show more
Nivrad00
I agree with everyone about the 8-diff limit, especially in cases of mania sets with multiple keymodes. If you include two keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 4; and if you include four keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 2. Whether it's reasonable to have over 8 standard diffs or over 8 4k diffs can be debated, but I definitely think this rule should at least be edited to allow more diffs in the case of multiple keymodes.
Nao Tomori
Songs cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time.
I don't see the point of this. Nobody is going to want to map full spreads for 4:40 songs, and this will not have that effect. Instead you'll just get a bunch of people who won't try and rank their songs they like, since finding mods / BNs for such a big drain time is near impossible for non-BN/QAT/famous mapper type people.
Additionally, this is practically unenforceable, you can just do something like add in some random hi-hat track at the end and call it your remix and upload it anyway.

edit: this is also worded in a way that means that you can't make songs compilations. is this intended?
Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game mode.
I don't see the purpose of this rule. It's just making people split their map spreads up, which as we can tell by the enormous popularity of sets like Zen Zen Zense, No title, and Hitorigoto, is pretty dumb. Again, this rule just seems like it's opposing more maps being ranked for no reason, since splitting sets up = more diffs/mods/BN checks etc = harder to rank things.
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.
What you end up with here is that someone will map their 8 star super hard diff that nobody can play, a 2.2 star normal, a 3.5 star hard and then a 4.5 star insane. Which leaves nothing for all the people in between, which is completely opposite to what spread rules are supposed to do in the first place.
Loctav

Nivrad00 wrote:

I agree with everyone about the 8-diff limit, especially in cases of mania sets with multiple keymodes. If you include two keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 4; and if you include four keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 2. Whether it's reasonable to have over 8 standard diffs or over 8 4k diffs can be debated, but I definitely think this rule should at least be edited to allow more diffs in the case of multiple keymodes.
Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes.
???????
Nivrad00
My bad, I didn't read the definition of game-mode
Seni
no change to the retarded 5 min rule. no change to people cutting full songs to be 1-2 min long which is just about the most disgusting thing you can possibly do with a song

nice draft
squishyguppy
thoughts

pishifat 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. how will this make maps more accessible to people? I think it won't. Some spreads can't get really hard and there are lots of difficulty techniques to grow between few amount of difficulties. This cap makes spreads like these be much harder to accomplish properly AND I think nobody will care to try to accomplish them since highest diff is not required to fit within a spread.
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. what part of mapping is hitsounding? this should be defined if its considered or not and how much its considered to avoid confusion.
Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended. this is really ambiguous
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. I know this is a guideline because of name changes, but in this event there are usually links in the description to the creators profile in case of ambiguity, and usually anyone who really cares checks there. Though does this mean if the gd is NOT indicated in the diff name it will be a problem also?
Hydria

pishifat wrote:

hi hey I'm here to mod your draft to sort out clarifications as well as point out potential issues

Common terms


Mapset
  1. Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes. and the entire osu!mania community goes "what" as this is the first time in 5 years they've ever been referred to as individual game modes.

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria. the use of the term "at least a Normal" can be quite confusing for new modders as it doesn't indicate a direction. Saying "The lowest difficulty must be a normal or easier" would be better clarification. This holds true for the below points as well.
  2. Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines. ^
  3. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines. ^
    2. 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. See this with rule D send out conflicting messages when first read. "Oh you can't have an Insane with an Easy/Normal oh but rule D says it can be Insane and lower." I understand that this is for normal/hard converted spreads but better clarification should be used.
    3. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard. same wording thing as first point
    4. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty. extending from rule B, this should most likely read something along the lines of "One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be a hard or easier unless the converted osu!standard set is a normal &
      hard spread (and any other acceptable combinations), to which an insane diff would be allowed." This might sound somewhat confusing in itself, but it's at least less ambiguous and not conflicting as the current set of rules.
  4. Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
  5. Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties. does the new website have a fix for maps that end with a slider/spinner? that would be really nice
  6. Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:
    1. Lowering a song’s BPM
    2. Looping portions of a song
    3. Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends so I get that these 3 here are meant to be there to preserve audio accuracy to the actual song at hand, but I feel like if they're used in the correct way (sound being slowed down enough to change how the song could be interpreted for instance,
      having perfect loops of a song to the point where it just sounds like an Extended Mix for lack of a better term, and well we have Pavor Nocturnus [2015] for the last point) it could potentially work but then that runs the risk of always being a case by case basis which is something you want to avoid as a ranking criteria council, so I'll leave this one up to further discussion
    4. Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds this is fine
    5. Manually removing breaks this is already against the RC afaik (aka editing the .osu file)
  7. 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. see no I can't get behind this. I understand that mapsets containing 9 or more diffs are rare, but they're common enough that they already have a place in the game, and whilst I've seen people argue the point that "if they're so similar/different they should just be in separate spreads" but most people won't do that, definitely considering that most people that have spreads that high are mostly guest difficulties, and so the mappers of the guest difficulties in a very high number of scenarios will just not bother to rank another spread of that map as it's not in their interest, so what you're doing is taking a 12 diff spread, and instead of splitting it into 2 6 spread mapsets like you want, you'll just cut 4 diffs from the set, that's reality. Also in spreads that have a high SR top diff, an 8 diff count is very limiting in spread terms. For example, stuff like Doppelganger barely fits into the 8 diff criteria and its spread isn't exactly overdoing, in fact, any less and it would be questionably unrankable due to gaps in the SR. Please, for the love of god, reconsider this before you make a terrible mistake and injure potential massive projects, or even just decent sets throughout, I can't see any upside to this rule.
  8. 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. woo case by case basis on hardest difficulty naming woo time to argue over why a diffname is relevant woo (in reality no one is going to follow this rule after like 2 weeks)
  9. 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).
  10. 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 an exception.
  11. 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. <--- this wording at the end makes no sense. "for via storyboarding"? does that mean that the people's names have to be included in a storyboard? have to be included in the description for potential storyboarding?
    what if the mapset owner doesn't plan to have a storyboard is it still necessary then? I can't contribute more to this until it's rewritten to make more sense.
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.

  1. Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
  2. 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). A mapset’s hardest difficulty may use free naming, but clear and appropriate relation to its song is recommended. Debatable being in the guidelines section considering you put a strict use of hardest diff naming in the rules
  3. 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. I guess if a user changes name then a drastic name change is fine, might want to add that as an exception.
  4. 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 18th of June! feedback given kds plz xd
Sieg
Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their 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 must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
Shouldn't be the same?
Jerry
hi

pishifat 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.
uhm is that a typo on "or via storyboarding"? Because the "for" can cause quite a bit of a confusion since many people (the ones that I've asked, at least) will think that collaborations now requires storyboards that states each mapper's part lol


pishifat 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.
Like what celerih said earlier, many songs can be interpreted in a lot of different ways due to the sheer number of different mapping styles that you can see varying from mapper to mapper. While I do see some sense to why this has been proposed (avoiding unnecessarily large mapsets and all that), I strongly think that this rule should be adjusted in a more flexible way and that it should only be applied in a case-by-case basis.

For example, let's say Mapper A has 9 guest difficulties on their map (along with maybe 4 of their own diffs), and each of these difficulties have a very distinct style to them that makes all of them unique and fun in their own way. And then we have Mapper B who also has 9 guest difficulties, however all 9 of them feels and plays in almost the same way that you can't really tell one apart from the other.
In this case, Mapper A's map should be allowed to pass through after being checked by the BNG/QATs while Mapper B will be asked to follow the "8 diff limit rule" that's stated above and remove some of their difficulties in order to proceed with the ranking process.

This seems like a better approach to this issue in my opinion rather than just completely disallowing mapsets to exceed a certain difficulty amount.
UndeadCapulet

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.
mangomizer
Not really here to offer my thoughts, more to just make sure things are clear unambiguous, ie. do the generic grammar and sense check cuz I'm bored.

Mod Box

pishifat wrote:

hi

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria. The wording of "at least" is really confusing. I'm guessing you are saying that it is Normal or lower, but "at least" suggests "more", which you could interpret as being harder than Normal (rip Easy difficulties, because they are apparently unrankable now lol). I propose an alternative wording, "must be no higher than X difficulty"/"must not be higher than X diff". PLEASE FIX FOR ALL INSTANCES!
  2. Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty Does this apply to both difficulties, or a singular difficulty? must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
  3. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
    2. 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.
    3. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard.
    4. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
  4. Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
  5. Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties.
  6. Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:
    1. Lowering a song’s BPM
    2. Looping portions of a song
    3. Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends
    4. Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds
    5. Manually removing breaks
  7. 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. OKOKOK HOLD ON. If the highest difficulty is not bound by reasonable spread, so I can theoretically map an Easy bundled with an Insane? This conflicts with an earlier rule which says that both difficulties must adhere to a "reasonable spread". So which rule here takes precedence?
  8. 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.
  9. 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).
  10. 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 an exception.
  11. 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.
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.

