Hello fellow community members. I'm dkun and I'm a fellow mapper here at osu!. I'm here to discuss the concept of getting a map "speedranked", and why this should be addressed. This is merely a discussion to the concept, and nothing else. I am not nominating a rule change to the current criteria, nor am I advocating for it to be changed.


To those of you that are not familiar with the mapping community and our mapping jargon, please note that a speedrank is exactly what the name entails; a map being ranked with speed that's not normal of the rest of the community, for one reason or another.

@mods: please move this thread accordingly if this is the incorrect section to do so.
@other people: if this doesn't concern you, or if you have negative things to say about speedranking that does not contribute to the thread's purpose, then please do not post at all.
@cnf: this goes out to you, and the other people that did try/still are trying to stop this on-going problem

jericho2442 wrote:

not worth it, you want a discussion over such a subject make a related topic, dont use map threads, it wont get anywhere

Here it is jericho. Let's have a discussion about it! Let me explain why this is a concept that needs to be addressed here in the world of osu!.

Sakura wrote:

As long as the map's are flawless it doesnt make any difference if it gets ranked now, in a week or in a year. The problem is when the map's not flawless, in that case then point it out in the map thread.

As much as i disagree with speedranks, this is how things work in here atm, so please direct your discussion elsewhere to another topic or probably a PM instead of here (you may as well PM me as well if you want to talk about this).

Let's start with this line that Sakura said right after jericho on Andrea's latest ranked map.

As long as the map is flawless? The map in question was deranked after a speedrank. This is a clear point to why this is an issue, is it not? You may disagree with speedranks, but what are you doing to prevent them? I hope this thread will have people listen about speedranks and why they are unethical in the community (I am guilty of this as well, please note this). This is one issue compared to the many that do come within the aspects within "speedranking".

If I start a PM with you, what exactly happens? I've spoken with a lot of the staff and they have all told me the same thing. Or no, they haven't told me, they all shrugged, because there's not enough drive to moderate something such as this.

peppy wrote:

How to get your map ranked, in order of effectiveness
1) Make it flawless
2) Put a lot of effort into the map. Make it awesome and stand out from the crowd.
3) Make it a popular song (call it controversial, but popular songs are the ones people want to play, so why not?)
4) Have a history of flawless maps (so modders/BATs are more likely to know how easily it can be ranked)
5) Give and receive. Offer to trade mods. Show that you aren't just about "me, me, me"
6) High SP, since we mod and rank at least 50% based on SP of maps.

Also consider that what you call "speedranking" is only so fast because there are minor/no issues. You can't "speedrank" most maps because they you know, require modding.

No rule needs to exist to solve this problem that doesn't exist.

What I just noted above with a map that was deranked is some sort of proof to why this problem exists. But point by point on a mapper standpoint to why most of these points are wrong, in order.

Why this is wrong, in order listed above:
1) Nothing is flawless, no? There's too many different interpretations to the different kinds of mapping out in the osu! world today. What one person may see as flawless may be complete trash to the next.
2) The said mapper putting effort? Awesome? (I would rather not elaborate on this)
3) I doubt these songs are "popular", just of the Anime aspect.
4) A history of putting effort and making awesome maps? (Same point as #2.)
5) ^ "me, me, me, and her"
6) 50%? His maps get ranked in a week with other maps still on the list that have been there for months.

As I said earlier, what I listed above right here points to one single instance of this problem. The entire issue of speedranking extends past this issue at hand. If you break down the entire problem, you have a problem within many aspects of mapping and the game in general, including...

1. Kudosu is meant to be spent on what mappers think is "rankable", not just because of the mapper. (There are instances of maps that are kudosu "abused", and are ranked due to their priority.)
2. Modders are only focusing on specific maps, rather than looking at it as a whole (elitism, looking at the people already here, than the new. tl;dr, it's hard for a mapper to start up.)
3. BAT's don't mod to the same standards as they do with "newer" mappers. (Looking at the example above, something got ranked and was deranked shortly after due to an issue. When a BAT lets the same issue go with said popular mapper, goes right around and enforces it with another. Essentially a double standard.)
4. Speedranking isn't to blame on one sole person, but essentially the entire process where it goes through, which includes, (but isn't limited to) the MAT and the BAT.

Let's put this all in retrospect. You need two people to rank a map. Three for an approval. (1 MAT/BAT, or 1 MAT/2 BAT) Where does the biggest problem lie in all of this? The BAT team as a whole. Change needs to come from within the BAT to address this issue, as it's not just one mapper's fault, or one BAT's fault. This is a community problem as it stands, and needs to be solved by those in power for the better sake of the community.

Essentially... Getting a map "speedranked" accelerates or even skips over the modding process, hindering the quality of ranked maps. It skips over what makes a map "polished", or what makes it "good". This is something that shouldn't be rushed, or avoided to any extent.

Let this be heard. This is an issue. But what are we going to do as it keeps exponentially growing?
Well, that's up to you.

