i decline mapsets with a lot of diffs are usually very good and take a lot of work to make so why split it when you can have all in 1

the community has spoken out against this "8 diff rule" or stuff like it before, how is rewording it going to change that fact no one approves of it.

jesus i dont understand why it's hard to accept that lots of diffs on a map, whilst rare, are actually kinda beneficial to the game as a whole (and prevent people all mapping the same song in different sets, yay for neatness).

Read through wall of texts.

Quality issues of huge sets? How are you sure that limiting the number of diffs in one set could increase the overall quality of the map? The two stuffs are pretty irrelevant. Maybe you have to give rational and persuasive deductions.

What could improve the quality of maps should be the modding process in fact. Unrealistic fancy on such number restriction criteria on improving quality is not tenable at all.

Repeatedly, if the map lacks of quality (even not because of it's huge), else if the mapper meets difficulties on ranking such huge mapsets, they will spontaneously reduce the size of their maps, by themselves. And if they stick to their huge sets, they will just undergo a hard time for ranking them. I do not see any meaning of a new rule or guideline.

Dislike PP maps? At first I have to say, not all the huge sets are pp maps. So talking about PP maps under this criteria is already partial. If you are not satisfied with pp maps, you could just stop playing them. No one forces you to play that maps. And if you want to see more non-pp maps, why not just map them by yourself? Again, not all the people are against the pp maps, by advocating this rule or guideline under a reason related to PP stuffs, you are also jeopardizing the recreation of other players.

Worried about too similar difficulties in one set? Firstly I have to say "similar" is pretty subjective. How you define similar? Styles? How you define "style" then? Let's compromise, assuming there are several "similar" difficulties in one map. By limiting the number of diffs, people will stop making similar difficulties? No, they will just make a new set with difficulties removed from former sets because of that limitation. And that will make the case even worse. If you really want to see a more various style of maps, the best way is to join in the mapping and create your own maps, or, giving appropriate and pertinent suggestions during modding period of the map.

Isn't that diff-number cap thing been highly rejected by the community last year? Why are you guys putting it back to here, only with small modification towards the rule? Osu! is a community-based game, and I believe community's opinion should be taken into serious consideration, but now I just feel like you guys are trying to ignore them.

Possible upcoming response:"no, we did. Look! We tried to be lenient by allowing the highest diff not to follow the spread."
But you just can't deny the fact that the diff-number cap still exists, and the community hates it.

Other posts above should have listed tons of reasons of why people don't want that rule to exist. Please, just no.

xdominik wrote:

It feels like talking to a wall again and again

I can't be bothered to make more than one difficulty, much less eight.

I think the main reason for this is modding a map with 10 difficulties is a real pain in the badonk

pishifat wrote:

1. 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.
2. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard.
3. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.

I've got two questions here. First question, why would you actually limit the difficulty of maps in a hybrid set? That would mean that if you want to have a Hard difficulty of osu!catch in an ENH or EN mapset, you can't. Why not? How are Insane difficulties superior in this case? I don't see any sensible reason behind this, so I'd welcome a good explanation.

Second question, why is osu!catch the only mode that can be alone in a hybrid mapset? I understand that converting osu!standard map into osu!catch is very smooth, but if you manage to have an osu!standard map that converts properly to any other mod, why wouldn't that be allowed? The probability is lower, but it's clearly not impossible. For example, I don't understand why it wouldn't be allowed to have one taiko difficulty and 2 or 3 standard difficulties which would make a nice spread to it and would work as an actual taiko map. That wouldn't be allowed, but literally copying the map and setting its mode to taiko would. I know that the probability of creating such a compatible map at random is not possible, but with enough knowledge of both modes, you certainly can be able to achieve that, so why limiting it to osu!catch only?

@Wafu - You can have more than one osu!catch difficulty as far as I'm concerned. The wording was just bad. Probably something like "If you want to add osu!catch difficulties to your mapset, at least one osu!catch difficulty must be included, and this difficulty must be at most an Insane."

Your second point makes a lot of sense in theory though. I think we should also consider if maps somehow convert well into taiko/mania and allow taiko/mania BN's to give their approval for such maps. Idk how often converts will actually be reasonably high quality though.

Monstrata wrote:

@Wafu - You can have more than one osu!catch difficulty as far as I'm concerned. The wording was just bad. Probably something like "If you want to add osu!catch difficulties to your mapset, at least one osu!catch difficulty must be included, and this difficulty must be at most an Insane."

Oh, "at least" sounded as if it was the minimum. Other way around makes sense, thanks.

- Yoshimaro - wrote:

Californian wrote:

There has been large ranked mapsets out there with reasonable diff spreads (sweet dreams, hitorigoto) and some semi questionable (tokyo).

