Firstly, I agree with not adding a specific map as an example because it is generally discouraged to let a certain map be a precedent for future maps since many ranked maps have flaws that should not be taken as an example.

Also, I honestly disagree with letting such mapsets skip the spread requirements for the individual difficulties because it is indeed an easy way to avoid making a spread for those songs. If the drain time is more than 5:00 like in the case of Xexxar's map, it's fine because those diffs don't need a spread anyway. It would also work if the individual parts are longer than 4:15 and they're all Insane diffs for example. However, mapping a bunch of songs from an EP or something that are like 3 minutes long each with only Expert diffs and then putting them together in a compilation would allow you to skip Normal, Hard and Insane diffs for multiple songs which doesn't seem fair for players who want to play those songs on a difficulty that is accessible to them. This could be taken even further by making a TV size cut of each song and doing a compilation with those. Of course you can say that the marathon would be rankable by itself and this is just splitting it up into multiple parts, but that is exactly what makes the difference: If the individual songs are not long enough to skip certain difficulties, there is no reason to allow them to be ranked without a spread. The marathon on the other hand is much longer and therefore not required to have lower difficulties.

I agree with not adding a specific map as an example because it is generally discouraged to let a certain map be a precedent for future maps since many ranked maps have flaws that should not be taken as an example.

the way I've worded it here I think it'd be very hard to interpret as showing The Unforgiving has no flaws or w/e, it's just saying how the diffs are laid out. regardless I'll see if there's a good way to word this without linking to specific map then, I just feel like it's gonna get wordy again and defeat the purpose of adding an example

Of course you can say that the marathon would be rankable by itself and this is just splitting it up into multiple parts, but that is exactly what makes the difference: If the individual songs are not long enough to skip certain difficulties, there is no reason to allow them to be ranked without a spread.

I don't see the logic in this, the marathon is rankable by itself, yet adding more content for the songs to that set should make it unrankable due to "skipping" requirements?

This could be taken even further by making a TV size cut of each song and doing a compilation with those.

fwiw this is prevented by the restriction to contiguous albums and multi-act songs. but the proposal I'm making has nothing to do with individual songs'/acts' lengths

clayton wrote:

I don't see the logic in this, the marathon is rankable by itself, yet adding more content for the songs to that set should make it unrankable due to "skipping" requirements?

Yes, because the content that is being added has a different length compared to the marathon diff. The reason why spread requirements depend on the length of the map is that newer players who play Easy/Normal/Hard diffs tend to prefer shorter maps because they require less stamina and are just easier and less tiring to play. Therefore, the compilation of all the songs/parts is most likely too long for most newer players to enjoy because they're still learning how to play the game. However, this is not the case for the individual songs. Under the assumption that they are usually not much longer than 3-4 minutes, it would mean that they are short enough to be reasonably playable by less experienced players (of course the enjoyment of playing a map is a highly subjective matter but these are the main reasons why the spread requirements were changed so I'm just using those as an argument). Having only Expert diffs on relatively short songs would simply cut out a large part of the playerbase and go against the purpose of spreads to begin with. It's like making a 4:15 Insane diff and then adding a Normal that only maps the first 50% of the song. The Normal would only be additional content too but that doesn't mean it should be allowed to skip certain requirements (in this case the last 20% of the audio file needing to be mapped).

This could be taken even further by making a TV size cut of each song and doing a compilation with those.

clayton wrote:

fwiw this is prevented by the restriction to contiguous albums and multi-act songs. but the proposal I'm making has nothing to do with individual songs'/acts' lengths

Based on the current wording, it is not prohibited to do that. This example would be an even bigger contradiction with the current spread rules.

if you cut up songs in a contiguous album and piece them back together, it's probably not going to be contiguous or representative of the album. same goes for multi-act songs. that's why I'd think it's not possible. in any case this concern is just a small wording change away from being 100% clear so I don't wanna get too held up on it

---

imagine you're a player who can only play ENH. you see this album marathon set with IIIIIXXXXXXX (top diff being Marathon) and think something like "damn I wish there were lower diffs", because it's a little disappointing that you saw a song mapped but can't play it well.

would you feel less disappointed if instead that set were just X? now, in addition to not being able to play a song well because of its map's difficulty, you can't even play the song without slogging through a bunch of other IX stuff that you also can't play well. the ENH player gains nothing from the transition from IIIIIXXXXXXX to X, which is exactly what would be happening if my proposed exception is denied and a mapset following this setup has to be changed into only a marathon.

