Here are the minor suggestions of patterns / hitsounds. It's your own choice whether to follow these suggestions.

01:01:676 ~ 01:03:843 - Maybe it's me, but imo the hitsounds don't fit the drum well ? ( eg 01:02:009 doesn't seem to have k sound ? ) You can consider this, but it depends if you want to keep the consistent drum-only style.

01:16:176 (2) - Blue note ? ( Although this is following vocal rather than drum, the feeling of 01:16:843 (2,1) tells me that this small section can be more based on vocal. Your choice though )

01:27:343 (1,1,1,1) - O O O O ? ( Considering the finishes in kiai tend to follow vocal more, I think using KDDK can keep this consistent style better )

Here are the minor suggestions of patterns / hitsounds. It's your own choice whether to follow these suggestions.

01:27:343 (1,1,1,1) - O O O O ? ( Basically same as oni )

01:05:343 (1,2,3,4) - O O O O ( imo using DDKK can show the different pitch variations better than only K )
01:37:343 (1,1,2,2) - O O O O ? ( The reverse of DDKK. imo this can keep your style consistent and follow the pitch of instrument better at the same time. Also contrasts with the above suggestion. Optional though )

01:48:676 (1~5) - ooooo ? ( It has an even higher pitch than 01:48:509 (1) and so I think using k instead of d fits better. Also fits the pitch-oriented finishes after this 1/4 )

[General]
I'm not sure the circle of artists is used as the artist in osu!. Often times it's just the singer or arranger (see Alstromeria Records beatmaps)
It's hard to say, you should ask around.
Changed artist to vocalist (3L) and adjusted tags accordingly. The only ranked Arte Refact map is Cake Hime * Masaruumi & JUMA - Eiya no Parade, which lists the artist as the vocalists, so I'll do the same for consistency.

[Normal]
The star rating is quite high (3.24), it's hard to rank maps with a high star lower difficulkty. Try toi get it as close to 3 as possible or under 3.
Spacing overall is really weird, stuff like 01:09:343 (2,3,4) - should theoretically have similar spacing on a Normal diff. This is especially an issue in places like 01:48:009 (4,5) - .
I removed every jump in the map and adjusted spacing to be consistent to ~0.90x, with ~1.20x used in the Kiai section. After applying spacing changes, the star difficulty is now 3.18, which is hopefully better!

00:54:509 (3) - This slider moves over itself, so it is burai and unrankable. The slider must not go over itself like that!
Fixed; slider doesn't move over itself anymore.

[apaffy's Hard]
00:20:009 (1,2) - This is a nasty antijump, this will mess up a lot of players because of how close 1 and 2 are.
Fixed by moving (1) so that its end stacks on (2), and applied a 30 degree CCW rotation to improve flow from the previous note.

01:06:343 (1) - Remove new combo, this just messes up HP drain.
01:07:009 (1) - Same as above
01:36:009 (1,1,1,1) - Same as above, just lessen the amount here
01:41:343 (1,1,1,1) - Lessen the amount of new combos please X_X, it's pretty but it does mess with gameplay.
Fixed all above.

[Lunatic]
00:23:509 (8) - This slider moves over itself, so it is burai and unrankable. The slider must not go over itself like that!
Fixed

00:56:676 (1,2,3) - This is a very strange rhythm and I recommend avoiding it. Putting these three circles into a repeat slider would fix the issue.\
00:58:676 (1,2,3,4,5,6) - Same with these. Two repeat sliders would be awesome here.
This was something that you mentioned a while back, but after experimenting a bit with repeat sliders I couldn't find an arrangement that I liked. I don't think these are too much of an issue; the spacing is relatively exaggerated which makes it somewhat easier to read, and even if do end up causing a player trouble during their first run through the map, it's not a problem that would persist throughout multiple playthroughs.

01:06:676 (1) - This slider moves over itself, so it is burai and unrankable. The slider must not go over itself like that! Dang this one's crazy
Fixed!

01:35:343 (10) - This slider moves slower than 0.5x slider speed because of its compression. Compressing sliders like this is a gray area, but it's usually okay as long as it isn't slower than the slowest achievable slider speed. This one is slower, so keeping it is a risky thing to do.
01:46:009 (6) - Same as the above.
Fixed both above. I kept the compression, but decompressed them enough so that they aren't slower than a 0.50x slider of the same length.

01:48:009 (1) - This slider changes its speed mid-slide. These are extremely risky to use and even more of a gray area than the compressed sliders.
This was also something we talked about a while ago in chat. You mentioned that this was debatable, but I want to keep this if possible because I like how it fits the instrumentation. If a BAT tells me that it's definitely unrankable though, I'll remove it.

01:50:676 (1) - Remove this slider, there's no need for it
The last few bass notes in the song fall on the ends of this slider. I like how this closes out the map, so I want to keep it.

11t wrote:
Hi, thanks for your reply!

As for the Lunatic, I'd still like to keep my current new comboing pattern. The 13 combo in the beginning definitely lasts for more than two measures, but I don't think this is an issue because the arrangement is slow and drastically easier in comparison to the rest of the map.

