Release (Ultimate MIke7) [3/10]

PERMS OK
SYNC OK

*Audio wave looks weird, not sure what's up with that.

Conceptually, this is clearly meant to target the very lowest skill range. Now while the difficulty definitely supports that, the song choice here is simply inadequate for such a concept; most the notes do not have a clear and sharp start/peak where the notes land, which in terms of being friendly to the most beginner players is quite counterproductive. This sort of pure ambient sound simply isn't a good fit for it doesn't really have any use case really. The low rating simply reflects the low potential of the song, not the notes themselves which are mostly fine although there are some clear errors like 38.435 being too early.

Judge Score: 3.00 - Rejected

While normally i hold the L when it comes to all my rejects. This one i'm willing to argue for (I dont know if i can appeal this due to its rating?).

It's meant to be easy, a difficulty 1. While yeah the song is 'chillax.' and Chill got rejected for a similiar reason (To be fair, that one was TOO easy.). I don't think that warrants a reject. There's plenty of chill like songs already in game, and i'm not gonna go ahead and understep the hell out of a hype song just for a difficulty 1.

So yeah, granted in terms of 'proper' notes; There's nothing wrong with this file other than maybe the 1 timestamp given. Rejecting this based on the song choice is in my opinion, ridiculous. So i would like this overturned or something idfk.

Your comment was brought to my (head judge's) attention by the above judges. This submission will remain rejected.

Your frustration is very understandable. Especially because I'll flatly admit that it's not exactly written out anywhere what the judge's expectations for this range actually are. My hope is to clarify it here.

One subjective aspect of our role as judges is to curate FFR's chart list. With difficulty 1-10ish submissions we need to ask in part: what is the new player experience we want FFR to have? If you were to introduce FFR to a potential new player, would you choose this song?

In my time judging (since ~2021), I've found us to be very consistent in expecting submissions in this range to use more energetic music than FFR has accepted in the past. That's all been in service of the above goal - bring more exciting and interesting music to any potential new players. This song does not satisfy that goal for reasons outlined in the judge notes.

You also don't need to be afraid of understepping a hype song to achieve the goal of difficulty 1. Heck, we'd even encourage it - see Altale [Light] for a decent example with a strong structure.

We're not asking you to send the next Control. But we do want FFR's low end difficulties to feautre more energetic music than this and Chill.

If you have any questions, my DMs are always open!