Having only Expert diffs on relatively short songs would simply cut out a large part of the playerbase and go against the purpose of spreads to begin with.

then, with the point I'm trying to get at via this example player, the problem isn't in all of these IX diffs, but the fact that the X marathon was allowed in the first place. I can already make something that "goes against the purpose of spreads" (in your opinion) by creating a bunch of 2 minute X maps, i.e. maps that should warrant a lower spread to allow more of the playerbase to play them, and then packing them all together in a song compilation because I'm too lazy for spreads. the playerbase that could not have played my 2 minute X maps is certainly not benefiting from me making this song compilation, nor are they missing out on less.

but I'm not here to talk about the purpose of spreads or if album/compilation marathons are going against that purpose, my argument is only this (using the example again cuz easier): the IIIIIXXXXXXX set should be rankable if and only if the X set is rankable. and the case here is that X set is already rankable so I'd say the IIIIIXXXXXXX should be too.

personally, it seems cool, but i don't really know how it'll go.

I still feel like you can't really compare a long map that consists of several parts/songs with the individual difficulties for each part/song. The gameplay experience is completely different and the length is also a deciding factor so I don't really consider this additional content because it's just the same thing being split into multiple parts. Aside from the duplicate content issue mentioned by other people before, by doing that you are changing the map from a marathon/compilation to a regular map of a single song. I think this change warrants a different approach regarding the spread. Having a single difficulty for the marathon makes sense because it's very long, but I simply don't see a reason why only one difficulty should be necessary for a fraction of the marathon when a normal mapset of that song would require an entire spread. The argument about additional content not changing the rankability of the map would make sense if the added content were similar to the marathon difficulty, but it's vastly different as explained earlier. The analogy with Songs Compilations already allowing to rank multiple songs with only Expert diffs is also not really logical because those maps only have 1 difficulty for the entire compilation, not one for each song. Again, you can't compare one long difficulty with several short difficulties because they're not the same thing.

Sorry if this is a bit off-tangent, but my concerns lie more with the pp-inflation this change will bring with it than spread rules

Allowing players to essentially gain pp for the same patterns twice opens up for even larger abuse of the pp system than we're currently faced with (assuming content from diff 1, 2 & 3 are put together into diff 4) and introduces content bloat into the Ranked Section

Though I can see the use-case for leaderboards on each song, I don't think this is the right direction to go because of this

A potential fix could be to restrict pp-gain to the marathon diff, but that'd open up another can of worms...

I don't think that is a problem. pp should measure skill, and if you have sufficient skill to do the map, then you deserve the pp. If it gives too much or too little pp, that's an issue that lies in the pp formula and not ranked.

Hypothetically speaking, having 20 copies of the same map ranked is going to earn you as much pp as as 20 different, varying, maps of similiar difficulty. There being 20 copies of the same map in ranked would be less of a pp issue and more of a quality issue.

Therefore concerns about pp-inflation with this proposal are not valid concerns

@abraker never thought about duplicate maps like that in respect to pp but I think you're right. and not to mention that a lot of farm maps' difficulty comes from a select few patterns that you can easily find as the most difficult element of plenty other farm maps already, so... a literal duplicate map actually wouldn't be very different. (for readers, remember that individual diff vs. whole marathon would require a whole different skillset though, despite being copies of the same map)

@Pennek not a tangent, thanks for bringing that up. aside from what abraker wrote, the kind-of-conclusion in #modding when this was first brought up was that limiting it to only albums and mulit-act songs would play a big part in preventing abuse like that

bringing it back today, i really don't know if this'll actually be a good addition. i think we should try to test this out, and see what a group of mappers, players, and bns/nats think.

now, another problem is how inconvenient it would be for mappers. mappers would need to apply the mods to the marathon and then to the diff. in nevo's case with his oral cigarettes comp, imagine if he had to copy individual diffs for each song. if you attempt to go to the discussion page for the map, and onto the timeline, you'll get a inconsiderable amount of lag, so it'll be near impossible to actually mod it

I agree with your suggestion. That rule can get more motivations for mappers & players. Some mappers like map marathons, but usually people too lazy for play long maps. Low playcount and non popularity can demotivate them to make marathons. Your suggestion can help for both sides: mappers & players.

you say this could be pp abuse but isn't the marathon harder than all of the diffs combined because of the consistency required for length? i think in really rare cases it could work, like 2 really easy songs and a hard one at the end, but really its kind of an insult when you consider how easy it is to just move to farming 2 similar maps for other songs lol, the effort in abusing this pointless. i don't think it's feasible that pp could be abused but just make the "marathon" diff unranked but with a leaderboard if it's really an issue...

Li Syaoran wrote:

bringing it back today, i really don't know if this'll actually be a good addition. i think we should try to test this out, and see what a group of mappers, players, and bns/nats think.

now, another problem is how inconvenient it would be for mappers. mappers would need to apply the mods to the marathon and then to the diff. in nevo's case with his oral cigarettes comp, imagine if he had to copy individual diffs for each song. if you attempt to go to the discussion page for the map, and onto the timeline, you'll get a inconsiderable amount of lag, so it'll be near impossible to actually mod it

this is why splitting the marathon into multiple difficulties isn't required.

