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[Proposal] Spread requirements based on song length

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Noffy
I think if anything CDFA's idea is far better. That way you're not totally shutting newer players out of enjoying songs they like, but you're not forcing a mapper to make four 4 minute difficulties either.

I mean, heck, the rule that all difficulties need to be around the same length was actually removed months ago. So take advantage of that instead.

this rule is gone wrote:

Your difficulties should all end at the same spot. Having a fully-mapped Normal/Hard and a half-mapped Easy just looks sloppy/lazy. A full Easy may look boring to you, but not to a player that can't handle the harder difficulties.

I mean this one btw, but a lot of people still point it out because it appears in modding assistant because modding assistant hasn't been updated.
pishifat
my thoughts on this have basically been said by other people here already

as a mapper, it's nice to have more equal work to rank longer maps compared to shorter ones. low diffs are boring to make anyway

if i were running osu and had i an interest in expanding its audience, i'd think this kind of change isnt very good. out of ranked maps selection, there would be a smaller fraction of content available for lowest level of players, alienating the potential future of hte game or something along those lines. the idea that new players are already alienated with 5+min songs, so being lenient with other lengths should be fine sounds more like a reason to remove approval from game dev perspective (which i'm not interested in doing).

so there's benefit for mapper quality of life, but maybe not for osu in general imo

@noffy im pretty sure the "you must map up to 80% of your map's mp3" rule counteracts that
Asaiga

pishifat wrote:

so there's benefit for mapper quality of life, but maybe not for osu in general imo
Natsu
Reducing content for new and casual players is never good for a game.
Shohei Ohtani

pishifat wrote:

@noffy im pretty sure the "you must map up to 80% of your map's mp3" rule counteracts that
well looks like were gonna have to change that then
Noffy

CDFA wrote:

pishifat wrote:

@noffy im pretty sure the "you must map up to 80% of your map's mp3" rule counteracts that
well looks like were gonna have to change that then
it doesn't specify it has to be mapped on every difficulty just that it must be mapped in general (I literally re-read that rule before posting to be sure). If it's mapped only in insane, it's still mapped.
seems like there's a loophole here if the intent is to in part disallow 1m 2m 3m 4m ENHI draintime spreads.
Linada

Natsu wrote:

Reducing content for new and casual players is never good for a game.
yea but ppl gonna extand 4:xx songs with R3 music boxes so it's even worse imo
i like thoses R3 music boxes but it's so lame... i'd rather have the song having its chorus extanded or smth

and having HIX spreads isn't that bad imo
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
chatlog i had w/ pishi, highly encourage anyone worried about new players to read through it:
UndeadCapulet - Today at 4:40 PM
i feel like people arent reading my posts at all
4min diffs are already not appealing for most new players
making it so they arent required isnt lowering content for new players
its just raising content for higher level players who actually like to play longer maps(edited)
your point about “fraction of content” is the closest to fair
but like
4:30 normal is draining and also kinda boring for newer players
theyd prefer to just play shorter maps
even in like game design perspective
you dont give new players big longer levels
they get eased into it
as they get more comfortable w/ mechanics
then you can start lengthening the levels and challenges
pishi - Today at 4:47 PM
that makes sense
it also makes me think time would be better spent making 2 minute maps instead of ones that have less general appeal
so im not sure id change stance
UndeadCapulet - Today at 4:50 PM
wait but
if what i said makes sense
then giving more incentives to make longer maps so more skilled players can challenge themselves
should also make sense .-.
pishi - Today at 4:53 PM
more experienced players playing longer maps than new players makes sense
catering content towards smaller audience not so much
from mr game running guy perspective that is
as a mapper i'd want more than anything to just get 1 diff things ranked without any bs extra content
UndeadCapulet - Today at 5:00 PM
idk i dont think its catering to smaller audience
if anything the current cut/extend meta is ostracizing experienced players
with less engaging content
progression spreadbalance just makes it so every skill level has more good stuff for them(edited)
new players will have all the tvsizes they could ask for like always
(and w/ current numbers theyll have 3min maps too)
they dont need 4mins tho, so those can be geared toward hard/insane players(edited)
pishi - Today at 5:04 PM
that doesnt account for people who would be ranking a full tv size thing, but instead opt to do a h/i set for a longer song
with the proposal, some amount of people will shift their attention away from making low diffs
so less new player stuff overall
UndeadCapulet - Today at 5:05 PM
at most the req difference would be
NAHIX for tvsize
vs HIX for 3:30-4:30(edited)
vs IX for 4:30
some people will stop being tvsize only mappers but
theyll still be making a lot of H icons
and we’re never gonna run out of tvsizes
drop in tvsizes will be small if any, increase in fullvers will be way bigger(edited)
bc fullver mappers wont have to spend so much time with each set
thats where the main increase will come from
not tvsize mappers switching over