  1. Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
  2. 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). A mapset’s hardest difficulty may use free naming, but clear and appropriate relation to its song is recommended.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 18th of June!
Ephemeral
I ported OP rulesets with wording and adjustments (minor) to markdown:

https://gist.github.com/Ephemeralis/4aa ... a1a1ebc7c7

The hybrid set section in particular is extremely confusing in the OP and needs adjustment.
Okoayu
this is like modding someone's map by giving them a .osu file and saying here i modded

can you retry with actual reasoning for your changes thanks!
Ephemeral
The adjustments are in wording only. The spirit of them should be pretty much identical, at least as far as I could discern them.
xxdeathx
I'm strongly opposed to the 8 difficulty limit per game mode rule and would not like to see it put into practice at all, but I have to hear your reasoning behind it. What good will it do that outweighs the current state?
Haskorion
Just remove the wording of "the lowest difficulty" and make into something like "at least 1of the difficulties must be a normal (or hard/insane for standard hybrid wordings)".

Also rules should be read with the other rules in context. "Reasonable spread" applies to the other rules.
A "E N H I X" spread should be the base where additional X difficulties still follow the spread apart from the highest one.
On the lower end "E N" and "N H" spreads are the minimum spreads for any set to be elegible for ranking.
VINXIS
Broz y is the # of diffs allowed thing back in the Talkz when we all said No

like srs whos mans is this.
Okoayu
took me 3 tries to read the vinxis sentence

the only thing im against is not telling us what you find unclear and just dumping a text here which makes me go through everything again to compare what you changed and then guess why
Shad0w1and
I just wonder if we could think about why people extend their mp3.
people are not afraid to make 1 or 2 more difficulties, but worried about making 5 more diffculties. would be nice if we could think about smt like this: t/432739

and for

xxdeathx wrote:

I'm strongly opposed to the 8 difficulty limit per game mode rule and would not like to see it put into practice at all, but I have to hear your reasoning behind it. What good will it do that outweighs the current state?
Agreed, better as it is.
Syph
is there ANY benefit to limiting the amount of difficulties a set can have? seriously i don't understand lol
Krfawy
The limitation is not a good idea because of three reasons:

  1. Firstly, not in all cases but when the bpm is higher (around 200 or higher) it is really hard to make a good spread like here https://osu.ppy.sh/s/326920 without creating so many diffs. Like it or not, but with the limitation you're going to have to worse spreads, not better.
  2. Secondly, isn't it becoming a tradition for everyone to actually enjoy multiple-difficulties sets? Once again, like it or not but the more maps we have, the bigger chance is we can find something that actually plays better for us. With the limitation you're only going to make people pissed because they will have to spend more time on creating their own sets for the song only because "someone created this rule so I can't give my difficulty to someone who can actually make their own good set. No, I am forced to actually learn myself how to create a full spread even thouhg I am unable to map myself anything different than Insanes." Like, really, do you want to tell me that you want to see 20 sets for one anime song instead of 1 set with many diffs? At least less people would be annoyed with the fact that the ranked section is being cluttered with the same song, wouldn't they?
  3. Thirdly, do I really have to remind someone that there are too many mapping styles that differ? Even that is an excuse to make monster sets: to show the variety. Surely, I have no idea how about other modes but the standard mode is really generous when it comes to the mapping styles and so should this stay this way.
About exdending/looping the song: ehem, but what is exactly wrong with it? If the song is beautiful/nice/meaningful/whatever the reason is but it's too short, then why not extending/looping it so it can become ranked? The rule says the drain time must be at least 30 seconds so people actually put their effort to meet the criteria? Surely, sometimes their piece of work might be off because they are not that skilled at editing mp3s but there can always be someone else to actually cut it for them in a professional way. So, again, why would that be bad to actually edit the mp3s?

And I have a question: the new rulest says that the lowest diff is supposed to be a Normal, at least. Does it mean that the 1.99-star rule is going to be removed or will that stay?
Ephemeral
I don't really understand the difficulty amount limitation either. I vaguely recall us having this conversation a few years ago and it being conclusively decided that installing such a limit would essentially force set dispersion in most cases and dissuade people from working with each other for big, cohesive sets, instead opting to risk submission "fatigue" by splitting such things up into multiple smaller sets.

Curious to know what the rationale behind that one is.
Xinnoh
If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...

One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
so this means that overdose and deluge can be included without rain? that's how i'm interpreting it + no longer allowed to gd salads/platter/cup
Caput Mortuum
rip extending mp3

also what does "Manually removing breaks" mean?
Ephemeral
I pried into the rationale behind the number of difficulties in a set limitation and found out that it was added with the following in mind:

There are concerns about a growing number of sets that are essentially uninspired ENHI spreads worked to the barest minimum quality required to actually pass the RC, and then those sets being padded and inflated with huge numbers of GD insanes or Extra/Experts.

The problem this causes is pretty big - the fat stack of similar yet subtly (or vastly) different tiered difficulties causes lots of fatigue in the review stage, namely the modders and the BN responsible for providing critical feedback during the modding stage. This has been supported by developer opinion in the past - namely that significantly smaller technical limits were suggested by the developers (5, if memory serves) which were too restrictive, and the attempt to limit this to 8 in the RC now is an effort to avoid such a restrictive limit in the future. It is also an attempt to encourage beatmap sets to be more "cohesive" and possessed of design and concept from top to bottom instead of simply encouraging sets which are constructed to a bare minimum to satisfy spread requirements and are then widely bloated at the higher end of the difficulty tiers.

Conversely, the set limitation can also be argued to squash a great deal of creative freedom and work that goes into these sets.

Arguably, the "displaced" difficulties from these sets have two places to go - into a new mapset of the same track which has another ENHI prepared to house them, a prospect which is often too great for many mappers to consider for themselves as adhering to spread is often a matter of "the RC requires me to do this so I have to". The difficulties are probably going to be "recycled" into the ranking cycle as new sets which require even more oversight during the review stage by virtue of having the four required ENHI difficulties to accompany them in the first place, often times equally as "uninspired" as the same set they came from. There's only so many ways you can spin the lower levels of difficulty in mapping.

That, or they simply get trashed and are never actually played again.

Either way, the players are left with fewer options. The systemic "friction" involved in imposing such a limitation is something that I ultimately think is toxic for the overall process, even if there is some merit in limiting it to improve the conditions of the reviewing phase and to encourage more cohesive creative design in beatmap sets as a whole.

Food for thought, I guess.
Hobbes2
It is also an attempt to encourage beatmap sets to be more "cohesive" and possessed of design and concept from top to bottom
Why is doing this vs. not doing this an indication of higher quality in a mapset? People don't play every difficulty of the spread from bottom to top, they play what skill level they are at. I don't look at a set, notice how the hard and insane have some cool concept that's similar between them and think "wow that's neat" because I'm not going to be playing both diffs; if I'm at the level where I play Insanes, I'm only going to really be playing the insane.

The point about having barely rankable ENHI's and then a bunch of extras tacked on is a legitimate one, but how is this going to solve that? Isn't the solution a higher quality standard for ENHIs? Regarding this, anyway, you basically summed up why this isn't a solution to that problem in your post, Ephemeral, and I agree with it wholeheartedly; the extra diffs are just going to end up on another set with probably even lazier ENHI's because the only reason they're making those diffs is because the ranking criteria forces them to.

The 8 diff limit seems really stupid to me. I've yet to be convinced why this change needs to occur. I don't know much about the development side of this game, just the mapping side, so if there's a legitimate reason from that standpoint, maybe I'd understand. But I haven't see it yet.

EDIT - Just wanna say that I agree with literally everything in UndeadCapulet's post.
Ephemeral
The main train of thought behind that is that people will construct all levels of their mapset with the same gimmick or theme in mind, thus producing a set which organically traverses difficulty without it needing to be a requirement, perse. Like, you introduce a concept in Easy at a toddler level and expand it in concert with the song's motif more and more thoroughly at higher difficulty levels, so that playing the set from E through to I reveals a deliberate progression.

Though as you say, barely anyone plays the sets bottom-up like that anyway.
Nao Tomori
I have some issues regarding that construction stuff. First off, you're saying the fact that people might have DIFFERENT gimmicks means that each one is mutually exclusive to the set.
You're also ignoring the fact that gimmicks implemented at an insane / extra level very likely are simply not possible to do at a normal / hard level. Good luck making a hard to read Normal because your Extra is based on stacked sliders and confusing patterns (a la Kuroko's Extra, or Lasse's recent Extra on Streaming Heart) without a bunch of people jumping on you bitching about guidelines designed to make sure your normal is NOT hard to read.
Finally, regarding what you say at the review stage is true, about a bunch of people just sticking a ton of identical extras on a set. But that issue is not with the Ranking Criteria but rather with the BNs that keep nominating them, or rather who do not mind nominating them. While I personally don't support adding additional identical maps of the same song to the ranked system (which I hope more BNs start agreeing with) that issue should NOT be handled at the rankability level because there is nothing inherently wrong with similar maps of the same song being ranked, and how similar they are in the first place is inherently very subjective.

Not to sound jaded or anything, but we've seen time and time again that devs/very-high-up-staff can be quite disconnected from the mapping community as it exists at this time, and basing rules off of their judgement seems a bit odd.
Ephemeral
I'm not saying I agree with any of this, mind, I'm just saying what I believe to be the some of the prevailing arguments of that school of thought.

