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[Proposal] Spread rules with Normal lowest difficulty above 2:45

posted
Total Posts
44
Noffy
Nomination Assessment Team
1,656 posts
Joined April 2012
Topic Starter
Noffy
Currently spread rules go like so->
Under 3:30 - lowest difficulty required is a normal
3:30 to 4:15 - hard
4:15-5:00 insane
etc

However, in mania, taiko, and standard, there are additional "normal difficulty as the lowest difficulty" guidelines, which encourage easier normals if the set has no easy.

I think this causes a somewhat uneven progression in spread rules.

Over the years this has pushed the meta for Normal difficulties to be between what easy and normal would be, resulting in a lack of harder normals to help transition to hard difficulties. Advanced difficulties existing help a bit, but only just a bit.

Allowing harder lowest difficulty normals fitting with the current spread rules pattern seems fitting for both this and making the progression of what's allowed or not more even.

My proposal is this

If the drain time of each difficulty is between 2:45 and 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal, but Normal as lowest difficulty guidelines no longer apply.
Annabel
Beatmap Nominator
519 posts
Joined October 2013
Annabel
nice
Cris-
Beatmap Nominator
551 posts
Joined March 2015
Cris-
pretty good
clayton
1,842 posts
Joined November 2013
clayton
sounds fine to me

i was gonna say it sounds oddly complicated but then I read what's already there and it's Already oddly complicated so /shrug

https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/4185
Last edited by clayton , edited 1 time in total.
Murumoo
Beatmap Nominator
719 posts
Joined February 2016
Murumoo
awesome
lenpai
Beatmap Nominator
1,772 posts
Joined December 2014
lenpai
yes.
StarCastler
osu! Alumni
151 posts
Joined June 2018
StarCastler
sounds nice
Cynplytholowazy
363 posts
Joined January 2014
Cynplytholowazy
Not sure why this should be a thing cuz if the spread is not as balanced because of the original rule the mapper SHOULD map an easy to accommodate the spread being unbalanced. It simply just discourage people to play longer maps.
Serizawa Haruki
1,656 posts
Joined June 2015
Serizawa Haruki
I have to disagree with this because it's just not true that harder Normals are rarely used. In fact, many lowest diff Normals have become more difficult in the past few years and even often break the guidelines for lowest diff Normals. The reason why some spreads are uneven is because of difficulty inflation in general and especially in Hard diffs. Mappers are often pushing the limits of what's acceptable according to the RC so naturally the gap between Normal and Hard becomes pretty big. Also 2:45 is just an arbitrary length, what's the point of trying to fix spreads for songs of that length but not shorter ones? It's easily possible to make balanced spreads without Easy diffs.
Dored
287 posts
Joined May 2017
Dored
I don't think it's necessary to have more harder Normals as lowest difficulty. In my opinion, those guildlines aim to control the difficulty of Normals as lowest difficulty in an appropriate range to ensure beginners are able to play (pass) them. For beginners, their playing skill isn't enough to pass nowaday harder Normals. Without the limitation, less Normals as lowest difficulty have a proper difficulty that beginners can play, beginners' situation will be deteriorated even further.

Questionable spread between Normal and Hard is not only caused by easy Normals, but also caused by difficult Hards, just increasing the difficulty of the lowest diff cant resolve the basic problem. Since an additional Advanced diff can fill the gap easily, and it's not hard to make an Advanced difficulty, I don't think current spread rules are inconvenient.
clayton
1,842 posts
Joined November 2013
clayton

Dored wrote:

Questionable spread between Normal and Hard is not only caused by easy Normals, but also caused by difficult Hards
isn't that the point of this change? between 2:45-3:30, this gives a new option for mappers to use not-super-easy Normals in their spreads with Hards that are either average or on the difficult side, without having to make another difficulty (Advanced) to join them together.

Dored wrote:

For beginners, their playing skill isn't enough to pass nowaday harder Normals. Without the limitation, less Normals as lowest difficulty have a proper difficulty that beginners can play, beginners' situation will be deteriorated even further.
if they can't pass Normal, there's thousands of Easy to download too (at least 8 of which are installed automatically). this whole set of minimum spread rules based on drain time exists because there's no need to design every mapset for absolute beginners, and I think it's natural that these rules can slowly become more lax over time due to higher volume of beginner-friendly mapsets in Ranked
Garden
Nomination Assessment Team
1,343 posts
Joined June 2013
Garden

clayton wrote:

Dored wrote:

For beginners, their playing skill isn't enough to pass nowaday harder Normals. Without the limitation, less Normals as lowest difficulty have a proper difficulty that beginners can play, beginners' situation will be deteriorated even further.
if they can't pass Normal, there's thousands of Easy to download too (at least 8 of which are installed automatically). this whole set of minimum spread rules based on drain time exists because there's no need to design every mapset for absolute beginners, and I think it's natural that these rules can slowly become more lax over time due to higher volume of beginner-friendly mapsets in Ranked
You miss the point of carrying out normal bottom diff guideline in the first place, why do beginners have to grind other easies of the songs they don't necessarily like just to pass a hard normal of a song that they favorited?

