Okoratu wrote:
Mun wrote:
On another note, I am also concerned at the challenge of, "what constitutes an acceptable bottom diff?" As it stands, many Normal difficulties are viewed as unacceptable as the lowest difficulty on a set not because of their star rating, but because of density and difficulty elements present in the map.
My main concern is that when we have challenging Hard or Insane difficulties, will these be at risk of being blocked from the ranked section due to the challenge they provide? As a side-effect of this, won't we just see people making sets that go one diff lower than the minimum required in order to have an acceptable lower diff, defeating the purpose of this amendment altogether?
That was on my agenda for all the modes already - we will need to define what and if we need additional guidelines the same way we have them for normals as the lowest difficulty right now because i think these work.
@LwL there's a definition of the term reasonable spread in the glossary which probably explains whatever you were suggesting already
The idea was the same as what you said, though I never believed that it should be particularly needed. What I was trying to argue was that a Hard diff following the current difficulty guidelines should be able to fulfill the purpose of being the lowest difficulty if the spread can end at a hard, it shouldn't be different from how it is now. If you had an N-H-I spread currently, and the Hard would be way out there in terms of playability, that brings up the same issue as having H-I-X after this proposal with a challenging Hard, as the spread doesn't work as intended for a spread. For that reason any issues arising in this regard would not be exclusive to this proposal, but rather still be an issue with the current RC, and therefore should be discussed seperately.
I did forget about the current rule regarding bottom diff Normals though, but if I understood it correctly Muns concern was that the existence of such a rule (or a common perception that the principle should be followed) would lead to a significant amount of sets ultimately mapping a Normal or a very easy hard to avoid any problems, and then end up with the same number of difficulties as now. I think it's a valid concern, but for above stated reason it should be enough for this to maybe clarify that a bottom diff Hard or Insane has to strictly follow the difficulty guidelines (basically turning the Guideline part into additional rules, while staying relative to song speed of course), without a need to follow anything further than that as that would partially defeat the point of the change.