Hello! Apologies about the last day disqualification as we have taken a day or two to mull this over before coming to our decision.
On behalf of the mania QAT, we are taking this map down because it forces patterns and concepts inappropriate for the song's relative difficulty which makes it unrealistically reflect the contents and nature of the song. I do not wish to throw the word "dump" around freely as I believe it tends to be taken as an insult to the mapper(s), but this is what this chart is, and I do not mean it in a rude way.
Previously, we have allowed semi-dumps to be ranked before and they have been widely regarded as some of the best maps mania has currently ranked. This though, goes beyond that, and goes from being challenging gimmicks and unique interpretations of a song through a chart to forced difficulty for the sake of making a hard map out of a relatively tranquil song. We believe it no longer reflects the song properly, and instead is inserting difficulty in awkward places which feels forced and unnatural.
Some examples of this from the top difficulty are as follows:
00:09:165 - to 00:11:085 - While not nearly as hard as other areas of the chart, we believe the majority of these to be ghost notes as they are played over indistinct sounds continuing from 00:08:565 - which are currently unacceptable unless for the sake of preserving flow, which in this case it is not believed to have this effect.
00:21:765 (21765|0,22245|3) - Similarly.
02:04:365 - ^
00:30:285 - As the song is 125 BPM, 1/8 streams and even jumpstreams can be considered fine for short periods of time due to the slow bpm, but we need to keep in mind that this is essentially a 250 BPM 1/4 dense handstream which leaves only 60 ms for players to read and properly hit notes. This alone boosts SR by 0.20* and is an unnecessary spike. A cleaner handstream with 1/4 jumps would be more closely centered to the general difficulty of the chart. A suggestion could be like so https://osu.ppy.sh/ss/11048440
00:34:125 - Accents at consistent intervals for sounds that do not change in volume or emphasis. The first half of each phrase (from 00:36:045 - to 00:37:005 - ) have a much lower note density, whereas the second half of the measure (from 00:37:005 - to 00:37:965 - ) have a large jump in density despite the fact that the song has clearer instruments that are more isolated and lighter in sound. A possible solution to this would be to reduce the chord sizes in the second half of each measure in order to reduce the jump in note density as we do understand that keeping a similar density would make the map truly awkward with the long notes to play.
00:39:885 - 00:49:485 - 00:51:405 - 00:53:325 - and so on. Yes, there have been other maps where we have allowed 1/8 bursts for bass growls, but they were not as smooth or clean as the sounds here. There is such a negligible amount of vibration or change within each of these synths to warrant these bursts that they are notes for non-existent alterations in the music. Especially combined with long notes which already do an excellent job of representing the long sounds and the SVs which accentuate the more hectic nature of this ending section, these notes almost become redundant. A proposed solution would be to use long notes for the 1/8 bursts instead, and use stronger SV stutters to represent the very slight variations in sound.
These are the main reasons why we are taking the map down. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask either me, Feerum, or Asherz007 for help. Most likely, I will be making a larger post later with more specifics of the issues we have so rest assured, these are not the only solutions available to you.
On behalf of the mania QAT, we are taking this map down because it forces patterns and concepts inappropriate for the song's relative difficulty which makes it unrealistically reflect the contents and nature of the song. I do not wish to throw the word "dump" around freely as I believe it tends to be taken as an insult to the mapper(s), but this is what this chart is, and I do not mean it in a rude way.
Previously, we have allowed semi-dumps to be ranked before and they have been widely regarded as some of the best maps mania has currently ranked. This though, goes beyond that, and goes from being challenging gimmicks and unique interpretations of a song through a chart to forced difficulty for the sake of making a hard map out of a relatively tranquil song. We believe it no longer reflects the song properly, and instead is inserting difficulty in awkward places which feels forced and unnatural.
Some examples of this from the top difficulty are as follows:
00:09:165 - to 00:11:085 - While not nearly as hard as other areas of the chart, we believe the majority of these to be ghost notes as they are played over indistinct sounds continuing from 00:08:565 - which are currently unacceptable unless for the sake of preserving flow, which in this case it is not believed to have this effect.
00:21:765 (21765|0,22245|3) - Similarly.
02:04:365 - ^
00:30:285 - As the song is 125 BPM, 1/8 streams and even jumpstreams can be considered fine for short periods of time due to the slow bpm, but we need to keep in mind that this is essentially a 250 BPM 1/4 dense handstream which leaves only 60 ms for players to read and properly hit notes. This alone boosts SR by 0.20* and is an unnecessary spike. A cleaner handstream with 1/4 jumps would be more closely centered to the general difficulty of the chart. A suggestion could be like so https://osu.ppy.sh/ss/11048440
00:34:125 - Accents at consistent intervals for sounds that do not change in volume or emphasis. The first half of each phrase (from 00:36:045 - to 00:37:005 - ) have a much lower note density, whereas the second half of the measure (from 00:37:005 - to 00:37:965 - ) have a large jump in density despite the fact that the song has clearer instruments that are more isolated and lighter in sound. A possible solution to this would be to reduce the chord sizes in the second half of each measure in order to reduce the jump in note density as we do understand that keeping a similar density would make the map truly awkward with the long notes to play.
00:39:885 - 00:49:485 - 00:51:405 - 00:53:325 - and so on. Yes, there have been other maps where we have allowed 1/8 bursts for bass growls, but they were not as smooth or clean as the sounds here. There is such a negligible amount of vibration or change within each of these synths to warrant these bursts that they are notes for non-existent alterations in the music. Especially combined with long notes which already do an excellent job of representing the long sounds and the SVs which accentuate the more hectic nature of this ending section, these notes almost become redundant. A proposed solution would be to use long notes for the 1/8 bursts instead, and use stronger SV stutters to represent the very slight variations in sound.
These are the main reasons why we are taking the map down. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask either me, Feerum, or Asherz007 for help. Most likely, I will be making a larger post later with more specifics of the issues we have so rest assured, these are not the only solutions available to you.