K so spinner approach sounds real bad so idk what else could be used so I'll use it for now.

This would be for easies and either normals or in the lowest diff normal part

Guideline:

Spinners should not appear before the end of the last object before it. This is to ensure enough time is given int he slider approach so that new players do not preemptively stop playing to start spinning.

Essentially this is to cover cases like this in lower diffs https://celerih.s-ul.eu/5exCV3K9.png where the spinner appears and players just start whackin around as they do when they see a spinner before the slider has even time to be done.

I'm not great at wording but i want to know what ppl think of a rule like this for this case

has this ever been observed in easy/normal player behaviour? i'd agree the rule makes good sense if someone can show instances of this causing unfair gameplay (perhaps replays on qualified maps), otherwise it would probably just be excessive and there's no point introducing a guideline that wouldn't have any noticeable effect for that target audience

good proposal, i was thinking the same long time ago, we could add it

would probably do more harm than good tbh.
1) There are all sorts of songs where spinners just barely fit the rc spinner length / recovery time rules, applying this guideline ontop of those would basically eliminate many possible places to use a spinner in the first place

2) Your screenshot is a reverse slider.... if anything players should learn to hold sliders for their whole value / get better grasp on slider leniency instead of being babied, which is what they are expected to know in hard diffs

3) This has always been fine? I'm not sure why it would make sense to suddenly enforce rules/guidelines for it, I agree with spoes that unless there are instances that deem it unfair, that its just excessive and unnecessary.

If players are "whackin around as they do when they see a spinner before the slider" then maybe they just need more experience playing rather changing things.

I'll try and grab some testplays over the next few days

A few things, firstly, I like this kind of proposal.

There can be concerns for how this proposal may negatively affect "stuff" (lets keep it ambiguous/open for now), but ultimately I would like to standardize how we view guidelines and low diffs functionally for the game.

Firstly looking at the guidelines for lower diffs, they do a few things, but guidelines in general are for newer mappers. I hope this is self explanatory but if need be I can elaborate on them.

Secondly, in the context of spread we know that low diffs are supposed to introduce mechanics of the game that higher difficulties utilize. In other words, Low diffs are teaching tools for new players to be more capable of harder diffs in the future.

It should be commonplace in the example that two circles following a slider end in an easy diff, both being the same spacing from said slider without any overlapping whatsoever would cause a reading issue. Newer players of any gamemode struggle reading ahead (you can test this out if you have a gamemode you have yet to play), which is normally why object density is as low as it is for lower diffs. Therefor having two near identical objects immediately accessible after a slider end is a bad practice for lower diffs. And such a problem is worse when an object later in the timeline MORE accessible than objects earlier in the timeline. (this is seen in hard diff plays as well btw). This accessibility issue is seen with single objects and spinners as well.

and more direct addressings:
>yes it is seen in replays of new players. I've introduced a bunch of new players into the game and met a bunch of normal diff/hard diff players/mains that make these mistakes all the time.

>yes there are a lot of points where spinners barely fit the minimum spinner lengty/recovery time, but those also usually suck in the context of maps anyways,

>the screenshot is not the exact best example but yes new players still make those sort of mistakes because they are still grasping the idea of how objects work, it doesn't make a lot of sense to introduce more punishment in gameplay at this level when we want to encourage people to play the game. And its not a rewarding experience to have objects on your screen just sitting there unplayed.

>guidelines aren't mean to be strictly followed most of the time, they are meant to teach mappers how new players play so mappers can teach new players how to play. Also the "just play more" attitude is never how you improve in a game like this, there are actual things you can do for your gameplay and practice sessions to improve. So I would not subject beginner players to such a sometimes fatal(in respects to staying with the game) and misleading mantra

good luck pushing this post through/possibly making improvements to the guideline itself

I really think this is a non-issue.
Spinners have an AR-agnostic approach time of a bit less than 400ms.
If you place a spinner on the blue tick after a sliderend this means they would have to recognise the spinner (which takes about 50ms of fade-in before being that noticeable), process its appearance and start moving their cursor madly before the slider itself actually ends.
On 120bpm that means they would need to move to their cursor sufficiently far from the sliderend within less than 300ms. I would guess that the amount of new players with reaction times like this is at best on a magnitude of 1 in 1000 players, likely much much less. It's on the scale of someone being able to read AR10 on their first day in the game.