What is questionable about the Toyko spread, lol... musical elements are represented as different mapping elements in pretty much every difficulty, ranging from patterning, flow, and even the CS lmfao. Those difficulties are comparable, sure, but not the same at all. Every mapper designed their own landscape of the map, and they each play differently enough to bring new elements to the spread, so what's wrong with that?

I only thought tokyo was questionable with all of the extras in the set. But yeah, thinking about it a bit more, I do agree with you how this rule is limiting creativity. Multiple of mappers interpreting one song differently was an interesting dynamic tokyo brought in for sure.

[*]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.

Regou=

Isn't that diff-number cap thing been highly rejected by the community last year? Why are you guys putting it back to here, only with small modification towards the rule? Osu! is a community-based game, and I believe community's opinion should be taken into serious consideration, but now I just feel like you guys are trying to ignore them.

I felt like the topic was out of the minds after the high disagreement in the comunity - guess i was wrong.
I don't like the idea of limiting the difficulties because restrictions arent a good thing when they are not needed - I guess it should be common sense that you can't rank a set with 50< diffs but as i can remember there was not very much drama over the sets with over for example 15 diffs in a set, so why change the concept when they arent problems.

When BNs complain about huge sets - they just should not mod them - but when there is no single BN who want to mod the set - then there is a problem with the set, not with the system because its not like there are multiple set which over 10 diffs.

I do not think so that a drop of quality is a thing in theese mapset - manly because its the case that many mappers are inclueded in theese sets what leads to vareity, what is always a good thing and more ppl are making smaller mistakes than one single person i guess
(the only pro agruement i can think off is that many diffs cant get as much mods as in a set of for example 5 diffs)

I think its hard to regulate something as spread - expecially in a time as this where the mapping style is getting more wiedly as ever - so i hope you will find another soulution than this (expecially when the crowd is shouting NOO!) - But i could not find the solution myself~

Based on community response, it's not likely the 8-diff cap rule will go through. So my question is: should the community and the Ranking Criteria compromise and make this cap maybe a guideline? Or should a compromise even be necessary. I'm wondering if there is a need to compromise between "having a cap" and "not having a cap" or if the disagreement between the two is just too great.

Basically, if the cap rule became a guideline, would people be happy? Or would they still disagree with it. Remember that guidelines are now enforceable and can only be broken with clear reasons. I'm worried that these "extenuating circumstances" will still force mappers to be unable to rank mapsets with over 8 difficulties because "breaking the guideline" is no longer something you can simply do without concequences.

If you ask me, I don't think the community needs to compromise at all with the RC. I would vote to abandon the rule, and I wouldn't consider making it a guideline a compromise since it largely favors the RC's agenda still, by making large sets still enforceable.

Agreed

(When this would be a guidline tho it should have the cap of 15~ diffs i guess because then the set should have a reason to have THAT much diffs, but it should be possible then tho)

I don't see why it should be a guideline at all. If a mapper wants to incorporate a large set, he or she would naturally have to put in more work (mapping process, getting gds, getting mods - all of which can be very difficult and time consuming)

as long as they've made sure everything ensues quality, they should be rewarded for their efforts.

I just mean "if it would be a guideline"

Imo it shouldnt be considered being a rule or anything, let the mapper decide!

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.

Wouldn't it make more sense if the mapset host has to have more mapped objects than the guest difficulty mapper?

e.g.: If the mapset host mapped the Easy and Normal difficulty and the guest difficulty mapper mapped the Extra difficulty of a song that has 1:30min drain time the mapset host would have certainly more mapped drain time but way less mapped objects, so the guest difficulty mapper has actually mapped more.

__Phantomhive__ wrote:

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.

Wouldn't it make more sense if the mapset host has to have more mapped objects than the guest difficulty mapper?

e.g.: If the mapset host mapped the Easy and Normal difficulty and the guest difficulty mapper mapped the Extra difficulty of a song that has 1:30min drain time the mapset host would have certainly more mapped drain time but way less mapped objects, so the guest difficulty mapper has actually mapped more.

No it wouldn't. Think again, what is the difference between a repeatslider and a stream?

I think that it shouldn't be even kept as guideline . Even as a guideline it will prove difficulties on the mapset host like for example when someone wouldn't want to mapset to pass through to the ranking section , they could just report it to QAT as "unreasonable" spread with too many difficulties creating discussion that would provide no feedback to the map and could cause disqualification it would be hard to pass mapsets with questionable diffs like Skystar's AXION diff (just remember whole drama with this wierd jump stream alternating pattern) . Sorry for extreme example but I think it best represent possible issues .

As many said before this rule/guideline isn't in interest of community to keep improving quality of the ranked maps - I think that all of ranked criteria should be doing that not just make mapper's life more misserable than it already is , killing creativity .

