starting a discussion here as loctav said it would be a better alternative to arguments on twitter or other sites

as you probably know, the most recent update to lazer changes how sliderend accuracy interacts with combo, i'll quickly list the changes below:

when you miss a sliderend in lazer, you now break combo - compared to just getting a 100 and -1 to combo

personally i think this change is counter-intuitive to the reason why it was put in place, and ill talk about the change itself and the reason why it was changed (and why this reasoning feels a bit flawed) here:



if you want to make gameplay less stale, and/or spice it up a little like what was said in peppy's response, the best way to do that would be to do something like adding new playable mods (that arent just gimmicks like the new ones in lazer) or relax some guidelines on the ranking criteria to allow unique and innovative things (while obviously still maintaining quality standards) or just about anything that doesnt actively make the gameplay more stale as this change would.

overall i think what most of us want is a better explanation regarding the change, why it was put into place, what positive effects it will have on gameplay and how it will make gameplay less stale

(also if theres any points ive missed feel free to add stuff as im sure this isnt all the issues people have with the change)

I agree, in that I am against this change. I like the idea of additional mods instead actually.

My main problem with the introduction of these sliderend changes is the impact they will have on current maps (even in the ranked section). Going about a change like this will need all sorts of changing in ranking criteria, and not only that but current ranked maps that abuse slider leniency will become unplayable.

I think that if this was the case from the very beginning it would be fine. This is because maps would be built around this. But unfortunately, the way maps currently are, this change is going to break a lot of ranked maps and is extremely unfair.

Introducing other mods would be a more interesting way to spice up game play as they give players choices on what they actually want to make more difficult about maps

as this would break the 5 years worth of slider-heavy maps that i love, i am 100% against this change

@altai it could work well as a sudden-death style mod, where it adds that restriction but doesn't alter pp/score

Reposting my post from my Reddit account on this very topic with some additions so it doesn't seem so rushed:

Slideracc is an idea I don't disagree with, but breaking combo upon dropping a sliderend is one I heavily disagree with. As others have mentioned in other discussion threads (Twitter & Reddit mainly) - this change has been implemented far too late into the game's lifespan, ultimately breaking a lot of pre-established mapping metas and other known facts about the game. It would break a lot of players' scores and, as mentioned by another user - would serve to do nothing more than to cause confusion between the older plays and the newer plays.

Slideracc is a good thing - it's definitely a thing I think should've been in the game from the start as it makes no sense why you can horribly mistime a slider and still hit a perfect 300 on it, and it's a change I think most of us can adapt to no problem. But breaking combo on a dropped sliderend is definitely pushing it.

I see where this change comes from, it makes sense in concept to help distinguish true full combos from "fake" ones (like dropping 10x ends and getting a 95% FC or lower), but at this point it's way too late to implement it because it would break a lot of existing maps, like a majority of tech maps. With this change, I feel like tech mapping would be as good as dead.

Maps greatly affected by this would be stuff like UndeadCapulet's Deal with the devil among plenty of other, namely Loved, maps like blissfulyoshi's Ikenai Borderline. Of course I can find examples, there are millions of dropped sliderend FCs that would just simply no longer be FCs due to this change, even on regular maps.

This kind of change is definitely 13 years too late. Slideracc is adaptable, but this is really pushing it.

Edit:
This type of idea could work as a separate mod instead. Kind of like how ScoreV2 in stable is currently a selectable mod, this idea could work as a separate mod like Duskyui above mentioned, but definitely shouldn't be forced onto the player if the dev team wants to keep this idea around.

quick thing but the bit about 10ms of difference before the sliderend registers is actually 36 ms as shown by this

As someone who is a very very active player and has worked over the years to help out in the community (usually not directly on the forums, to be fair), a huge motivating factor in me still playing every day is the game's own longevity & directly interracting with the game's history in its making. I strongly oppose any change which jeopardises older scores and makes it difficult to compare newer scores to older ones. Basically, if a valid option to mitigating issues that arise due to a change made to the game is to make old scores obsolete or wipe them completely, I'm not interested. As a result, this change is obviously completely off the table for me. I believe the way in which the mechanics of this game have barely changed in the last 13 years is a good thing. Many people agree with me, I shouldn't have to point them out. Before you say anything about that, by 'many people' I refer not to the layman, but people like me who have poured thousands of hours into the game and love the game to the Moon and back. Call me selfish, but I think such people are the kinds of people who should be listened to.

That being said, the change itself isn't a good one from a gameplay perspective in the first place. You're telling me that it took until today for you to decide that the sliderend mechanic we've had for 13 years is actually incorrect? Well, congratulations, because you accidentally made a pretty good mechanic 13 years ago. Sliders are harder to hit than hitcircles. There's more to hitting a slider than there is to hitting a hitcircle. For a hitcircle, you either hit it or you miss it. Quite simply, the way in which you hit it can be measured based on how close to the intended hitwindow you actually hit the note. But again, there's not much more that can go wrong.