I fully agree with Lafayla here. This would do much more harm than any perceivable good for players and mappers alike. I have also seen new players coming to the Gameplay & Rankings forum boasting about their spinning skills when they weren't really playing the rest of the game "correctly" so learning when the spinner happens and going ham on it for nonsensical reasons is not out of the question either, even if you can find replays of this happening.

It isn't about reaction time to the spinner but rather about the spinner covering up or making it confusing to see a slider. If there is a case where a spinner being 1/4 beat shorter fails to meet drain time, I would be extremely surprised to see that since the proposal does not affect where spinners can end. As for the minimum score, one could simply start the spinner where the last clickable object is (subpar but acceptable), or simply not use a short spinner that will be a pain in the ass to play for new players (better).

Plenty of things were at one point "always fine and acceptable" but that doesn't mean that guidelines cannot be improved. I don't see how this is restrictive as it is merely saying to delay spinners by 1/4 beat to avoid reading problems for new players on lowest diffs made specifically for new players to play.

I'm not sure if the difference between a 1/4 gap and a 1/2 gap before a spinner is even distinguishable but I think in most cases half a beat is enough time for players to react to the spinner, so that could be used as a minimum gap before the spinner start. It obviously depends on the BPM, AR and OD though so this might just be an arbitrary number, but then again it would be a guideline which is more lenient in that regard anyway.

I can see why players would start spinning before even finishing to play the previous object, since beginners tend to be overwhelmed by new objects appearing on the screen and react to them as fast as possible. One could argue that they'll learn to complete each object as intended before moving on to the next one, but from what I've seen players keep struggling with this kind of issue for some time so it might be a good idea to aid them a little.

On the other hand, adding a minimum time gap requirement before the start of a spinner that is noticeably longer than what is commonly being used right now could be problematic in terms of song representation. Usually, spinners are used for fade-outs, build-ups etc. so starting the spinner too late wouldn't feel connected to what the song is doing.

@serizawa harukoi

even if there were harder numbers to go by, this is still a guideline not a rule. furthermore there are already limitations to interacting with spinner rhythms for low diffs that mappers already have to work around, the onus is on the mapper to follow the song in the end and likely the examples you may think of are likely non problematic and the possibility of having such a conflict of interest is improbable at worst and folklore at best

@endaris

I have a similar idea to nao tomori, but it seems like some ideas in your post neglect my priors post existence, if you could more directly respond to it we would be able to move towards consensus on this topic

@bor yeah I realized that and edited my post at the same time as you posted yours xd

I already use 1/2 gaps before a spinner in all my Easy/Normal diffs (which is what I map most of the time anyway) and I think it works just fine, but I can try to get some testplays if necessary. Many people use 1/4 gaps though and I don't know if that makes a big difference or not.

Personally, I would just set a 1/2 gap as a benchmark to keep it simple.

from the earliest Easy diffs we expect the player to learn and understand multiple objects on the screen. the only difference with spinners is that instead of an approach circle, you get the "spin!" text. if the player makes the mistake of spinning too early, the lack of a spinning animation or sound makes it pretty clear that their action has no effect

seems like a pointless guideline because the game is already designed well for this

@clayton the difference here with spinners is that a spinner is accessible at all locations of the screen, as a holistic interaction object, where as individual objects are more regionally accessible. There is no expectation of an easy diff player to differentiate object timelines via approach circle or numbers only and rather a time-distance gap has been established to help with that differentiation. This sort of proposal attempts the same thing but because the spinner is globally accessible there is no regional/spacing differences you can create to help the player identify time gaps, and in a notable amount of cases said accessibility the spinner has become problematic.

I would find it hard that the spinner animation and or sound would bring clarity when spinner sound is not (typically) hitsoundable as other objects are and have a loop based sound that is detatched from "normal" perceptions of instrumental feedback. as for the animation, the spinner never directly reflects the speed at which you are spinning, which is immediately understood by even new players and there is a windup to the spinner giving "immediate" feedback. Its not quite fair to say the feedback of a spinner is remotely relatable to that of any other object in the game at this point.

And though there are some design elements of the game to assist in said reading, mappers (especially mappers unfamiliar with the nuances of lower diffs) do not understand situations in which players have legitimate issues with reading objects in general. Which in large I tried to talk about in my original post.

