In this example, I made the holds 3/16ths long, leaving a 1/16th gap between the notes. Let's say you wanted to chart a moment in a song that often occurs in electronic music where there are big identical synth+kick hits on the quarter notes (or some other quantization) and nothing else in the music, like this:Ī sensible way to chart something like this would be to have identical kicks on the quarter notes with holds that cut off a bit before the following note, and this is what I would do in many games: But more fundamentally, this is partially the fault of the decision itself to solely have LNs (and not regular holds)- they are limiting from a charting perspective.
LNs are being used poorly in ranked, moderate difficulty charts where you would expect them to go with the music. I'll talk about that a bit more later on, but for now, we are not talking about very challenging charts where LNs are used to simply create difficulty, but more about medium-hard and lower difficulty charts where you expect LNs to be used sensibly with the music). (Before we go any further, a lot of people will probably mention here about LN spam in high level charts and the state of the high level meta in general.
Quaver note download#
If you go ahead and download a couple popular ranked charts on Quaver, you will notice very quickly that the releases of LNs are frequently placed inappropriately in the chart and do not line up with a musical element. However, this is where the root of the problem lies. Both of these events are explicit actions performed by the player that are scored and must be timed at a particular moment in the music, So, both the initial note and release should line up with musical elements in the song. (For this discussion, we will be ignoring "dumps," charts that shove a large volume of notes that do not exist in the song musically for the sake of difficulty, a joke, or w/e).įor LNs, you receive two judgments, one for hitting the initial note and one for releasing at the end of the note. along with the instruments, drums, and so on in a piece of music. (I will be using the terms "chart" and "map" interchangeably).Īs most people that have ever dabbled in charting/stepping/mapping before know, the notes in a chart should represent elements in the music so that it feels like players are tapping, moving their feet, playing their guitar, etc. I recognize that this is a fundamental change to the gameplay, but having just LNs is a poor rhythm game design decision and should not have been the case from the beginning. I strongly request that Quaver implements holds alongside LNs in regular gameplay not as a modifier or anything, but as a 3rd fundamental type of note in the game (joining regular notes and LNs). In a nutshell, what I will refer to as holds are essentially LNs in Quaver that you do not have to release at a precise timing and are not judged for- you just have to hold to the end. This is sometimes used to "ghost step," but it won't be important for our discussion here. It should be mentioned that in some games you can release the hold in the middle and the game gives you a short buffer period to get back on the hold to keep it active. The player may keep the note held down past the end of the hold with no penalty all the game looks for is if they held the note down during the period the hold was active. The player must keep the note active until the end of the duration of the hold, where they either get a "good" judgment for holding it down for the whole period, or a "bad" judgment if they let go of the hold early.
The player must hit the start of the note at a certain timing (judged within the timing window), at which point the note becomes active. Holds: I'll use to refer to holds as they implemented in games like DDR, StepMania, ITG, etc.
The player must hit the start of the note at a certain timing (judged within a timing window), must keep their key held down for the duration of the note, and must release their key at the end of the note, which is also judged within a timing window. LNs: "Long notes" as they are currently implemented in Quaver.Regular Notes: The bread-and-butter rhythm game note- you just press it at a certain timing and get a judgment for the note.In this post, I'm going to be referencing different types of "notes" from several different rhythm games, and since Quaver players may come from a variety of rhythm-gaming backgrounds, let me be extremely explicit about what I am talking about when I refer to different things: