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[Proposal] Remove spread requirements in mania

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Total Posts
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abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
Topic Starter
abraker
Coming from mania specific discussions and osu! wide discussions concerning this topic, the consensus is that removing spreads will only benefit the osu!mania game mode.

Why this is important:
  1. Many good maps by various mappers are being left in graveyard because mappers refuse to map difficulties they don't feel like doing.
  2. Graveyard was never intended to be permanent storage
  3. Loved was never supposed to be a dump of maps that couldn't make it to ranked
  4. There is a concerning number of unranked maps being used in mania tournaments. See first bullet point as to why.
This aims to help solve those problems.

There are concerns that this may leave lower difficulties neglected. There is good reason to believe that will not happen due to the following reasons:
  1. It's still easier to rank lower difficulties than harder difficulties due to complexity. Ranking easy diffs also offers new mappers a good entry point to get into ranked mapping.
  2. There are BN that are concerned that easy diffs will be neglected. Then it begs to reason they would focus to nominate easy difficulties
  3. If you go to beatmap listing, you will be able to find maps that have full spreads and have their highest difficulty something a player would be able to do within the first month.
Now this is meant to be a trial period. This will be a thing for 6 months or so to see how it plays out. If it becomes apparent that this is causing more harm than good, it will be reversed.
___

current RC for reference

current RC wrote:

  1. All game modes within a beatmap must form a spread starting from the lowest difficulty level dictated by the song's drain time. For difficulties above the lowest required difficulty level, the spread cannot skip any difficulty levels and there cannot be any drastically large difficulty gaps between any two difficulties.
  2. If the drain time of each difficulty is...
    1. ...lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
    2. ...between 3:30 and 4:15, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
    3. ...between 4:15 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.
____

proposed RC wrote:

  1. All game modes within a beatmap must form a spread starting from the lowest difficulty level dictated by the song's drain time. For difficulties above the lowest required difficulty level, the spread cannot skip any difficulty levels and there cannot be any drastically large difficulty gaps between any two difficulties.
    1. osu!mania beatmaps do not require spreads. This is to allow for easier approachability to osu!mania mappers of different upbringings.
  1. If the drain time of each difficulty is...
    1. ...lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included applicable game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
    2. ...between 3:30 and 4:15, the lowest difficulty of each included applicable game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
    3. ...between 4:15 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included applicable game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.
Last edited by abraker , edited 10 times in total.
_underjoy
704 posts
Joined January 2013
_underjoy
Please do. That would allow infinitely many more interesting charts to be ranked much smoother and quicker.
Orca-
72 posts
Joined February 2016
Orca-
This won’t effect me or my maps but since I am a caring individual capable of empathy I agree! Honestly it’s long overdue.

(This is 100% shade btw, mapping discourse sucks and y’all know who you are)
Horrifying
237 posts
Joined January 2015
Horrifying
yeah i agree with underjoy 1000000%
Sydosys
Featured Artist
95 posts
Joined June 2020
Sydosys
PLEASE YES
Xnery
139 posts
Joined January 2017
Xnery
but my low effort obligatory throwaway lower diffs...!
Scotty
Nomination Assessment Team
267 posts
Joined October 2017
Scotty
personally i am still more in favor of relaxing the requirements rather than removing them entirely. besides the reasons mentioned in the original thread, i feel anti-meta keymodes would really suffer from this. anti meta keymodes have accessibility issues as is and i feel this would exacerbate this.
Rivals_7
Beatmap Nominator
2,978 posts
Joined July 2014
Rivals_7

Scotty wrote:

personally i am still more in favor of relaxing the requirements rather than removing them entirely. besides the reasons mentioned in the original thread, i feel anti-meta keymodes would really suffer from this. anti meta keymodes have accessibility issues as is and i feel this would exacerbate this.
should this removal be a thing only for 4K (+ 7K i guess?) then? but still mandatory for others? We already treated separate keymodes as "individual game modes" anyway. The OP sentence should probably add the clause that the spread requirement are for all but 4K.

also there is this sentence in the RC for those unaware:
Beatmap

Note: Each of osu!mania's key counts are considered individual game modes throughout this section.
Quenlla
Beatmap Nominator
124 posts
Joined July 2014
Quenlla
A change to spread requirements is more than due so this is highly welcomed.

Removing or relaxing spread requirements will lead to not only more quality higher-end ranked content, but also less throaway lower-end diffs in favor of more carefully crafted content in that part of the difficulty spectrum.