We have discussions like this to debate these issues and find solutions to them. This is just a proposal, after all - nothing in it is concrete at the moment.
Nakano Itsuki
The number of difficulties rule was very very heavily rejected by the community back when they were first introduced like, a year ago? Can't remember when it was.
Anyway I don't really see any benefit. Sure, there might be sets that might have a spread of lower quality, but then it's hurting sets with actually quality and thought put into them. Dunno if I'm allowed to link example mapsets here but I'm sure my opinion would be understood anyway.

Also, regarding the mp3 extension rule, I don't really see a reason to deny extensions if the mp3 is properly extended without any badly trimmed sections; plus I'd rather see an extension of a song rather than a crude 1-2 min cut. Imo those are even worse than extending an mp3 just by a few seconds. (Also the song compilations stuff that others have pointed out already so ya)

Shad0w1and's proposal seems interesting enough for consideration imo.
Loctav

StarrStyx wrote:

Also, regarding the mp3 extension rule, I don't really see a reason to deny extensions if the mp3 is properly extended without any badly trimmed sections; plus I'd rather see an extension of a song rather than a crude 1-2 min cut. Imo those are even worse than extending an mp3 just by a few seconds. (Also the song compilations stuff that others have pointed out already so ya)
In my personal opinion, either way is bad, cutting and extending alike. Extending stuff by a few seconds just to adhere to personal laziness to avoid mapping a fullspread and making the set accessible to the entire playerbase (instead of just to a small minority that can even play most Approvals, which are mostly Extreme level) is contradicting some core philosophy we have been trying to defend for years (make stuff accessible and enjoyable for the majority, not just to only the top players). Like it or not, but those who play Extreme level maps are in the sheer minority. Encouraging to circumvent the necessity to produce content for the majority of our playerbase is unwanted, because with that new people will eventually not find content they like and they can play.

While the argument usually pops up that there are "already loads of mid level content to play", don't forget that newcomers to this game usually look for music they already know. And as time goes on, new music gets produced and therefore new osu beatmaps on these tracks. If these tracks are all available but only for the top tier player segment, it discourages newcomers to actually stay in osu! and enjoy it with us together. (because if you are into the hottest newest Trash Metal album and beatmaps exists of that in osu!, I doubt you can be bothered to play 500 Anime opening maps first before you can even remotely play what you actually came for)

Cutting songs is horrible, too, especially if done poorly (like literally just cutting it) and is also some sort of epitome of laziness, because mapping a full spread on 4.49 minutes long songs is definitely tedious.

I understand both sides of the argument and I can relate, like every mapper, with the laziness that comes along with mapping fullspreads, but the limits get stretched more and more. First someone extends a 4.58 minutes song to 5 minutes, then they start with 4:50, then 4:40 and as longer this goes, we have 2:00 songs just being looped five times just to avoid the fullspread. This shouldn't be a thing, in my opinion.
Izzz
clarification, does the extension thing only apply to extending a song to marathon length, or does it also apply to extending really short songs (lets say like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuJvZdKlJH8 ) to at least 30 seconds?

As for the 8 diffs thing, which i don't really like the sound of, if you absolutely can't remove it, and the community hates it this much, why not just make it a guideline you can break if you have good reasons? I'd prefer it not being there at all but that is always an option.
Mafumafu
For the difficulty number limitation rule: 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.

Actually as stated many times above, this is rejected by the community for several times and even for the last time it got rejected, the vast amount of reasons put forward by the community are not, likely to be addressed in this new draft. Additionally, are there any advantages of this possible new rule over the current one?
Monstrata

Loctav wrote:

StarrStyx wrote:

Also, regarding the mp3 extension rule, I don't really see a reason to deny extensions if the mp3 is properly extended without any badly trimmed sections; plus I'd rather see an extension of a song rather than a crude 1-2 min cut. Imo those are even worse than extending an mp3 just by a few seconds. (Also the song compilations stuff that others have pointed out already so ya)
In my personal opinion, either way is bad, cutting and extending alike. Extending stuff by a few seconds just to adhere to personal laziness to avoid mapping a fullspread and making the set accessible to the entire playerbase (instead of just to a small minority that can even play most Approvals, which are mostly Extreme level) is contradicting some core philosophy we have been trying to defend for years (make stuff accessible and enjoyable for the majority, not just to only the top players). Like it or not, but those who play Extreme level maps are in the sheer minority. Encouraging to circumvent the necessity to produce content for the majority of our playerbase is unwanted, because with that new people will eventually not find content they like and they can play.

While the argument usually pops up that there are "already loads of mid level content to play", don't forget that newcomers to this game usually look for music they already know. And as time goes on, new music gets produced and therefore new osu beatmaps on these tracks. If these tracks are all available but only for the top tier player segment, it discourages newcomers to actually stay in osu! and enjoy it with us together. (because if you are into the hottest newest Trash Metal album and beatmaps exists of that in osu!, I doubt you can be bothered to play 500 Anime opening maps first before you can even remotely play what you actually came for)

Cutting songs is horrible, too, especially if done poorly (like literally just cutting it) and is also some sort of epitome of laziness, because mapping a full spread on 4.49 minutes long songs is definitely tedious.

I understand both sides of the argument and I can relate, like every mapper, with the laziness that comes along with mapping fullspreads, but the limits get stretched more and more. First someone extends a 4.58 minutes song to 5 minutes, then they start with 4:50, then 4:40 and as longer this goes, we have 2:00 songs just being looped five times just to avoid the fullspread. This shouldn't be a thing, in my opinion.
Can you guys stop shaming mappers for being "lazy" just because they try to avoid mapping full spreads for 4:59 songs? Their laziness has absolutely no correlation with the map's quality, or the mp3's quality, or anything that matters quality wise. The only thing potentially negative about extending mp3's is poor mp3 editing, and apparent laziness. So what if people are lazy? You are operating under a slippery slope fallacy that because 4:58 songs are sometimes extended, songs that are 4:00, 3:30, 1:00 etc... are all subject to that extension practice. Just because X happens, it doesn't mean Y is bound to happen.

Laziness should not be your primary argument, it has no tangible bearing on mapping quality which is the concern of the Ranking Criteria.



Regarding the spread issue, the entire reason we even put this on the draft was because "8 is the maximum number Loctav thinks is acceptable/defendable to developers". We never got feedback directly from dev's regarding how accurate Loctav's claims were, and seeing Ephemeral being open to both sides of the argument makes me think dev's aren't adamant on restricting difficulties to 5-6 etc... Imo it's entirely unnecessary to restrict the number of difficulties on a set. There is no quality improvement in setting a cap from my perspective as someone who has both nominated many large sets, and made many myself. Rather, as people ahve already mentioned, only negatives. You can argue for "cohesion between difficulties" all you want, but good luck describing that. It seems entirely like an argument someone developing the game, with no knowledge of the mapping meta, would consider a reasonable argument. Do consider that often times, guest difficulties are there not for cohesion, but for variety and contrast. Also, how exactly will capping difficulties improve cohesion, if this wasn't already an abstract enough concept. Additionally, do you think cohesion is actually that important of a feature in mapsets? What defines a cohesive mapset? I don't believe this reflects the current mapping meta in the first place, and is too far removed from philosophies the current mapping community considers high quality. It's something you have to be active in the mapping and modding community to understand, honestly.



Anyways, just voicing my ideas. It's sad how lonely I was in the ranking criteria discussion. I'm supposed to be playing the devils advocate and trying to poke holes in the draft, and ways to abuse the current wording, so we can iron them out before the public proposal. I shouldn't be the only one who is arguing against capping difficulties... (though i guess council members are inactive too...) This issue is clearly something the vast majority of the community has disagreed on...
ErunamoJAZZ
I think the limit of 8 diff in a set will be beneficial in the sense that mapper will stop that think that do a mapset is equal to make 5 extras because pp.
But its true that doing this a rule will be bad idea, like in Kenterz's example.

I propose make this a guideline, where if any mapper wanna broke the guide, must to justify this very well ;)


(Now, in a personal side, i can see how most players usually play only one or two extras in a set... so limiting the amount of extras in a set will be what the data is showing that player really wish?)
:thinking:
Endaris
I also think a guideline is a better idea for the amount of difficulties.
The criteria for breaking that guideline should be either spread or unique approaches. I can see the appeal of no restrictions for the amount of difficulties but all to often you get multiple extra diffs that only differ in minor details stylewise where it is really questionable what justifies the existence of that difficulty when it is really just bloating the set, bloating the work for modding and qualification and achieving nothing gameplaywise that sets it apart from the other difficulties.
I really like the reasons for having smaller sets as it also comes with a potential increase in quality for these sets. Not to mention that the musical diversity might profit in the long run because instead of mapping 5 similar extras for the same song, we might see an extra for 3 other songs instead.

A problem would be how one could get mappers to not make GDs that match each other as seen here.
Because it would be lame to tell them later to remove one of the diffs due to duplication.
alice soft
haven't read op+thread, just got linked to mons's post and from composer pov I disagree with non-purposeful extending. Unrelated to the diff-spread issue obv.

