We currently use the following HP drain settings as a guideline:

Current HP guideline settings


Those settings seem pretty old to me and almost all newly created mapsets use the lowest value of the guideline or even something below this. Especially on the lower diffs it can be harsh to use the value of the guideline. For example, using a HP drain of 6 for platter is way to overkill in my eyes and doesn't seem like a guideline to me.

I would like to propose the following change to this guideline value of the HP setting to a more up to date standard/meta by lowering most values by 1:

Proposed HP guideline settings


On top of this I want to add a new rule which enforces round values in the HP setting, this is because decimal numbers do not work for catch and even BN's seem to forget this sometimes, like in this situation.

New general rule


I would like to discuss if we want to keep current settings but only extend it with 1 more value.
I also want to discuss if we want a general rule like this to make it clear for everyone and if the wording for this can be shorter or not because a small explanation for newer people is a must in my opinion.

I always wondered if the used HP values these days make much sense or not.

People discuss HP values on Overdoses (mainly to avoid instant-deaths or to reduce the chance of an instant-death), but I've never seen people investigating the effect of HP values in lower diffs. Maybe we should test out different HP values on different difficulty levels first before deciding on the numbers - the guidelines shouldn't just reflect the given meta imo, since that hinders new meta resp. the development of the meta.

I am fine with the round number rule.

i mean there's no reason to make the last one a rule because it shouldn't be disallowed, it just doesn't do anything

other one is cool, can push that easily when other people give feedback

Sanyi wrote:

Maybe we should test out different HP values on different difficulty levels first before deciding on the numbers - the guidelines shouldn't just reflect the given meta imo, since that hinders new meta resp. the development of the meta.

I wrote all this more out of my personal view of this, since I think the highest HP setting currently for every diff is just to hard and not forgivable for each difficulty level respectively. But I agree with you here that using "the current meta" as to change it seems a bit silly.

Ascendance wrote:

i mean there's no reason to make the last one a rule because it shouldn't be disallowed, it just doesn't do anything

This is because (at least when I started mapping) I used decimal values on HP until someone told me about it since there was no rule or guideline for this setting whatsoever. Adding this would instead be a good clarification for newer mappers. Also, I think we should add it just because it doesn't do anything at all in catch.

Greaper wrote:

I wrote all this more out of my personal view of this, since I think the highest HP setting currently for every diff is just to hard and not forgivable for each difficulty level respectively.

Can you provide examples for what is ok and what is too hard? Would be nice to have a few maps/diffs as a reference for what you consider too hard and why you'd say that is too hard.

Make it a guideline, not a rule @ 2nd part

there's nothing that disallows it or SHOULD disallow it, it just doesnt do anything

Sanyi wrote:

Can you provide examples for what is ok and what is too hard? Would be nice to have a few maps/diffs as a reference for what you consider too hard and why you'd say that is too hard.

There're are only a few mapsets which use this kind of high HP drain, are ranked and feel to harsh to me.

For some examples with platter difficulties:
This or this are good examples where the HP seems a bit to much to me.

One good example where this kind of high HP does fit on all diffs is this because it mainly uses 1/2 patterns and it's not very high bpm.

Ascendance wrote:

Make it a guideline, not a rule @ 2nd part

there's nothing that disallows it or SHOULD disallow it, it just doesnt do anything

I guess a guideline works as well but a rule would ensure always using the correct value so we don't get decimal values on maps which do nothing. Lets see how other people think about this before we do something about it.

I'm gonna suggest my changes first, and then explain them after. My changes proposed are in bold.

Proposed HP guideline settings



Explanation for change to Cup: Below HP2 is near never needed, and if it is used in conjunction with the rest of the guidelines in this section, it would be quite a noticeable jump from cup to salad, especially if HP0 was used. A case where below HP2 would be fitting would be a case where all of the other difficulties would probably require HP lower than the guideline suggests, and so it makes sense to increase the guideline to a more reasonable level.

Explanation for change to Rain: HP7 in a rain is quite often acceptable, due to the nature of rains tending to introduce a lot more in the way of 1/4 streams for health recovery, and generally have less issues with health draining out too quickly in slow sections, which is the main big problem with high HP drain rates.

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As for the rule suggestion, I would actually prefer it to be a rule, and in fact I don't feel a need to explain this here, as I think more of an explanation should be given in the rule itself, so the below suggestion should give my explanation for me.



Other than these proposed changes, I'm really happy with the proposal as it is now.