Uniform wrote:

Li Syaoran wrote:

bringing it back today, i really don't know if this'll actually be a good addition. i think we should try to test this out, and see what a group of mappers, players, and bns/nats think.

now, another problem is how inconvenient it would be for mappers. mappers would need to apply the mods to the marathon and then to the diff. in nevo's case with his oral cigarettes comp, imagine if he had to copy individual diffs for each song. if you attempt to go to the discussion page for the map, and onto the timeline, you'll get a inconsiderable amount of lag, so it'll be near impossible to actually mod it

this is why splitting the marathon into multiple difficulties isn't required.

the answer is just waiting until mods are finished to create the marathon diff...

knightc0re and i were talking about this in a stream. one viable compromise for this could be handled in the same way as old TAG maps. Just like how TAG diffs were loved and subsequent diffs were ranked, why not just love the act/chapter diffs and rank the full marathon? that removes the concern of pp inflation. in order ot get pp you have to play the full map. very surprised this hasn't been proposed yet

maps aren't formatted in a munti-act manner very often so even if this manually has to be done it shouldn't have to be too often

also hurry up and pass this so that i can maybe rank i am shimmer

pp isn't an issue (community/forums/posts/7524471, https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/posts/7742593) and I don't think settling for a hacked up loved+ranked solution just cuz a few people are scared is the way to go

the amt of writing here arguing for what should be a clear net benefit for players and mappers (OP, community/forums/posts/7492799, https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/posts/7496209, community/forums/posts/7492085) is kinda ridiculous already and I've got nothing more to add. I'll ask some NAT to read it if it doesn't get any activity soon.

community/forums/posts/7499257 still needs to be addressed.

There's just a contradiction with the current spread rules which makes this change not coherent. The same logic could be applied to a full spread of a song by adding difficulties for the first half and for the second half of the song, it would technically also be additional content because the map would be rankable without them, but in the end they're only duplicates. I feel like it's not really necessary to have leaderboards on the individual parts anyway, people can still play them regardless.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

There's just a contradiction with the current spread rules which makes this change not coherent.

that's the point, it's a special case/exception and does not fit into current spread rules, or at least I couldn't figure out a decent way to word it in there. for clarity when reading RC I'd at least put this very near the big block of spread jazz

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

The same logic could be applied to a full spread of a song by adding difficulties for the first half and for the second half of the song, it would technically also be additional content because the map would be rankable without them, but in the end they're only duplicates.

it could be applied there but that's not what I'm proposing. nobody asked for any random song/diff to be cut into parts and ranked separately, and I can't imagine people would enjoy playing it that much either...

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

I feel like it's not really necessary to have leaderboards on the individual parts anyway, people can still play them regardless.

I don't understand why lack of necessity is an argument against something that would be fun.

if a very specific written exception for the act/chapter splitting of a marathon/compilation beatmap into its specific parts is made, i'd be okay with allowing something like this

what i am worried about though is people taking this ruling if it was written incorrectly to create more "songs compilations" with 1 minute snippets of completely unrelated songs and stringing together giant sets of like 20 diffs + marathon with them, because people will do stuff like this, ploved has proven already that there is an appetite for sets like this.

if we do allow something like this, it has to be for contiguous works, like Varien's Valkyrie trilogy of tracks or The Unforgiving's 3 act stuff. it absolutely has a productive and engaging use case in those circumstances

clayton wrote:

it could be applied there but that's not what I'm proposing. nobody asked for any random song/diff to be cut into parts and ranked separately, and I can't imagine people would enjoy playing it that much either...

It doesn't matter if nobody asked for it, you can't make RC proposals solely based on a single example without considering other possibilities. Cutting a song into multiple parts can make just as much sense as cutting an album or multi-act, there are songs which are clearly divided into several parts that sound very different from each other, and they don't have to be extremely long either to be split up. But even without taking this into account, full spreads can also be made for 5+ minute songs, so you would essentially end up having several full spreads for different songs within the same mapset. Given how adamantly "content bloat" has been tried to prevent, this is rather contradictory.

There's even a specific guideline about it:

Directly re-using your own Ranked beatmaps in other Ranked beatmaps is discouraged. This is to avoid unnecessary bloating of Ranked content.

Ephemeral wrote:

if a very specific written exception for the act/chapter splitting of a marathon/compilation beatmap into its specific parts is made, i'd be okay with allowing something like this

agreed, the proposed bold part of the rule's got "contiguous albums or multi-act songs" in there

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

clayton wrote:

it could be applied there but that's not what I'm proposing. nobody asked for any random song/diff to be cut into parts and ranked separately, and I can't imagine people would enjoy playing it that much either...