Monstrata wrote:

Can you guys stop shaming mappers for being "lazy" just because they try to avoid mapping full spreads for 4:59 songs? Their laziness has absolutely no correlation with the map's quality, or the mp3's quality, or anything that matters quality wise. The only thing potentially negative about extending mp3's is poor mp3 editing, and apparent laziness. So what if people are lazy? You are operating under a slippery slope fallacy that because 4:58 songs are sometimes extended, songs that are 4:00, 3:30, 1:00 etc... are all subject to that extension practice. Just because X happens, it doesn't mean Y is bound to happen.

Laziness should not be your primary argument, it has no tangible bearing on mapping quality which is the concern of the Ranking Criteria.
You're right in defending the fact mappers aren't being lazy for doing this but mp3 editing goes against the creator's work; a single measure being repeated to make it 5:xx+ instead of 4:59 could make the track be full 4/4 + 5/4 on one occasion which makes no sense etc if it wasn't structurally/musically intended. What would the guidelines/rules be required to say in that case; "extending is allowed if it's subjectively ok sounding and insert-more-details-that'll-eventually-be-more-restrictive-in-a-year-or-two instead of doing w/e" ? Longer extensions could be swell but then we'd have to 'set limits' on subjective povs in that
direction as well so it'll lead to issues as well. Write it out nicely if this does get allowed so such things don't come up.

Otherwise osu! has stuck to its 5:00 limit for quite some time so why not stick with the current Loved or unranked plan if a mapper doesn't want to do multiple difficulties; the Loved category also exists due to this issue, not only due to lack of mods/etc.

Other possibility: mappers can work on doing their own remixes: would even small variations to an existing track be allowed? In the music industry it isn't but this game disregards their copyright/etc laws already so it could be handled differently and mappers+staff can come to a compromise in this direction.
Shad0w1and
For the extension issue, I would again argue it is not about "why should we ban extended mp3?" but "why should that 1 second matter so much?"
As I explained before, if the spread rule could vary according to the song length, everything will be clear.

People are not afraid to make 1 or 2 more difficulties, but worried about making 5 more diffculties just because of that 1 second. would be nice if we could think about smt like this: t/432739/start=0
What did I mean?
Length: 30sec ~ 2:59 min:
minimum diff must be under SR 2.00
spread nicely (like current mapset rule)
>>1.9 - 3.3 - 4.6 - 5.8 - 7
(for most people, they will do like >>1.9 - 2.8 star - 3.6 - 4.8 - 5.9 - 7)

Length: 3min ~ 3:59 min:
minimum diff must be under SR 2.00
there must be two additional diff between the lowest diff and the highest diff if the gap is too huge (require linear difficualty spread)
>>1.8 star - 3.5 star - 5.2 star - 7 star
>>1.8 star - 3.5 star - 5.2 star
>>1.8 star - 3.5 star

Length: 4min ~ 4:59 min:
there must be two additional diff no more than if the highest diff is (Require Linear Spread)
>>2.8 star - 4.8 - 7 star
>>2.8 star - 4.8

Length: >5 min
App, but if the diff is , and the song does not have a ranked or below diffs (by anyone), we need an additional or below diff
>>4.2 - 7 star

Actually, it is not reasonable to rank a single X diff, even it is an approval diff, in my opinion. i really wish the managing team understand the App should not be a reason for mappers to edit mp3, but serve to make the spread of ranked sets better.
Thus, mappers do not really need to worry much about extending mp3, therefore problem solved.
Monstrata

alice soft wrote:

haven't read op+thread, just got linked to mons's post and from composer pov I disagree with non-purposeful extending. Unrelated to the diff-spread issue obv.

Monstrata wrote:

Can you guys stop shaming mappers for being "lazy" just because they try to avoid mapping full spreads for 4:59 songs? Their laziness has absolutely no correlation with the map's quality, or the mp3's quality, or anything that matters quality wise. The only thing potentially negative about extending mp3's is poor mp3 editing, and apparent laziness. So what if people are lazy? You are operating under a slippery slope fallacy that because 4:58 songs are sometimes extended, songs that are 4:00, 3:30, 1:00 etc... are all subject to that extension practice. Just because X happens, it doesn't mean Y is bound to happen.

Laziness should not be your primary argument, it has no tangible bearing on mapping quality which is the concern of the Ranking Criteria.
You're right in defending the fact mappers aren't being lazy for doing this but mp3 editing goes against the creator's work; a single measure being repeated to make it 5:xx+ instead of 4:59 could make the track be full 4/4 + 5/4 on one occasion which makes no sense etc if it wasn't structurally/musically intended. What would the guidelines/rules be required to say in that case; "extending is allowed if it's subjectively ok sounding and insert-more-details-that'll-eventually-be-more-restrictive-in-a-year-or-two instead of doing w/e" ? Longer extensions could be swell but then we'd have to 'set limits' on subjective povs in that
direction as well so it'll lead to issues as well. Write it out nicely if this does get allowed so such things don't come up.

Otherwise osu! has stuck to its 5:00 limit for quite some time so why not stick with the current Loved or unranked plan if a mapper doesn't want to do multiple difficulties; the Loved category also exists due to this issue, not only due to lack of mods/etc.

Other possibility: mappers can work on doing their own remixes: would even small variations to an existing track be allowed? In the music industry it isn't but this game disregards their copyright/etc laws already so it could be handled differently and mappers+staff can come to a compromise in this direction.
If such things occur, they should be brought up in the modding process anyways. The rules shouldn't replace BN's abilities to make sound judgements. I've never come across a poor mp3 edit getting past qualification anyways though :P.
_Meep_
I guess if you want to do some 7 extra mapset
you gotta at least have different styles on each difficulty and not have them be exactly the same,otherwise there wouldnt be a need for the other difficulty to be in the spread
blissfulyoshi

Loctav wrote:

Like it or not, but those who play Extreme level maps are in the sheer minority. Encouraging to circumvent the necessity to produce content for the majority of our playerbase is unwanted, because with that new people will eventually not find content they like and they can play.
Do you want to give numbers to back up your data?

Let's take a top 5 played map like No Title, since this is probably a decent choice that represents what people want to play given its playcount https://osu.ppy.sh/b/766475

At the time of posting, here are the amount of passes and plays in diffs at various ratings:

Difficulty
Passes Plays

E
413892 650246

N
299507 614919
374551 1264139
============
674058 1879058

H
480281 2936976

I
671031 3449540
261651 2375593
195770 2166451
211253 1877997
============
1339705 9869581

X
45155 628154
129675 1354980
116640 1179720
138373 1566427
75497 1072797
133822 1602187
============
639162 7404265

Passes:
I > H > N > X > E

Plays:
I > X > H > N > E

I'll leave interpretation of the data up to others, but it certainly seems that most people rather play I and X rather than N or E.
Hobbes2
bad edits to mp3s shouldn't be reason to stop mp3 extending / cutting. Bad mp3 edits getting ranked shouldn't even be a thing right now; BNs / modders aren't stupid. They can tell if an mp3 edit is garbage and would probably tell the mapper to do a better one if possible.

Really feels to me like a lot of the reasoning provided to defend these changes show a real disconnect between the higher ups / devs and the mapping community to me. I don't want to make it sound like I'm insulting anyone, it's just what I feel is the case.
Illyasviel

blissfulyoshi wrote:

Loctav wrote:

Like it or not, but those who play Extreme level maps are in the sheer minority. Encouraging to circumvent the necessity to produce content for the majority of our playerbase is unwanted, because with that new people will eventually not find content they like and they can play.
Do you want to give numbers to back up your data?

Let's take a top 5 played map like No Title, since this is probably a decent choice that represents what people want to play given its playcount https://osu.ppy.sh/b/766475

At the time of posting, here are the amount of passes and plays in diffs at various ratings:

Difficulty
Passes Plays

E
413892 650246

N
299507 614919
374551 1264139
============
674058 1879058

H
480281 2936976

I
671031 3449540
261651 2375593
195770 2166451
211253 1877997
============
1339705 9869581

X
45155 628154
129675 1354980
116640 1179720
138373 1566427
75497 1072797
133822 1602187
============
639162 7404265

Passes:
I > H > N > X > E

Plays:
I > X > H > N > E

I'll leave interpretation of the data up to others, but it certainly seems that most people rather play I and X rather than N or E.
Exactly, most of the player base plays I/X or superior. Even high digit players play I or X instead of H or below.
That's also why adding a restriction to 8 difficulties per set it's just going to kill the Easy difficulty. No one is going to add an Easy instead of an Extra or another Insane. In fact, if you look at the data, you'll find that usually in every single set, the lower difficulties are often played 3-4 times less than the top difficulty.
ErunamoJAZZ
Those numbers are not adequate for an analysis. You must take numbers only in 1 month or so.
If you take all plays, any conclusion will be wrong.
blissfulyoshi

ErunamoJAZZ wrote:

Those numbers are not adequate for an analysis. You must take numbers only in 1 month or so.
If you take all plays, any conclusion will be wrong.
Well you can repeat the same exercise with Hitorigoto (https://osu.ppy.sh/s/596704) and get the same result, except there are no X diffs, so you only see I plays.

