Hello, lets get right down to business
General
Easy
I'm going to stop there for now to avoid redundancy. This isn't a bad start, but there is a lot that needs to be done. A lot of these issues stem from a lack of experience which I think you should get before you continue mapping. Some people might disagree with me on this but I think its important to have a good understanding of a large number of maps, and their difficulty spreads before you try mapping one out for yourself. The best way to do this, is of course by playing the game I think if you tried this after playing the game from longer you'd have a lot more success, but i'll just give some general comments so you know my impressions of the other maps.
The normal had essentially all the same issues as the easy but with red ticks (1/2)
The hard was over mapped, and didn't play well, the jumps weren't placed to add contrast or to match the music. To me they felt like they were purely placed to boost SR, which is generally frowned upon. Flow is constantly being broken by counter-intuitive movements and you include some things that would make getting this map ranked very difficulty such as streams larger than 5 notes.
The insane was much better but still did some things that most people wouldn't appreciate like a sextuplet streams that don't match the music. Both the hard and insane had weird rhythms that just shouldn't be used or really weird slider rhythms.
I remember doing the same thing you're doing now and I got really discouraged when I got the same feedback I'm giving you. However, looking back they were absolutely correct. Don't take this too hard, but I think with a bit more game play experience you'll definitely be able to identify what makes a map good, and what detracts from its value.
If you intend to continue pursuing ranked status for this map I recommend you check out the ranked criteria, read around the forums a bit and check out some community made content such as ranked maps or youtube videos. There are bunch of guides out there for new mappers, like Pishifat's youtube channel made by a QAT member, which covers a lot relatively abstract concepts related to mapping with great explanations. After that I would suggest remapping a large majority of this set, as it is nowhere close to quality required a map to become ranked, or even for the modding process imho. Even now, I dont post a lot of my stuff because I dont consider it good enough, but a big part of the ranking\modding process is learning from your peers and in that regard you're way ahead of me and well on your way making this good map.
Please respond to my mod letting me know what you think so I know how to improve my mods in the future. Good luck
General
SPOILER
- Turn off Enable Countdown (Song Setup>Design), since you don't make use of it no need to have it on.
- I found that your offset was incorrect (the hits were coming in early), I'd suggest using an offset of 800. Don't forget to re-snap your timing points, preview point and hit objects.
- To avoid inconsistencies with audio preview placement\kiai time etc. I found it helpful to create an empty map that just has all my timing points/kiai/audio preview decided out ahead of time so I can start each difficulty from the same place.
- A good next step would be to add some hit-sounds that compliment the set.
Easy
SPOILER
- Carefully check over all of your placement, as a general rule of thumb I personally don't let my DS go outside a margin of error of ±0.01 especially in easier difficulties.
- There is a lot of linear movement (this could be a deliberate choice), but personally since this is an easier difficulty I think going with what is intuitive or natural is the better choice. The objective of the easier maps in my opinion is to introduce the new player to a large number movements that are commonly found in maps in an easy to consume format.
- On a more detailed level there is a lot that can be done in terms of aesthetics on a basic level. Changes like these should be made across the entire map so I'll highlight what I mean in the section before the spinner and let you do the rest across the map.
- There are lots of times where you aim for symmetry but you're off by a little. 00:11:415 (1,2) - this is a good example. I'd suggest copy/pasting sliders more frequently to ensure your sliders are more consistent across the board when doing things like this.
- 00:00:800 (1) - This doesn't accurately follow the vocals, so I suggest adding a hitcircle here 00:00:338 (1) - to imply a basic pattern related to vocals, but not directly based off of them.
- 00:02:646 (3,4) - these two should be swapped, it more accurately follows the rhythm.
- 00:03:108 (4) - This slider is pretty ugly, i'd suggest editing
- This generally has an old map feel, where is where most mappers start but you'll quickly notice a change in how the map intuitively plays or flows if you try some of this stuff.
- 00:24:800 (3,4) - why not make them like the previous 2 that have red anchor points?
- 00:26:646 (1,3) - same movement different sliders? make them match. You alternate between the two, but it doesn't look nice. Alternate in pairs.
- 00:26:646 (1,2,3) - angle can be improved for better flow.
- 00:45:107 (1,5) - this applies to a majority of the kinked sliders, they don't look uniform and as a result fairly ugly, especially next to a curved slider. After Kiai they start looking much better.
- You're more or less representing the music through just the circles, but the visual aspect of representing the music is just as important and probably the biggest downfall of this difficulty, a lot of the circles feel randomly placed.
I'm going to stop there for now to avoid redundancy. This isn't a bad start, but there is a lot that needs to be done. A lot of these issues stem from a lack of experience which I think you should get before you continue mapping. Some people might disagree with me on this but I think its important to have a good understanding of a large number of maps, and their difficulty spreads before you try mapping one out for yourself. The best way to do this, is of course by playing the game I think if you tried this after playing the game from longer you'd have a lot more success, but i'll just give some general comments so you know my impressions of the other maps.
The normal had essentially all the same issues as the easy but with red ticks (1/2)
The hard was over mapped, and didn't play well, the jumps weren't placed to add contrast or to match the music. To me they felt like they were purely placed to boost SR, which is generally frowned upon. Flow is constantly being broken by counter-intuitive movements and you include some things that would make getting this map ranked very difficulty such as streams larger than 5 notes.
The insane was much better but still did some things that most people wouldn't appreciate like a sextuplet streams that don't match the music. Both the hard and insane had weird rhythms that just shouldn't be used or really weird slider rhythms.
I remember doing the same thing you're doing now and I got really discouraged when I got the same feedback I'm giving you. However, looking back they were absolutely correct. Don't take this too hard, but I think with a bit more game play experience you'll definitely be able to identify what makes a map good, and what detracts from its value.
If you intend to continue pursuing ranked status for this map I recommend you check out the ranked criteria, read around the forums a bit and check out some community made content such as ranked maps or youtube videos. There are bunch of guides out there for new mappers, like Pishifat's youtube channel made by a QAT member, which covers a lot relatively abstract concepts related to mapping with great explanations. After that I would suggest remapping a large majority of this set, as it is nowhere close to quality required a map to become ranked, or even for the modding process imho. Even now, I dont post a lot of my stuff because I dont consider it good enough, but a big part of the ranking\modding process is learning from your peers and in that regard you're way ahead of me and well on your way making this good map.
Please respond to my mod letting me know what you think so I know how to improve my mods in the future. Good luck