It doesn't matter if nobody asked for it, you can't make RC proposals solely based on a single example without considering other possibilities. Cutting a song into multiple parts can make just as much sense as cutting an album or multi-act, there are songs which are clearly divided into several parts that sound very different from each other, and they don't have to be extremely long either to be split up. But even without taking this into account, full spreads can also be made for 5+ minute songs, so you would essentially end up having several full spreads for different songs within the same mapset. Given how adamantly "content bloat" has been tried to prevent, this is rather contradictory.

1. I (and the others from original #modding discussion) did consider "other possibilities", that's why the wording of the proposed rule is so specific
2. it is specifically for marathons because nobody asked or wants to be splitting up shorter songs like this, even if they are "multi-act"
3. it is specifically for single-difficulty sets because of this concern with existing spreads

I know that it goes against the content bloat rules, that's why it's a specific amendment/exception thing that spells out exactly which rules can be ignored in this case

I believe you're missing the point, which is that there's no difference between splitting a song and splitting an album from the point of view of how spreads work. Why should one be allowed but not the other? Similarly, why should only songs above 5 minutes apply? It's not true that only longer songs can/should be split up, there are actually other rhythm games where this is the case and it's actually not a bad idea because shorter maps are suitable for such games. I also don't see why it should only apply to single difficulty sets. The only reason is because the proposal is made to fit one specific example instead of trying to adapt to different examples. The RC applies to everyone, not only those who ask for certain changes.

It also shouldn't be allowed to ignore content bloat rules because it's no different from doing the same thing across multiple mapsets rather than within one. For example, if someone mapped an entire album and then someone else mapped one song from that album and asked them to make a GD, they wouldn't be allowed to take that part from their own map and rank it again in someone else's map, so why should they be allowed to do it within their own set. Either the rule applies to all maps or none.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

I believe you're missing the point, which is that there's no difference between splitting a song and splitting an album from the point of view of how spreads work.

so I'm proposing to change up the rules slightly with this amendment---there will be a difference, if this gets written in RC. I'm a little confused why the current RC is being referenced to say that my proposed RC is not allowed (?)

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Why should one be allowed but not the other?

the former is not wanted but the latter is (correct me if I'm wrong), plus a more broad allowance for this is easily open to abuse (community/forums/posts/7816440)

edit: by "former" i meant normal songs, and "latter" i meant albums or multi-act song

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Similarly, why should only songs above 5 minutes apply? It's not true that only longer songs can/should be split up, there are actually other rhythm games where this is the case and it's actually not a bad idea because shorter maps are suitable for such games. I also don't see why it should only apply to single difficulty sets.

community/forums/posts/7817379

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

It also shouldn't be allowed to ignore content bloat rules because it's no different from doing the same thing across multiple mapsets rather than within one. For example, if someone mapped an entire album and then someone else mapped one song from that album and asked them to make a GD, they wouldn't be allowed to take that part from their own map and rank it again in someone else's map, so why should they be allowed to do it within their own set. Either the rule applies to all maps or none.

keeping the duplicate maps contained within a single set means that they are organized and clearly presented as duplicates in a place where they don't produce the harm that "content bloat" does. these duplicate maps don't mislead players, circumvent standards for other would-be-typical sets, or flood Ranked with identical maps(they keep only 2 copies, and with good purpose). the example you give is what will stay disallowed

so I'm proposing to change up the rules slightly with this amendment---there will be a difference, if this gets written in RC. I'm a little confused why the current RC is being referenced to say that my proposed RC is not allowed (?)

I'm not talking about the RC, it's about the logical standpoint.

the former is not wanted but the latter is (correct me if I'm wrong), plus a more broad allowance for this is easily open to abuse (community/forums/posts/7816440)

edit: by "former" i meant normal songs, and "latter" i meant albums or multi-act song

You can't really speak for the entire community regarding what is wanted and what isn't. There are many examples of songs where splitting them up makes just as much sense as splitting up albums or multi-acts and where this is wanted (e. g. beatmapsets/662260). It's arbitrary to consider mapsets with more than one difficulty abuse but not the example mentioned in the proposal because if splitting one difficulty is fine, it's also fine to do it on a whole spread. The difficulties are completely different from each other and therefore not more duplicated content compared to a single difficulty mapset, plus this could also just be circumvented by creating a new mapset for each difficulty, but the result is the same. The same goes for song compilations, if each song is cut in a proper way and the songs are related to each other (both of which are already required by the RC), I don't see why this would be worse. This type of "abuse" could also happen with the kind of examples you're probably having in mind, that's why I keep saying the proposal shouldn't be focused on specific examples as it only leads to bias.