I feel like whole of these proposal feels unnesserar MAYBE other than not extanding/shortering mp3 (I think this need disscusion) are all missing the point and shouldn't be even posted . Same for recent 2 tier BN system but that is already done and set in place I hope it won't be same with this one .

Endaris wrote:

I think one of the major underlying questions with this is:
What is a spread nowadays?
Back in the days spreads used to have difficulties built on each other, some sort of coherence in the usage of gameplay elements.
Nowadays I don't think that is an actual thing anymore as the majority of sets includes guest difficulties.
Instead of fucking around with a limit of difficulties it would be a lot better if there was a systematical change in how additional difficulties can get on a set.

Picking up this old feature request of Loctav along with something i vaguely recall from the ztrot-drama-thread:
As the traditional "set" is pretty much dead, wouldn't it be nice if it was possible to add difficulties to songs past ranking in a separate process?
That way one could restrict the spread for the ranking of the initial set relatively strictly to ensure a better review phase and get more variety in later through a separate review phase for each difficulty that strives to be added.
At the same time it would possibly reduce the amount of redundant difficulties because unlike in the current process people don't start their GDs at the same time, instead they see what is already there.

Apart from a change in the ranking system itself I don't see a way to properly satisfy both sides of the argument.

If spread design is the concern, why not put a condition on mapsets that have more than 7 diffs, the mapper must map the minimal amount to make a spread , basically the host must map a normal a hard themselves, plus what ever insane and extra he decide to map that fits the description of a good spread, and then GDs are treated separately.

Though unlikely people will like this idea

N0thingSpecial wrote:

If spread design is the concern, why not put a condition on mapsets that have more than 7 diffs, the mapper must map the minimal amount to make a spread , basically the host must map a normal a hard themselves, plus what ever insane and extra he decide to map that fits the description of a good spread, and then GDs are treated separately.

Though unlikely people will like this idea

uhmm, seems reasonable. but if there is no limit on the set itself, it really does not matter how many diffs are created by the creator... it won't help the set.

Monstrata wrote:

Insanes/Extra's because they allow you a lot more creative freedom

Glad there is at least one person with sway in the community able to look beyond the meaningless numbers and statistics to bring up the actual issue at hand.

One of the reasons I don't agree with what the ranking category stands for is that it gets too hung up on game design fundamentals. The true source of quality in mapping isn't adherence to good game design. True quality comes from artistic interpretation of the music. As music is highly structured, an interpretation consistent with the music will naturally exhibit good design.

In turn, if you completely ignore *rating and focus on making an artistic rendition, your map will nearly always exceed 4*. Speaking purely from an artistic POV, the need for fresh lower diffs is far more bloating than the trend to focus on higher diffs.

tl;dr:

most plays are on hards/insanes because that's where most players tend to practice / find a "comfort zone".

There are fewer plays on extras due to their higher skill requirements and the fact that most players will rather quickly plateau and they will either start playing less or quit altogether over time. The only reason to actively get better at this game is only to raise your pp score, as the maps that give the most pp also naturally are the most robotic in design. There is very little enjoyment to playing maps anymore, because the most popular maps are the ones that give the most points for minimal effort (It's not coincidence that these tend to be anime songs, either: The extremely basic, catchy melody structure of theme music just happens to really fit this style). This self-feeding spiral quickly saps most of the fun out of the game, as it is no longer a musical game, but one based around reaction time and physical conditioning.

Implementing a cap to the map size is so random and out there. Omnibus sets are rare as hell and feature their own host of problems, especially in the current meta. Most of this list is just already in existence, or slightly re-worded to allow for less bullshittery. Which I approve of, but the pepper sprinkles in the vanilla icecream are what pisses everyone off.

Player retention is at an all-time low. Mapper retention is at an all-time low. Modder retention is at an all-time low. Fresh meat comes in, but quickly spoils. Because the staff is so obsessed with making numbers look good and making public statements that look good while desperately ignoring the gushing wound that will exist until an actual overhaul that includes coding changes to the client and to the site.

Which have been in progress for over three years. At minimum.

But personally, I am still holding my breath.

at this point it's very clear which points of the draft will need revision lol


Here's my personal opinion on the matter of approval maps, backed up with a bit of data grabbing by Ephemeral:

My one and only issue with approval is that compared to the average map the average 5 minute approval map actually adds way less content targeted towards way fewer people to the game itself.
The average (osu!) mapset across Approved, Loved, Qualified, Ranked mapsets adds 460.4542 seconds of draintime on average to the Ranked section, this translates to 7.6 minutes of content per map across all skill levels whereas Marathons are targeted towards one certain audience only and provide less content than your average map.

