Given the increasing prevalence of Beginner difficulty in mapsets (specially Mapper's Guild ones) and the lack of regulations they have in the RC, I and some other people thought some regulation ought to be established for them, as they are the lowest difficulty in a set. So far this has not caused any issue, but who knows for how long this will remain. Some of the ideas that come to mind for it are the following:


This is obviously not final, and community input is very welcome, whether you want to suggest number fixes, additional rules or guidelines, or simply do not want Beginners to be regulated, please do speak up!

"2/1 patterns should not be longer than three notes. Anything longer is likely to be too straining for beginners. Patterns like these should be followed by a rest moment."

i wonder why 3 notes and not 5 ?
beginners diffs would pretty much have a lot of 2/1 rhythms so limiting it to 3 would just result into beginners diffs being a 2/1 triplet spam as i think it's very restrictive.

"At least 1 rest moment that is 6/1 or longer should be inserted after 16/1 to 20/1 of continuous mapping. Using rest moments less frequently is acceptable if either the pace of the music makes rest moments counter-intuitive or if the continuously mapped part is overall more forgiving to the player."

this guideline should be completely removed as it is extremely restrictive right now in term of mapping.
it would be practically impossible to make the beginner a least try to follow the music as almost all very important sounds occurs at least every 4/1 in basically any music.
Also, the purposes of rest moment is to give the player a rest which in this case doesn't seem necessary at all as having mainly 4/1 rhythms is definitively not straining at all for a very very beginner player.

As you can see here, the screen is basically blank if you're using a 4/1 rhythm so i don't think in any way players would feel tired after playing continuous 4/1 rhythms which is the main point of having rest moments. (also this pic uses slower sv for a song at 165 bpm)

so, pretty much remove this guideline and change this one a bit :
"2/1 patterns should not be longer than three five notes. Anything longer is likely to be too straining for beginners. Patterns like these should be followed by a rest moment that is 4/1 or longer"

I agree that there should be some regulations for Beginner diffs, but I am not a huge fan of the proposed rules/guidelines as they don't really allow for a meaningful diff and the gap between them and kantan would be unnecessarily large, keep in mind that rhythm-related rules and guidelines apply to approximately 180 BPM beatmaps. A beginner diff being basically a half time version of a kantan diff would be good enough (much like kantans are a half time version of futsuu diffs).

Here's the rules/guidelines I personally operate under when making beginner diffs:


I don't think the 6/1 or longer rest moment guideline is problematic like realy0_ said. Kantans require a 3/1 or longer rest moment but most people use 4/1 breaks anyways, so in the case of beginner diffs people will be generally using 8/1 rest moments but have the option to use 6/1 ones if they fit the music. What might seem a bit odd is the rest moment being required after 32/1 to 36/1 of continuous mapping, but it makes absolutely perfect sense to me since in the context of a beginner diff, 32/1 of mapping is the same as 16/1 of mapping in a kantan diff, but slowed down by 50%. Requiring a rest moment every 16/1 doesn't allow you to do anything with the diff when you are using 4/1 as your main rhythm. Raiden's proposed guideline requiring at least 1/2 distance between a spinner and its preceding note makes absolutely no sense and has room for abuse. You are basically prohibiting the usage of anything faster than 1/1 with the second rule so requiring at least a 1/2 gap when you shouldn't even be using 1/2 on this diff is flawed, but I decided to space them out even more since I think it's better for a diff that mainly uses 2/1 as it's fastest rhythm to have at least a 2/1 gap when introducing a new gameplay element as that might confuse beginners otherwise.

Keep in mind that beginners diffs are mostly redundant and are only really useful when mapping high bpm or when the kantan diff uses weird snaps, so restricting them too much with guidelines that apply to 180bpm maps isn't a good idea.

Yes, more defined rules for beginner diffs would be nice. I'll be copying / modifying above suggestions and adding my comments to them.
Here's my take:
Rules:
If a 1/1 pattern is used, the patterns must stay simplistic and be followed by a rest moment.

1. Kantan allows simple 1/2, so allowing simple 1/1 would be the most natural progression, I think.

Slider velocity changes are prohibited at this difficulty level unless they serve a scroll speed stabilizing purpose.

1. I don't think anyone would argue against this.

Guidelines:
2/1 patterns should not be longer than seven notes.

1. Makes the most sense to me since Futsuu has max 7x 1/2 and Kantan has max 7x 1/1.

Main snapping should consist of mostly 4/1 or slower rhythms. Occasionally using 2/1 rhythms is acceptable.

1. Natural progression (/regression?) from Kantan

There should be at least 1/1 distance between a spinner and its preceding note.

