I am back yet again with another proposal to the catch RC, this time aiming at a slight nerf to Rains, typically in the cases were you would see a map that is on the verge of becoming an Overdose.

The proposal would be to this following RC rule:

Basic hyperdashes must not be used more than four times between consecutive fruits. If higher-snapped hyperdashes are used, they must not be used in conjunction with other hyperdashes or higher-snapped dashes.

The change would come in the latter part of the definition. Currently it reads as "higher-snapped hyperdashes must not be used in conjunction with other hyperdashes or higher-snapped dashes."

I'd like to change this to:

Basic hyperdashes must not be used more than four times between consecutive fruits. If higher-snapped hyperdashes are used, they must not be used in conjunction with other hyperdashes or any dash with a gap <250ms.

Given the current RC, this would be the best wording to achieve this without having to invent new terms. Currently a higher snapped dash on rains is <125ms (same as hyperdashes). If there was a possible way to make a new term that is twice the amount of a basic dash that could also be used (but I personally think this as unnecessary).

In terms of general snapping at 180 bpm, currently rankable is a 1/2 dash after a 1/4 hdash. I would like this to change to requiring a 1/1 spacing after a 1/4 hdash.

The reasoning behind this change is because as of recently rains are starting to feel more like overdoses with little gap/difference between the two. As of now, there are 3 differences between rains and overdoses:

1. Higher snapped hdashes used with anything
2. Hdash chains of >4
3. (In rare cases) Hdashes <62 ms

By adding in another restrictive layer to option 1, the difference between Rains and Overdoses become more apparent. We won't see the types of "Rainverdoses" that have been appearing more and more frequently and the difficulty creep would be stopped.

The reason I feel confident in why this should be applied is simply because it already has been before, but to an even greater degree.

In the past we've had several RC proposals to this exact rule, yet each time the outcome has been flawed or no conclusion has been reached.

First was Ascendance's proposal community/forums/topics/844434 here. At this time, any dashes following a higher snapped hdash was disallowed, and the rule was too restrictive. The solution to this was a flawed wording that technically allowed all dashes after higher snapped hdashes because the definition for "higher snapped dash" was undefined.

Secondly was Greaper's proposal community/forums/topics/1033696 here to fix the above wording. This essentially added the definition of a higher snapped dash in rain so that we could no longer have 1/4 dashes after a 1/4 hdash in rain. This in reality achieved nothing as nobody ever used 1/4 dashes after a 1/4 hdash in rains anyways.

The original goal of the first proposal was to make large dash gaps after a 1/4 hdash rankable, such a 1/1, but the sight of the goal got lost after bad original wording that took a year to get fixed.

For quite a while now, we've seen and heard people complain that rains are getting too hard (example, ascendance's proposal only 4 months after the original proposal for removing prior rule earlier got accepted community/forums/topics/904308). I think it's finally time that we reduce difficulty of rains in the proper manner.

If people do not agree with this rule, a possible compromise would be to disallow only antiflow 1/2 dashes after a 1/4 hdash instead of all dashes.

tldr; disallow 1/2 dashes after 1/4 hdashes in rains at 180bpm+

Honestly, after my return to the catch modding/mapping community after 12-15 months one of the more glaring
discrepancies I noticed was the state of the rain in the current meta and the way the term "Rain" was getting
overstretched to eventually slowly converge with Overdose mechanics. That being said, I also do think this is one
of the contributing reasons platters have also been slowly increasing in density and difficulty through the
passage of time due to the current RC Rulings.

I believe this will be a beneficial change to the state of the rain difficulty, I do however want to state my
own personal thoughts on this proposal which , even though do meet up with your own intentions, are potentially
different in execution and possibly a bit more lenient.

In the context of difficulty progression, rains serve the bridging gap between Overdose and platter. I believe
that since we are talking about difficulty progression on its own, with the player in mind, rains should almost
always, if not always, try to land a bit closer to the diff preceding it rather than the diff following it.
It would be way more beneficial to difficulty spread to have it be this way, since you want to introduce new
gameplay mechanics as clear as possible.

