Really like what io proposed

Not stating a position one way or the other, but consider these factors:

- The prevalence of PP mapping shows that players are willing to go out of their way to create maps that garner high playcount. Similar logic applies to low diffs.

- Replying to Noffy's comment, I think most of the new maps being pushed during the trial period wouldn't be old maps with full spreads, they would be maps by mappers who map for graveyard and prioritize mapping for themselves that are revived in order to push for rank now that spread requirements are relaxed.

Noffy wrote:

I can't bring myself to agree with bringing it to other modes. osu!mania is part of a very broad VSRG genre, many players come from and can also play very similar VSRG games, changing the learning curve and general approach.

I agree that this is a concern that separates this thread from the other, maybe not for taiko ig but for standard and catch at least. same as my comments in the other thread, I argue that taking this into account can support this change, bc not requiring mappers to invest minimum effort into lower diffs should improve the quality of those that are left going forward, providing better experience/introduction/etc for newer players that will be using osu! as their first exposure to this kind of game.

Noffy wrote:

An issue on other level making game communities where custom levels are a thing is the majority of user made content will cater to the harder end, since they get into making stuff after playing for a while.

This can be frustrating and restrictive from the player's point of view and reduce their available song choice significantly, especially for osu! Which is entirely community content.

I think this is a bigger problem for osu! and osu!catch which don't have much for other active and equivalent games that players can additionally use to learn from. I think it would be unhealthy going forward as many more songs would be left without accessible options.

also from other thread I have a hard time seeing where reduction of song choice would impede on accessibility for newer players. I don't buy (from what other ppl said in other thread) that there's a significant population that comes to osu! with such rigid expectations that they're disappointed right away by not being able to play particular songs. even if that were the case, it's unlikely that mappers motivated by satisfying popular demand would give up that opportunity just because the rules changed, so naturally the individual songs most likely to be singled out by search would still be most likely to have been mapped. I think.

I'd get the concern if we were talking about shrinking a small library, but this is on the scale of tens of thousands vs. thousands of maps in coming years. not to mention that existing maps aren't going anywhere.

the extension of this thought I can agree with is that some general variety is nice to have, but I don't think that is in jeopardy by removing spread requirement

Noffy wrote:

The current spread rules are pretty balanced as they are to account for amount of work involved and the endurance of newer players not being able to play longer songs as well to start with, doesn't seem like something that needs changing IMO

this is with the assumption that the extra required work is helping anything which I don't think is fair. apart from having more songs available like mentioned above, nobody is even trying to argue other upsides and nobody argued so far that the main/clear downsides are invalid.

is having more songs available at low difficulties really more valuable than supporting and expanding the involved community? can you be sure that this is a question of tradeoff in the first place, rather than a relic of the past that doesn't have positive effect today?

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Noffy wrote:

The thing about a trial period is unless it's extremely long most of the maps going for rank will have already existed and have spreads for the previous rules too, making it hard to see if it's actually accurate to long term reality.

It's not like they're gonna see the rule change and be like "oh gonna delete these diffs I was made to make"

things have a chance to get really unusual either way if this rule goes into effect, I don't think it's unlikely that we'd see a sudden wave of maps going for ranked that used to not be eligible just cuz the mapper didn't want to make a full set for it

"trial period" is questionable to me, i think it might be an unproductive way to gather thoughts in this situation because the end of that period will leave lots of mappers feeling like something was taken away from them, diverting focus to the "forced mapper work" part of this argument even tho that is not the only consideration

that said i dont have better alternative... besides treating this like normal rc and just removing the rules if consensus goes that way, which is what i want :^)

ok i argued only with what noffy said but its cuz she summarized everything to respond to sorry noffy i dont hate u

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other thoughts:

other RC rules are there to ideally promote a quality standard and technical requirements for the maps going into ranked. this set of rules does not do that, it mandates creating more maps in certain cases, which I don't think is what RC should be for. or what anything should be for. why are we forcing people to create stuff against their will just to make their other stuff eligible for exposure?

spread requirements apply to all mappers & mapsets currently but it doesn't require that to meet its end. they exist (according to people in these threads) to create choice and accessibility for players of lower difficulties, which does not have anything to do with the maps that mappers happen to be pushing through ranked, it was merely convenient to give mappers some homework since they'll probably do it in order to rank their sets. this is main reason I think the spread requirement setup is so ridiculous, it's offloading time and effort to other mappers for a passion project they don't even care about, and that their maps are not related to.