But finding maps that were ~1 month old had really small sizes for numerical purposes, but here https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1251083&m=0
xxdeathx
I think there are more players who play ENH, but the ones that play IX retry many more times, driving up the playcount.

Still not a reason to limit the number of difficulties in a mapset, which everyone should have realized by now is a terrible idea.
blissfulyoshi

xxdeathx wrote:

I think there are more players who play ENH, but the ones that play IX retry many more times, driving up the playcount.

Still not a reason to limit the number of difficulties in a mapset, which everyone should have realized by now is a terrible idea.
Thinking and proof are 2 different things. Without proof, your opinions mean nothing.
Illyasviel

xxdeathx wrote:

I think there are more players who play ENH, but the ones that play IX retry many more times, driving up the playcount.

Still not a reason to limit the number of difficulties in a mapset, which everyone should have realized by now is a terrible idea.
Actually the number of (true) people who play ENH difficulties is pretty low. Most people who play and retry lower difficulties are people who HDDTHR them to be in the leader boards. The only change happens on old popular maps, but that's because it's one of the first maps new players download so it only represents that popular maps are the gate to new people.
DeletedUser_4329079

pishifat 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.
Weird wording there, "for via storyboarding".
Zexous

ErunamoJAZZ wrote:

I think the limit of 8 diff in a set will be beneficial in the sense that mapper will stop that think that do a mapset is equal to make 5 extras because pp.
But its true that doing this a rule will be bad idea, like in Kenterz's example.

I propose make this a guideline, where if any mapper wanna broke the guide, must to justify this very well ;)


(Now, in a personal side, i can see how most players usually play only one or two extras in a set... so limiting the amount of extras in a set will be what the data is showing that player really wish?)
:thinking:

Endaris wrote:

I also think a guideline is a better idea for the amount of difficulties.
The criteria for breaking that guideline should be either spread or unique approaches. I can see the appeal of no restrictions for the amount of difficulties but all to often you get multiple extra diffs that only differ in minor details stylewise where it is really questionable what justifies the existence of that difficulty when it is really just bloating the set, bloating the work for modding and qualification and achieving nothing gameplaywise that sets it apart from the other difficulties.
I really like the reasons for having smaller sets as it also comes with a potential increase in quality for these sets. Not to mention that the musical diversity might profit in the long run because instead of mapping 5 similar extras for the same song, we might see an extra for 3 other songs instead.

A problem would be how one could get mappers to not make GDs that match each other as seen here.
Because it would be lame to tell them later to remove one of the diffs due to duplication.
I like this idea
squishyguppy

blissfulyoshi wrote:

xxdeathx wrote:

I think there are more players who play ENH, but the ones that play IX retry many more times, driving up the playcount.

Still not a reason to limit the number of difficulties in a mapset, which everyone should have realized by now is a terrible idea.
Thinking and proof are 2 different things. Without proof, your opinions mean nothing.

how about just look at the ranks of people and the range of those ranks can perform at, its not rocket science to see most people play ENH, but many more relevant people who contribute to this game play I+
Ascendance

pishifat wrote:

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
Does this counter this rule now? t/292401

The current standing explains that catch the beat diffs on hybrid sets could not contain ONLY an X-level difficulty (Overdose). The new rule implies that only one difficulty can be added and it can be either I (Rain) or X (Overdose) level? Unless I'm missing something here, isn't this a bit counterproductive towards the growth of our mode, considering a good amount of hybrid sets have H-level (Platters) on them?

Also why are we limiting the amount of difficulties on a hybrid mapset? It's like we're being discouraged from providing content to our users. It's not like we've ever had a problem with too many difficulties in a set before in our mode, so there's almost no reason to enforce something on us like this. Our mode is dying, please don't kill it more. It's already bad enough that I have 1/2 of the ranked osu!catch maps in the last 2 months lol
xxdeathx

blissfulyoshi wrote:

xxdeathx wrote:

I think there are more players who play ENH, but the ones that play IX retry many more times, driving up the playcount.

Still not a reason to limit the number of difficulties in a mapset, which everyone should have realized by now is a terrible idea.
Thinking and proof are 2 different things. Without proof, your opinions mean nothing.

borborygmos wrote:

how about just look at the ranks of people and the range of those ranks can perform at, its not rocket science to see most people play ENH, but many more relevant people who contribute to this game play I+
Pretty much this when I said what I said. I shouldn't have to go off topic to argue the semantics of my slightly incorrect word choice when the proof is in plain view.
blissfulyoshi

borborygmos wrote:

how about just look at the ranks of people and the range of those ranks can perform at, its not rocket science to see most people play ENH, but many more relevant people who contribute to this game play I+

xxdeathx wrote:

Pretty much this when I said what I said. I shouldn't have to go off topic to argue the semantics of my slightly incorrect word choice when the proof is in plain view.
What plain view? What logic? Prove it with data. I'm not saying any of you are wrong, but if people interpret the same source of data differently, then whatever you say means nothing to those seeing that data, unless you back it up with something more solid than your own conclusion.

Note: I never said anything about H diffs.
alice soft

Monstrata wrote:

If such things occur, they should be brought up in the modding process anyways. The rules shouldn't replace BN's abilities to make sound judgements. I've never come across a poor mp3 edit getting past qualification anyways though :P.
Can't say I have either so point taken.
Bonsai

Ascendance wrote:

pishifat wrote:

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
Does this counter this rule now? t/292401

The current standing explains that catch the beat diffs on hybrid sets could not contain ONLY an X-level difficulty (Overdose). The new rule implies that only one difficulty can be added and it can be either I (Rain) or X (Overdose) level? Unless I'm missing something here, isn't this a bit counterproductive towards the growth of our mode, considering a good amount of hybrid sets have H-level (Platters) on them?

Also why are we limiting the amount of difficulties on a hybrid mapset? It's like we're being discouraged from providing content to our users. It's not like we've ever had a problem with too many difficulties in a set before in our mode, so there's almost no reason to enforce something on us like this. Our mode is dying, please don't kill it more. It's already bad enough that I have 1/2 of the ranked osu!catch maps in the last 2 months lol
Nope, it's not meant that way, just a case of bad wording again LOL
It's supposed to say pmuch the same as that old rule, so I guess smth like "..having only one osu!catch difficulty suffices when it's an Insane or lower" would work better
Ephemeral
In the interests of fair and accurate discussion on the matter, I pulled some stats down for beatmap plays across all difficulty ranges of ALL approved, ranked, qualified and Loved beatmaps:



Make of that what you will.
blissfulyoshi

Ephemeral wrote:

In the interests of fair and accurate discussion on the matter, I pulled some stats down for beatmap plays across all difficulty ranges of ALL approved, ranked, qualified and Loved beatmaps:



Make of that what you will.
Just checking, this is across all time?
Ephemeral
Across all ranked plays, yes. You'll note that it adds up to almost the exact number of purported "total ranked plays" at the top of the page as well.
Nakano Itsuki
But then the consideration is that there are still some sets that may not have an Extra or an Insane at all so it's still not really a perfect representation of what the player base plays these days. (Since you mentioned all maps Im just gonna assume it includes the older maps before 2013, and back then we didn't have much Extra difficulties (or sometimes not even Insanes) compared to now.)

edit: ok so it is indeed all maps
Ephemeral
Good point.

2014-present:


2015-present:


2016-present:

------

2008-2015:


2015-2016:


2016-2017:


2017-present:
Monstrata
It would be interesting to see how those numbers corresponded to Playcount. I would like to believe that the more dedicated players, people who put time in this game, will make up the majority of the Insane/Extra plays, and people just visiting the site / playing when they're bored for like 2 hours a month or something would make up the majority of Normal/Hard plays. All conjecture though of course.

I would prefer catering to more dedicated players in the community over people who just play once in a while.
Ephemeral
A reasonable assertion would be that NHI-HIX spread would adequately encompass about 60-70% of the playerbase based on these statistics alone.

Easy difficulty outlier-status is easily explained by its incredibly high pass ratio compared to other difficulties - most easies are probably too easy for 95% of all players, even newer ones, and are frequently only ever played once or in very few numbers before players graduate on to Normal as the defacto "entry-level" difficulty.
xxdeathx

blissfulyoshi wrote:

borborygmos wrote:

how about just look at the ranks of people and the range of those ranks can perform at, its not rocket science to see most people play ENH, but many more relevant people who contribute to this game play I+

xxdeathx wrote:

Pretty much this when I said what I said. I shouldn't have to go off topic to argue the semantics of my slightly incorrect word choice when the proof is in plain view.
What plain view? What logic? Prove it with data. I'm not saying any of you are wrong, but if people interpret the same source of data differently, then whatever you say means nothing to those seeing that data, unless you back it up with something more solid than your own conclusion.

Note: I never said anything about H diffs.
The fact that there are 10 million users and no more than the top few hundred thousand that are capable of playing insanes is not enough to support my original hypothesis?
there are more players who play ENH
That's the data and I see no need to analyze it to the point where you're convinced when most others are able to take it for granted
Monstrata
I think it's less an issue of easiness, and more an issue of sheer quantity. Every mapset that is not approval has an Easy difficulty, but the learning curve in progressing from playing Normals > Hards is a lot steeper than Easy > Normal (And Hard > Insane even steeper still). My point being, because there are steeper learning curves the harder you get, the more a player is likely to play more maps with similar difficulties. You might have to play ~1000 Hard maps before you've improved enough in skill level to properly play Insanes. But you probably would only need a fraction of those plays before progressing from an Easy to a Normal. Therefore, you wouldn't feel the need to "try" as many different Easy-difficulty maps.