With a slider, you can make many more minor mistakes within the process of pressing, following, and releasing the slider. You can mis-time hitting the start of the slider (slideracc, which is a whole different can of worms). You can mis-aim the sliderbody, which itself is not punished unless you miss a slider tick, in which case your combo is broken. Fair enough. You can miss the end of a slider, which results in a 100 and you simply don't get the combo for that one slider-end.

I think that the existing mechanic is a very good one. While there's no real feedback to missing a slider-end (with slideracc in the mix, since normally the feedback is getting a 100), I think that the lesser punishment for missing the end of a slider balances out the difficulty between regular hitcircles and sliders. Usually mappers have sliders start on strong sounds and end on weak ones, so a mistake in letting go of one a little early, especially when hitting multiple, super-fast sliders in a row and aiming in different directions, is quite a common mistake to make. It is definitely a mistake I would consider major enough to be punished (as it is currently), but minor enough that out-right breaking your entire combo (the most extreme punishment in the game, really) is quite questionable.

Every map ever created in this game has been made with slider mechanics in mind. Changing those mechanics would change the intended way of playing every single map in the game. So, no thanks.

Pretty much gonna summarize some ideas, probably seen these arguments everywhere already but:

I get that the intention is to punish for dropping slider ends, but breaking combo isn't the way to go. As mentioned earlier, tons of slider heavy maps will be doomed to unplayability (such as Monstrata's Trinity Homerun, which uses 3/16 sliders that are next to impossible to score perfectly). Additionally, as people mentioned in the Github thread, it imposes a huge restriction on gameplay that makes future maps less likely to use sliders in more creative ways.

Notably, this actually won't really force people to aim sliders according to the track; if anything, people will treat the slider end as another tick, and if the -30ms judgement offset is still a thing, that makes gameplay really weird for faster or longer sliders.

A more palatable solution here is to turn it into a mod (or even allow mappers to force mods on submission so that players cannot submit scores that don't have certain mod requirements, like using or not using a particular mod).

Also, with regards to the "playability becoming stale" argument, all this does is push out the maps that were trying to fix that to begin with. As many people have mentioned, this change will do nothing but force the convergence of mapping styles in the ranked section, which I can't see going in any other direction but making the game more stale overall.

Slider leniency (both slider acc and slider end leniency) are defining characteristics of Osu and to change it at this point is throwing away tons of mapping history and forcing players into a change that may not end up for the better.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

It's ridiculous to even consider implementing a change like this at all I feel. I honestly think peppy needs some sort of input from experienced players to run ideas by before he even implements them in lazer because he obviously doesn't know what impacts gameplay for better or worse. Why sink time into coding solutions that no one wants when you could have the idea struck down immediately and work on something that would actually improve the game. He's also gotten so used to people being outraged over poor decision in the past that I feel backlash from stuff like this won't even phase him. I just want the future of this game that I've sunk almost 7 years of my life into to be bright but every time something like this happens it makes it a little harder to see the light.

I'm not against it being added as a mod, however adding it as a mandatory thing seems just stupid. A lot of maps are very slider heavy, especially if you like tech maps and it renders some literally impossible to fc. So as a mod, it makes sense as you don't have to have it enabled but it can (maybe) give you a slight multiplier if you do. This would actually be a cool implementation imo, but I'd much rather it wasn't forced upon people essentially ruining a lot of people's entire playstyle and enjoyment in the game. It makes no sense to me to randomly make such a huge change to the game after so many years which many players have literally said will make them quit if it is permanently implemented into the game and not in the form of a mod. By default sliders are harder to hit and some, especially in tech maps, go extremely fast to the point of you can't physically hit all of the slider ends accurately. These maps to me and to others are a great deal of fun and it doesn't make sense to render them almost impossible. I love the game as it is now and sure there are aspects that need polishing but that's true of any game, but making such a big change after 13 years is not going to make you popular.

Edit: As Willy above me said, some opinions and views from experience players you can trust not to leak things would be the way to go, this isn't the first backlash you've had from pretty much the entire community and I'm sure won't be the last. Also as he said, whereas I only have half that time in the game at 3.5 years I can't see myself playing it into the future if we keep getting insane changes like this that we're expected to just agree with. Consult your community first and listen to them.

This change is bad for both new and seasoned players. The only good change would be making the slider end hitbox where the slider actually ends instead of 36 ms before. It's fine as is.