I think the proposal only further refrains beginners from playing longer songs in the long run so I'm personally against it. The current spread problem is not with the lack of harder normal but the hards being much too difficult nowadays, as someone who plays a lot of Hard HDDT for leaderboard grinds I can confirm it 100%. If one can't get their lazy ass to map an advanced when spread does not look good with an easy normal, nerf the hard please, don't sacrifice the gameplay experience of beginners instead.

Additionally it is kinda true what Serizawa Haruki said that normals are actually harder too, I have a friend of mine who actively plays normal for years and he recently complained a lot that normal nowadays are hella hard and beginner-unfriendly.

edit: was only talking about std, I dunno how it's like for other modes.
Last edited by Garden , edited 1 time in total.
Cheri
1,770 posts
Joined November 2014
Cheri
I don't know about other gamemodes but I don't think this should be a thing at all.

It is already annoying enough with the song length rule previously which I personally don't mind at all and not against, but I feel like this just makes things too lenient and doesn't even really solved much issues instead create more issues in the long run

Also normals as is kind of already really difficult and giving some form of leniency for it is kind of ? and I am 100% against having.
hypercyte
Elite Mapper
741 posts
Joined October 2016
hypercyte
Personally am for this change mainly because I don't see it as a bad thing to lift the "easy" normal limitations at a certain point.

Garden wrote:

I think the proposal only further refrains beginners from playing longer songs
I can fully see what you mean here and I'd almost agree with it, but I don't think it takes very long for new players to get used to easy diffs and move on to more challenging normals so idk if i'd see it as too detrimental - if anything, it could be a nice way to incentivise new players to get better so they can play their favourite songs (at least that's how i'd see it)

I'm pretty sure every newer player ends up at a point where they think "wow hard diffs are impossible" (and I definitely was), so I feel this'd help bridge that gap too!

(honestly though, best thing would be if people made easy diffs along with with more "normal" normals but not everyone wants do put the time in to do that :()
Last edited by hypercyte , edited 1 time in total.
TypicalStep
2 posts
Joined September 2019
TypicalStep
I think the normal personally should be at 2.50 but I definitely agree it should be higher.
Dored
287 posts
Joined May 2017
Dored

hypercyte wrote:

I'm pretty sure every newer player ends up at a point where they think "wow hard diffs are impossible" (and I definitely was), so I feel this'd help bridge that gap too!
Hard diffs are impossible so why not try to make Hard diffs easier? Even if Normal diffs become harder, yea the gap is bridged superficially, most Hards are still impossible to them. Their playing skill improve little by little during trying and practicing more and more maps, the process is they play: (Easy)-"easy" Normal-"hard" Normal-(Advanced)-"easy" Hard-"hard" Hard, just increasing the the number of challenging Normals doesnt help they get with those Hard diffs, "easy" Hard diffs are still indispensible transition, it is also the reason I said this cant resolve basic problem. Nowadays challenging normals arent that rare, as this cant radically improve the situation of current low diffs spread, and there is possiblity it will harm more beginners who only just join the game, I dont think it's a good idea to change.
Last edited by Dored , edited 1 time in total.
lenpai
Beatmap Nominator
1,772 posts
Joined December 2014
lenpai
normal guidelines have been pretty intrusive for mania normals as they're enforced quite noticeably and so mappers are generally required to make a new normal, nerf layers, or shift all the diff names forward despite having a proper difficulty gap between NHI.

This should be fine in service of providing transition content to hard and by extension, transition content to insanes (where a spread allows for a higher end normal and a higher end hard in a spread)

seems to be a problematic addition for standard by which i understand but hm
chowch
43 posts
Joined February 2018
chowch

clayton wrote:

i was gonna say it sounds oddly complicated but then I read what's already there and it's Already oddly complicated so /shrug
don't really have an opinion on this, but i wanted to say that if this change goes through, it would be helpful to have a graphic in the rc to show drain time difficulty progression
Dialect
1,522 posts
Joined May 2018
Dialect

TypicalStep wrote:

I think the normal personally should be at 2.50 but I definitely agree it should be higher.
sr doesn't equal difficulty per se
Wriothesley
266 posts
Joined June 2014
Wriothesley
sorry but this is terrible and if this is a requirement i will never rank any song under 3:00. this requires so many diffs that no one will ever really play or need but require large amounts of effort to get modded
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