It's why imo Easies are so untouched. Tbh I think the same holds true for Normal, but the number is offset by the sheer quantity of people who just play osu as a past-time like maybe for an hour every month or something.


But anyways. interesting statistics, thanks for sharing! I wasn't expecting Insanes to have that many plays. I always thought it would be the Hard or Normal difficulty judging from all the bundled beatmap playcounts. Reaffirms my opinion that a spread cap is unnecessary.
Ephemeral
Important to note that the 2014-2015 discrepancy appears to be due to a change in the way beatmaps are recorded serverside, and is instead an aggregate of 2008-2014.
Xinnoh
since spread cap of 8 isn't really needed here, would changing it so that it's a diff specific cap work better?
eg. capping at 4-5 insanes.
prevents things from getting spammy without limiting the max difficulty, eg if an a hyper or advanced was needed for spread
Ephemeral
I think a rule limiting difficulties that are not significantly different would do well to address the bloat issue while still keeping things fair for creators. The difficulty (hah) then comes in determining what is "significantly" different.
Loctav
As data displayed, the majority of plays can be found in the segment of Hard, Insane and Normal - and Expert difficulty being in the minority (together with Easy, which is clear because not all sets must have an Easy). The amount of Expert difficulties produced in recent history are in no relation to the amount of plays they actually receive. The excerise of increasing the set's amount of difficulties to add *even more Experts* (although they are not even targetted at who actually plays the set) just adds content bloat - a lot of the same, without a distinctive difference.

I debated with Ephemeral for a while and I can get behind two alternative proposals being made by fellow community members, one being to turn the set size limitation into a guideline, saying that "sets shall not exceed the amount of 8 difficulties per game mode, unless the exceeding ones are a significantly different approach of interpretation"

It is a middle ground between "we need a limit" and "whoever actually exersizes varied mapping and adds an actual multitude of map designs as alternative to their mapset, is allowed to do so, if the alternatives are distinctive enough from each other"
Mafumafu
But I still cannot see any valid and reasonable points about the necessity of putting limitations of mapset size.
For building up difficulty of ranking and modding process? If a mapper meets difficulty on pushing their map forward, they will automatically reduce their mapset size. And if they do not want to do that, they take the consequences by themselves. Same for modders and BNs. And I dont think it is reasonable for the criteria to handle this scheme.

For the majority-minority issue? Actually there is no determined sign and valid reason to conclude if with this new guideline, more beginner friendly maps will be created. It might just increase the proportion of simple difficulties overall but not the total number of them. This cannot solve the problem you put forward at all and even might reduce the range of choices for more pro players. Also it is not sure if people who wanted to rank a huge mapset initially will make two sets instead, because of the limitation.
Okoayu
responding to things that i have a different view on and why if i deleted something from your quote you can guess that it's because my viewpoint is sufficiently explained in other posts on the thread

UndeadCapulet wrote:

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.

If a mapper is going out of their way to custom-extend a mp3 to dodge a spread they do just that: dodge a spread and thus content they would normally have to provide to the game's different target audiences which is detrimental to a mapset's quality overall and not just plainly lazy.

The whatever diff they make out of it's quality would remain untouched if they made a full spread plus it would offer other target audiences something to play. You claim that some songs don't need a spread whereas I think at this point in the thread it's kind-of obvious that adding a spread will not be detrimental to a map's quality and if you let it influence your maps quality you should probably rethink why you are ranking stuff in the first place.

We went for explicitly listing what constitutes as abuse for the 5 minute draintime ruling on marathon maps to avoid the mentioned scenarios in mapping as well as mp3 editing for this purpose to get away with it, song compilations are a thing that would probably need talking about with this wording, i agree.



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" fair
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.
it has been agreed upon that the one hosting a set has extra tasks which he voluntarily takes over by hosting the set, but to be able to do so there needs to be some sort of failsave to assure that the mapset's host has contributed to the mapping side of a set that he hosts unless we want to see people ranking gd-only sets again.
This minimum effort that someone has to put into a set in order to claim to be the host has been decided to be the amount of draintime they mapped to leave out wiggle room for ambiguity. obviously mapped objects would not work as a measure because then it'd dictate that more dense = better so the only component that went into this rationale was the draintime someone mapped.

I think as a rationale this makes a whole lot of sense because it aims to avoid people going for ranking with content that they cannot even claim to have done the majority on.



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.
At least an explanation as to why you're using a different alias every goddamn set without changing your username for no other reason than lolz would be nice. This guideline is intended to bring forward more clarity about who a guest diff indicating possession is actually crediting because with recent developments this became quite unclear in some cases
Minimum draintime rule should talk about abusing the 5 min because the extend your song to get 30 seconds thing is actually encouraged

for anyone wondering a few of the compelling reasons for the first guideline were given by https://osu.ppy.sh/b/765299&m=0
second guideline shoudl not only recommend but require clear and appropriate relation to a song

requiring one or two difficulties if you do a marathon length set to encompass the majority of the playerbase if you are doing an expert level difficulty is something i could agree with.

As for the 8 difficulty spread limitation: I think this thing is already being really lenient (but probably only because i know all our alternative ideas for this lol), but if we want it to work as a guideline then we should remove the sentence that states that the highest level difficulties can be out of spread and would allow reasonable high-end spread to be one of the reasons to break the guideline

Additionally if we see sets that are top heavy with a lot of redundant content bloated into them a problem then allow a maximum of <N> diffs around the same difficulty to allow <N> distinct interpretations though we would then need to define what constitutes as such because if the majority of the rhythms and concepts used in a map are identical it'll become really hard to draw the line, this would need definition of further extra tier difficulty levels along with standardizing naming schemes for them which goes along xexxar's idea which he posted but never really bothered to answer my concerns from 6 months ago on

Also @Monstrata: contrary to popular belief I do actually sleep (a lot more on weekends, by the way) so just concluding / asserting that we are completely inactive when it comes to dealing with this thing is ridiculous
ErunamoJAZZ

Ephemeral wrote:

Good point.
2014-present:

2015-present:

2016-present:

------
2008-2015:

2015-2016:

2016-2017:

2017-present:

Thanks Eph!, I love it.
I knew about this behavior looking in amount of plays in my loved set, but I did not spected that hards were the most tbh.
That explains why hitorigoto have a lot of plays...

Data > Opinions! <3
UndeadCapulet

Okorin wrote:

If a mapper is going out of their way to custom-extend a mp3 to dodge a spread they do just that: dodge a spread and thus content they would normally have to provide to the game's different target audiences which is detrimental to a mapset's quality overall and not just plainly lazy. The whatever diff they make out of it's quality would remain untouched if they made a full spread plus it would offer other target audiences something to play.
Again, mappers that extend mp3 to 5min are not going to be making a full spread because of this rule. It's just not going to happen. They'll just pick a different song to map. Extending mp3 can't be detrimental to a mapset when that mapset wouldn't exist at all without the extension. Between 1 map and 0 maps, clearly the 1 map is the better option.
Keep in mind that not everyone has enough friends to gather mods/gd's/bn's for a 4:58 ENHIXU set, only a small handful of even well-known mappers can make that happen. Limiting the kinds of songs that can be reasonably pushed forward is definitely detrimental to the quality of the ranked section.
From my personal experience as a new player, experiences I've had with irl friends getting into the game, and just talking to less skilled players, in general maps above 4 minutes are not appealing to new players. They're just too long and exhausting, constant focus on not failing for 4 minutes straight is a skill only Insane/Expert players, and maybe some Hard players have developed to begin with. Making a rule forcing mappers to appeal to a target audience that would never find the map appealing is not beneficial to rank quality.

Okorin wrote:

You claim that some songs don't need a spread whereas I think at this point in the thread it's kind-of obvious that adding a spread will not be detrimental to a map's quality and if you let it influence your maps quality you should probably rethink why you are ranking stuff in the first place.
Feel like I may have implied something by mistake here. I didn't mean to say the rule would be detrimental to map quality, just that it wouldn't improve it. It does nothing at best. It only punishes "lazy mappers", reduces the diversity of songs in the ranked section, and doesn't provide any major benefits outside of this.

If you really think it necessary to restrict mp3 editing to this degree, then please instead implement something closer to what Shad0w1and suggested here. This would lead to more maps for more players to play that would actually be played. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

Okorin wrote:

it has been agreed upon that the one hosting a set has extra tasks which he voluntarily takes over by hosting the set, but to be able to do so there needs to be some sort of failsave to assure that the mapset's host has contributed to the mapping side of a set that he hosts unless we want to see people ranking gd-only sets again.
I don't see how gd-only sets is a bad thing. All the gd-er's are aware and consenting to being in a set that the host didn't participate in. They are the only people who should be concerned about getting credit for their work, and they're still in the set. If they don't care, why should we? Is it just an issue of staff not wanting to give contest/BestOf rewards to someone that didn't map anything? Because the rewards are still given in the case of someone who only mapped an Easy for their ENHIIXXU4K5K6K7KTaikoCTB set. There's little difference between rewarding this and rewarding a gd-only set.