I want to hug you forever
nothing else to say

I will say that I don't care about speedranking at all. Maps getting ranked much earlier than those who have had more mods, SP, etc isn't something that bothers me (and yes, it has happened to me before http://osu.ppy.sh/s/37235 http://osu.ppy.sh/s/42460)

However, when a speedranked map gets unranked due to an issue, why rerank after that? Seems like common sense to realize that more than one thing could of been looked over. It's like finding a rat in a house you are selling - don't assume that single rat to be the only one there, and get it checked lol

Lol I was going to create such a thread.. Nevermind, yours is better.

Speedranking is very bad, I agree.

Kudosu system is useless those days since a person can earn star poins with useful mod post in his/her map.

Also, I don't think the 50% of the most rated maps (High SP) are modding those days, I can give you some 3 or 4 examples.

I'm against of "That BAT/MAT is my friend, I think I can call him/her to claim a bubble, doesn't matter the others' mod now."



Star Priority, huh?

I agree with this. Maps should only be speedrank when they stand out by A LOT. There are very few cases when I see just that happening. Most of the time, it's your average uninteresting boring map that people just play to get their score/pp to go up, not to actually have fun.

Here is a link to the osu!monthly #5 where KRZY discusses Speedranking. Needless to say, this didn't have any impact on the ranking process in general. This was made back in mid-2011.

If you could rank my maps I would love you forever.

Also, it doesn't really seem you have any sort of proposed solution. This is a type of problem that you really can't fix by just saying, "Guys, stop." imo, it just seems like after a certain point, people get lazy, and modding just begins to feel burdensome. People start to pay less attention, overlooking minor details. Now not every BAT/MAT probably is like that, but sometimes after a person first becomes BAT/MAT they just kinda dwindle away. To be honest, if you really need people to be consistently concentrated and determined in modding, I don't really see much else of a way other than having some sort of rotation so that new players keep coming and older ones leave (and may or may not come back), but kinda sounds like a really bad idea/probably will not work.

I don't mind speedranking that much, but when it needs to be unranked and reranked, then it's not a good thing. It's also annoying to players who took time to FC the map and lose their scores (depending on how the unranking and reranking process went)

It also annoys me cuz I'm all like wtfhow2rankmapsgoddamnit

Hm, I feel like I haven't discussed it enough. But dkun really has his finger on a huge problem here.

I'm quite tired of seeing maps being bubbled/ranked in less than a week after they were submitted unless they gain some sort of popular attention, support, or anything that shows that the map is really well-received, stands out from the other maps by its quality, originality, fun, flow, etc. Like I said, they're usually very boring, plain and uninteresting maps, which only get many plays and good ratings because the song is popular and not because the map is great. Now, when the map speedranked in question is actually ranked with problems, that is simply unacceptable. I can close my eyes on a map that's been ranked in a week if it has no gameplay issues, if the mapper has put effort into his map, even if the map in itself... Isn't all that great. But I do remember a few examples, which add nicely to the one provided by dkun. Let's focus on one particular one.

I'm not trying to flame anybody here. If I were flaming, I'd be using sarcasm.

Remember the whole fuss about Fluorite Diary? The one mapped by Kawayi Rika? Yeah, that was pretty bad now was it? The map had a number of issues pointed out by those or Charles445, and yet, it got ranked in two days after its submission. Drama ensued, naturally. One of the major complaints was that it had a high Star Priority due to many stars given by one BAT, Andrea, which kinda threw off the whole "we mod maps according to star priority as to advantage maps that got many mods" way of modding, which at the time, was still in its early days. Nevertheless, the map got unranked after an interesting amount of people complained. It was reranked several weeks later when a significative amount of changes were applied to the map. The problem here, was the high and "undeserved" star priority as many people pointed out. That's something I want to focus on for a minute here.

Nowadays, there are two ways to get star priority: Modding other people's maps, which gives you kudosu, that you can use to boost the priority of your map or any map that you like, or to get it modded and give the mods kudosu. Looks fine, right? But let's study a very specific example. Imagine, you're a XAT. Naturally, you mod maps, and get kudosu off of these. You can then choose to boost your own maps with kd or use them on other maps that you liked. Imagine you do mod4mod. Since you're XAT, you will have NO trouble whatsoever finding people to mod your map. You're going to get 1 kudosu by modding someone's map, you're going to get +1 SP from the mod you get, and you can possibly get more if that someone stars your map with the kudosu you gave the guy. If all of these various stars, and star priority boosts were off of decent-sized, well-made, and most importantly, listened to and applied mods, then that would be fine. However, it usually results in a couple of lines of somewhat lazy modding, along the lines of New Combo placement, or metadata changing. And people get kudosu (and star priority) from these. I think the problem here is that the kudosu giving policy is much too lenient. It should be something like this:

This, of course, is your top-notch, neat, omg-you-need-to-be-a-MAT mod. But it would be nice to at least deny kudosu on mods that are less than 4 lines long. This would prevent the star priority from skyrocketing for no apparent reason, which would lead to a proper treatment of the map, which would avoid the map from being speedranked. Even if it still won't prevent certain XATs from bubbling/ranking certain other XATs under the name of friendship, it'll help.

