I recently spoke with clayton, and I think almost every mapper can agree -- loved is broken. Essentially, the loved section is the ranked section with less accountability: captains are essentially BNs but dont even have to pretend to take requests. When nearly every vote passes, that's a really big issue. As a personal example, both of the maps I have in loved are GDs on sets that got votes with less favorites than either of two og my own sets that have spent about a year and a half and a year pending on the loved spreadsheet, respectively. To me, it feels like "community popularity" is a term thrown around to cleverly disguise "captain's interests". Captains pick a few first maps that get hundreds of favorites due to song choice (everything black), a few "loved staple" mappers, like arles stuff and akali maps, and other than that, cherry-pick whatever they feel like.
Essentially, we have handed leaderboard granting power to a few specific people who are not even elected by the community or a quality control board, and they mostly just give maps they like leaderboards. In this community, where leaderboards are both a spotlight and a quality assurance, that power is godlike. The worst part is, even at their mission of "giving leaderboards to the maps the community loved", they are failing. Maps in loved fall mostly into three categories -- maps that were lifted to popularity by being chosen; maps that used to be popular, but aren't really played anymore; and maps that are essentially just leaderboards for a captain who likes the map.
Judging by the playcounts and favorite counts of many loved maps, the latter is very often true. I can find plenty of examples of maps like beatmapsets/522763#osu/1110112 which end up with lower favorite counts after spending 9 months in loved than most maps need to even get a vote (hello, my two sets with 90+ favorites).
This brings me to my next point -- is what we really want true player community representation? Univocally, the most popular loved maps are either memes, trashy jump practices, or hype songs. I don't think this is a category that should exist as a valid form of getting a leaderboard at all, with the way they are coveted in this game. You can make all the arguments you want about "community driven game" and "this is what the community wants", but I don't think that catering to delibarately low quality content is a healthy strategy at all. These maps belong in the graveyard for a reason -- they are not the kind of content that is deserving of a spotlight. They gather popularity on their own -- why would we spotlight bad content?
I don't believe in loved as a category, but this post isn't about abolishing loved. Because so many people seem attached to the idea of deliberately pushing low quality content to a community spotlight because muh community, I think the real solution is trying to at least separate this category of low quality memes, hype songs, and jump practices from the other dual role the category currently serves -- giving extremely cool, high quality maps a community spotlight and a leaderboard.
Many of these maps are not going to ranked for legitimate reasons, even though many will whine "good maps belong in ranked!!!11111 stop being lazy stupid mappers!!!!!" Despite the fact that even though many people consider it common knowledge that ranked is more about who you know than the quality of your mapping (here's osu staff admitting it on twitter) because they are unrankable on technicalities that the playerbase hasn't even heard of, like beatmapsets/914372#osu/1909836 is unrankable due to circle size. Sometimes mappers do not want to try to dumb down 200 bpm speedcore down into a normal difficulty, because it simply doesn't fit the song.
I wrote a community proposal about this a while back, and it received attention from osu staff, the (at the time) QAT, multiple BNs, and many regular members of the community. Lots of rounds of feedback went into crafting a proposal, which was posted to github, because ephemeral has said repeatedly that "toy wasn't given special treatment as a top player, he just spearheaded the project!" So I attempted the same, and have been met with absolutely deafening silence. Just like my proposal to simply display playcount on all maps, which has had virtually no opposition, has been sitting open on github for two entire years, my proposal to separate "community loved" from a "mapper loved" has been sitting open on github with no action for a year and a half.
I have been into the development discord and asked how exactly I should spearhead this further, but I've been told a confusing mix of defensive "loved wasn't favoritism toy just spearheaded it!!!" and "i don't know how you could spearhead this further". I guess this post is, in a way, me spearheading it further -- calling out the development team for treating me like a nuisance instead of the community asset I have tried to be for years. This began as a condemnation of loved, but it is so much more than that. When I spoke to a personal friend who ran the only officially licensed doujin label with western distribution rights, and tried to get him to lisence his label's songs to the featured artist program, I was reprimanded by osu staff for "impersonation of osu staff". I responded with screenshots of me telling him, in a direct quote, that "I am not osu!staff, I just know how to contact them." I was then told not to do it again -- but then they ghosted his emails so he came to me to poke them, which I did, and that is how rising sun traxx became an osu featured artist.
Instead of implementing popular ideas, like a simple playcounter for all maps instead of just ranked and loved beatmaps that has been pending for two years, the devteam finds the time to implement changes the community, especially mappers, absolutely hates. Instead of listening to mappers for ideas about keeping the game fresh (like hold notes), or officially implementing popular ideas that the community has implemented (like olibomby's sliderator), the devteam decided that it will be changing the way sliders work, completely destroying years and years of maps mapped with the current ideas of slider leniency in mind, and despite massive community backlash, condescending refusal to rollback the changes. One mapper I know said it best -- expanding content keeps a game fresh, not taking it away.
I have so many more stories, but I want to bring this post back to what it's really about -- the loved category is broken, but so is the direction the development team is taking. One of the perks of osu!supporter is that the development team is supposed to be willing to listen to your ideas, and implement community ideas. Unfortunately, as the years tick on, the development team runs further and further astray of changes that the community that produces the content for the game agrees are good, and runs a defiant opposition as if to taunt us. I love this game, and I love beatmapping. I teach beatmapping, I mod beatmapping, and I even wrote an academic paper on beatmapping and musical representation for a class on music theory and human communication (I got an A-). Unfortunately, I feel as though the development team never really listens -- they have their own ideas, everyone else be damned. I know I shouldn't lash out like this, but this really is the only way to get them to listen -- unless there is major "drama" or "community backlash", things don't even register on their radar. When I try to speak to osu!staff calmly and work through their protocols like github, I am roundly ignored. So here this is -- the development team of this game is broken. I hope someone can fix it, because I can't.
