Hello, I have some quality concerns that I think need addressing before this set goes through to ranked.
General:The difficulty spread is WAY too huge between difficulties. People who would come from comfortably playing the Normal difficulty would have to spend significantly longer improving compared to other sets before they were even capable of understanding some of the complex patterns used in the Hard. The difference in difficulty, density and complexity are just way too harsh, and there should be a difficulty between them, a TRUE normal difficulty, which the song is fully capable of supporting.
Hard:I've already been through this in discord, but I wanted to do a comprehensive list of all inappropriate 1/6th note usage due to insignificant synth sfx that probably shouldn't be mapped to, and ones that SHOULD stay mapped, because there is a significant difference between some of these that shouldn't be ignored.
00:11:800 (11800|1) - 00:16:600 (16600|1) - 00:19:000 (19000|1) - During all of these notes, there is a kinda "wiggly" synth noise, which is the only audible sound other than the held "main" synth (for example, held from 00:11:700 - to 00:11:850 -). All of these notes are unacceptable for two reasons:
1. They are barely audible compared to the main synth, which leads to players feeling as though they are hitting "dead notes" which aren't mapped to anything.
2. Even if these sfx sounds are audible, there are no specific sounds that I can hear that call for these notes to be snapped to SPECIFICALLY these 1/6th lines. In fact, if i'm hearing correctly the "apex" of the wiggle sfx all happen on 1/4th snaps (00:11:700 - 00:11:775 - and 00:11:850 -) which make the 1/6th snap usage extremely inappropriate.
(As an example of good appropriate note placement on sfx in this song, 00:13:500 (13500|2,13575|1) - has a distinct sfx sound on each snap here which the above mentioned notes all really don't.)
As a solution i'd like to see the 1/6th note removed in all of these cases, and for the doubles that come before it (for example 00:11:700 (11700|3,11700|2) - ) to include a LN in some form to better represent the held synth noises here.
Additionally, i'd like to bring attention to some of the inconsistent double usage when it comes to distinctive synth noises in this map.
For the first 20 seconds of the map, you use doubles to accentuate the "main" synth noises in the map while using singles for the background, which is fine. However, there are some isntances where this isn't the case, which I think takes away from the map a lot.
00:07:050 (7050|2,7200|1,7200|0,7350|2) - As mentioned in discord, the usage of singles on the main synth sounds here and the double on the non-main synth sounds is pretty weird, however I see the point you gave, that you didn't want players to have to play 6 1/2 doubles in a row, which is fine. I'd like some changes to be made however to make this section a little more consistent. Instead of just swapping the density for these notes (00:07:050 (7050|2,7200|1,7200|0,7350|2), consider removing 00:07:200 (7200|0). Having them all be singles would make for an easier lead-in for the 4 doublets (which at this point in the map is the most dense pattern, as it should be).
I'd also like to see a double on 00:08:100 - since the synth noise here is exactly the same as the double at 00:08:400 - and is pretty distinctly different from the note at 00:08:250.
Even if you don't agree with anything I've said above (which you really should), in this difficulty's current state, through the use of unrelenting 1/2 double note usage and VERY QUESTIONABLE 1/6th note usage in the section before the Kiai, the Kiai section feels less difficult than the entire map before it by not utilizing doublets on the EXTREMELY LOUD BASS SYNTH every 2/1 white tick starting from 00:20:700 - (which it REALLY should). Although you mentioned this would increase the SR to about 2.9*, this really shouldn't be a problem if you make a
REAL normal difficulty.
I'd like to go through this set a little more if it ends up falling out of qualified to go through some questionable pitch usage in the Normal, but these are minor issues that I don't see the point in addressing atm unless the above changes are to be made.