Most of us know what halftime is, some of us are guilty of using it. It is the easymode of osu; Infamously used for songs that take a lot of effort to FC, which people do not want to apply. Thus, their saviour, HalfTime!

Commonly half-timed songs are Vivid, Marisa, Kanbu, Polka Power, Hardware Store, Agony, and the likes. If you take a look at the score board for most of these songs, 50% of the scores are half-timed.

Some people will say "Half-time is available to all to use." This is true, however some people take pride in their ability and would like to see where they fall in the rankings when compared to other players (ie. the scoreboard) However when the scoreboard is cluttered with difficulty decreasing mods, there is no accurate comparison. There's always "Hey, I'm in 7th place! First place unmodded!" But the joy of being in 7th doesn't compare to that of being in first. 7th place put in more effort to get their score, yet they stay in 7th because they did not take the easy way out.

Let's do some math:

Nofail mod: .5 multiplyer.
This is balanced. If a player needs the nofail mod, this means they cannot full combo the song. They can still claim a place on the score board since they will actually pass the song, yet they'll be nowhere near the top positions.

Easy mod: .5 multiplyer.
Similar to the nofail mod, yet with a slight advantage. Songs that cannot be FC'd without this mod can still be FCed with easy mod, to some people. This could deserve a slight nerf too, since it is not completely balanced with nofail, but that is offtopic and completely a different story. This mod does not bother me.

HalfTime mod: .6 multiplyer.
This bastard, like I've said, is the savior to many people when point farming or when wanting to claim a few #1 spots. By far the most imbalanced of all of the difficulty decreasing mods, as fast songs with a lot of beats that are nearly impossible to FC modless can EASILY be FC'd, S'd, even SS'd with this mod. However, it remains the highest multiplyer of them all.

I'll give you a few examples now:
Weird Al Yankovic - Polka Power [nearly impossible]
4:13 length. 534 hit circles, 201 sliders, 18 spinners. Max score (nomod) roughly 19mil.
Positions 1-4 of this song are all half-timed, 5th place being the highest unmodded score @ 3.2mil (tormentor_84). First place in this song is Kai with 11m, half timed of course. See the imbalance?

IOSYS - Kanbu etc etc (overdrive) [hard]
2:53 length. 200 BPM. 513 hit circles. 158 sliders. 0 spinners. Max score (nomod) roughly 21m.
Position 1, 3, 4, and 5 are half timed. First place sits at 6.8m (bia), and second 4.1m (rolled) Have you played overdrive? It's freaking nuts, even on half time. However it is still a hell of a lot easier on half time, and I've played this like 200 times to achieve my 4.1m...
/me looks
Okay, Bia has played this ~240 times. But there is just a difference in skill between us two. Not meant to offend you Bia, but regardless of how many times you've played this, a real-time score does not deserve 2nd place to a half timed score.

Anyways, on to the poll. There are three options here. One being to leave the half time mod as is, one reducing the multiplyer to .2-.3 (will be decided later), and the third being to unrank it altogether. (Back to Polka Power, if the multiplyer was .3, the highest half timed score (FC) would be ~5.7mil. If .2, 3.8 would be the highest score. Remember 3.2 is currently the highest unmodded score)

Feel free to post any comments you have about the issue, and please vote in the poll.

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I think that my opinion represents people like Bia.

I see Rolled's current #2 spot on Kanbu and I think that it belongs on #2. When non-osu! players come to my house and ask me what Osu! is, and to see a hard song... I ALWAYS show Rolled's replay of Kanbu. It's far more impressive than a half-timed replay. But does it deserve the number one score ?

In my opinion... If the #1 score matters to you more than your skills, use Half Time so you can full combo it. It's clearly an incredibly difficult song. Even with Half Time, Bia was unable to full combo it. No one has been able to. I think making Half-Time unranked makes, in effect, some songs impossible to score well on. No one will play the songs anymore. Bia decided to make the song fun to play by putting Half Time AND Flashlight on. That's a tough challenge, and I feel that he deserves the score he received for that.

Rolled's score shows that he is the better player because he did not play with the Half Time mod. I think that should be pleasing enough for him. Does he really need the recognition of being the number one player ? If he wanted that, he could have done Half Time himself.

