Not sure if this has been about posted before but this is an idea I've been juggling around that would lower the mental barrier of modding large mapsets. The proposal is a change to the Beatmap Ranking Procedure, which is why I didn't post into the ranking criteria proposals, and since this would require changes to the website from a development angle as well.

Instead of pushing a mapset into qualified when it receives 2 nominations from nominators, it should be pushed into qualified when each difficulty has 2 nominations, as well as overall mapset checks (spread + metadata) requiring 2 nominators separately.

Here's some reasons why this is a good thing:

- Metadata checking can be done completely separately.
- Nominators can specialize in checking certain types of difficulties (eg. lower diff, higher diff)
- Larger sets don't necessarily require more effort from a single person.
- Hybrid sets don't suffer from the responsibility of quality resting on 1 nominator per game mode.

This introduces technical challenges:

- The website obviously has to be updated to allow this.
- Beatmap submission should take care to only reset nomination status for difficulties that have been updated, rather than the mapset itself. I don't think the mapset submission process is in the new osu-web source tree yet, so this might actually be the biggest blocker.

Anyway, just an idea pitch, so I'd love to hear what people think about it. I'd also be willing to contribute code changes necessary to make this happen.

EDIT: renamed the title so people don't understand that this forces each diff to have 2 different nominators zzz I think people are getting the wrong idea

Some small thoughts:

with this change what would happen with spread issues, if the whole idea is to have modders have to spend less time on a set then how would spread issues be handled,

Also imo it would be waaaay harder to start coordinating a set to get ranked like this


Edit: although i wholeheartedly agree though that the current hybrid nomination rules are really off

If I understand the proposal correctly, wouldn't this mean that it would be significantly harder to get things ranked seeing as in the most extreme scenarios you'd need to find perhaps up to 10+ BNs for a set, notwithstanding that for some styles there might not even be 10 BNs who want to mod the map in the first place?

I suppose in practice nominators could double down and check multiple difficulties themselves but still the requirements to rank a map would massively increase

>with this change what would happen with spread issues, if the whole idea is to have modders have to spend less time on a set then how would spread issues be handled,

>Also imo it would be waaaay harder to start coordinating a set to get ranked like this

Yeah hadn't really thought too much about spread issues other than "spread should be considered by a general-check bn". We can probably break that down a bit into all the "general" things that have to be checked and formalizing the checklist into something that you can tick off on the website.

Coordinating a set is usually done by the mapset host anyway, and this should only make it easier for BNs to check certain diffs rather than the whole set.

>wouldn't this mean that it would be significantly harder to get things ranked seeing as in the most extreme scenarios you'd need to find perhaps up to 10+ BNs for a set, notwithstanding that for some styles there might not even be 10 BNs who want to mod the map in the first place?

Not necessarily. If you want, you can still have 2 people check the whole thing, it's just with this there's more of a detailed checklist of "hey every diff is separately checked".

at that point one could also argue that you could just allow per-difficulty ranking instead if you want to cut down on overhead

at the same time the whole idea seems like a clusterfuck for anyone trying to coordinate it while also retaining their sanity

don't really think this solves any issues, just makes the process more lenghty and unecessarily complex~

for example, your points about why it is a good thing:

metadata: theoretically it already is, for example, me and other BNs I know usually leave metadata to be checked after the entire set is done since sometimes it's a bit boring and slow to confirm it

Specialization for difficulties: Don't really think that is a good thing at all, having BNs that for example are only good with lower diffs and not with higher diffs already puts into question if that person is even good enough to be a BN

large sets: theoretically it shouldn't even require more effort from a single person, both should always check regardless so I don't really get where this comes from

Hybrid: I do agree that hybrid nominations are weird though, imo should still require 2 bns per mode but that's a totally different discussion and I don't think it correlates with the proposed idea

> Not necessarily. If you want, you can still have 2 people check the whole thing, it's just with this there's more of a detailed checklist of "hey every diff is separately checked".

yep however if there is an option for bns to only check certain diffs/aspects then with bns being open to restrict their modding activities within those parameters it might end up unreasonably hard to coordinate everything as people have said, as well as it still being much harder to find enough bns if a lot of them go from "i'll check a full set" to "i'll only check the insane diff" for example

also yea i also agree with the hybrid stuff

Okoratu:

>at that point one could also argue that you could just allow per-difficulty ranking instead if you want to cut down on overhead

Yeah honestly this would be the ideal but I think this would require a LOT more fundamental changes to the entire infrastructure so I don't think it's feasible right now.

