Yes please +1

about time this thing got changed

+1

Sylvarus wrote:

Edit: Also unsure how this change can affect converts, anybody know if there could be issues?

converts should never be considered

they don't follow ranking standards to begin with

sound good +1

Yea i think changing this rule to a guideline and rewording it is good and fine, theres cases like beatmaps/2940257 01:05:702 - which mirash and i are wanting to push for ranked that technically also break "a clear and visible path of movement to follow from start to end" but noone that can play this map is going to break or get 100s on these sliders

also even more egregious of a case than apollo's dialtone map is scub's glacierfall map since those sliders weren't even hold sliders and u literally cannot tell where the slider actually ends to get a 300 on those but we are allowing that kind of shit anyway already so, apollo's dialtone sliders are like a complete nonissue relatively speaking personally (even the glacierfall issue is because of the leniency bug more than anything and personally not really something that shuold be barred because mans just arent fixing it)

The topic of players being unfairly punished / fucked over on purpose because of a beatmap's (faulty) design are kind of unrelated to this I think, there's a shitton of cases where this doesn't even happen and are blocked by this rule

as well as the fact that the majority of mappers dont give a fuck/think it doesnt matter anyway so i don't really see a reason to not change the rule

Mapping dies Today (+1)

+1 lets go

"I doubt any two decent BNs would nominate a slider that is so egregiously unreasonable and unfair as a result of this change that it would harm anything, and if they did then you can still veto the map as you have been doing now"

I disagree with the 1st part LOL but the problem is I only saw these two maps because they were specifically requested to me or posted in the BN server. I think it's actually really problematic when people ignore the RC and rank stuff anyway because they know there's an extremely low chance it'll be looked at properly during QF, instead of going the proper route of doing a proposal like this FIRST. Especially for BNs. But I guess this is beside the point of the thread.

I've had multiple people tell me that they agree w/ my reasoning in the Mazzerin case afterwards so I'm curious if anyone who thinks so as well will post here.

I agree, +1
I would prefer the word "intuitive" over "fair" however. I feel the word conveys the message better

Finally.

Nyanaro wrote:

I agree, +1
I would prefer the word "intuitive" over "fair" however. I feel the word conveys the message better

True, amended

u can tell which BNs actually play osu and which BNs dont these replies are a read

Sylvarus wrote:

because they know there's an extremely low chance it'll be looked at properly during QF, instead of going the proper route of doing a proposal like this FIRST.

you're acting like there's malicious intent in creating a slider in a circle game that can be hit by holding your cursor in the same area. this proposal is completely valid and there's really no reason for it not to be changed.

+1

i believe everyone already takes this rule as "don't make unreadable sliders that are unreadable because you can't play them" rather than "don't make unreadable sliders no matter what," should definitely make this change already

however, i still think it should be heavily enforced. burais are almost always "unfair gameplay elements" and i wouldn't want to see people getting away with random burais in their otherwise normal maps cuz it's "just a guideline"

this seems fixable with just an allowance at the end:

1. Every slider must have a clear and visible path of movement to follow from start to end. Sliders that overlap themselves without straightforward slider borders and sliders whose individual sections are unreadable cannot be used. A slider's end position must be clear under the assumption that a player has a skin which makes slider end circles fully transparent. Unreadable sliders that do not require movement are allowed.

that + making it a guideline for anyone out there who wants to make some crazy gimmick map centered around burais or something (or in sliderator cases where the sliders are obviously playable) — bns should be able to judge this on a case-by-case basis. otherwise, burais should still be disallowed

UberFazz wrote:

however, i still think it should be heavily enforced. burais are almost always "unfair gameplay elements" and i wouldn't want to see people getting away with random burais in their otherwise normal maps cuz it's "just a guideline"

the way I see it, you can already put a random unfair gameplay element in your map that isn't a burai and it's the BN's job to mod it out or veto it (high powered Lol). it being moved to a guideline shouldn't really encourage people to include bad mapping designs on purpose, considering it's not like it will drastically change the taste of BNs or players I would hope.

UberFazz wrote:

this seems fixable with just an allowance at the end:

1. Every slider must have a clear and visible path of movement to follow from start to end. Sliders that overlap themselves without straightforward slider borders and sliders whose individual sections are unreadable cannot be used. A slider's end position must be clear under the assumption that a player has a skin which makes slider end circles fully transparent. Unreadable sliders that do not require movement are allowed.

that + making it a guideline for anyone out there who wants to make some crazy gimmick map centered around burais or something (or in sliderator cases where the sliders are obviously playable) — bns should be able to judge this on a case-by-case basis. otherwise, burais should still be disallowed

seems good to me, but I think this is a bit weird because there are sliders that are readable with intuition despite requiring movement, or perhaps ones that are so slow that the path being unintelligible at glance is rendered unproblematic because of how slow the movement is, etc. so probably adding the line from my OP about intuitiveness/map design would help to clarify a bit more

