Hi, so as most osu!mania mappers know, getting a hold of a BN is really hard right now. So hard in fact, that a lot of people have kind of resigned themselves to other tactics such as waiting for new BNs to come around or taking advantage of nepotism.

So why is it so hard to get one? Well that questions has two answers. Firstly though, let me give you a rundown on the state of the BNs.

Out of 15 BNs at the moment of making this post. ONE is taking requests. That number could be slightly higher depending on how you interpret their userpages, but even an optimistic take would give you a figure of 2-4. I compiled a quick list on what's listed on each BNs userpage or at least a summary here (dead does not mean dead)

My theory on why is frankly, just a critical lack of active BNs. Once a certain number is hit, the remaining members are so overloaded with requests that they close their doors as well. Check https://osu.ppy.sh/u/protastic101 for one such example. If all 15 members were active or at least, a majority, the system could work pretty well. But as it is now, anyone who starts taking requests will be spammed immediately essentially forcing them to close again. I fear that the incoming BNs well get this treatment as well and before long, instead of 14 inactive BNs, we'll just have 19 inactive BNs.

I'm making this thread for discussion and possibly ideas on what we can do about this. I'm not advocating forcing BNs to mod anything because that's just a terrible idea.
Personally I think the current BN split is a good idea if we also lower the bar for tier 1 BNs significantly. The only cure I see for this problem is increasing the number of BNs dramatically or changing the system altogether. With a BN split, lowering the bar could not be as bad of an idea as it might seem. Having a number similar to STD BNs is pretty attractive.

In Taiko that's the same, probably because that's mini-games ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

No really, I agree with you on this point, but to be honest, some are probably busy with school, or else, and some takes requests, even if they don't want, you just have to get luck to have an request accepted.

Litharrale wrote:

Having a number similar to STD BNs is pretty attractive.

That would be quite hard, because the number of mini-games mappers and STD mappers is absolutely different.

Personally think the main drawback from me, if i am not busy, is the motivation to rank a map.
Not to intentionally come out as an elitist (so it means I will) and demotivate ranking of a map in this post

I won't speak for the BNG as a whole but if anyone in the group agrees, go ahead.

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reason 1:
Going back to the very basis of why people rank maps is kind of hard since different bns have different targets for what maps get ranked, this cloud of uncertainty of what is correct and what isn't is what's slowing the process down for me personally, since I don't know what is OK and i'm sure a lot of people is not even sure what is OK.

Sure we can just put the very baseline of ok-ness as it adheres to the ranking criteria so it's ok for rank but most bns will agree that it isn't how this works, subjectivity comes into play and this is where everything starts to fall apart.

This confusion usually stalls questionable maps for quite a while and honestly, you really can't classify what's a map that is "quality" and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey that's a lot of essay posts in that thread.

reason 2:
Well shit when do I rank a map then, I have developed their own interests and some of the time, I haven't gotten to a point where I really REALLY want to rank your map just because it has exceeded my expectations. (i warned you about the elitist thing)

I usually lose motivation when I'm tasked to nominate a map. Sure, you could argue that maps that are ok for rank deserves to be ranked, but nope it's not my job to rank every one of them, why?

1) Other mods and requests
2) I'll get kicked out if i screw up too much
3) I really just don't like the map at all
4) I kind of want to do something else

reason 3:
No more coordination
There is close to 0 coordination between the BNG, which is expected due to conflicting interests

cool theory:
maybe if more bns come together and agree on a map being ranked in a discussion it will give bns the confidence on ranking things
on the other hand, if the map is questionable, it could be easily resolved if there's easy coordination between, heeey that's going to make requalification easier too

sure this cool theory sounds like a great idea but it never took off both in the o!n and modding association discord so don't think it'll work

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Well damn how do i qualify something then?

I don't really want to go on a tangent here about personal preferences but really though, unless everyone has a consensus of what is acceptable and what isn't, it's going to be a eh idk for an answer.

The chances will increase if you meet the bn's expectations of course, I would say "try to not randomly pick bns" but then again there's like 1 semi-active bn LOL

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I can safely say that the nomination process wouldn't be improving for quite a while, not saying that it's bad right now, it's kind of ok, i mean, there's maps on the qualified section lol

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hey might as well create a bn thread that everyone can ask ranking criteria questions before they try to ask bns and piss them all off yea, just an idea, probably won't do much honestly

Thanks a tonne for the post evening, it's great to hear from someone who's actually experienced the things I was trying to talk about

So your reply gives me two questions of you

1.

Sure we can just put the very baseline of ok-ness as it adheres to the ranking criteria so it's ok for rank but most bns will agree that it isn't how this works, subjectivity comes into play and this is where everything starts to fall apart.

If the ranking criteria is changed to a subjective checklist sort of like the current standard ranking criteria, would this make it easier to go through the process? I know that feerum and blocko are working on a new criteria at the moment but I dont know if it would fit this purpose. Making it easier and faster for BNs to check if a map is "worthy" or not in the eyes of the community sounds like a good idea to me

2.

