These are just a few suggestions I have after looking at the current state of 7K ranked maps. That being the number of super high star maps that for some reason all have to have LN🤔. And after experimenting a little, I found out that removing 1/4 length LNs in most of those maps will reduce the difficulty by 1 or more stars.

1. No LN length shorter than 30ms – reason being that it’s impossible to get lower unless you don’t bottom out, and it’s very inconsistent to achieve accurately anyways, so not a real skill (yet?).
2. LN with length between 50-89ms should just be treated the same as a normal note – reason being that with percy/cut ln skin, they are read and played the same as rice anyways.
3. So that means 30-49ms should be treated differently since it actually takes conscious effort.
   3.1 And lengths longer than 90ms also should be treated differently.
   3.2 Could even say that actual LONG notes and number of concurrent holds should increase difficulty i.e., inverse or release maps. This will better reflect low star inverse/release maps’ actual difficulty.

1. The benefits of implementing such changes will no longer give incentive to mappers from purposely adding LN to artificially inflate the pp (without increasing difficulty) which tarnishes map integrity and quality.
2. This will also make mappers more conscious about the different uses of LN and what feeling and effects it can achieve other than just visually.
3. Furthermore, (ranked) mappers can finally focus on something other than SR for once.
4. And finally, reward actual LN maps instead of rice maps disguised as LN.

Do you agree with what has been suggested or do you think that things are fine as the way they are now and nothing needs fixing?

Agree, tho I'd lean towards buffing rice + tech SR more (while considering the changes here), currently very hard rice maps doesn't have a star rating as high as they deserve, be it 4 or 7K

tl;dr Good post except, due to how LN timing windows work, they still allow for normal play in the 30ms-49ms range.

I totally agree with 1.) and 2.)

3.0
While I think this is technically correct, this just leaves the door open for more abuse in the future. LN timings also depend on if you're playing with ScoreV1 or ScoreV2, because in v1 the start and end are judged together but the hit windows get a lenience multiplier of 1.2 and 2.4 length respectively. Whereas in v2 they are judged separately and the LN end only has a 1.5 lenience multiplier.
I've looked through a few ranked maps and most have around OD7 which has a ±43.5ms timing window for 300s, so if your LN is 40ms long the timing of the LN end is over 100ms with scorev1 and over 60ms with v2. That means you can hit the end -60 to +140ms and -20 to +100ms after the start with v1 and v2 respectively according to this.
I don't know if these timing calculations are true, but from what I've read it seems to be this way, and it's also not easy to test without a program.

I would just leave this out, because you can even play 0ms LNs perfectly due to the hitwindow. LNs between 30-49ms length can still be cheesed and most players won't bother anyway because it plays so similiarly, without dropping acc.
Also at 300bpm or 200bpm + DT, 1/4 LNs are 50ms long, so that opens a new way for DT abuse, to have play maps with DT that are over 200bpm or just 300bpm+ maps in general.

3.1
While I agree that longer LNs should be treated differently there shouldn't be a hard cut off point like 90ms and there should be a smooth transition to favor longer LNs again due to how large the end timing window for Lns are, most can be cheesed heavily.

3.2
100% agree.

In my opinion we should rather slightly overnerf, than be too lenient and still have the same problem but with 1/2 and 1/8 LNs, which play similiarly with no or little deviation from normal play for players with a LN cut-off skin.

Agreed with majority of those points.
I'd also like to interject my own thoughts in relation to this topic regarding point number 2.


With the rise of percy across all keys, it's only common that some reworking of the timing windows were to be put in place, as a way to discourage massive percy edits
(eg: Stellium percy: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16fhAjZ61b4aayzJMJgcsWxr_1_eRg_j8/view).

This also helps with, as you mentioned, fixing these high star rating maps which all have LN as the majority. But instead of just making "LN with length between 50-89ms should [...] be treated the same as a normal not", a rework of timing windows could be placed instead. By encouraging players to use no percy skins (or the very least, skins with a little ln cut or percy edit) will greatly emphasise the difficulty of the higher ln star maps, as they were most likely intended to be viewed (unless the intention of the map was for pp).

This also applies for 4k, with maps such as End Time+DT (beatmapsets/1766740#mania/3616430), Weenywalker+DT (beatmapsets/1933536#mania/3995196) where, although the SR is lower due to the key amount, it still has overinflation, even with the LN nerf.

A couple benefits could include:

1.
Reflecting actual difficulty of the map with the star rating, and while that is hard to do, a rework on timing windows for LNs would be a step in the right direction.

2.
Encourages players to improve their LN accuracy. If we were to rework the timing windows along with your proposed changes (point 2 excluded) it will greatly reflect the difficulty of maps with high LN count, as mentioned before, discouraging percy rather than affecting how an LN is percieved by making certain lns worth the same as a regular note.

3.
Additionally have the possibility of helping mappers utilize LN in a different way, and encourage more inverse heavy maps to be created, rather than these obvious pp maps we have nowadays.

While this may seem unfair to percy users, I feel its an obvious step which contributes towards a playerbase who doesnt abuse percy with 10000+ pixel skins, rather smaller versions of it. However it will still affect how players read the game, but in my eyes, percy isn't cheating due to it only changing how a player READS the game, not PLAYS the game. I feel discouraging the use of overly abusive percy cuts rather than call it cheating or removing value to lengths would achieve a better result when it comes to how we approach this topic. I'm not mapper smart nor do I know how to correctly make a skin, but changing the value of LN length 50-89ms just to combat percy is silly and a bad idea.

What is everyone else's thouhts on this proposal? It won't change everything immediately, but is a step in the right direction. Let me know if I'm wrong in any of my points, or my entire argument is just silly.

With regards to buffing rice, as much as I want a rice buff, I recognise that that won't solve any issues but instead add to it. Think about the hybrid maps now, with a rice buff it'll hyperinflate the SR.

Now, what Malox raised is a very good point which I didn't account for. Basically all of my suggestions are moot once the timing windows come into play. One thing that I can think of is to remove the release leniency only for early releases and late releases will be spared. Reason being is that the idea of LN is to hold down the key and not so much the releasing aspect (as shown in many other rhythm games), so wouldn't it only be right to be stricter on early releases? As for how this might affect gameplay, I don't think it will bring any harm except that LN maps have to finally be played like LN maps. (EDIT. this change will affect mini/tiny LNs)

(EDIT 2 removed unnecessary stuff)

Short LNs are almost impossible to get full acc on though. You have to give them the exact amount of light taps while playing other patterns normally.

I do agree that late releases should be less strict than early ones, but I don’t really think this stuff can get changed since it would mean that every single score submitted would have to be recalculated again.

TBH I don’t think it’s short LNs cause that much of SR inflation. It’s probably mostly because of the LN flams and release timings just over 40ms.

I would suggest another rebalance of the SR system than not allowing people to use short LNs. I do think that RC should have some guideline against unjustified mini LNs.