The change would render most technical maps (or any map with fast sliders) nearly unplayable. I've played with it on lazer and I can confirm even easier maps like Talent Shredder are 10x harder to not combo break on.

from having a chat with loctav its better to comment on how the change plays ingame rather than the implications it would have for the meta (as with lazer meta is going to change anyways)

DeviousPanda wrote:

from having a chat with loctav its better to comment on how the change plays ingame rather than the implications it would have for the meta (as with lazer meta is going to change anyways)

If a single proposed change could potentially remove multiple genres of maps from the game due to their loss in viability then a meta discussion is critically important and relevant to this change and we should not have to wait until a few years down the line when Lazer is released to discuss problems caused by a change now.

To discuss gameplay specifically though:

- Make sliderend hit detection occur precisely at the end, not 36ms before it's end.
- Since this game's ranking system is based primarily around aiming and scoring high accuracy on circles, it makes no sense to punish so hard for not following sliders precisely. Current 100 points for a missed sliderend system is much more fitting for the game's metric of how skill is measured.
- A better gameplay alternative would be to reward players for following the sliders. You'd need slidertrack difficulty calculations though, which is not happening anytime this century.. let's be real
- By implementing this change you are adding an immense amount of difficulty to many maps, but offering no new reward to the players for this extra challenge. So why should the player play them? The average player will simply play the maps least affected by this change, which are likely to be the average "PP maps". And now we are back to how the gameplay related to this change directly affects the "meta". The discussion of loss of multiple genres of maps cannot be avoided when discussing this change.

Combobreaks on sliderends feel unfair since sliderends aren't interpreted as an "active gameplay element".

It is difficult to comment on this mechanic without going into any detail regarding how it affects current maps. One thing that I think is fair to consider is that future maps (which would have this mechanic presumably) would end up having easier sliders to accomodate for this feature - and that's if "old maps won't have this, new maps will". No more slider tech maps - no one will want to play *those* when you can just play the old ones that feel more fair.

I genuinely think that the best way forward would be to implement slider acc + sliderend breaks as one mod. There would be incentive for players to play with this mod through changes to the performance point system to accomodate for slider difficulty - so this would change the meta in an acceptable way for both players and the developers who wish to promote the longevity of their game.

"if you want to make gameplay less stale, and/or spice it up a little like what was said in peppy's response"

I don't know how much of this reason is accurate but starting from that we can kinda look at the possibilities this kind of change can bring. The most obvious one I can see is patterns like https://puu.sh/FND4K/92b49d5877.png vs https://puu.sh/FND67/a2d65fba61.png , the second pattern here will play practically the same either with the change implemented or without as the next sliderhead is in the extension of the movement you get when coming from the sliderbody. But the first pattern is where I think these kind of problems show more, in that pattern most players don't play all the way to the end of the slider so having high spacing on them doesnt really feel as intense. The new change would force people to adjust to that.

With the rule implemented when we take another look at a pattern, we'll see that to be sure that we wont break, we'll need to go the extra distance to make sure we hit the sliderend https://puu.sh/FNDct/ed102fa959.PNG (blue is before / red is after).

That kinda raises 2 questions for me:
- Can't people just adapt to it?
- Does this give more freedom to the mapper?

I feel like people could overtime adapt to this change pretty easily and apart from gigantic amounts of frustration on random breaks, I feel like this shoudlnt be the reason this change gets held back.

But does it actually give the mapper more freedom or let him do different things? And here is why I think the change shouldnt go through, in the current state of the game we already have the tools to decide wether the player should follow the slider or not and we take wether we want that into account when mapping. The change would restrict that freedom heavily as a lot of designs would just become unusable due to requiring a lot more aim making them not appropriate anymore for what we are trying to represent of the song. Especially in more casual/comfortable maps would this be pretty obvious. Cause you would only go for the option where the player has no chance to break as to make sure people wouldnt get frustrated with certain parts. The PP meta would probably evolve to something even more basic and repetetive.

I feel like this change comes more from the mindset of "How can we change it up as much as possible?" instead of from "How can we improve the tools mappers have to represent the song?". Like other people mentioned, there is a lot of stuff like the strict burai rules and if we are looking forward to lazer things like variable cs that would increase the freedom mappers have while not taking away from the freedom somewhere else.

PS: I personally think that this will limit the types of maps created instead of creating new things due to there being less tools to work with.

Unpopular opinion:

Kicksliders.
When I first saw this shit I thought: 'well, it's interesting.' Then I saw it again... and again... and again. And nowadays it's hard to find a map without at least one kickslider. Tired of this bullshit. Why do you wanna treat slider as a circle? Just place circle instead. Place two circles. It's way more logical.

Extended sliders.
When I first saw that shit, it exploded my mind. Why would you ever ignore rhythm in a rhythm game? Do you wanna slider without slidertail? Lemme introduce a circle to you. Or if you really want that beautiful sliderbody, just end the goddamn slider on a goddamn beat that actually used in the goddamn song.