Seto:

>Don't really think that is a good thing at all, having BNs that for example are only good with lower diffs and not with higher diffs already puts into question if that person is even good enough to be a BN

Fair, I was thinking more about high diffs with this point; for example, if you have like 7+* difficulties you don't necessarily have to turn away BNs who can't judge maps with that difficulty, they can just check lower difficulties only and save effort for the higher diff ones.

>large sets: theoretically it shouldn't even require more effort from a single person, both should always check regardless so I don't really get where this comes from

Yeah you could split the set up and have nominators choose diffs they would like to mod, or just work through it incrementally and check off ones they checked once they're done with that single diff.

just wanted to add:

saying that spread issues is something for a general check to catch isnt really possible, as spread issues and single diff issues can be mixed together and solutions can be aslo, and knowing when issues can be solved by fixing a single difficulty or adjusting a whole spread is a big part of being a BN, so trying to break up into specialisations really doesnt work when issues arent always a clean split like you suggest

so making spread issues a general check would just require the modder to check the whole set anyways and completely removes the need for seperate checks

a side point that seto said too - if you have to specialise into modding to avoid checking certain difficulty ranges then you dont have the knowledge on how to properly judge spread wide problems

I like the idea but I think having two per diff might be excessive. You should have two minimum and then need 1 for each diff so for a 4 diff set you need 5 BNs to check it. For a 2 diff, 3 ECT.

Edit: maybe I'm missunderstanding and two BNs can still rank a map but they nominate individual diffs rather than the whole set. So you could use 5 BNs because certain BNs could look at individual diffs rather than the whole thing

While I think this could potentially work for difficulties this would require several changes to how beatmap submission and sets work, likely including changes to ranking criteria as well to bring it in line with the technical possibilities. There are a lot of good ideas how sets and beatmap ownership could be restructured and in terms of priority these all have priority over the required changes for your suggestion in my opinion.
Thinking small does not help if it still requires changes to the underlying system.
If changes to the underlying system are necessary they should be done with something bigger in mind for example per-difficulty ranking as mentioned by Oko, perhaps after a base spread has been approved to ranking in the first place.


Personally I believe that this division of responsibility in relation to the areas of expertise would work much better for beatmap elements that aren't related to the gameplay aspect such as skinning, audio, metadata and storyboarding.
It is unrealistic for every BN to possess in-depth knowledge in all of these areas nor does knowledge about these seem to be part of the requirements to become a BN. Dividing responsibility for these concerns would make much more sense and would be more practical in real cases - even without changes in the interface of modding v2.
And yes, I'm biased here because most BNs don't know jackshit about storyboarding. And they will still nominate storyboarded maps.

Don't really see this working. While the idea itself is somewhat good it brings some complications which are not worth the change.

For each difficulty, metadata, spread progression (and anything else) 2 nominations from different BNs are required. This means that in practice you could proceed with nomination progress just like in its current form, with only difference that you have to click "nominate" button few more times. That said the change would be redundant for 99% of the ranking paths cause in practice 2 BNs would be just fine.

It also raises serious problem regarding BN activity. Each part of the mapset allows for technically unlimited amount of BNs involved - that allows for easy activity manipulations:
- other BNs can come in during nominating phase popping something, later "fixing" your nomination getting free activity
- your BNs getting big nomination points if they dedicate themselves to do everything on their own (basically nowadays check)
- "specializing in checking certain elements/types of difficulties" means you can just mindlessly look over one thing in a mapset, farming free activity, which is contrary to what nominator is supposed to do - being well-rounded in modding and check all elements of the mapset (not to mention some aspects of mapsets are a lot easier to look after than the others - e.g. metadata doesn't even require modding ability, that's just some research on the internet lol).