+1

Agree with proposal + uberfazz/vinxis suggestion to make this into Guideline instead of Rule

The more room to make unique & interesting playable maps, the better

AJT wrote:

seems good to me, but I think this is a bit weird because there are sliders that are readable with good intuition despite requiring movement, so probably adding the line from my OP about intuitiveness/map design would help to clarify a bit more

true, that's where the guideline aspect comes in since this shouldn't be too common of an occurrence. im fine with the clarification tho, just don't rly think its necessary

UberFazz wrote:

AJT wrote:

seems good to me, but I think this is a bit weird because there are sliders that are readable with good intuition despite requiring movement, so probably adding the line from my OP about intuitiveness/map design would help to clarify a bit more

true, that's where the guideline aspect comes in since this shouldn't be too common of an occurrence. im fine with the clarification tho, just don't rly think its necessary

oh also it should probabyl say "Unreadable sliders/sections of sliders that do not require movement are allowed."

I don't know about allowing that for individual slider sections, that seems much more problematic than if it's the entire slider that doesn't require movement.

that's implied in "unreadable sliders"; if a section is unreadable, the slider is in turn unreadable as well

UberFazz wrote:

that's implied in "unreadable sliders"; if a section is unreadable, the slider is in turn unreadable as well

I made that clarification because the host rule does too, also I don't see anything wrong with being as clear as possible: the reason sliders are so contentious right now in the first place is because there are different plausible ways for people to interpret the rule. This was also my mindset in regards to your other reply:

UberFazz wrote:

true, that's where the guideline aspect comes in since this shouldn't be too common of an occurrence. im fine with the clarification tho, just don't rly think its necessary

---

Sylvarus wrote:

I don't know about allowing that for individual slider sections, that seems much more problematic than if it's the entire slider that doesn't require movement.

I think of it as an extension to UberFazz's point. The slider I had in my mind when I wrote that was something similar in spirit to 01:54:525 (1) - (let's assume that it goes backwards, or even stops moving completely, for the purpose of my point instead of technically going diagonally upwards which is completely fine). Although that would probably be allowed implicitly as a result of these other changes anyways (if not already "allowed" due to common sense) I suppose these "effectively manipulating SV during slider" slider cases are more similar to the Mazzerin ones than Dialtone.

There also still remains the opportunity to contest awful usages of such features, just like there are for any circle pattern or slider pattern that doesn't involve burai movement

AJT wrote:

I made that clarification because the host rule does too, also I don't see anything wrong with being as clear as possible: the reason sliders are so contentious right now in the first place is because there are different plausible ways for people to interpret the rule.

seems fine to me, tho i still believe it's implied and adding more words to the allowance makes it unnecessarily complex

+1

UberFazz wrote:

AJT wrote:

I made that clarification because the host rule does too, also I don't see anything wrong with being as clear as possible: the reason sliders are so contentious right now in the first place is because there are different plausible ways for people to interpret the rule.

seems fine to me, tho i still believe it's implied and adding more words to the allowance makes it unnecessarily complex

well I suppose if it is also moved to a guideline then extra words would not be necessary too because the BN's discretion would be able to prevail (although I mean there was a case in this very thread of someone misinterpreting the fact that it would be implied without the extra words so idk)

but yea this is secondary to the main point anyways - glad we are on the same page!

JUSTICE FOR JUSTICE BREAKER

+1

+1

+1

I must be seriously misremembering things cause I thought we changed this years ago?
Regardless +1

+1

This allows more creative sliders in ranked

+1

was considering a different approach before making the github pr: putting the current rule under "Rules" section of per-difficulty rules for e/n/h and the updated rule under "Guidelines" for i/x

vs the other approach of just directly modifying the current rule

since this is only really an issue for top diffs, i believe the per-difficulty approach is the best one but want more opinions first

Good point on low diffs, those should certainly be categorically excluded

UberFazz wrote:

was considering a different approach before making the github pr: putting the current rule under "Rules" section of per-difficulty rules for e/n/h and the updated rule under "Guidelines" for i/x

vs the other approach of just directly modifying the current rule

since this is only really an issue for top diffs, i believe the per-difficulty approach is the best one but want more opinions first

just writing here that I Agree cus we already concluded this together in dms last night

+2. Also yes making this a difficulty-based guideline makes sense to me.

Let me paste the full sketch for clarity (draft)

Easy, Normal, Hard, under rules:

 Every slider must have a clear and visible path of movement to follow from start to end. Sliders that overlap themselves without straightforward slider borders and sliders whose individual sections are unreadable cannot be used. A slider's end position must be clear under the assumption that a player has a skin which makes slider end circles fully transparent.

i.e. the same rule as currently, but just applied to low diffs only.

Insane and up under guidelines:

 Every slider should have a clear and visible path of movement to follow from start to end. Sliders that overlap themselves without straightforward slider borders and sliders whose individual sections are unreadable should not be used. A slider's end position should be clear under the assumption that a player has a skin which makes slider end circles fully transparent. 