About speedranking...if map is REALLY GOOD and almost perfect and it gets ranked fast...then I see no problem...for example recent grumd's map...and also he can get like 30 mods in 4 days...

Mr Color wrote:

I think the problem here is that the kudosu giving policy is much too lenient.

yet another huge problem without a clear solution :/

Mr Color wrote:

it would be nice to at least deny kudosu on mods that are less than 4 lines long.

hi

The problem you're describing has nothing at all to do with fast ranks, rather, it has everything to do with bad ranks.. If a map needs to be unranked, it's because of something important that the ranking BAT ought to have caught before ranking it in the first place. If anything, there should be more discipline towards the BATs involved in bad ranks.

Mr Color wrote:

A mod that makes the mapper change stuff in his map (a disregarded mod isn't a mod since nothing came out of it)

I couldn't disagree more. If the mapper needs to make changes for it to count, it becomes a game of roulette for the modder since they have no way of knowing if the mapper applies their changes or not. It puts the mapper on a high pedestal, establishing their personal opinions as law regarding whether a mod is good or bad. Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.
There's a reason why BATs are allowed to grant kudosu rather than just the mapper.

Can we please get rid of the mod4mod BAT/MAT queues? People post in there and make half-assed mods to the BAT/MAT maps just to get an easy bubble/ranks. Andrea's maps have tons of that and this is how he gets so many badly done mods in such a short amount of time.

Blue Dragon wrote:

Can we please get rid of the mod4mod BAT/MAT queues? People post in there and make half-assed mods to the BAT/MAT maps just to get an easy bubble/ranks. Andrea's maps have tons of that and this is how he gets so many badly done mods in such a short amount of time.

completely agree with this.

I don't really have much to say other than that I totally agree with dkun here. @ mm201, you may say the problem at hand may be caused by bad ranks, when frankly, it wouldn't be a bad rank in the first place had enough people modded the map if they were given more time.

However I don't really have the time to read absolutely everything going on in this thread, so I won't say any more than that; just throwing in my opinion.

Canadia supports dkun!!!

Kitsunemimi wrote:

you may say the problem at hand may be caused by bad ranks, when frankly, it wouldn't be a bad rank in the first place had enough people modded the map if they were given more time.

Kinda this.

I don't really care about speedranking as long as the map is stay ranked after be ranked. But nowadays we saw so many speedranks following with de-rank soon after it became ranked. This is just not good.
Instead of time we count the amount of mods what the map is got. Basically this way, the map needs (example) 30 mod before it will become ranked. Of course, someone will get this amount in a few days, but at least, the map is already good enough.
I hope I was able to wrote this in an understandable way.

mm201 wrote:

Mr Color wrote:

A mod that makes the mapper change stuff in his map (a disregarded mod isn't a mod since nothing came out of it)

I couldn't disagree more. If the mapper needs to make changes for it to count, it becomes a game of roulette for the modder since they have no way of knowing if the mapper applies their changes or not. It puts the mapper on a high pedestal, establishing their personal opinions as law regarding whether a mod is good or bad. Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.
There's a reason why BATs are allowed to grant kudosu rather than just the mapper.

I actually partly agree with you on this, but I'd rather see something like this: When a XAT comes to check out a map, he should also check out the mods it has received, and check what has been fixed and what hasn't. If a normally good mod has been completely disregarded by the mapper, he would be able to deny the SP gained by the mod without revoking the modder's well-deserved kd. Unfortunately, that would require a lot of work from the XATs. We don't really want that.

mm201 wrote:

Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.

See, that's something I disagree with. Instead of getting the map ranked with fewer mods, the map should be stuck in its ranking process until the mapper accepts to give in and eventually apply changes pointed out by the mods. This would prompt mappers with too much pride to learn some modesty, also.

maybe we should make the rankingprocess anonymously, so you don't see who mapped what, so nobody cares for big names, and people like andrea start again actually caring about quality, and modders mod maps based on quality and not on names.

well, at least this would e the utopian answer the problem.

but for the start, it would really help if people would stop with the elitism and don't just mod maps from some special people.

As mm201 said, this is an issue with bad ranks, not speed ranks.

I will never repeat this enough, but the problems comes from the general modding level. Yes, many MATs and BATs are concerned. Mods are bad. No one bothers to point out what could be improved. They only point out what could be unranked.

No attention whatsoever is given to quality. Yes, I know, this speech again. Do you need any more proof of this ? And before you go "find us a solution", I had a "mod queue" in which I told people what I think could be improved in their mod posts. Unfortunately, it was very quickly forgotten. We need to make mappers understand that a rank is a consequence of making a good map, while most seem to think that having a good map is a consequence of having a map ranked.

So, what solutions ? Obviously, changing people's mindsets is impossible, especially when some mappers keep getting bad maps (in many ways) ranked and showing the wrong example. Trying to set good examples is impossible either, for the same reason.

The only solution I can think of would be to make the overall modding quality greater.