Lately rain difficulties are getting much more difficult, one of the reasons is because there are no guidelines for the use of strong hyperdashes.
For example, a couple of weeks ago we had a mapset which was disqualified because the rain had a too high spaced hyperdashes (which can be found here) even while there was no rule or guideline about this whatsoever.

I want to add the following guideline to the ranking criteria to set this limit on paper, so we don't get ambiguous disqualifies like for the mentioned map and create a proper bridge between platters, rains and overdoses:

Rain - New Guideline


I would like to discuss about the trigger distance values, this is because for basic hyper dashes 1.7 times the trigger distance might be a bit too much especially for dashes close to ~125ms.
For higher-snapped hyperdashes the trigger distance seems to be good without making it too extreme since increasing this more would make it way to snappy at 62ms.

Honestly, I think just using the default platter values works. After all (assuming 120-240BPM), a 1/1 HDash will very rarely even be possible to go over the 1.5x limit, the 1.5x limit is slightly higher then the 1.3x limit that 1/2 HDashes have on platters, and the 1.3x limit works well for 1/4 HDashes considering 1/4 HDashes aren't even allowed on the previous difficulty. Overall I agree.

can we have a guideline on antiflow patterns also? (or repetitive antiflow movement)

wonjae wrote:

can we have a guideline on antiflow patterns also? (or repetitive antiflow movement)

If you make a new proposal, maybe.

MBomb wrote:

Honestly, I think just using the default platter values works. After all (assuming 120-240BPM), a 1/1 HDash will very rarely even be possible to go over the 1.5x limit, the 1.5x limit is slightly higher then the 1.3x limit that 1/2 HDashes have on platters, and the 1.3x limit works well for 1/4 HDashes considering 1/4 HDashes aren't even allowed on the previous difficulty. Overall I agree.

I've tested all the distances you said, and I agree, they seem to work well without removing all the freedom we want to give to rain mappers. It will also be easier to remember if we use the platter values.

Thats being said we will end up with something like:



I added the word "instead" since we also used this wording for the platter guideline.

wonjae wrote:

can we have a guideline on antiflow patterns also? (or repetitive antiflow movement)

I wanted to leave the scope small for this RC change. Hyperdash strength isn't something related to antiflow patterns so it's more logical to create a separate RC guideline for this.

I wouldn't mind those changes.

I agree with these changes.

Sounds good, would be nice to have a written guideline like this since the current RC isn't limiting it. Especially that some rain nowadays uses quite a lot of higher snapped hyperdashes with no limitation and sometimes they're too overdone.

Don't really think this is necessary personally - you're just adding more complexity and convolution for people to wade through. The RC is already daunting enough for new mappers as it is without having to do literal maths on every hyperdash in their map.

From a modder / BN perspective, why do you all need a hard value rule / guideline to fall back on? Is it so hard to justify that an excessive spacing / strength is unfitting, unexpected, flow-breaking, plays poorly, etc.? Are mappers and modders both content to see "this is bad cus RC says so" more and more without actually understanding why?

Seems to me like something that could easily be addressed by common sense and better communications skills.

what jbh said. i think implementing this change would just make rains kinda annoying to map as platters tbh. I'd prolly agree more if we're talkin about antiflow hdashes especially on higher snaps.

I'll see what i can do and maybe make a separate rc proposal for that since I've been kinda wanting to propose that. but im personally not liking this proposal.

100% agree with JBH here, he expressed it so well I've nothing more to add

I feel like the hdash distances themselves don't contribute a whole lot to increasing Rain difficulty. I'm a new-ish catch player just starting to do well on Rains, and the large dashes seem ok as long as what comes before and after them allows for setup/recovery

what I find most difficult are parts with lots of normal dashes and direction changes cuz its easy to get the catcher offset from the fruits' centers and start to miss a few. maybe this is only my personal experience and not telling of all Rain players though. just thought i'd pitch in a newbie perspective

I'm gonna have to express complete disagreement with JBH's point.