if you passionately believe that bare-minimum ENH diffs in volume help the game in some way, is there anything stopping you from building those yourself? if so, what justification do you have to move the responsibility to other people?

other important thing to consider that many people may not have thought about: spreads are an important vector of socialization. by forcing mappers that want to rank a map to either suffer a lot alone or talk to others and presumably ask for/trade GDs, mapping communities are developed as a result. spreads are a nuisance, but they're one that, if removed to streamline things, could result in the game feeling more dead as a whole.

also disagree with ioe's proposal, we should be discouraging mapping already oversaturated songs

In line with what I've been pointing out in the OG thread a lot of factors that result in the proposal seem to be mania-specific at the very least ("People are already having a bunch of charts they created in other games on their backlog", "Having a strict Ranking Criteria rules and guidelines for lower diffs is not beneficial on many occasions", etc.) and I... don't think the situation can be generalized into other modes just like that.

In a sense I'm okay with IOE's idea of relaxing the spread requirements further I guess, but on the idea of completely quote-on-quote "abolishing" the spread requirement I don't think that would be a good notion for the game going forward.

Niva wrote:

I'm okay with IOE's idea of relaxing the spread requirements further tho, but for completely quote-on-quote "abolishing" the spread requirement I don't think that would be a good idea for the game at large going forward.

Absolutely agree with this^

agree with uber, clayton and io wholeheartedly

i. did you come to osu expecting a certain song with low difficulties? if yes you probably wouldnt be playing now because not every song people come to play (especially popular western songs on a very western-centric game) are even mapped, let alone ranked with low difficulties. Removing the opportunity for beginners to play certain songs is not really a valid point because you could argue that opportunity did not exist in the first place for 99% of songs, nobody comes to osu with rigid ideas of the songs they want to play and if they are not available they leave; and even if it were the case it would just be natural selection at that point and that is not the mentality needed for a rhythm game.

ii. i believe some spreads just seem very bloated or are unnecessary, i feel like we should be promoting foward-thinking in mapping which is why spreads are a massive burden. there is no reason to have a 2* on a 9* set because;
1) that map is not targetted at ALL for that level of difficulty, arguably the map was made to challenge and not accomodate
2) if a song is able to fit and be represented accurately by a 9*, arguably there will be a significant amount of absent song representation on a 2* that will start to balance on a thread of logic, it eventually just won't make sense

perhaps we could tweak spreads to make them fit 'brackets' of difficulty instead of specific difficulty requirements (sort of similar to quaver), for example if you had a 5* map it perhaps would require a normal, but a 7* would only need an insane. we can still have accessability for the right crowds and for the right intentions this way.


NOTE: if we all stopped mapping low diffs from today there is still enough content to make it to an intermediate level (4*~), we should really be focusing on these set-centre core diffs rather than lowest diffs because realistically you spend a week on normal difficulties and move on, that journey off of insanes is the majority of your osu career, these diffs are arguably more important to keep.

normal difficulties generally garner higher playcounts on certain types of maps (e.g anime tv size maps), i dont understand who sputnik's normal diff is appealing to with that genre of song which is obviously not targetted at players of that level (and this goes for more maps/songs that are styled like this and are even longer)


just my two pence ^^

Hold on, have an idea here

What if we further reduced spread requirements based off drain time?

Purely hypothetically (literally just throwing random draintimes out there), 0:00-1:59 could be Normal minimum, 2:00-3:29 could be hard minimum, 3:30-4:14 could be insane minimum, and 4:15+ could be any diff

Something along these lines would still keep a steady supply of lower diffs, but would help alleviate some of the pressure for making lower difficulties.

Finding the right drain times for each minimum required diff is a bit of work but pretty sure we can just tweak what we have right now.

ok but that assumes what we have right now doesnt work fine. i think what we have right now works fine; what makes you think it doesn't? my argument is that we have some of the most ranked maps ever in the history of osu in the current system, and if the spread rules were overly restrictive, that we wouldn't (and would be suffering a content drought, like mania seems to be)

im leaning for spread requirement removal in standard specifically but idrc if it isn't removed either considering these factors:

