Greetings all, n0ah here, representing the tournament committee.

We’ve been trying to become more actively involved with the community tournaments scene and we have been trying to update our rules to make more sense. Recently, we pushed this PR to add some criteria for badged tournaments and we added a tournament report feature so that you can come to us more easily when issues arise. Before we make further changes, we want to hear from you guys. Today I would like to start a discussion on what we could do with badges.
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So what are the complaints?

Do you guys think these are valid concerns? Why/why not? Did we miss any?

Some of the suggested solutions

Let us know what you think about these and let us know if you have anything to add. I want to stress that these are all just ideas and that there's no guarantee we’ll go through with any of them. Please keep the discussion respectful.

Don't see how it devaluate badges when no one really cared about it, tournament community is small, 5 digits derankers are noname for the rest of the player base, and most of players don't care about it, yes ok someone like yoshilover456 have more badge than whitecat, but no one is thinking that he is better than whitecat, or any popular players.
Most tournaments are unknown for the community, only few of them like corsace or owc. It's not the badge at the end who have a value, but how people performed while everyone was watching them

Also removing 5 digits badges would make it way harder to remove derankers (no more bws) / cheaters (because no badge = no screening)

no longer badging rank restricted tournaments is a good idea

If we are stopping 5 digit badges you could remove existing 5 digit badges such as my badge. I would not mind having lower BWS.

For 6 digits and "low" 5 digits (we're talking up to ~40-50k) I wouldn't see an issue with removing badges. However, I feel like removing badges for any tourney in the 10-40k range would actually have the opposite effect, as "derankers" will gladly participate to events for which no badges would be awarded as it wouldn't have any impact on their profile. Furthermore, as quite a few of them use BWS, it would basically mean that any "deranker" could play in any tournament and still reap the profits.

The only way this measure would be logical would be to basically do a list of every tournament in the range, with every single winner/high place finisher, that would be shared between all tournament organizers of the range, to allow for a better manual screening of the "derankers"/"sandbaggers". However I'm afraid this measure would end up taking way too much time for its own good.

I feel adding some weight to the "open rank" tournaments on the profile might be an idea to explore as well, with only showing open rank tournaments and OWC on profile by default, for example (with rank-restricted tournaments being toggleable by choosing the option in a drop-down menu). This would allow for a better visibility of open-ranked tournaments while still showing the rank-restricted ones.

I've been hosting tournaments for quite a while already, and also tried out several concepts. I'm mostly known for the 5 Digit Rankrange, and I can totally understand why deranking and sandbagging is a massive problem.

It doesn't matter what you host, the stronger team always wins. There are the default Team vs Team Tournaments, which are always ending up in 2 - 3 superteams battleing for the first place. Draft Tournaments are also a thing, quite nice in my opinion, since captains have to pick players into their team, which makes it rather equal for everyone who participates. The other tournament that exists, is Random Teams (a.e. Suiji. It's a tournament concept where the players are getting scrambled into random teams, meaning that the team outcome can be close, yet also very favored towards any. Before specific rankranges will not receive badges anymore, you should think about what tournaments are getting badges. The standard procedure is at least 16 participants and a screening file, with experienced staff. But is 16 players/teams really enough? Getting 16 teams in 3 Digit World Cup as example sounds rough, since only 90 players are in that range, yet there are 9900 available players for the 5 Digit Range. Increasing the requirement of at least 32 Players/Team on higher rankranges, or 64, would increase the quality and the effort of the hosts/tournaments, which would be a step into the right direction. Tournaments like Five Digit Feuds (4v4, Teams of 8) is the typical 4v4 tournament everyone knows. Of course, it is pretty hype to watch and staff in in rankranges like 3 Digit, but when it comes to 4/5 digit, there are mostly 4 sandbaggers, 2 people that are decent, and 1-2 people that are not on their level at all. They get carried through the tournament without playing a single map, yet they get a badge. That's where I totally understand that topplayers are frustrated that nonames walk around with badges while not being able to play the game on their level. If people participate in the tournament, the tournament staff should make sure that they at least played a few maps, otherwise the badge is not deserved in my opinion.

Not badging 6 digit tournaments is a good move, yet a good amount of multi-accounters/cheaters would not be detected anymore. The same for 5 digit tournaments, yet I feel like removing badges in the 5 digit tournament scene would make the problem of deranking/sandbagging even worse. When no badges are rewarded, the main tournament prize is going to be either prize money, sponsored stuff (yes, in 5 digit range.) or supporter. Without badges, BWS can not be enforced anymore, meaning that people who have offline 600pp plays who are Idle in 5 digit rankrange, will simply win every single tournament that is existing. In my opinion, Solo Tournaments, Team Tournaments (to the extend of having no worthless side-players), and Tournaments that end up having fair teams in whatever reason (Random Team, Draft etc.) should get badged, if the Team Size and the quality of the tournament is high enough. The current standards of badging a tournament is nowhere near enough.

