Currently, we're trying for some changes within the RC that should potentially open up mapping to a wider audience and make it more interesting for mappers and players alike. Time has shown that many people have built up a decline of interest when it comes to ranking their maps, which is one of the big reasons we want to make the ranked section more interesting and make it fit into current trends. This is proposal 2/2 of our current plans to advance our system. This has also been brought up to the BNG, as we tried to gather more opinions until releasing a proposal.

In terms of breaks, we feel like giving more freedom here as well would be a good step in the right direction to allow for a more free mapping approach. We at least want to make for a bit of leeway when songs decide to go against the planned break structure of songs and want to make it more safe to use less breaks.

Therefore, this is the change we have in mind for breaks:


The jump from 16-20/1 up to 32-36/1 of continuous mapping is due to the fact that music often times has their cut after 4 measures, which makes 32/1 be the next natural step for an increase. (Music people pls don't insult me if I say something wrong, I'm sure y'all understand what I mean :sob:)

Please leave your opinion down below and suggest any further changes you might have. Thanks!

letsgo

I agree

I agree

I agree

big agree

In combination with the fact that muzu already allows 3x1/1 as alternative rest I personally am worried that especially muzukashii and oni difficulties would suffer from this change. Kantan is already low density enough that this proposal doesn't hurt that difficulty but keeping in mind the other proposal I am not sure this is the correct step to implement both changes as it would just inflate the difficulty of all lower difficulties.

This proposal is basically saying that you should have a rest moment after 8 measures as opposed to 4 but honestly I think 4 measures is fine (splits most kiai times in half, typically speaking).



For kantan/futsuu this proposal is fine, but in combination with increasing allowed pattern length it becomes questionable, and this proposal is not beneficial for muzu/oni players imo as it would be used as an excuse to just push muzus to become onis with monocolor 1/4 patterns.

Awesome, I agree

This should eliminate awkward forced breaks in kantan and futsuu, I agree

For muzu, I think triple 1/1 should no longer be considered if this passes.

For Oni, I think this isn’t really needed because 1/1 breaks are usually easy enough to achieve already

ikin5050 wrote:

this proposal is not beneficial for muzu/oni players imo

from a player pov the transition from muzu to oni has always been the roughest in terms of improvement, we want to shorten that gap so this proposal goes perfectly in hand with that

would love to see this change

kantan and futsuu yeah sure im fine w that, but i believe that we should be more stricter on mappers who go over that limit

muzu and oni ehhh should thinl about it. with this u can allow mappers to make a lot harder difficulties than actually needed for a muzu and oni. regarding spread im sure this is going to create a bit of a conflict on sets that actually do this. would kinda just want the 3x1/1 thing for muzus to get removed then. would suggest nerfing the 9plet guideline down to a 7plet on onis then if this change gets thru

As mentioned before, I support this change. As stated in OP, 32/1 is the next natural step after 16/1 because this is where you usually divide stanza wise a section in their parts. 32/1 is usually half a chorus. Metal and rock mapper will be happy about this change.

These changes should only apply to Kantan and Futsuu, I don't think Muzu and Oni needs a difficulty increase, plus it would make the proposal to increase the 1/1 and 1/2 patterns of Kantan and Futsuu not make that much difference, keeping the same unbalance.

Hivie wrote:

ikin5050 wrote:

this proposal is not beneficial for muzu/oni players imo

from a player pov the transition from muzu to oni has always been the roughest in terms of improvement, we want to shorten that gap so this proposal goes perfectly in hand with that

Reducing rest moments raises the level of all difficulties, I am not entirely sure how this shortens the gap. The main difficulty of going from muzu to oni is not the lack of rest moments (at least from my experience) but the fact that multicolor 1/4 patterns are used instead of monocolor. I am not sure reducing rest moment frequency will aid players with that, if anything having more frequent rest moments will allow muzu players to recover from messing up patterns easier?

hard agree on this one. personally i find breaks to be forced a lot (especially on constant high energy songs) and usually players dont need that many rest moments (at least when i was a beginner i could miss and start again mid 1/2 patterns, not having to wait for a real rest moment). also when mapping lower difficulties i often find myself mapping rhythms on kantan that consists of two 2/1 + 1/2 (5/2?) gaps after each other which currently does not fit the break guideline, (same with two 3/2 gaps on futsuu), even though usually on regular bpm they are veeery slow and take up a lot of space and definitely IS a rest moment in my eyes. just throwing my experiences and thoughts quickly here, i am definitely interested in seeing how this progresses over time

I disagree even more with this than with the pattern length increase proposal. Breaks are very necessary in lower diffs as many new players experience dizzyness and getting overwhelmed due to many objects floating towards them without proper breaks for their brain and eyes. 36/1 is absolutely mental.

