Tasha (Aug 22, 2014) - Creator

Our current difficulty guide is located @ t/152263

Use this card to discuss any possible changes to this guide, or to discuss difficulty spread in general.

To-Do:

1. Create new guideline for Futsuu (Done!)
2. Create new guideline for Muzukashii
3. Create new guideline for Oni
4. Define what maps makes an Inner Oni
5. Finalize guidelines and update current guide topics to reflect the changes made.

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Tasha (Aug 22, 2014)

There was a good discussion on dkun's mumble between Ono, MMzz and I about the gap between Futsuu / Muzukashii, as well as how we should approach Oni / Inner Oni from now on with plenty of very hard maps being tagged as Oni difficulties. I'd like to bring that discussion here.

Right now I feel that we should look at adjusting the guidelines for Futsuu and Muzukashii to enable a better map spread, and lower the difficulty spike of Muzukashii and Oni maps so that we can allow the Inner Oni diff to be the 'go all out' difficulty. I'd like for people to discuss options on how we can change the guidelines to accomplish this.

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MMzz (Aug 22, 2014)

Oni needs to be redefined for sure. The level of difficulty for On I is so broad that we need to split it up. Inner Oni being an appropriate max difficulty for the song. (Aka what most Oni are now) And oni acting as the bridge between Muzukashii and Inner.

Doing so will help all the lower diff's become more appropriate because you won't be forced to make them harder than they need to be.

All in all, 5 difficulty spreads should be more encouraged. Where Inner Oni becomes the appropriate highest difficulty for the song, and Oni become slightly harder than the common muzukashii we have. More 1/4 and 1/2 density. Of course not every song needs it, but most will depending on how it is mapped.

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OnosakiHito (Aug 22, 2014)

Agree with everything you guys said. Additional to this, let me mention what I said in lounge:

Spread issues often happen due to the note density(ND) the maps provide. People are not sure how to evaluate a Kantan, Futsuu, Muzu or easy Oni, so they map rather to the song and try to left no sound out which the song provides. This can make a diff harder or make it be more dense than the other diffs. which makes big differences in ND (spread).

What mappers should follow up is, giving every difficulty a good amount of breaks, since it's also a part of mapping. In that understanding, something like that should be mentioned (but in a professional english of course):

1. When the map mostly contains 4/1 + 2/1 patterns(Kantan) it should provide some 8/1 breaks.
2. Does it have mainly 2/1 + 1/1(Futsuu), then the map should have 4/1 breaks.
3. A Muzukashii which is mainly mapped on 1/1 + 1/2, should provide a lot of 2/1 breaks.
4. Oni ... "

For this, I have a good example: p/3324352
As you can see, the spread has regulated itself due to the fact, that the mapper used more breaks.

Another point which got mentioned before, but which I want to point out again is about sets which contain Inners. I would agree to allow spread like this: K <-> F <-> M <-> O <-----------------> I

Tasha said it in lounge before, that people can always find a difficulty which fills this big Oni - Inner gap in another map.

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Tasha (Aug 22, 2014)

Before we check off that we've finished things on guidelines. Does everyone agree with the changes put forth by Ono? I'd like to make a few suggestions of my own.

1. (Kantan) No need to change anything here as the rules for kantan are already fine.
2. (Futsuu) Disallow 1/4 usage entirely here, keep patterns to 2/1, 1/1, 1/2, and 1/3.
3. (Muzukashii) Allow 1/4 usage here, but with simple patterns. ie: No multicolour quintuplets, very simple quads. Triplets have more leeway here, as do doubles. Try to get the mapper to have 1/1 or 2/1 breaks after more difficult sections to give the player a chance to catch up with reading / playing.
4. (Oni) Open up more options for mapping here. Allow usage of more complex 1/4 patterns, as well as simpler 1/6 quad patterns. Limit 1/4 stream usage and get the mapper to break up streams where possible into smaller, easier to manage patterns. Deathstreams should be highly avoided here.
5. (Oni) We can also start allowing some small (not too difficult) reading traps here.
6. (Inner Oni) Allow for mappers to push the boundaries of the song here. Anything that is reasonably mapped goes here (aka not overmapped for the sake of overmapping). Deathstreams and more complicated 1/4 + 1/6 patterning is allowed here as for the most part, anything goes.
7. (Inner Oni) Reading traps could be allowed at this point as long as they are reasonably done (this is subjective, but with the QAT I believe we can cover subjectiveness now). This would allow for things like 'ghost notes' like you see in https://osu.ppy.sh/s/36541

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Love (Aug 22, 2014)

for Futsuu, I'd say keep away from the 1/3 usage and have that start up in muzu with double patterns.

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TKS (Aug 22, 2014)

i feel like needing further work to between Futsuu and Muzukashii. in many cases, these gaps are kinda big yet because of the nature of diff.

