I think it would be useful to be able to sort your maps by popularity rating. When I'm multiplaying in osu!, I can't guarantee that the random will always pick a good rated map. If there was a way to sort by star rating, 5.0,6.0,7.0,9.0 etc. The sorting would divide each category into tenths. That way I could filter only 9.0+ maps and then I wouldn't have to worry about getting a bad song in my massive list when I hit random.
Edit: How I would do it:
I would take general things that are only accessible by the forum such as Date ranked, popularity, total plays, and I would create separate master list for them, which could be in the form of a .txt file.All ranked/approved maps will have data on these lists. When data is updated on the song, it will also be recorded in the list. Well it would go to an list array and then be recorded on file. Once all the data of all the ranked songs are listed on the master list, clients can then request the server for the latest master list and then instantly have the data for every approved song in osu!, which can then can be organized and sorted.
Just like pp is only updated every x hours, the request to update the list from the servers can be similarly scheduled, so that there isn't a request for the list too frequently and it wouldn't need to be updated that frequently. The list would update client side upon map download.
In order for efficiency sake, a client side list would be compiled from the master list. Only the songs you currently have downloaded will be shown on this list. A folder check could do the job as all submitted maps are numbered. The list will be stored in memory upon first use of the filter, so that it wouldn't need to load from file each time it needs to filter.
The naysayers?
All recent maps get rated 9.0+ anyways so this is pointless
Incorrect. I don't think peppy is planning on deleting older ranked maps anytime soon, and it is naive to think that noone is going to download songs that are more than a year old and that all of us older members will have deleted our maps by now, because of how awesome newer maps are. Maps come in all ranges of ratings and just because we have a higher standard of quality now than we have in the past does not invalidate this request. Actually supporting this will be the first step in sorting by .5 of accuracy. Just because you have only newer maps, doesn't mean older maps no longer exist and people don't play them.
Rating doesn't matter
Incorrect. The system isn't perfect, and the degree of quality may be ambiguous at times, there is a margin for error in this system and that is roughly 0.2-0.3 star rating points depending on genre. <(Sorting by genre anyone?) What I mean by this is that the actual deserved star rating for a map is usually never more than 0.2 or 0.3 points from it's actual rating.
If something is rated 8.5, there's over a 90% likelihood that it's properly rated within 8 standards. 9.3 is very likely to be appropriately deserving of a 9 or more standard. Ratings generally even out over time, and for the large majority indicate a certain degree of quality.
The way I look at it is that such a feature will make it easier to use random in multiplayer, because it will limit the pool of maps to a higher percentage of better maps instead of searching through a sea of landmines. The chances of random picking a decent map will be higher when picking through a pool of 9.0+ maps as compared to a pool of 8 and 9 maps.
Idea below would probably be unfeasible, but would be an example of the most extreme use of a master list
On a side note, "Overall Most Played" might be helpful as well, but this thread is mainly about the first topic. In this case, I would be referring to a supporter only filter that would sort maps by how many overall plays have been submitted to that map. It would be good for finding popular maps, the maps worth the most pp, generally. (This may be performance intensive though so might not be the best idea)
Edit: How I would do it:
I would take general things that are only accessible by the forum such as Date ranked, popularity, total plays, and I would create separate master list for them, which could be in the form of a .txt file.All ranked/approved maps will have data on these lists. When data is updated on the song, it will also be recorded in the list. Well it would go to an list array and then be recorded on file. Once all the data of all the ranked songs are listed on the master list, clients can then request the server for the latest master list and then instantly have the data for every approved song in osu!, which can then can be organized and sorted.
Just like pp is only updated every x hours, the request to update the list from the servers can be similarly scheduled, so that there isn't a request for the list too frequently and it wouldn't need to be updated that frequently. The list would update client side upon map download.
In order for efficiency sake, a client side list would be compiled from the master list. Only the songs you currently have downloaded will be shown on this list. A folder check could do the job as all submitted maps are numbered. The list will be stored in memory upon first use of the filter, so that it wouldn't need to load from file each time it needs to filter.
The naysayers?
All recent maps get rated 9.0+ anyways so this is pointless
Incorrect. I don't think peppy is planning on deleting older ranked maps anytime soon, and it is naive to think that noone is going to download songs that are more than a year old and that all of us older members will have deleted our maps by now, because of how awesome newer maps are. Maps come in all ranges of ratings and just because we have a higher standard of quality now than we have in the past does not invalidate this request. Actually supporting this will be the first step in sorting by .5 of accuracy. Just because you have only newer maps, doesn't mean older maps no longer exist and people don't play them.
Rating doesn't matter
Incorrect. The system isn't perfect, and the degree of quality may be ambiguous at times, there is a margin for error in this system and that is roughly 0.2-0.3 star rating points depending on genre. <(Sorting by genre anyone?) What I mean by this is that the actual deserved star rating for a map is usually never more than 0.2 or 0.3 points from it's actual rating.
If something is rated 8.5, there's over a 90% likelihood that it's properly rated within 8 standards. 9.3 is very likely to be appropriately deserving of a 9 or more standard. Ratings generally even out over time, and for the large majority indicate a certain degree of quality.
The way I look at it is that such a feature will make it easier to use random in multiplayer, because it will limit the pool of maps to a higher percentage of better maps instead of searching through a sea of landmines. The chances of random picking a decent map will be higher when picking through a pool of 9.0+ maps as compared to a pool of 8 and 9 maps.
Idea below would probably be unfeasible, but would be an example of the most extreme use of a master list
On a side note, "Overall Most Played" might be helpful as well, but this thread is mainly about the first topic. In this case, I would be referring to a supporter only filter that would sort maps by how many overall plays have been submitted to that map. It would be good for finding popular maps, the maps worth the most pp, generally. (This may be performance intensive though so might not be the best idea)
". Then the maps that really should have had more work put into them or are just bad outright would get plenty of sub-9 ratings. Good luck convincing anyone to make things that way, though.