Hello!
The current ranking criteria has this Difficulty-Specific rule in Platter difficulties:
I'd like to propose that we move the bolded/highlighted section of the above to a guideline rather than a rule.Ranking Criteria wrote:
Basic hyperdashes (1/1, 1/2) may begin to appear, but must not be used in conjunction with each other. Platters should serve as an introduction to hyperdashing, meaning strong hypers (e.g. with a distance snap of 1.5x above the trigger distance) and hypers combined with antiflow patterns must not be used.
The overarching reason behind this suggestion is our inability to come up with a concrete definition for "antiflow". While I believe that we could have dealt with this on a case-by-case basis, I think it's better overall to move the rule to a guideline so that there will no longer be a need to argue over what's antiflow and what's not when there's clear edge cases.
The real reason I decided to ACTUALLY make the proposal was because I'm thinking more about the bigger picture. As of recently, maps have become increasingly harder and obviously more top-heavy. This started with overdoses and is slowly creeping it's way down towards rains, as we can see with a few recently ranked rains using more advanced techniques. Barring antiflow completely from platters creates an unnecessarily large gap between the Platter and Rain difficulties, as there is no limitation to antiflow at ANY snap in rains. For example, you could be seeing 1/4 antiflow hypers in a rain without any problem, but any antiflow hypers at ANY SNAP in a Platter is disallowed. Platters are meant to be introductions to hyperdashes in general, I don't believe that we should be withholding certain types of hyperdashes because of that. Platters should still be used to introduce antiflow hyperdashes to prepare a player for higher difficulties, but only in circumstances where the song truly calls for it, hence changing it to a guideline.
Just a reminder of the official definition for a guideline
Because of this, I believe that changing this rule to a guideline would not only offer more diversity in lower difficulty mapping, but also bridge an ever-increasing gap between platter and rain as of late. I'd like to hear some opinions on this, and hopefully we can agree on a change that will overall improve the quality of spreads.Ranking Criteria wrote:
Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.
--- Stuff to discuss if the change is made ---
This is important since it puts some restrictions on how powerful it can be. It also goes with -Sh1n1-'s point right above his post where he says that Platters are still introductions to hyperdashes, and therefore the antiflow movement should still be comfortable and simple for the playerMBomb wrote:
Pretty important thing to mention here is HDash strength. Whilst there is currently a limit of 1.5x on HDash strength in platters, this would still be far too powerful of a velocity change for someone learning HDashes, and so it's probably best to restrict these antiflow HDashes to a maximum of maybe 1.2x HDash strength?