1. Kantan allows 1/2 gaps, so jumping straight into 2/1 like Genjuro suggested is a bit too much imo. Plus 1/1 would be the fastest allowed snap so limiting spinners to more than that doesn't feel right.

At least 1 rest moment that is 4/1 or longer should be inserted after 16/1 to 20/1 of continuous mapping.

1. Progression from Beginner to Futsuu would be 4/1->3/1->2/1. Makes the most sense. I agree with realy that requiring more than 4/1 would be too restrictive. That's already like a whole measure. No one will get so easily tired that more than that is needed.

Jaltzu wrote:

1. Main snapping should consist of mostly 4/1 or slower rhythms.
2. At least 1 rest moment that is 4/1 or longer should be inserted after 16/1 to 20/1 of continuous mapping.

You see the flaw in this right? You can't consider 4/1 to be a rest moment when it's the main snapping used in the diff. 6/1 makes the most sense to me.

Jaltzu wrote:

1. Kantan allows 1/2 gaps, so jumping straight into 2/1 like Genjuro suggested is a bit too much imo. Plus 1/1 would be the fastest allowed snap so limiting spinners to more than that doesn't feel right.

Kantan shouldn't allow 1/2 gaps to begin with, it's a unique gameplay element that is rarely used so having it be so close to the predecing note can be quite problematic as most players at this level don't even know how to play spinners or sliders properly.

i'll be editing the main post regularly with the feedback obtained

Genjuro wrote:

You see the flaw in this right? You can't consider 4/1 to be a rest moment when it's the main snapping used in the diff.

Well, yes. So instead I'd say just remove the whole break rule completely. 4/1 will be the main snapping so there is no need to create extra breaks, since the patterns will be really sparse anyway.

Genjuro wrote:

Kantan shouldn't allow 1/2 gaps to begin with, it's a unique gameplay element that is rarely used so having it be so close to the predecing note can be quite problematic as most players at this level don't even know how to play spinners or sliders properly.

Fair enough. Tho people not knowing how to play spinners / sliders is more like due to there being no Taiko tutorial rather than a gameplay issue. But that's beside the point.

What I edited from the original post:

1. Rest moments are now defined as 6/1 every 32/1 to 36/1
2. Note to spinner gap increased to 2/1 (what Genjuro mentioned makes sense specially considering the addendum on rule 3)
3. Amount of notes in a 2/1 pattern increased to 5 from 3 (as I think 5 notes is already pretty long by itself and covers 2 and a half measures on most songs)
4. Reworded addendum on spinner guideline (to somewhat mirror what's on rule 3)

thanks for the feedback and corrections!

Hello. Here is my opinion for each point on the main post for optimization and consistency. Italic or strikes means suggestion on changes.

Rules

1. If a 1/1 pattern is used, the patterns must stay simplistic and be followed by a rest moment.
   
   Good. So, I guess 1/1 finisher is acceptable then? Because rule on Kantan and Futsuu difficulty states this so I want confirmation on how others think about this. I am personally okay with either.
2. Notes must be at least one beat apart. Anything faster is too complex for beginner players.
   
   As this is regulation for Beginner diff, I guess this would make much more sense as rule on Kantan and Futsuu difficulty uses this.
3. Slider velocity changes are prohibited at this difficulty level unless they serve a scroll speed stabilizing purpose. The target audience of this difficulty is only supposed to learn the basic gameplay elements such as colour difference Changes are only acceptable for scroll speed stabilizing purpose.
   
   Current additional information does not really relate or benefit on supporting main point so I guess this can be completely removed and instead can be changed to above to match how rule on Kantan and higher difficulty uses, maybe wording can be improved further though.

Guidelines

1. 2/1 patterns should not be longer than five notes. Anything longer is likely to be too straining for beginners. Patterns like these should be followed by a rest moment.
   
   I think maybe 7 notes would be a better compromise as build-up concept are pretty commons for long song as guideline in Kantan and Futsuu states? Though this serves as guideline so I guess this is fine either way.
2. Main snapping should consist of mostly 4/1 or slower rhythms. Occasionally using 2/1 rhythms is acceptable.
   
   Good. I agree.
3. There should be at least 2/1 distance between a spinner and its preceding note. This is to ensure that the target audience recognizes spinners as a separate gameplay element.
   
   I think 1/1 distance is maybe alright as when spinner is used after a note on held-sound on final section for example, except this technique is not acceptable to be used for the difficulty now.
4. At least 1 rest moment that is 6/1
   or longer should be inserted after 32/1 to 36/1 of continuous mapping. Using rest moments less frequently is acceptable if either the pace of the music makes rest moments counter-intuitive or if the continuously mapped part is overall more forgiving to the player.
   
