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Hard = the not-so-new Insane - why ?

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109
Rena-chan
Topic Starter
Rena-chan
I'm pretty sure this has been brought up before, but really.

Why is it that obvious Insane difficulties are being labeled as Hard and ranked like that ?
I'm going to use this (07th Expansion - miragecoordinator) as an example here. "Hard" is a fairly streamy difficulty with lots of jumps and spacing changes, and while we all know that star rating doesn't always work well, it's not that difficult to map a proper Hard difficulty that doesn't have a 4.93 rating. Is this really what a Hard should look like ?

Or is it that BATs just don't give half a fuck about what they're ranking as long as it's "technically rankable" ?
It's not exactly a rare occurrence from what I've seen either.

Now before anyone goes "hurr you can't play hawrd", I'd like to state that I can, indeed, easily play Insane difficulties, just to clear up misunderstandings before they're made. This isn't about skill level, it's about wrong labeling and laziness.
thelewa
3,537 posts
Joined August 2010
thelewa
Maybe the name hard actually means that it's hard

hard to play that is
ziin
2,632 posts
Joined January 2010
ziin
la cataline hards are always insane.
senaya
osu! Alumni
5,798 posts
Joined March 2010
senaya

ziin wrote:

la cataline hards are always insane.
isn't it a good thing?
NoHitter
osu! Alumni
3,785 posts
Joined June 2009
NoHitter
Some Hard difficulties have high star rating.
This creates the illusion that high star rating =/= difficulty.
Rena-chan
Topic Starter
Rena-chan

ziin wrote:

la cataline hards are always insane.
And ?

NoHItter wrote:

Some Hard difficulties have high star rating.
This creates the illusion that high star rating =/= difficulty.
Did you even bother looking at the map I used as an example ?

senaya wrote:

ziin wrote:

la cataline hards are always insane.
isn't it a good thing?
No.

Also;

ragelewa wrote:

Maybe the name hard actually means that it's hard

hard to play that is
If you go by things like this, it should be labeled Easy just because most above-averagely-skilled players will easily get +99% accuracy on it.
Doesn't make it any less of an Insane. This is still not the only map that is like that.
NoHitter
osu! Alumni
3,785 posts
Joined June 2009
NoHitter
Yes I did.
I just merely stated what could be a cause of the confusion regarding Hard diffs not equaling Insane diffs.
ziin
2,632 posts
Joined January 2010
ziin
this is why I prefer a +/- scale, but since we can name our difficulties, all you have to do is call them something different and it's no longer a "problem".

Stupid I know, but trying to fit everything on a 4 point scale is silly.
Bass
1,846 posts
Joined January 2009
Bass
Nobody gives a shit when xierbaliti gets ranked maps with insane which is named Hard js.
thelewa
3,537 posts
Joined August 2010
thelewa

Rena-chan wrote:

If you go by things like this, it should be labeled Easy just because most above-averagely-skilled players will easily get +99% accuracy on it.
Doesn't make it any less of an Insane. This is still not the only map that is like that.
I don't see why it should be called easy because it's easy for maybe 1% of osu! players ?

1% is 10000 and I dare you to find even that amount of people who can fc the diff easily with +99% accuracy.
Ekaru
3,617 posts
Joined July 2008
Ekaru
Okay, yeah, the map in question is not a Hard at all. You cannot even try to argue that it's a Hard. It's not a matter of the map's star rating but a matter of the map clearly being an Insane through and through if you play it.

It really is mainly a matter of laziness. That's all there is to it, really.
palion
172 posts
Joined October 2011
palion
naming is too arbitrary for this to be objective

ragelewa wrote:

1% is 10000 and I dare you to find even that amount of people who can fc the diff easily with +99% accuracy.
yay

thelewa
3,537 posts
Joined August 2010
thelewa
9999 left then
Neruell
408 posts
Joined May 2009
Neruell
Is it really SUCH a big problem when the name of the difficulty is "Hard" rather than "Insane"? If i don't manage "Insane"/"Hard" I go to an easier difficulty, if I can manage "Insane"/"Hard" I go to a harder difficulty. If there is no harder difficulty and I am #1 than I am happy. If not, I keep trying. Sometimes the "Insane" on 1 song is harder than on the other, sometimes not. That's what I call variety.