1. most players that play for more than 5 maps play [Normal] level difficulties for like a week or so at most before moving on to [Hard] for the next month or so (though I could be wrong, mainly from what ive observed from players who i knew before osu who joined after me, and players that i randomly stumbled upon that were just starting out)
2. players at this level are usually just searching up songs they like (and not looking at the latest ranked maps) to play more than anything, the chances of such a song they like being recently ranked are pretty low intuitively speaking in that regard already unless they are looking for the latest pop single that got released around the same time they started playing osu or something
3. theres actually a ridiculous amount of [Normal] level diffs and this diff range has the highest density of all difficulty ranges in standard, to where u could might as well equal the amount of content to the equivalence of like 17 other paywalled games similar to osu
4. most if not all song tastes have essentially more than enough low diffs from the past 14 years already to get players good enough to move on to the next difficulty level
5. mainly functioning now as just barring maps that are fine for rank aside for spread from ranked... which to be fair doesn't really matter much anymore considering the very high flow rate of content currently

i dont think spread req rules are necessary at all in the current circumstances of osu today for those reasons, its not broken or really negatively (or positively) affecting anything in standard so idrc either way, dont think it needs to be changed from currently or anything but i dont think this whole discussion of "accessibility" has any value anymore

BUT i do worry about mappers with the mindset similar to Sotarks and the like that dont give a shit about many things speedranking 342589349583 tv size 7 stars tho, thatd look kinda disgusting and i think if i were to see that when i open Ranked back in like late 2014 when i was just an insane diff player i would be like "this is dumb as fuck"

so maybe if there could be a way to ensure some dumbassery like that wouldnt happen id be Fully on board with it, but yea (also dunno how many ppl share this sentiment)

(Also i do think a trial period is useless considering having a long enough period to get new maps in would just basically be like as if keeping the change forever and not having a long enough period would tell u nothing considering how many of them are older maps)

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Tho I think it'd just be better to have an auto low diff generator for the modes if we really wanna still be scared about something that isnt an issue/concern anymore (accessibility) L:ol . Tho the point about affecing the social environment of osu is interesting tho, might be worth looking at if this is going to stay seriously considered

I agree mania but not for other modes.

i don't know if other modes has same issue but mania having trouble trying to get hard content, we already have lots of lower contents so it will going to the right direction. considering that we got only 14 high contents (above 6*) in this year it's really poor. but it would be nice to have a middle ground instead of removing spread, i think we'll need another discussion if mania decided to having a specific spread rule.

Kawawa wrote:

i think we'll need another discussion if mania decided to having a specific spread rule.

I'm not sure if it's what you're referring to and I'm pretty sure you've seen this already, but there's already a mania-specific thread, it would be great if you could share your thoughts there.

VINXIS wrote:

most players that play for more than 5 maps play [Normal] level difficulties for like a week or so at most before moving on to [Hard] for the next month or so (though I could be wrong, mainly from what I've observed from players who I knew before osu who joined after me, and players that I randomly stumbled upon that were just starting out)

It's bad enough IMO that Easy diffs basically don't even get mapped anymore. While the above^ is pretty much spot on, there are many players (not even just score farmers) who enjoy playing through low diffs and full spreads, while at a higher skill level. Not all of osu! is pushing skill/getting better. Playing at a level you are already proficient at or lower is perfectly enjoyable (at least with the right mindset I suppose).

VINXIS wrote:

theres actually a ridiculous amount of [Normal] level diffs and this diff range has the highest density of all difficulty ranges in standard, to where u could might as well equal the amount of content to the equivalence of like 17 other paywalled games similar to osu

VINXIS wrote:

most if not all song tastes have essentially more than enough low diffs from the past 14 years already to get players good enough to move on to the next difficulty level

Yeah I'm pretty sure 50% of all ranked o!std maps are 0-3.99* from what I've seen, however that doesn't mean that players don't want new low diffs, to keep things fresh, or on new songs/genres that come out etc. For example, my music taste has really only been mapped in the past year or so, there hasn't been much of it around until now, meaning there's not many low diffs for them either.

vernonlim wrote:

Kawawa wrote:

i think we'll need another discussion if mania decided to having a specific spread rule.

I'm not sure if it's what you're referring to and I'm pretty sure you've seen this already, but there's already a mania-specific thread, it would be great if you could share your thoughts there.

oh thank you so much i forgot this link

I disagree

VINXIS wrote:

most if not all song tastes have essentially more than enough low diffs from the past 14 years already to get players good enough to move on to the next difficulty level

Removing low diff requirements from ranking criteria would remove innovation from low diffs since only old normals are available.

Mapsets are supposed to provide a coherent package of content to the ranked section. There is no need to change the ranking criteria to handhold mappers who can't be arsed to make low diffs or ask 3 friends to make low diffs for them.

I don't see arguments why the ranked section would improve with relaxing of the spread requirements. Difficulties that can be ranked with relaxed spread requirements can also be ranked with the current system, provided that proper low diffs are added.