Scenario: Osu Committee removes badges for 4 Digit, 5 Digit, 6 Digit Tournaments.

What happens?

Sandbagging proceeds, Derankers keep on deranking to win tournaments once the BWS is out of existence due to the entirety of the deranker community complaining about it, until they win tournaments again.
While the 1-2-3 Digits, keep on playing the same tournament, while we end up having the same people winning the tournaments over and over again.

The worth of badges is way too high nowadays, in fact you only fight for a few pixel on your profilepage. The way badges are represented on the profile page is fine in my opinion, since I doubt that a OWC/Corsace player is jealous of a 5 Digit noname badge. The only way how to get rid of sandbaggers, would be calculating the badges with their rank. When you would imply that, you could think about the value, how much a tournament is worth ( in ranks, or a formula ). Giving out a new tab for rank-restricted badges or other non-play tournament wins doesn't make sense to me either, since it pretty much has the same outcome. Badge is a badge, isn't it?

As Kaeldori pointed out removing badges from the 5 digits scene would not only remove an incentive for the players but also lower the quality of said tournaments because screening would then not be an option anymore and lower ranges are full of players that got rolled back and might still be cheating.

Also the average level in lower rank tournaments slowly improves over the years, "derankers" beinga factor but just the average level in rank restricted being another and I don't think removing those incentives and screening would do any good for it. Now maybe adding on said profile a rank range category next to profiles to make it clearer and add merit to the open rank or more prestigious tournaments where the competition is fiercer / allow Sentenza's BWS formula to be more easily applied.

Also removing the rank-restricted badges may lead to a completeclog of the scene by the few players that are way better than their ranks without them ever moving up in upper ranges or open rank and may lead to a decline of these a little more casual-friendly ranges.

Good points have been brought up.

I would like to add that while rank restriction is obviously needed, the concept, as I am sure everyone is aware, unfortunately leads to an eventual 'deranker arms race' and is a fundamental flaw with ranking systems in general, since there is no incentive at all to increase one's rank, you can be quite flexible with what rank range you want to play in, eventually leading to better and better players being pushed to lower rank ranges with time.

BWS is simply a band-aid solution. Even in extreme edge cases it could still be avoided, for example by intentionally throwing grand finals. I am not really in agreement with the 'new tab' idea or different formatting as it is another band-aid solution for maybe the few people who actually care about such a thing, but it is foolish to think that that will solve anything, as people in this thread have pointed out.

My personal opinion is that the notion of the 'coolness of having a badge' per se is completely meaningless due to the various things that can get you a badge (tourney win, contributor badges etc). This is a flaw in how the community thinks of badges rather than the concept of a badge itself, since the concept is fine, it exactly states what achievement you did to get the badge and hence you should be regarded based on what you did to get that badge, but some people seem to assign some artificial value to the number of badges you have.

As a side note the concept of animated profile banners for a (rank restricted or otherwise) tournament win seems much more meaningful and could potentially be explored further by staff, for example a 'banners' tab.

I do not foresee a complete solution to this problem, anyone who can find one is a genius. Until then, rank restricted tournaments will continue to be highly flawed, not just in osu! but in pretty much anything. I do appreciate that staff is attempting to reach out though.

Yeah I absolutely agree with Bakugo-. He made lots of fair points. I have the same opinion about 5 digit rank range - the main problem are team tournaments (teams full of derankers/V2 players/Gatari players make the tournament much much less enjoyable for other teams, also, yeah, some substitutes end up getting "free" badges without even playing in the tournament. Another thing I noticed is that it also slightly effects the mappool difficulty. Some maps end up being almost unplayable for other teams even before semifinals.

and btw bakugo how did you get the total number of 9900 players in 5 digit rank range 😂

Some thoughts of mine reading over the thread:

It's hard to get behind any potential solution that involves displaying different types of badges differently without actually seeing some kind of example. In my head, "multiple rows" means I'm going to have two empty rows on my profile for world cups and mapping achievements, and then a third row with my tournament badges, which doesn't do much to actually separate them, and instead creates clutter. The same goes for the "new tab" suggestion; without seeing an example, I don't really understand it, and the example I come up with in my head doesn't sound like much of a solution.

