Greetings! As a part of the upcoming 1.5 update, we are standardaizing the level difficulty ratings of all past and future CytoidIO levels. tl;dr: Instead of the old Lv. 1~9 scale inherited from Cytus I, we are switching to a new Lv. 1~15+ scale that took inspiration from Cytus II, but slightly different.

Why?

In Cytoid 1.5, player experience system and player rating system will be added. More details will be released soon, but now you simply need to know that both player experience and rating depend on the difficulty of the levels that a player has played. Therefore, we need a standardized difficulty scale, and all levels need to be rated correctly — otherwise, people will start playing Lv. 999 troll levels that are actually easy to farm experience and rating.

If you are a player...

Great! There is not much you need to do because all of the work is left on the charters, and we believe you will get used to the new difficulty scale soon. You may have questions...

Do I need to download anything?

No.

Do I need to update/redownload my levels?

No. Starting from Cytoid 1.5, the level meta will be automatically updated to match with the latest level meta on CytoidIO. That means if a charter decides to change their level's difficulty to 13, you will see Lv. 13 for their level in-game.

I downloaded a level, but its difficulty is different from what I see on the level page?

Yes, because your game (1.4 or older) is still using the old difficulty scale. Just update to Cytoid 1.5 when it is released!

Anyway, stay tuned for Cytoid 1.5!

If you are a charter...

What do I need to know?

The new difficulty scale starts from 1 and there is no upper limit. However, a difficulty rating above 15 — 16, 99, or 2345 — will be displayed as 15+, and has an internal difficulty rating of 16. (The internal rating is used to calculate player experiences and ratings.)

You can also use 0, which is specifically reserved for troll charts and charts that are not meant to be played. A difficulty rating of 0 will be displayed as ?.

You should follow this rating table to rate all of your charts. It provides examples from Cytus I, Cytus II, and Cytoid. If you are familiar wth the charts in any column, you should be able to rate your charts fairly quickly.

If you are not sure, people at Cytoid Discord are always willing to help! :]

How do I apply the new difficulty?

There are two cases: new levels, and your past levels.

If you are uploading a new level, you must rate your charts' difficulties in level.json according to the new difficulty scale. Then, add the schema_version parameter with value 2 in the root of your level.json, like this. This is necessary as it tells Cytoid that you are following to the new difficulty rating standards.

For your past levels — if you haven't noticed — they are already converted automatically with following rules:

1→2 2→3 3→4 4→6 5→8 6→10 7→11 8→12 9→14 10~12→15 13+→15+

However, the automatic conversion is mostly not accurate (and it is never meant to be). You should re-rate your levels using one of the following methods:

1. Make the required changes to the level.json on your computer (i.e. re-rate the charts, and add schema_version), compress the level files, and upload the new .cytoidlevel file.

This method is very inconvenient if you have many levels uploaded, so we recommend the following method.

2. Re-rate the charts directly in our new online level meta editor. Simply go to your level's page and click on the Edit level meta button to launch the editor. Besides the chart difficulties, you may also want to update other level meta, such as localized titles/artist names, as well as proper credits to the artists. When you click on the Update button, a new .cytoidlevel level file is generated and replaces the current level file on the server, with a new level.json that includes your edits to the level meta.

Note that this method can only be used to edit level meta; if, for instance, you would like to update the cover art for your level, you must make the changes locally, and upload a new .cytoidlevel file like before.

What if people incorrectly rate their levels?

We expect people will make (a lot of) mistakes when rating their levels. Generally speaking, we (moderators) do not forcibly change your level ratings unless they are terribly wrong (e.g. a Lv. 15+ chart rated as Lv. 7). Please be assured that an error margin within Lv. ±1 is absolutely acceptable.

Thanks for reading!

That's it! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to comment or join the Discord to ask us. See ya next time.