keeping the duplicate maps contained within a single set means that they are organized and clearly presented as duplicates in a place where they don't produce the harm that "content bloat" does. these duplicate maps don't mislead players, circumvent standards for other would-be-typical sets, or flood Ranked with identical maps(they keep only 2 copies, and with good purpose). the example you give is what will stay disallowed

This makes no sense because all the discussions about content bloat took place on single mapsets without considering other mapsets. I actually do think that having different songs mapped within the same mapset is misleading because at first glance it seems like there are several different difficulties which cover the whole audio file and not only a part of it. Also how does this not flood the ranked section with identical maps? If maps which are only "similar" are deemed problematic, this should be even more so. There's no reason as to why the same scenario on two different mapsets should stay disallowed but not on one, there is no actual difference despite what you claim.

this proposal is focused on allowing a very specific example type of map because that's all I and the other participants of this discussion cared about, and the other mappers chiming in here so far have also not expressed desire to make it less specific. could it be made more broad? maybe, that's just not my proposal. I'm not trying to make this one general or all-encompassing because I've seen no support for that and I don't personally care, nor do I want to put in the extra thought to how exactly someone might abuse a broader version of this and come up with a more complex rule accordingly. it is "bias"ed toward the people who cared to speak to this proposal at all and our rough estimation of how other ppl would react based on a past example.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

I actually do think that having different songs mapped within the same mapset is misleading because at first glance it seems like there are several different difficulties which cover the whole audio file and not only a part of it.

that's true, I was assuming people would name the difficulties after the individual songs or acts, at which point I would argue it's clear what they are (looking at The Unforgiving as an example again, since there seems to have been no issue with it after its approval). didn't write that into the rule though so next time I'm at a computer I'll update the proposed wording to factor that in

the rest of your post has already been addressed in this thread

Couldn't you just make one marathon diff, and then remap the individual section diffs so its technically not duplicate content?


The only thing stopping you then would be the ambiguous 20% audio thing.

Having a continuous flow between songs should allow to solve this problem over this way.

beatmapsets/1220237#taiko/2538450 is 52 minutes long and people don't want to play the easier parts first just to play one certain part, which can take up to 48 minutes.

I'd be okay with this suggestion if the acts as you call them have a reasonable length, the 20 % audio thing is written in the spirit that all difficulties in the set start and end at the same time so I'd not even apply that guideline to those sort of projects so long as the longest difficulty fulfills the guideline, the mp3 wouldn't need to be cut in my opinion.

This is an example of what this proposal is talking about and is in fact the inspiration for the original post.

beatmapsets/1275778#osu/2650704

As long as all songs/acts in the album are related, i see no problem with this and hope it will be implemented. Mapping whole albums takes a lot of effort (unless it's mapped by different mappers), i don't think someone would abuse that.

I actually don't think we need any change for this to happen. The "re-using" guideline can be broken under exceptional circumstances (as is the case with all guidelines) and this seems like a good reason to do so.

UberFazz wrote:

I actually don't think we need any change for this to happen. The "re-using" guideline can be broken under exceptional circumstances (as is the case with all guidelines) and this seems like a good reason to do so.

if this is the official position going forward, then this needs to be /explicitly/ stated in RC. we have seen how people's interpretation of the RC can vary, and this would benefit from not being subject to unfair vetoes and DQs just cuz it's not stated anywhere.

i think the proposal is good barring the example at the end (for reasons already stated above), so i would personally just consider:

Single-difficulty marathon beatmapsets of contiguous albums or multi-act songs may include extra difficulties that split the marathon difficulty into single songs or acts. These extra difficulties are exempt from other rules and guidelines regarding duplicate content, audio file coverage, and drain time spread requirements, and are allowed to use the songs' or acts' names as difficulty names.

the example was just to help explain inline, cuz at least to me it seems like everyone would understand this exception better as "you're allowed to make sets like The Unforgiving"(stretched a little)

doesn't matter to me if it's included or not, but like usual the wording and stuff can be figured out by ppl on the wiki side instead of here. i just want to get approval for this exception here :^)

I think this is an interesting proposal, but it would need to be extremely clear in the rule what is allowed and what isn't. The OP already does that by specifying contiguous albums and multi-act songs, but we can go further. I doubt this rule will be used very often, so it's worth being incredibly... ostentatious(?) about its implementation.