Right now platters do not allow dashes at all after a Higher snapped Hyperdash, but rains on the other hand allow
a dash of any kind as long as its not Higher-snapped. However dashes < 125ms are almost never used since they
inherently dont create viable patterns that can be replicated and also dont provide a favourable gameplay effect
So this ruling kinda functions as a phantom rule, offering no practical application when mapping.

Dashes on 125ms paired with higher-snapped Hyperdashes and paired with an antiflow movement inbetween them
can be really difficult to play through when coming into rains when someone is a platter player and patterns
like this will be the ones where the most drops will be. In contrast, if the antiflow is removed, the pattern
can play in a favourable manner without spiking in strain since there is no sudden switch of direction and the
catcher can follow a linear movement to the next dash with the momentum that is also built up from the HDash

To sum up:

1. Higher snapped Hyperdashes in conjuction with dashes <250ms, and especially with antiflow between them, shouldnt
   belong in a rain. It is a mechanic that I would love to see best reserved in an overdose only.
2. However, without antiflow, the pattern can be used comfortably, albeit a bit hard, it is still a mechanic
   introduced in platter with just a ramp up in difficulty since, as I mentioned, there is no direction break to
   enforce a timely switch in keystrokes

A counter-argument would be that current application can be really constricting in the cases where
It would do the song injustice, to not use a pattern like this. But i still feel that especially the antiflow
usage inbetween dash<250ms and a HDash is a mechanic that should best be best kept for overdoses.

My two proposals would be to either

1. Make this rule proposal a guideline :
   Higher-snapped Hyperdashes Should not be used in conjuction with any dash with a gap <250ms.
2. Use the following ruling instead :
   If higher-snapped hyperdashes are used, they must not be used in conjunction with
   other hyperdashes or with any dash with a gap <250ms in conjuction with antiflow.

No matter the result, I do feel the current rain state leans so much next to overdose, and not next to platter,
which is counter-intuitive to our focus on a linear difficulty progression through the difficulties of catch
This is a step in the right direction.

tl;dr I agree that the rain is slowly becoming closer to an odose and i would love to see it changed,
either use the rule proposed, or make it a guideline, or only disallow patterns like this only when theres antiflow inbetween

hello

i do agree that Rain is becoming closer to be overdose nowdays. the statement of "1/2 dashes after 1/4 hdashes in rains at 180bpm+" sounds good for me because they seem kinda complicated for rain level who are start learning about more challenging stuff.

But imo its better to disallow 1/2 antiflow dashes after 1/4 hdashes as Nokashi has said, because high snapped 1/4 hdashes combined with high snapped 1/2 dash in easy flow pattern feels acceptable and easy to play for rain level player (at least for me, this case you know my gameplay ability is Rain and not able to play overdose)

Honestly I disagree with the new ruleset you provided :


I'd want to see more variation and diversity since rain is considered as 'challenging' diff as well as overdose which we might have overlooked
Also as long as the Rain diff functions appropriately as a bridge between platter and overdose / as long as the spread has no issue I think it's fine to have some harder rains as well.

I'd rather let this issue being determined by BNs' own perspectives and decisions rather than forcing everyone to thoroughly check every hypers in Rain difficulties just like what current BNs do on Platters.


I would be more leaned toward agree with this one but would also prefer to add the condition about 'antiflow' since if they aren't used in antiflow you just need to hold dash which might be not that challenging for the Rain players.

So the one I'm suggesting, under the premise that we'd need to revise the current ruleset since I think the current rule already is fine, is:

Spectator wrote:

So the one I'm suggesting, under the premise that we'd need to revise the current ruleset since I think the current rule already is fine, is:

Higher-snapped Hyperdashes Should not be used in conjuction with any antiflow dash with a gap <250ms.

Man, I forgot to add the "antiflow" to my guidline proposal thing, thanks for catching that error spec with your thoughts on this!
Of course, I can agree with this viewpoint. I also did write in my proposal that what I want to see is a steady decline in the ever increasing rain difficulty, with a way to limit the usage of patterns like this, I wouldnt mind seeing this as a guideline addition instead of a rule, to allow a singular use of this pattern to highlight a special part of the song. Right now since these patterns can happen at will, there can be no bound to how many times they can be used.