I'm not going to suggest raising the limit because I can predict the deaththreats coming in already, but with this the suggestion to have marathons include more than one diff as mentioned in parts of shad0w1and's suggestions suddenly seems more reasonable than it already was.

i.e. if your set includes one diff above 300 seconds in length it must at least include another diff if its total draintime is <500 seconds or something among the lines to balance out that the minimum requirement for the entire category is at 300 seconds, the average length across approval maps is at 399 (data distribution is hugely uneven towards being at 300 seconds or close with only 80 mapsets being above 400s draintime out of 523 (less than 20%)) seconds and the average length of all sets is 460 seconds for the upside of omitting spread

the upside to this would be that the entire basis for don't abuse approval limit rule probably could be entirely transformed into a guideline that aims to prevent poorly done extensions as well as mp3 cuts

all the data above is on osu mapsets only btw can rerun numbers for all modes but i think this should be representative anyways

What do you think? So far this is only a rough idea where i asked for data to back up my assumptions

@Oko The whole discussion of approval necessitating a spread isn't even in the current draft yet. This is opening up a new can of worms. Didn't we already agree not to discuss all that "removal of approval" idea since people would be coming here with pitchforks again?

Anyways, since shadowland's idea was mentioned, i'll just say some quick things. I like the idea up until Approval. I tried to push forward some ideas about allowing larger spreads for songs that are longer than 3 minutes, as well as having the minimum difficulty be a Hard rather than a Normal for songs past say 4 minutes etc... (Insert arguments about stamina and Normal players etc... reasons here).

However, the point of approval isn't to cater to a larger audience. That was never the objective to begin with... So I don't think adding extraneous diffculties to approval mapsets is necessary at all. Basically, if a rule forces mappers to map "filler difficulties" for the sake of catering to more players, we need to consider where to draw the line. And we have. We drew the line at 5 minutes. Once a song is over 5 minutes, mappers no longer need to cater to the whole community by adding filler difficulties to satisfy a spread.

You guys are throwing around "community" and "audience" too vaguely. With approval, very often you are mapping for a specific audience. The mapper's objectively clearly isn't to reach a "general audience" or they would have made a set. The choice of only mapping one difficulty already suggests a narrower target scope, so we can safely rule out the mapper's intention being to cater to a larger audience. The idea shadowland is pushing forward is ideally prompting mappers to map for a larger audience, but this was never the mapper's objective. I really disagree with "mapping for a larger audience" being a goal for the Ranking Criteria. That has again, no bearing on quality standard. Have you even asked yourselves the question "is there a necessity to cater to a larger audience?" Additionally, the appeal of difficult approval mapsets has always been for the dedicated and highly-skilled players in the community anyways. The intention again, was never to make sure players who could only play 5* maps could still enjoy the song.

If you want to add a second difficulty to your approval mapset, be my guest. I don't think there's anything wrong with adding more difficulties to a mapset thats over 5 minutes. But don't force people to add these difficulties either, especially since you're forcing an objective onto the mapper who may or may not share that objective.




There is no need to compromise imo... Just get rid of the rule in the next draft. Period. Reading people's reasoning here, this is what I will be arguing for anyways.

this isnt on the current draft, i was proposing it as an idea based on comparing the amount of content getting ranked per mapset

to find that with the current approval limitation with its limit being so low seems kinda unfair towards the average map so i suggested this as an alternative and crammed together a few arguments and listed the side effects that implementing it would have in the most likely scenario. Note that I never even specified if this additionally created content has to adhere to a certain other target audience and just threw it out there.

Your beliefs of what approval is and should be don't line up with what mine are, i am pretty sure we both figured that out by now - this is a different idea entirely which is centered around something that i assumed both sides of the argument should actually be neutral on.

@Ephemeral: Is it possible to check the playcounts of easy diffs on songs with different lengths? Basically if there's a significant difference between the amount of plays a 2 minute easy diff and a 4 minute one would receive or not.

I think it would be pretty useful information in regards to Shadow1and's suggestion (I actually came here initially to post the same idea). The reason people want to get over the approval length limit and "abuse" it right now, is because the amount of work required is significantly reduced just from a few seconds of difference. A 5 minute map requires you to map less total time than a generic 5 diff spread for a 1:30 tv size, and while obviously this doesn't translate to the same amount of effort needed (mapping lower difficulties are tend to be faster because they require less notes to be placed, and are more restrictive anyway), I think it's clear why people want to get to the approval length when they're really close. Arguing about laziness and whatnot is irrelevant and should not have anything to do with a ranking criteria anyway, and even then it's not true for a lot of mappers. For instance, I'm also a player, so naturally I split my time between mapping and playing. Adding to that any real life obligations I have and whatnot, I might just not have enough time or will to map and maintain a full spread for a 4:58min map in hopes of it getting ranked. My efforts would be much better spent on either extending said song, map something else, or just play the game instead. Also, if we're speaking about laziness, then the 8 diff rule doesn't exactly promote unlazy behaviour anyway.