I know it can sometimes be hard to get good song emphasis with these long breaks but they are extremely necessary because these diffs are made to introduce people to taiko.

These diffs are not made to be perfectly mapped to the song and follow every single layer of the song.

ikin5050 wrote:

In combination with the fact that muzu already allows 3x1/1 as alternative rest I personally am worried that especially muzukashii and oni difficulties would suffer from this change. Kantan is already low density enough that this proposal doesn't hurt that difficulty but keeping in mind the other proposal I am not sure this is the correct step to implement both changes as it would just inflate the difficulty of all lower difficulties.

This proposal is basically saying that you should have a rest moment after 8 measures as opposed to 4 but honestly I think 4 measures is fine (splits most kiai times in half, typically speaking).



For kantan/futsuu this proposal is fine, but in combination with increasing allowed pattern length it becomes questionable, and this proposal is not beneficial for muzu/oni players imo as it would be used as an excuse to just push muzus to become onis with monocolor 1/4 patterns.

ikin5050 wrote:

Hivie wrote:

ikin5050 wrote:

this proposal is not beneficial for muzu/oni players imo

from a player pov the transition from muzu to oni has always been the roughest in terms of improvement, we want to shorten that gap so this proposal goes perfectly in hand with that

Reducing rest moments raises the level of all difficulties, I am not entirely sure how this shortens the gap. The main difficulty of going from muzu to oni is not the lack of rest moments (at least from my experience) but the fact that multicolor 1/4 patterns are used instead of monocolor. I am not sure reducing rest moment frequency will aid players with that, if anything having more frequent rest moments will allow muzu players to recover from messing up patterns easier?

this is definitely a concern of mine, increasing the density or difficulty of lower difficulties doesn't help with the ongoing problem of muzukashiis and onis being pushed further than they should be, the current criteria doesn't do much at all to prevent onis from being lite-inners and spamming multicolor 5plets, and now that there may be fewer breaks enforced to combat it, the problem is going to get worse.

Disagree 32/1 is a really long chain of continuous mapping especially for K and F. As Boaz mentioned, beginners get dizzy and they need breaks to get back on track from any mistakes that were caused by the dizzyness

32/1 would be nice for kantan diffs because you barely have any room to create patterns currently, but every diff above it works just fine with 16/1

ikin5050 wrote:

Reducing rest moments raises the level of all difficulties, I am not entirely sure how this shortens the gap.

ikin5050 wrote:

The main difficulty of going from muzu to oni is not the lack of rest moments (at least from my experience) but the fact that multicolor 1/4 patterns are used instead of monocolor.

ok i'm starting to see the concerns behind buffing onis, considering they can get quite dense as-is.

also good point on the gap thing since by buffing everything we're just shifting the difficulty spectrum without bridging any gaps.

i think it may be a better solution if we keep oni untouched, do a slight buff to muzu breaks (20/1 to 24/1), and apply current buff to kantan and futsuu (28/1 to 32/1)

people may wonder if 24/1 may be an "unnatural" chain, but so is the 3/2 break, yet we rolled with it because it's the next logical step of progression. in addition, having 8 measures in KF, 6 measures in M, and 4 measures in O is a better progression than 8 measures in KF then 4 measures in MO

thoughts?

Make sure that there are spaces in density that allow for newer players to recover

Hivie wrote:

ikin5050 wrote:

Reducing rest moments raises the level of all difficulties, I am not entirely sure how this shortens the gap.

ikin5050 wrote:

The main difficulty of going from muzu to oni is not the lack of rest moments (at least from my experience) but the fact that multicolor 1/4 patterns are used instead of monocolor.

ok i'm starting to see the concerns behind buffing onis, considering they can get quite dense as-is.

also good point on the gap thing since by buffing everything we're just shifting the difficulty spectrum without bridging any gaps.

i think it may be a better solution if we keep oni untouched, do a slight buff to muzu breaks (20/1 to 24/1), and apply current buff to kantan and futsuu (28/1 to 32/1)

people may wonder if 24/1 may be an "unnatural" chain, but so is the 3/2 break, yet we rolled with it because it's the next logical step of progression. in addition, having 8 measures in KF, 6 measures in M, and 4 measures in O is a better progression than 8 measures in KF then 4 measures in MO

thoughts?

this is better

also a random thought, why are we the only mode that has breaks? standard catch and mania don't have breaks like us, yet they're doing just fine. why are we limiting ourselves by barriers set by people who've played and quit the game many years ago? people who've set these guidelines based on a meta that's from the past decade?

bc our bns r stupid and we need rules like these

Standard has rules about chain length fwiw, those are more analogous to break rules than string length. CtB also has rules about strain and so on which translate obliquely into de facto rest moment rules. Taiko just has more explicit ones, which is fine given the simplicity of the mode.