To indefinitely prevent abuse of this rule, I would add an exact length requirement, since many people might try to map EPs or LPs with very few songs in this manner, such as this 8 minute map of a mini-album. Obviously, this is not something that you would want split into 5 separate difficulties, all under 2 minutes each. I think that this length requirement logically carries over to multi-act songs for the same reason, and this would be fine since the proposal is obviously meant to be applied to these extreme cases of marathons (over 30 minutes) and not merely 10-15 minutes long maps. From what I know about music and the world, a full-length album is generally over 30 minutes, so that's where I would place the cutoff.

I don't think an example map is necessary if the rule is as clear-cut as I'm suggesting. Once somebody makes a modern example, people will look at that, but it's unwise to include maps in the ranking criteria without knowing how the game will look in the future.

Also, something may need to be added for storyboards (if some madman ever decides to do that), cause in my knowledge, maps don't end until the storyboard ends, so if someone maps the first 5 minutes of a 30-minute file with a storyboard, the player will be sitting there for 25 more minutes waiting for the results screen. The mapper would have to cut down the audio file and link it to the separate difficulties to avoid this. This might be able to be edited in the .osu file to end the map earlier than the storyboard ends, but I don't know enough about the subject to confirm or deny that, so I'll leave it for discussion.

With that, I propose a leaner version of the rule:

Single-difficulty marathon beatmaps of albums or multi-act songs over 30 minutes in drain time may include individual difficulties for each song or act. These extra difficulties are exempt from other rules and guidelines regarding duplicate content, audio file coverage, and drain time spread requirements.

A length requirement would make sense. What would you think of 20 or 15 minutes instead of 30? Nowadays, the runtime of an "album" isn't really in the definition due to the advancements of recording formats, and major charts & award corporations seem to have more lenient requirements for what counts as an album (see: UK Albums Chart and Grammy Awards). Multi-act songs are also usually not the length of whole albums, so I don't see a reason to be as harsh as to lean on the lengths of albums O_O

Nifty wrote:

Also, something may need to be added for storyboards... (cont.)

I thought that you can skip storyboards that keep going after the map ends? Unless you mean that storyboards should be cut so that players don't have to press skip?

30m is far too harsh of a cutoff, tbh i dont think any minimum length works as there are plenty of albums out there that are ~20m-30m and have 15-20 songs depending on genres i dont see a problem with a map like axer’s having individual difficulties?

personally, I don't see the need for a minimum length (other than "marathon"), I feel it's the same concept even for a shorter album like the mapset in Nifty's post. I don't care too much either way though.

for the example, yeah I'll prob not include it in the actual rule if this goes thru, since multiple ppl said they don't like it being there. if example is at all necessary then it'll be with some other kind of styling that makes it appear as just help text and not part of the rule in any way

for storyboard concern I think Apo11o is correct but I don't have stable installed rn to verify that myself

i think the point is to not use this to avoid spread rules, so having either a minimum average length of song or an absolute minimum length for the full mp3 would serve that well

also something i thought of - do difficulty settings have to be unified? i would say that at very least hp should be modifiable as it scales based on object count and drain time

Advancing this proposal seems appropriate at this point of discussion. Most points have been brought up and answered already. The general consensus seems in favor of this proposal, as long as the restrictions regarding album / multi-set / very strong correlation between the songs is upheld.

If there are no more concerns then I'd like to proceed with contacting a NAT to finalize this.

Eistal wrote:

Advancing this proposal seems appropriate at this point of discussion. Most points have been brought up and answered already. The general consensus seems in favor of this proposal, as long as the restrictions regarding album / multi-set / very strong correlation between the songs is upheld.

If there are no more concerns then I'd like to proceed with contacting a NAT to finalize this.

This proposal is very much not ready to be implemented as several concerns haven't been adressed properly or sufficiently:

