I'm relatively new to mania and was wondering if there's any telltale signs that a map is a pp farm.

e usually if a map is pp farm worth everyone will talk about it, at some time u'll just know all the pp maps like it or not


tho if u want an actual answer, usually maps that are overrated, or stars are too high when the song is actually much easier

there's also DT farm maps, which are maps played with DT are still dummy easy, so it p much the same reason stated above

u can also start playing 7k now, at one point the only source left for pp will be mostly 7k maps or insane 4k DT maps u'll need years of practice before playing


either way you really shouldnt be playing for pp in mania or u'll barely improve, at around 4.5* especially when unranked maps are much better for training than any ranked, if u just stay playing rankeds and playing for pp you'll hit a wall quite early and go nowhere

[Ska] wrote:

e usually if a map is pp farm worth everyone will talk about it, at some time u'll just know all the pp maps like it or not


tho if u want an actual answer, usually maps that are overrated, or stars are too high when the song is actually much easier

there's also DT farm maps, which are maps played with DT are still dummy easy, so it p much the same reason stated above

u can also start playing 7k now, at one point the only source left for pp will be mostly 7k maps or insane 4k DT maps u'll need years of practice before playing


either way you really shouldnt be playing for pp in mania or u'll barely improve, at around 4.5* especially when unranked maps are much better for training than any ranked, if u just stay playing rankeds and playing for pp you'll hit a wall quite early and go nowhere

Thanks so much for this. And I was really asking because I wanted to avoid starting out by pp farming! I'm too nooby to realize when I'm doing it on mania and I don't wanna base my skills off of pp maps! So thanks for your answer.

Just don't take pp too serious, its a nice way to track progress but don't get fixated on getting pp.

So here's a breakdown of why PP farm maps even exist.

The maximum PP that a song can have is based off the star rating (and a bit of other stuff I think. Pretty sure song length has a small effect).

The star rating is almost entirely based on note density. That is: the number of notes in 1 second (or some other amount of time) during the part of the song with the most notes in that amount of time.

It does not take into account any patterning information at all. Purely how many notes exist in a certain amount of time.

This means that maps with easy patterns that include a lot of notes (for example, quad jacks [only easy at low speeds] or jumptrills) will end up being overrated. It also means that there are maps that end up underrated too. For example, maps with very fast or complicated single note streams are underrated (for example, empress sc is pretty underrated).

Since maximum PP is based on star rating, and star rating doesn't take into account the actual difficulty to play patterns, easy but dense patterns are overrated in both difficulty and max pp, and sparse, but difficult patterns are underrated in both.

But all that ignores how LNs affect the rating. LNs are basically counted as 1.5 notes for the density calculation (as far as I'm aware). This has 2 possible effects: Either a map becomes underrated, because that 1.5x multiplier is not enough to account for the difficulty of the LN patterns being used (hard, but not dense patterns), or a map becomes overrated because there are a lot of small LNs which are not too hard to hit (dense, but easier patterns).

And to make the explanation here complete, I'll discuss 7k. Now, in 4k, you rarely see maps above 6 stars unless they are doing something really silly. In 7k, star rating really breaks down once you get past 5 stars. I have passed a couple 9 star maps, but I still fail plenty of maps around 5.5 stars. Since 7k can become a lot more dense than 4k, there's even more difference between pattern difficulty and star rating.

In 7k, it's much easier to make a 6, 7, or 8 star map that still has playable patterns, and I honestly feel like it's possible to make rankable patterns (or patterns that should be rankable) up to around 12 stars in 7k.

So since 4k maps start becoming silly and unrankable in the 6 star range (with few exceptions) that doesn't really happen to 7k until 10+ stars, making it easier to make a 6+ star map that is rankable, and worth a lot more PP than the hardest 4k maps are.

Bobbias wrote:

So here's a breakdown of why PP farm maps even exist.

The maximum PP that a song can have is based off the star rating (and a bit of other stuff I think. Pretty sure song length has a small effect).

The star rating is almost entirely based on note density. That is: the number of notes in 1 second (or some other amount of time) during the part of the song with the most notes in that amount of time.

It does not take into account any patterning information at all. Purely how many notes exist in a certain amount of time.

This means that maps with easy patterns that include a lot of notes (for example, quad jacks [only easy at low speeds] or jumptrills) will end up being overrated. It also means that there are maps that end up underrated too. For example, maps with very fast or complicated single note streams are underrated (for example, empress sc is pretty underrated).

Since maximum PP is based on star rating, and star rating doesn't take into account the actual difficulty to play patterns, easy but dense patterns are overrated in both difficulty and max pp, and sparse, but difficult patterns are underrated in both.

But all that ignores how LNs affect the rating. LNs are basically counted as 1.5 notes for the density calculation (as far as I'm aware). This has 2 possible effects: Either a map becomes underrated, because that 1.5x multiplier is not enough to account for the difficulty of the LN patterns being used (hard, but not dense patterns), or a map becomes overrated because there are a lot of small LNs which are not too hard to hit (dense, but easier patterns).

And to make the explanation here complete, I'll discuss 7k. Now, in 4k, you rarely see maps above 6 stars unless they are doing something really silly. In 7k, star rating really breaks down once you get past 5 stars. I have passed a couple 9 star maps, but I still fail plenty of maps around 5.5 stars. Since 7k can become a lot more dense than 4k, there's even more difference between pattern difficulty and star rating.

In 7k, it's much easier to make a 6, 7, or 8 star map that still has playable patterns, and I honestly feel like it's possible to make rankable patterns (or patterns that should be rankable) up to around 12 stars in 7k.