And I think the reason is just that the difference it makes is too big, so the rewards for "abusing" it is higher than just mapping the spread. Instead, making it gradual would make the whole thing less of a pain in the ass for mappers. For example, maps above 4 minutes need 3 difficulties, 5min need 2 and 6min need 1 (I'm just pulling random numbers right now). If we can look at the statistics of the playcounts of different difficulties and their map lengths, we could maybe find reasonable lengths to make these cut-offs, and which difficulties could be excluded. This way, the gain from extending an .mp3 is less compelling than before, and also encourages mapping for a wider audience in general.

Although I personally don't find extending .mp3's a problem in the first place. In a lot of cases you probably wouldn't even notice it was unless you've heard the song before, or someone tells you.

@Oko

Except in a normal set you can get multiple guest difficulties which can save you plenty of time, and also not to ignore how much faster it is to map easy - hard difficulties compared to an insane / extra. Meanwhile, for an approval map it is very usual to map an extra by yourself, and usually spending more time than just a normal set.

So sure maybe the total seconds of content are less but the effort put into the set doesn't necessarily have to be less.
Not all mappers are willing to spend all of their free time mapping. Thus I think the mappers efforts should also be considered in cases like this, otherwise you'll end up discouraging the few amount of people who are willing to map for approval in the first place.

same goes for everyone caring about lower difficulties and wanting to polish them... i guess?

Okorin wrote:

at this point it's very clear which points of the draft will need revision lol


Here's my personal opinion on the matter of approval maps, backed up with a bit of data grabbing by Ephemeral:

My one and only issue with approval is that compared to the average map the average 5 minute approval map actually adds way less content targeted towards way fewer people to the game itself.
The average (osu!) mapset across Approved, Loved, Qualified, Ranked mapsets adds 460.4542 seconds of draintime on average to the Ranked section, this translates to 7.6 minutes of content per map across all skill levels whereas Marathons are targeted towards one certain audience only and provide less content than your average map. Already entirely subjective. Here, you're defining content by drain time. What about note density, design, patterning, bpm,
etc... one high quality 6 minute difficulty can in fact hold more content than a 9 minute mapset if you consider the density of easies/normals/hards too, and perhaps those sets are 120 bpm while the approval difficulty is 200 bpm? Measuring "average content" through drain time is already way too vague. Unless you can consider all these factors, its best not to even measure content anyways. There is only so much that numbers can tell us. The only objective thing you can say is that the average approval map has a lower drain time than an average map on osu. Anything else is subjective and prone to data manipulation to serve one's purposes/arguments.

I'm not going to suggest raising the limit because I can predict the deaththreats coming in already, but with this the suggestion to have marathons include more than one diff as mentioned in parts of shad0w1and's suggestions suddenly seems more reasonable than it already was.

i.e. if your set includes one diff above 300 seconds in length it must at least include another diff if its total draintime is <500 seconds or something among the lines to balance out that the minimum requirement for the entire category is at 300 seconds, the average length across approval maps is at 399 (data distribution is hugely uneven towards being at 300 seconds or close with only 80 mapsets being above 400s draintime out of 523 (less than 20%)) seconds and the average length of all sets is 460 seconds for the upside of omitting spread Assuming these statistics are true, doesn't this also show you how many maps will be affected by this rule being implemented? Additionally, doubling the drain time for all these maps between 5-6 minutes (which as you say, accounts for over 80% of all approval maps) will just completely skew the average mapset drain time in the opposite direction. Rather than 80% of these sets being between 5-6 minutes, now you have over 80% of the set being between 10-12 minutes. This is just creating more problems.

the upside to this would be that the entire basis for don't abuse approval limit rule probably could be entirely transformed into a guideline that aims to prevent poorly done extensions as well as mp3 cuts This change is not a result of adopting shadowland's idea, so "the upside to this would be... is entirely misleading. The approval limit rule should be transformed into a guideline because of the community response. Saying "We will shift the rule into a guideline if shadowland's idea is used instead" isn't correct. Rather, it should be "We will shift the rule into a guideline, and consider shadowland's idea as well". Those two are not correlated. Trying to connect them to create a pseudo compromise won't work here.

all the data above is on osu mapsets only btw can rerun numbers for all modes but i think this should be representative anyways

What do you think? So far this is only a rough idea where i asked for data to back up my assumptions

Okay, replied without bringing up stuff about approval. I agree, our views on approval are different, and I don't expect to convince you of mine.

And you're always arguing via quality which is just as vague if not more vague than any basis i've argued on regarding this because it is already and per definition entirely subjective so telling me I'm hiding behind manipulated/scewed data while hiding an abstract idea yourself seems funny.