   I personally never saw any 6/1 distance is used as occasional rest moment ever on Beginner difficulty (if there is, please give me some examples) and 4/1 distance is already more than enough as the difficulty is really simple and lenient in my opinion. I can imagine if this gets applied, the diff probably will be extremely easy and boring. Guideline point 1 is enough to ensure that 4/1 is used after using 2/1 patterns. I suggest to remove this guideline completely, though probably there should be adjustment on guideline point one regarding rest moment part.

Difficulty setting guidelines

1. Overall Difficulty should be 3 or less.
   
   Good. I agree.
2. HP Drain Rate should be 7 or more. In cases of higher note count, HP Drain Rate could be slightly adjusted to lower than 7.
   
   Good. I agree.

i have no idea what the addition of a beginner difficulty does for anyone, are kantans all of a sudden not easy enough after the 13 years this game (and 19 years for authentic TnT) has existed? these rules and guidelines for an entirely optional difficulty don't seem to change anything that a kantan provides other than serving for unnecessary simplification of a song. kantans serve the purpose of "learning the color changes" in, at minimum, 90% of cases, and even when kantans are more difficult than usual it's usually because the song calls for such a difficulty.

i'm really not sure why beginner difficulties exist in taiko, and i think adding a whole section to the RC for them when they are not required and hardly necessary is quite confusing

[quote="Raiden"]Given the increasing prevalence of Beginner difficulty in mapsets (specially Mapper's Guild ones) and the lack of regulations they have in the RC, I and some other people thought some regulation ought to be established for them, as they are the lowest difficulty in a set. So far this has not caused any issue, but who knows for how long this will remain. Some of the ideas that come to mind for it are the following:Notes must be at least one beat apart. Anything faster is too complex for the target audience of this difficulty

But what if low BPM or Halfed BPM

incandescence wrote:

i have no idea what the addition of a beginner difficulty does for anyone, are kantans all of a sudden not easy enough after the 13 years this game (and 19 years for authentic TnT) has existed? these rules and guidelines for an entirely optional difficulty don't seem to change anything that a kantan provides other than serving for unnecessary simplification of a song. kantans serve the purpose of "learning the color changes" in, at minimum, 90% of cases, and even when kantans are more difficult than usual it's usually because the song calls for such a difficulty.

i'm really not sure why beginner difficulties exist in taiko, and i think adding a whole section to the RC for them when they are not required and hardly necessary is quite confusing

i agree with this opinion.

taiko not need beginner diff rc

I know very little about taiko but if a beginner difficulty becomes standard in this mode please consider formally naming it

Shoshinsa

instead - it means novice/beginner

calling it beginner when the rest of the taiko difficulty names are in japanese feels really randomly slapped together and very unfitting to taiko's difficulty naming scheme

Do we really need beginner difficulties? Aren't Kantan supposed to be the newcomer friendly ones? Agreeing with incandescence here.

Some additional spare thoughts that I couldn't organise properly:

1. I can see Beginner difficulties making sense in very high BPM songs, but those are already meant to be support a 'harder than usual' difficulties, so there's really no need to make one tbh. If a player is getting trouble with a Kantan, there's already a lot of Kantan where the can practise on and come back later.
2. They'll be likely underrepresenting the song to the point you could slap the same map in a lot of songs and make it work.
3. In the end they're just an 'Lite' Kantan, as we have 'Lite' difficulties that sometimes people use to fix spreads without considerably changing the already existent difficulties. If we ever need to regulate them, why don't we take them as an easier Kantan?

Why do we need to regulate Beginner difficulties? Most of the times, Kantan is enough to be the lowest difficulty in a mapset. Although an easier diff is probably good for maps with high BPM or complex snapping, it still should be under the Kantan category. You may call it Beginner/Lite Kantan/Shoshinsa or whatever the naming scheme you want, but i don't see the urgency of regulating it.

I think it would be unprecedented, in a bad way :<, to add this because no other game mode does this. osu!catch doesn't standardize spoon, mania doesn't standardize BG (or whatever it's called?), and std doesn't standardize beginner. I don't see why taiko beginners are a special case. I think that could confuse people trying to get into taiko because they might feel pushed to make a beginner difficulty, which is not required and not really the norm.

I think the linear difficulty spread requirement is enough for this difficulty to regulate itself.

given that a vast majority of posters think there's no need to regulate them, it's appropriate to move this to "denied" ammendments!

Moved to the archive.