I have argued with you a few times and we are never gonna agree. We are from different groups, as you are not an active player, you are more of a mapper so you don't really know much about how people plays the game, while I'm more of a player than a mapper so I get to know what players want. Different points of view I guess, tho I still think many mappers fail to see what mapping is really about: making maps for people to play and have fun on. A map is as good as people can enjoy it. Having a full difficulty spread is probably the best since everyone is able to play it, yet I'm not sure if anyone would like a FIVE MINUTE LONG EASY, damn even insanes that long get boring unless they are extremely good, I can't imagine how you could not die of boredom after playing 5 minutes of ultra long sliders and 1/1s...

Wishy wrote:

I have argued with you a few times and we are never gonna agree. We are from different groups, as you are not an active player, you are more of a mapper so you don't really know much about how people plays the game, while I'm more of a player than a mapper so I get to know what players want. Different points of view I guess, tho I still think many mappers fail to see what mapping is really about: making maps for people to play and have fun on. A map is as good as people can enjoy it. Having a full difficulty spread is probably the best since everyone is able to play it, yet I'm not sure if anyone would like a FIVE MINUTE LONG EASY, damn even insanes that long get boring unless they are extremely good, I can't imagine how you could not die of boredom after playing 5 minutes of ultra long sliders and 1/1s...

Not everybody has fun the same way as you do. Take into consideration that people have different levels of skill: While you probably can SS easy Insanes without even focusing, for some people SSing a 5 minute long Easy can still be a challenge.

Also, a considerable part of the appeal of playing this game is listening to the music they like while they play. If there are less songs for lower levels, then some people can't play properly until they get better at the game (and not everybody is even interested in becoming a skilled player).

Wishy wrote:

I can't imagine how you could not die of boredom after playing 5 minutes of ultra long sliders and 1/1s...

please stop it. thanks.

Wishy wrote:

I have argued with you a few times and we are never gonna agree. We are from different groups, as you are not an active player, you are more of a mapper so you don't really know much about how people plays the game, while I'm more of a player than a mapper so I get to know what players want. Different points of view I guess, tho I still think many mappers fail to see what mapping is really about: making maps for people to play and have fun on. A map is as good as people can enjoy it. Having a full difficulty spread is probably the best since everyone is able to play it, yet I'm not sure if anyone would like a FIVE MINUTE LONG EASY, damn even insanes that long get boring unless they are extremely good, I can't imagine how you could not die of boredom after playing 5 minutes of ultra long sliders and 1/1s...

I can assure you that, after the aforementioned instances of trying to get friends into the game, trying to get e/n right for osu!stream and interacting with novices in the client itself, I know a thing or two about the bottom end of the spectrum. For example, I showed a novice my easy diff of 'Harmless Minor' and they appreciated the fact that it was so expressive and even made them think a little bit--that's the sort of thing I go for with easies. The diff in question amounted to a fair amount of variance and punch, yet the song itself is about three and a half minutes+.

Now, I'm feeling rather mellow for once, so I'm not gonna bite your head off. Just try not to make too many assumptions about me and where I'm coming from. Not only have I been there as a player (I play this game pretty frequently if I come across the rare maps that I actually enjoy), i.e. lamenting the lack of nice easier maps, but I've seen enough of novices to know that they need some love from time to time as well. That's just the way it is. With any luck, my osu!academy guest slot will be up for all to see, where I'll be talking about all of this in an official context--here's hoping that lots of newbies take away enough from it to help mitigate the "e/n is boring and useless" problem.

DEEDIT: I will throw in a deconstructive dig at your post--you contradict yourself by preaching the importance of mapping for players to enjoy. Novices will probably not enjoy a map that's beyond their ability, but they also won't enjoy a doable map that's got bad/no pacing or flair. That's what makes the issue all the more important, which is why I'm always jumping down people's throats about it. I know that I get carried away with myself, but I'm extremely passionate about this game and would hate to see it even harder for beginners to get into it.

this game has a horrible horrible problem with ranking

the good players run out of shit to play

why?