Okorin wrote:

At least an explanation as to why you're using a different alias every goddamn set without changing your username for no other reason than lolz would be nice. This guideline is intended to bring forward more clarity about who a guest diff indicating possession is actually crediting because with recent developments this became quite unclear in some cases
Then why isn't the gd'er fully required to put their username in the difficulty? I think it's way more unclear to have "Insane by Kibbleru" than it is to have "Quibboo's Tragic Love Insane feat. Kibb by Kibbleru".
But as I said already, any diffname restriction is unnecessary in my opinion, because star rating shows map difficulty to a reasonable degree for the average player to have a reasonable expectation of difficulty. We've just recently had multiple cases of the mapping community rejecting mappers' silly Yuri Imouto with a Sword diffname, showing the RC limitations aren't helpful (these were all rankable) or needed (community can oversee itself to ensure nothing too ridiculous is ranked). This isn't exactly the most serious game out there (our lord creator peppy makes this clear enough), osu! is just a fun hobby, so what's wrong with a teeny bit of fun? Diffname affects map quality literally 0%, restricting in any way is excessive imo

---

In regards to 8diff as a guideline, I don't see how that's enforceable. There's no clear line for what makes 2 diffs of the same level distinct enough experiences to say "this set is unrankable under this guideline, while this other set is perfectly rankable." It would be case-by-case, heavily swayed by the current atmosphere of whatever was recently ranked, inconsistent, and lead to unpleasant community interactions.

In regards to 8diff as a rule:
It's been said the rule is intended to break up top-heavy sets, but the current implementation would be breaking up sets with an even spread that are just really big, like Hitorigoto, the most-played map since it was ranked. Why are we removing sets clearly approved of by players?

And I still don't see how top-heavy sets is a bad thing. It's still more maps being ranked. More maps is never a bad thing. Loctav used the term "content bloat", but breaking up the Expert diffs into other sets would create even more bloat, since now there are also multiple low diffs, across multiple sets, which requires multiple downloads, and makes it harder to find a different song when browsing through newly ranked. If anything we should be encouraging mappers to combine their sets for player convenience.

Since 2015 Insanes have been the most-played difficulty judging by Ephemeral's numbers. There are plenty of sets that are Insane-heavy as well as Expert heavy, that this rule would cut out. This is yet another way the rule would be going against the playerbase's desires. Really disagree with a rule that goes against what both players and mappers like.
DeletedUser_4329079
When I started playing I remember hating easy difficulties because they felt like they didn't follow the music at all so I moved on to stuff that was a little harder and didn't ignore most important sounds.
lcfc
So you guys are bringing back a rule that was widely rejected by the mapping community a year ago (the restriction of the number of difficulties). Also rip 4:30-4:59 minute songs, I'm most sure they will not be pushed for ranking as much anymore if this gets implemented. I'm more or less negative about these two rules and I hope they will have the same fate as the previous time the first one was proposed.
C00L
I support her ^
Monstrata
@Oko, I'm not talking about you, or pishi, but look at how active the other people are, as well as how similar the spread council's views are. It's more a comment about the council lacking diversity and varying opinions. At the end of the day, we're going to take everyone's comments here "into account" and push forward the rule based also on our thoughts and considerations, and what we think of people's opinions. I don't want to have to be the only person saying "the vast majority of members in the community are against it". I already know the counter-arguments that will try to make light of the discussions here like: "but the mapping community is a very small minority, we should take their consideration lightly and also consider the statistics which cater more to the player-base, even if they didn't voice their opinions".

Also, please stop using these statistics as a way to dissuade people from mapping Extras. Statistics are easily manipulated, this is one such occasion. You have to remember that Extra's cater to a different playerbase than Normals/Hards. Also, Extra's are a lot harder so obviously they have less play count since they aren't as accessible to new players. Insanes and Extra's because of their difficulty, are obviously much more popular with dedicated players in the community. You also need to consider that. Additionally, you also need to consider that aside from these "content-bloating" arguments, mappers also prefer to map Insanes/Extra's because they allow you a lot more creative freedom and enjoyment in mapping.

I really think the content-bloating argument is being unnecessarily discussed like it's a very relevant issue. You can discuss that, but also consider other factors please. We've had no limit to difficulties for a long time. There's no need to fix something that isn't broken. If mappers wish to create more content for the game, out of their own time, they should be allowed to.

The ranking criteria should cater to the mapping meta. We add rules and guidelines to nudge people in the right direction to providing higher quality maps. The difficulty-cap rule, and the song-extension rule both do nothing to producing higher quality maps or mapsets. They are only there because the RCC doesn't like them. I've only seen arguments from criteria members about how its "low quality" which is subjective, and clearly not a view reflected by the majority of the community. I remain unconvinced that implementing these rules in any effect will produce higher quality maps. The only arguments I've heard so far is that "too many difficulties clutter the song-select and difficulty-selection screen", and "abuse of mp3 extension can lead to poor mp3 edits". The first is honestly very frivolous especially since Renatus already gives every player joining the game an "overbloated" mapset to begin with. The latter is something BN's and modders should be able to comment on. It is extremely rare anyways (actually I don't even know any examples of poor mp3 editing, only mp3 editing abuse).
Okoayu
@Monstrata
yeah but that extra playerbase is smaller what's your point none of us are trying to stop high tier content in this game, otherwise the current proposal would say that all diffs need to be in spread

the content bloating is a relevant issue and so are other factors, but i'm also open for different approaches of the issue that you claim does not exist

@UC
comparatively adding a full spread for something to the ranked section would not be detrimental in comparison to just adding one diff. Your argument is based around people being lazy, but the same applies to 3:30 mapsets or the sort of thing that isn't long enough to tastefully extend it as of now, people won't map songs that are long because they hate spreads. This is a thing that already happens so using that as your main argument seems kinda weird considering it is aiming to disallow a thing that shouldn't have been allowed to begin with

overall it's not like we're lacking dedicated people, in fact the entire ranking criteria except for approval is centered around having people not be lazy shits with their creations which this idea - in the grand scheme of things - aligns with. also im pretty sure loctav was talking about the amount of content hitting ranked at the same time, not in separate steps and thus flooding people with seemingly arbitrary things to choose from
celerih

Loctav wrote:

As data displayed, the majority of plays can be found in the segment of Hard, Insane and Normal - and Expert difficulty being in the minority (together with Easy, which is clear because not all sets must have an Easy).
I mean looking at the numbers overall yes this is true, but from 2015 onwards this is plainly wrong. If you look at the current meta, Hard, Insane and Expert form the majority. If you look at 2016-2017 you can even see that Expert difficulties received more plays than Hards, and for 2017 alone Expert and Hard are similar in amount of plays, with around 8 million more plays each than Normals.

So yeah, your argument of no one plays extras doesn't really apply here. It's obvious that these days Hard, Insane and Expert are the more important difficulties. I understand that you dislike sets with a lot of difficulties since a lot of them feel pointless and repetitive, and even though I agree I don't see how these are a necessarily a bad thing. They aren't necessary but by being there they're not doing anything negative. They serve as bonus difficulties, simply there for those who want more from a same song or mapper. No one wants to see content for the game limited.
Also here are some fun facts


This graph's statsisn't perfect, it's not all ranked maps, but it does show that Experts get the most plays per map. Experts diffs aren't pointless. They get the third most plays and are played the most times as opposed to hards. The stats earlier by Ephemeral aren't perfect because they don't take into account that there are more hards and experts.
Ephemeral
Any additional beatmap in a set adds strain to the review phase (aka: modding, qualifying, etc) as it is extra work for the modding/BN community to check before giving their approval. There is definitely the potential for the increasingly "bloated" top-heavy sets we've seen over the past few months to begin creating serious overhead during said phase, and the rule was introduced as an effort to try and stem that.

People need to be acutely aware that the people suggesting these changes are not doing so with ill intent or out of the means to shape things to their personal tastes - these rules arise out of issues that are eminent and growing within the mapping and modding communities. Of course, debating the reach and influence these rules might have in the future is fine, but understand as well that you're very correct when you say that nobody wants to see content limited - that includes the people behind this rework, as well.
Illyasviel
I think the main issue is not bloating and stressing BNs/Modders with large mapsets, but rather that it doesn't feel rewarding modding them.
Nao Tomori
If the argument for banning them is that it's tiring for BNs to check them, you have to realize that BNs are the ones choosing to check them in the first place. If it was actually such a pain in the ass to check them then BNs will simply ignore those giant sets until people stop trying to get them ranked because BNs don't want to check their amazing 13 diff set for a 1:30 song. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to feel obligated to nominate that kind of thing. There's also no reason for this kind of set to define a RULE due to how uncommon they are in the first place. IF people were EXCLUSIVELY mapping 15 diff sets then it would be a different story but if you look at the pending section for even 30 seconds you will see how few of those things there are.
iYiyo
About the diff limit

ErunamoJAZZ wrote:

I propose make this a guideline, where if any mapper wanna broke the guide, must to justify this very well ;)
DeletedUser_4329079
I would love to see something that makes ranking 4:00-4:59 min songs a little easier. They are almost non existent in the game.
Stjpa

Default wrote:

I would love to see something that makes ranking 4:00-4:59 min songs a little easier. They are almost non existent in the game.
Shadowland had a really good suggestion imo, but it got ignored (page 4 if you are curious)
DeletedUser_4329079
That has been suggested multiple times in the past and I find always find the same arguments against it which are pretty weak in my opinion.