Regarding "No longer granting badges to 5-6 digit tournaments": Are we thinking of a strict cut-off at 10k or something? Could this be dodged by hosting 9k+ and badging that? What about 7.5k+? Or is a more vague, case-by-case thing being considered? Personally, I think a case-by-case check is a terrible idea, as it sounds like a good way to upset a host who may be "technically within rules". If a strict cut-off is used, I'd heard someone suggest that 5k be made the cut-off, since that's the cut-off for OWC registration.

Are there plans to retroactively remove certain rank restricted badges? Does not removing them do enough save the value of badges? Curious to hear opinions from the players who think badges have been devalued.

Contrary to the other replies, I don't think BWS is in danger by changing badging rules. Under new rules, rank restricted tournaments may no longer be subject to official support rules, so there would be nothing stopping them from just blacklisting or kicking derankers. If that idea isn't popular, the lower-ranked community can establish its own, unofficial "badge system" to keep track of BWS. Maybe I'm being naively optimistic, but I don't think it would be as hard to coordinate as others seem to think.

n0ah wrote:

There is no difference between tournament badges and badges obtained through ways other than winning a tournament (mapping, contribution, etc.).

I don't personally see this as an issue. As far as mapping/contributor badges relate to tournaments, these "other" badges are rare enough that they don't devalue tournament badges, regardless of whether or not rank restricted tournament badges are considered. It might be worth duplicating or referencing this post in a mapping subforum in case mappers less involved with tournaments have an opinion on how mapping rewards are displayed.

Bakugo- wrote:

Before specific rankranges will not receive badges anymore, you should think about what tournaments are getting badges

Seconded, would like to see more restrictions on tournament formats if they haven't already been put in place

n0ah wrote:

No longer granting badges to 5-6 digit tournaments.

Feel like it's worth mentioning, 6 digit tournaments have not been badged for some time, just so that that doesn't become the focus of the thread

Just want to say that if you were to unbadge 5 digit tournaments due to the feeling of them being worth less or being riddled with derankers, I feel like the same would have to be done for 4 digit tournaments as well at the minimum. The 4 digit tournament is at the very least just as full of derankers, if not more full, than the 5 digit scene; more over, I feel like if you remove 5 digit tournaments due to the prestige aspect, I see no reason why 4 digit badges would be on the same level as open rank badges. Personally, I support removing 5 digit badges, but I think it should also include 4 digit, and even 3 digit, badges as well.

remove 5-6 digit badges

I do not believe that our issue lies within „badging lower tier tournaments“ but more in what tournaments we badge as bakugo said. I believe that a lot of low quality tournaments got badged, as well as tournaments with weird concepts. Therefore I think instead of thinking „what do we do about lower tier tournaments“ shouldn’t be directed at the rank range you’re looking at but more at the general quality and concept of the tournament. A lot of people just bring in some known tourney staff and get their tourney idea badged without ever hosting before.

Another flaw in the current concept is that most hosts just need experience of one previously hosted tournament to get their second tourney badged. If the number of hosts allowed to host badged tournaments would massively decrease and you still get certain hosts organize tournaments for certain rank ranges I can see the tourney scene even bloom a bit brighter than before. Of course it’s impossible to foresee what’s going to happen if the number of badged tournaments heavily decrease, but if you were to „fix“ the current problem of „deranking“ and „sandbagging“ while also changing the amount of badges going out it’d be needed to re-evaluate every past badged tournament with new quality rules.

Of course an Elo-system instead of bws (including the previous idea) would most likely be the „dream-idea“ (its most likely impossible to implement)

Anyways thanks to everyone who read that, it was just me throwing out my thoughts into the discussion - as I have not read every previous comment there could be people saying the exact same thing, if that is the case just ignore this have a great day

I don’t think there’s a perfect solution. I don’t think an elo system would be a “dream” solution even though it will make a change for the better.
Having elo will just encourage a new wave of de-eloers and people who sandbag their elo just to join (for example) an elo restricted badged tournament.
It won’t be much different as rank restricted tournaments we know today in the long term.
In any game with a competitive environment there will be people there to ruin its integrity, its going to be very hard to find an alternative solution to just removing 5/6 digit badges entirely.

n0ah wrote:

New tab for rank-restricted badges or other (non-play) tournament wins.Multiple rows for different types of badges (eg: one for world cups, one for tournaments, one for mapping, contribution, etc.).