Even doing a trial period harms the ranked section forever because some mapsets will get ranked that do not form a coherent package of content just like the instarank mapsets from 2007.

Castagne wrote:

Removing low diff requirements from ranking criteria would remove innovation from low diffs since only old normals are available.

people who were never interested in mapping low diffs would stop mapping them, and people who are would continue. does that not leave a higher portion of low diff mappers left who could "innovate"? where r u seeing "innovation" done by ppl who wouldn't make these maps in the first place without a rule requiring it?

Castagne wrote:

Mapsets are supposed to provide a coherent package of content to the ranked section.

I'm also curious where you find many "coherent" mapsets spanning down to low diffs these days, part of the reason I'm very supportive of this change is that the default minimum-effort low diffs made due to requirement hardly ever feel belonging in their mapsets to me to begin with

Castagne wrote:

There is no need to change the ranking criteria to handhold mappers who can't be arsed to make low diffs or ask 3 friends to make low diffs for them.

nobody is saying it's so much effort and they want to escape some responsibility like this. the point of these threads is to reconsider the pros and cons of these rules that have been with osu for so long that the scene has almost entirely changed. you're never going to be open minded about changes if your reaction is to attack views of the discussion that aren't even present

Castagne wrote:

I don't see arguments why the ranked section would improve with relaxing of the spread requirements.

my argument about that is that it'd do away with the bottom denominator of low diff maps that are made with min. effort for the requirement alone, other ppl said things too though, it's all in this thread and some in mania one

Castagne wrote:

Difficulties that can be ranked with relaxed spread requirements can also be ranked with the current system, provided that proper low diffs are added.

that second part is the topic o_o

Disagree with the proposal but cba discussing why lol

whay song taste hasnt been mapped until the past year i can only really think of hyperpop (and that already has a shitton of low diffs too),

i Did say that players usually move on after like a week or so from normal level difficulty so dunno, thats still a shitload of content for hyperpoop consoomers

low diff innovation???? i dontr understand this one its not like low diffs can be innovative aside for in the perspective of spread progression/theming and even then ur not gonna see it from ppl that just get random ppl to gd low diffs cuz they r lazy asf, not like the people that are going to map low diffs are going to stop either

the reasons i was listing were about why i think the rule isnt doing shit not why the rule is breaking shit, removing it doesnt improve or damage ranked from how i see it, and juet having a low diff generator is best i think

easies are still mapped to a decent extent too, iduno why we're assuming spreads just wont exist doesnt seem like the right assumption to make

One of the reasons of low diffs is to demonstrate mapping and modding expertise (at least in standard). Most new mappers don't map low diffs since it's much easier to map a difficulty where you don't have to be aware of the ranking criteria. Experienced mappers can create amazing high diffs, but new mappers just have to make something playable.

From a nominating point of view, a set without low diffs means that the nominating BNs were not tested on their ability to mod low diffs. From a mapping point of view, this means that the mapper is able to create maps without limitations but may not understand the nature of low diffs.

Since higher diffs allow for more freedom, the quality of higher diffs tend to be lower than lower diffs. BNs are more willing to nominate lower quality high diffs due to the effort required to make them (object count, complexity, etc.).

Project Railgun wrote:

From a nominating point of view, a set without low diffs means that the nominating BNs were not tested on their ability to mod low diffs. From a mapping point of view, this means that the mapper is able to create maps without limitations but may not understand the nature of low diffs.

there is a thing called the 'bn application process' that goes over this, don't worry! you wont be added to the bng without understanding of lower difficulties!

lol

proposed RC wrote:

If the highest difficulty within a set is...

...an insane, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
...an extra, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
...an Extreme, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

or

proposed RC wrote:

If the highest difficulty within a set is...

...4.5~, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
...5.5~, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
...6.5, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

this approach to having bracketed spreads is a much better approach and helps tackle most qualms people have with it now, with this you are able to have a ranged audience access your maps, whilst appealing to that specific audience, this will help push forward the agenda of mapping higher difficulties as maps slowly progess into becoming harder and harder, this will make the burden on both BNs and mappers for mapping higher diffuclties much less.

Some maps are targetted generally at higher levels of expertise, this is fine. Can we stop breaking the mappers intention by forcing them to adhere to lower levels of play? if for example, we had a 9* map going for ranked, and there would be a difficulty for each star up to normal, that would require the map to have 8 difficulties. With my proposed change, we would only need to see such map with a 4-5* lowest, which better targets this set at higher levels of play whilst encouraging and removing the burden for those who want to push harder maps that test the limits.