P.S. What was the problem once again?
A8mew
74 posts
Joined February 2010
A8mew
The problem is consistency.

Hard and Insane should not be used interchangeably. While it doesn't matter to highly skilled players, it does matter to not-so-skilled players working their way up to Hard, only to see a sea of "Hard" difficulties that are inarguably meant to be Insane.
Neruell
408 posts
Joined May 2009
Neruell
Hmm and what is that "line" that sets the difficulties?

For example if I map a new song and think, hey its seems like "Hard", too easy for "Insane". I ask a MAT and he says, "Hey, you are right, it seems really like "Hard"." Then my 15 years old brother comes who just started playing osu! and occasionally manages "Hard' says that it is way too hard for him, it's seems like "Insane". So what is the "line" between those 2 difficulties where you can 100% say, it is "Hard" and this is "Insane". Since I am also interested in my own "playlevel" and if I can say that I can play "Insane".

I do talk about different maps, not "Bad Apple"/Touhou or any kind of that, that have 1000 clones of each song where you can really just copy paste everything.
eldnl
Former osu!catch Champion: 2013
2,930 posts
Joined March 2010
eldnl
Great example of a Hard and Insane.

http://osu.ppy.sh/s/19182
Luvdic
2,113 posts
Joined July 2009
Luvdic
If anything, I have seen MATs and BATs being more strict about difficulty names than before. (Hello Gojou Kai maps and a bunch of other ~2years+ old mapsets)

Also, I don't really see why this should be a problem, the way I see it, it's just a name to separate/differenciate it from other difficulties, if it's too hard, just go 1 difficulty lower, if it's too easy, just go 1 difficulty easier, anyways, if you are seeking is some sort of global consistency between all of osu! ranked mapset, then I got to say that this kind of consistency doesn't even exists on games such as Guitar Hero, where I can easily pass some Expert songs, and there are other songs where I can barely pass their Medium difficulty.
awp
osu! Alumni
11,869 posts
Here since the beginning
awp

ErufenRito wrote:

this kind of consistency doesn't even exists on games such as Guitar Hero, where I can easily pass some Expert songs, and there are other songs where I can barely pass their Medium difficulty.
There are two layers of consistency in the Guitar Hero/RB/Your-Music-Game-Here games. The songs at the beginning of the game are the easy songs (the "1 star" songs), and the songs at the end of the game are the hard songs (the 5-star/devil horns/flames songs). Each song has four levels of internal difficulty relative to one another and based upon that star rating.

While you can argue the second point is present in osu! (assuming a competent map set), not having the former supersedes its meaning. If you take any given map set, you cannot order its relative difficulty to other map sets. Because of this, the individual difficulty ratings have to be set to a standard relating to all maps, not just internal to that one map set. Ergo, it's bad form to rate difficulties only on an internal, relative scale, because it has no meaning without an over-arching difficulty ranking.
Luvdic
2,113 posts
Joined July 2009
Luvdic

awp wrote:

There are two layers of consistency in the Guitar Hero/RB/Your-Music-Game-Here games. The songs at the beginning of the game are the easy songs (the "1 star" songs), and the songs at the end of the game are the hard songs (the 5-star/devil horns/flames songs). Each song has four levels of internal difficulty relative to one another and based upon that star rating.

While you can argue the second point is present in osu! (assuming a competent map set), not having the former supersedes its meaning. If you take any given map set, you cannot order its relative difficulty to other map sets. Because of this, the individual difficulty ratings have to be set to a standard relating to all maps, not just internal to that one map set. Ergo, it's bad form to rate difficulties only on an internal, relative scale, because it has no meaning without an over-arching difficulty ranking.
Oh I see, never noticed that each song has a "star difficulty" labeled on them (I don't own any of those games), and I suppose that those games uses the song's bpm to measure the stars? Cause as for me, I usually use the map's BPM as another measurement of their difficulty level, a 120 bpm insane can't even be compared with a 200 bpm insane if we're talking about difficulty.