Edit: Also fixed a slight grammar issue in my suggestion of the rule, "a round numbers" was fixed to "a round number".

this wording would work much better for the rule (because "round number" technically means something else):



or:



or:



i know most people dont know the technical meaning of "round number" and just assume it to be a rounded-up/down number (even i didnt know the technical meaning) but its best to be precise with the terminologies used in rules

and yes i do agree this should be a rule, just best to avoid player confusion as to figuring out whether decimal HP behaves like the ceiling value, floor value, or something inbetween (and yea they can be misleading)

decimal hp does nothing on a client/playfield level, it just confuses the fuck out of players (and we're most likely gonna tell everyone who uses decimal hp to Delete This so might as well make it a rule anyway)

as for the proposed hp guidelines, i actually think overdose should just be 5-7 or 6-7: 8 is rarely used (only appears on 12 maps, including hp9-10) and i personally think its way too punishing already (but hey i despise 7 as well so that might just be me)

other than that, me likey

MBomb wrote:

Below HP2 is near never needed, and if it is used in conjunction with the rest of the guidelines in this section, it would be quite a noticeable jump from cup to salad, especially if HP0 was used. A case where below HP2 would be fitting would be a case where all of the other difficulties would probably require HP lower than the guideline suggests, and so it makes sense to increase the guideline to a more reasonable level.

I agree with you that HP below 2 might be not a situation which occurs often and since its a guideline changing this to a more "standard" might be better.

MBomb wrote:

Explanation for change to Rain: HP7 in a rain is quite often acceptable, due to the nature of rains tending to introduce a lot more in the way of 1/4 streams for health recovery, and generally have less issues with health draining out too quickly in slow sections, which is the main big problem with high HP drain rates.

In my opinion I still think that HP 7 for rains is to harsh and should only be used in special occasions. For example, a 5-minute rain is something were I would pick HP 7 for but other then that I don't really see a use case for this.

Spreadwise using HP 7 for a rain wouldn't make sense if the platter would use HP 6 and fall outside the newly proposed guideline since with this change, we encourage a HP gap of 2 and we would end up with strange spreads like:

3/4/5/7/8 - this wouldn't make sense at all since we want a logical increase instead of having this gap between the platter and rain.
1/3/5/7/9 - this would make more sense, but it would be way to hard, especially for higher diffs its way to overkill and we only have a handful of difficulties which use HP 9.

Bunnrei wrote:

HP drain must be an integer.

I don't think using the Latin word for "whole" is a good choose since we want to make the RC understandable for everyone not just a selected group of people who know this word or have some kind of programming background where the term is used very frequent.

Bunnrei wrote:

HP drain must be a whole number.

This would fit way better in my eyes.

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So, we would end up with the following values for the HP setting (if MBomb agrees with my opinion):



And for the new HP rule we should have something like:



I’m not sure about the following wording "HP settings naturally round up in osu!catch, and therefore decimal HP values lead to the drain rate being misleading when compared to other HP values.".

Something like "HP settings naturally round up in osu!catch, and therefore the use of decimal values should not be used." would make much more sense to me or something like "HP settings naturally round up in osu!catch, and therefore the use of decimal values is misleading and has no additional value."

"Round number" -> "Integer", this cannot be misinterpreted.

Saying "decimal values should not be used" doesn't immediately explain why, which is why the additional clause about decimal HP values being misrepresentative is necessary.

I agree with those changes.

After some discussion on the osu!catch Modding and Mapping Hub I am ok with the proposed HP values and making the integer suggestion into either a guideline or a rule (whatever people prefer).

I'm fine as long as they stay in guidelines

The integer rule/guideline needs to be scrapped now because we just found out that decimal HP values work now!

Sanyi wrote:

The integer rule/guideline needs to be scrapped now because we just found out that decimal HP values work now!

Some of us still think this guideline is useful and I myself think that adding this guideline would ensure that the difficulties on catch maintain in a clean spread with an incremental increase.

So only adding the following should do well:


or we could add something like:



This is of course if we can add if we decide to go with the "standardized value" reason for this guideline.

I disagree, now that we know that decimal hp does have an effect, I think it's 100% fine to use (and is actually rather helpful for spread reasons), so there's no need to restrict it.

Agree with MBomb, the second half is scrappable now

Will give a final call for the following guideline and if Greaper is okay with it then we’ll give it a final date and push it.

Ascendance wrote:

Will give a final call for the following guideline and if Greaper is okay with it then we’ll give it a final date and push it.

Okay I'm fine with that, I guess adding the extra guideline/rule would be useless.

finalized