Thanks again for leaving concerns about this map!Protastic101 wrote:
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.
The point of our discussion is how much QAT including you can agree with 'dump' stuffs, and I'm already certain about keeping most parts. So I thought it would be better to start from the beginnings of your post. I had never thought saying this map as a dump was rude. However, I strongly disagree with this chart being unnatural or being forced. Since most of the parts' rolly 250bpm stream patterns are meant to be 'light' for skilled players who can handle the sections around 30s (which we discussed mostly) while having some diversity of patterning that gives similar (not the same) feelings. The point here is, everyone can feel and interpret their feelings in their own way. You said this song is rather quiet and tranquil than being extreme, however, I got the feeling of the sounds itself being quite intense, even by comparing with other songs too. (Although I agree overall flow itself has some calm sections that are a contrast of what I have expressed through this map.)
For the first points that you suggested is, well as we discussed I disagree but that does not affect much of this map's gameplay, so I somewhat have the desire to change patterns if there are good solutions for that. However, your screenshot was not that satisfying cuz even for a former section I used 2 LNs in col 3,4 which is placed each 1/2 lines but the one you gave me was only 1/1. If anyone can think of a better solution for that part I would appreciate it and fix it. But please keep in mind all modders and GDers, BNs and also I agreed with expressing those indistinct sounds with simple single note 1/4 rolly streams, although your opinions still have the highest priority. And for those weak snare drum sounds, I gave you people's compromised opinion but if you still disagree, I don't mind changing it cuz it really doesn't matter much.
For the next part that you said there are a bit of SR boosts, please keep in mind I also made enough discussions with people while struggling to find the patterns which can actually fit most with the sounds. Again, the main reason would be three. 1) consistency through that short section 2) musical rise that notes (and difficulty of playing) should represent the intense feelings 3) technicality. As we somewhat made a good point to scramble up notes to be bit harder, I won't make many comments about this. I will increase HP value (since you said you could pass this map by mashing keys), maybe between 8.8 to 9.0, since I thought 9.2 could be a bit too much to have wider player range. I'll try to move only about few notes from the second section(02:04:365 - ) to make it have higher difficulty than the first secction(00:30:285 - ) that can change its difficulty. (Some people might pass the first part but eventually fails on the second section.) Yet I'm worried about this section being too much hard for making it to more harder.
Your third opinion, wasn't that satisfying one. What I've tried to express here is, to make it easier than the section before kiai while having denser jacking parts by combination of two styles. Giving each part breaks by making half to be easy LNs with a bit of expressive SVs, I combined it with hard parts. By this, players who have abilities to bearly play constantly dense 125bpm jacks can still play lightly by concentrating on hard parts while resting (both concentration & their hands) on easier sections. Also I tried to express those stuttering sounds by using LNs rather than using 250bpm streams since the sound is similar with other parts that are expressed by dumps. Thus it's not a good idea to decrease density and the difficulty of this chart's kiai if you consider the former parts, especially for the densest 250bpm streams around 30s. These patterns are, of course, not the usual ways to express the sounds that people made, but since this chart is somewhat experimental in a way that can widen ways of music interpretation, I think it's not bad to give it a shot.
The last concern was, for me, the most confusing one, since I had to reconsider structures of all parts. So there are three problems for changing patterns as you suggested, 1) having way less difference between Fontes' Insane 2) difficulty differences between the sections that I actually can express sounds with streams in your sight (ex. 00:47:565 - ) which has slightly stronger growls or with pitch. 3) this part is the main concept of this map. You see, those stream sections without LNs and with LNs have huge gap of its visuals, difficulty, and the feelings that a player can get through both sections. While sections with LNs have simpler patterns yet being harder to play (which focuses on pitch expression more), those without LNs have a higher diversity of patterns with easier difficulties. The point is, those easier sections are good enough to express lighter sounds that can be played as rolling fingers without being too far from the sounds. So to conclude, I focused less on how much sounds are growling, I focused on making some distinction between stream sections that which sound could be mapped and which part should be harder, while having a decent level of difficulty consistency.
Again, thanks for taking your time checking this map, and please let me make further discussions by in-game chat if there are more things that should be justified.