I'm measuring average draintime because it's the amount of time you could possibly play while going through any set and comparing it to the amount of time you would spend on an approval mapset, because the entire basis for the approval rule in its current design is draintime and not mapdesign or map quality or object density or any of the other factors you just used to claim that i'm manipulating data for my own benefit here.

so comparing draintimes in itself is the most logical thing to be done in this situation, due to the layout of everything being centered around it. Demanding the special category without a spread to be at least at average length would be the logical consequence out of this, but i'm well aware that raising said limit is out of the question as far as community opinion on the matter goes, hence the idea to instead measure total draintime of a set if a difficulty is longer than 5 minutes on it

I have no reason to argue for quality. Not sure where you're getting that from. My argument is that you cannot measure a map's content on solely drain time. As well, you cannot accurately compare content across mapsets. When you say drain time, you really mean the time it takes the play through the song. That's fine. It's when you attribute this time as "game content" that you are redefining what content is. You can play a map that's 2 minutes long, and a map thats 3 minutes long. Objectively, you can say that the 3 minute map is longer than the 2 minute map. Simple arithmetic will conclude with you. But when you say the 3 minute map has more content than a 2 minute map, thats erroneous because you neglect so many other factors that go into considering a map. BPM, difficulty, breaks, note density, complexity of patterns, etc... all those are considered when you define "content".

I'm just trying to show you that drain time is not an accurate form of comparing game content. And I don't believe that statistics alone will be able to measure it anyways. The topic is too subjective. There is no "most logical thing to be done" here. Quantifying the amount of content in a map shouldn't be done anyways. This is because any results you try to pull out of these analyses will be inevitably biased. You may believe drain time to be the most logical thing. Someone else may believe object count to be the most logical. Yet others may believe a combination of both to be the most logical. You can all be correct according to your own logic. But because there are so many interpretations that function "logically" you begin to see why a system for defining his won't be acceptable to everyone.

Okorin wrote:

I'm measuring average draintime because it's the amount of time you could possibly play while going through any set and comparing it to the amount of time you would spend on an approval mapset, because the entire basis for the approval rule in its current design is draintime and not mapdesign or map quality or object density or any of the other factors you just used to claim that i'm manipulating data for my own benefit here.

Im not going to say anything about data but I still find this to be a faulty argument, if a song is mapped with an E/N/H/I spread most people who can play the insane will ONLY play the insane, they get less playtime out of this spread than they would get out of a marathon. Total draintime doesn't matter if most people will ignore over half the difficulties on a set.

After a certain amount of playcount most players will end up playing only insanes with mods and extra's, I would actually be interested to know how many different easy/normal/hard difficulties most people play before moving on to the next difficulty.

Lets say players play on average 50 different easy difficulties before they move to normals, because of the amount of new players compared to experienced players this will still turn into a large amount of playcount, but this does not in fact mean there need to be a lot of easy maps.
If there are 50 or 100 easy maps available to the player he will still do the same thing, he is still going to stop playing easy difficulties after map 50. He just has a bit more choice. Same goes for normals and hards, most people move on from these difficulty levels when they can play the next tier of maps.

Insane (usually with mods) and extra difficulties however still get played by the top players.
For this reason I don't really understand why there seems to be some pushing to get mappers to invest more time in lower difficulties.

You also have to remember that mappers do this for fun, if people like mapping extra's why force them to make a spread. That isn't going to increase the amount of ranked maps, most mappers will just give up before they learn to map a full spread. Guest diffs aren't a viable option to these new mappers who are only interested in a certain difficulty as most people who make guest difficulties have the criteria that you need to have a ranked map if you want a guest difficulty from them (which makes sense).

tl;dr bleh

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.

why tho

Hey, I'm a pretty shitty noob mapper, but I'm trying my best and would also like to offer my opinion from a standpoint that I don't think has been covered yet.

By limiting the mapset to 8, you're making it much harder for people like me to get GD slots on ranked sets. For example, let's say a new song comes out and a more experienced mapper picks it up and starts creating a set. Sometimes, these mappers are ok with taking a GD from a newer mapper and helping them to make something rankable out of it. This is super important because not only does it allow newer mappers rejected from the academy (like me!) more opportunities to learn about the ranking process and gain mapping exposure, we also learn a lot about mapping, what's rankable and whats not, and usually being modded for rank is more strict and will likely lead to better feedback.

However, under this new system, it's even more unlikely that stuff like this will happen. This is already a big headache for the more experienced mapper, as they will have to put lots of time into helping them create something rankable and have to ensure it's up to quality standards. However, with 8 difficulties, mappers are even less likely to do so because sets will fill up, and who wants a new mapper who's gonna be a headache anyway taking up precious slots when all your friends want to make GDs for that hot new song?

Now, I'm not saying that I'm good enough to create a rankable GD (I'm not), and I don't think I expressed myself very eloquently, but this cap will make mapping even more clique-y than it already is.

I also agree with what's already been said about how bad it is to limit the spread anyway, but I thought this wasn't a perspective seen yet so I wanted to write this.

Thank you for your time.