I agree with boaz. The point of low diffs isn't really to map the song. It's just to have the player play along with the song while focusing on pressing the right color. They are not listening to the song to inform their hand movements like on inner onis.

I don't think many songs support a break after the 2nd/6th measure nearly as well as after the 4th/8th.

I think while your rewording idea is better, it still raises the question of whether this is truly the way to reduce the gap between muzu and oni. At this point, we have such a large base of maps that you can find many maps for your exact skill level (barring maybe the top 1%). In my opinion, sticking with the established standards is easier, and naturally, some people will rank easier and some people will rank harder difficulties for their bounds.

I believe it's best to keep MO at 16/1 and KF could go to 32/1, especially considering chains like 28/1 or even 30/1 occasionally get used already and are already allowed under the guidelines in the most intense parts of the song. Setting the standard requirement at 24/1 and considering this is a guideline will simply mean people use 32/1 anyway for muzu continuous mapping as guidelines are flexible.


Also regarding comment about 'why do we have breaks as only mode' there are limits regarding active/passive rhythm in standard and limits on strain in ctb so yea... And 'why do we follow rules set by old people' I mean, most of the RC is subjective guidelines. Unless the RC is faulty or no longer adequately serves its purpose there is no need to mess with the status quo in my opinion, and so far there's no real argument been made to show the RC does its job badly.

surely billybob2009 will enjoy my 32/1 1/1 chain on his first taiko map ever…

After some concerns, it may be better to keep the Oni as it is. Currently the measured needed until a break has to occur are consistent between all difficulties, so the first thought was to raise it for all, if we do it for some. However, this might not be the best idea and given that a 1/1 in Oni's case is not losing on as much flow as a 2/1 or 3/2 does, actually having individual lengths for continuous mapping accross some difficulties might be better

i personally believe oni should remain untouched as it's a general trend already that these have gotten more difficult over the years compared to old oni difficulties (mainly in density), so 16/1 should be good. fully support the proposal on kantan and futsuu, but muzu, as it's been brought up already, is iffy. 24/1 is an odd middle ground, as is 3/2 and has always been, and as ikin said people would like stretch that guideline to the max anyway. it'd probably be easier if it could be worded in a way that clearly states that it should be a middleground between futsuu and oni, though that's going to raise a few more questions across mappers too, especially newer ones...

Until I ranked 4 of my maps, I missunderstood the rule and thought it would be just 20 notes of mapping. Somehow they were kinda fitting in terms of sr and actual difficulty of the map and difficutly itself. So I am not sure if this change is needed.

I guess it could work on Kantan and Futsuu since some of the songs don't really allow you to find good breaks on some points. It would also be a good idea to make Kantan and Futsuu diffs more interesting pattern whise and structure whise.

My only concern would be that Muzukashii and Oni would start to get way harder than they should which could cause a lot of problems in terms of ranking, since it would be rankable in this case but way too hard for some Muzukashii or Oni players. There are already pretty dense Muzukashii and Oni diffs atm so I would not feel comftable with a change that would go in this direction.

All in all, I am oke with this change on Kantan and Futsuu but not on Muzukashii and Oni, because the gap between diffs could split even more there.

Genjuro wrote:

32/1 would be nice for kantan diffs because you barely have any room to create patterns currently, but every diff above it works just fine with 16/1

yea i am fine with this

Oni breaks should remains untouched, as they tend to be overall dense with their 1/4 multicolour usage.

