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Use play time instead of drain for higher difficulties

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Topic Starter
Xinnoh
Current rules regarding drain times



Proposed rules / general ideas:
Allow higher difficulty to use their play time as a metric instead of drain time, allowing up to 10% of the total play time to be breaks.

To reference how much 10% is:
3:30 = 21 second break
4:15 = 25.5 second break
5:00 = 30 second break
10% feels more suitable compared to the 20% offered on lower difficulties. This can be changed if needed

Why:
Some parts of a song are better left unmapped. Forcing a mapper to add notes to a section can even affect how a mapper wants to interpret a song, and can negatively affect the general quality of a set.

Examples
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/894980 - Mapper was forced to add 1/1 sliders before each break because total drain time was 4:14.5. It is objectively worse and doesn't fit
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/645256 - I was mapping an insane difficulty, but would need to map the preview point. It would have been terrible so I just gave up.
There's more examples that I don't have on me but this has affected quite a few people.

Why not just map a lower diff? - someone
The issue isn't whether or not there is enough drain time. Mappers are actively choosing to lower their set quality by removing breaks instead of mapping another diff because it's just not worth the effort when there is a far easier (but less satisfactory) solution.
In most of the cases where drain is an issue, the play time is just over 4:15, which is further discouraging to map a hard.

This wasn't written as a normal RC proposal where the text would displayed on the RC, this is because it would change the focus from drain time to play time, hence the entire drain time section would need rewriting.
tatatat
I disagree with this. I strongly believe ignoring the song is almost always a bad idea. Unless there is complete silence it should be represented. Even if its 1/1 or 4/1. The spread rules are also very lenient as they are. Too lenient in my opinion. But that is not relevant to this proposal. :c
MisakiTobisawa-

tatatat wrote:

I disagree with this. I strongly believe ignoring the song is almost always a bad idea. Unless there is complete silence it should be represented. Even if its 1/1 or 4/1. The spread rules are also very lenient as they are. Too lenient in my opinion. But that is not relevant to this proposal. :c

Longer vocal songs sometimes have quiet instrumental only parts, and these could be left as breaks. By allowing for leniency in breaks, mappers may choose to interpret the song by mostly mapping vocals. Of course, if there are instrumental sections that sound significantly more important than others, it's still good to map those.

Either way, I will most likely not be affected by these changes, since I typically don't map long songs anyway.
Tenshichan
I agree with this proposal. The rule never made sense in my opinion as breaks can represent some quiet parts very nicely and on top of that offer the player a moment to relax during a difficult song. I had to remove 2 small breaks in my only ranked map due to this rule so ye.
tatatat

Tenshichan wrote:

I agree with this proposal. The rule never made sense in my opinion as breaks can represent some quiet parts very nicely and on top of that offer the player a moment to relax during a difficult song. I had to remove 2 small breaks in my only ranked map due to this rule so ye.


Breaks for relaxing is only relevant in osu!standard though(or maybe ctb too, dunno).
wonjae
Put it in as a guideline so that people cant just randomly shit out breaks when mapping a section would clearly be viable for the mapset. That being said, i do agree that something like this should exist as there are many cases of songs where the quality of the map would increase withe the inclusion of a break and being forced to degrade map experience never should be optimal.
Ascendance
i either agree with the above or lower the number from 10% to like somewhere between 5-7%
Topic Starter
Xinnoh

tatatat wrote:

I disagree with this. I strongly believe ignoring the song is almost always a bad idea. Unless there is complete silence it should be represented. Even if its 1/1 or 4/1. The spread rules are also very lenient as they are. Too lenient in my opinion. But that is not relevant to this proposal. :c
this doesn't apply to standard and mania

tatatat wrote:

Tenshichan wrote:

I agree with this proposal. The rule never made sense in my opinion as breaks can represent some quiet parts very nicely and on top of that offer the player a moment to relax during a difficult song. I had to remove 2 small breaks in my only ranked map due to this rule so ye.
Breaks for relaxing is only relevant in osu!standard though(or maybe ctb too, dunno).
not allowing breaks for standard and ctb because they're not common in mania and taiko doesn't make any sense.

if this is added, you can still map breaks in taiko and mania. people that prefer to map breaks would be literally unaffected by the change
if it isn't added, taiko and mania are still unaffected, std and ctb would still suffer from drain time rules


wonjae wrote:

Put it in as a guideline so that people cant just randomly shit out breaks when mapping a section would clearly be viable for the mapset. That being said, i do agree that something like this should exist as there are many cases of songs where the quality of the map would increase withe the inclusion of a break and being forced to degrade map experience never should be optimal.
anything related to mapset length needs to stay in the rules, the 80% playtime rule for lower diffs is already in the rules so this shouldn't be changed.


just as another example, iNiS (the original ds game) eg https://osu.ppy.sh/s/4422, has heavy use of breaks.
use of breaks can be implemented as a mapping style, requiring someone to map an extra difficulty just because they have a different mapping style doesn't really make any sense
Qnio
I fully support this idea. I won't be writing an essay on this, everything I had to say was already expressed above.

I say that, but I won't rest until I mention how much it hurts me when I want to map a song that is like 3:31 and there is this one section which feels like it was made to be left as a break.
Vacuous
I agree with this proposal but yeah 10% is too much, especially for a 5 min song. Maybe 15 seconds or 5% at most, if a song needs more than that for a break just make an insane for it imo
Topic Starter
Xinnoh
Ok, seems like most people agree it should be lowered. 5% is probably fine since most songs aren't exactly 3:30 or 4:15 long, so there's more than enough breathing room.

sow now it's "allowing up to 5% of the total play time to be breaks"

3:30 = 10.5
4:15 = 12.7
5:00 = 15
pishifat
talked with some folks and were gonna not go through with it. if a section of a map is poorly done to fit drain time requirements, it's a reason to improve the map/add an easier diff, not lower the requirements. plus, with the semirecent spread changes, those requirements are already easy to meet
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