SakuraKaminari wrote:

Hey, I'm a pretty shitty noob mapper, but I'm trying my best and would also like to offer my opinion from a standpoint that I don't think has been covered yet.

By limiting the mapset to 8, you're making it much harder for people like me to get GD slots on ranked sets. For example, let's say a new song comes out and a more experienced mapper picks it up and starts creating a set. Sometimes, these mappers are ok with taking a GD from a newer mapper and helping them to make something rankable out of it. This is super important because not only does it allow newer mappers rejected from the academy (like me!) more opportunities to learn about the ranking process and gain mapping exposure, we also learn a lot about mapping, what's rankable and whats not, and usually being modded for rank is more strict and will likely lead to better feedback.

However, under this new system, it's even more unlikely that stuff like this will happen. This is already a big headache for the more experienced mapper, as they will have to put lots of time into helping them create something rankable and have to ensure it's up to quality standards. However, with 8 difficulties, mappers are even less likely to do so because sets will fill up, and who wants a new mapper who's gonna be a headache anyway taking up precious slots when all your friends want to make GDs for that hot new song?

Now, I'm not saying that I'm good enough to create a rankable GD (I'm not), and I don't think I expressed myself very eloquently, but this cap will make mapping even more clique-y than it already is.

I also agree with what's already been said about how bad it is to limit the spread anyway, but I thought this wasn't a perspective seen yet so I wanted to write this.

Thank you for your time.

You are right. when the set gets bigger, it is more likely the creator might accept some new mappers' lower diffs and help them get their first GDs ranked. because it will help balance the spread of lower diffs a bit.

Shad0w1and wrote:

SakuraKaminari wrote:

Hey, I'm a pretty shitty noob mapper, but I'm trying my best and would also like to offer my opinion from a standpoint that I don't think has been covered yet.

By limiting the mapset to 8, you're making it much harder for people like me to get GD slots on ranked sets. For example, let's say a new song comes out and a more experienced mapper picks it up and starts creating a set. Sometimes, these mappers are ok with taking a GD from a newer mapper and helping them to make something rankable out of it. This is super important because not only does it allow newer mappers rejected from the academy (like me!) more opportunities to learn about the ranking process and gain mapping exposure, we also learn a lot about mapping, what's rankable and whats not, and usually being modded for rank is more strict and will likely lead to better feedback.

However, under this new system, it's even more unlikely that stuff like this will happen. This is already a big headache for the more experienced mapper, as they will have to put lots of time into helping them create something rankable and have to ensure it's up to quality standards. However, with 8 difficulties, mappers are even less likely to do so because sets will fill up, and who wants a new mapper who's gonna be a headache anyway taking up precious slots when all your friends want to make GDs for that hot new song?

Now, I'm not saying that I'm good enough to create a rankable GD (I'm not), and I don't think I expressed myself very eloquently, but this cap will make mapping even more clique-y than it already is.

I also agree with what's already been said about how bad it is to limit the spread anyway, but I thought this wasn't a perspective seen yet so I wanted to write this.

Thank you for your time.

You are right. when the set gets bigger, it is more likely the creator might accept some new mappers' lower diffs and help them get their first GDs ranked. because it will help balance the spread of lower diffs a bit.

Monstrata also seconded this over in-game chat. I really hope okorin sees this, as it's important to me and others have agreed.

Disagree strongly on spread. Few points:

* I'm in a belief every player has a comfort zone when it comes to difficulty of map. Maps outside this comfort zone are either too easy and boring to play or simply too hard to be enjoyable. As time goes on and your skill increases, this comfort zone goes towards upper spectrum of maps. This leads to easier difficulties becoming too easy and uninteresting to you. I'm talking about easy/normal/hard becoming irrelevant to you after certain skill level. This could be verified by poll, statistics etc.

* As time has went on, average comfort zone has ended up at "Insane" level of maps (based on graphs ephemeral posted). Maps below insane have playcount of half or third above it, making difficulties of that level a minority in popularity.

* While I do agree newcomers need content to play, I don't think there needs to be constant supply of entry level content. This is because the lowest difficulties serve as tutorial to game and generally you progress past this skill level extremely fast. Like I stated earlier, majority of players are Insane tier players but low skilltier content is forced to be produced. Why? This content becomes redundant for player as time goes on and there is already a ton of entry-level content.

* There has been an argument about a need for modern new songs, like trash metal, to be mapped because newcomers are looking for recently released songs to play. Well first of all, newer songs aren't necessarily better or more desirable to look for. I would argue everyone listens to older songs too and you don't only listen the newest rad top50-played-in-radio-100-times-a-day song. I do agree it's nice to find new songs being mapped too but they aren't the ONLY songs mattering. And there is absolutely nothing uncommon about finding songs you like from older production. Because of these reasons, I would argue osu! already has enough content for everyone to enjoy and discover during their entry skill level days. I see no merit in FORCING mappers to cater to newer players and invest time into lower difficulties.

