Just throwing my two cents here-
I think a forced linear spread could potentially stifle creativity; while it does encourage balance, it also forces the mapper to have to add/remove elements in a difficulty they otherwise may not want to in order to maintain the spread. It could lead to a lot of dumbed down and/or overcomplicated difficulties when they don't have to be.ztrot wrote:
First of all, we reworded the current spread rule. All difficulties in each game mode have to align in a linear and progressive spread. You can add one Ultra difficulty past an Expert difficulty that does not have to increase linearly in difficulty with the rest of the spread. Keep in mind, that Ultra is a placeholder term, used to reflect a high end difficulty that has not been specified with a name yet. We put that name in place, so you guys know what we are talking about when we want to refer to the high end difficulties of a mapset.
This leads to less diversity in my opinion. Many people have different mapping styles (e.g. person A can map an Insane difficulty that is completely different to how person B maps an Insane), and limiting the amount of same difficulties prevents that diversity.ztrot wrote:
Secondly, we limited the amount of difficulties of the same level per game mode. Every mapset is limited to one of each difficulty level per game mode. While this appears very limiting at the beginning, the hybrid set rules stay intact. Don't forget that every keycount in osu!mania is considered as individual game mode, too! If you wish to get your mapsets with multiple difficulties of the same level ranked, we advise you to split it off into a new mapset.
I'm sort of okay with this one actually-ztrot wrote:
At last, we altered the requirements for Approval beatmaps. Approval mapsets must have 1 difficulty that is either an Easy, Normal, Hard or Insane. Your mapset must contain an Insane difficulty if an Expert or Ultra difficulty is present. This means that every Approval containing only an Expert or Ultra difficulty must receive a second difficulty. If you do not wish to map more than one difficulty for your Approval sets, we would advise you to keep the single difficulty at Insane level or below.