Half Time allows players who are not as good as Rolled to still succeed in incredibly tough maps that are almost impossible in full time, and, for some, impossible even in Half Time.

Ever since Half Time was released as a mod, it has been 0.60x. Why was that number introduced in the first place ? I do not think it was a mistake. It was released before I joined Osu!, and has been around since the eleventh of March, this year. That is nearly seven months. Why should months of scores be changed or erased ? It is too late to change them now.

When Flashlight scores were deleted, it was different because it was over a time period of one day. Half Time has been out for far longer, and hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more scores would have to be completely destroyed.

Rolled wrote:

"Bia is fucked"

Is that fair ? To take someone's score away like that, after they worked for it ? It was not easy for Bia to do what he did to get the #1 score.

Rolled wrote:

It is the easymode of osu; Infamously used for songs that take a lot of effort to FC, which people do not want to apply.

If Half Time is unranked, why even have the mod ? I don't think it's 'fun' to play on Half Time. People will just not play the harder difficulty songs like Kanbu and Crazy Motorcycle Chase. I can't pass CMC on full time. Most people can't. But I can get some credit for doing it on Half Time. There are several songs like this. I don't consider myself a bad player, but CMC is just too difficult. So I should never play it again ?

I think a reasonable change would be a 0.5 multiplier. Half time, half score. Makes sense. Goes with the other difficulty-reducing mods (Easy, NoFail).

Deleting scores would hurt many players. I hope that it is possible to simply give them the new multiplier effect. Preferably 0.5x.

LuigiHann wrote:

I think Half-Time is a great practice mod, but I don't see why it shouldn't be unranked.

I think it's a terrible practice mod. It will just hold the player back.

For example, if you played a song on Double Time several times and repeatedly failed, and started getting further and further into the song... You would probably be able to full combo it after reducing the difficulty back to full time. That is a good way to practice.

Half Time has the opposite effect.

If you make it slower, it becomes easier to comprehend, and if you use this as practice enough, you'll be able to comprehend it better once you speed it up. Similar scenarios include Guitar Hero/Rock band practice mode. In these cases, speeding the song up will only make you faster, not help you to read it so much.

you wont learn anything in half time, youll know where circles are placed, but you still wont get to hit them precisely at normal speed. and you can learn the placement of notes in edit mode too.

imo half time is just for score-whores who like to get a high score on a really hard to FC songs.

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Half Time can only show you hit circle placement.

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hmm nobody seems willing to see it by point of view....

Just so you know, I in no way support leaving it as is.

I agree with Cyclone.

I'm for 0.4x multiplier.

And I was thinking that we should make something about "Easy", because it's quite unused due to the "increase" of difficulty.
In better words: lots of maps with easy are a mess of beats overlapped one on another and it's quite confusing.
Maybe it should be a little less "Easy".
Can I know what does it exactly do?

tl;dr, but i got the idea.

I'm not for unranking, but yes to decreasing multiplier.

Card N'FoRcE wrote:

I'm for 0.4x multiplier.

And I was thinking that we should make something about "Easy", because it's quite unused due to the "increase" of difficulty.
In better words: lots of maps with easy are a mess of beats overlapped one on another and it's quite confusing.
Maybe it should be a little less "Easy".
Can I know what does it exactly do?

IIRC, Easy allows one "revive" during the song, bigger hitcircles, which appear earlier than usual, and slower Ki bar drain.

And I'm for reducing the multiplier.

I support .4 multiplier

not worth an unrank

Is it possible to retroactively change scores?

If not, why not?

The score data does not store when each note was hit, so it's impossible to take the combo multiplier into account.

Also iirc not all scores have replay data saved online so you can't just run through each replay either.

I go for decrease multiplier, not unranked.

unranked, seriously.

.01

in case an impossibly hard song with low HP drain kills your accuracy

i think easy should increase to .6 and halftime to .3-.4,since easy mod is not as easy as halftime...i should kno cause im not the best player lol

I'll admit, I use half time a lot. I'm second in Pressing On with half-time.

I can see why the multiplier would want to be decreased, but at the same time, I think it's a little unfair to say to everyone who has used it thus far that their scores are going to be taken away. Believe it or not, it's easy to screw up in half-time too. I've currently played Agony the most out of any song thus far, a total of 119 times, and I still have yet to FC it. It's difficult, and things can still go wrong. I'll admit, when I try to play it on regular speed, I fail before the second break, usually right after the first.