i feel like natsu/oko/etc. just aren't reading my posts at all atm, bc if they did they wouldn't be saying this is lowering content for new players. 4min diffs are not appropriate for new players. it's not content for them. if anything those types of diffs will be a turnoff bc of how draining it can be to play them. this proposal doesn't hinder newer players in any way, it will only be adding content for hard+ players.
CXu
I'd say add a minimum amount of diffs required for the spread as well in some way, so say minimum 3 diffs for maps <4:00, and minimum 2 diffs for maps <5:00. (Not sure how this would affect those Easy+Normal sets only though).

If you're mapping a 4min ballad you can get away with only a hard since Insane/Extra might not fit well with the song, and Easy/Normal aren't required.
This should make it so that easier difficulties for newer players are still created whenever slower songs that would fit lower diffs better are mapped as well.
Okoratu

UndeadCapulet wrote:

chatlog i had w/ pishi, highly encourage anyone worried about new players to read through it:
i feel like natsu/oko/etc. just aren't reading my posts at all atm, bc if they did they wouldn't be saying this is lowering content for new players. 4min diffs are not appropriate for new players. it's not content for them. if anything those types of diffs will be a turnoff bc of how draining it can be to play them. this proposal doesn't hinder newer players in any way, it will only be adding content for hard+ players.
i read that part but i idisagree with the logic you use to arrive at that fact that longer songs are not content for new players
if you start the game up and listen to music before finding this game you will notice that most edm and general songs are around 3:30 ~ 4:30 length (hint: the FA section contains mostly longer songs) because it's a common length of music.

Would be a shame if you start out the game and search for your favourite music just to find that "it's too long to require a diff for you"
Caput Mortuum
This feels like forcing new players to play exclusively anime openings/game songs tbh
New players care more about the song itself rather than the content

i can also see some mappers in the future saying 3:30 is too long
CXu
So about the argument that it's less content for newer players. The current state of things is less content for ALL players, as people are less inclined to map these maps that are 4:30min long if they have to spend that much more effort compared to extending the song to 5min, or just mapping some other song.

Doing something like this would give more incentive to map these longer maps for mappers who would maybe otherwise not map these songs at all, or greatly increase the amount of songs they map in this length range.

As for the details, it's obviously something to discuss in terms of what would be appropriate cut-offs, limits, appropriate spreads (would EHX be acceptable for example) etc., but I don't think it's a bad idea overall to suggest something like this.

As for the "too long to require a diff for you" thing, that already happens with approval maps, and as more people go with extending songs, or cutting them down, you're still not getting the required diff for low level players in the length range that is being discussed.
Okoratu
i know im saying i'd prefer that over the possibility that there's even more stuff that is inaccessible to new players trying to get into the game or the average player
MaridiuS
Hey those were my actual thoughts today when i opnened sotarks freedom dive, I fully support this.
Mentai
i don't know.. it's kind of refreshing and rewarding when i map a full length set of songs i like, because it's a rare thing to see in osu! currently, and i tend to really like mappers who map things that way too.

i'm a pretty big fan of mapping lower difficulties because no one seems to care about them anymore in terms of quality, all that matters is it is a reasonable spread for the higher diffs to be workable for the set. i think this is just going further down the hole of "why bother making quality lower diffs if my extra diff gets all the attention" and whatnot

i know i'm in the minority for this, this would probably be a happy change for most mappers, but i just think at some point lower diffs will just like, be absent from most sets lol
Pachiru
I disagree with it. Cause of the less content for begginer argument. Shiguma said "if you think about it, what new player wants to play a 4-5 minute long song" which is somewhat true.

However, most of player who likes an anime song will be interested in playing the TV size version cause it's short and they can still play the song they like. But if they like a Rock, Metal, Pop or whatever that doesn't have any TV size ver song, they will not be able to play it cause there is this rule?
CXu

Okoratu wrote:

i know im saying i'd prefer that over the possibility that there's even more stuff that is inaccessible to new players trying to get into the game or the average player
Ah fair enough. I read that wrong then.