None of the other combos exceed two measures in length, and I still believe that the current new combos match the phrasing of the music better than a pattern of new combos based solely on downbeats.

I still haven't had a chance to look back at the map, but from what I remember there were a lot of short 3 note combos that seems to be there more to make a pattern more readable rather than fitting the phrase of the song. Anyway, we both have our take on it - just as long as you understand where I'm coming from, it's fine.

I actually thought that breaking the previous feel of my map with these slowdowns would add contrast to the gameplay, and help to emphasize these particular points. As long as it was a readable slowdown, I felt that it in the end it would have a positive contribution to the map. Of course I didn't want to overuse this though, so I only chose to emphasize the phrasings that occurred right before the streams at the end of these sections. Overall I think that these slowdowns diversify the gameplay, are easily readable, and fit the music both visually (with the vibration effect) and mechanically, and these are very strong reasons for me to keep them.

Since this has gone through multiple BATs (and a rank!) with a few of them telling me that they enjoyed the scrunching, I guess it's not unreasonable for me to be resistant to changes here. But at the same time I also understand that an unrankable issue in this map has also gone through multiple BATs (and a rank...), and inconsistency as you mentioned is a significant downside to using these slowdowns. In the end though, I think that sometimes it's viable to sacrifice consistency to bring unique elements into your map, as long as those elements are readable, fit the music, and don't completely catch players by surprise. This is one of those cases where I think this works.

I think the biggest part for me is that the slowdown was simply too drastic. It felt out of place and felt more like a bad design decision rather than something special. If you did a slowdown that wasn't as extreme, you would still retain this same effect without breaking the flow as badly.

I'll try to catch you in game so we can talk about this a bit and sort it out quicker, but if not, please PM me and let me know what you think about these things!

Overtime pay is just too tempting, haha. Hopefully I can get some time in Friday evening, but no guarantees, though I think we've mostly gotten our points out here. I'll get that screenshot to you when I can.


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11t
about 36 hours ago
Hi, thanks for your reply!

Garven wrote:
The new combo concerns mostly have to do with the HP Drain mechanic. If you have too many too frequently, you artificially gain too much HP and 'break' that aspect of the challenge. Too few, and it becomes unfair in the difficulty to recover from a mistake. Generally comboing should be used to reflect the phrasing in the music as well, so usually setting them to change every two measures or so (tall white ticks) fits most modern songs.

This makes sense; I'll fix the new comboing in the Normal.

As for the Lunatic, I'd still like to keep my current new comboing pattern. The 13 combo in the beginning definitely lasts for more than two measures, but I don't think this is an issue because the arrangement is slow and drastically easier in comparison to the rest of the map.

None of the other combos exceed two measures in length, and I still believe that the current new combos match the phrasing of the music better than a pattern of new combos based solely on downbeats.

Garven wrote:
The storyboard might be due to my resolution since I'm running at 16:10. Something to consider in your SB design, perhaps. If I recall, it was cutting off about about "Onosakihi" I'll get a screenshot when I can.

A screenshot would be great, thanks!

Garven wrote:
The slowdown sliders... well, for me it was more an issue about the pacing of the cursor. There were many similar phrasings throughout the melody that continued the normal pace of the rest of your mapping, but when those slowdown instances came about the drastic slowdown just breaks the feel of your map up to that point. I can provide a more specific response later if this doesn't make sense.

I actually thought that breaking the previous feel of my map with these slowdowns would add contrast to the gameplay, and help to emphasize these particular points. As long as it was a readable slowdown, I felt that it in the end it would have a positive contribution to the map. Of course I didn't want to overuse this though, so I only chose to emphasize the phrasings that occurred right before the streams at the end of these sections. Overall I think that these slowdowns diversify the gameplay, are easily readable, and fit the music both visually (with the vibration effect) and mechanically, and these are very strong reasons for me to keep them.

Since this has gone through multiple BATs (and a rank!) with a few of them telling me that they enjoyed the scrunching, I guess it's not unreasonable for me to be resistant to changes here. But at the same time I also understand that an unrankable issue in this map has also gone through multiple BATs (and a rank...), and inconsistency as you mentioned is a significant downside to using these slowdowns. In the end though, I think that sometimes it's viable to sacrifice consistency to bring unique elements into your map, as long as those elements are readable, fit the music, and don't completely catch players by surprise. This is one of those cases where I think this works.

I'll try to catch you in game so we can talk about this a bit and sort it out quicker, but if not, please PM me and let me know what you think about these things!
Garven
about 39 hours ago
The quick and dirty reply because I'm throwing this up between overtime shifts:

The new combo concerns mostly have to do with the HP Drain mechanic. If you have too many too frequently, you artificially gain too much HP and 'break' that aspect of the challenge. Too few, and it becomes unfair in the difficulty to recover from a mistake. Generally comboing should be used to reflect the phrasing in the music as well, so usually setting them to change every two measures or so (tall white ticks) fits most modern songs.