I'll get kicked out if i screw up too much

Would relaxing the punishments encourage you to take more risks? The last thing we need is less BNs

the "cultural split" between mappers is so large nobody can agree on anything which is basically why nothing even remotely hard ever gets ranked and why all the maps are generic jumpstream garbage

I have rarely seen any ranked file that fits an icyworld style be ranked

Theyre all holds and weird jacky bullshit

Comes down to motivation. Between all the things that go on in BNs' lives and the work needed to satisfy our expectations of this system, there is no visible middle ground. There is a point where going any higher quality is not worthy the free work of the ones that need to manage it. There will only be preferences for someone and not for all.

As Evening stated the current state is what it is for multiple reasons and the main one being all the BNs being humans and not machines.

Everyone have their own musical and map tastes and usually all of them are fine but sadly this is community driven, there is no way to really "limit" what anyone is doing as long as they do stuff. Since nothing is really required you wont really see a lot of whats "out of meta". BNs that say that they have their slots open are usually just on a state that they dont want to be bothered with anything and instead they would rather go for safe ranking their friends maps (which is, again, a thing that is alright but when that group of people involves only the Indonesian community and half of the BNG its at least harsh for the rest).

I would say we can blame both SR/DT as an incentive to not even care or try anymore (at least for those who were kinda trying to push out something different) but I guess we could also blame the Ranking Criteria not being reworked for example. What is good? What is bad? When is good, and when not? Those are things that all the BNG cant agree and its absolutely not clear in the RC. Jeez, even if you think about it people isnt able to tell if an LN map is just rankable or not.

This provokes (in general) generic mapping and overall just going for what we are "sure" that is good and alright and I am talking about pmuch every single map that we have ranked nowadays leaving maybe 2 exceptions a month. And what happens when people finds only that type of content? Well, happens what is happening to all gamemodes. You can see it on STD, everything is the same pp mapping because they are sure its alright but no one really attempts to do something different.

I like the idea that Evening is suggesting tho, having some sort of mutual agreement with the BNG seems reasonable but just the language barrier is being such a problem that I cant even imagine attempting to do something like that. This is why I think the RC needs to be reworked as soon as possible, so the limits of content can be pushed in such a way that gives all the new people proper guidelines to start mapping and giving the BNs in general something to hold into when they are aiming to rank something they arent as familiar with.

I dont want to blame the QAT either because even when they are supposed to be the ones managing the quality overall I dont know if they should be the ones taking actions into this situation and to be fair, I dont even think the QAT is feeling bad about the amount and quality of the ranked maps nowadays.

Another thing that comes to mind is community leaders. Even when it sounds dumb I think that mappers with a lot of content ranked works as some sort of community leaders in terms of being the "I wanna be" figure of the new people mapping and well, when those new individuals find themselves into a situation where their only chance is working hard and mod the maps of certain BNs to rank their stuff that is pmuch identical is not really that fair. I dont know, maybe its just me or maybe we are lacking proper community lead or a better amount of community leaders?

And I pmuch just said a bunch of nonsense without any real relation so yeah, sorry. I guess that working as a team (imagine if that ever happens, lmao) and having a new ranking criteria could be a good way to improve the state of the system. What are the other options anyways? In my experience, I aimed and did as much as I could to reach the BN position so I could bring some LN maps to the ranked section but then I figured that people are either not experienced mapping that theme, not aiming for rank at all and, the worst part, I didnt really got a single request of a real LN map for me to rank besides maybe Finger VIP.


To end this nonsensical post I guess I can leave my experience this last months and I can tell that I didnt really got more than 1 or 2 requests a week. Maybe its just me but being the "only one open to take requests" and not being flooded with requests is weird :thinking:

why so serious?

I don't see more bns would make game more fun

kicking out shit bn would better

enjoy game please

Juan wrote:

BNs are humans, not machines

I've only gotten 1-2 requests a week for the past few months

This figure is far lower than I thought it would be. Surely 1-2 a week I s not enough to overload a community of BNs? Unless your rate is abnormally lower than the rest

Shitposters wrote:

irrelevant

Leave your shitposts for other threads pls

lol

I've never seen attang act like this

It must be bad

Yuudachi-kun wrote:

I've never seen attang act like this

It must be bad

yes this thread is freakin bad

stepmania is better
content goes out in packages and no one complains
people play what the want to play
stepmania is better


i wish osu didn't need a complete overhaul in every single aspect possible

Well I mean in stepmania nothing is ranked or needs to be ranked or needs to be modded or needs to anything

The main reason people would play here is easy to use leaderboards but we don't have them on unranked do we

Rank my maps pls. (Someone had to say it)

Litharrale wrote:

This figure is far lower than I thought it would be. Surely 1-2 a week I s not enough to overload a community of BNs? Unless your rate is abnormally lower than the rest

Have you ever imagine "how many mappers that request BN check to BNs?" in this "world wide"?
Around 15 BNs against hundred mappers or so? please, the hell with that

CommandoBlack wrote:

Rank my maps pls. (Someone had to say it)

Rank my map pls.