Are you really for keeping normal maps to hinder the progression of higher-difficulty mapping and a higher level of play?

I see a lot of misconceptions from people who think requiring low diffs isn't necessary, it probably comes from the belief that low diffs are not as valuable as higher diffs but this is fundamentally wrong and I'll explain why.

1. Low diffs do not only exist to satisfy beginners' needs. Believe it or not, but there are a lot of highly skilled players who enjoy playing Easy, Normal and Hard diffs. If spreads no longer require these difficulties, a large portion of players will have less content to enjoy. Only catering to those who mainly play Insane/Extra diffs isn't fair, maps should be made for as many people as possible to be enjoyed.

2. Low diffs are crucial for the growth and longevity of the game. I feel like many people are underestimating the importance of players' experience when they first start playing osu!. Having a big variety of maps and songs to choose from is essential so that everyone can find something they like. And no, just because thousands of ranked low diffs exist already, doesn't mean that we don't need more. A decreasing number of newly ranked difficulties in this range would result in stagnating variety and an even bigger discrepancy between song choice for low diffs and high diffs than there already is. And despite what people are saying, many genres and/or languages are underrepresented in the ranked section. There might be some maps for almost any music taste, but having more is definitely preferable. Also, new songs would have a much lower chance to have low diffs included in the mapset and this is a big deal because most people are hyped about new songs from their favorite artists or TV series. Another thing to keep in mind is that the number of new players who join is constantly growing, making them an increasingly important demographic. Let's also not forget that not everyone progresses past the Easy/Normal/Hard skill level as not everyone will continue playing the game for weeks or months or years, so even if it only takes a short amount of time to move on to Insane+, many never get there, meaning that these Easy/Normal/Hard diffs shaped their entire experience of the game.

3. Mappers having no time/energy/motivation to map low diffs is not a good reason for removing the spead rules. Outsourcing this "work" by getting guest difficulties is usually not a problem because there are more than enough mappers willing to map them (at least in standard, this might be different in other game modes like mania). Any map can get a rankable spread without much extra effort. But I think assuming that mappers view spreads as only extra work is not right to begin with, for many it's enjoyable to map several diffs or working with other mappers on a set.

4. Low diffs aren't necessarily lower quality just because people don't put as much effort into mapping them. Quality mostly comes down to understanding the concepts of mapping these diffs and having the necessary skills/experience. Effort may also have an impact but if someone is good at mapping they can still create a good map without trying, the same applies to higher diffs though. The main reason why low diffs are often not very good is because many mappers never develop the skills required to make a good map and because there's little to no quality control from modders and BNs, it's a whole different issue.

5. It's not necessary to make a trial period without spread rules. Just make a poll to ask mappers if they would continue to make spreads and one to ask BNs if they would nominate maps that don't have spreads.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

5. It's not necessary to make a trial period without spread rules. Just make a poll to ask mappers if they would continue to make spreads and one to ask BNs if they would nominate maps that don't have spreads.

Such poll would demonstrate intentions from a select sample size at the current moment, but that would not be completely indicative of what will actually happen with time passed. Polls are great to gauge thoughts and opinions, but not great to predict how entire dynamic systems will function.

I definitely think this is a good idea for mania as the reason it was brought up is because charters from other games werent able to get their stuff uploaded on osu due to upload limitations, as they werent ranking stuff to expand it, mainly because they'd have to add to a project they already considered finished to make rankable here. Allowing these charts to get ranked would expand the amount and types of content people would have access to and put more good maps into ranked.

In the other modes completly removing this is probably not a great idea as many have pointed out, however maybe consider discussing if relaxing the time cutoffs a bit would be at all beneficial, like was proposed at first in the mania thread. Im sure alot of people have been turned off of ranking some 3:30 songs because they'd have to map like 8 difficulties to rank their top diff idea. Though I think the issue there is the rule about diff gaps, why do we need so many high diffs to bridge anyway, they often just end up really similar, and most of the reasons we need low diffs dont really apply to the second extra in a set, peoole who can play that are already very invested in the game.

Also call me antisocial but I dont really agree with the whole just get GD's sentiment, since the effort required to do that can be very high for some people, especially if their song is difficult to map low diffs for. Not everybody is a social butterfly and it seems the beatmap projects forum isnt very reliable.

abraker wrote:

Such poll would demonstrate intentions from a select sample size at the current moment, but that would not be completely indicative of what will actually happen with time passed. Polls are great to gauge thoughts and opinions, but not great to predict how entire dynamic systems will function.

i find a poll to still be more feasible than a trial period because of the issue noffy previously brought up. this is exacerbated by the fact that maps aimed for rank probably take longer to rank in mania compared to standard (don't have data to back this up but i don't think it's too unreasonable to think this). i think a poll would be a good compromise between the insight it'd provide and how quickly it can be done in comparison. at the very least this could be done to ask BNs if they'd nominate maps without full spreads considering it's not too hard to do.

