agu wrote:
ninja notes are a bit hard considering they could vary greatly in how acceptable they are by how readable they are, and deciding a specific limit would be pretty difficult.
Also worth mentioning that rule 1 and 3 might contradict each other a bit if the map starts when the song does, considering if the map starts with an unreadable note your best bet will often be to just to hit the button randomly in hopes to hit it.
I feel like those guidelines could also make it more clear that ninjas similiar to taiko time shouldn't be used (I think it is pretty clear in the case of taiko time but I'm not sure if the sound was louder and more clear)
Basically just how I think the guidelines could be better myself.
Yeah, ninja notes at the beginning of a song are among my least favorite mapping ideas. If I may add to Agu's second paragraph: there needs to be some clear, ongoing rhythm if you're going to successfully play a note that you can't even see. Just look at the Crack Traxxx and Music Revolver highest diffs -- the first notes of those maps occur entirely without rhythmic context, since they just appear when the opening sample ends. The next two ninja notes of Crack Traxxx are fine, as far as I'm concerned, since they occur once the song's tempo has been clearly established: if you're listening to the beat, and know that they're coming, then you can't miss them. Whereas the only way I know how to consistently hit those opening notes is to watch the "countdown to drain time" circle, or just spam the proper color.
Which leads me to the next idea: the fact that we need a stipulation of "if you know that they're coming" is very frustrating. The second and third ninjas of Crack Traxxx occur before you've played a lot of the song, so if you restart a few times, then you'll never miss them again. But ninjas in the middle of a longer song? Well, there are a few ways in which these get mapped, and some ways are quite interesting and enhance the map, while others are terrible:
There are some more ninjas at the end of the streaming section of that Crack Traxxx map as well -- luckily they correspond to with a well-established rhythmic motif. (By well-established, I mean that we've heard this exact musical phrase multiple times throughout the song, and it has always been mapped without changing the rhythm on repeat occasions.) Even though these ninjas have screwed me out of FCs, they still feel relatively fair because I know WHEN I should be playing, simply because I can understand that these ninjas copy some rhythm that I've been playing throughout the rest of the map. Their increased SV is somewhat acceptable because we've just gotten out of the most intense part of the song, and this musical phrase signals the transition from the climax of the song to the final chorus. Of course, I think it's annoying that the pattern assigned to this rhythm has changed: even though you know WHEN to play, it's not at all obvious WHAT to play. If that latter qualm were addressed, then I'd say this would be a fair use of ninjas.
There are some other ninja-type notes in this map, but they're not set with nearly so high an SV as the instances that I've mentioned. However, I will point out that these remaining ninjas are ALWAYS mapped to either of two brief, simple, oft-repeated rhythms. These are the same sorts of ninjas that occur in the Defenders map: SV not off the charts, and notes always placed in the same rhythmic context. This sort of mapping is fine, as far as I'm concerned. It's a style that engages the player with one of the fundamental rhythms of a song. I think the Defenders map does a much better job at this than the Crack Traxxx map though, since the ninja notes are consistently the same pattern (K K), whereas the patterns assigned to the repeated rhythms in the Crack Traxxx maps change (see the increased SV finisher sections in between the streams in that map).
Some instances that I wish were entirely filtered out of ranked Taiko mapping: random K before final chorus in the new Streaming Heart map, and final K at the end of the Shiny King-fu Carnival highest diff. The reason I dislike them is simple: they do not correspond to any rhythmic motif in the song. In that "good" Crack Traxxx example two paragraphs above, the ninjas are in time with a rhythm we hear again and again -- the song and the mapping have already taught you what this rhythm is, in a simpler context, the FIRST TIME you play the song. So even though the SV is REALLY high, the mapping has helped teach the player what to do. These latter two examples are not at all like it: the only way you can hit these notes is by trial and error, listening to that specific part of the song multiple times so you can figure out where they are. The mapping gives these notes heightened SV because they come at an intense moment in the song, but nothing about the mapping or song up to this point has suggested anything about this new rhythm. And so this hinders and frustrates the player just because the mapper thought that "well, making this a finisher isn't emphasis enough."
Anyway, if people want me to link to the maps mentioned or some time-stamped YouTube vids, I'll gladly do that. I've been writing this up on my phone and that would be a real hassle for me at this specific time.