I personally always found the 5 min limit for marathon kind of low, and would really prefer it to be 6 min, with 2 diff requirements for 5 min and 3 diff requirement for 4 min or something, with proper spread rules along those lines, but I doubt that's ever possible anymore nowadays after the requirement was lowered.
Shiguma
Okay, after reading this thread, I've changed my stance.


First, can we get some actual numbers? I want to see how many people
  1. Play <2 minute normal and hard diffs
  2. Play 4 minute+ normal and hard diffs

    And also see how many:
  3. Ranked 1:30-3:00 minute songs there are annually
  4. Ranked 3 minute + sets there are annually


Even without the numbers, I have to agree with CDFA, where a good compromise would be diff specific drain times. Either something like "if your song's length is above 3:30, your Hard diff must be mapped up to at least 3:30 of drain time, while your Normal diff must be mapped up to 2:30 of drain time."

I'm not sure what to make the specific wording to prevent abuse while also preventing people from being able to map songs with a lot of unmappable sections where you'd put a break, but the idea is that lower diffs would have to be mapped to a lesser percentage of the mp3 than higher diffs.

This makes sense to me, as now there would be content for the newer players, because they will have a map to play in their skill range, the mappers would be much happier mapping a shorter map for low diffs they probably don't care for much in the first place (hopefully with lower drain requirements they'd put quality > quantity but that's wishful thinking), while also opening up the ranked section to more 4 minute songs.

(Also I agree with CXu, five minute songs should have a minimum 2 diff requirement if your diff is above an Insane)
Kroytz
Completely 100% in agreement with UndeadCapulet on this one.

Instead of writing some paragraphs about why I think it’s a good idea with pros/cons listed for both sides, I’ll just sum it up and say that I’d rather see there be content for some players (HIX or IX spreads in this case) than no content for everyone.
sdafsf
since the majority of the player base plays diffs below insane i dont think ie spreads should ever be a thing. therefore i really like icekalts proposal
Antalf
I think in a way this benefits more the mapper, modder and the BN than the player in a way that it makes it easier for everyone just to have a smaller spread and less things to check. The true thing that i believe its affecting this is what Capulet said, i don't think someone wants to check a 4:30 min, 4 diff spread map, unless you're really dedicated to it or you know that person (you'll be modding around 18 mins of drain if you mod each difficulty).

Even though i do believe if any of this would be applied to modern day mapping and modding, osu! will experience a crash in what would be intake of new players, and i'm not only talking about standard or mania, every game mode will feel that and hard; yes maybe its true that mapping low difficulties can be tedious and boring but it opens a wide range in what would be player intake, plus why wouldn't you want to give the same chance to someone "new" rather than an already decent player?

Low difficulties around each game mode provides that "chance" I'm talking about, maybe to play their favorite song while not choosing something they cant play, improving, trying out new skins and none the less, having fun.

TL;DR

I do think this will benefit everyone involved in the creation and ranking process of a map but will damage any low player for sure, maybe something else can be implemented to make this beneficial for the modder and mapper as well for the player.
J1NX1337

pishifat wrote:

if i were running osu and had i an interest in expanding its audience, i'd think this kind of change isnt very good. out of ranked maps selection, there would be a smaller fraction of content available for lowest level of players, alienating the potential future of hte game or something along those lines. the idea that new players are already alienated with 5+min songs, so being lenient with other lengths should be fine sounds more like a reason to remove approval from game dev perspective (which i'm not interested in doing).


But back in the days maps even shorter than 5min were approved (like The Big Black). Didn't really hurt the game's future now did it? More like the opposite considering how popular and iconic it became. Imagine having to map a full spread for that song. lol

Anyway, I do think that doing something about this is a good idea, rather than leaving it as it is with .mp3 extensions becoming ever more popular.

What might indeed seem as a problem is that as a new player, I would hate it if I couldn't play, say, my favourite pop or metal song because it's like 3:30 in length and has no easy/normal diffs available for it.

However, as was said before, most new players don't like playing very long maps right off the bat. If you think about it, the most popular genres in this community are things like anime and electronic music, not pop and metal really, they're more niche.

If there is a pop or metal song they'd really like to play but can't quite reach because the lowest diff is a hard, it should motivate them to improve their skills in the game enough to play it. If the only genres of music they listen to are niche in this game, and they're completely unable to tolerate playing easier maps of genres they don't really listen to, I don't think they'd last as a community member for very long to begin with.