Scotty wrote:

at the very least this could be done to ask BNs if they'd nominate maps without full spreads considering it's not too hard to do.

isn't this a meaningless poll though, since the idea is to let mappers and BNs choose when they feel a spread is necessary?

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Serizawa Haruki wrote:

and an even bigger discrepancy between song choice for low diffs and high diffs than there already is

just lol, this is all backwards. there are currently way more mapsets including low diffs than high diffs. even if we want to make a (probably baseless) assumption that something abt the nature of mapping high diffs yields more song variety for the same amt of mapsets, it's not enough to cast aside the data here:

just looking at osu! mode, Ranked, # of mapsets including these difficulty ranges:

SR range | Name  | Count
---------+-------+------
   < 2   | E     | 12906
   < 2.7 | (E)N  | 18076
   < 4   | (EN)H | 19118
  >= 4   | I(X+) | 14571
  >= 5.3 | X+    |  6441
  >= 6   |       |  2679
  >= 6.5 |       |  1118

and the median SR included in mapsets is about 3.36.

so I call BS on that "discrepancy" you're feeling, that actually goes the opposite way.

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I don't know if I want to spend time responding to rest of Serizawa post cuz it'd just be repeating my earlier post... try to respond to what ppl r saying instead of proposing words like new argument and waiting for others to repeat themselves

You do realize that the reason why so many ranked low diffs exist is because of all the older maps that don't have Insane/Extra diffs because they weren't really a thing back then (and if Insane diffs were included in a set, they were typically less difficult than nowadays due to difficulty inflation)? Also, a lot of Insane diffs for slow songs are below 4* so keep in mind that star rating alone isn't reliable.

You need to look at more recent data, but that's not even necessary because the current spread rules already tell you that such a discrepancy does in fact exist *nowadays* for longer songs as they don't require Normal/Hard diffs for songs above 3:30 and 4:15 respectively. It might not be a big deal now, but if the spread rules are relaxed further or removed entirely this would worsen the situation significantly as it would extend to shorter songs too.

Also I didn't quote any specific posts because I wanted to address the most common arguments used by several people.

I dont get it is the point about there being more higher diffs than lower diffs recently because thats not true either when u look at 2019 + 2020 https://i.imgur.com/ohHbdX2.png


WHYY is accessibility even sitll a talking poiint i doint undwerstand

it's very easy for me to imagine a scenario in which a new player finds a map of a recent op they liked & reacts negatively when they can't find a mapset that includes low difficulties for them

this is fine from time to time (marathons, over 3:30 songs, etc.) but it feels unreasonable if a decent portion of new tv size maps won't have low diffs

i don't think we can rely on the tons and tons of beginner content we already have here because a lot of the appeal in osu's ranked section is that it has a nearly constant stream of new songs and maps (largely) made for the whole playerbase. even if i'm not super involved in that space, having a lot of the op's from each anime season mapped and ranked is really fun and cool! and it's cool that new players can also take part in this!

however i am in full support of relaxing (or removing altogether) spread requirements for songs that already have ranked sets - forcing new renditions of songs to have another set of low diffs seems pointless to me

i wish there was a way to know how much of an effect axing spread requirements would actually have - i may be overestimating its importance idk

general quality of low diffs will increase if only the people who want to map them map them, out of interest for it rather than a necessity. I saw some random point about innovation and you're not gonna get innovation by forcing people to map low diffs as FILLER. because that's what forced spread mapping typically results in - FILLER.

looking into data relevant to the prior spread changes (with the flexible lengths), and assuming the same will apply for a "no spread requirements" rule, YES the quantity of these diffs is going to drop (by about half), but nowhere near as much as some of the people in this thread are trying to tell you

Solitaire wrote:

it's very easy for me to imagine a scenario in which a new player finds a map of a recent op they liked & reacts negatively when they can't find a mapset that includes low difficulties for them

although tbf a player is only in this stage for like,, 2 weeks

i think something similar to this already exists but as long as there's an easy way for players to get a whole bunch of mapsets that have low diffs through the site or the client (maybe highlighting the "recommended difficulty" option the first time a user enters the beatmap search page) people will find enough recent content that interests them and fits their difficulty level

like when i play a rhythm game in an arcade i'm never mad that my favorite song isn't on there lol

Not everyone can proceed to Insane+ in a few weeks. We should keep in mind that most players posting here are much more than just regular players. We have devoted a lot of time to improving our skills.