because the fucking approval rule changed

no one who maps super hard maps also wants to map easier difficulties and then put in the effort to get them ranked on top of that

if you are bad enough at this game to want to play easies/normals

then you have a very large amount of shit to challenge you

stop acting entitled to your boring easy crap that there's endless amounts of, and saying that "new players won't be able to play their favorite song ;;"

if they want to play it, tell them to get better, there's plenty of other songs for them in the mean time

^

Silynn wrote:

this game has a horrible horrible problem with ranking

the good players run out of shit to play

why?

because the fucking approval rule changed

no one who maps super hard maps also wants to map easier difficulties and then put in the effort to get them ranked on top of that

if you are bad enough at this game to want to play easies/normals

then you have a very large amount of shit to challenge you

stop acting entitled to your boring easy crap that there's endless amounts of, and saying that "new players won't be able to play their favorite song ;;"

if they want to play it, tell them to get better, there's plenty of other songs for them in the mean time

I like it that way. 95% (includes me a few years ago) of the mappers who don't care enough to make an Easy diff for their EXTRA INSANE EXTREME beatmaps make terrible beatmaps as well with artificial difficulty and AR10 jumps on let's say, 180BPM, so the rule helps to keep the bad maps away.

Silynn wrote:

no one who maps super hard maps also wants to map easier difficulties and then put in the effort to get them ranked on top of that

I love these people who tries to speak for other people. So you have clear proofs to confirm this? Ah nevermind this would end in nowhere. But seriously, that attitude is as bad as these people which complains about no Easy/Normal Difficulties in xyz Song.

Silynn wrote:

this game has a horrible horrible problem with ranking

the good players run out of shit to play

why?

because the fucking approval rule changed

no one who maps super hard maps also wants to map easier difficulties and then put in the effort to get them ranked on top of that

if you are bad enough at this game to want to play easies/normals

then you have a very large amount of shit to challenge you

stop acting entitled to your boring easy crap that there's endless amounts of, and saying that "new players won't be able to play their favorite song ;;"

if they want to play it, tell them to get better, there's plenty of other songs for them in the mean time

The solution is for mappers to get better at making good spreads. Yes, ranking takes effort. Mappers know that when they start any set.

New players do need to be catered to and the only way for some people to get better quickly is to use easier maps to get used to basic mechanics, as well as basic musical cues. Players are spoiled with the number of maps which are ranked day in, day out. Stop acting entitled in a way which implies that the game should revolve around you and your kind, because it doesn't. It revolves around everybody who plays the game.

Also, supporting BD's sentiment. It's a method of quality control, which is what this game needs.

From a completely objective stand point in this current arguement, these are (IMO) important points to remember.

* Peppy himself has stated that he does not want nor need more *NEW* players in osu. Mainly because it will be even harder as a sole person to keep management over the ever increasing users.

* People who play osu improve if they are somewhat active, that is more or less a fact which everyone will agree upon (at least being able to play normals/hards).

Reasoning

New people start every day. Let's say they all start by playing easy difficulties to get used to the game. Fine. Some people become active, others never log in again or rarely ever play. The active players will gradually improve from the easy/normal category no matter how bad they are, as long as they play somewhat frequently.

Questions

So why does every mapper still have to cater to the very least needed, and eventually minority (if somehow there is a stop to the constant flow of new players) population of newbies, when there are already so many maps they can play a couple of times to improve on?

Keeping the past points in mind, would lowering the approval lenght requirement by a minute really have any detrimental rammifications that some people in this thread love to paint out? Especially when maps around the 5-6 minute range rarely ever gets ranked these days?

Editing maps is a personal investment of free time that grants you nothing practical in return in the end. Quality maps are in decline. Rules & regulations push creativeness further and further away from getting something ranked (this also concerns modding in a way).

That's also why I could also see something like the (HI) spread as people have proposed here for maps in the 5-6 minute range. That aside I think the OP in this thread displays excellent points and should be discussed at first.

I know I'm partly speculating here, but I still feel that this is the reality we are in today.

Why are we still discussing this in a way that marathons should get changed?

Change how the ranking works instead of marathon, leave the marathon be imo.
Still stand by my suggestions.

