Changes to Judgement rules - Grand Bugfix Patchnotes

In the update on 9th Feb 2022, they enabled a couple changes to the way flicks and slides interact in GRAND LIVE to make some of the judgement less problematic. Well, this change actually affects more things than just GRAND under the hood. This article will explore and explain some of the changes made.

Let's go through the list of bugs

1.リズムアイコン「スライド」の終点部分として「フリック」が出現した際に、意図しないタイミングで判定する場合がある

1.When a flick appears as the endpoint of a slide rhythm icon, it may be judged at an unintended timing.

This change affects ALL GAME MODES including TRICK and MASTER+

This change was done in a way that flicks attached to slides now can only be perfect or miss. Previously on patterns like EVERLASTING FORTE you have patterns like the example below where you might accidentally hit a NICE or BAD the pattern due to consuming all the previous protection you have before the flick which means you can get a early NICE/BAD just by positioning for the note.

Unfortunately this is not quite the right solution for this as what this means is that outside of the 150MS flick window, you instantly miss flicks now. This is extra bad because with concentration your flick window is further halved to 75ms which makes everything all that more difficult to keep combo on. The right change to make was to keep the GREAT window as well as the PERFECT window but unfortunately this is not the current behavior.

This is extra bad for people manipulating higher scores with timing optimizations as this means being one frame too early or too late now causes a miss which instantly ends the attempt. It also introduces a problem where some scores that involve a GREAT on a flick attached to a slide are now impossible to achieve, reducing the theoretical maximum of the chart. This also makes it harder to get a full combo with concentration now as the flicks are now a very small window to continue combo if they're attached to a slide. It remains to be seen if this will be changed again in the future.

2.リズムアイコン「スライド」の判定中にリズムアイコンがずれて表示される場合がある
3.リズムアイコン「スライド」の判定中に光エフェクトがずれて表示される場合がある

2.During the judgement of the slide, rhythm icons may be displayed at an incorrect location.
3.During the judgement of the slide, the light effect may be displayed at an incorrect location.

These are visual bugs regarding the slide rhythm icon. I don't recall exactly where this occurs but I believe that sometimes the width of the slide checks may be incorrect on the judgement line when expanding or contracting rapidly like in 星環世界 FORTE's star pattern. I don't have any specific recordings for this though.

4.リズムアイコン「スライド」の判定中に、「スライド」の終点より後にある「フリック」を判定する場合がある

4.During the judgement of the slide, a flick after the endpoint of the slide may be judged.

This is a slide precedence issue where sometimes flicks can be judged even when a slide is being registered. As far as we know this issue only happens on grand and concerns the pattern in ココカラミライヘ.

5.リズムアイコン「スライド」を特技「PERFECTサポート」と「スキルブースト」が同時発動中の効果で判定中、特技効果が終了した際に想定より多くのMISSを判定する場合がある

5.When a slide icon is under the influence of Perfect Support and Skill Boost, when the effect ends more misses than expected might occur.

This is the auto team bug which kills you when you mirror. It would be quite an explanation required to even understand the bug that this is fixing. The basic outcome of this is that you no longer take additional damage on specific slides and the scores when autoing on mirror and without mirror should be the same now.

Long Explanation

Consider the 15 lanes of grand numbered 1 to 15 from the left to the right. Normally when you tap a slide and let go, you incur 1 miss and all the checkpoints disappear together with the rest of the slide. However, if you tap a slide and don't hit any of the checkpoints, each missed checkpoint contributes one miss each.

When a slide starts in the rightmost 5 lanes (11-15) when the skill boost + perfect support skill cuts out mid slide, something weird happens. The entire slide doesn't drop, instead it only drops the initial hold so far, and causes each individual slide checkpoint to deal damage to you when it crosses the miss line. What this means is that the starting lane of the slide matters and thus mirroring the chart will affect both the amount of damage taken as well as the score.

また、本修正に関連して、以下の楽曲のリズムアイコンを一部調整しました。
・Wish you Happiness!!（FORTE）

※リズムアイコンの総数に変更はございません

One of the slide notes in wish you happiness got changed as a result of this.

If you have a look at the comparison image, you can see that the thickness of the slide has been changed. I believe this is to prevent you from accidentally grabbing the slide with the hand that you wanted to hit the flick with. It's a nice quality of life change I suppose.