Tips on creating "Beginner Friendly" easies

Hello everyone! Maps are becoming harder and harder, and 2012 mapping is very different compared to 2016 mapping.

Nowadays, people tend to space their objects farther and use more complex rhythms. Currently, mappers want to impress and achieve fame by making the best hard difficulties possible for their songs and often neglect their easier difficulties. In order to ensure your maps are enjoyable to players of all abilities, here are some tips for making beginner friendly easies.

Spinners

Before you place spinners, you have to take two things into consideration: the length and the recovery time. Spinners that last very long can be just as detrimental as spinners that are too short. Long periods of spinning can be very tiring. Likewise, short spinners put beginners at a disadvantage. Ever heard about the spinner bonus? If auto can get at least a four thousand spin bonus and no more than a ten thousand spin bonus, you’re good to go.

Additionally, you should keep the recovery time at a reasonable amount. Newbies need time to react after a spinner. Aim for at least a whole measure of recovery time after a spinner ends.

Rhythm Usage

Rhythms should be kept simple. Do not try to map every single sound in the song. Simplify any complicated rhythms and emphasize the important beats. Try to use mostly 1/1 rhythms and sometimes 1/2 rhythms (if the song permits). Refrain from using 1/4 rhythms in easies, as they are VERY problematic for beginners. The song’s BPM has a major impact on your rhythm usage. For example, 1/2 rhythms in a 180 BPM song are much more difficult than 1/2 rhythms in a 120 BPM song. Lastly, SLIDERS. The more sliders the merrier! Sliders have what we call "hit leniency", meaning it is easier to click a slider correctly "on time" than a circle!

Keep the difficulty spread in mind. All players should be able to play and enjoy your map, despite their skill level. You do not want to just please the beginners, but all players in general.

Awkward Spacing

Distance snap exists for a reason and you should follow it in most (if not all) cases. Players at this level use it to help them determine when to click. In addition to following distance snap, avoid stacking notes on top of each other. Stacks make it hard for players to click to the rhythm accurately and they can be annoying to read at low approach rates. Stacks can be ESPECIALLY confusing if the clicking time frame between the stack and the next note varies between instances. Here is an example:

In the above image, each pair of notes is stacked. However, top two notes require you to click twice as fast. Players only have the approach circle to guide them when to click as shown in the image above.

Slider Shapes

Sliders are your friends, though there will also be many opportunities where you can replace a slider with a spinner. Longer sliders allow you to make beautiful slider shapes; (e.g Loop sliders, heart sliders, letter sliders etc.) When used properly, you can make some truly amazing things. Note that your sliders should still be clearly visible and the slider path should not blocked. Overlapping sliders are fine, as long as the follow path of the whole slider is clearly readable, and players can easily see where the slider begins and ends.

Difficulty Settings

The difficulty settings should be appropriate to the map, meaning high settings should be avoided AT ALL COSTS. A very high AR will make the map unreadable and unplayable. A very high HP will make players fail before they’ve even hit the 1st note. Common sense and intuition come a long way. Ask beginners to test play the map! Most settings issues are easily recognizable simply by playing the map.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas for creating your own awesome easy difficulties for beginners to play and enjoy. They may not seem that important to you, but there are lots of players out there who do enjoy and even require playing easies in order to learn the basics of the game. Always remember that you were a new player once too!

—Tari