With that in mind, and as much as it feels weird to let go of these spread rules I've gotten used to over the years, something needs to be done, and as long as nobody comes up with a better alternative, I'm supporting this one.
AncuL
  1. if the drain time is <4:00 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
  2. if the drain time is 4:00-5:00 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
  3. >5:00 can be anything

I'm thinking more like this. since H is way more accessible than N. IX only is just too small imo. Since we are having problems with 4:30 maps, we don't need to do anything with anything below 4:00
Arutsuki
agree with ancul, insane as the lowest diff sounds to me like too much for something non marathon, but otherwise it's a neat idea
Mentai

AncuL wrote:

  1. if the drain time is <4:00 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
  2. if the drain time is 4:00-5:00 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
  3. >5:00 can be anything
I'm thinking more like this. since H is way more accessible than N. IX only is just too small imo. Since we are having problems with 4:30 maps, we don't need to do anything with anything below 4:00
yeah this seems the most reasonable at least from the suggestions
J1NX1337

AncuL wrote:

  1. if the drain time is <4:00 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
  2. if the drain time is 4:00-5:00 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
  3. >5:00 can be anything

I'm thinking more like this. since H is way more accessible than N. IX only is just too small imo. Since we are having problems with 4:30 maps, we don't need to do anything with anything below 4:00


Hmm, I think a change like this would at least motivate people to map longer songs more. It probably won't make .mp3 extensions that much less popular of a choice when it comes to stuff like 4:50 length songs, though. But even with an IX spread requirement, why wouldn't you just extend the .mp3 instead if you've already done that before? A spread requirement change like this is less impactful on both the newbie playerbase and mapper perspectives, but also generally safer.
Halfslashed
I definitely agree with the idea of scaling spread requirements based on song length. Right now I think it is pretty silly how a few seconds determine whether or not you need to map 5 difficulties or just one.

Personally I think that this will increase the amount of content we have due to the lack of longer songs as of now, despite decreasing the amount of content for newbies available in the long run.

However, I think if we went with this, a compromise with people that think this would reduce content too much would be having an insane difficulty required for drain time over 5 minutes, and reserving single difficulty mapsets for songs above 10 minutes, as has been previously proposed.

Overall, reducing the effort gap between approval length and spreads is a good idea, hopefully we can solidify the details in this thread.
sdafsf
the argument that spreads shouldnt start at insane is kinda odd the more i think about it because marathon maps dont need a spread at all. also the appeal for longer maps rises with player skill (at least thats how it was when i learned the game). also what you guys have to think about is that right now 2 diff spreads are already a thing if the hardest diff is hard or normal. if with ucs proposal a 7* for example was made you would still need 3-4 diffs for a reasonable spread with insane as the lowest diff, so the hardest <5min 2 diffs spreads would be like a high 5* and an insane diff witch does sound that unreasonable to me.

i would still love to see some number about number of plays on beatmaps for each diff and song length so the "majority of players" argument can properly be
talked about
kwk
im bad at excel but draw your own conclusions


taken from t/631455
pkhg
i dont agree with getting rid of low diffs at any lenght but if i had to choose id go with what AncuL proposed
Nao Tomori
i agree with the scaling length thing. this eliminates the issue of normals not being mapped at all, while also lowering the amount of necessary effort spent on diffs that will be 1/4 as popular as the higher ones. this effort is a huge factor in why people don't map long songs.

i've noticed that almost all the people against this are the minority who are completely fine with churning out massive sets by themselves or finding gds if needed; i think that you guys don't realize how hard that is for most "normal" mappers who do not have 3-4 years of mapping experience and integration into the community necessary to find bns and gds for such long things. that breed of "normal" mapper makes up the vast majority of the mapping community too, so i really believe it's safe to say that the increase in 3:30+ songs will be quite large if the barriers to making the spreads for them are lowered. this will counteract the fact that quite literally 75%+ of ranked maps are under 1:30 nowadays.
pkhg
im not exactly against this i just want this to be less lenient than what uc proposed
i barely map so i dont think this rule will affect me but im still taking in consideration casual players who like the song but arent skilled enough to play harder stuff. i experienced taht when i was new :(
Saturnalize
It's only a minimum requirements for a map to get rank. If you really that carz about making a fullspread for 4+mins then there's no ine stopping you. The minimum requirements need to be reworked and the reason are already well stated by many user up there. However, I'm jot against fullspread either, it's harder to find modder for it than to map it after all.

Still on topic, ban mp3 manipulation to loophole duration requirements because it's literally ridiculous
Okoratu

Saturnalize wrote:

It's only a minimum requirements for a map to get rank. If you really that carz about making a fullspread for 4+mins then there's no ine stopping you. The minimum requirements need to be reworked and the reason are already well stated by many user up there. However, I'm jot against fullspread either, it's harder to find modder for it than to map it after all.