But all those 110 times I played it on half-time, I could've spent my time playing it on regular speed trying to get my wrist and finger used to the timing on that.

What I'm saying is that I can see why the multiplier would be decreased, to apply it retroactively is totally unfair. I've spent too much time actually using it and still not getting it and wouldn't have had I known that the multiplier was that low.

I voted the middle option because it had the most votes.

IsThisASignoftheEnd wrote:

I'll admit, I use half time a lot. I'm second in Pressing On with half-time.

I can see why the multiplier would want to be decreased, but at the same time, I think it's a little unfair to say to everyone who has used it thus far that their scores are going to be taken away. Believe it or not, it's easy to screw up in half-time too. I've currently played Agony the most out of any song thus far, a total of 119 times, and I still have yet to FC it. It's difficult, and things can still go wrong. I'll admit, when I try to play it on regular speed, I fail before the second break, usually right after the first.

But all those 110 times I played it on half-time, I could've spent my time playing it on regular speed trying to get my wrist and finger used to the timing on that.

What I'm saying is that I can see why the multiplier would be decreased, to apply it retroactively is totally unfair. I've spent too much time actually using it and still not getting it and wouldn't have had I known that the multiplier was that low.

This is the perfect example of someone who will be very affected and hurt by the deletion of Half Time scores.

Should he suffer due to no one addressing this score multiplier problem a long time ago ?

ThePassingShadow wrote:

IsThisASignoftheEnd wrote:

I'll admit, I use half time a lot. I'm second in Pressing On with half-time.

I can see why the multiplier would want to be decreased, but at the same time, I think it's a little unfair to say to everyone who has used it thus far that their scores are going to be taken away. Believe it or not, it's easy to screw up in half-time too. I've currently played Agony the most out of any song thus far, a total of 119 times, and I still have yet to FC it. It's difficult, and things can still go wrong. I'll admit, when I try to play it on regular speed, I fail before the second break, usually right after the first.

But all those 110 times I played it on half-time, I could've spent my time playing it on regular speed trying to get my wrist and finger used to the timing on that.

What I'm saying is that I can see why the multiplier would be decreased, to apply it retroactively is totally unfair. I've spent too much time actually using it and still not getting it and wouldn't have had I known that the multiplier was that low.

This is the perfect example of someone who will be very affected and hurt by the deletion of Half Time scores.

Should he suffer due to no one addressing this score multiplier problem a long time ago ?

Don't get me wrong, a lot of my scores are pretty legitimate other than what half-time did. As far as I can remember, Agony, Pressing On, and maybe one or two others are the only ones I've needed half-time.

Your latter point, though, is what I mean. In much shorter words anyway.

IsThisASignoftheEnd wrote:

ThePassingShadow wrote:

IsThisASignoftheEnd wrote:

I'll admit, I use half time a lot. I'm second in Pressing On with half-time.

I can see why the multiplier would want to be decreased, but at the same time, I think it's a little unfair to say to everyone who has used it thus far that their scores are going to be taken away. Believe it or not, it's easy to screw up in half-time too. I've currently played Agony the most out of any song thus far, a total of 119 times, and I still have yet to FC it. It's difficult, and things can still go wrong. I'll admit, when I try to play it on regular speed, I fail before the second break, usually right after the first.

But all those 110 times I played it on half-time, I could've spent my time playing it on regular speed trying to get my wrist and finger used to the timing on that.

What I'm saying is that I can see why the multiplier would be decreased, to apply it retroactively is totally unfair. I've spent too much time actually using it and still not getting it and wouldn't have had I known that the multiplier was that low.

This is the perfect example of someone who will be very affected and hurt by the deletion of Half Time scores.

Should he suffer due to no one addressing this score multiplier problem a long time ago ?

Don't get me wrong, a lot of my scores are pretty legitimate other than what half-time did. As far as I can remember, Agony, Pressing On, and maybe one or two others are the only ones I've needed half-time.

Your latter point, though, is what I mean. In much shorter words anyway.

Regardless of your ranked score, the time you put into some scores on Half Time will be lost. You worked hard for them, and they will disappear.