@D33d, while we both know how this may end up, with my proposal you don't get a lot of changes done immediately so the chances for ruin are small though. It's still possible to observe how it turns out and if successful, keep or move forward. If unsuccessful, emergency changes can be done.
I doubt not having an easy in a 4 min mapset is something that will break the current criteria, most of the people just cheese their normals to be easy enough anyway, and get away with it.

Liiraye wrote:

Editing maps is a personal investment of free time that grants you nothing practical in return in the end. Quality maps are in decline. Rules & regulations push creativeness further and further away from getting something ranked (this also concerns modding in a way).

The mapper knows this and they're effectively signing up to create quality content by their own volition. In regards to that, nothing's changed and the only reason for quality decline is the mappers themselves. There has never been anything in the rules and guidelines to stifle creativity, although I realise the the popular definition is "make something as outlandish and gimmicky as possible." That still doesn't mean that creativity's unwelcome.

That's also why I could also see something like the (HI) spread as people have proposed here for maps in the 5-6 minute range. That aside I think the OP in this thread displays excellent points and should be discussed at first.

This I'm okay with, as we've always had a 1-2 diff allowance for longer songs. It's when songs begin to fall into "normal length" territory that I see no reason for the mapper not to attempt a full spread. Maybe three diffs, but they'd better create a damn good spread.

lolcubes, the problem with tentative changes is that mappers can easily use them to get their way by whittling away the quality control, bit by bit. Moreover, people are more likely to cry foul if a limitation's reincluded, so once a change is in place, it becomes a lot harder to undo in an emergency. I guess that people generally do "get away with" omitting easy, but I'd say it's better to encourage mappers to go a bit further than doing the bare minimum. Easies take very little time anyway. Besides that, all I ever see in this kind of debate is a series of weak excuses for doing the bare minimum, when the mapper might as well put in a small amount of time to make their contribution as complete as possible.

Even if peppy doesn't want/need more players, they're still going to come--why not allow for that which eases the newer players into the game, especially if it means that they'll eventually contribute? In 2008, I found it impossible to get used to the gameplay, so I didn't think anything of the game until 2011, when I finally had a decent mouse. Even then, I was thankful for the easier diffs which I could actually manage, for just long enough that I ended up committing to osu! as I do today.

For an example of what I don't want the game to become, I once tried to play Toribash. Because of the steep learning curve, I tried it for a bit and ended up having nothing to do with the game ever again. There was very little to ease newbies into it. Let's say that osu! had never been based around full spreads and was only an open canvas for "creative" insanes as ranked maps. I don't think I'd have cared at all after even a day of commitment.

Other than preventing a bad snowball effect and keeping more open to newer players, the benefit of encouraging more full sets is that mappers actually have reasons to practice full sets, which would make them improve at making easier diffs. As soon as I had to make full sets, my easier maps improved drastically and became a lot more nuanced--after struggling to make 'Teardrop' tidy and compelling, I came back with more experience and was suddenly able to make a set with which I was satisfied. Again, I must stress that people are already asking how they can make their single diffs rankable, so they'll end up asking that in more cases if they know they'll have more excuses for it. As it is, we don't exactly see many easies and normals which are made that well, so I hope that my point speaks for itself through what's already out there.

There are so many graveyarded maps that people like. Many of those, for example, let's say crn maps, are known and played by many people. It's played a lot even though it's not officially ranked. Why? People share and spread through friends, multiplayer and /np.

They can get recognition even if they are not ranked, so in my opinion, it is not a pressing issue that songs have to be ranked for people to play them, since when is songs not getting ranked = players have nothing good to play? They can enjoy those songs without a rank. Thus the rules do not have to be changed. Mappers make such one-shot difficulties because they think it is fun, and it's what they do, they are free to submit them to the site, getting a ranked is totally different matter. I'm not really sure how else to elaborate what I'm saying, but I hope you get the idea as to what I'm trying to say. Of course, maybe it would be good to have a possible monthly or of some sort where such songs can be compiled on the site, something like a group of unranked stuff that people have tried and is thought to be a good challenge for even skilled players, so other's can see for themselves and give it a go to test their skills.

neonat wrote:

There are so many graveyarded maps that people like. Many of those, for example, let's say crn maps, are known and played by many people. It's played a lot even though it's not officially ranked. Why? People share and spread through friends, multiplayer and /np.