Still on topic, ban mp3 manipulation to loophole duration requirements because it's literally ridiculous
i tried to do that it didnt get received well :D
Stefan

CXu wrote:

I'd say add a minimum amount of diffs required for the spread as well in some way, so say minimum 3 diffs for maps <4:00, and minimum 2 diffs for maps <5:00. (Not sure how this would affect those Easy+Normal sets only though).

If you're mapping a 4min ballad you can get away with only a hard since Insane/Extra might not fit well with the song, and Easy/Normal aren't required.
This should make it so that easier difficulties for newer players are still created whenever slower songs that would fit lower diffs better are mapped as well.

I second this option so much. It's by far more flexible and better than making thing easier by default.



Okoratu wrote:

Saturnalize wrote:

Still on topic, ban mp3 manipulation to loophole duration requirements because it's literally ridiculous


i tried to do that it didnt get received well :D

still sad people prefer to put less time on their creations than making it available for a fairly larger audience :/
LwL
Just like probably everyone else I've thought about this for forever, and it definitely seems necessary to have less of a hard cutoff at 5 minutes where the workload goes from potentially huge to low.

Though I share the concerns about making longer songs too inaccessible for newer players, so my personal idea of this has always been "Maps >4:00 and <5:00 need to have at least two difficulties, one of which must be a Hard or below". If we want to expand this to 3 minute maps, same thing with three diffs and maybe additionally set the requirement of a somewhat even spread but allowing it to be with only 3 diffs (to avoid N-H-7*), though there doesn't seem to be that much of a shortage of maps in that range so I'm not sure it necessarily needs changing.

A rule like this would also make banning mp3 extensions much more reasonable fwiw, since adding 50 seconds of R3 music box will no longer mean you need to map/get GDs for 20 minutes of drain time less. I've always been in favor of that under the condition of a more gradual spread requirement based on length.
Kyuunex
just my thoughts, i like this idea.

there has been many times when I simply decided to not map a song because it was 4 minutes and 55 seconds long and i dislike the idea of editing the song.

as for new players, i think they would get really bored of playing a 4 minute beatmap, i know i would. so i see no problems here. tv size beatmapsets are regularly made so i doubt they will ran out of beatmaps to play.
Asaiga

Okoratu wrote:

Saturnalize wrote:

Still on topic, ban mp3 manipulation to loophole duration requirements because it's literally ridiculous
i tried to do that it didnt get received well :D
I would like to know the final conclusion about this. So you know, I can avoid attempting an Artist / R3 Music Box-map : )
At the same time any map comes after the mp3 extension ban won't be qualified.
Saturnalize
To make my post relevant to the thread:
I myself also support CXu's idea regarding spread requirements that are dependant by mp3 length (duration) and speed (bpm). It is strongly advised for the set to be 1 level apart and not a duplicating level tier, though (for example, if an mp3 reached 3 diffs minimum, it should not be ENI, ENX, EHI, EHX, NHX, and NIX. EXX, EEX, and any kind of stupid thing like that is also not advised) to ensure the curve of the map doesn't go wild (also EXX is stupid and probably one of those X diff is GD)

Also:

Stefan wrote:

Okoratu wrote:

Saturnalize wrote:

Still on topic, ban mp3 manipulation to loophole duration requirements because it's literally ridiculous


i tried to do that it didnt get received well :D

still sad people prefer to put less time on their creations than making it available for a fairly larger audience :/


Doesn't matter if the mapper is good therefore the map is good because I'm the bootlicker and want to make my god feel proud and accepted uwu
AncuL

CXu wrote:

I'd say add a minimum amount of diffs required for the spread as well in some way, so say minimum 3 diffs for maps <4:00, and minimum 2 diffs for maps <5:00. (Not sure how this would affect those Easy+Normal sets only though).

If you're mapping a 4min ballad you can get away with only a hard since Insane/Extra might not fit well with the song, and Easy/Normal aren't required.
This should make it so that easier difficulties for newer players are still created whenever slower songs that would fit lower diffs better are mapped as well.

i don't remember correctly whether there's a rule regarding difficulty count, but i'm sure that the only length appropriate for a one-diff map is 5 minutes and above. 5 minutes of length and below still needs to make at least 2 diffs. therefore it isn't valid and the mapper still needs to map another diff (whether it's normal, another hard, or insane) for the map to be able to be rankable
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