Nevertheless, I'd personally prefer a strong relaxation of the requirements rather than a straight up deletion. This allows to provide a more constant influx of maps that generally hook starting players into the game (anime TVSize, VSRG pools) and just like Scotty says, it helps keymodes that do suffer from more content starvation (anti-meta keymodes), something that does not happen in 4k and 7k. This last point could be solved by treating keymodes separately as Rivals says, though.

But of course, I prefer to remove the requirements completely than to keep them as they are now.
Last edited by Quenlla , edited 4 times in total.
Sydosys
Featured Artist
95 posts
Joined June 2020
Sydosys

Scotty wrote:

personally i am still more in favor of relaxing the requirements rather than removing them entirely. besides the reasons mentioned in the original thread, i feel anti-meta keymodes would really suffer from this. anti meta keymodes have accessibility issues as is and i feel this would exacerbate this.
I will say this has some merit to it, but I think we should see how this goes first. It could benefit anti-meta keymodes overall cause we could see more anti-meta maps get ranked, or it could possibly harm it, with only harder anti-meta maps getting ranked. However, my opinion is that overall we are severely lacking anti-meta maps in general, and I feel like the spread criteria being removed would lead to an increase in interesting and anti-meta maps overall, which I think is a good thing regardless of the difficulty of the maps.

Overall, I believe in more freedom to rank what you want as long as it's good, and I don't think we should be forcing people to make ez diffs for like Laur songs. I think there's a place for easy and normal diffs, but it should depend on the song itself and the style, not the length. We'll probably see plenty of easy, normal, and hard diffs in anti-meta keymodes, as generally people love to rank short, easy stuff, as it's usually lower effort, so I believe we'll still see a fair amount of easy maps.

Sorry for rambleing lol, didn't really organize my thoughts here and probably repeated a few things. Might revise later ig
AutotelicBrown
66 posts
Joined April 2014
AutotelicBrown
Gonna link to my post in the all modes discussion thread but yeah, I'm in favor of relaxing requirements but very against removing spread altogether as I don't see it leading to a net positive for the community at large.

My original and way more elaborated post: community/forums/posts/8313712
Furryswan
Elite Nominator
325 posts
Joined January 2017
Furryswan
Even if we just remove spread requirements, there will always be some new ranked map like most of the anime TV size, Vtuber music that has 1~3* only for new players.

Requiring lower diff spread for even some intense music just because the drain time won't be enough to pass EZ/NM/HD diff is absolutely blocking the advantage, I'd say.
[Ping]
498 posts
Joined April 2015
[Ping]

[LS]Ham wrote:

I will say this has some merit to it, but I think we should see how this goes first. It could benefit anti-meta keymodes overall cause we could see more anti-meta maps get ranked, or it could possibly harm it, with only harder anti-meta maps getting ranked. However, my opinion is that overall we are severely lacking anti-meta maps in general, and I feel like the spread criteria being removed would lead to an increase in interesting and anti-meta maps overall, which I think is a good thing regardless of the difficulty of the maps.
I don't fully agree with this. I think anti-meta won't have any difference considering it is already a norm (from what I've seen in 5k and 10k) to make spreads for the map. The problem with that is lack of BNs capable of checking but that's another topic.

Regarding more interests in anti-meta, sure. I think spread changes would give a little bit of an easier entry barrier / incentive.



About the spread proposal I am always neutral with this. However, I know for a fact that even lowering spread requirements will already encourage a lot more sets to be pushed to ranked.

(For starters we could round of the length - something like 3:00 or more you only need Hard as lowest diff, and then the one for Insane can be 4:00 or even 3:45)

The main problem is Normal diffs and below - which some people barely map them. However, Hard RC is free enough for most mappers to make a Hard diff to push their map in my opinion.

I don't particularly feel like removing it entirely will be a good idea. There will be some really wacky sets being ranked like an Expert/Insane with 1:30 length or something extreme which I think is too much disruption to the current ranking "meta" and to the community (both player and mapper) as a whole.
Last edited by [Ping] , edited 4 times in total.
Ventilo le vrai
126 posts
Joined December 2018
Ventilo le vrai

Dubstek wrote:

Even if we just remove spread requirements, there will always be some new ranked map like most of the anime TV size, Vtuber music that has 1~3* only for new players.

Requiring lower diff spread for even some intense music just because the drain time won't be enough to pass EZ/NM/HD diff is absolutely blocking the advantage, I'd say.
I agree with that, the drain time shouldn't define if the map should have lower difficulties or not because easy maps aren't fitting with some songs
epic man 2
476 posts
Joined May 2019
epic man 2
wow i can speedrank all of my 280+ mania maps lol!
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
Topic Starter
abraker

Scotty wrote:

personally i am still more in favor of relaxing the requirements rather than removing them entirely. besides the reasons mentioned in the original thread, i feel anti-meta keymodes would really suffer from this. anti meta keymodes have accessibility issues as is and i feel this would exacerbate this.
anti-meta keymodes have content issues. That's even worse than accessibility - it means that there are not enough maps for beginner and experienced players alike. Let the be at least something.