For the last thing I mentioned. It could potentially be fixed through complete redefining of nomination scoring system, but that would be just a nightmare to keep track of. BN instead of getting certain amount of nominated mapsets per month, dunno now would have to worry about nominating x amount of Easies, Normals, metadata etc.? Idk I don't really see that work. That might also raise a concern of how BN applications might be taken in consideration. If BNs can "focus" just on one thing, does that mean the person applying can choose to be examined from that one particular thing? That just wouldn't make sense from practical standpoint, because that would just massively inflate the amount of pseudo nominators being "good" at one aspect. This is not what modding/mapset checking is about - it's just special treatment completely changing the definition of nominator.

Though I don't know how complicated it actually would be from BSS side, the most concerning thing would be metadata influence on already nominated diffs. Applying metadata changes will update the diff, causing nomination reset anyways. And if you wanna avoid it then you would have to either a) take in comparison certain parts of .osu files to see if they changed (timing, objects) through separate lines of code; b) completely redo the mapset definition where there are multiple .osu(?) files for diffs, meta etc.

So yeah while I can see the idea behind it to make BNs be engaged more into checking individual parts of the mapset, that just unnecessarily complicates everything. If anything, what needs to be improved is not nomination process but nominators sometimes going yolo/lazy mode, and your proposals allow for even more of that.

(and for the hybrid sets, the easier alternative would be to just allow bns from each mode to nominate the mapset as a whole rather than one diff)

tl;dr this would be the same ranking process like current one but with few extra clicks on forums, BN activity can be abused very easily with that causing many BNs to hunt for more yolo nominations, overcomplicated in many aspects too

Re: Rolniczy

>the most concerning thing would be metadata influence on already nominated diffs

Oh yeah this is actually gonna be Stupid to change.

>It also raises serious problem regarding BN activity.

I believe that BN activity would need to be updated to work with this kind of nominating scheme as well; as you pointed out the current system would probably be rather inaccurate when moving to a totally different nomination scheme. But I'm not too well-informed on how the activity ranking works at the moment so if anyone has ideas regarding BN assessment then I'm all ears.

>If BNs can "focus" just on one thing, does that mean the person applying can choose to be examined from that one particular thing?

Don't people do this already? There's a line in the BN rules stating that you should not nominate maps that you're not qualified to judge. Why would that line be there if not to have nominators specialize? Obviously not every nominator is well-versed in high-difficulty or high-density maps, and BNs already have massive song/map preferences that they already filter by, so it makes sense for BNs to specialize. Whether or not they're judged with that in mind is open to discussion.

>If anything, what needs to be improved is not nomination process but nominators sometimes going yolo/lazy mode, and your proposals allow for even more of that.

To the contrary, giving nominators a button to push for each difficulty probably makes it less likely for them to "yolo" nominations (obviously I'm not sure about how each BN thinks but it's like an extra reminder).

Anyway, yes this would increase the complexity, but in a way that allows for more flexibility for mappers, and reduce work for BNs. The complexity can also be managed by using tools to streamline the nomination history. Spreadsheets and the new bn.mappersguild site should be able to handle this easily.

the "not nominating maps you arent qualified to judge" part of the CoC (as i understand it) doesnt mean that some bns only nominate EN sets or cant mod a full spread effectively, its in place so you dont nominate niche techniques if you dont understand them such as skinning or keysounding (or for lower rank bns that only push things they can play)

also a quick note but BN tests are focused around making sure people have a good knowlege of all the ranking criteria, and specialisation isnt a thing in the current BNG structure

in any case this proposed change is looking to have major implications to restructure how the BNG works and how nominations work on a fundamental level, and i dont see this being even considered without any compelling argument that this change would vastly improve the process of ranking maps, but right now it feels like the change would just add extra hoops to rank mapsets,

to be honest the idea has a bit of merit, and some points like fixing the current hybrid nomination system is good, but it feels like the wider range of implications this change would cause are a bit too much rn

this isn't a good idea imo.


a lot of bns already don't like en sets, so it'll be hard to rank easy + normal diffs along with your harder diffs.

it's 99% likely the nat chooses you to be a bn because you have a lot of knowledge when it comes to modding. you can mod lower diffs, along with higher diffs. prob. bns have to rank a lot of maps, and sometimes, you need a different mindset when you mod lower diffs vs modding higher diffs.

