on 5+ stars map. Between theses, Hp Drain is having way too much fun.
In a previous thread, 3 years ago, Peppy said something about how he didnt knew how it would affect rankings if HP Drain was to be removed. With my suggestion of removing it only for Nomod, it would change a few ranks in the 5 stars+ song yes, but most songs will eventually have a full scoreboard of people completing the song with 1-4 mods. And i even doubt most of theses high song have huge failure because of Hp Drain.
One of the fear of Peppy and a few map maker was that removing Hp Drain would make many "Hard map made with Hp Drain in mind" easy. Exactly, thats one of the point, a positive one, that could be a result of that.
Just think about it : If people fail songs because of HP Drain, they cannot practice it (unless using No Fail/Easy). Now, if they can complete the song in Nomod, that mean they can practice it in full. That mean they can try to use some mod on it. And theses mod still have Hp Drain in them.
The devs could even add a "new" mod to turn on/off Hp Drain and having it On by default so all players that keep saying how much they love Hp Drain can keep it, while people that dont like it can turn it off (yeah yeah, i know what you will say, that as been already talked about, by that was many years ago). As soon as you click on another mod, it get turned on (kind like the same idea, currently in game, where you cannot have Hard Rock and Easy at the same time)
You can complete the song, you can practice it, you can get better and go in the more "Challenging" part of Osu that is the world of Mods. Just let us newbies enjoy the game, we're not there yet, farming a map 1000+, but someday we will.
One last point that needs to be adressed, if the Hp Drain gets removed, how it goes with the +life -life? (when you miss or get a 100/50). Dont change them! They are already there, somewhat calibrated for the various Hp ranks. Might requires some fine tuning in the long run, but i would say to try it out first and then see if anything needs to be done with the numbers.
Annnnd i dont know how to close this long post so... i'll just leave it like that and hopefully people dont send me to the pyre because im suggesting to change something in the game!
Random thinking while editing, for people that are not happy with my suggestion, how about removing Hp Drain Nomods for songs under 5 stars? I dont think i have a single song under 5 stars that is only completed in Nomods, but thats only me.
(Damn, did i really just wrote 3 pages worth of text? I'm surprising myself! Now, to calm down, play some osu, come back and try to fix the over 9000 errors in my text! and now i've been at this way too long, im tired, i need to sleep!)
TL:DR : Remove HP Drain from NOMOD and keep it for all other mods that increase the score. Help the newbies to enjoy the game more!