WitherFlower wrote:
Total misscount gives far less information on combo than what it would seem like, for a simple reason : it is impossible to predict how those misses were distributed throughout the play. If I have 3 misses, I don't know if they were spread evenly, or if the player only missed a triple.
I don't see why this is a problem. Why is completely messing up a whole triple assumed to always be less of a mistake than missing randomly on 3 different jump patterns? The player really has to mess up to miss a whole triple. I don't think we should make arbitrary judgments on different kinds of misses and use that as a basis for a scoring system.
WitherFlower wrote:
It is also very hard to use misses for score calculation without making them very punitive. While testing this solution, we observed cases where a player could lose upwards of 50,000 score from a single miss, which feels very wrong in terms of player experience.
Why does it feel very wrong for misses to be punished significantly in certain cases? The player can lose way more than 50,000 score total from a single miss using combo scoring. Also, what cases?
peppy wrote:
Just to confirm you understand what you're saying: this would mean that anyone playing without classic mod into the future (ie. the default when playing on lazer) will always be at a disadvantage.
Then how about just not forcing significant difficulty changing gameplay changes on already ranked maps while playing nomod? That would resolve this dilemma.
The main changes in this category that I know of are notelock, slider ends not really mattering, and slider accuracy.
The notelock changes usually don't really change how the map is played outside of trying to pass a high star map, so it can just be a setting for player preference. It doesn't have to be part of a mod.
The changes to slider ends making them almost optional are clearly horrible for the flow of slider maps, so I assume this'll be reverted soon.
The main change is of course slider accuracy. I have never understood why slider accuracy
needs to be the default.
There are thousands of ranked maps that use slider accuracy leniency as an intentional mapping tool to remove unwanted reading and accuracy difficulty spikes. Some of the times where this would be used are:
- The first object of a map
- The first object after a break
- A sudden timing change
- A very complex rhythm
This is especially the case on low star maps. Hundreds of ranked map mappers over the last 15+ years have used a slider instead of a circle in these situations on ranked maps to smooth out the difficulty since players,
especially new players, shouldn't always be expected to visually read the timing of the approach circles to time something that is rhythmically unintuitive.
The reality is that the vast majority of people will never use the classic mod and new players won't understand what it is or what it does. So, if slider accuracy is forced on all already ranked maps as the default, then the VAST majority of players will be playing those thousands of maps, that use slider accuracy leniency intentionally, in an objectively worse state. Forever. This is sad to me. This will discourage new players from playing non-new maps. And worse, it will discourage mappers from mapping to complex rhythms and timings
even more than they already are since they will no longer have slider accuracy leniency to use as a tool.
People often phrase forcing slider accuracy on old maps as something that has to be done for the progress of the game, but for these reasons, with how it is currently planned, I can't see it as anything other than a step backwards for the game.
My proposal is having slider accuracy be a difficulty setting like AR and OD instead of including it in the classic mod. For new maps, mappers can choose to leave slider accuracy on if it doesn't matter for their map, or they can turn it off to use a mapping tool that has been used for 15+ years. For all already ranked maps, it'll be off by default. Players can instead change it using the difficulty adjust mod. If the map has it on and the player turns it off, there will be a score penalty. If the map has it off and the player turns it on, there won't be a score bonus because it is impossible to balance, but they can still use it to practice and also for competing in different ways.
What I'm trying to say is, changing slider accuracy is changing mapping, so it should be up to the mappers how it applies to their maps by default.
(I apologize if any of this seems too strongly worded. I have thought about and debated these topics for several years now, so I have strong opinions about them. Thanks for reading.)