You did work hard for them, yet people worked harder to get scores that are lower than yours on the scoreboard.

This whole debate is all about fairness. If player A is better than player B, then player A should be higher on the scoreboard, regardless of how much time went into those particular songs. Player A put more effort in general, or is just naturally more skilled. Either way, they should still get the rank they deserved.

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Two wrote:

The multiplier needs to be lowered at the very least. I think peppy's reply to this was something like "the song shouldn't have been ranked in the first place if halftime beats normal scores", though.

I didn't read the thread since I only care about my opinion ^_^

In a way, I agree. But Half Time allows for those extremely hard songs to be played and given points.

You won't see a Half Time score in the top six for a song that is possible to S on full time.

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@my last post

My mistake, I think it's possible to apply a new multiplier to old scores after all, because all you have to do is multiply the score by (new multiplier / 0.6)

Echo wrote:

@my last post

My mistake, I think it's possible to apply a new multiplier to old scores after all, because all you have to do is multiply the score by (new multiplier / 0.6)

I really hope that this is true.

Well, with the little that I've talked to peppy about this he said he'd have to wipe all old HT scores. I guess it might conflict with the replays if the score is just changed?

Rolled wrote:

Well, with the little that I've talked to peppy about this he said he'd have to wipe all old HT scores. I guess it might conflict with the replays if the score is just changed?

I think making 'no replay data' for all Half Time scores would not be a bad sacrifice to keep the old scores.

Rolled wrote:

You did work hard for them, yet people worked harder to get scores that are lower than yours on the scoreboard.

This whole debate is all about fairness. If player A is better than player B, then player A should be higher on the scoreboard, regardless of how much time went into those particular songs. Player A put more effort in general, or is just naturally more skilled. Either way, they should still get the rank they deserved.

They put their time into one thing, and I put mine into another. They could have just as easily put their half time score on their and would end up better than me, and when they did do better than the half time score, it would knock mine down anyway.

I feel like I'm talking to a crazed cult or something. Of course the top users will be all for this, but when it comes to people who actually do do this, it's a little saddening that this wasn't applied earlier before we spent all our time with half time. We're totally a minority being abused if you degrade scores retroactively.

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Download: Mami Kawada - No Buts! (HakuNoKaemi) [Inamaru CTB Insane].osu

Saturos wrote:

If there's this much of a bitch about losing half-time scores, I can't wait to see what happens when maps start getting either deranked + wiped or moved to approved.

If it means anything, I'll end up losing 2-3 scores out of this since I halftime-fagged a few maps.

It's a totally different concept. One applies to everyone who played a certain song, this only affects a certain few individuals who couldn't do it normally.

And it's sorta both ways on that one. Half-time generally helps people who aren't so good, and I don't think we can consider yourself not so good. The people who aren't so great at this game will generally be a little more upset about it than the ones who feel like they can do good without it anyway.

tl;dr version: Fuck the whiners, wipe scores.

IsThisASignoftheEnd wrote:

It's a totally different concept. One applies to everyone who played a certain song, this only affects a certain few individuals who couldn't do it normally.

And it's sorta both ways on that one. Half-time generally helps people who aren't so good, and I don't think we can consider yourself not so good. The people who aren't so great at this game will generally be a little more upset about it than the ones who feel like they can do good without it anyway.

Makes no difference if you're skilled or not. It'll still help people who have trouble learning a map, which in turn allows you to play the map better at 100%. In this way, halftime does not need to be a ranked.

The problem lies with the skilled people who abuse it's relatively high multiplier to obtain scores that are nearly impossible at 100%, thereby pushing other amazing 100% scores aside. Something needs to be done on this end, whether it be deranking those certain maps altogether, or changing the way halftime functions.

Also, as a side note (this applies to everyone); don't try to use time vested into a map as an excuse to keep the scores. Aside from a couple individuals, everyone had to start at the low end of the skill totem poll. osu! is all about consistancy and practice. Time vested in to any map will help increase you skill overall. Just because you have more plays on a map than someone else does not mean you deserve a higher score, for the others that scored higher have probably been playing for far longer. All you'll be losing from the removal of halftime scores is the literal scores; the skill you gained from playing that often will remain.