AutotelicBrown wrote:

I can compile concrete evidence from these games if needed but it's pretty clear the influx of new charts in both FFR and Etterna that would be playable for most of the o!m community is lacking in both quantity and quality. I mention the o!m community specifically because both FFR and Etterna nowadays have skewed demographics due to low influx of fresh beginners (lack of content is not the only reason but it's definitely a big one). On that note, I think even having the 'half-assed' lower level content some people mentioned as a potential negative from spread requirements is still better than the situation those games (FFR/Etterna) are in, not to mention I think any competent mapper who respects their own work would still try to make decent lower diffs even if it's out of obligation (if you disagree you should probably reread the sentence).

Returning to o!m specifically and together with what I mentioned about the general population's skill level**, I think there's strong evidence that difficulty spreads should still exist in some shape or form if ranking criteria wants to keep the general community best interests in mind. This is not to say I don't think there's an issue with good high-end content not being ranked (sorry for the triple negative), at least on o!m, but I think removing spread requirements is not the way to go about it.
Thing about FFR and Etterna is that the games themselves are not as accessible as osu!mania is. I am ofc talking about UI (at least in Etterna), and the fact that I find it hard to imagine someone new to VSRGs would come across Etterna or FFR before they come across DDR, Guitar Hero, osu!, or Friday night Funkin'. Even I searched for guitar hero like games back in late 00's I did not find anything, and wasn't until 2014 when I came across osu! by recommendation. My point is that a beginner would not find those games easily, and if they do it's not beginner friendly from the get go, therefore it makes sense they don't have many easy charts.

As for mania, I and others already debunked the fearmongering regarding easy diffs. Here is my arguement:

abraker wrote:

Here is a list of recent ranked mania mapsets that have diffs composed out of low skill maps. If there were no spread requirements what would have those mapsets become? I have a hard time believing they would have been maps a new player could not pass. Even less believable is that there wouldn't be a BN to nominate them.

beatmapsets/1110188#mania/2319892
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1465254#mania/3035623
beatmapsets/773502#mania/2458855
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1386044#mania/2863218
beatmapsets/1382018#mania/2855453
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/998152#mania/2087790
beatmapsets/1391279#mania/2872780
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1137177#mania/2374714
beatmapsets/1173757#mania/2832659
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1376799#mania/2845539
beatmapsets/1356104#mania/2806609

These examples contradict what you believe will happen. Mappers already create full spread of low diff maps. They are not going away.
Last edited by abraker , edited 9 times in total.
Nao Tomori
Nomination Assessment Team
3,089 posts
Joined December 2014
Nao Tomori
just want to point out that the point of low diffs is that players can play all sorts of songs at their level, not just 2 bpm piano songs. particularly popular rhythm game and anime songs. so to that end linking a bunch of r3-esque sets doesn't really address the issue.
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
Topic Starter
abraker

Nao Tomori wrote:

just want to point out that the point of low diffs is that players can play all sorts of songs at their level, not just 2 bpm piano songs. particularly popular rhythm game and anime songs. so to that end linking a bunch of r3-esque sets doesn't really address the issue.
We already established that mania has disproportionate amounts of low diffs for players, in the osu! community meetings as well.
Last edited by abraker , edited 1 time in total.
z0z
497 posts
Joined February 2018
z0z
since we're considering rule relaxation, i'll copypaste my post from another spread thread because i think this is a good base level to start off with

original location: community/forums/posts/8313743

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
Scotty
Nomination Assessment Team
267 posts
Joined October 2017
Scotty

abraker wrote:

anti-meta keymodes have content issues. That's even worse than accessibility - it means that there are not enough maps for beginner and experienced players alike. Let the be at least something.
locking out newer players from playing these keymodes would make it impossible to become an experienced player to begin with (at least via ranked) and i don't think forcing people to play unranked or other games is something ranked should be trying to achieve.

abraker wrote:

We already established that mania has disproportionate amounts of low diffs for players, in the osu! community meetings as well.
this is something true for all modes, and i'm not sure how this is a problem because this is by design. not all songs support higher diffs while at the same time most higher diffs have to be accompanied by lower diffs. this also doesn't counter nao's point regarding song choice which is one of the major factors in attracting newer players to the game.
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