And sv abuse.
Oh boy, this shit is drive me crazy. Why? Just why? Why would you change sv several times per measure? To make a map more creative? Well. Once is creative, twice - not so much. And it's certainly not creative after 789 times. Or maybe to better express music? Well... it works for some complex songs. And generic jpop or dnb certainly isn't complex enough, especially when the chosen rhythm is a rhythm filler.



With each year it becomes harder and harder to find a fun map. Most of the maps are ether generic rhythm filler or tech slider bullshit. What I want is a middle ground between the two. And I down for any change that push mappers toward this middle ground.

Especially when the change is basically a bugfix that should be done years ago.

You shouldn't expect what kind of stuff will be in lazer imo.

peppy (on Github) wrote:

There seems to be some misunderstanding here. Lazer is a testbed project and we will continue to iterate testing new features and breaking existing ones. This does not mean changes will stick. Please stop spamming my socials / email just because of a feature which exists or has changed on lazer.

Please do not tell me what I can or cannot change in lazer because "this is a community game and you have no right". We will continue to strive to make osu! more enjoyable to all users and rest assured, we hear your voices and will not make any breaking changes to stable releases without proper discussion.

NeonLick wrote:

Unpopular opinion:

Kicksliders.
When I first saw this shit I thought: 'well, it's interesting.' Then I saw it again... and again... and again. And nowadays it's hard to find a map without at least one kickslider. Tired of this bullshit. Why do you wanna treat slider as a circle? Just place circle instead. Place two circles. It's way more logical.
>Mostly depends. If it's actually represent the strong, stand out sounds then I have no problem with it, but people nowadays...

Extended sliders.
When I first saw that shit, it exploded my mind. Why would you ever ignore rhythm in a rhythm game? Do you wanna slider without slidertail? Lemme introduce a circle to you. Or if you really want that beautiful sliderbody, just end the goddamn slider on a goddamn beat that actually used in the goddamn song.
>Intensity, i repeat, intensity. And if you feel irritate about it, talk to other rhythm games too because they sometimes ignore rhythm.

And sv abuse.
Oh boy, this shit is drive me crazy. Why? Just why? Why would you change sv several times per measure? To make a map more creative? Well. Once is creative, twice - not so much. And it's certainly not creative after 789 times. Or maybe to better express music? Well... it works for some complex songs. And generic jpop or dnb certainly isn't complex enough, especially when the chosen rhythm is a rhythm filler.
>I agree with this one. What's the point of changing SV in every, single, f*cking, sliders, to represent every sounds in the song when you have lots of other alternatives w/out abusing them?

TBH, I'm kinda in the love-hate relationship with this time's update. Since:
1. Playerbase-wise, this makes everything harder indeed, especially when you want to FC stuff since we are familiar with our current playing strategies.
2. Mapping-wise, this will be a big slap to the tech community, but as NeonLick said, I'm down for something new even with tech maps with this kind of limitation.

With the score calculating in lazer that I don't even know if it's similar to Mania or Cytus, I have no idea if it actually affects anything with accuracy and pp, so yeah

r/showerthoughts btw

I hope this will be one of the last messages on this board since lazer stuff should really be on github. osu! stable is now, and gameplay changes there can justifiably create outrage. However changes have not been made in stable gameplay-wise. Lazer is the future, and we need to try to future-proof it because gameplay changes can't be made once it is released. Lazer is still not the official client because it is not ready, and there will still be hundreds if not thousands of changes made. This change in gameplay can and will be revised.

Something to keep in mind is that right now, development of lazer is focused more on gameplay, so if you want to make a suggestion on gameplay, go for it, and peppy will be all ears. If your suggestion is based on mapping, because the development is not currently focusing on the mapping side, it is not a priority and won't be considered until later (this isn't peppy blocking you out because he doesn't want to, as some people like to think). You may not agree with their way of developing the game this way (I personally don't), but I think you should remember this, because it is resulting in a good amount of miscommunication.

This change has also created a lot of unnecessary backlash. As stated before, no changes have been made in stable. Not in beta, not in cutting edge, so this change done in lazer doesn't affect anyone. Lazer has to be future-proof, so ideas have to be thrown around. If you don't experiment with an idea, you can't find out if it's good or not. Peppy getting hate for a change in lazer doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. People can air their concerns (even if it isn't gameplay related) respectfully, and in a way that can incentive changing to a different system for this particular feature.

If you have any gameplay concern with this change, go over to the github and express it there, because peppy will be sure to see it and listen to what you have to say.

Napoca wrote:

I hope this will be one of the last messages on this board since lazer stuff should really be on github.

https://puu.sh/FNPCZ/b4fd077910.png

https://puu.sh/FNPEc/47a12b7d23.png

People have been explicitly instructed to bring this discussion to the forums by both Peppy and Loctav.