hi
As part of the Ranking Criteria's reconstruction, the United Beat-Knights of Ranking Criteria have been discussing subsections (such as timing, metadata, skinning, etc.) with the experts of each field. I'm here to announce what kind of rules and guidelines we agreed upon for the Spread (labeled as Mapset on the current RC) subsection in this draft. Notice this is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki!
Before posting, please think through if what you want to add belongs in any game-mode specific drafts of the Ranking Criteria or should be part of another subsection of the general Ranking Criteria. Thanks!
The proposal starts with the glossary.
Mapset
Rules
All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.
Guidelines
Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.
Once again, this draft is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 31st of August!
As part of the Ranking Criteria's reconstruction, the United Beat-Knights of Ranking Criteria have been discussing subsections (such as timing, metadata, skinning, etc.) with the experts of each field. I'm here to announce what kind of rules and guidelines we agreed upon for the Spread (labeled as Mapset on the current RC) subsection in this draft. Notice this is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki!
Frequently Asked Questions
(read this in all cases before posting)- Is it necessary to read the entire draft before commenting or asking questions?
-> Yes, else you may complain about/mention things that are not related to this draft or are actually already present here. - Is this the entire new Ranking Criteria? I feel like this is missing a lot of things...
-> This is not the entire Ranking Criteria. This draft aims to be the rules and guidelines that end up under the Mapset header.
The proposal starts with the glossary.
Glossary
Common terms
Mapset
- Drain time: The time during which the health-bar drains. Excludes break periods. Taiko mode’s drain time includes sliders and the intended length of spinners.
- Reasonable Spread: A mapset without drastically large differences between difficulties as dictated by difficulty-specific rules and guidelines.
- Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes.
- Single-mode mapset: A mapset which contains difficulties of only one game-mode.
- Hybrid mapset: A mapset which contains difficulties of multiple game-modes.
- Marathon: A mapset which does not require a full spread of difficulties.
- Mapset host: A user who uploads and manages a mapset.
- Guest difficulty: A difficulty added to a mapset which is not created by a mapset host.
- Collaborative difficulty: A single difficulty mapped by more than one mapper.
Spread
Rules
All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.
- Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
- Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
- If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
- A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
- Converted difficulties must form a reasonable spread. For example, a mapset with Easy and Normal osu!standard difficulties and an Insane osu!catch difficulty is not permitted. One or more additional difficulties may need to be added to fill the gap.
- Any two or more osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
- One or more osu!catch difficulties may be included. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than an Insane.
- Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
- Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties.
- Excluding a mapset’s hardest difficulty, a difficulty’s name must accurately indicate its level of difficulty. Conventional difficulty names vary between modes, but any set of clearly progressive difficulty names can be alternatively used. Additionally, a mapset’s hardest difficulty should not use a name misrepresentative of its difficulty.
- A difficulty’s name must be unrelated to a username. Guest difficulties, however, may indicate possession with its mappers’ username or nickname. (e.g. Guest Mapper’s Insane). Words that happen to be usernames are acceptable within difficulty names as long as they relate to the song.
- Additionally, a mapset host cannot indicate possession in a difficulty’s name. (e.g. Mapset Host’s Insane). Metadata conflicts caused by mapping a song multiple times are the only exception.
- A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due.
- A mapset host and guest mappers can make changes to their respective difficulties as they wish. If there is a disagreement between both, the mapset host must delete the guest contribution upon request. If a guest mapper cannot be contacted for a month, they will be assumed to agree with any changes.
Guidelines
Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.
- Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
- Avoid difficulty names with descriptive elements not clearly related to a guest difficulty mapper or a level of difficulty. (e.g. Mapper’s Tragic Love Extra)
- Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty ambiguous or misleading.
- Avoid unicode characters in a difficulty’s name. These can cause errors with the beatmap submission system and problems for certain users when appearing in chat.
Once again, this draft is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 31st of August!