Anyways, for things like this, where a map's "difficulty" is not so well determined is the reason on which I see each difficulty just as a name separating them from the others.
mochi
779 posts
Joined June 2010
mochi
New rule forces mappers to map difficulties in consecutive order.

La Cataline was lazy and just named the obvious insane difficulty as hard.
Espionage724
876 posts
Joined August 2011
Espionage724

mochi wrote:

New rule forces mappers to map difficulties in consecutive order.
That does sound kinda nice :p

I can think of 2 songs that have weird difficulty ordering.

Xi - Black Apple (Extra Stage > Fighter69's Hard, for a fact :p)
Hanataba - Night of Knights (Extra Sage > Lunatic, imo. Have no problem on Lunatic, Extra Stage is just slaughter though to me...)
lolcubes
osu! Alumni
4,437 posts
Joined November 2010
lolcubes
That is only because star rating is broken and sometimes goes down when difficulty goes up. That has nothing to do with the real difficulty of the mapset though.
(chipscape was like 4.36 stars originally lol)
Soly
343 posts
Joined June 2011
Soly
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Last edited by Soly , edited 1 time in total.
hoihoisoi
134 posts
Joined May 2011
hoihoisoi
I guess sometimes people have different opinions on what is hard and insane. For me a hard song is something that I can at least get a 200 - 300 combo and win. Insane to me is more like between 10 - 200 combo and win or lose. So probably, due to the difference in opinion, the mapper felt it didn't need the insane tag and instead went with hard. I mean, it's a probability you know. Or it could be a pure mistake or it could be as stated by OP. Stuff happens I guess.


(This is the real reason of my post actually) Sorry to suddenly be really random but can someone tell me what skin is this? Looks cool.


Hakkero
Hakkero
this is the skin

no real answer to the topic, dont really care, most of the times u can judge the difficulty by checking the mods ppl play it with too
Espionage724
876 posts
Joined August 2011
Espionage724

Hakkero wrote:

...u can judge the difficulty by checking the mods ppl play it with too
That.

Also, if you happen to see the top #6 people either with no mods and/or misses, you can go ahead and assume that map is relatively difficult :p
Zelmarked
407 posts
Joined September 2011
Zelmarked
I've felt that some hard's feel insane and other hard's feel normal. I think the whole system should be reworked. A five star map could be one that I could do and another 5 star map could be one I couldn't do in a month.

I have a feeling that 3 star maps were originally going to be the "normal". Then it was discovered that most worked their way to 4-5 star fairly easy but it was never changed. I now sort through my 5 star maps not knowing whether it's do-able, just out of reach, or impossible at the moment.
lolcubes
osu! Alumni
4,437 posts
Joined November 2010
lolcubes
The problem with that is that star ratings don't reflect the actual difficulty of the map, but how dense the timeline actually is, or something. So if you have alot of notes, it will be high rating. You can make them play like a normal if you use low spacing and slow speeds (if it's not that many notes), but you can also make it insane with high speed, lots of big spacing and high AR with difficult accuracy requirement. You can't expect 5 star maps to be of similar difficulty because there are just too many factors involved.
ziin
2,632 posts
Joined January 2010
ziin
it's a measure of the chaos more than the stream. Chaos is the irregularity of steps, so maps with nonstandard rhythms can be higher than a much harder map filled with more voltage/stream.
Sakura
osu! Alumni
7,979 posts
Joined March 2010
Sakura
There is a set of hidden guidelines mappers usually follow, for instance when i was making my 2nd mapset modders were all like "This shouldnt go in a normal" while at present, as long as the difficulty name relates to the overall difference between difficulties, for instance a Normal is harder than an Easy, and a Hard is harder than a Normal, an Insane is very much Harder than a Normal, if the mapset has ENI (in difficulty names) i'd be expecting the I to be much harder than N, now if the mapset was ENH in difficulty names, i'd be assuming the Hard, is only harder than the Normal.

If the jump between Hard and Insane is too big, you can always call the Insane, Expert or Crazy (like Larto) or something like that.