Muzukashii are quite in a odd spot with their 3/2 rest moments, making them unfitting for the most part with songs where their usage are not supported and uses 2/1 instead. I would love to see an increase of continuous mapping from 16/1, 20/1 to 24/1, 28/1 (but not 32/1 because that's too long of a continuous mapping especially in kiais)

As for the low diffs (Kantan/Futsuu) I am not completely against the change, but we should really encourage people to use rests moments, because most the time, they really do help improving the rhythm overall, and I don't usually see this guideline as an downside to song representation for these difficulties (due to rhythm repetition).

realy0_ wrote:

Muzukashii are quite in a odd spot with their 3/2 rest moments, making them unfitting for the most part with songs where their usage are not supported and uses 2/1 instead

from experience 3/2 aren't as bad as people make them to be, any good mapper can fit a good 3/2 break like 75% of the time, so i wouldn't undermine them too much, they're still not as ideal as 1/1 or 2/1 for example tho.

---

(below, i will be referring to 16/1~20/1 as 4 measures, 20/1~24/1 as 6 measures, 28/1~32/1 as 8 measures)

also on another note, people keep suggesting we do 8 measures for KF yet stick with 4 measures for MO which i don't really understand. it's a really drastic gap and i believe it can be reasonably be bridged with 6 measures, it's not as awkward as people make it to be, and they can still do any number less than 6 if it doesn't fit (so 4 is still on the table)

having KF as 8 measuers, M as 6, and keeping O as 4 seems like the most sensible middleground to this

It is not really as drastic a gap as you make it out to be if you consider that muzukashii will be primarily long 1/1 +1/2 chains with occasional 1/4 and futsuu is mainly short 1/2 inside 1/1 chains

Let me clear up some basics:

Hivie wrote:

also a random thought, why are we the only mode that has breaks? standard catch and mania don't have breaks like us, yet they're doing just fine. why are we limiting ourselves by barriers set by people who've played and quit the game many years ago? people who've set these guidelines based on a meta that's from the past decade?

While I see where you are coming from, this isn't true. osu! for example has "no breaks" because the sliders work as a break or rest moment in osu!. That's why they can map "continuously". mania has something similar going on with their hold patterns. In Taiko you have to constantly hit the notes, becoming naturally one of the more stamina-draining rhythm games and more unforgiving the longer a song goes. This is the reason why these rules were made and still have their right to exist. It is however a step into the right direction to have 32/1 as it does limit mapping in the lower difficulties.

Hivie wrote:

[...] i think it may be a better solution if we keep oni untouched, do a slight buff to muzu breaks (20/1 to 24/1), and apply current buff to kantan and futsuu (28/1 to 32/1)

people may wonder if 24/1 may be an "unnatural" chain, but so is the 3/2 break, yet we rolled with it because it's the next logical step of progression. in addition, having 8 measures in KF, 6 measures in M, and 4 measures in O is a better progression than 8 measures in KF then 4 measures in MO

thoughts?

Disagreeing with any form of cutting measures / stanzas in an odd way which goes against the feeling of the human being. This is what music theory is based on which is why most songs get cut in 4/4 or 8/4 measures as ikin already mentioned. That's why 16/1 and 32/1 is the right way to go as anything else would lead in an unnatural cut - making that change defacto redundant for most cases as no one is gonna cut a section/part at 24/1 or god forbid 20/1.

3/2 doesn't work as argument because it doesn't effect a section as a whole, but rather only a pattern. This is a huge difference.

I've been annoyed at these guidelines ever since its inception (even though I never ranked anything back in 2014-era, when it didn't exist). Though in all honesty I feel fine with KF's guideline, the MO guidelines is maybe a little too stringent. To give an extreme example (even though most BNs and modders will scream at you to change it), "kkkkkkd kkkkkkk ddkkddk kkkkddk" technically breaks no Oni guidelines, while "d d d d d d d d d d d d d ...." technically breaks it. Of course you're allowed to bend around guidelines within reason but I argue that this discourages people from making "long and simple patterns" regardless of whether it fits. This was also sort of addressed in the Muzu guideline change that allows "d d d d d d d ..." and I feel that the Oni equivalent is missing. The bump up to 32 beats should be more than enough to support these kinds of patterns in songs that do continuous 1/2s. This point is slightly off-topic, but if anything I feel Oni 1/4 patterning length should even be increased to 9 notes given how unnatural 7 is, and as long as you stick to very simple colours like ddddddddk or ddddkkkkd and as long as you don't spam the pattern more than once or twice in a typical 3-min map. Edit: I was not aware of whether this has been changed recently, but I agree nonetheless.

Addressing points about "shifting the difficulty up" that was brought up by some people, is it not enough to use discretion and common sense to determine what kind of spread fits the set? I feel the problem also just get shifted to how big the gap is nowadays from Inner to Hell to Top in particularly difficult sets.