@serizawa harukoi

I like the idea of following rhythmic guidelines for time between spinners and their immediate prior objects

why is the focus on making it as easy as possible to read? you're right that having some space before the spinner fades in would make them easier to read since they cover a lot of space and don't have the exact same mechanics as other objects. but an Easy diff is meant to teach the player... in an example like OP's, any action taken by a new player will prompt them to learn something

good game design isn't about removing all "issues"

my post was never about removing all "issues"

Its about creating a focus design fixed on what the newer players need to learn to move up in the game, while removing unnecessary "problems" that take away from the focused design of lower diffs, at the easiest level of gameplay shouldn't the players focus on how to play the fundamental objects instead of trying to focus on reading elements? does reading not always come secondary to playing objects itself?

also the line "any action taken by a new player will prompt them to learn something" is untrue, players must understand that something is fundamentally wrong, in which they still have to learn how the game gives said feedback of "wrong"

i think ur overthinking this way too much

nothing overlaps spinner: nothing to discuss
object overlaps spinner and player has no issues: nothing to discuss
object overlaps spinner and player spins too early: player gets feedback about their miss (or 100, for sliders), and gets no feedback from the spinner, dispelling their expectation that spinning early would work

> players must understand that something is fundamentally wrong, in which they still have to learn how the game gives said feedback of "wrong"

they know it's wrong cuz once they play the spinner they can hear the loudass sound and see it moving. there's also a large "Spin!" text that appears immediately before the spinner starts working. this is what I already wrote in other post and your counterargument misses my point

you have two false assumptions imo,

the first being that only a slider preceding a spinner is an issue, this goes for circles as well, and
2> have you watched a new player play a spinner? how the hell will most new players have the ability to actually see the 100 on the slider given their gameplay, and if the objects are so closely intertwined, the spinner will start spinning when its supposed to, with its windup, and understanding that time gap is something new players won't have the ability to do because they will assume the spinner is still "winding up"

also the text is so disconnected from other objects' functions, its not like other objects have text as for when they are supposed to be hit nor does the tutorial explain the nuance of "one object before the other" which osu!stream entirely deviates from with its 2b mapping (if they had that to begin with, its not intuitive to assume objects only happen once at a time especially when there are multiple on the screen at a time) Its not exactly intuitive to rely on text cues when no other time in a map will there be a text cue to perform an action, much less take time away from focusing on current objects to read the text cue.

also I did not miss your point about the spinner, as the feedback from the spinner is a windup instead of how feedback works with other objects where they make a distinctive stacatto sound once struck > and have a distinct visual cue where the object dissapears

(the first thing u mention is wrong if you read my post but it's not important anyway)
edited edited

likewise you're assuming new players aren't able to comprehend the difference in feedback between before the spinner's start and after, something which (according to the lack of evidence in this thread) nobody has observed a new player struggling with. this is such a tiny detail that I don't think any new player would be able to give u insightful feedback (you'd have to prompt the question, already ruining your results because you'd have suggested the idea they may not have considered when actually playing), so assumptions are necessary. this info is something you will never discover from just watching someone play because it's about cognition...

this idea stands to benefit nothing and the RC is hella bloated as is. if you're truly worried about new players' ability to understand basic gameplay you should probably start at the tutorial or something

Somebody should compile a list of maps that have this and give some low ranked players to play to see with they think about it

@clayton

I wouldn't say I'm assuming something without having done research, actually - especially in my newer years to mapping - spent days worth of time simply watching newer players play the game. So these things I am mentioning I've personally observed from multiple players. And the claim that "you must ask them and its not possible to tell intent from their replay" is untrue. Where people move their cursor, how long cursors linger on objects, and irl things like eye movement and laughing and whatnot can all help decipher intent especially when the person isn't incredibly self aware or articulate.

this is why its also important to identify the levels of new-ness because players who play fps/shooter games or other rhythm games can pick up the fundamentals quicker, especially if they are caring about improving, whereas a lot of people play the game without any or much prior experience playing the game and just play it for the sake of listening to their favorite songs from their favorite animes etc.

And yes sure I like to work on generalities, not so much assumptions. How someone could logically come across something or how likely they are to perform some behaviour based on intuitive design and whatnot are more what generalities should be used when breaking down smaller instances/occurrences.