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MMzz (Aug 22, 2014)

1/3 in Futsuu should be more specified. It only really works in songs that have a 1/3 rhythm. Outside of those songs, adding 1/3 is too big of a change in the maps core rhythm for a new player to understand, even under various BPM.

Also, what do you guys mean by "reading traps"?

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OnosakiHito (Aug 22, 2014)

Well, let's say Futsuu can have 1/3 as long as they stay alone (e.g.dddd). In low BPM songs it's not a big problem at all. 1/3 just shouldn't be overtaken.

The change of Muzukashii and Oni diff is so far fine as long as it stays as guide, not guideline. I'm afraid to make mapping more complicated as it should actually be. You know, with all the mentions about single cases like streams and etc.

Yeah, what do you mean by "reading traps"? If you mean the overalap, this should never be allowed since you can fix it with inherited timing sections.

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MMzz (Aug 22, 2014)

On lower BPM 1/3 would be even worse because the time gap for error is much larger (Because the notes come slower) than a faster BPM.

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OnosakiHito (Aug 22, 2014)

Hm. I guess you are right. But still not sure if restricting 1/3 on futsuu is a good idea, since this hasn't been used by mappers anyway. And if, QAT would check it before it gets ranked. So I would rather choose the path of more freedom mapping.

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Tasha (Aug 22, 2014)

What I meant by reading traps is what was mentioned by Ono, but not done in a stupid way. Think of it more like.... gradually speeding up each notes SV / gradually lowering each notes SV to transition into a higher / lower bpm or pace. I consider this to be a 'reading trap' as it changes how you need to perceive the stream without actually changing the bpm.

On the topic of 1/3. MMzz covered what I meant about 1/3 usage. It should only be used in songs that have a natural 1/3 rhythm.

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OnosakiHito (Aug 22, 2014)

Well, then I agree with the description of Futsuu.

But can't agree with those traps / gimmicks in Taiko. People can try to do it(like Bonfire) and see if it gets approved or not. I'm fine with that. But wouldn't recommend to add it into a guide which would indicate such use.

It's a similar case like the 1/6 usage: In the past we only used them when the song had 1/6-like sounds. And even then we used it sparingly. Now 1/6 are getting added even on parts where no 1/6 are supported. Further more bounded together with 1/4.

Now we can prevent that much easier, but adding specific "traps / gimmicks" into a guide is something we shouldn't do, if you ask me. Indiactes to possible overmapping on higher diffs.

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Tasha (Aug 22, 2014)

What I'm saying Ono is that while we shouldn't encourage them to do those things, we should prevent it entirely on any difficulties below Oni. Hopefully that clarifies a bit.

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Love (Aug 24, 2014)

Hmm, about Oni -> Inner Oni, this should be determined by how complex the patterns are or how dense it is compared to the Oni. An Inner Oni could have a much smaller gap in notes compared to Muzu -> Oni, but the patterns could be very complex that it justifies the difficulty.

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Tasha (Aug 26, 2014)

I don't have any solid ideas for Oni -> Inner Oni yet for a good ruleset between the two, but I'd like to confirm everyone is good with these rules for Futsuu.

1. Disallow 1/4 usage entirely.
2. Keep patterns to 2/1, 1/1, 1/2
3. Allow 1/3 patterns in a song that has a natural 1/3 rhythm.

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OnosakiHito (Sep 1, 2014)

Yeah, Futsuu is fine as you discribed it.
I will think about Oni -> Inner.

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MMzz (Sep 9, 2014)

We need to talk about Muzukashii. Let it be known breaks within the standard 1/1 beat should occur. The easy way to do this is find parts of the song that don't have to be mapped fully. Like small drum fills before new stanzas or changes in the song. Keep this in mind before bubbles and ranks please.

Also try and compare the amount of 1/4 usage in the muzu to the amount in Oni to see if it is fair. This applies to the colors too. If a muzu has basic one color triplets and 5 pelts. The oni should not be filled with masses of multi color triples and 5 pelts every other pattern.

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OnosakiHito (Sep 9, 2014)

You mean 2/1breaks(or bigger) within 1/1patterns should occur, right? Because 1/1+1/2 is the common snapping for patterns.

Yeah, I agree with what Mmzz said. Reasons should be already known.

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Tasha (Oct 13, 2014)

I'd like to bring this up again and ask if we're actually going to go through with setting real guidelines for Muzukashii and Oni. I know it was brought up a few times that we should make Muzukashii rules more clear, but if we're going to do this, I feel like we should make Inner Oni have to be the hardest difficulty, and have Oni designed around being a gap filler difficulty. As it is right now Oni is generally just a hard diff and Inner Oni's range from normal Oni to flat out insane Onis. I don't really have any changes to suggest without first confirming that we agree on making Muzukashii diffs more regulated.