I also inherently dislike the argument that you're not supposed to map to the music in lower difficulties, which was also brought up by some people here. I don't know if I can speak for Kantan players, but it feels incredibly jarring to just have a note (or break) that doesn't follow the music whatsoever.

I think most of my argument is just "use your common sense and don't be stupid". Is it really that much to ask to trust discretion and common sense, then ask modders to mod out what is normally would be considered too difficult? I suppose that back during the 12SP era you would need to mod more maps, which then results in your maps getting modded more with M4M. I wouldn't want to go back to 12SP, mainly because it encourages quantity over quality of mods to kudosu farm, but I feel like many of the problems (spread, strain, etc.) can be solved by just getting more people to look at the map before it gets sent to a nominator.

Ono: fair concerns, i wouldn't oppose having 4 measures for MO and 8 measures for KF then, mayb im overthinking the gap idk.

i still honestly want to see some change happen to our break guidelines and the above seems like the most agreed upon change so

ptar124 wrote:

Is it really that much to ask to trust discretion and common sense, then ask modders to mod out what is normally would be considered too difficult?...

...but I feel like many of the problems (spread, strain, etc.) can be solved by just getting more people to look at the map before it gets sent to a nominator.

yes it is too much to ask, that is why the rules and guidelines exist in the first place because mappers cannot be trusted.



Keeping MO as 16/1 and allowing longer on KF seems fine because the guidelines already allow longer sections of continuous mapping in more intense parts of the song up to BN discretion. Thats the whole point of it being a guideline

ptar124 wrote:

I also inherently dislike the argument that you're not supposed to map to the music in lower difficulties, which was also brought up by some people here. I don't know if I can speak for Kantan players, but it feels incredibly jarring to just have a note (or break) that doesn't follow the music whatsoever.

I agree with this statement. While we should prevent making lower difficulties too hard, we also have an obligation to make lower difficulties fit to a song. Having 32/1 will help to balance that a bit since lower difficulties have become quite stale and sterile.

These rules were made 11 years ago. They changed a bit over the years and got revised in 2016, but the core concept behind them is still there: Back then everyone mapped Oni and no one knew how to make lower difficulties. So they were made in a strict way because we didn't knew it better. Now that we do know better, having a change to 32/1 to cater a bit towards less sterile maps will be appreciated.

ikin5050 wrote:

Keeping MO as 16/1 and allowing longer on KF seems fine because the guidelines already allow longer sections of continuous mapping in more intense parts of the song up to BN discretion. Thats the whole point of it being a guideline

We could go step by step, seeing how the changes would do and if in the future we could consider using similar changes for Muzukashii for example.

At the end, it is not only about the rest moments, but also the density and alternation of patterns as some of you already mentioned in this thread. So maybe we should address this in the near future as well to achieve a better jump from M to O. For now however, I would ask everyone to stick to the current topic of continues mapping and help us to make the mapping and ranking process better for all of us step by step.

agreed

ya good ideera

Wholeheartedly agree, the lower diffs needed some increase for a long time and it's now possible to do so since there's a lot of content already which follows older / stricter guidelines.

OnosakiHito wrote:

Disagreeing with any form of cutting measures / stanzas in an odd way which goes against the feeling of the human being. This is what music theory is based on which is why most songs get cut in 4/4 or 8/4 measures as ikin already mentioned. That's why 16/1 and 32/1 is the right way to go as anything else would lead in an unnatural cut - making that change defacto redundant for most cases as no one is gonna cut a section/part at 24/1 or god forbid 20/1.

3/2 doesn't work as argument because it doesn't effect a section as a whole, but rather only a pattern. This is a huge difference.

I think this fits best, and for now is a good modification of the proposal. 32/1 for K and F, and keep the rest as is.

I don’t want to repeat what’s been said but also bring up a new consideration. If the problem is the jump between Muzu and Oni, I think a good help to this would be removing or modifying the guidelines about mixed coloured triplets. Making ddk and alike more common in muzu is going to make a pattern like ddkkd much easier and approachable in oni. It’s not unrankable but it is discouraged and I’m not sure why, especially since Oni’s are getting harder these days.

seeing how people reacted to this, we've decided to push this change only for Kantans and Futsuus, we'll see if other diffs would need such adjustment in the future.

seeing how people reacted to this, we've decided to push this change only for Kantans and Futsuus, we'll see if other diffs would need such adjustment in the future.

ismerged