We could start working on some sets of guidelines from the community on what should be done and what shouldnt be done for each difficulty in the osu!wiki in here: http://osu.ppy.sh/wiki/Beatmapping
Louis Cyphre
2,684 posts
Joined October 2009
Louis Cyphre
The problem with that is that star ratings don't reflect the actual difficulty of the map
Have to disagree with ALL people who think that star rating works incorrect.
the coefficient of infelicity of star rating exists, yes, but it's not so high as you all think. Why some mappers can do 'H' on hard maps, some not?
I will not be shy, why for example some mappers including me are able to make 'H' and some not? And don't say that it is bpm issues, length blah blah blah:
120 bpm
138 bpm
145
148 bpm
158+ bpm
170 bpm
180+ bpm
230 bpm
270 bpm

Also let's not forget that the coefficient of infelicity is still exists, but i'm pretty sure it's not such high as here:
169 bpm - Star rating 5.00
170+ bpm - Insane < Hard lol.
200 bpm
etc.

People keep using 1/4 streams with solo notes, heavy jumps with also solo notes, anti/large spacing, that's why star rating gives us so large numbers. I'd call 90% of hard (H) maps in whole osu! light insanes (someone of them are even like insanes, and some are even harder then just insanes). Unfortunatly this is also related with both easy and normal difficulties, but it's not so usuall as hard.

EDIT:
forgot to say. To make coefficient of infelicity of star rating close to zero, i suggest to increase the maximum of (H) star system. It'd be really awesome if insane difficulty starts from 4.7 stars.
IppE
IppE
I don't know what this thread is about but I personally like hard diffs taht are actually hard and not something you SS on the first play.
Lesjuh
Elite Mapper
2,442 posts
Joined October 2008
Lesjuh
Making a H Hard is easy, but why should I? That'd be boring as hell. Also remember that in EBA the difference between easy difficulties was also huge. Compare 'walkie talkie man' to 'jumping jack flash'. Some maps are just harder than others. What about a star rating that outlines the entire mapset (like in EBA)?
LuigiHann
Resident Skinner
4,432 posts
Here since the beginning
LuigiHann

Lesjuh wrote:

Making a H Hard is easy, but why should I? That'd be boring as hell. Also remember that in EBA the difference between easy difficulties was also huge. Compare 'walkie talkie man' to 'jumping jack flash'. Some maps are just harder than others. What about a star rating that outlines the entire mapset (like in EBA)?
That's nice in theory but people don't make mapsets like that. WTM's Easy is much easier than JJF's Easy, and WTM's Hard is much easier than JJF's Hard. Each song in EBA is a unit, with difficulties that are proportional to one another. With the way people throw guest diffs and extra insanes and trying-to-get-away-with-the-bare-minimum-of-non-insane-diffs and such in osu, I don't think a proper tiering system would work at all. The concept of a mapset as a unit barely exists.
La Cataline
osu! Alumni
1,025 posts
Joined March 2010
La Cataline
What's wrong in having my own criteria of what is Hard or Insane?
Natteke
6,538 posts
Joined August 2009
Natteke
Lol @ Thread and people who think diff name means something. What will change if a Hard will be renamed to Insane? Will the map become easier or what? The only thing that will change is the that the diff name will have 6 letters in its name instead of 4.

On top of that, I think "Insane" is a stupid name for a diff, makes you think that it's an impossible map for some kinda fucking insane morons.

Here imagine I have a map with a song about fruits, I have 4 difficulties, I name the hardest of them "Banana" and the easiest "Apricot". Are you going to complain that Banana is easier than Apricot?

Oh, I have an example: http://osu.ppy.sh/s/13387

mochi wrote:

New rule forces mappers to map difficulties in consecutive order.

La Cataline was lazy and just named the obvious insane difficulty as hard.
Seriously? LC was lazy? Did you even look at the map? Did you see how much work has been put in hitsounding and patterns? This map is of the highest quality, much higher that most of what gets ranked these days and you still manage to call her lazy? Because she doesn't like to call her difs "Insane", really? Sort your shit out, please. You're making no sense what so ever.

tl;dr changing diff names won't change shit
ampzz
ampzz

La Cataline wrote:

What's wrong in having my own criteria of what is Hard or Insane?
I bloody love Hard difficulties as they're highly enjoyable and challenging.