The storyboard might be due to my resolution since I'm running at 16:10. Something to consider in your SB design, perhaps. If I recall, it was cutting off about about "Onosakihi" I'll get a screenshot when I can.

The slowdown sliders... well, for me it was more an issue about the pacing of the cursor. There were many similar phrasings throughout the melody that continued the normal pace of the rest of your mapping, but when those slowdown instances came about the drastic slowdown just breaks the feel of your map up to that point. I can provide a more specific response later if this doesn't make sense.
11t
about 43 hours ago
Hi, I couldn't catch you in game, but I have a few questions about my map which was recently unranked.

[Normal]
Garven wrote:
01:06:676 (1,1,1) - Please don't new combo spam.
01:12:009 (1,1,1) - ^
01:17:343 (1,1,1) -
01:22:676 (1,1,1) -

If this is a strictly unrankable issue I'll change it, but if not I'd like to keep these new combos if possible for a few reasons. Having a new combo on each of these large sliders gives this section more impact. The vocal melodies at these sliders are both symmetric yet distinct; that symmetry is captured by the symmetry of the sliders shapes, but I also wanted to preserve the sense of distinctness by splitting the combos. This might seem a bit contrived, but I also felt that having new combos in these particular areas added a more flavorful mix of color to the visual field. Removing them makes the kiai section seem more mundane. I don't see any particular gameplay concerns or issues with readability in this particular use of additional new combos.

If these reasons don't seem valid to you, or aren't enough to outweigh whatever downsides these new combos might bring to the map, I'll remove them.

[Taiko]
Garven wrote:
The storyboard image is scaled a little bit too high. It's cutting off Ono's name.

This looks fine to me in-game: http://puu.sh/4MfNT.png
I'm using 1366x768 resolution. Would this depend on the resolution?

[Insane]
Garven wrote:
What happened to your new combo progression from the Normal? It's all messed up in this difficulty. :<

Rather than follow downbeats for new combos, I chose to follow the vocal melody and placed new combos at the start of each new vocal phrase. For a high-paced difficulty like this, using this sort of new combo pattern makes more sense to me than adding new combos on downbeats which may be right in the middle of a vocal phrase, leading to what seems to me as an unnatural combo split.

Anyway, that's my reasoning for it. Let me know if I'm just totally off the mark, though.

Garven wrote:
00:10:010 (13) - You should just add a second grey combo so this doesn't get so high

Is this really necessary? I feel like a 13 combo isn't that large, and I like how keeping everything in a single combo reinforces the idea of monotoneity and uniformity that I was trying to convey in the intro here. Are there any gameplay issues with this? My knowledge of osu mechanics is pretty poor so if this actually has some sort of huge impact on score or playability, please let me know.

Garven wrote:
01:35:343 (1) - Eew what is that. This completely breaks your flow and any sort of pace you had established earlier.
01:46:009 (1) - ^ I guess these were the old scrunched slider spots, huh? From how you've used them, they were a bad idea from the start anyway if they slowed down to this degree.

Yes, these were two of the old scrunched slider spots ;_;
I was told that all scrunched sliders were unrankable, but after talking with other BATs apparently this isn't the case. Scrunched sliders are acceptable, just not for sliders that change speed midway, and as long as they don't move slower than a 0.50x slider.

I had scrunched sliders at these two places, and while they were more or less consistently scrunched there were pretty large bits of unscrunched slider at the ends so I guess that could have caused some issues.

Is something like this alright?
Image

I'd like to have scrunched sliders here if possible. I think that the vibration effect matches the timbre of the instrumentation, the increased slider width makes it easy to read, and the slower speed reflects the held note and the halted pace of the melody here. I don't think there are any gameplay issues with this, and no one ever had any trouble with my previous sliders during all of the testplays that I asked for, many from BATs. If scrunching isn't possible here, the next best thing I could think of was to simply reduce slider SV, though as you noticed that wasn't nearly as readable nor did it really match the music at all.

Anyway, if this isn't possible, do you have any particular suggestions for what I could here?

I fixed everything that I didn't mention here. Thanks a lot for taking a look at the map! I appreciate you taking the time to try and move this forward.

[Lunatic]
00:02:676 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13) - the combo seems too long. You should use 2 different gray colors and add some NCs and switch colors between them.
This really wasn't something I wanted to change because the combo is only 13 notes long, and the duration of the combo isn't an issue because the section is extremely easy to play in comparison to the rest of the map. I also felt that mapping the intro in a single combo helped to reinforce the idea of monotoneity that I was trying to convey, and that using another combo color, even if it's another gray, would compromise this.

Well, I changed it now anyway because everyone keeps bringing this up.

[Hard]
00:02:676 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) - maybe same as Lunatic
Changed as above.

[Normal]
01:20:009 (1,2,3,4,1,2) - spacing inconsistency?
01:26:343 (2,3,4,1) - spacing inconsistency?
Fixed both by reworking sliders.