I also agree that,without antiflow, patterns like this are acceptable for the rain gameplay mechanics

Nokashi wrote:

However, without antiflow, the pattern can be used comfortably, albeit a bit hard, it is still a mechanic
introduced in platter with just a ramp up in difficulty since, as I mentioned, there is no direction break to
enforce a timely switch in keystrokes

Also this guideline does support an answer to a counterargument as stated in my post

Nokashi wrote:

A counter-argument would be that current application can be really constricting in the cases where
It would do the song injustice, to not use a pattern like this.

Thanks for your thoughts spec, as always! <3

Spectator wrote:

I would be more leaned toward agree with this one but would also prefer to add the condition about 'antiflow' since if they aren't used in antiflow you just need to hold dash which might be not that challenging for the Rain players.

So the one I'm suggesting, under the premise that we'd need to revise the current ruleset since I think the current rule already is fine, is:

Higher-snapped Hyperdashes Should not be used in conjuction with any antiflow dash with a gap <250ms.

I agree with Spectator on that point. In many cases having a regular dash after a hyperdash can be easier to play, since the player doesn't have to time when to release the dash button. Restricting them would also be a problem for mappers to emphasize the song correctly as Nokashi stated.

However the current change may be shaped badly as "in conjunction" also covers dashes before a higher snapped hyperdash, which aren't the topic of this proposal and are significantly less precise to play.

In that case I'd suggest making it a separate, independent point to avoid confusion:

As for and Spec's most recent points, the wording does not work because your wording would also allow higher snapped hdashes to be used with any other hdash. An option like Phob's where we have another seperate clause could work.

After several opinions I think the best way to go about this would be:





This means that you can use higher snapped hdashes in conjunction with any flowing dash >125ms and for there to be antiflow movement afterwards you would need a gap of 250ms.

This wording also disallows the use of higher snapped hdashes with other hdashes, which is something specifically that the other proposal wordings were missing.

If there is a way to condense this while having all 3 of the following restrictors, I'd be willing to use that wording aswell:

1. Higher snapped hdashes cant be used with any other hdashes
2. Higher snapped hdashes cant be used with any flowing dash <125ms
3. Higher snapped hdashes cant be followed by any dash <250ms

2 should be really allowed for Rain diff it's not that hard for Rain players

After some talk with the fellow NAT members we have decided to not do anything with this proposal. It is true that rains are increasing in difficulty significantly the last 2 years or so. That being said, Overdoses have increased in difficulty as well, sometimes not containing a so called "Spread overdose" making the bridge much bigger than it needs to be.

Disallowing higher-snapped hypers in conjunction with any normal dash is something introduced in a Rain, this should not be something we firstly introduce in an Overdose. As this would make Rain difficulties way easier and make the gap between a Rain and Overdose even bigger than it currently is.

Now the bridge between Platter, Rain and Overdose difficulties are on a pretty good spot, removing more freedom from a Rain difficulty would make this more like how a Platter plays. The change would also make the RC more complicated which I rather avoid. Nevertheless, a BN or modder can always use common sense to point out harsh patterns instead of adding more and more rules and complexity to the RC.

Will leave this open for 24~ hours, will finalize the proposal when nothing happens by then.

If this is the stance that's going to be taken on this, I highly suggest implementing Phob's wordage/suggestion at the bare minimum

Higher-snapped hyperdashes should not be followed by antiflow dashes with a gap lower than 250ms.

This gets rid of the pattern that really makes rains feel completely like overdoses. Keeping dashes before a higher snapped hdash would be fine in this case.

That is really harsh for Rain since you just try your best to hold the dash button. I agree with this in my opinion.

Secre wrote:

Higher-snapped hyperdashes should not be followed by antiflow dashes with a gap lower than 250ms.

This looks fine in my opinion as players need more time to read and react for those antiflow dashes after higher-snapped hyperdashes.

just noticed that the wording says "should" instead of "must"

therefore actual wording should be

Higher-snapped hyperdashes must not be followed by antiflow dashes with a gap lower than 250ms.

After talking about this for the last week, we've decided to add the following guideline:

Higher-snapped hyperdashes should not be followed by antiflow dashes with a gap lower than 250ms.

Forcing this, as a rule, isn't needed from our point of view. We will leave this open for 24~ hours before any of us will create a PR to the wiki.

Created a PR at https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/4960
Will finalize once merged