Either of these would work perfectly well in my opinion. it'd be very good to see one of these implemented

What about Tiering badges in whatever way? Like you said about rows, but maybe just a small outline, and they all clump together in descending order of tier on the profile, rather than date currently. Have 5~ Tiers or so, one for World Cup, one for Top Tier tournaments and overall level of competitiveness going down...? This way you wouldn’t need to remove any badges, and you could create a new system of BWS to properly weight them as well, may also incentivize some to go for Tier 1 Badges rather than lots of Tier 4 ?

I wouldn't suggest to remove 5-6 digits rank restricted tournament badges if there's no better alternative to the current BWS, as this might actually increase the amount of derankers and sandbaggers since badges aren't the only prizes that you can get from these tournaments and these players wouldn't get any badges which will keep them in the same BWS range despite winning multiple tournaments. Prizes might not be the only factor as some people probably just want to achieve something by any means which is winning these tournaments.

Suggestions for alternatives is an Elo system or an unofficial badge system that Kron05 mentioned. However, I think an Elo system would be much better.

Big Brayn wrote:

Of course an Elo-system instead of bws (including the previous idea) would most likely be the „dream-idea“ (its most likely impossible to implement)

I don't think it's impossible but probably complicated. You could make new players to tournament scene have elo based on their ranks and go from there. But yeah, more thought is needed to make this system great. It doesn't have to be perfect as long it's more beneficial.

Dragbit 6 wrote:

Having elo will just encourage a new wave of de-eloers and people who sandbag their elo just to join (for example) an elo restricted badged tournament.

De-eloing requires you to throw tournaments. Deranking (current problem) requires you to get higher score but worse accuracy in a top play. You can see that deranking would be much more common than de-eloing as you can derank anytime while de-eloing requires you to wait for tournaments. Also tournament hosts and staffs could probably counter/report these de-eloers pretty easily.

n0ah wrote:

New tab for rank-restricted badges or other (non-play) tournament wins.

I think this is a good idea to separate these badges but could be better imo. Another way I could think of is making badge size of 5-6 digits rank-restricted significantly smaller compared to open rank tournaments, lower digit tournaments and OWC. Or specifying the rank range of the badge in it's name when you hover over it. Tiering badges as Wixonater mentioned should also be a good idea.

Bakugo- wrote:

If people participate in the tournament, the tournament staff should make sure that they at least played a few maps, otherwise the badge is not deserved in my opinion.

Support. Imagine getting a badge by just doing nothing. cringe

n0ah wrote:

Multiple rows for different types of badges (eg: one for world cups, one for tournaments, one for mapping achievements).

Support. I think I saw some mapping badges that looks similar to tournament badges which will cause confusion.

n0ah wrote:

New tab for rank-restricted badges or other (non-play) tournament wins.

I think a better solution to this may be just order of badges, keep them in one tab but separate them somehow in the same tab.

For example make 4 main categories:
Open Rank > Rank Restricted > Mapping/Community awards etc > Monthly Spotlights

Each of these categories could be separated with a small line and it wouldn't make a big mess (as it could make if all these would be separated with different tabs) on the user page.

It would probably take a lot of effort from the community to find all tourney badges and categorize them but I believe it's a logical compromise.

In all seriousness, suggested solutions no. 2 and no. 3 are both improvements if you ask me. But I do wonder if the result will be worth the effort. I don't think we will know for sure unless it's actually implemented.

Bakugo- wrote:

If people participate in the tournament, the tournament staff should make sure that they at least played a few maps, otherwise the badge is not deserved in my opinion.

All you need to do is have the player in question play maps when you're about to clean sweep someone. This idea of yours would only cause unnecessarily prolonged matches. You can't reliably establish something to prevent badging benchers unless you:
a) revoke badges based on arbitrary decisions made by staff, or
b) stop badging team tournaments where overall max team size is bigger than match team size

Monofly wrote:

Dragbit 6 wrote:

Having elo will just encourage a new wave of de-eloers and people who sandbag their elo just to join (for example) an elo restricted badged tournament.

De-eloing requires you to throw tournaments. Deranking (current problem) requires you to get higher score but worse accuracy in a top play. You can see that deranking would be much more common than de-eloing as you can derank anytime while de-eloing requires you to wait for tournaments. Also tournament hosts and staffs could probably counter/report these de-eloers pretty easily.

Deranking is a lot of effort. De-eloing would only require you to sign up for random tournaments and throw or forfeit the first match. You basically wouldn't need to do anything.

Only thing you will see here is derankers trying their best to keep the opportunity of getting badges the easy way. Remove 6 and 5 digit badges and let the world burn

And btw

Kondi wrote:

Deranking is a lot of effort.

Pressing F1 and B before you play the map is not a lot of effort