1. The main logical flaw is the fact that this proposal is made to fit one specific example of a map rather than maps and the ranked section in general. The described use case refers to a "marathon" map (which is a somewhat outdated term) that is split into multiple parts or songs, but the same result could be achieved the other way around - mapping multiple parts or songs and combining them into one map, which is why some people brought up that it could be used as an easy way to circumvent spread requirements for these songs if they are shorter than 5 minutes. The practice of doing this (although in other ways) has generally been viewed negatively, for example R3 music box extensions or some song compilations, so it seems contradictory to claim that it's not problematic in this case. One could argue that for "contiguous albums and multi-act songs" the individual parts/songs are more connected to each other, but this is not necessarily true. A song compilation of an artist can be just as related as an album from that artist.
2. The fact that what this proposal aims to achieve breaks multiple major ranking criteria rules and guidelines is a red flag in itself and goes against the reason why these rules/guidelines exist in the first place. The reasoning provided as to why it would be acceptable to ignore the RC in this case could be applied to pretty much any other type of map too.
3. There is no actual benefit or necessity for this change, the only thing I can get behind is adding a leaderboard for each part, so if anything loved would be an appropriate solution as mentioned by squirrelpascals here. Even if pp might not be an issue, ranked is still not the right format for such content. Loved on the other hand has very relaxed requirements which makes it more suitable.
4. What is the definition of contiguous albums and multi-act songs? It's not entirely clear what falls under these terms and what doesn't.
5. If the minimum length is five minutes, it would mean that some extremely short albums consisting of several very short songs could take advantage of this allowance, for example this (9:44 - 9 songs) or even this (5:02 - 9 songs) and I'm not sure if this is intended.
6. What about individual tracks/parts that are less than 30 seconds long? Would these still be allowed to have their own difficulty, and if not, would that disqualify the entire map from making use of it or only the parts under 30 seconds?
7. Another problem is the preview point, it has to be consistent across all difficulties but in cases like these it would actually make more sense to have different preview points for each difficulty which is not allowed under the RC.
8. The wording "...and are allowed to use the songs' or acts' names as difficulty names..." doesn't say that the difficulty names have to correspond with the songs' or acts' names, meaning that difficulty names like Expert, Extra and Extreme would be allowed, making it seem like they're different maps of the entire audio which is misleading.
9. As mentioned by Nao here, whether difficulty settings have to be consistent throughout the entire mapset needs to be specified as well.

even years later I cannot understand the "circumvent spread requirements" argument. if a mapper does what you said -- "[map] multiple parts or songs and [combine] them into one map" -- and if it's already allowed to exist as a single-diff set, that's exactly the case that I'm proposing should be eligible here! and the potentially negatively-viewed ones you mention -- "R3 music box extensions or some song compilations" -- is exactly what I'm proposing shouldn't be eligible.

there are indeed parts of this proposal that were never finished or need to be discussed further (e.g. 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 in community/forums/posts/9210872 ), but to me at least these seem more like details to be ironed out if the main idea is given a green light

personally I stopped pushing this one because it's just a lot of work to keep making arguments back and forth for what realistically should be a sparingly-invoked exception to rules, and it's also just an annoying task to codify the general spirit here ("allow stuff like The Unforgiving, it's cool"). I probably won't be following up with this anymore. if anyone does want to take this over for me, I recommend you seek opinion from someone that could action on this, because there is already lots of discussion and a decent amount of talking in circles as well. I'm gonna unsub but can still be msgd if I need to clarify anything I wrote here o/

Hi, I'd like to revive this proposal.

First of all, I don't know why this isn't allowed already. Allowing players to digest a long marathon map at their own pace is much better than forcing them to sit through all of it. As Loctav said way earlier, this could be an easy method of preventing individuals from making spreads of songs - which is totally valid - but I suggest we can

A) Use best faith and allow bns to disqualify sets that are blatantly avoiding spreads by doing this.

or

B) Make each song that's being cut off from the marathon have to meet its minimum draintime requirements.
This could be either making a set within a set for those songs, or allowing people to take sections of a marathon and bundle them together to make a diff that's just a 'part' of the marathon.

In my opinion, using best faith and going with option A) seems like the better choice here. Marathons that combine multiple songs already avoid the individual spread requirements by combining the songs into one MP3 - so as long as it is not done in abuse and is justifiable (i.e an album) it should fall under good faith.

Allowing each song of an album / compilation to be its own individual diff should be fine in terms of prevention of 'content bloat' or w/e because the amount of Consistency and stamina to play the entire marathon is way higher than just the individual diffs.

However, we do need specifiers that dictate what defines what classifies as a marathon that's able to split into multiple pieces.

My current suggestion is anything that falls under the label of 'Gungathons' - which should be any compilation over 10 minutes. In addition, spreading the set across multiple difficulties should only be allowed if the marathon has multiple songs - therefore you can not cut at a random point and rank two difficulties of the same song.

TLDR: 10+ minute compilations that include multiple songs should be able to rank individual difficulties.

re: my earlier post saying this is already technically allowed

no need for even more arbitrary numbers in RC. just nominate the maps, and if people aren't ok with it, they will veto it. this will happen regardless of whether it's explicitly "allowed" or not; it needs to be culturally acceptable and we don't need RC changes for this

also insert my yearly rant about how spread rules suck and should be abolished etc etc here

UberFazz wrote:

re: my earlier post saying this is already technically allowed

no need for even more arbitrary numbers in RC. just nominate the maps, and if people aren't ok with it, they will veto it. this will happen regardless of whether it's explicitly "allowed" or not; it needs to be culturally acceptable and we don't need RC changes for this

also insert my yearly rant about how spread rules suck and should be abolished etc etc here

Whoops I think I totally missed that response .w.

I agree that technically this is allowed under current RC, but I think the end goal is to have it be explicitly allowed - atleast that's what I hoped to achieve by reviving since no one seemed clear on whether or not on whether or not it was even technically allowed.