Many people who have never played other rhythm games (or other video games in general) typically need weeks just to understand the very basics of the game, and many people just don't have enough time to practice. I know many of my friends who still can't play Hard diffs properly after years of occasional playing. Removing spread rules means all of these players now have to play very old maps with old songs only. There are more than enough 'regular' players like that.

Do we want to let many potential new players feel ignored and quit, and think that this game is only for talented players?

I also highly doubt if there are even a few mappers who are willing to map lower diffs "when they feel necessary", like for most of the songs. Of course, there are very calm songs that many people do consider lower diffs proper, but we don't want new players to play such songs only, right?

Doyak wrote:

Do we want to let many potential new players feel ignored and quit, and think that this game is only for talented players?

I also highly doubt if there are even a few mappers who are willing to map lower diffs "when they feel necessary", like for most of the songs. Of course, there are very calm songs that many people do consider lower diffs proper, but we don't want new players to play such songs only, right?

no and no, stop doomposting

see community/forums/posts/8313322 too. and viewed a different way, this is more of a potential benefit for new players than anything, said in other posts.

VINXIS wrote:

WHYY is accessibility even sitll a talking poiint i doint undwerstand

4real it's not relevant to this at all, i regret entertaining it in my own arguments

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readin through more of the thread again I can see the argument of like "well it's not causing any problems", since I think it's true the existence of spread req hasn't been a hot topic for a long time and it can't be easily proven that lots of mappers r avoiding ranking maps due to it alone (unlike, in mania) (but its also big assumption to say it isn't happening).

I'm curious abt these things i said earlier still though, which don't seem to have any response (basically the "other thoughts" part at the bottom of community/forums/posts/8311690)

1. does it make sense that RC is telling you to make more maps in this case, rather than just set criteria for the maps you already made or plan to make?
2. assuming we do want a way to force the creation of low diff maps, does it make sense that the people tasked for the job are the ones who are already offering to contribute (otherwise-)rankable maps of higher diffs? why specifically them, out of all who are capable?

this situation just feels so dumb when you step away from it all and think abt the complete nonsensicality of who is required to do what. imagine if i set awesome sudokus, went to upload them to logic masters deutschland, and they told me I couldn't submit them because I didn't also set unrelated easier sudokus too or some shit. it's ridiculous for a community-driven content system

if some of y'all really cannot be convinced that the accessibility argument is BS and don't want to personally take responsibility for what u think helps the game, can't we at least let the main part of ranked be more organic and move the Content Requirements crap to something like mappersguild that has already proven ppl will go out of their way to do "work" mapping lol

agree w/ clayton

what is the doom posting. the data we looked at show that about 10-15% of mappers don't do the bare minimum. which means that if spread rules are loosened about 10% of mappers will map spreads and the rest will map their single diff insane / extra on all their songs and rank it that way. it's not doom posting to acknowledge that new songs should have easy difficulties for new players.

to your points about doing more work - yes, it makes sense for rc to tell you to make more maps. rc sets a bare minimum standard for a ranked section that contributes to the overall health of the game. low diffs are included in that overall health as a game with a greatly reduced amount of lower difficulties will fail to attract new players as songs they want to play are not mapped for their level or maps at their level are sparse enough that they can't find new content (relevant for taiko and ctb, not as much standard).
yes, it makes sense to task people who want to rank their sets with adhering to the ranking criteria. should we also be complaining about requiring hitsounds, or the inexorable burden of finding a background and combo colors, or having to get the correct artist? anyone capable can make a low diff - that's why many people make low diff gds! no mapper is required to spend the requisite 30 minutes making a compliant low diff themselves as they can find gds for them. however, including low diffs on sets is, as i previously mentioned, important for the long term health of the game.

what i don't understand is why you guys are arguing from the position that the ranked section is currently being stifled due to spread limitations as that is very blatantly not the case in non-mania modes, which is also why nobody (relevant) complains about spread. you can see that the number of sets and number of high difficulty sets both are extremely high compared to prior years due to the already-loosened-to-reasonable-levels spread requirements.