This change really doesn't make the RC much more daunting at all, and points out something which 90% of mappers would class as unrankable already. If anything, all it does is help new mappers by telling them a pattern they may assume is fine actually isn't. Mappers shouldn't need to do literal maths, as these guidelines are heavily lenient, and so if the mapper has to do literal maths to make sure their jump is okay, chances are they should be nerfing it regardless.

Saying people wouldn't understand why really doesn't make sense, given the fact the reasoning of strong HDashes leading to high momentum changes is quite self-explanitory, and in fact we could even add this explanation to the RC rule's non-bold text (though honestly, I feel that'd make it more daunting rather than less).

"Seems to me like something that could easily be addressed by common sense and better communications skills." Could be said for so many of the rules in the RC and be just as valid as saying it for this. The thing is, the RC is a lot more helpful for inexperienced mappers than experienced ones, and inexperienced ones generally don't have this "common sense" in regards to mapping, as they are just learning about it. In reality, this would barely ever come up for an experienced mapper, for the reasons mentioned in my first paragraph, so having it in the RC is purely to the benefit of new mappers knowing what's considered not acceptable.

And even ignoring everything else I said, if there was really such a strong reason to break the general consensus of these HDashes being problematic in rain difficulties, it's being made a guideline, so that strong reason could surely be used to break that.

1st para: If 90% of mappers already consider it unrankable, then why do you need to put it in writing? Your comment about mappers "not having to do maths to check their distances are fine because they'd probably be too big anyway" is farcical. If a jump is so massively overdone to break this "incredibly lenient" guideline / rule, just point it out, say that is sucks because <x reason I provided in my original post> and move on. Having this in writing is completely unnecessary and I feel discussing it further is a waste of time.

2nd para: If it's self-explanatory, it doesn't need to be put in writing, so I consider you as defeating your own argument with this one.

3rd para: Sure you could argue that other parts of the RC are unnecessarily bloated and pedantic, but we're not discussing that here, so I'll ignore it and you should too. An inexperienced mapper is far more likely to just ask for help, at which point you can say "this jump is too big / combined with a too difficult pattern / antiflows uncomfortably / etc., please reduce it", rather than struggle through a confusing ass list of rules about multipliers and distance ratios.

JBHyperion wrote:

If it's self-explanatory, it doesn't need to be put in writing

this doesn't really support the purpose of the RC, which is to define all of the traits a Ranked map should have (even if they'd be obvious to an experienced mapper/modder). I agree that a modder shouldn't blindly refer people to the RC, because RC isn't supposed to be a guide...

if the topic of this thread is something 90% of mappers consider to be a criterion for an osu!catch map to be Ranked---guess what article exists to list these things!

The problem is that this rule is only self-explanatory if you're already an experienced mapper. If you're a new mapper, being told you have to calculate strength and distance ratios for every jump in your map will either make no sense, or just frustrate and annoy you to the point of quitting.

If 90% of people want this to be a rule because they can't use common sense and logical reasoning, then we have a serious problem that minor amendments / additions / etc. will not fix.

Again, this should be in a guide, not the RC.

listing the exact ratios is something I probably don't agree with either (not that I'm experienced enough to comment on this anyway), I'm just saying that it's important to write down these rules/guidelines if they can't be obviously interpreted from the overall RC or some other resource that's clearly referred to. right now, the Rain RC is missing this text that effectively already is a guideline, so why not write it down?

you're worried about an important issue, but I don't think it's of the same scope as this change. if modders apply RC without any common sense or reason then there already exists a problem

Platter RC has a very similarly worded guideline, so if this change doesn't go in I think you should look into the wording of that one afterwards

While the example brought up in the OP is probably an exception for Rains, I believe common sense should be applied in such cases as JBH pointed out in this thread.

The current standardised limitation for Platters is useful for newer (and also experienced) mappers, as such difficulties are meant to introduce hyperdashes and those should be appropriate for players of that level. Whereas on Rains we do expect players to be able to manage some higher distances, and hence a bit of leniency on placing jumps is more than welcome... though not with a 1/4 9.0x jump!

Will archive the thread, since neither Ascendance nor I are convinced this should be necessary to have in the RC.