update wrote:
Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose.
If a mapper is going to go out of their way to have the mp3 edited to reach marathon length, this rule won't get them to make a full spread. This rule is choosing between "have a 5 minute map for a song that isn't 5 minutes" and "have no map". As long as the actual play experience of the map is still pleasant, it is better to have the map than not have the map. There is never anything bad about having more maps.
There are plenty of songs that really don't fit for a full mapspread, but just barely don't reach minimum drain time. My 4:45 300BPM death metal anthem is not going to make for a good experience as a Normal difficulty. Requiring a mapper to design a full spread for certain songs that clearly don't need it isn't beneficial to rank quality.
To be honest this rule is almost unenforceable anyway since the line between user remix and mp3 extending is super blurry. Right now I can't add sounds to the beginning or end, but I CAN add sounds consistently throughout the mp3, call it an Edit ver. and rank it that way. People will always find loopholes to unnecessary rules.
It's also unclear whether separate songs are included in the "adding sounds to the end of the mp3" or not. Song compilations can be considered unrankable with this current wording.
update wrote:
Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
This idea has already been very vocally rejected by the community. Players love big sets because it gives lots of different difficulties in one easy-to-download bundle instead of having to dig through a bunch of different sets. Mappers love big sets because they create lots of community interaction and they are fun to build up with friends. They are harder to find bn's for but that's the mappers' risk to take.
There is literally no downside to more maps in ranked.
update wrote:
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. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding.
change "for" to "or"The mapset owner is in charge of not just mapping, but frequently also asking for every guest diff, finding mods, hitsounding, storyboarding, timing, balancing spread, and ensuring every other included difficulty is rankable. The set owner basically always deserves credit regardless of how much work they actually did.
If the guest difficulty mappers are okay giving mapset credit to a mapper who did "less work" than them, there should be no reason to not let them. If they weren't okay with it they wouldn't be in the set.
update wrote:
Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty confusing.
If the mapper doesn't care whether they're credited or not then that's entirely on them. The real username will be in tags and description anyway for users to find them so it doesn't matter what nickname they use in the diff name. This is just a "No Fun Allowed" rule that doesn't affect map quality in any way.
To be honest this can be said about every diffname rule/guideline. Is it really necessary to police them so strictly? With the new star rating the map difficulty can be somewhat reasonably determined without any difficulty name, so I don't see any reason to carry over old rules.