to your point about only voluntary normals being made somehow being better for new players - i challenge you to point out ways in which the average normal or hard somehow stands out from current "unneeded" normals. since they're compliance diffs, they should be noticeably worse? but they aren't because normals and hards are so limited in their song representation ability that realistically, a normal that complies with RC and that BNs are willing to nominate (aka isn't so awful that it can't be ranked, which is extremely easy to do) is completely indistinguishable whether or not the mapper "actually wanted to make it" or is just doing it to rank their map. the main factor to evaluate its quality, then, is whether or not it exists in an RC-compliant manner at all - which obviously, compliance difficulties do. and even if voluntary normals were a bit better (which i strongly dispute), there's no way that a 80% drop in the rate of normals getting ranked could possibly be overall beneficial.

one should analyze the benefits spread requirements similarly to something like environmental regulations - they prevent negative externalities (few or no new low difficulties (logical outcome of removing spread rules, shown by drop in low diffs mapped on long songs after spread rule changes) = long term decay of gamemode because less new players get to play new songs they want to). those regulations have to be set in a manner that doesn't prohibit businesses from operating (= mappers from ranking sets) but still prevent pollution (no low diffs + tons of *amazing* 6* tv size anime single diff sets). i strongly believe, as do many of my colleagues, that the current level of regulation is adequate. additionally, the biggest threshold for ranking is not making a set. it's finding bns. if the goal of these changes is to boost the number of ranked maps (which is already at an all time high) then targeting the modding and feedback process is a better avenue than simply removing low diffs from being required because some people are vehemently opposed to making them.

to sum it up in a concise political analogy - what we currently have is a taxpayer funded public transport system available to all to use. what you are suggesting is to cut that tax to instead require everyone to have a car and rely on charities to provide shuttle services to places the charities like going to, then pretending that those charity shuttles perform the same function and provide the same societal good as the public transport system previously in place. i'm sure you can appreciate why i and others firmly oppose that suggestion.

clayton wrote:

Doyak wrote:

Do we want to let many potential new players feel ignored and quit, and think that this game is only for talented players?

I also highly doubt if there are even a few mappers who are willing to map lower diffs "when they feel necessary", like for most of the songs. Of course, there are very calm songs that many people do consider lower diffs proper, but we don't want new players to play such songs only, right?

no and no, stop doomposting

see community/forums/posts/8313322 too. and viewed a different way, this is more of a potential benefit for new players than anything, said in other posts.

There's no way to prove how beneficial / disadvantageous to remove the rule since it hasn't happened yet. Yes, that could be a little extreme assumption, but it's totally a possible scenario which we should take in consideration when discussing a huge change in RC like this. I think Nao's post explains this point pretty well. Calling it a doompost and just telling me to stop doesn't help.

I'm strongly against dropping spread requirements altogether (or a trial period for that matter) but I think relaxing some requirements would be beneficial (at least for o!m). I'll focus more on the dropping part with my perspective as someone well acquainted with the mapping/charting scene of o!m equivalent games that never had spread requirements (or some equivalent rule to force the creation of easier content), and share some quick thoughts about potentially relaxing some requirements.



Lastly, as some extra comments. I won't pretend to not be biased on this matter, I have always been a fierce proponent of mappers/charters putting more effort into making more good accessible content for the playerbase at large and this also shows in the work I put forward myself in all the games I've contributed to. That being said, I'm also someone who values very hard stuff (in fact, people in the o!m community have known me more due to my hard maps featured in various o!m tournaments), and I know firsthand how painful it'd be to rank those due to existing RC.

Additionally, I don't think OP makes a good case for what is the so called consensus of the original o!m specific thread, a lot of posts in there were advocating for just relaxing spread requirements but were against dropping it altogether.

wafer wrote:

Hold on, have an idea here

What if we further reduced spread requirements based off drain time?

Purely hypothetically (literally just throwing random draintimes out there), 0:00-1:59 could be Normal minimum, 2:00-3:29 could be hard minimum, 3:30-4:14 could be insane minimum, and 4:15+ could be any diff

Something along these lines would still keep a steady supply of lower diffs, but would help alleviate some of the pressure for making lower difficulties.

Finding the right drain times for each minimum required diff is a bit of work but pretty sure we can just tweak what we have right now.

imo, i think 1:45, 2:45, and 3:30 for minimum ranges would work better

based on what i know:
rhythm game songs are around 2:00 but can deviate a bit, lower or higher
the shorter full-length songs seem to be around 3:00, can also deviate
the regular or longer full length songs are generally 3:30 and above

so i think the ranges of <1:45 for normal minimum, <2:45 for hard minimum, <3:30 for insane minimum, and no limits above 3:30 are more fitting