Go ahead and ban me over a disagreement, you're only proving that I'm right.
Essentially, we have handed leaderboard granting power to a few specific people who are not even elected by the community or a quality control board, and they mostly just give maps they like leaderboards. In this community, where leaderboards are both a spotlight and a quality assurance, that power is godlike. The worst part is, even at their mission of "giving leaderboards to the maps the community loved", they are failing. Maps in loved fall mostly into three categories -- maps that were lifted to popularity by being chosen; maps that used to be popular, but aren't really played anymore; and maps that are essentially just leaderboards for a captain who likes the map.
Judging by the playcounts and favorite counts of many loved maps, the latter is very often true. I can find plenty of examples of maps like beatmapsets/522763#osu/1110112 which end up with lower favorite counts after spending 9 months in loved than most maps need to even get a vote (hello, my two sets with 90+ favorites).
This brings me to my next point -- is what we really want true player community representation? Univocally, the most popular loved maps are either memes, trashy jump practices, or hype songs. I don't think this is a category that should exist as a valid form of getting a leaderboard at all, with the way they are coveted in this game. You can make all the arguments you want about "community driven game" and "this is what the community wants", but I don't think that catering to delibarately low quality content is a healthy strategy at all. These maps belong in the graveyard for a reason -- they are not the kind of content that is deserving of a spotlight. They gather popularity on their own -- why would we spotlight bad content?
I don't believe in loved as a category, but this post isn't about abolishing loved. Because so many people seem attached to the idea of deliberately pushing low quality content to a community spotlight because muh community, I think the real solution is trying to at least separate this category of low quality memes, hype songs, and jump practices from the other dual role the category currently serves -- giving extremely cool, high quality maps a community spotlight and a leaderboard.
Many of these maps are not going to ranked for legitimate reasons, even though many will whine "good maps belong in ranked!!!11111 stop being lazy stupid mappers!!!!!" Despite the fact that even though many people consider it common knowledge that ranked is more about who you know than the quality of your mapping (here's osu staff admitting it on twitter) because they are unrankable on technicalities that the playerbase hasn't even heard of, like beatmapsets/914372#osu/1909836 is unrankable due to circle size. Sometimes mappers do not want to try to dumb down 200 bpm speedcore down into a normal difficulty, because it simply doesn't fit the song.
I wrote a community proposal about this a while back, and it received attention from osu staff, the (at the time) QAT, multiple BNs, and many regular members of the community. Lots of rounds of feedback went into crafting a proposal, which was posted to github, because ephemeral has said repeatedly that "toy wasn't given special treatment as a top player, he just spearheaded the project!" So I attempted the same, and have been met with absolutely deafening silence. Just like my proposal to simply display playcount on all maps, which has had virtually no opposition, has been sitting open on github for two entire years, my proposal to separate "community loved" from a "mapper loved" has been sitting open on github with no action for a year and a half.
I have been into the development discord and asked how exactly I should spearhead this further, but I've been told a confusing mix of defensive "loved wasn't favoritism toy just spearheaded it!!!" and "i don't know how you could spearhead this further". I guess this post is, in a way, me spearheading it further -- calling out the development team for treating me like a nuisance instead of the community asset I have tried to be for years. This began as a condemnation of loved, but it is so much more than that. When I spoke to a personal friend who ran the only officially licensed doujin label with western distribution rights, and tried to get him to lisence his label's songs to the featured artist program, I was reprimanded by osu staff for "impersonation of osu staff". I responded with screenshots of me telling him, in a direct quote, that "I am not osu!staff, I just know how to contact them." I was then told not to do it again -- but then they ghosted his emails so he came to me to poke them, which I did, and that is how rising sun traxx became an osu featured artist.
Instead of implementing popular ideas, like a simple playcounter for all maps instead of just ranked and loved beatmaps that has been pending for two years, the devteam finds the time to implement changes the community, especially mappers, absolutely hates. Instead of listening to mappers for ideas about keeping the game fresh (like hold notes), or officially implementing popular ideas that the community has implemented (like olibomby's sliderator), the devteam decided that it will be changing the way sliders work, completely destroying years and years of maps mapped with the current ideas of slider leniency in mind, and despite massive community backlash, condescending refusal to rollback the changes. One mapper I know said it best -- expanding content keeps a game fresh, not taking it away.
I have so many more stories, but I want to bring this post back to what it's really about -- the loved category is broken, but so is the direction the development team is taking. One of the perks of osu!supporter is that the development team is supposed to be willing to listen to your ideas, and implement community ideas. Unfortunately, as the years tick on, the development team runs further and further astray of changes that the community that produces the content for the game agrees are good, and runs a defiant opposition as if to taunt us. I love this game, and I love beatmapping. I teach beatmapping, I mod beatmapping, and I even wrote an academic paper on beatmapping and musical representation for a class on music theory and human communication (I got an A-). Unfortunately, I feel as though the development team never really listens -- they have their own ideas, everyone else be damned. I know I shouldn't lash out like this, but this really is the only way to get them to listen -- unless there is major "drama" or "community backlash", things don't even register on their radar. When I try to speak to osu!staff calmly and work through their protocols like github, I am roundly ignored. So here this is -- the development team of this game is broken. I hope someone can fix it, because I can't.
Go ahead and ban me over a disagreement, you're only proving that I'm right.