Sliders that do not require movement are exempt from this.

The idea here is that the wording change from “must” to “should” will tacitly allow for sensible cases like Mazzerin’s if there is a good enough reason to break the guideline, and the addendum at the end more explicitly clarifies that sliders where you don’t need to move at all are allowed to have unclear “paths” on Insane and up.

+1 but disagree with splitting up into diff-specific rules.

Technically a slider with a tiny tumor in it can be argued to have its "individual sections unreadable", and imo having a very small tumor slider in a hard diff is perfectly acceptable. Given that people taking specific wording in the most literal sense is the reason why this proposal is made, you can't rule out that that kind of rule would cause a similar problem and someone will try to argue this.

Regardless of if that happens, can't "in the context of their map" also imply in the context of map difficulty too? i.e. putting this kind of slider in a hard diff doesn't make sense in the context of its map because the map is too easy to use that kind of design without properly leading into it.

I feel like keeping it as the original proposal had it (and maybe adding something like "and its difficulty level") would be a better solution so BNs can decide what's acceptable in each case

Purplegaze wrote:

+1 but disagree with splitting up into diff-specific rules.

Technically a slider with a tiny tumor in it can be argued to have its "individual sections unreadable", and imo having a very small tumor slider in a hard diff is perfectly acceptable. Given that people taking specific wording in the most literal sense is the reason why this proposal is made, you can't rule out that that kind of rule would cause a similar problem and someone will try to argue this.

Regardless of if that happens, can't "in the context of their map" also imply in the context of map difficulty too? i.e. putting this kind of slider in a hard diff doesn't make sense in the context of its map because the map is too easy to use that kind of design without properly leading into it.

I feel like keeping it as the original proposal had it (and maybe adding something like "and its difficulty level") would be a better solution so BNs can decide what's acceptable in each case

I agree with your concern about people purposely taking things too literally, although I think splitting it into difficulty specific legislation actually helps clarify more. Perhaps the solution here would just be to add a brief line to state that minor cosmetic features in a slider that do not affect how someone would realistically read or play it would also be fine.

This does not apply to cosmetic features of sliders that do not realistically pose an unfair reading challenge, such as slider tumors.

Although I do question whether this is necessary because if someone is going to take RC THAT literally that they think stuff like this is a problem then they are likely trolling or lacking in BN-level discretion, and even with the current rule in place sliders like these haven’t really had an issue going through.

I feel like tumor sliders still do provide “a clear and visible path of movement” if you interpret it pragmatically, i.e. that you can just move normally down them. Sliders that use tumors in a way that unexpectedly slows down the movement at a certain part of them would be unsuitable for low diffs anyways so perhaps the proposed legislation is already clear enough.

nobody's ever complained about tumors being unreadable and i doubt anyone ever would, seems unnecessary to add anything relating to it to the rules

was under the impression that current ruling already implies that tumors are okay, or at least that's the common understanding

in any case

im gonna ignore proposal i) because it's really bad, historically this doesn't work as written ruling because it's wayyyyy too open for interpretation. If the rc could just say ""if it's done well"" and everyone agreed on what that means it'd have been written like that 10 years ago.

in general not against the hold sliders though, I think those can be read and thus be allowed. Diff-specific ruling is necessary yeah, we are not doing any of this on normal diffs lol ..

would be more tentative about allowing it for insane diffs. In principle what you're looking to allow defies how sliders are understood - suddenly sliders don't end when the sliderball reaches the visible end.
I'd argue that this in a very general sense requires much more experience reading different slidershapes than a 4* player has developed. It sounds very unlikely that they've learned "keep holding the slider because the next object hasn't appeared" thing at the same time they're learning to read more SV-heavy™ stuff and aim consecutive jumps.

ie. requires "expertise" -> "expert" level difficulty

you can technically create insanes where this kind of slider works, but the roadblock you're running into is the spectrum of
1) Can Read everything
2) Needs to Adapt to level's design
3) Needs to Memorize large sections

The RC is at 1) as it stands, 3) is something we don't want (arguably).
2) would be ideal, since allowing players to learn and adapt to the level is good level design! Though I get the impression this approach is hard to codify and relies more on testplays of the right target audience than anything.

Thus we're kinda stuck at 1) unless we aim to revise that side of the rc somehow.

Other considerations are
- should these sliders be shaped differently from the rest of the map as a sort of visual indicator?, enhancing readability/adaptability and moving away from seeming like pure memorization
- does "not require movement" cover our bases, or do we need to worry about certain sliders being more intuitive to follow than holding?
- similarly, does "not require movement" mean the cursor can stay on the head or does it mean there is a center-point where the cursor can sit?, the latter seems just as common
- the latest draft says "exempt from "this"", is it clear what "this" refers to exactly?, it's easy to say it's exempt from our current understanding now but that might become vague in the future

many many questions, good luck and don't rush