You know, maybe it's not Half Time that's at fault, but people over-mapping the shit out of everything on Insane. I don't think I've ever made a song that scores higher on half time than on no-mods, because I dislike overmapping. Overmapping is not fun.

But to be honest, I don't see why Half Time is 0.6 as oppose to 0.5 - I'm in favour of reducing it to 0.5 (even more so if scores can just get recalculated) but it doesn't need to go any lower.

I think the problem is the mappers, not the mod.

Saturos wrote:

Also, as a side note (this applies to everyone); don't try to use time vested into a map as an excuse to keep the scores. Aside from a couple individuals, everyone had to start at the low end of the skill totem poll. osu! is all about consistancy and practice. Time vested in to any map will help increase you skill overall. Just because you have more plays on a map than someone else does not mean you deserve a higher score, for the others that scored higher have probably been playing for far longer. All you'll be losing from the removal of halftime scores is the literal scores; the skill you gained from playing that often will remain.

qft. Wish I could have worded it like this.

Hmmm? Have you already said something along these lines? Too lazy to read the thread, I just felt like shitting out text. Guess I did a good job of it~

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@saturos

derank + approved != wipe scores?

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Echo wrote:

@saturos

derank + approved != wipe scores?

I'm aware. Just talking about ranked score, really. ;x

My view on half-time:

First off, half-time scores should not be ranked. I think that half-time is more of a preparatory tool than anything else. Slow it down so you can get used to it, then take it up to speed. Unrank the scores achieved by half-time. If you complain about it, maybe you should spend more time attempting to play the map up to speed like it was intended to be played.

Next, it is also partly the mapper's responsibility. Overmapping your Insane difficulty doesn't make you a good mapper, but it'll sure as hell get a lot more people half-timing your map just to beat it. Half-time would be an appropriate tool only to practice the map, but if your map is near impossible without half-time, then you know something's wrong.

So, use half-time only to get used to the song and remove half-time'd scores. Mappers, it's your job to not overmap something just because it's an Insane difficulty. Not every map needs to be like that, some are a LOT more fun when easier.

If we unrank halftime now, next to go will be Easy.

Easy is a lot harder than half time. Also, that thinking reminds me a lot of "if gays marry, next we'll see people wanting to marry animals".

Mappers, it's your job to not overmap something just because it's an Insane difficulty. Not every map needs to be like that, some are a LOT more fun when easier.

It's not the mapper's fault at all. Moderators are the ones who are responsible for what gets ranked and what doesn't. And if you rank songs like this: viewtopic.php?t=5432, I don't think you can complain about overmapping ever.

Two wrote:

Mappers, it's your job to not overmap something just because it's an Insane difficulty. Not every map needs to be like that, some are a LOT more fun when easier.

It's not the mapper's fault at all. Moderators are the ones who are responsible for what gets ranked and what doesn't. And if you rank songs like this: viewtopic.php?t=5432, I don't think you can complain about overmapping ever.

I do have a right to complain, though. I may be a BAT member, but that doesn't mean that I consider all maps above a certain difficulty to be unacceptable. Overmapped files that are fun and have patterns that at make sense in the context are alright with me, but really, seeing something that hard for every single map is what grinds my gears. I am a tad hypocritical in saying this, for I do like mapping hard maps (and even have some absolutely impossible maps in the works). But I even criticize myself for doing this, because the song's just going to get half-timed and nobody's going to play it the way it's meant to be played. The difficulty makes people flock to the mods, and that ruins some of the fun the map author had in mind. Does it bother me that I rank these maps? Yes, sometimes. I rank them, though, based on whether or not they're good maps, and I do take difficulty into account during this (Justice to Believe? It was fun and appropriate, believe me). If something is overmapped beyond the point of it being acceptable, that's when I have a problem. So, well, I guess it is partly the mods' faults, but you know, in the end, us BATs aren't the ones making all the maps, are we?

excuse my incomprehensible rant at points, I need some sleep

Anyways, back on topic.

What about NoFail? Seeing all these scores (including some of mine from awhile ago) that only exist due to NoFail...yeah. Kinda like the scores that exist due to half-time, huh?

I don't think nofail will cause any problems, because anyone who can finish the song without nofail will almost definitely get a better score than someone using nofail.

whats the point of having nofail on if you can FC the song? o.O