Back then Tasha, MMzz and me came to a conclusion about the difficulty spread in a Taiko Set, and I would like to read opinions by the other BNs (or maybe more opinions by other "Taiko QATs") to have now a clear direction in how we manage spreads. QATs are already approaching spreads in this way, but BNs seem to be not certain about it.

That's what we got so far:


That means:


So, give your opinions here about this. I want to add a new guide into the wiki anyway, so starting concluding to a solution would be good.

OnosakiHito wrote:

People can make easy Kantan, Futsuu, Muzukashii and Oni, without worrying about having a too high spread to their hardest difficulty. This also avoids having too many difficulties in a set and lowers the danger of having an uneven spread. Low players and high players would benefit of it.

This.

(Haven't we been doing this already? Just not officially I guess?)

OnosakiHito wrote:

QATs are already approaching spreads in this way, but BNs seem to be not certain about it.

Yeah. Half-half. We didn't were strict about the spread to Inner so far. The rest is still a little vague. And yeah, it's about making this "officially", or at least make people known to it.

WAIT WHAT, OK

*makes 5-diff set out of 6-diff sets*

So your concept is minimize about diffs?

OnosakiHito wrote:

People can make easy Kantan, Futsuu, Muzukashii and Oni, without worrying about having a too high spread to their hardest difficulty. This also avoids having too many difficulties in a set and lowers the danger of having an uneven spread. Low players and high players would benefit of it.

i'm not taiko mapper,but i can't more agree this

Genocide wrote:

So your concept is minimize about diffs?

Well, that's a side effect of this. The main point here is to have appropriated easy difficulties and a well spread.
So the resulting effect of this is having appropriated low and even spreaded maps + a hard one because, forcing people having an endless amount of diffs makes no sense. In most cases it makes spreading maps just harder and unrankable.

@shionelove & other BNs: Every BN is allowed to voice up their opinion here.

it seems work as a guideline.

but sometimes, BN/modders are mentioning about the amount of notes between diffs to avoid a spread issue, or about star difficulty. as you know, both don't affect to a spread "basically" because there are a variety of placement patterns and star difficulty isn't working well for a taiko diff. i mean, people still don't understand what spread is. what do you think?

Difficulty guide is very clear on kantan~muzu, but oni should have more work imo ,it seems not have a limitation of the difficulty on oni, so that most of mappers usually map oni much harder.

About Oni, probably just an appropriate pattern and the mapper has an imagination about pattern that will grow up and up.

TKS wrote:

SPOILER

it seems work as a guideline.

but sometimes, BN/modders are mentioning about the amount of notes between diffs to avoid a spread issue, or about star difficulty. as you know, both don't affect to a spread "basically" because there are a variety of placement patterns and star difficulty isn't working well for a taiko diff. i mean, people still don't understand what spread is. what do you think?

Well, having a guideline, as in how to make a difficulty, might be too much. A Guide as we have now is probably fine (like this).
About the star raiting I agree. Which is why the guide should help to valuate this in an appropriate way. Because I think, all you have to know is following: Your rest moments results of your main snapping in your dififculty.
This regulates the spread itself when following this(example).

@qoot: Exactly. Oni needs an update in this matter.

I somehow agree with this. As long as the spread between Oni and Inner/Ura isn't too excessive.

But I expect to not enforce these requeriments in every song, as calm song will require an easy/calm diff spread, but an intense song would require the opposite, and this is where the problem starts. (read qoot's above post).
With this said, I think Futsuu could have simple 1/4 doubles if the BPM is relatively low and can't be avoided (sometimes avoiding it is hard or sounds meh). Similar stuff with Kantan and Muzukashii, and obviously, this can be handled case by case. But I think this would be quite obvious?

Edit: I forgot the main point of this, that is, if you have an Oni a little harder than usual, you should balance the other lower diffs to make the spread even.

Yep. If a spread becomes absurdly high between Oni and Inner, there should be one more diff between this.

Of course this is not enforced. We will map / mod as always. This idea is brought up for cases were songs are meant to be super hard, but too hard to spread in an appropriate way.

As for changing Kantan, Futsuu and Muzu guide, that might be not really requiered since we have exactly that mentioned in the guide what you just said Dake.

Oops, I misread a bit.

I have no problems with actual guide then. I think shouldn't limit Oni that much if there would be no Inner/Ura (unless it becomes ridiculously hard). That'd be the only thing I have to say.

Exactly!

Considering the fact that Inner Oni acts as an additional difficulty exclusively for hard mapping, I think the spread from Muzukashii to Oni should allow more flexibility in a Kantan~Oni set like Dake said.

I also agree that difficulty spread should be even among lower difficulties, so all players would be happy about it.

p/4892052

With that said, the difficulty spread in taiko we handle since several months / years is now officaly approved, hence this discussion is done and not needed anymore.