Doesn't really matter what the difficulty name is in my honest opinion as peoples opinion on what a Hard difficulties are varies between individuals.
dNextGen
4,689 posts
Joined May 2010
dNextGen

Natteke wrote:

Lol @ Thread and people who think diff name means something
La Cataline
osu! Alumni
1,025 posts
Joined March 2010
La Cataline
Well I really am pretty lazy to think of how i name the diff. I would rather do my best mapping the song than focus on some useless stuff..
Neruell
408 posts
Joined May 2009
Neruell

Natteke wrote:

Lol @ Thread and people who think diff name means something. What will change if a Hard will be renamed to Insane? Will the map become easier or what? The only thing that will change is the that the diff name will have 6 letters in its name instead of 4.
<3
Sakura
osu! Alumni
7,979 posts
Joined March 2010
Sakura

Natteke wrote:

Lol @ Thread and people who think diff name means something. What will change if a Hard will be renamed to Insane? Will the map become easier or what? The only thing that will change is the that the diff name will have 6 letters in its name instead of 4.
The diff name isnt supposed to alter a beatmap, it's supposed to inform people of the difficulty of a map.

@Rest of thread:

There's already a rule in discussion regarding difficulty names in here: viewtopic.php?f=87&t=64222 feel free to give feedback
Natteke
6,538 posts
Joined August 2009
Natteke
How does "Hard" on miragecoordinator not inform player of the map's difficulty? It perfectly does, in my eyes.
Neruell
408 posts
Joined May 2009
Neruell
Seems like an other useless rule to make the life of a mapper harder :)
Sakura
osu! Alumni
7,979 posts
Joined March 2010
Sakura

Natteke wrote:

How does "Hard" on miragecoordinator not inform player of the map's difficulty? It perfectly does, in my eyes.
Call it Very hard then, dont you have custom difficulty names for a reason?
Natteke
6,538 posts
Joined August 2009
Natteke
Eh, I guess it's pretty pointless to explain this all over again.

For sakura this will be Very Hard
For me it's Hard
For Cookiezi it's Easy
For newbie it's not even rankable
aiousfghasiugasuio
Last edited by Natteke , edited 2 times in total.
La Cataline
osu! Alumni
1,025 posts
Joined March 2010
La Cataline

Sakura Hana wrote:

Natteke wrote:

How does "Hard" on miragecoordinator not inform player of the map's difficulty? It perfectly does, in my eyes.
Call it Very hard then, dont you have custom difficulty names for a reason?
what.
Luna
2,355 posts
Joined November 2010
Luna
Difficulties should be labeled at least somewhat consistently, for newer players' sake.
I can tell from experience that mislabeled difficulties can be detrimental to the development of skills in newer players.
Why? The first [Hard] difficulty I ever played was this http://osu.ppy.sh/b/46483&m=0
Go ahead, play it. It's an Insane diff. Not even a super-easy one at that.
After playing that I got the impression that all Hards were really difficult and didn't even dare try other ones for a few months. When I finally played a different Hard diff (in multiplayer, I wouldn't have done it myself) I realized how easy most of them were. Took me around two weeks to go up to easy Insanes from there. A mislabeled difficulty basically wasted around three months of potential progress, that still bugs me today - and I'm sure there are other people with similar experiences out there.
So please, if it's considered to be an Insane diff by most people, label it as such.
Natteke
6,538 posts
Joined August 2009
Natteke
Well, it's your problem really that you were aftaid to play Harder maps, not mapper's. When I started I jsut played whatever I downloaded and even tried maps like Kanbu and Marisa (which, by the way, had hardest diff names named Hard), even though they were extremely hard for me.

To me Hard means that the map is Hard to pass.
Insane means you have to be insane to play this map, like cookiezi or other pro koreans like White Wolf and Niko.
So please don't make me responsible for you being scared of playing harder maps.
Last edited by Natteke , edited 1 time in total.
Luna
2,355 posts
Joined November 2010
Luna
Okay, so if I map Hards and call them Easy it's alright as well?
That doesn't make sense.
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