General
Combo colour 4 is really dark, I know you're using the same colour as the shirt in the picture, but dark combo colours are never very fun to use, and they can make approach circles hard to see when background dim is enabled. Here is a suggestion for a more lively colour choice:
Although I did not change it to below I did however did use a new brighter colour.Combo1 : 7,56,226
It's basically the same blue, but brighter.
Your, uhh, "spread balance" is really weird. The song is 90BPM, so 1/2 is basically just 1/1. Your SV's are very low (fittingly low, but still low). Because of these things, your Hard diff feels like a Normal with some DS inconsistencies, and your Normal is closer to an Easy, even considering the note density. This shouldn't be too big of an issue, since the spread isn't "unbalanced" per se, but there was a recent disqualification over unfitting difficulty names, so I just wanted to point it out, keep it in mind for the future.
Well I was going for an easier hard and normal however you do have a point. I do think that the current works great with the and increase the sv might me unnecessary. ---
Hard
Someone has to be the "No Fun Allowed" police for this map, unfortunately it's going to be me, sorry :V
I cri evyrtiemThere is no 1/6 in this song, your current 1/6 sliders should all be 1/4. Slow the song down to 25% playback and it will be more obvious; she's just slurring her words to make it feel more "jazzy", but the rhythm is all 1/4. And yes, this is an unrankable issue; I wish it wasn't as much as you do, I'd love to be allowed to extend sliders to 1/6, but it's against da rulez :<
It feels so fun with 1/6 alas I did change all of them.I'm going to segment a part of this mod out to discuss spacing, and it's appropriate usage in a Hard difficutly. After that, I'll touch on a few other semi-general things for the remainder of the mod.
00:07:208 (1,2) - I know this is a Hard, so distance snap isn't as important, but this spacing is just too high compared to your early 1/2 sections; Hard-level players will not be able to expect 1/2 at this part. Not only that, but a jump here really doesn't make any sense, there's nothing in this part of the music that is stronger than anything before this; you should save your jumps for stronger drumbeats or specific vocal emphasis. These concepts apply to most of this difficulty, you overemphasize a lot of beats in the music, and your DS usage is unfitting for a Hard difficulty. You can include jumps or DS breaks just fine, but please aim to keep the general spacing and composition consistent; 1/2 should never be spaced similar to 1/1, or vice versa, it will only make things confusing. Similarly, 1/4 should never look like 1/2.
I do see how this jump is too spaced and would throw off players so I reduced the jump to the proper DS.If you need an example of what a "fitting jump" would be, 00:54:208 (3,1) - is perfectly appropriate for this difficulty. It fits the music well, flows well, and most importantly, still looks like it's in 1/2 beat.
Meanwhile, 01:09:208 (2,3,4) - is
completely unacceptable, it's 1/4 that's nearing the same spacing as 1/1 stuff. No Hard-level player will ever be able to read this.
Aha, I didn't really know what to here before so I made some jumpy pattern. I remade the pattern where the proper DS is used.Go through your difficulty again, only this time pay attention to your overall composition.
And now for the rest of the mod:
00:03:875 (4,5,1) - The composition of this part is very strange; it's completely linear, but I think there should be some deviation to emphasize the downbeat better. These shouldn't feel as connected as they currently are.
An arrangement along the lines of this is more interesting and more fitting to the music.
Hmm, I see what you mean here. I moved the slider to somewhere else and it does flow a lot better now.00:10:875 (2,3,4,5,1) - This is another example of awkward straight lines. The 2,3 motion is the same direction as the 3,4,5 motion, but there's a whole 1/2 time period of lingering over 3; the player expects some form of direction change at this point, and not having one is underwhelming. Furthermore, the next slider is also pointing in the same direction, which makes things even more boring. I'm not going to continue pointing out instances of unfitting straight lines, I hope you can apply my comments here wherever else you see fit.
Also fixed00:14:875 (1,1) - and 00:17:541 (1,1) - Lovely and creative usage of new combo, this is really nice! However, since you don't use this effect in the later parts of the verse, it may come across as NC inconsistency, which is never a good thing. You always want to strive to keep your NC job consistent throughout the map, and especially in lower difficulties, people tend to not approve of single-note-only combos. Be careful!
I found more places where NC could be used like this so it is a bit more consistent throughout the map.01:11:541 (1,2,3,4,5) - This whole rhythm choice is illogical. You start out with a debatable overmap (that once again should be 1/4), since there's nothing but vocals here. You continue with vocals until you reach 01:13:208 (4) - , where you swap to some instrumental sound in the background. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too; these mixmatched rhythm choices are very confusing and nonsensical, not to mention unrewarding to play.
This is a more fitting rhythm choice for this section, it follows the vocals (the stronger and more appropriate of the two options), while still letting the player hold through that ringing sound a little bit. Furthermore, your current arrangement of stacked sliderheads is too cluttered and confusing for Hard-level players; they aren't accustomed to doubling back to sliderheads or consciously abusing slider leniency, so they will basically always miss here. I know you want to be creative, but please keep your target audience in mind while doing so.
Having the sliderheads in the same place would confuse hard mode players. I made a new pattern where it emphasizes the blue tick while having a patter with proper DS so its easier to follow.---
Normal
00:20:875 (3,4,5,6,7) - This is a very jerky an haphazard composition. For the easiest map in your spread, expect new players to be playing it. They will find these kinds of 1/2 arrangements to be very snapping-based and, well I already used this word but, jerky. Try to stick to smoother curves for a slower, smoother song. I would suggest one rearrangement to give you ideas for what I mean, but I can't really find an easy way to fix this without completely breaking the rest of the map, so... instead enjoy the following two images, and hopefully you can understand my suggestions and think of something yourself:
http://puu.sh/jtuyq/ec2bada225.jpg ,
http://puu.sh/jtuBS/339bd3ee18.jpg . To be honest, you do a pretty good job for most of the map, it seems like for this part you just ran out of space or something lol.
That's actually kinda true about the 'running out of space' thing. I redid this pattern where it feels more rounded so its less stagnant.00:41:875 (1) - Extend this out two more white ticks, and delete everything up to 00:45:875 (1) - ; the spinner now fits the vocals better, and you aren't missing out on anything important. That lead-in bit wasn't needed, and what's left over is still a good build into the kiai, since now all that's really mapped is the vocals.
Tiny overlaps such as 01:05:541 (5,1) - and 01:06:875 (3,4) - are ugly and only serve to make your map feel cluttered. You can make very minor rearrangements to the spacings and slider designs and everything will be fixed easily.
Instead of doing this I chose to make two sliders instead which imo matches the music better also leads into khai time quite well.---
Good luck!