Sieg wrote:

When people trying to pass their shit to the ranked status they should think about how to be more friendly to the player base. Ranking system is all about this and shouldn't be adjusted to encourage laziness or whatever you talking about.
How is a rule that makes it harder for these songs from getting ranked any friendlier for the player base? It just ends up discouraging mappers from trying to rank them and reducing song diversity as a result, which many players find quite frustrating. It's also better to have a few high quality difficulties than a thousand uninspired ones.
Ultima Fox
About the 8 diff limit rule:

I feel like the creators of the draft need to think about the people this will effect the most: the mappers. The thing with large mapsets is that people aren't creating them left and right, not everyone and their mom is creating a 17 diff mapset. Instead, you're limiting the few and far between maps that, most likely have justifications for those extra modes (different styles, high sr cap, etc.). Also I've seen the argument that low quality ENHIs are made for these mapsets, and thus we should restrict them, however the people who will have those additional difficulties will most likely go and create their own map, overpopulating the ranked section with even more maps of the same song, as well as more of what is believed to be low quality ENHIs. Lastly, this change has been proposed and shot down before, so why try to bring it back up in a revised ranking criteria if the community has already rejected it?
7ambda
I actually think difficulty amount limitation can be a good thing, but not as a total number limit.
  1. If mapping styles are extremely similar for the same difficulty icon (i.e. https://osu.ppy.sh/s/320118 and https://osu.ppy.sh/s/596704), then the number of diffs of that icon should be limited to one; however, if styles for the same difficulty icon do noticeably differentiate (i.e. https://osu.ppy.sh/s/115193 and https://osu.ppy.sh/b/928371), then multiple diffs of the same icon should be allowed.
  2. Top diff is exempt since it can be considered an Ultra, or because it's the hardest difficulty by star rating.
  3. Exceptions can also be made if the issue is spread balance.
Nao Tomori
How do you define extremely similar? That's way too subjective.
Top diff being exempt means that its a 9 diff spread instead of 8 diffs, hardly a difference.
Agree that number 3 is an absolute necessity if this rule is forced through despite the fact that there is massive community backlash against it.
7ambda

Naotoshi wrote:

How do you define extremely similar? That's way too subjective.
There is no way to define it, but that's definitely a better alternative than having a hard limit.
stealthpaw
Changes look good. :)
_Meep_

Naotoshi wrote:

How do you define extremely similar? That's way too subjective.
Top diff being exempt means that its a 9 diff spread instead of 8 diffs, hardly a difference.
Agree that number 3 is an absolute necessity if this rule is forced through despite the fact that there is massive community backlash against it.
I guess if difficulties in a spread are similar in difficulty.
Let's say extra diff 1 and extra diff 2 are both 5.4 and 5.6 stars respectively while diff 3 is 5.8.
diff 1 has only one stream in the song even though theres a sound that calls for streams later in the song, because he prioritizes vocals at that part
diff 2 and 3 have 2 streams, mainly because the GDers felt a need to map them even if the prominent sound are vocals
there may be a need to delete either diff 2 or diff 3 because they are practically the aame rhythmically and don't contribute to having a better spread, they just idle there as another difficulty to play.

idk if this works as an example
Shmiklak
I really cannot agree with this new limitation of numbers of difficulties. Why can't mapper map as many diffs as they want to? For example, let's say... about my mapsets. I like making such big mapsets concluding this https://osu.ppy.sh/s/589073 I done it because I'd want to let more people map the song they might like and do not create another set. Why can't we just keep the RC without this limitation? Making many sets of the same song isn't really that good imo. And if people want to map the song, I usually allow it them. And in this case, making such big sets is a cool idea too, even having my own difficulties and GDs have different types of mapping styles in a single set. I would suggest to change this rule that the same mapper cannot make more than 8 diffs because style of these diffs would be about, or almost, the same. At least turning it into a guideline would be sufficient for everyone. Also when people make more and more sets, for the same song it takes much space on osu! servers, like in the past years where there are separate mappers mapped their own MIIRO mapsets and a ton of them got ranked. So imo, making big sets is more optimized variant.

Also this suggestion was rejected by most of the community before, so you are going to add it again for another reason? If you wanna be hated by community then do it, I don't actually mind. But I always believed that osu! staff listens to community and doesn't do what it want for everyone to play this game much more enjoyable. I trusted that it does what community wants. Also even if it will be added, will it start working immediately? Will I have some time to rank my map which was created before this rule was added, like after six months in effect?
Athrun
But why?

Why must we have a limit? If you take a look at beatmaps like Monstrata's Zen Zen Zense and VINXIS' No title, there's a huge spread of difficulties. The point of this, is that it caters to everyone's taste.

By having a limit, you're giving certain players the finger, especially when one does not enjoy certain quality of mapping.


A small reminder that a similar suggestion was placed on the table. You saw how much backlash there was from the community. I feel that you're not even listening to us at all! Isn't the point of these changes, a reflection towards what the community really wants? Not about your own tastes, but a mix between everyone's own opinions.

A poll should be held for this, honestly. What's the point if you don't understand the community?
Akali
You should be removing restrictions, not adding more. Most work hours put into this game is content creation and people do it being paid only with recognition, not even going by their real names but rather as anime girls sitting in their avatars. All the 8 difficulty limitation does is fulfill some people's need for "clean" sets, does nothing for players and limits community aspect of the game (cooperation required on creating big sets). You might say that these extra extras are redundant, but what's even more redundant is building additional sets of the popular song with easies, normals and hards being virtually the same. BNs might hate checking so many diffs but no one forces them too and it's between the mappers and BNG, big sets DO get ranked which means they are open to it. Keep the things as much of free market as possible please.

What I would like to see is removal of approval category (it doesn't mean anything at this point) just let the 5 min songs be ranked, adding 4 minute 2 diff possibility (like HI, HX, IX etc) would be great as well - lot of songs fall into that category due to the structure popular in electronic music that makes for great beatmaps and I don't think reducing number of easies and normals in the game on those would be that bad.

Agreed on ban on editing the mp3s (but could give people some slack on 4:58-4:59 drain time, judged case by case).
Dianthus
Why limit maps per mode to 8? It's not like there will be many maps aiming to get ranked with over 8 difficulties per mode anyway, and these few extra .osu files and leaderboards don't really take that much space. Seems too restrictive for me, especially when there's a popular song that has multiple guest difficulties.

Of course, I'm not saying that there should be no limit (there will definitely be at least one troll dude who tries to get 20 difficulties of Gory in the House or sth ranked), just that more should be allowed depending on the song and mappers' mapping quality.

So, to compromise, it should be a guideline, not a rule.
Liyac
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.
I can see where this is going in order to prevent maps to have 26548 extras. Except, a lot of the statement is pretty vague. Reasonable spread could mean a lot of different ways. It's a pretty restrictive rule to say the least and making mappers create multiple of sets to counteract this rule would make things tedious for both sides. More BN searching, waiting, two sets of the same song and same gamemode not allowed to be qualified at the same time, yeah. There has been large ranked mapsets out there with reasonable diff spreads (sweet dreams, hitorigoto) and some semi questionable (tokyo). I guess a solution to this may be capping the sr of each diff (ex. 6 extras, 6 insanes, etc allowed at a time). Only problem with this solution is that extra's can range to a multiple of different sr's. Maybe a new diff icon could be made for 7 star maps, but that may be a hassle too.

Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time.
I don't agree with this rule as much either. Supposed this rule does get published, will people actually take the time to make sure the mp3 is not modified? If someone gets caught doing it, what would happen? Telling a mapper to make a full spread of the modified mp3 that's barely 5 minutes would just be excessive and stressful. There's mini songs I would love to try mapping but the original mp3 being less than 30 seconds, so what then? As some people mentioned earlier, it really depends on how abused the modified mp3 is. If its 20 seconds of fireworks to meet the drain time, then yeah, I could see this rule being implemented. But if the mp3 is something like 4:58 drain time and one little loop could meet the approval mark, this rule could be a disaster.
7ambda
why are people complaining about the minimum drain time thing

just get people to gd other diffs if you really don't want to map them
eh - - -
hey...
Its slightly offtopic my comments question , but still part of the Ranking Criteria.

I would like to know if it is possible to remove one rule for Ranking that has been made a few years ago


"Sliders are not allowed to change speed midway" , something like that.


The gimmick used by val1080 or other mappers.

Is it possible that at some point players can map this again ?

I hope some way it can be possible to map this again for Ranked maps , its beautiful ^^
7ambda

Californian wrote:

Supposed this rule does get published, will people actually take the time to make sure the mp3 is not modified?
p/5602195

p/5287081
show more
Please sign in to reply.

New reply

/