* There has been a point missing in this thread, and that is: Each difficulty requires time and effort to make and ensure quality, this time is taken from mapper(s), modders and BN's. More difficulties = more effort required to make it ranked. I am in understanding that the more complex the difficulty is, the more time it requires to create and review quality. Now because of the spread rule, let's say you are mapping some aggressive metal song that screams for brutal 7* difficulty to make justice for the song. To get this ranked you would need 2*, 3*, 4*, 5*, 6*, 7* difficulties as bare minmum. Song is pretty average metal song, 4 minutes long and has a variable timing and could benefit a lot from special attention to hitsounding. To get this ranked you need to invest major time to timing (variable / complex) and hitsounding design. You also need to map the same 4 minutes for each difficulty 6 times, this is 24 minutes in total. Each difficulty also needs to meet strict quality criteria and you know 7* alone is gonna take at least 3 pages of mods and you wonder how to express this minute long guitar solo in 2* map. I would see this situation being quite common when trying to provide ranked content for current top players AND future highly skilled players. Because of current, and proposed spread rule, you need to make some extraordinary effort to get high* maps ranked alone. It isn't simply linearly increasing workload, its multiplicative.

* Related to above, there are extremely few ranked/approved metal songs. Same goes for rock (excluding jrock), pop (excluding jpop/kpop). Currently ranked sets are saturated with tv sizes and dnb. Why? Obvious music taste differences aside, songs of those genre tend to be shorter and therefore have less to map. Current spread rule promotes mapping shorter songs because it takes less effort to do so, 6 difficulties on 2minute song is just 12 minute of mapping. This compared to other extremely unlucky 4 min song requiring TWICE the time to be mapped. Also keep in mind, it also means more of mapping to be checked by multiple modders and bn's.

* The issue above could be alleviated in many ways, personally I would see midde ground solution working best. I would add seperate category for full size songs where you could make do with more lax difficulty spread and moving approval time limit further.

Mapset with 7* difficulty (proposed criteria)
2 min: 6 difficulty spread =12 minutes to map
4 min: 3 difficuly spread = 12 minutes to map
6 min: 2 difficulty spread = 12 minutes to map

Mapset with 7* difficulty (old criteria)
2 min: 6 difficulty spread = 12 minutes to map
4 min: 6 difficulty spread = 24 minutes to map
6min: 1 difficulty = 6 minutes to map

* As you can see, currently workload is extremely inbalanced. Half of work needed for approval, twice for 4 minute song.

Amaikai's point is similar to what I said. But just one thing, you have to consider GDs will greatly help the workload. And the effort on easy is not equal to extra. Therefore I do not support that 6 min you have to make 2 diffs. But in my proposal, it only requires 2 diff when there has not been a ranked Insane. As we know that insane serves the biggest player group in the game. Also I suggest when we consider the approval set, we might consider the ranked sets' spread. If there has been a ranked Insane app, then it does not really matter if you make another insane to meet 2 diff spread. One extra should be enough.

Shad0w1and wrote:

Amaikai's point is similar to what I said. But just one thing, you have to consider GDs will greatly help the workload. And the effort on easy is not equal to extra. Therefore I do not support that 6 min you have to make 2 diffs. But in my proposal, it only requires 2 diff when there has not been a ranked Insane. As we know that insane serves the biggest player group in the game. Also I suggest when we consider the approval set, we might consider the ranked sets' spread. If there has been a ranked Insane app, then it does not really matter if you make another insane to meet 2 diff spread. One extra should be enough.

You say that 6 minute songs do not require 2 diffs... but 5 minute songs do? Just clarifying what you think a cut-off length is for single-diff approval.

Also, finding GD's for 4+ minute maps is a lot harder than finding GD's for tv-size maps.

mapping longer songs will always be harder than mapping shorter songs, not quite seeing where everyone's getting at with the effort arguments as there's legit nothing to be done about it lol.

in the long run lowering spread requirements for sets further and further will only prove to be detrimental to especially new players getting into the game, there's a constant supply of new music to be mapped as well as old music to take from so denying someone that is just getting into osu to play their favourite song because you think insanes / extras / hards are more important than complete entry level content is just going to disappoint the new people getting into the game.

This content does become redundant for people as their skill increases but it remains a necessity for getting people to that level - just claiming that entry level content to the game is redundant will just make it harder to get into the game to begin with in the long run. Even if people just browse the recently ranked mapset list without understanding what it actually displays they will just search for songs they like from their favourite new anime opening or pick at random from a list they find somewhere.

I took average total draintime across all sets to make a similar argument about approval though, but suggested going in the opposite direction as you did @amaikai

RIP my musubine ribbon twin song compilation project