So since 4k maps start becoming silly and unrankable in the 6 star range (with few exceptions) that doesn't really happen to 7k until 10+ stars, making it easier to make a 6+ star map that is rankable, and worth a lot more PP than the hardest 4k maps are.

This is fantastic! Thanks so much for going out of your way to write this answer. So much detail!

I'd say it's any map that, after which you play, surprises you with the number of ranks you just gained. See above for what content in such maps contribute toward its pp-ness.

abraker wrote:

I'd say it's any map that, after which you play, surprises you with the number of ranks you just gained. See above for what content in such maps contribute toward its pp-ness.

Does this count during the early stages of playing mania where you gain at least 1000 ranks for every map you play?

I think Bobbias said it best here.

The star rating is almost entirely based on note density. That is: the number of notes in 1 second (or some other amount of time) during the part of the song with the most notes in that amount of time.

Early on, especially in 1K PP range, the difficulties are pretty standard and are alright for the most part. Where SR really falls short is later on when progressing further into 4* and 5*s. A lot of the maps you seen get played a lot, usually fall on the side that it's easier with patterns not getting as technical and the maps being fairly easy. Imo, these maps aren't exactly at fault for being the way they are, but rather SR is as the higher the SR is, the more PP it gives. As Bobbias said, trills are usually what factor into what gives PP, specifically 1/8 trills, those usually spike up the SR by a lot. Noticing patterns like these while playing and/or in the editor are ways that you can tell they probably give more PP than they should. If you do start to play more mania in the future and get better with the gamemode, I feel you'll definitely experience this and you'll start to get a better feel on what maps are easier and which ones aren't/more underrated than what the SR shows.

Unpredictable wrote:

I think Bobbias said it best here.

The star rating is almost entirely based on note density. That is: the number of notes in 1 second (or some other amount of time) during the part of the song with the most notes in that amount of time.

Early on, especially in 1K PP range, the difficulties are pretty standard and are alright for the most part. Where SR really falls short is later on when progressing further into 4* and 5*s. A lot of the maps you seen get played a lot, usually fall on the side that it's easier with patterns not getting as technical and the maps being fairly easy. Imo, these maps aren't exactly at fault for being the way they are, but rather SR is as the higher the SR is, the more PP it gives. As Bobbias said, trills are usually what factor into what gives PP, specifically 1/8 trills, those usually spike up the SR by a lot. Noticing patterns like these while playing and/or in the editor are ways that you can tell they probably give more PP than they should. If you do start to play more mania in the future and get better with the gamemode, I feel you'll definitely experience this and you'll start to get a better feel on what maps are easier and which ones aren't/more underrated than what the SR shows.

Does SR mean scroll rate? Sorry my noob is showing lol

kittykat2222 wrote:

Unpredictable wrote:

I think Bobbias said it best here.

The star rating is almost entirely based on note density. That is: the number of notes in 1 second (or some other amount of time) during the part of the song with the most notes in that amount of time.

Early on, especially in 1K PP range, the difficulties are pretty standard and are alright for the most part. Where SR really falls short is later on when progressing further into 4* and 5*s. A lot of the maps you seen get played a lot, usually fall on the side that it's easier with patterns not getting as technical and the maps being fairly easy. Imo, these maps aren't exactly at fault for being the way they are, but rather SR is as the higher the SR is, the more PP it gives. As Bobbias said, trills are usually what factor into what gives PP, specifically 1/8 trills, those usually spike up the SR by a lot. Noticing patterns like these while playing and/or in the editor are ways that you can tell they probably give more PP than they should. If you do start to play more mania in the future and get better with the gamemode, I feel you'll definitely experience this and you'll start to get a better feel on what maps are easier and which ones aren't/more underrated than what the SR shows.

Does SR mean scroll rate? Sorry my noob is showing lol

SR means Star Rating!

For scroll, we usually just say scroll speed without an abbreviation.
Also, if a map changes its scroll speed in its duration (usually for effect e.g. fastjams) we call that Slider Velocity / Scroll Velocity (SV). SV can also be used to make songs with BPM changes scroll at the same speed, which is often done for lower difficulty maps.

SR means Star Rating!

For scroll, we usually just say scroll speed without an abbreviation.
Also, if a map changes its scroll speed in its duration (usually for effect e.g. fastjams) we call that Slider Velocity / Scroll Velocity (SV). SV can also be used to make songs with BPM changes scroll at the same speed, which is often done for lower difficulty maps.

perfect! thank you for taking the time to answer

As a side note, the term Slider Velocity comes from how the effect is created in the editor. When you use the speed multiplier in the editor in standard, it speeds up or slows down slider movement, while not affecting anything else. In mania, it changes scroll speed during the map. Since it is created exactly the same as slider velocity changes are, that name just stuck, and was shortened to SV. Scroll Velocity or sudder Speed Velocity (please nobody ever use that term as an explanation for SV) are backronyms, or new terms created by people who did not know the original meaning of SV and just made up something that fits.

Bobbias wrote:

As a side note, the term Slider Velocity comes from how the effect is created in the editor. When you use the speed multiplier in the editor in standard, it speeds up or slows down slider movement, while not affecting anything else. In mania, it changes scroll speed during the map. Since it is created exactly the same as slider velocity changes are, that name just stuck, and was shortened to SV. Scroll Velocity or sudder Speed Velocity (please nobody ever use that term as an explanation for SV) are backronyms, or new terms created by people who did not know the original meaning of SV and just made up something that fits.

ah thats good to know! thank you!