-1

Didn't read this entire thread cus words r gross but this sounds like making modding more like a chore. I don't think the core system of "checking a map" has been handled any differently and it sounds like a more tedious process. There are people who even mod maps together so this is more like asking for something people can already do without any rules around it.

I don't think this fixes the issue with hybrids and this would make modding probably more shit for anyone involved cus its not natural.

^ personally bns already have a stigma towards hybrids so it's hard to get one ranked

just make hybrids require 2 bns per mode instead

Re: BlastTheKidd

>Didn't read this entire thread cus words r gross but this sounds like making modding more like a chore.

Please read. It's not requiring any more modding than usual.

>There are people who even mod maps together so this is more like asking for something people can already do without any rules around it.

This isn't about applying extra rules to it, it's just formalizing the checks around each diff so instead of clicking 1 nominate button for the entire mapset you would click 1 nominate button for each difficulty, so if mappers wanted, they could choose to have different nominators instead.

Re: Li Syaoran

>a lot of bns already don't like en sets, so it'll be hard to rank easy + normal diffs along with your harder diffs.

The way I see it, BNs don't like EN sets because they're low effort. I don't see what this has to do with a normal full spread with higher difficulties.

>bns have to rank a lot of maps, and sometimes, you need a different mindset when you mod lower diffs vs modding higher diffs.

This is exactly why it would be neat if BNs could specialize in modding higher diffs (since as Seto said earlier, all BNs should be able to judge the quality of low diffs which I somewhat agree with)

>^ personally bns already have a stigma towards hybrids so it's hard to get one ranked

The reason there's a stigma is because the entire weight of the mapset quality falls onto the shoulder of 1 BN rather than 2, since there's only 1 BN per game mode. This entirely fixes that problem by requiring 2 BNs of the corresponding gamemode to approve the map.

---

I think y'all are misunderstanding the intention here... the point is so that you CAN choose to get different nominators for different difficulties, SO LONG as you have 2 per diff. I think this goes in accordance with the intentions of the ranking process and while it adds a bit of complexity, it reduces the amount of effort required from checking full sets.

For example, think of the number of BNs who would be bothered to look at 9*+ maps or maps with complex timing. The point of this proposal is to disassociate those so instead of 2 BNs responsible for the quality of the entire mapset, different people can be responsible for different aspects of the map's quality.

Ok now everything makes sense, but I still don't think this should be implemented this unecessary lengthy. Like what's the point of recheck anyway? You can just even get the 1st BN to mod a part of mapset, and the 2nd BN to do the same thing with the rest, then the 1st BN have to recheck to see if there's something wrong left then just nominate the mapset.

Mordred wrote:

just make hybrids require 2 bns per mode instead

^

If I am understanding this correctly, this is only asking for the option of having separate difficulties be nominated by different BN if so desired. You will still need 2 BN per difficulty, and it can still be 2 BN for all difficulties like it is now. You just get the option to have something like BN A & B nominate easy diff and BN B & C nominate normal diff.

It allows a bit more flexibility. The change would be noticeable only to mappers who know how to take advantage of this. Needless to say, this is not for mappers who have difficulty finding available BN.

Re: Zelzatter Zero

>You can just even get the 1st BN to mod a part of mapset, and the 2nd BN to do the same thing with the rest, then the 1st BN have to recheck to see if there's something wrong left then just nominate the mapset.

The original intention of the 2-person check is that each part of the beatmap is checked by two people. If any one person is only doing part of the mapset then you need at least a third person to check the rest of what the first one didn't check.

GUYS I AM THE NOMINATOR FOR THE HITSOUND'S ON AN INSANE DIFF
see how stupid you sound now

yeah i still think the current ranking system is fine aside from hybrids, which the nat + devs could decide on allowing 2 bns per mode instead of 1.