Also just baselining for basis to build a proper veto / dq off of rather than 'rc says you shouldn't do this so don't'

If this is technically allowed, a more verbose point of rule should be added. Apparently I need to re-read the RC multiple times until I understand that this is technically allowed. There's nothing harmful in explaining it in more direct way!

it may not be the comfiest option, but a good way to start more conversation about this if you really wanted the topic to get more attention would be to push a map that's already like this with the defenses you've already outlined

it seems like the reasons are already pretty exhaustive and there are many agreeing. this is a solid baseline for breaking a guideline, as stated in the RC itself

not everything needs to be explicitly stated in the RC, and some of the most important aspects of mapping aren't, simply due to the nature of certain concepts being very difficult to define and/or quantify

edit: you would still need a spread if the separate diffs are under <5 mins. good luck on getting spread rules to change tho lol that's a fruitless venture

Claiming that this is allowed under the current RC is misleading, not to mention false. Guidelines shouldn't be treated as something that can be broken so easily, especially fundamental ones like these (namely about not reusing ranked content and not leaving more than the last 20% of the audio file unmapped). It doesn't make sense to break them if the justification for doing so is the very reason they exist in the first place.
For example, some old maps used to have difficulties that only mapped a part of the song and just ended in the middle of it, while other difficulties mapped the whole song. The 20% guideline is supposed to prevent that, so it's not true that it wouldn't apply in a case like this just because one difficulty covers the entire audio - clearly this applies to all diffs (and if the wording doesn't make that clear enough, it needs to be adjusted).
The stance against reusing ranked maps has been expressed strongly - in case you forgot, entire mapsets have been vetoed/nuked for content that was technically not even duplicate, just very similar. I don't see how/why this would be an exception if it's literally the same map twice, just one time by itself and one time as part of a longer map. It's technically the same as mapping the full version of a song and then mapping the TV Size version by copying the respective parts from the full version, which is generally considered a malpractice.

But even if you completely ignore the guidelines, a mapset like this is clearly not inteded to be rankable as it currently stands, so you'd just be abusing a loophole. Encouraging people to simply push such maps for ranked is counterproductive since the only thing you'll achieve is getting the map disqualified and the nominating BNs in trouble.

And even if we assume that it is actually allowed, then it would technically also be allowed for a case like mentioned earlier where you map a full song and add a diff for the short version to the same mapset, which I doubt you'd be in favor of.

> long and exhaustive forum thread with multiple people weighing in and providing reasoning

> "broken so easily"

ok

this is why i don't keep notifs on for these threads anymore

best wishes

I like and support this. There is a niche for this, and the playerbase would appreciate it.


If people are worried about duplicate content being ranked.. Don’t allow copy paste from full length and individual difficulties. Require a remap. But I dont see that as necessary

" I don't see how/why this would be an exception if it's literally the same map twice, just one time by itself and one time as part of a longer map."

It's the same content, but in a different context, playing wise. Just ask anyone who ever tried FCing 5~6k combo before. The element of consistency adds up to it and builds a lot of tension that a regular 3-4min singular diff doesn't have.

From the user perspective, I've never met a single person who complained that The Unforgiving has each individual song as a separate diff.

My guess is that most people wouldn't mind big marathons such as Because Maybe, Umineko comp, to have each individual song be a single diff and the top diff being the complete marathon. Personally, I'd loved if each of these 5 songs had their own separate difficulty ranked alongside the marathon, because sometimes I don't want to play the whole thing but maybe 2 or 3 of them.

So far, what are the concerns against this idea beyond "mappers will exploit this to avoid spreads"?

Because if that's the concern, the logic is nonexistent. You can already pick 3 complete songs with a theme in mind (artist, source, etc.), slap them together in audacity, call it a compilation according to rc and rank them. Most people don't do it now, even if it's allowed, so I doubt this proposal would change anything on the current state of the ranked section.

this entire proposal assumes that songs wont get cut in any capacity (cutting in a similar fashion to rhythm-game/tv size maps, or just singular sections/drops), but what about DJ-style transitions? in The Unforgiving, there's silence between tracks, but with the recent-ish rules that compilations shouldn't have fade-ins-and-outs, what if an album mix doesn't contain the full length of the song, even if it's by a couple of seconds?

this makes me think of pre-Uncaged Monstercat albums, where there are 2 album mixes per album, and each track has transitions. How would these be cut up into separate diffs?

additionally, if an album has 2 album mixes, would it be okay to stitch both album mixes into a single beatmap, assuming there won't be score overflow?

Net0 wrote:

"mappers will exploit this to avoid spreads"?

vetos will solve that lol