While I would like to be full authority figure mode because of my time spent watching/analyzing replays and the sort, I have no concrete replays/VODS to explain these things right now AND its healthier for the community to work together in replay analysis and discussion to find what is truly best for new players.

As for abraker, I think more documents and VODs of analysis would be incredibly helpful, I think celerih is working on something more tailored to your request. (not entirely sure on this though)

what gamemode is this for? please specify in the post.

tatatat: standard
Free Hong Kong:
first 3 paragraphs are arguing over things I didn't claim, and I agree with all of that

my point is "replay analysis" won't reveal anything useful to this particular discussion---consider all of the possible evidence you may find, and consider all of the conclusions you could make from it. unless you follow the same player(s) over a longer period of time, there's no way to tell if the game's design intuitively taught players how this mechanic works or if the RC addition is necessary. I'm sure some kind of extensive study could be done but at that point I really doubt if it's worth your time, especially considering this technique has been done for 12+ years and negative effects are yet to be found

FWIW I'm not too against adding this as a guideline, cuz at least the intuition checks out and it can't really hurt anything, but at the same time I think it might be useless. I'd much prefer we make these types of threads after discovering conclusive results, not before

"this technique has been done for 12+ years and negative effects are yet to be found"

this is untrue if you follow people who are first starting to play the game. Especially people who are unfamiliar with games in general, but more specifically new to rhythm games, they do make this mistakes and in some instances also are able to articulate what confuses them. the problem is nobody cares about lower diffs enough to watch low diff replays or ask lower diff players what they think are issues or problems then run into in maps. Just because nothing has changed for 12 years doesn't mean nothing is wrong.

can you show them then? why tell if you can show. would have saved a bit of time here

bro i said i don't have any replays >> my point is the last thing i said anyways

what's with the definitive speaking then. this is such a strange thread lol

>Just because nothing has changed for 12 years doesn't mean nothing is wrong.

I think you just need to read my messages a little more carefully. I never claim "nothing is wrong" and I'm not even disagreeing with ur concern

I mean there is no value in continuing our back and forth exchange then, I just prefer to clarify statements for onlookers. Now I guess we wait for celerih or others' to add to the conversation

It just seems to be completely counterintuitive to the already present guideline:

Avoid spinners less than 4 beats. Players need time to recognize that they have to begin spinning.

Like what, do they actually need time to recognize them now or not. Because this proposal assumes definitely not.

Endaris wrote:

It just seems to be completely counterintuitive to the already present guideline:

Avoid spinners less than 4 beats. Players need time to recognize that they have to begin spinning.

Like what, do they actually need time to recognize them now or not. Because this proposal assumes definitely not.

The proposal does the opposite of that, do you mind explaining why you believe otherwise?

OP wrote:

where the spinner appears and players just start whackin around as they do when they see a spinner before the slider has even time to be done.

this assumption contradicts the assumption in the guideline Endaris mentioned, because if the player can start "whackin around" so quickly after the spinner appears then they must not "need [a significant amount of] time to recognize that they have to begin spinning"

I think the answer here is just that not every player is the same, but the wording is not great at suggesting this

im reading through the thread and im not at all sure how to proceed

so first, it seems like a good deal of people don't agree with adding any amount of "spinner approach" control for different reasons, most important being "it's not a problem for new players to deal with (even if they struggle at first)"

if there were an agreement on that, the second issue is that there's no concrete numbers for how to implement it (like x beats between object and spinner for WhateverDifficulty) which makes testing any improvements impossible

gonna give this a week -- if there's no conclusion for whether the addition is useful + what possible values should be used, the thread will be archived

I already proposed a concrete value (1/2 beat) but the problem is that finding testplayers is actually very difficult for Easy/Normal diffs because most players who are still learning how to play those are so new to the game that they don't even know how to open the chat or they don't answer for some reason. I've tried getting testplays for some of my Easy diffs before and all players who replied were able to nearly SS the map effortlessly which means they were already too good to gather useful information. Besides, this specific guideline would be very situational as it depends on the BPM, the AR, the length of the spinner and whether the player expects a spinner or not (for example if they know the song and there's a fade-out at the end). You'd have to observe plays on the same map with different gaps before the spinner to obtain relevant data which also excludes replays on qualified maps since you can't change them during the qualified state.

archiving since it seems like no conclusion will be reached for things mentioned here community/forums/posts/7376120