They can get recognition even if they are not ranked, so in my opinion, it is not a pressing issue that songs have to be ranked for people to play them, since when is songs not getting ranked = players have nothing good to play? They can enjoy those songs without a rank. Thus the rules do not have to be changed. Mappers make such one-shot difficulties because they think it is fun, and it's what they do, they are free to submit them to the site, getting a ranked is totally different matter. I'm not really sure how else to elaborate what I'm saying, but I hope you get the idea as to what I'm trying to say. Of course, maybe it would be good to have a possible monthly or of some sort where such songs can be compiled on the site, something like a group of unranked stuff that people have tried and is thought to be a good challenge for even skilled players, so other's can see for themselves and give it a go to test their skills.

This is the crux of it--mappers tend to feel entitled to have their maps approved, solely because they've made them. It's a privilege, not a right, and the mappers have to earn it.

A compilation sort of thing would be cool. Hell, I wouldn't mind single diffs being approved regardless of length, but for one thing--people would pay a lot less attention to full spreads, or even HIX spreads. That aside, people are absolutely able to bundle their favourite unranked maps together to play for fun.

Hey, I have some single diffs which I only made as an outlet. There are times when I think it'd be nice if they could be ranked as-is, but I know that they're unfinished mapsets and would therefore never want them to be ranked on their own. I don't get in people's faces and complain that my cherished work won't be made official, so I suggest that other people follow suit.

D33d wrote:

Mapping less than a third of the song is getting away with murder, simple as that.

Why? As lolcubes said, Easy diffs here are to let beginners learn how to play this game, not to play them.

99% of Easy diffs based on 2/1 or 1/1, which is perfectly fine for short tutorial, but not for a 4 or 5 min long map - this really can be extremely boring sometimes.

My point is - maps should have proper diff spread, but to make ranking criteria more friendly for long maps let's allow having shorten drain time for easiest diffs. This is not something directly forbidden anyway, and this already was common practice for years.

Kodora wrote:

99% of Easy diffs based on 2/1 or 1/1, which is perfectly fine for short tutorial, but not for a 4 or 5 min long map - this really can be extremely boring sometimes.

Then this has nothing to do with the ranking criteria, but the quality of maps people produce and/or quality of mods people give.

those wrote:

Then this has nothing to do with the ranking criteria, but the quality of maps people produce and/or quality of mods people give.

I don't aim to disallow having fully mapped easy/normal diffs, i aim to allow shorten low diffs for people who wants that. Forcing people map them fully won't increase overral quality of the whole diff (and probably even made it worse). Quality of mods? Yes, it is quite hard to find good modder nowadays, but this topic is not about that.

Kodora wrote:

i aim to allow shorten low diffs for people who wants that.

Our goal is to go steps forward, this would be a step backwards. It would be much better to keep them out as mapping a Difficulty to 50%.

Kodora wrote:

those wrote:

Then this has nothing to do with the ranking criteria, but the quality of maps people produce and/or quality of mods people give.

I don't aim to disallow having fully mapped easy/normal diffs, i aim to allow shorten low diffs for people who wants that. Forcing people map them fully won't increase overral quality of the whole diff (and probably even made it worse). Quality of mods? Yes, it is quite hard to find good modder nowadays, but this topic is not about that.

It's not about whether or not current mapping quality should decide things either. If anything, we need more people mapping easier diffs for the practice.

Rules would be kept a lot simpler this way:

- marathon should be a song compilation (various songs together, like ParaparaMAX, even though not being so longer as it), e.g., a compilation of various TV size songs. Some animes have a considerable count of different op/eds.

- exception would be granted for longer songs, like Eastern Dream touhou (mapped by lfj) (its length would be aimed as a minimum req for a marathon map) and the 4th movement of the 9th Symphony of Beethoven, to give an extremal example. Don't hate.

and how I wish make a collab with Kodora on otetsu - Shell! *no esplendor da ansiedade*

Denied. See p/3031859 for the approved version.